The Apollo Academy

by Kimberly P. Chase

  ZANE

  The hallway was completely silent and deserted when Zane made his way from Dr. Stevenson’s office to the cafeteria. The only sounds he heard were his running footsteps as they pounded against the tile floor. He couldn’t get to the cafeteria fast enough. Lights, sensing a human presence, automatically turned on as he ran down the hallway. He almost laughed at the irony. Was he still human if he had something very inhuman embedded into his DNA?

  Zane shoved those thoughts away. His mind was a jumbled mess. There was no need to focus on his unknown freak issues because a more pressing issue consumed his heart. Something bad had happened at the SpacePort.

  If anything’s happened to Aurora… Zane covered his ears with his hands, as if that would stop him from hearing what he didn’t want to think about.

  Determined to at least address one of the issues on his mind, he picked up his speed. If there was anywhere he would find out the latest gossip, it would be here.

  The cafeteria was crowded with the hustle and bustle of people eating. Chairs scraped the tile floors as people moved around. It was dinnertime, so the room was filled with students, graduated cadets, astronauts, teachers, and scientists. He didn’t pretend he was there to eat. Instead of ordering a dinner plate, he strode over to the alcove where the first-year cadets liked to gather.

  Akemi, Kaylana, Jean-Pierre, and Rick all huddled at a table together, their heads down. Zane took the seat next to Rick, hoping he would know about Dr. Stevenson’s emergency call. Jean-Pierre probably could have told him what happened, but sometimes his French accent was heavy.

  Unfortunately, no one was really talking. Kaylana had her head down on the table, and Akemi’s hand kept hovering over her shoulder, like he wanted to comfort her but didn’t quite know how.

  Even though he wanted to demand answers, he spoke calmly. “You guys look a little freaked out. Does this have anything to do with the emergency Dr. Stevenson received?”

  Akemi’s hovering hand quickly dropped onto his lap just as Kaylana’s head popped up. She eyed him suspiciously. “Yeah. How did you know?”

  “I, uh, was with him when he got the call?” he said, the words coming out like a question.

  Kaylana deflated. “Oh. Okay.”

  The table’s earlier silence resumed, and he heard Hailen and Brianna laughing with a few cadets nearby. Zane turned his attention back to his table, but no one was volunteering any information. He looked directly at Rick. “So what happened?”

  Rick gazed at Zane, his face pale.

  Zane raised his eyebrows in an aren’t-you-going-to-say-anything look.

  Rick took the hint. “Aurora had some sort of instrument and oxygen failure at fifty-five thousand feet. She passed out, went into a mach tuck, and—” Rick swallowed.

  Zane had to restrain himself from shaking the information out of him, but Rick finally whispered, “She barely recovered in time.”

  If it was possible, Zane thought Rick’s face had grown even paler during his speech, but he understood the sentiment. The painful knot in Zane’s stomach made sense. He knew Dr. Stevenson’s quick departure for an emergency would involve Aurora. That girl was always in the middle of everything.

  “Is she all right?” His heart rate began to spike.

  Weird he couldn’t get his heart rate to increase running twenty-six miles, but a certain petite, green-eyed girl could do it. Zane looked at Kaylana. “Is she okay?”

  She met his concerned eyes and nodded.

  Some of the tension in Zane’s shoulders eased. Pursing his lips together, he thought this information over.

  “Why didn’t the ground pilot take over?”

  Rick shook his head. “I guess the UAV was down too.”

  What were the odds of that many failures occurring at the same time? “Is that even possible? What happened after that? Is she okay?” Zane couldn’t help but ask that last one again. He needed more than just a head nod.

  Rick shrugged and shook his head, his usual confidence on anything involving aviation completely gone. “From what I heard, the ground pilot program was down, so Sky wasn’t able to help her. She passed out from lack of oxygen but regained consciousness when she hit lower altitudes. As far as what caused all of her simultaneous failures, I don’t really know. I had just landed when she declared her emergency, and Lieutenant Colonel Jackson sent everyone back to the Academy before they got details of what happened. All I know is that Aurora, Sky, and the Lieutenant Colonel were visibly shook up. I’m sure a maintenance crew will be going through her aircraft to figure it all out.”

  Now that Rick had started talking, he couldn’t seem to stop. “It must have been horrible. There was apparently nothing anyone could do to help her.” He paused before adding. “I don’t understand how she could have that many failures all at the same time. Usually, there are redundant systems that prevent failures like that.”

  Rick looked around, like he was about to reveal a big secret. “Most people don’t realize it, but Aurora is one of the best pilots the Academy’s ever seen. I’m not sure any other person would have survived. Hopefully the maintenance team will fix whatever problem there was so that it doesn’t happen again.”

