Aurora slowly made her way to the bathroom where she hoped a hot, steaming shower would take care of any remaining aches. Before she closed the door, she heard Kaylana begin rummaging through their closet. “I’ll pick you out some killer shoes,” she yelled.
Yeah, that would definitely perk her up.
Once she was dressed and ready to go, she again gave Kaylana a big hug. “Thank you.”
“Anytime, but I better
not
have another excuse to do this again.”
“Yeah, no kidding.” Aurora definitely planned for it to be a one-time thing.
Keeping her promise to herself, Aurora strode as confidently as she could manage into Interplanetary Living, her first class of the day. It was the only class she had with Kaylana this morning. Interplanetary Living was a mandatory class for every cadet because it covered all of the issues and challenges that stemmed from living outside of earth. The difference in gravity and the extreme caution needed for safety changed how a person would normally function.
Of course, when she walked into the room, everyone turned to look, but she ignored their stares and took her seat at the front of the class. A few moments later Zane came strolling in, but instead of ignoring her like he usually did, he sat in the seat beside her. Aurora felt his eyes raking up and down her body as he silently stared at her. Aurora knew he was trying to be sly about it, but she felt the heat in his gaze.
“How are you feeling?” he whispered.
“I’m fine,” she whispered back.
Aurora swallowed, but neither of them came up with anything else to say. He silently looked at her until he seemed to remember something. He pulled a small object out of his pocket.
“Hold out your hand,” he whispered.
Aurora slowly held her hand out between their desks. When he placed what looked like a small-winged bug in her hand, she raised her eyebrows.
“It used to be a toy ladybug for kids,” he said.
Aurora carefully examined the thing in her hand and saw that it did look exactly like a tiny ladybug. In fact, she thought she remembered her dad giving her something like it as a child.
Zane placed a small remote control unit on her desk. “But now it can actually fly. It’s similar to the snake bots your dad created for the army, but this little guy can move quickly in and out of small areas while recording and broadcasting a live video stream. Plus it looks friendly too.”
Aurora silently watched him talk. His eyes were lit in fascination. Apparently talking about tech was the way to get him to open up.
Her lips curved into a smile. “It’s wonderful. Did you do this all yourself?”
“Yeah. I found it in a junk techyard a while ago. Its wings were crushed together, but that was an easy fix. I just thought you might like it.” Zane shrugged, seeming to remember they were in class. He turned back in his seat and remained silent.
Confused, Aurora looked at Kaylana on her other side, but there was no time to talk.
Today her professor was covering the proper way to physically exercise in order to counter the effects of lower gravity on the body. Every astronaut, while living outside of earth’s atmosphere, was put on an aggressive exercise regimen.
Despite the many advancements in medicine and technology, living outside of the earth’s atmosphere was detrimental to an astronaut’s physical strength. It was one of the reasons the Academy only wanted to train the young and physically fit. The younger an astronaut was trained, the longer their career would be.
On the moon base, they would live in one-sixth gravity. Intrigued with this idea, Aurora calculated that she would only weigh eighteen pounds on the surface of the moon. With everything being so much lighter and easier to move, she would have to struggle against the natural muscle atrophy that would occur from living there.
Class eventually ended, and when Zane and Akemi walked past them, they both waved goodbye.
Aurora waved, glancing over at Kaylana for an answer to Zane’s new behavior, but she only shrugged and said, “Boys,” as if that were enough of an explanation. They didn’t have time to discuss it any further because she had sim training, and Kaylana needed to hurry if she was going to make it to her medical class on time.
Aurora hesitantly made her way down to the simulator bay, not quite sure if she was ready to get back into the cockpit again. At least today’s flight block was for shuttle simulator training and not the XT-101.
The usual quiet sounds of the bay went a long way in soothing her nerves. All was quiet with the exception of the humming and mechanical movement as the simulators shifted around. The bay she walked down housed six level D shuttle simulators and classrooms that were used for ground training and flight de-briefing.
