14 Days Later. 13:00 Yeager Station, Lecture Hall 1A

“Cadet’s dorm assignments will be posted shortly. In short whoever your current roommate will continue to be your roommate. Space obviously is limited here so the rooms are a touch smaller than your used too.” Said the officer in charge of acclimatizing the cadets to their new location.

“Touch small my ass. Our rooms are like five by ten-foot rectangles.” Kevin said under his breath.

“John...” Andern was about to ask a question.

“Bunk beds, same small shit you have too.” John answered the question before he asked it.

Alice, Kristin and Theresa pinched their respective partners to get them focused on the meeting. They didn’t want to get into trouble before the first day finished. Alice knew this wasn’t John’s first rodeo, but she figured he needed to pay attention to some of what they were going through. The truth of the matter was John already acquired the syllabus and knew everything that was going to be said.

“Your 15:00 class will occur at its normal time. All room assignments should be sent now. Please take the time to stow your gear and determine where the closest restrooms and cafeterias are. Dismissed.”

The cadets began filing out of the room. All of them, except Brian, were on the same floor. John was guiding the group to their floor. It was down the hall and up three floors from the main conference hall.

“Jesus, they cram us in here don’t they.” Theresa said.

“The hallway isn’t even five feet wide.” Nathan could touch both walls.

“It’s an old space station. Space is always limited. Did I mention old?” John smiled. “Old ones are notorious for being coffin like.”

“This is my room.” Andern bounced around and opened the door.

“I’m beyond the bulkhead.” Nathan said as he walked down the group.

“I’m next to Nathan.” Theresa followed him.

“Honey, we’re down six doors.” Alice pulled on John’s arm.

Alice and John walked down and entered their room. There was very little free space. A small table and a pair of chairs that folded into the wall. And then a pair of bunk beds.

“John, if you say, ‘I got dibs on bottom bunk’ the wedding is off.”

John looked defeated. “You are the love of my life, but you can be no fun at times.”

“Ugh, there is no room to move around here. I’m going to be rubbing up around you all the time.” Alice did not realize what she said.

John smirked. “You can rub on me all you want.”

Alice realized what she said, stopped and rubbed her forehead. “I walked into that one, didn’t I?”

“Yup, but you aren’t wrong, there is no space to do anything here.” John hugged Alice. “We’ll just have to get used to tripping over one another.”

“And hope it doesn’t drive us nuts.” Alice stood on her tip toes and gave him a kiss.

“Let’s go get the others and find out what where everything is.”

14:15 Cafeteria 1A

“Have you seen where the lounges are?” Theresa asked as she sat down with the group.

“Sounds like the cafeterias are the de facto lounge areas.” John was pointing at the wall. “Tables sink into the floors and wall when those buttons are pressed.”

“So, cornhole is a thing here then?” Thomas asked.

“There is any extra storage here?” Nathan knew where John was going.

“If we find space then we can stash the boards in, then we can play.” Kevin was looking at the room. “Back wall in the center there should be two cabinets.”

John jumped off his seat and walked over. He found the door but didn’t find a handle or button to open it. John moved his hands along the wall, eventually he found the access panel and slid the cover back.

“Jackpot.” John pressed the button. “I do believe I found where we can store them.”

“Yeah, we can make the board fold in half. Now we just need the materials to make one.” Andern said.

“Look at all of you. You are all obsessed.” Jessica said.

“Yes, but that’s because there’s nothing else to do here.” Brian said.

“What he said.” John was pointing at Brian.

“Let’s stake out the cafeterias and find out how full they are after meals. I’m pretty sure we can fashion boards out of some spare stuff I saw in the cargo bay.” John was smiling. “I’ll sneak in there after classes to get some materials.”

The group then chatted about various things they wanted to complain about the station. The common theme was how small everything was. The PE area was a tenth the size of the gym back at the Academy. The rooms were ridiculously small and had just enough room to move around. There were open questions about the quality of the food here.

One thing they all agreed though was that it was going to be a long three months. Eventually they separated and headed to their lone class of the day. After that was finished, they got their first taste of station food. It wasn’t bad but wasn’t great. John remarked it was better than the gruel that Miami station served. After dinner there was a PE session and then the group scoped out the different cafeterias. The first one appeared to be the most lightly used one.

John, Kevin and Thomas went down to the hangar and found some sheet metal that was bound for recycling. They grabbed it along with some hinges and got to work on making a board. An hour of work was all it took to make cornhole boards. That night they didn’t get much time to play, but they knew the board was good enough.

2 Weeks Later, Friday. 06:15 Gym

The group was in an early morning PE session running laps around the cargo bay adjacent to the weight room. They had another ten minutes of running left before it was time to do some weightlifting. PE Here at the station was different and frankly not nearly as good as it was back on Earth.

“I haven’t had a good work out here yet.” John was heading to the locker rooms with his friends.

“The weight room sucks. There’s no space to do anything and the resistance machines feel like they are on their last legs.” Andern agreed.

“I’m surprised, I thought you hated exercising.” Jessica was shaking her head.

“I do hate working out, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. The machines here suck.”