  Rick’s shoulders slumped, and he put his hands on his head. “And I haven’t done anything, but make things harder for her. All the guys give her a hard time in training, and I just go along with it. I’ve never once told them to stop. And you know what she does?” He looked around at everyone at the table. “She just sucks it up and works even harder to prove her worth. I feel awful. She could’ve died today.”

  Zane looked from Rick only to see tears falling down Kaylana’s very red cheeks. Akemi finally reached over and patted her shoulder, succeeding in his attempts to console her.

  It looked like a lot of people had been treating Aurora differently, some just more subtly than others.

  Kaylana seemed to be feeling better now that Akemi’s hand had made its way into hers. Zane was surprised that she wasn’t strapped to Aurora’s side, after everything that had happened today. “Where is Aurora, anyway?”

  Kaylana wiped her eyes with the one hand Akemi wasn’t holding. “She’s lying down in our room. Dr. Stevenson said she needed some rest, and she asked to be alone for a little while.”

  “What happened to the airplane?” The growing knot in Zane’s stomach made him sure that it was something beyond normal failure. Most people wouldn’t think too far past her emergency because she was all right, but Zane was confident that something else was at work.

  Why would that many systems fail at once? Like Rick said, there were several fail safes in place to prevent that kind of disastrous combination, and Zane would know. He worked on those kinds of things all the time.

  Rick scrunched his eyebrows, as if he thought this was an odd question, but he answered it anyway. “The Lieutenant Colonel hauled it into the maintenance hangar.”

  Zane nodded, deep in thought. “Where’s Sky?” He wouldn’t mind having a little chat with him. As her ground partner, he would have witnessed the entire event. When everyone at the table just shrugged their shoulders, he contemplated asking Hailen because he occasionally saw them together but then thought better of it.

  Pushing the chair back from the table, he stood up to leave. He had too many things to figure out to sit around and mope in the cafeteria. Once he’d ensured Aurora’s safety, he’d fix his own issues. He stifled the urge to verify for himself that she was safely tucked away in her room, said goodbye to everyone at the table, and strode out of the cafeteria confident he would find answers.

  ZANE

  Enlarging the display screen on his techiwatch, Zane pulled up the Apollo Academy’s personnel contact list. Zane didn’t know Sky’s real name, but he didn’t have to worry. Sky was listed simply as Sky in the Academy’s database.

  With a quick touch, he selected the techiwatch number, hoping Sky would answer his call.

  Zane was about to give up when Sky’s face filled the scre
en.

  He brusquely answered with a “Yeah” and seemed pissed off at being disturbed. Sky’s hair stuck up all over his head as if he had repeatedly run his hands through it.

  “Hey, it’s Zane.” Actually, now that he thought about it, Sky had never actually spoken to him since the security guard incident. “Um, we met the first day of school. Anyway, can we talk?”

  “Yeah, Zane Paxton. I remember the unknown.”

  Zane gritted his teeth, swallowing his angry retort. He would earn his status even if it killed him. Even though he’d been around Sky for training, he had never actually spoken to Zane or even acknowledged his presence since that first day. Sky obviously didn’t want to associate with someone like him. Probably ruin his reputation or something. That reminded him, maybe he should find out what Ms. Lovell meant that day about not bringing up his past.

  “What do you want?” Sky snapped, bringing him back to their conversation.

  “I was hoping I could meet up with you for a minute.”

  Sky pushed his hands back through his hair and sighed. “Look, Zane, I’ve had a really horrible day. Can this wait?”

  Zane shook his head. “That’s actually why I want to talk with you. I heard what happened with Aurora.”

  “And why would you need to talk to me about that? What’s it have to do with you?”

  Zane thought about his options. He could pretend that he didn’t think there was some sort of foul play going on because he really had nothing to back that feeling up, or he could tell Sky what he suspected and hope for the best.

  He looked around to make sure no one was listening before he said, “There’s no way that many failures would naturally occur at the exact same time. The confluence of that many malfunctions are incalculable.”

  Zane heard Sky’s breathing over his watch as he listened. “I just have a bad feeling. I think we need to find answers, and I want to look at the equipment that failed.” He didn’t want to have to sneak his way into the hangar, but he could if Sky didn’t cooperate.

  Sky pursed his lips as he thought this over. “You’re supposed to be some sort of tech genius, right?”

  “You could say that.” Zane rolled his eyes.

  Sky took a deep breath and spoke quickly, like he couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “I don’t think it was a typical accident either. But either way we should talk in person.”

  “Where can we meet?”

