Cluster of Stars- Chapter One

Cluster of Stars

*1

The universe looked like it was made by a baby with black paint and glitter, Alectra thought as she leaned over the railing staring through the roof of Space Base Central. Some ignored the scenery; to them the stars were nothing new. They were probably Space Base inhabitants, living constantly with the stars wrapped around them like a dirty blanket. Didn’t matter, to Alectra they were glorious.
Looking down, Alectra could see 11 more floors, space ships exiting and entering, swirling through plexi-glass tubes twisted like an intricate web.
“Last call Ganymede Academy cadets, Dock G-19. Last call Ganymede Academy cadets.”A gasp hung in Alectra’s throat, heart seeming to blast through her ribs. That’s me, she thought.
The dock was swarming with students, most already in uniform, armors of honor, royal blue and silver long sleeved jackets with royal blue pants. Students said bye to their parents, a rush of emotions flowing through the dock like a rampant wind as friends reunited. Here at Ganymede Academy, you don’t make friends, you make family.
Steam pissed out of the gate as it opened, letting in ship 319. It was huge, five floors, with private rooms, a café at the top and even beds for those who wanted to sleep their way through hyperspace. Alectra found a seat on the first floor and slunk back in her chair, exhaling deeply, several strands of her white blonde hair lifting off of her face.
“Is this seat taken?”
A girl with short bubblegum pink hair stood over her and held out a hand that Alectra reluctantly shook.
“Beau Gamble,” she said, pumping her hand professionally.
“The second best reporter in the Galaxy, though no one knows it yet. My mother is the first. But when I’m done at Ganymede, that’ll change,” she said, confidently as she settled in next to Alectra.
“You’re a reporter?” Alectra asked, curiously.
“That’s right,” she said, and pulled out a mini camera. It lifted up and around them recording.
“Isn’t there a reporter school you can go to?”
“I don’t need to learn how to be a reporter. It’s in my blood,” she said, pulling up her sleeve from her arm to show Alectra her veins. As if she could tell the difference between reporter’s blood and normal blood.
“My mother’s Alanna Gamble for Galaxy’s sake!” Alanna Gamble was a renegade reporter, most popular for her coverage of the Akonian war. Now she’s the lead reporter for GBC news, the only broadcasting channel with news all day every day, reporting everything and nothing. Because of Alanna Gamble nothing went on in their galaxy without everyone knowing about it.
“I’m making a four year documentary on what it’s like to be a Ganymede Academy student. From the first step on the Academy ship to the last step off the graduating stage. Posing as a student, going where no student has gone before,” she said, pumping a dedicated fist in the air.
“O-K,” Alectra said, losing interest, and reaching to peg in her ear pods. Ear pods were two round balls that once inserted into your ears connected to your brain and was able to display a visual list in front of your eyes that only you could see, all you had to do was think of what you wanted to hear and it played. You could play it as loud as you wanted and nobody else would hear.
“What about you?” Beau asked. The camera buzzed in front of her eyes and Alectra could see herself in the holographic screen it displayed.
“Well…um…my family has been going to this school for years and –”
“Wait, don’t tell me you came just because of your family.”
“No, thats not it at all,” Alectra said. She could’ve worded it differently but Beau had practically hit the nail on the head, and Alectra didn’t like how it sounded.
“Then why?”
She thought about it, seeing her pondering, confused face in the screen.
“I mean I wouldn’t say I didn’t want to be here, I do. I honestly do, but…it’s not my greatest desire you know, to be a Star Force Cadet. I don’t really know what I want to be. So why not follow your family’s roots?”
“Yeah but to be a Star Force Cadet, it’s something you have to do with passion or else you could get lost in it’s violent world.”
“I mean, you’ve really got to be brave, self sacrificial, fearless. Thousands of Star Cadets lose their lives every year. And to die without a cause, besides ‘cause daddy told you to -”
“I have a cause,” Alectra stated firmly.
“What?”
Alectra thought about it, staring into nothing until Beau lost interest, and started talking to a few kids around them. Alectra pegged in her pods, thinking about what Beau had said, to die without a cause. That’s not going to happen to me. If I’m going to die doing anything, it’s going to have a cause.
She lay back in her seat, gazing at the stars pulsing past her in the window, music from her favorite band, Zero G, playing softly in her ears. Ahead, a holo-screen glittered was playing GBC news. The Captain of Team Silver, the number 1 team in the galaxy spun in a circle in front of the words: Captain Sterling Silver, captain of the famous Team Silver: Missing. She dozed off.
Drifting back into awareness as the school came into view. It was eerily silent everyone, freshman and upperclassmen alike, were staring out the window with a sharp intake of breath, clouds forming beneath their noses in the glass. Alectra pressed her face against the window and saw it; it was the most beautiful space ship she had ever seen. It looked like a creature, beautiful, graceful, like a mechanical whale with blue lights glowing from its belly. Glowing on the side of the ship were the words, Welcome Back, Cadets! Everyone cheered and whooped at the sight.
Alectra looked around in awe as she climbed off and onto the Ganymede dock, ships lining miles long from one side of the dock to the other, as far as the eye could see. She’d never seen so many ships at once in her life, all manner of sizes, styles and colors. Most bearing the Ganymede Academy crest, with the school motto, Return with honor below it. Their duffles were piled on top one another in front of them. Hers wasn’t hard to find, silver was in this year, and hers was the only metallic teal. It was in the second stack over, buried beneath a blue and yellow vintage Team Lightning bag. As she reached to grab it, someone else snatched it before she could along with the Team Lightning bag. She looked up, and there stood Skyler Comet in all his glory.