Aurora padded down to the largest classroom where she saw several other cadets already waiting. As usual, when she walked into the room and shuffled her way into an open seat, they all stopped whatever it was they were doing and watched her. She wasn’t sure if they realized how uncomfortable it was for her to have so many pairs of eyes focused solely on her. This was one of the reasons she always dressed so nice. If she didn’t, she’d be wondering if she were missing an article of clothing or something.
Maybe they’re just horny
, she thought. The longer she was around Zane, the more she understood the feeling. Aurora giggled, garnering more stares.
She could tell they wanted to ask her questions about yesterday, but before any of them got up the nerve to ask, Lieutenant Colonel Jackson and Sky drew everyone’s interest when they walked into the room.
Now that everyone had turned back in their seats to face the front of the room, Aurora sighed in relief, happy to no longer be the center of attention. Luckily, the Lieutenant Colonel demanded everyone’s undivided attention. His military upbringing threw some people off at first glance, but once in class, he managed to combine humor and real-life experience into the lessons.
Aurora actually considered starting a list to keep track of Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Jackson’s humorous quips on aviation that managed to turn an entire class into an uproar of laughter. Her favorites were “Keep your knots up” and “Any problem that can’t be solved with afterburner, alcohol, or money was never really a problem to begin with.” He somehow managed to convey the importance of safety while keeping class interesting.
Of course, Aurora’s few moments out of the spotlight were short-lived, because the first thing the Lieutenant Colonel wanted to discuss was Aurora’s own personal flight from hell.
This announcement was met with nods of approval from the class, but Aurora was studying Sky. He was still standing behind the Lieutenant Colonel with his arms folded across his chest, leaning back against the wall, watching. It was an unusual place for him to be because he was usually living up the limelight. His normally open face was completely closed down as he studied everyone in the room. He nodded, briefly meeting Aurora’s eyes before looking away again.
She swallowed and looked down at her desk. She wasn’t sure she wanted to relive the flight again, but she understood that talking about it was unavoidable. She continued to focus on the solid desk below her as she breathed in and out. When she felt completely calm, she looked back up at the class to find that everyone was quiet and that Lieutenant Colonel Jackson was watching her.
Aurora looked up at him, eyes wide. “Oh. Sorry. I’m ready.”
“We all witnessed some part of Aurora’s flight yesterday, and I wanted to take a moment to discuss what happened. As a pilot, you will all need to get used to the fact that failures do occur. It is up to you to be prepared for them.”
Aurora let out a shaky laugh, unable to meet anyone’s eyes.
“First off, Aurora handled herself very well, and I’m proud that she was able to control what she could of the situation.” Lieutenant Colonel Jackson paced the room while Sky glowered behind him. “As Aurora’s flight proved yesterday, emergencies are real, which is why we must continue with our intense training regimen. I do not have the complete maintenance report that will answer the whys and hows of the situation Aurora found herself in, but we can still learn an important lesson from it.” He paused. “We can all realize the necessity of not relying on one instrument because not everything will always function as it’s intended. It is up to the pilot in command to handle these types of situations calmly and quickly. We need to continually refresh our emergency procedures because as proven, a computer program may not be there to save the day.” He pulled up the XT-101’s performance graph. “From what I was able to gather from Aurora’s communication with Sky and her flight path, we know that she entered into a mach tuck at fifty-five thousand feet. She lost consciousness soon after her failures occurred and knew to immediately lower the nose of the aircraft to descend.” He pointed to where the airspeed and altitude crossed paths, indicating the airplane’s coffin corner. “In a perfect world, she would have also managed to pull her throttles back, but she was unable to accomplish that before passing out. Once she regained consciousness, she was able to recover the airplane.”
The Lieutenant Colonel looked at Aurora “Whatever ignited Aurora’s problems will be addressed with the maintenance crew, so there’s no need to worry.”
Several people raised their hands, hoping the Lieutenant Colonel would answer more questions, but he waved them down. Aurora was disappointed that he could not easily explain everything.
