Interstellar Academy, Kennedy Harkins [epub e ink reader TXT] 📗

to control it,” Mae said without any real interest.

Kavi frowned. “But how will it know which room is ours? How will it start up?”

The human shrugged. “That’s probably half the fun,” she said and jumped in the tube.

It lit up almost immediately and she began to float as if weightless. Kavi was the first to join her, followed by Mae and then me.

For the second time that day, I felt the effects of no gravity as we soared upward. “How are we going to stop?” I called up.

The girl answered, “Not sure! But the first door is coming up. Think it’s us?”

Sure enough, we were fast approaching a large hole in the tube, probably the first of four.

Mae said, “Maybe. It’s the first entrance and we’re in our first year. Of course, they’re twenty-five floors....” She flapped her wings, using some of the air currents to gain ground on the human, beating her to the door. “Let’s try this.” Mae lunged against the opposite wall and used to momentum to spring herself through the door.

The human, who was almost past the door at that point, hastily copied Mae’s motion. Kavi tried to, but missed the door by a few inches and had to hang on to the edge of it to keep from floating up towards the next level.

I placed my feet against the opposite wall, ready to spring shot myself in the door, and made a face. The Animarian was looking at me, needing my help to get in the room. I pushed off and shot towards the door, reluctantly grabbing the dreg on my way in, pulling him with me. I released him like he was on fire as soon as we were on solid ground with gravity acting as it should.

On the bottom most portion of the apartment there were chairs and couches and shelves hosting a wealth of books. The floor was a glowing white that lit up the whole room the moment you stepped on it. The windows, though shaded on the outside, allowed you to see everything from the inside. We weren’t up high, so the the view of the town was very personal, like being a part of it.

The ceiling was quite high, because the living room was only the first layer of the apartment. Floating in the middle, probably suspended with fields, was a thin, metal circle with a diameter about half as big as the whole room. It was a few feet above our head, leaving me wondering if we were supposed to get up there. If so, I wasn’t sure how. There weren’t any ladders attached to it.

“Hey, guys, what do you think this do--”

Gravity flickered off again, leaving us wafting through the air in the apartment. As I got higher, I saw that there were two bunk beds on top of the circle. Our things were laying on them, and I could only assume the enormous, pink bag was the human’s. I tried to move my body towards the bottom bed on the left that had my pack on it. My wings tipped me too much, and I spiralled off to the side, bumping into a blue couch on the lower level.

Kavi was pressed against the ceiling. “What did I do?”

The girl was trying to do a flip by one of the book shelves. “I think this is how we’re supposed to get around in here, like it’s constant practice. And I didn’t want to come!”

She tore what I assumed to be a priceless painting off the wall and placed it beneath her feet. “Check it out: zero-grav surfing!”

The Animarian laughed at that and attempted to mimic her actions.

This was going to be a long year.

Astra

 

August 30:

This year is going to fly by, I thought, still catching an imaginary wave. The painting was probably compromised, but it was barely worth a few thousand credit anyway.

A holo, on of the four placed on our prospective beds, buzzed. It was right by my puny suitcase, so I figured it was mine.

I bumped into a myriad of things in my dash to grab the sphere shaped computer-- namely the moody guy with wings. He gave me the odorous of stink eyes. Oddly, he reminded me a bit of Igor: the muscles, the lack of a sense of humor. I guess I just attracted stick-in-the-mud personality types.

I levitated a few feet off the mattress, but since I was the top bunk, I didn’t have to worry about hitting my head. The message on the holo was just text, no video or image attached. I didn’t bother turning on the hologram feature, reading it on the surface screen.

Please report immediately to Professor Earhart’s office. Directions have been enclosed in this message.

I’d only been here an hour, and I was already being called to the Principal’s office. That was probably my personal best. Even better than the time I’d gotten kicked out of a camp for crashing the bus. It’d taken hours to sort out who was responsible from the literal wreckage. I couldn’t wait to tell Igor.

I studied the little map of campus that had been attached to the message. It was practically microscopic, but I could make out the main faculty building. It wasn’t far from apartment five, right by one of the libraries.

It was one of the stranger buildings on campus, shaped like a flowing spiral, large at the base, and ending with a sharp point at the top. There weren’t many lights on, and I wondered if it’d even be unlocked. When I tried the glass door; however, it  slide open immediately.

