“I still think we need maximum jump capacity,” Auberje argued, leaning forward and staring across the semi-transparent orange and gold ship at Helos. Over the last two hours they had learned a lot about one another. They were great collaborators. Almost as good at it as Riley and Auberje.

Their minds were similar enough to understand one another but varied dramatically when it came to the places their creative juices concentrated . This made for a fine covering of all the bases. Riley continued to contribute as much or more. She took the notes, added the fine-tuned touches and manipulated the holoprojected spaceships into existence. While Auberje talked, Helos built the model and manipulated the different scenarios Auberje suggested.

“Right, and I think we should consider additional weapons. What if someone tries to blow us out of the sky right away?” Helos said again, they had been at loggerheads over the same point for some time now.

“We have to go to class in 5 minutes, gentlmen, What is it going to be? Range or weapons?” Riley asked.

“It is a race, let’s do range,” Helos said at the same time as Auberje said, “If we don’t finish, we don’t graduate, so maybe weapons?”

Helos laughed, “No, let’s do range. We wll have to dodge and fly fast in the early stage but once we jump we should be far and away ahead of our competition. I would like to make sure we pick a jump capacitor syst em that allows for multiple quick jumps along the main range. I think we have a slightly different one in the cureent build than the one I’d like us to.” He selected a different jump capacitor from the list and Riley took it and swapped it with the current design. Their three seater wasn’t small. It wasn’t as big as the shuttles they had used in their last greathing either. It was a mix of sharp lines and curving angles. The ship resembled an icicle, pointed at the front, blunt at the tail, conical in shape and look.

“What do we call her?” Auberje asked.

“The Triumvirate,” Riley said immediately, staring at the boys in turn. They nodded with appreciation for her name.

“Alright, let’s get it submitted and go to class,” Auberje said, putting his backpack on and heading for the door.

“Right, well, this has been fun guys. I look forwarded to seeing our design built and getting it tested in real life,” Helos said as he strapped on his own bookbag and they moved out of the room into the corridor, down the ladder-like stairs and out in to the main hallway. They were in the same class together next, so they walked as a squad, awkwardly, still stiff legged and long silenced, but thawing.

Riley took Auberje’s hand in his and they skipped down the hallway together. They were happy, these three young humans, perhaps, for the first time since coming to the Academy.

After class, they received a rather cryptic message from the headmistress, “Hangar 27 – Bay 3.”

The three of them ran the whole way to see the ship they hoped awaited them. They were not disappointed.

There it was. Full size. A beautiful sleek metal icicle ship awaiting them in the bay. It looked fast with its massive pair of engines, one for the folding of space and one for blazing through atmo with abandon. The exterior of the vessel was a sleek chrome and white adding even more to the ice motif.

The ramp was down, and they could see even the interior was finished. Gold and white trimmed hallways, three seats in a shallow V pattern. The middle seat, marked with Auberje’s name sat just behind the other two. All three were jammed near the front of the icicle’s point. A large holoscreen wall just in front of the chairs. Virtual, haptic enabled holocontrols sprung out and up from the chair as Auberje took his seat. The ramp came up with an imperceptible bump and noise. Auberje would not have even been aware of it had the controls not told him. A small button pulsed “engines on?”

He glanced at his co-pilots. They looked at him in readiness and awe. “Shall we take her out for a test run?”

“Yes, let’s!” Riley’s face shone with excitement.

Auberje smiled at her.

They sat, strapping in. Riley flicked the switch to raise the ramp. Pneumatic pressure, a hiss of extra air and they were safely sealed in. They turned the vessel on.

Helos twisted a nob and the throttle came up, “Retracting landing gear, requesting immediate clearence to leave Star Academy proper from Headmistress.”

“Clearance granted, safe flight, cadets.” Came the Headmistress’s reply.

The bay doors behind them sealed, the doors in front opened and the black maw of space beckoned to them.

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“Initiating drive, pulse engine aligned, firing thrusters…” Riley said as she moved them out of the bay.

A thin line of red dust trailed behind them as their ship burned matter and turned it into energy which propelled them forward in a smooth rush. The ship felt no different, not really, yet all three knew they were free of Star Academy’s bays and that they were now in space. He checked the ship systems status indicators. Everything looked optimal. He wasn’t too surprised, they had run thousands of similuataitons before the buildout, and the vessel was built with common ship parts.

“I am going to engage fold engines, let’s stretch our legs a bit. Headmistress please put in the coordinates to say… the last Greathing system.”

“That will require two jumps at maximum capacity. You will then have to charge the capacitors for 6 hours. Are you sure you want to do that, Auberje?” The Headmistress’s voice sounded neither concerned nor particularly interested, only matter of fact.

He glanced at his companions, swallowing hard. That was a long time to be away from school. The longest he had ever been away from anywhere truth be told.

Still, he wanted to make sure the ship worked, but… he knew that if the ship broke down that far out, the only thing they had going for them was the Headmistress knowing where they were intending to go.

“Err, maybe somewhere closer?” He hesitated.

“No, let’s do that max test, Auberje,” Riley said, as Helos said, “Yes, let’s go for max test. Better to know now.”

“Right,” Auberje firmed his rsolve, “Let’s do it. Please set coordinates as per the data packet we are now receivng from the headmistress and let’s go!”

As soon as the coordinates were set by Riley, Auberje punched the big red button pulsing on his display.

