COMPETE: The Atlantis Grail (Book Two) - Preview

CHAPTER EIGHT (draft)

CHAPTER EIGHT

I help Gennio and Anu with the post-assembly cleanup of the office, while Aeson Kassiopei gets his desk back in one piece, calls up his various consoles, and gets to work, promptly ignoring all three of us.

I spend the hours before lunch working at a small console in the corner of the office, next to Anu and Gennio, entering data and occasionally glancing in Aeson's direction, out of simple curiosity. Gennio runs various software diagnostics while Anu looks over email and personnel data and makes catty remarks about random individuals, muttering under his breath. The three of us aides then head out to eat, while the Command Pilot remains working alone in his office, his face serious and absentminded, as he consults what appears to be intricate star charts, and makes occasional face-to-face calls with Atlantean officers.

And then, it's 1:00 PM, and time for my first class onboard the Atlantean starship.

Pilot Training.

* * *

"Good luck, Gwen, you'll do fine. This is a very important class!" Gennio waves at me at the end of our meal, while Anu merely nods, as I empty my tray at the Cadet Deck Two Meal Hall. The room is noisy and filled with savory food smells and with Qualified Earth teens, mostly from the Blue Quadrant, since this is their meal hall. Everyone is chattering about the upcoming Pilot Training, which means most of us will be going to the same class in a few minutes.

It's interesting that now the Cadets are all wearing small four-point-star gold buttons next to their ID tokens. I'd noticed it earlier this morning as I passed some of them in the ship corridors—must be a new thing.

I follow the Cadets out of the meal hall, and down a network of corridors to an open deck instruction area, the size of a large classroom. It has about twenty rows of desk-like double-seater cubicles, six per row, each with strange attached circular terminals before them—not precisely computer screens but more like gaming consoles.

"Flight simulators!" a boy exclaims, grabbing one of the places near me.

I think he's right.

I take a seat in the second row, at one of the weird double desks, and watch the room fill up around me. I think I'm the only Yellow in a sea of Blues, with a small sprinkling of Reds and Greens. I'm also the only person without a four-point star button on my uniform.

"Hey, Yellow. You're in the wrong section. Are you supposed to be here?" a serious dark-haired boy with a blue armband says in accented English, glancing at my shirt with its obvious lack of a star button. He looks possibly Latin American.

"Yes," I say curtly. "I am." And I stay silent while he shrugs, then takes the other seat next to me.

I watch as more people arrive, and hear conversations in different languages. To my surprise I see two athletic Asian teens with short blue-black spiked hair, and recognize Erin and Roy Tai, sister and brother, the #1 and #2 top Standing Score contenders from my own Pennsylvania RQC-3. Furthermore, there's also Kadeem Cantrell, African American parkour free runner god and #3 contender. Not surprising at all that they made it through Qualification, or that they were chosen to be on this particular ship ICS-2 under the command of the best Pilot in the Fleet. But it's kind of amazing that I'm going to be in the same class with them. Okay, I'm so out of my league!

At one point I also notice the entrance of two other teens—a muscular arrogant boy with wavy brown hair and a green armband, and a girl with long dark hair with purple highlights and a red armband. They are the same sarcastic pair of alphas from the observation deck the night before, who made smirking fun of Gennio. They don't recognize or notice me, and I am glad.