The Lieutenant Colonel walked over to where she was sitting, and all eyes followed his movements. He patted her shoulder. “You kept your knots up, and that’s all that matters at this point.”
The class laughed, which was probably the whole point. The flight department couldn’t have its students running around scared, so he was using humor to keep the direness of the situation at bay.
Aurora wasn’t sure what to think. The Lieutenant Colonel and Sky had both looked shocked and upset by what happened yesterday, but it seemed as if he now thought it was just an unfortunate maintenance problem that would easily be rectified. Her father’s worried behavior had only amplified her own doubts, but she wasn’t about to say anymore. Her father’s threat to bring her home still rang in her ears.
Aurora met Sky’s eyes. A silent exchange passed between them, and she was certain he could read all of her fears clearly.
“Now, let’s get in the sims,” Lieutenant Colonel Jackson announced.
Aurora slowly gathered her headset and tablet that held all of her approach charts and checklists. She was intentionally taking her time leaving the room. Looking at a cockpit, even in a simulator of a totally different aircraft, made her nervous. Before she made her way out of the room, Lieutenant Colonel Jackson called her over to him.
“Are you feeling up to today’s flight?” he asked.
Despite his attempts to lighten the situation, he must have recognized her unwillingness to get in the shuttle simulator. There was nothing to do but move forward, so she attempted a small smile. “Yeah, nothing too bad can happen in a sim, right?”
Lieutenant Colonel Jackson nodded and leaned down to tell her. “There’s nothing more to worry about now. Whatever caused your failures will be fixed, I promise.”
Aurora wasn’t really convinced that it was something that could be easily fixed, but she didn’t destroy his faith in the maintenance personnel or her small hope that he was right.
The Lieutenant Colonel glanced at Sky, who was loading the flight-training program for the simulators.
“Sky, would you mind riding along on Aurora’s flight today?”
Aurora’s quick intake of breath drew the Lieutenant Colonel’s attention. Before she said anything, Sky had looked up and answered, “Sure.” Not wanting to cause trouble, Aurora held her tongue. She was sure Sky’s presence would not make her flight any easier.
Sky continued to load the data for the simulator-training lesson, and Aurora patiently waited. She was in no hurry to get started. The Lieutenant Colonel left them together in the room so that he could oversee the other cadets.
As soon as Sky finished, they made their way to the last available simulator. It was the only one not already in motion and its little walkway was still down, waiting to be boarded.
She passed the monitor screens where the instructor sat and headed directly into the cockpit where she easily maneuvered herself into the left captain seat. As she was adjusting the rudder pedals, Sky’s shoulder bumped up against her. He was trying to squeeze his long muscular frame into the seat next to her without bumping into her, but it was too tight of a fit for them not to touch.
Aurora assumed that he would sit in the back area where all of the computer screens were mounted, but instead, the Apollo Academy’s star astronaut was choosing to sit in the co-pilot seat next to her.
His eyes caught her choice of shoes, and she was certain he was going to begin the flight with one of his snarky comments. Instead he just shook his head at the platform wedge boots that Kaylana had picked out for her. “Nice shoes.”
The only response she was able to come up with was a raised eyebrow that he just laughed at. She couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face. He was so much nicer when he wasn’t glaring at her.
He raised his hands in supplication. “Sorry. I won’t say another word. You won’t even know I’m here.”
To say the rest of simulator run went normally would just be a lie. Well, the flight itself was completely routine. There were no nasty surprises for her to handle, and true to his word, Sky silently sat in the seat next to her as he watched her complete each training maneuver. The only indication that he was even there were brief touches of skin as she flicked switches throughout the cockpit and the occasional glimpse of observant, bright blue eyes.
Aurora usually didn’t mind silence, but this was intense. It was like they both wanted to say something, but neither of them broke the silence until it came to a point where it would have been weird if it was broken. Her hands were sweating by the time the flight was over. She had been nervous about getting back into the cockpit, but she forgot all about it as soon as Sky gave her a new reason to be nervous.
Shit. This is not happening!
Aurora had to keep reminding herself that Sky was an ass.