‘What do you mean, you haven’t flown void bikes before? Isn’t that part of your training?’

‘I haven't and I don’t know if it is. It’s not like they ever tell us anything.’

‘Damnit, Voss. Listen up, it’s not that difficult. First you press and hold the lever on the left handle bar. That’s your kill switch. If you let it go, the bike shuts itself off. Be gentle with the steering wheel because it’s sensitive. If you pull it towards you, you go up. Push it away from you and you go down. Left is left and right is right. Your throttle is on the right handle bar. Twist it forward and you go forward. Twist it backwards and you go backwards. Like I said, it’s not that difficult. One thing though, there’s no brake on this thing. If you want to slow down, twist the handlebar backwards. Let go of it in time or else you’ll go backwards instead of making a full stop.

Use gentle, short bursts when you want to accelerate or decelerate. There’s nothing slowing you down out here. Once you go at the speed you want to go, let go of your throttle and we’ll glide on. Slow down before making corners. It’s easy to underestimate your speed. Trust me, you don’t want to be making sharp corners when you’re going a thousand kilometers an hour. Look at your dashboard. The bike has an internal computer that calculates how fast you’re going.

When you make a corner, steer where you want to go. The bike will automatically fire the proper thrusters. When you end your corner, the bike will fire different thrusters to stop your spin. Be gentle with this because the rougher you take corners, the harder it will be for your bike to compensate and stop your spin. When you’re done taking a corner, accelerate again.

Never fire your main thrusters directly into other objects. The particles released from your engine can cause serious damage at short distances. Departure and arrival have to be done carefully to avoid damaging structures, equipment or people. Do you copy, recruit Voss?’

‘Honestly, lieutenant, you lost me about halfway through your story.’

‘Oh shut up and press the left lever already. Start the bike and let’s go. We’re running out of air.’

Voss pressed and held the left lever. Nothing happened. There was no sound, no shaking. Nor were there any other noticeable effects other than a small red light on the bike’s dashboard that turned itself on. He then turned the throttle forward and the bike responded instantly. It accelerated and steered itself downwards. Before he realized that this happened because he had pushed the steering wheel too far forward, they were already halfway through making a loop.

He quickly let go of the left lever to avoid worse. If only the lieutenant would have warned him that doing so also meant that the stabilizer thrusters shut down as well. They were now caught in a spin, drifting away from both the bastion and the Ciklops.

‘Damnit, Voss. Stop mucking about and get this thing stable again.’

He pulled the left lever back again and did his best to stabilize the bike again. When he finally managed to, he found that they had only slightly drifted of course and that their time loss had been minimal. They had been extremely fortunate. If they had been spun in a slightly different direction, they could have crashed into the bastion. This would have led to a certain death considering how low they were on oxygen.

Voss tried steering towards the Ciklops for a second time. This time he fared better. His steering was far from smooth. Nor was their speed impressive. They weren’t even going at half the pace they had gone when the lieutenant was behind the wheel; but at least they were now going in the right direction. Voss’ helmet flashed again, indicating that his oxygen levels were down to one bar. He knew he had to hurry up, but he didn’t dare go any faster.

He knew he still had two difficult maneuvers left to perform. Not only would he have to slow down and park the bike, he also had to somehow flip the bike around. For they were approaching the Ciklops upside down.

‘Listen up, Voss. When I say so, I want you to lean slightly to your left. I’ll lean with you. The bike will recognize that you’re trying to roll over and will assist you in doing so in a controlled manner. When you’re done rolling the bike in the correct position, simply sit back up straight. Do you copy?’

‘Yes, lieutenant.’

‘Good, now go. Lean left. A little more. Yes that’s it. Let the bike roll it self around gently. There’s no rush. Almost there. Now sit back up straight. Great that’s it. Now steer to your right.’

‘What do you mean, lieutenant? We’re already heading towards the ship. Why would you want to steer away from it?’

‘Do you want to blast your fellow recruits with particles that can rip through their suits and destroy the ship that’s supposed to take you home?’

‘No, lieutenant.’

‘Then steer to your right and then when I tell you, steer to your left again. We’re going to approach the ship from an angle so that your reverse thrusters won’t blast everyone to shreds. Honestly Voss, I just explained all of this to you, are you daft or something?’

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Voss didn’t answer the lieutenant but began his turn right instead. Part of him wanted to throw the lieutenant off the back of the bike. Make her eat some particles to stop her from nagging at him. Too bad he needed her though. Without her instructions he was unlikely to perform the parking maneuver successfully.

‘Alright now turn left again until you’re at a 90 degree angle from the ship’s rear hatch. Nice and slow, good. In about twenty seconds, I want you to softly hit the reverse thrusters. We’re going to slow down to a crawl. Then when I say so, you make a hard right turn straight into the passenger bay. There will be several instructors and recruits ready to catch us. Remember. No more braking once we make the turn. You don’t want to blast your fellow recruits.’

He did as he was told to the best of his abilities, but it all felt alien to him. He had never driven anything before. He had never owned a bike or any other form of transport. Very few people did in the slums. Most couldn’t afford it, and those who did, usually opted not to anyways. Roads were too poorly maintained and your vehicle was likely to get stolen or stripped for parts. There was no need either. Public transport was decent enough. Vast networks of monorails and subways ensured workers got to and fro their jobs on schedule. Come to think of it, he had never even ridden a bike. Not even a fake one in an arcade hall.