“Eleven’ish weeks to go too. Feels like time is slowing down.” John was leading the group.

“Anyone else getting used to the cramped feeling?” Theresa asked.

Everyone agreed in unison.

“I don’t think I’ve rubbed up against meathead over there once in the last few days in our room.” Alice smirked. “It’s like we learned how to dance.”

“Good time too, need to do that in a few months.” John smiled.

The group split when they got to the locker rooms. They met back up when they got to the cafeteria. The boys were nearly finished with their food when the girls sat down.

“So, no PE or no classes this weekend.” Andern looked so happy.

“Yeah, don’t get your hopes up. You know the rec areas aren’t open to us, right?” Nathan wasn’t looking forward to this weekend.

“We have cornhole, sleeping, or doing homework. Going to be a long week until we get access to the rec area. Maybe.” Kevin finished his bacon.

“Wait, why wouldn’t we have access to it?” Andern looked concern.

“Based on class demerits. There’s been a lot. Now there’s two ways to go about that. Hammer the ones that are underperforming or hammer everyone. The latter seems to be the norm lately.” John was taking a drink of orange juice.

“So, when do we find out?”

“Who knows. I’d rather plan on not getting anything than get my hopes up.” Kristin was looking at her tablet.

“Ok, I’m sorry I need to ask the obvious. You’ve done it in two locations. Why hasn’t it been confiscated.” Jessica asked.

“Yeah, are you doing, ‘you stuff’ again?” Theresa was eyeing John.

“Y’all wound me. Would I ever do that?”

“Yes.” Everyone at the table responded nearly in unison.

“No, I haven’t done anything. Dunno why they don’t seem to care about cornhole.” John shrugged.

The group continued to chat. They weren’t convinced John wasn’t behind the lack of caring about cornhole. But eventually the moved on with plans for the weekend. John had wanted to make a couch or something more comfortable to sit on. The boys talked him off the ledge on that idea, mainly because they didn’t want the cornhole stuff confiscated.

Eventually they put their trays away and headed off to class. The morning command classes for John and Kristin were brutal lecture classes. The material wasn’t difficult, but the cadets were assaulted with loads of information they needed. Doubly so now with the plan for the Junior class to start the next school year on a ship instead of the bottom half of that year. That meant the afternoon classes were every bit as bad as the morning.

Engineering, operations and medical classes were simply progressions from the classes they took in the fall. The workload was certainly lower than command, but there were weekly quizzes and more homework that was asked of the cadets to finish.

17:05 Cafeteria 1A

The nine-hour day felt like it would take forever. But graciously it ended for everyone. They were waiting for the food to be made available. The group was talking about the day and how it generally wasn’t a great one. John was at a terminal next to the table looking at things.

“What are you doing?” Thomas asked.

“I suppose I’d call it research. But I’m not sure what I’m looking for.” John continued to scan through the daily arrivals to the station.

“The better question is should you be looking at that?” Alice smirked.

“I have clearance, so yes. It’s probably nothing. Besides this is a military station. Only people that come here are military or freight ships.” John tilted his head when he saw the list of future arrivals.

The others went back to their conversations and ignored John. He had found something; this wasn’t a station that new ships appeared at. But at 03:00 a ship was cleared to dock here that had never been here before. John was going to research the ship more but then the food station opened and began serving food.

“Please god let it be pizza night.” Andern walked up and picked up a tray.

“Lasagna is acceptable.” John mockingly consoled Andern.

The group laughed and got their food plated up. Dinner in room 1A was the quietest. The other dining rooms had more screens and seating in them. 1A was slightly smaller than the others so most people didn’t bother with the room. John and his friends liked the room because it was the closest thing to their lounge.

After the meal John did some research on the ship. He told Alice he was going to stay up and watch this ship dock. Alice naturally called bullshit on his excuse. He quietly told her about Flavio’s tip and request. She naturally didn’t trust Flavio one bit and didn’t want John to get involved in anything he shouldn’t. John just flashed that impish smile which she knew that a decision had already been made.

“Wait, so there’s no curfew for us?” Andern asked.

“Lot of fucking good that does us, where are we going to go?” Kevin asked.

“Well, we can hang out here. Beats being in our rooms.” Theresa smiled.

“She’s got a point. John, the hell are you doing?” Brian hollered over at John.

“Researching a ship that’s going to dock here in the morning. Gonna pay her a visit.”

“Stop it, no talkie.” Jessica had been the groups primary advocate to stop John from elaborating his ideas.

“Fine. It’s probably nothing.”

“Probably nothing usually leads to trouble. Please avoid blowing the station up. That would be bad.” Nathan smiled as he tossed the bad.

“Three officers have walked in looking for someone, seen you guys play, gave zero fucks and left.” Jessica was sitting on the table. “You have to be doing something.”

“Look, you can blame me for lots of stuff. Because you’d be right. In this case I swear I’m not doing anything. The officers just don’t care.”