He was especially tall, being an upperclassman, and mature, well toned arms, uniform rolled up in creases, white tank underneath with a silver lightning bolt chain around his neck. He had a shock of long blonde hair that fell rebelliously behind his ears, and these ink blue puddling eyes, that looked like they would drip and stain.
“You’ve got to be quicker than that if you plan to last here, freshie,” he said, tossing it back to her with a wink. Then he walked away throwing his own bag over his shoulder like no one else mattered in the room but him. And maybe they didn’t. I think I just found my cause, Alectra thought.
Turning away, Alectra approached the aerators, it was a traveling device, similar to an elevator but faster. She went in, pressed M for main floor, and in a blink she was there. It felt like being pinched in the stomach.
The main floor was the heart of the school, it was spherical, with a curving, clear roof overhead showing the stars leaking over them. Beneath it was a space plane, vintage, really old big and bulky but with its own charm. Four more floors twisted around them five halls jutting out into the center. Each hall the representation of a different planet.
“Whoa!” A space plane did a somersault over the roof in the sky.
“Did you see that?”
Alectra looked up and saw flashing words, Mercury Gym beaming out the window. Everyone rushed to get there. Mercury Gym was more like an arena, the room entirely clear, even the seats so that you could see everything that went on outside. As Alectra pushed and shoved her way inside, she could see space planes blazing beneath her. There was also a huge holo-screen in front to catch everything you couldn’t catch yourself.
The room filled with gasps, mutterings and whispers as ten beautifully crafted and expensive space planes burned the sky, twisting, turning doing impossible tricks, flying really close to each other, close enough to crash but never even nicking the paint. It was amazing. It was almost an art the way they flew, cutting across the sky like metallic angels.
If only I could fly like that. Shark was unimpressed. She was Plutonian. You could tell with the holier than thou essence she had about her.
“They do this every year, the top ten, to show the first years how good they can become but mostly to show off,” she said, black hair falling savagely over her eyes.
The top ten were the top ten ranked students at the school, the best of the best. The first in school was a Senior, Quan Nebellum. He was Plutonian with long dark hair, fathomless black eyes, with a quiet expression. The second in school was a Junior, pretty boy, Skyler Comet, also the son of the President of the Galaxy. The top ten were the monarchy at Ganymede, they were worshipped amongst the students like Gods.
Skyler the god of Flight, Quan the god of fight, Caz the god of speed; they were the stuff of legend. Everything at Ganymede was about rank. The higher ranked you were the more respect you got. It was an unspoken rule out here, pay your respects to the elders, move out of their way in the halls or you’ll get shoved out of the way. Everyone followed them; secretly hoping that things will change one day and they’ll be shoving people out of the way instead.
As the show ended, the screen showed the faces of the flyers through their ships, they all looked at the screen and smiled or made peace signs. The coolest was seeing Skyler’s intense blue eyes from beneath his helmet, a blonde streak sticking out beneath it, his smile, and peace sign as he turned out of the way. He had the essence of a god, this untouchable thing that all the elite had. But Skyler was the coolest, Alectra could tell already.
“One day,” the girl standing next to Alectra said, “that will be me.” Shark’s parents made weapons, some of the best came from Pluto. They invented the Reaper, a weapon so disgusting it was banned from usage by the W.A.C, Weapons Advisory Council. Freshie dorms were basic. Three bunks beds in a cramped windowless room. The beds were uncomfortable and firm, the pillows flat. When Alectra entered, Aurora Cerelis was already decorating her bottom bunk with pink feather boas and other fluffy cutesy things. She was Venetian. Pretty and impossibly feminine with long wavy blonde hair that crashed across her shoulders.
“Hi,” she said, turning to Alectra, extending a hand, “you must be Alectra. I’m Aurora, but you can call me Rory.” Alectra shook it and smiled. Beau was sitting on the top bunk, next to Azelle Phobos, a girl with a mane of frizzy blonde hair and a faraway look in her eyes.
“I’m Azelle!” she exclaimed. The girl beneath her, with sky blue wisps of hair smiled at her and waved.
“Sianne,” she said. And then the last roommate entered. She was gorgeous. And everyone noticed. Alectra must’ve been staring because Callista gave her a what-are-you-looking-at face. Alectra averted her eyes. She tossed her bag across her bed and climbed onto the top, over Alectra’s.
The lunch bell rung, and they all left to the mess hall. Upperclassmen barreled their way down the halls bystanders being knocked out of their way, one of the guys almost shoved Callista but stopped, turning to see her, and moved out of her way instead. Callista had power. It was an essence that only some people had. While nobodies like Alectra were being shoved, elbowed and tossed. The girls made it, finally and found a table on the second platform towards the edge and sat, thankfully out of the crowds.
There was a big show of the top ten entering the mess hall, all lined up after the other, walking in coolly, as everyone whispered and watched.
“Skyler is the definition of astro,” Beau sighed, leaning onto her hand.
No one would ever forget the first time they’d seen Jesse Stratum. He came in followed by all of his roommates, though nobody would remember that they were there. All anyone would remember was him; silver wild hair, black eyes that seemed to say everything and nothing at all, long slender toned body, with the kind of beauty that made your eyes bleed. Even the top ten were looking, wondering who it was that had stolen their thunder. It never really got as quiet in the mess hall again. Jesse didn’t notice though, he never did, just walked around to the stairs and came up to the second floor, sitting at a table somewhere near the girls.
“Who is he?” Aurora breathed.
“I wish I knew,” Beau gasped.