‘Hit the reverse thrusters now, Voss. No that’s not enough, brake harder! BRAKE HARDER I SAID, VOSS!’

But it was too late. He had to make the turn now, or they’d overshoot the passenger bay. He couldn’t slow them down any further now without killing half of the recruits.

‘Hang on, lieutenant. We’re going to crash!’

Their bike smashed into the other bike, which had been expertly parked in its designated spot by the instructor. The force of the impact caused them to bounce over the other bike in a spin. Voss pulled his hands away from the steering wheel and stuck them out forwards in an attempt to protect his head from impact. They slammed into two of the recruits, causing them to fall backwards. The two impacts had made the void bike slow down enough that one of the instructors managed to now stop it completely by grabbing onto it whilst planting both of his feet against the hull of the ship.

Voss’ intercom was a cacophony of angry shouts and curses. Above everyone else the lieutenant’s and the sergeant’s voices were yelling abuse straight into his ears. He wished he could have turned his intercom off, but they had been programmed in such a way that you could never block the incoming messages of someone that outranked you.

The sergeant pulled down a lever. The hatch closed itself. Once it had achieved full lock, the sergeant typed in a command in the console next to it and air began to shoot into the room from several vents. It was done at such speeds that the drop of temperature due to the decompressing of air, caused the air to turn liquid. Several of the instructors and recruits had to step out of the way of the liquid blasts of air to prevent damage to their suits.

The sergeant punched in another command. Several steel pipes on both sides of the passenger bay started to glow with heat. Voss had wondered what those pipes were for on the way in and why they were covered by steel cages. Now he knew. They were rapidly heating the passenger bay to a level where the liquid air would vaporize and reach a temperature where it would become breathable again.

Voss didn’t understand why the sergeant had been in such a rush though. Not until he turned around and saw that the suit of one of the recruits they had crashed into had been punctured. Recruit nine was writhing helplessly as he floated through the passenger bay. The sergeant had engaged emergency protocols to flood the passenger bay with breathable air as fast as he could. A crude method but it had worked. In less than thirty seconds, the temperature within the passenger bay had risen to around minus forty degrees again. Still freezing cold, but warm enough to be breathable. Recruit nine’s life had been saved by the sergeant's quick reaction.

Voss strapped himself loose from the void bike and went to help with getting the bike into its docking station. The blinded visors of everybody’s helmets hid their faces, but Voss knew that behind those visors, angry faces lay hidden. His actions today had caused not one, but two recruits to nearly lose their lives. He knew the others would hold him responsible for that, even if it had happened due to mistakes or faulty equipment. He decided that it would be best for now to keep his head down and do whatever he could to help solve the situation.

Once the bike was put in place and had been strapped in, the sergeant ordered everyone to take positions. Voss sat down in his seat next to the lieutenant. He was grateful for the blinded visors and standard protocols that required everyone to keep them on until they were docked into the spaceport again. The only exception to this was recruit nine, Tick, who had taken his helmet off. Fair enough though. It wasn’t like that helmet did anything for him anyhow with his suit being punctured. Ice melted out of Tick’s hair. With his suit punctured, the extreme cold of the void had managed to find its way into Tick’s suit. The sergeant had been just in time. If asphyxiation hadn’t finished Tick off in under a minute, the frost would have done it.

Voss’ thoughts were interrupted when the voice of the lieutenant spoke to him via their private channel. ‘They’ll have us both for this muck up of yours, you stupid idiot. They’ll send you to the gallows for this.’.

‘Then fly yourself next time instead of letting a recruit with zero experience take the wheel, you daft harlo.. lieutenant.’. With difficulty, he managed to stop himself before finishing that word. He was in enough trouble as it was. The last thing he needed was getting written up for subordination against a superior officer. ‘Damn that stupid bitch.’ he thought to himself. ‘She got me kicked out of the fifth for sure. There’s no way they’re letting me stay after today.’. He leaned back into his seat. ‘My fellow recruits will want to see my head roll for this.’ The red light began to flash again and the Ciklops began to accelerate.

Voss closed his eyes for a minute. He took deep breaths and felt the adrenaline rush fade away again. This wasn’t a time to get emotional. He may have survived that catastrophe of a mission, his life was still on the line. He had to think this through. A lieutenant was involved. That meant that they’d have to get an officer that was senior to her to deal with this situation. That meant that the captain, the same captain that had given them their lashes, would handle this situation. This was going to be tough. The captain didn’t seem like a man you could sway easily. He didn’t seem like he was an unreasonable man either though. Perhaps he could save himself by telling the captain the truth. Perhaps he could save himself if he threw that darned lieutenant in front of the bus. But what if he succeeded though? He needed the lieutenant and her mission to achieve his own goals. There was no way he’d ever manage to get what he wanted if he got stuck working the engines of some rusty space freighter. That was of later concern though. Right now he had to survive; with or without the lieutenant. And then? Even if the captain would spare him, how was he ever going to get the forgiveness of his fellow recruits? A cold shiver ran down his spine.