I’m going to personally supervise your fitness regimen myself! Understand, Daggart? I’ll be watching you and all the choices you make when you’re down here. And if you mess the tiniest bit, I’ll be on you like a bad smell on a wookie! Understand?”

“Yes, Sir!”

“Then get going! Join up or find something to do on your own, but move!”

Slak started jogging, trying hard to ignore the spasms of pain in his leg he was enduring where Hublin had kicked him earlier.

When he thought he was safely out of Maybe if he just found a circular track, he could walk for the sports day...

“DAGGART!”

Solo had appeared again as if by magic, jogging backwards in front of Slak while facing him. “Thinking about taking the easy way out, Daggart? Thinking about walking instead of running? I saw you eyeing the track and slowing down as soon as you spotted it! I think you’ll need a little more guidance before you can be left on your own!”

Skrog, thought Slak. This is gonna be a longest skrogging hour of my life...

#

Dav stood for a moment in front of one of the playfields. The energy field that kept players and balls from bouncing and slamming into spectators like himself shimmered each time the glowing blue ball flew through the air, propelled by one of the players’ grav-gloves.

Dav made a point of not flinching as the blue ball slammed against the energy field inches from his face. A trick he’d learned long ago in school, he felt a certain bit of satisfaction when a dozen other cadet spectators beside him yelped and jumped back in reflexive surprise at the whistle and slam the ball made while he alone stood in place.

“Not bad,” said a voice behind him.

Dav turned. Behind him stood a blond youth, Dav’s own height and apparent age.

“Pardon me?” he said as the other cadets found something else to do. Dav noticed several of the cadets gave a shifty eye to the blond boy as they left, a mixture of dislike and fear.

“You knew it wouldn’t hit you. That means you know gravball, and how the safety field works. And that usually means you were raised in a civilized place, not like some of these cretins who crawled out of jungle slime or just traded in their nerfherder boots for a set of cadet shoes.”

There was a pause. “My name’s Freddik,” the blond boy said, extending his hand at waist level to Dav with a confident air. “I’m from Tothis. My father is a member of upper management for the Galactic Electronics firm there.”

“Dav, Dav Eccles. I’m from Coruscant. My father’s a councilman for our planetary sector.”

“Is he, now? And what flight are you in, Dav Eccles of Coruscant? Second? Third?”

“Fourth, actually.”

Freddik looked puzzled for a moment. “Fourth? Really. That is...well, surprising. Perhaps we can fix that, don’t you think?”

“To hear our Flight Leader, Shea Hublin, we’re supposed to think of little else. There’s such a stigma of being in Four Flight I’m beginning to think someone had it in for me when I signed up for the piloting program.”

“I see. Well, I’ll see what I can do about that, won’t I? Take care, Eccles, good to meet you.” Freddik shook Dav’s hand again and left, melting into the hundreds of other young people, nearly all of them males, dressed in identical white shirts and dark shorts.

Dav looked around a bit more. The sheer number of sports being played was more than a little overwhelming. Aside of the large fields where team sports were underway, there were lineups for jumping, throwing and vaulting competitions. There were footraces and weightlifting competitions between pairs and groups. And a bit further on...

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Dav sighed happily inside. In a corner of the field were several fighting rings, and in those rings were pairs of cadets engaged in fights of nearly every fighting discipline Dav knew, and a few he didn’t. There were variants on boxing, wrestling, kick-fighting, and, as he looked, he saw what he was looking for:

Two cadets engaged in what could only be his preferred method of martial arts: Tae-Jitsu kickboxing.

Yes!

Dav closed to the edge of the ring, looking for someone in charge. He tapped someone on the shoulder he recognized from his flight, an overweight, red haired fellow who’d somehow avoided Hublin’s abuse that morning.

“Hey, Eccles!” he said cheerfully. “You’re looking better! How’s you doing after Hublin tried to tear you that new breathing hole?”

“Better,” Dav said. “I might try this out today, too. Do you know how we get in the ring?”

“It might be a little tight today,” he said to Dav. “This is our first day, so unless you made someone mad like poor Daggart over there- see him? Lieutenant Solo’s riding him pretty hard. Doesn’t want him to get outta line again. Anyways, just get in line today. Tomorrow, you’ll sign up on the datapad they’ll send around for whatever sport you’re interested in. I saw you checking out that ring. You going out for Tae-Jitsu, Eccles?”

“Probably. How about you?”

“Well,” he said, patting his sizable stomach, “my world’s got pretty significant gravity. Over on Bestine 4, there’s enough pull we all get pretty strong and pretty big. I’m going to try for one of the wrestling groups over there, I think. You use your size to try and knock your opponent out of the holo- ring.”

Dav smiled. He was starting to see that just about everyone in Four Flight had something that made them a misfit for the other three flights. The pilots in training for the other groups were all in top physical condition, and all seemed to know each other from before even their enlistment.

Four Flight, though, was different. Norrin was short, skinny and couldn’t win a fight with a sandball. Bondo was huge, but strained to speak in a way that all could understand. Slak seemed the kind of person who would get into trouble each time he opened his mouth. And while that red-haired girl was pretty, she seemed tough a length of steel cable, not particularly like other girls he’d known in school. Her speech seemed rougher, the way she moved seemed coarser than any girl he’d known growing up in his sector’s political circles.

Dav, though. Dav could pass into One Flight without any difficulty, if his last conversation was any indicator.

“You!” shouted a voice. Dav started. He looked at the ring and saw a cadet a little older than himself wearing the red armband of a sports-leader on his shirt. “You gonna fight? Get over here! This one’s over soon, and you’ll need to get your fists taped up and be ready when the bell sounds!”

“Taped?” said Dav.

#

Jada swooped down and scooped up the glowing ball in her gloved hand. This game, gravball, was tricky but surprisingly easy. Hoverskate on a circular track, grab the ball with your glove, and hurl it as hard as you could to the next player in line. And they’d either throw it to someone else or try to get it into a three-foot wide metal indentation in the wall.

The safety equipment was a bit of an annoyance. She and her brothers had played a similar game with their speeder bikes back home on Tatooine. And they’d done it without padded helmets, kneepads, elbow and shoulder pads, or any of the other equipment they had to wear as part of gravball.

Looking around quickly while sliding forward on the hoverskates, she spotted another player wearing the same blue colored shoulder pads as she did. She pointed her right-handed glove at him, holding out her left arm to help her aim. Twitching her thumb as the older cadet had taught her to do at the game’s beginning, the ball leaped out of her hand and flew with a whisper of air and a cough of spent energy at her teammate.

A player with red shoulder pads and a large number one on her shirtsleeve tried to intercept Jada’s throw. But she misjudged the path of the ball, taking taking a hit from it square on the forehead of her helmet instead. With a yell more of surprise than actual pain, she fell down backwards square on her backside. The other players paused for a few seconds to laugh, still moving forward on the track while skating around her and clapping.

The fallen player leapt to her feet and skated over to Jada, storming in her direction with long, angry strides while pointing a single finger at her menacingly. Jada chuckled- she’d seen similar intimidation tactics a hundred times in games with other farm kids back on Tatooine, with far more threatening gestures and more dangerous people involved.

The threatening skater looked at the referee and and moved away from Jada,still glaring at her. Both teams went back to playing the gravball game, though for Jada the score was secondary to her actually building the skills needed to keep up with the other players, and stay ahead on the track of her new ‘friend.’

Sports time each day? And she got paid for it? She didn’t care what the lieutenants said. This made boot camp with the other fem-troopers seem like an easy-paced walk on a sand dune at night.

#