A blinding white light split through his optic nerves. Visual spectrum faded to pulsing red and then black of the vioid. He shoved his eyelids down as forcefully as his facial muscles would allow. A sense of compression formed in him and made him want to scream. He heard Riley’s gasp, and a grunt of pain from Helos, then they were through and a second white light smacked into his closed eyes. The compression ended, the light fading, he blinked madly looking around the cockpit. They were all three still there. He checked the ship’s status. All a go and all unchanged except that they had burned 48% of jump capacity.

“You guys okay?” He asked.

Riley nodded and with half closed eyes she gave him a thumbs up. She shook out her hands as if she had pins and needles. She probably did, Auberje realized, returning the thumbs up gesture to her.

Helos was slower to respond, “I think so,” he said eventually, his hands full of controls, moving with a blurring speed. “ready for the next jump, skipper.” He must have been hit in the head… or he was joking. Auberje wasn’t sure which. It would be weird for this small child, object of their rivalry, to be joking, right?

“Right, let’s do it again,” he more gingerly pressed the big red button this time. The ship lurched forward and compressed and spun and deposited them safely just outside the atmo of the planet they had portalled to and from during their last Greathing.

He checked the ships status as he slowly blinked away the bright red splotches on his occular nerve. All a go excepting a 2% jump capacity. One very, very small jump was possible.

Riley was unbuckling herself, then down on all fours, heaving. He tried to stand but realized he was still strapped in. He leaned back, letting the restraints relax slightly. He unbuckled and joined her on the ground, his hand rubbing her back in slow circles. She tried to wave him off, saying through burps, “I’m fine, I’m fine. Just not used to the rough jumps.”

Helos sicked up to their left suddenly. They both glanced over. Riley obviously wished she hadn’t as she sympathetically threw up too. Auberje started to laugh. Riley, looking miserable, betrayed, and unhappy shot him a reproachful glance.

Auberje held up one hand to intercept the glare, like a shield against the bad juju she felt for him at that moment, “I am not laughing at you two. I am so sorry you’re sick. I was just laughing at the irony that I chose to do this, and yet am not sick at all. And that damn irony that I’m here with you, Helos. I still can’t get over that.”

From around a bile filled mouth, Helos said, “5-months of animosity destroyed by a few moments of interstellar travel.”

Auberje nodded grinning, “Well, I think we have one cleaning bot. Let me get it in here and you two should use the emergency rinsing station to clean yourselves up.” He smiled at them and sat back down in his chair, issuing a command to the ship to clean up his companions' messes.

He set himself a quick task of checking all systems a bit more thoroughly and cataloging all the information they had on the status of the ships reserves. He realized he had no idea if they had food or water, and he really should have considered sleeping arrangements before agreeing to hangout for 6 hours while the ship recharged in the sunlight of the Homestead system.

He knew that he and Riley could have gone down to the base, but with Helos in tow, that option was out the door. It wasn’t their secret to share, even if he had felt inclined to do so. While he certainly liked Helos more now than he ever had before, he wasn’t expecting to ever show the boy that much trust.

Helos, cleaned himself with the tools from the bot. The little machine even offered him a tooth brushing tablet. He sucked on it slowly lettting the minty freshness and the nanobots activated by his saliva clear his tongue of any residual bile. He nodded toward the planet, “I figure we can go down and eat from the 1-1 supplies we left. There should be plenty on the planet still. We came back in a hurry. No way we cleaned up everything like we should have.”

Riley brightened at that thought, “Good, because we didn’t really consider what we were going to do for sleeping, eating or drinking for the next six hours.”

“I know, I was just considering that,” Auberje said ruefully, he pushed his hand through his cropped hair, calming himself with the gesture, “next time we go camping we need to bring more gear and lots more food and water.”

“Life support has the ability to make food and water for us, Auberje. It is more the fact that this ship is 75m^2 of livable, usable space, and the three of us would have to share it all.”

Auberje nodded. The didn’t have a cargo hold, they literally had the ship’s three seats, a bathroom with a standing shower/toilet combo, and a weapons locker. They could stand easily, the ship was designed around normal human height, but it would have been far too cramped for 3 adults to spend any extended amount of time together. Technically the ship didn’t need more than one pilot, but they had given thought to who would do what roles during the competition, so the ships systems were broken up into more manageable chunks.

Auberje stretched his legs out while sitting, unbuckled in the cockpit seat. “I’ll take us planetside and we can test the ship there too.”

“That’s fine, what time do we have to be back? And do we have a timer set for how long we are going to be here?” Helos asked Auberje and Riley.

Riley replied, “First classes start 15 hours from now. I have a marker set to remind us when we are 6 hours from now. I thought we would stay the night here though.” Both boys nodded to her.

“Should we try and contact the headmistress? I think we can get a message pulse through folded space with 2% on the jump capacitors.” Auberje asked.

“We can, and I already sent a “we made it” message to her,” Riley said.

“Good, that works perfectly. Thank you, Riley.” Auberje smiled and began to send the ship toward the bright blue green, red planet of Homestead. He thought of the system in those terms but believed the actual designation was something of letters and numbers he no longer could remember. Garbage in and garbage out, he supposed.

They landed about 20 minutes later. It was a fine thing, the ship. It did most of the work itself and what little he had to do was rote. He had selected a fine open field for their landing zone.