My spider heels scratched against the smooth floor as I wandered around the base level. When I looked up, I realised the building was hollow, with a large fluctuated shaft swerving through thee shape, getting thinner and thinner until it reached the top. The doors went right up to the edge of this space. I briefly pictured some stuffy professor hurrying out the door without look and falling with a great splat a few feet in front of me.

I grinned while scanning the barely lit room for a way up. Professor Earhart’s office was supposed to be on the top floor, and at this point, I was almost certain they wanted me to scale the inside of the building to reach it.

The moment I thought about physically going up, a small disk descended from the shadows. It was as flat as paper and made from a shiny, silver metal. It wasn’t large, barely big enough for a single person to stand on comfortably. And that’s exactly what I’m supposed to do with it, I thought, as it hovered a few scant inches above my feet.

When I stepped onto it, it bobbed slightly under my weight, making me wince. But I didn’t hop off, and as soon as I was fully on, it took off into the air.

“Woa!” I said, spreading my feet out as far as possible on the little circle and holding my arms out for balance.

On way way up, a couple of the doors were open, revealing a few teachers--of varying species-- bent over a desk or hanging up educational decorations. Peering through the windows of the unoccupied classroom, I saw loads of equipment. These rooms appeared to be already set up, sporting extra mass spectrometers, holo projectors, simulators, and other high tech, teaching extravagance.

I wondered then how much my last minute admission had set my parents back and smiled when an outrageous figure came to mind.

Before I reached the top level, I flew past an open classroom with the tiniest professor in the world. He was obviously Parvulian-- just over three foot high with pale peach fuzz covering his entire body, what else could he be? He was on top of a Parvulian sized desk, trying to push around textbooks that had a greater combined height than he did. I stifled a giggle as he vanished from sight.

I flew through a hole big enough for a couple people and came to the end of the spiral. The office was shaped like an irregular triangle. The opening that I’d floated through wasn’t directly in the center of it but off to the side and railed off. On one side of the hole, the one with less space, sat a couple of shelves with books, gadgets, and the largest collection of paperweights I’d ever seen.

The larger side had an even larger array of them, but also housed a desk made of some kind of obsidian rock and a few uncomfortable looking seats. Uncomfortable because they were just floating slabs of metal a little larger than the thing I flew in on.

A space that doesn’t want visitors, I thought.

When I  finally noticed the elderly woman sitting behind the desk, my eyes threatened to pop out of my sockets, and I choked a little on my spit. She was tall, from what I could see, and had shoulder length, gray hair. Her face was well wrinkled, like a dress shirt shoved in a bag for too long. She had the bushiest pair of eyebrows I’d ever encountered. Bushy enough to deserve an award of some kind, but my extensive collection of trophies had probably been taken out by my mutinous servants.

“Didn’t I crash into your face?” I asked.

Isra Earhart, hero, adventurer extraordinaire, and figure head for equal rights and cooperation amongst all the spies, smiled. It wasn’t exactly happy, but still a smile. “I wondered if you’d recognize me. From what I hear, you crash things on the regular.”

“Igor is a vicious liar; don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth.” 

She leaned back in her chair, folding her fingers together. “And your rap sheet? Should I disregard that rather long document as well?”

I took a seat, and my butt squealed in protest. “I don’t have a rap sheet.”

“Not an official one, no. But that is a glaring oversight made by the law enforcement of Earth--”

“And the United Galaxy. Don’t forget about them.”

“--that will not be fostered here.” She looked at me for a moment, and I felt a tendril of unease. “Can I be frank, Miss Alkaev?”

“Give it your best shot, but can I still Astra?”

She pressed her lips together and adjusted an Earth shaped paperweight on her desk. “I assume we are both aware that your parent’s intervention, not your credentials, secured you a place in the roster.”

“Intervention,” I tested the word out on my tongue. “That’s a funny way to say money.”

“But money, Miss Alkaev, will not help you to succeed here.”

I shrugged. It didn’t really need to be said that money would help me succeed anywhere. Money, specifically from my trust fund, was going to buy me a ship and a small crew of lackies. Money was going to fuel that ship to the farthest edges of the universe, just me piloting through the wonders of Galaxy forever. Money, unlike parents or friends, had never failed me, and it wasn’t going to start now.

“Do you know what we do here, Miss Alkaev?”

The last name bit was getting on my nerves, but I answered, “Goof around on the government’s dollar? A