John looked back at the terminal and was reviewing the freighter CPF Dominus. This ship was owned by Centauri Prime Freight, who hauled ninety plus percent of goods between the Sol and Alpha Centauri systems. This was an older freighter but with an entirely new crew. None of which were native to the two systems in question.

Alice sat down next to John. “How bad is it?”

“Corporate espionage most likely. I honestly cannot imagine them blowing this place up. Shutting some things down while they escape sure. But not much more than that.”

“Be safe. Obviously if you need our backup, you know what to do.” Alice kissed his cheek.

“Will do. And I’ll be careful.” John winked at her and got back to researching.

Saturday. 02:45 Docking Arm 2

John was watching the screen show the flightpath of the freighter towards the station. It was still a speck of light in the distance. John felt uneasy about everything. He knew something was up. No one was going to convince him otherwise. But how much trouble the station could be in wasn’t known. Not yet anyways.

“Morning cadet. We don’t often get people watching the ships come in.” Third Lieutenant Garcia said.

“No curfew and there’s fuck all for fun to do here. Figured I should watch some ships come in.”

“Hate to break it to you, but it’s going to be boring as hell.”

“Noooo. You don’t say.”

Garcia laughed. “Smartass. But the point stands. Once they get a few clicks away our computer takes control of theirs and then the big arms hold her in place when she’s in position.”

“Dude, this is exciting. We don’t even have access to the rec rooms yet.”

“Ouch, and they suck something awful here too.” Garcia stifled some laughter. “Well, you have as much fun as you think you can have watching us dock a ship.”

“What do you know of this ship?”

“Fuck all, never been here but had clearance. That was…” Garcia cut himself off.

“Odd? Since the military would only generally allow ships, we’re friendly with to come here.”

Garcia looked down at the terminal. “Yeah.” He looked up. “Are you that cadet?”

“Well, I am ‘A’ cadet, not sure if I’m ‘THE’ cadet.” John used air quotes.

“Ok, so you are him. My sister is a senior this year. She was telling me about some cadet got run up some hefty charges but beat the case.”

“Easy to beat a case that was manufactured bullshit.” John looked out the window. “Ooh. Ship.”

“Yeah, she’ll be docked here in ten minutes.”

“What’s the likelihood of getting onto that ship?” John figured he’d ask bluntly.

“Depends on the ship, but you’d have a better chance of shitting gold than getting on any freighter here. Most of the crews don’t want our types on board because we have a tendency to ferret out things they shouldn’t have.”

John chuckled. The lieutenant wasn’t wrong. Anytime the military got on board of freighters they tended to find things that shouldn’t be onboard. The problem with that is too often bribes were paid to muzzle the Navy from doing its job. And only a few ever actually benefitted from that practice.

“CPF Dominus is a freighter, right?”

“Yeah, it’s a model JF-8 that’s been modified to handle a couple extra atmospheric containers.”

“Well, I’m looking at the ship you’re docking and it’s older Confed frigate. Is this a secret op?” John was pointing at the ship outside.

The ship closing in on its docking location. The umbilical that would tie the two airlocks together was located three decks below where they were currently.

“No, no messages were sent, nor were we told about this.”

“If I were you, I’d get the captain on coms and find out…”

John was interrupted by the lights shutting off. John didn’t want to laugh, but he did because this situation was idiotic. Flavio was right about trouble coming to the station.

“That fat motherfucker was right. So, Garcia, y’all have any weapons and armor around here?”

“Well, I can’t see shit, but what we have is on the back wall.” Garcia was working on the terminal. He was successful in turning on the emergency lights in their area.

“That terminal is useless, you’re not going to get anything out of it anymore.” John walked to the wall and opened the door. “We need to get to the back up control room.”

John took off his fatigues jacket. He slipped on the armored vest and then put the jacket back on. A battle rifle, pistol and several back up magazines were picked.

“Wonderful, plastic rounds. These work lovely.” John was not a fan.

Plastic rounds were often used on military stations because they wouldn’t pierce any view holes or the skin of the station itself. Atmosphere was incredibly important for the occupants, blowing out windows or panels would cause that atmosphere to vanish into the void. That would result in killing the people on board which would not be a good thing.

“Coms are down. What the fuck are we going to do?”

“Gear up Garcia. I’m going to make you a hero today. We need to get the main computers back up and running. It’s two decks up and down the hall.”

Garcia didn’t look convinced. “Cadet, I’m positioned here.”

“And you just finished docking a frigate that’s playing make believe for someone. The way I see it you have two options. Do nothing and then you get blamed for this fuck up. Or you come with me, and we make things right.”

“I just…”

“You might even get to shoot someone.”

Garcia looked at John and shook his head. “Wait, why would that motivate me to help?”

“Sometimes shooting people helps. You know, there are people out there that need a good shooting.”

“I’m going to help you, but that’s just a straight fucked up way of thinking.”

“Everyone says that but I dunno why.”

Garcia reluctantly decided to help the deranged cadet. He’d keep an eye on him, his presence there that night looked suspicious as hell. But for now, everyone on the station was helpless without their main computers being online. The pair ran out of the room and headed for the nearest stairwell. The backup control room was their destination, and maybe they’d get some answers.