  “We can talk in my room, 817.” With that, Sky disconnected the call, and Zane was left looking at a dark screen.

  Sky sounded sincere in his worry over Aurora’s flight, but if he was lying about not knowing what had happened, Zane would be able to tell just by watching his reactions. It wasn’t that farfetched to believe something else was going on, especially with all of the controversy over the Apollo Alliance and its direct correlation to the Apollo Academy. TerraUnited had yet to openly attack the Academy, but it certainly was a possibility to consider.

  Room 817 was on the eighth floor, a floor dedicated to graduated cadets who were now employed as astronauts for the Apollo Alliance. When Zane arrived, he found it similar to his dormitory floor, except it was much nicer with rooms twice the size. The hallways were a little more subdued than the dormitory floors, probably because these floors held astronauts and personnel responsible for safely sending people to and from space.

  Zane knocked on the door marked 817 and pushed it open once he heard the locks disengage. If he hadn’t had complete control over his face, his mouth would have dropped open by what greeted him.

  Sky’s room seemed more fitted for a king than a twenty-two- year-old man. Granted, he was the Academy’s star astronaut, but this was super nova. Zane’s room was meek and barely furnished compared to the room spread before him.

  If Zane hadn’t seen the room himself, he would never have believed it belonged to Sky. From what Zane had seen, Sky was a down-to-earth guy that everyone else seemed to love. The room held more tech candy than a junk techyard. The walls were covered in glass screens, and all sorts of tech sat discarded on the floor. An overly large bed covered in pillows completed the ridiculously lavish room.

  As he tried to focus on the many glass monitors that appeared to be set on different media stations, Sky waved his hand in the air, changing the station. Sky was lying back on the bed with his feet propped up on a stack of pillows and was paying absolutely no attention to the person who had just entered.

  Zane stood in the middle of the room, feeling a little out of place in all the luxury, when he decided he couldn’t stand the silent treatment any longer.

  “Nice digs,” he said.

  Sky didn’t seem to notice Zane’s awkward stance. His brows creased in concentration.

  Zane turned his attention to the news station that seemed to hold Sky’s interest.

  “Have no doubt that Frontier Solutions will remain in full operation throughout this bankruptcy which is allowing us to undergo a complete restructuring of our corporate business model. In fact, just today we discovered irregularities in a financial audit that would suggest that money was being siphoned off by a high-level executive. While we have not yet concluded who is responsible, an investigation is underway, both internally and with the FBI and SEC. We fully expect that once this situation is addressed, our actual earnings and financial statement will drastically improve.”

  Zane stared at the blue-eyed and blond-haired man on the screen. He looked eerily familiar, but Zane couldn’t place the feeling. He was obviously involved with Frontier Solutions in some way.

  “In addition, I have concluded a fifty million dollar deal with a private investment group whose interest in our company will prove to be mutually beneficial. In light of this capital injection and the complete, top-down reorganization of our company, I fully expect that Frontier Solutions will soon regain its former status as a leading supplier to the technology sector.”

  Zane watched as Veronica Harley replaced the young man’s recorded speech. He was really getting sick of seeing that chick everywhere.

  “Financial analysts speculate that only an extremely high executive or board member or the CEO himself would be able to siphon off enough funds to really make a difference in their bottom line for this many years without being caught. It is also noteworthy that Henry Dagan, the CEO, was completely uninvolved and not mentioned in this latest scandal, suggesting, perhaps, that his son, Rowan Dagan, may be taking over. The question remains who the new investor is and whether or not their funding, along with the resolution to their financial leak, will be enough to turn the company profitable.

  “This is Veronica Harley. Please stay linked to Broadcast 5 News for the most up-to-date reports.”

  Who would make a deal with Frontier Solutions for fifty million dollars when they were obviously going through serious financial trouble? Zane looked over at Sky who was still deep in thought. He wasn’t sure if he was thinking of the news he had just been watching or the Aurora situation.

  Finally, Sky dragged his attention away from whatever he was thinking so hard about and turned to Zane. As if coming out of a trance, Sky shrugged his shoulders like the room made no difference to him. “So you think you can figure out what happened today?”

  Zane appreciated his directness, even if it had taken a few minutes to get his undivided attention. “If there was any irregular interference with Aurora’s XT-101, I’ll find it.” He knew he sounded like a complete dick, but, well, he knew his abilities. No one was as good as he was when it came to anything with electronics and automation.

  Sky nodded, jumping off the bed. “No harm trying, I guess. I can get you into the maintenance hangar.”

  Good. He wouldn’t have to override the retinal scanners that would assuredly be stationed outside the hangar door.

  Sky went to his closet and began putting on a pair of expensive-looking boots. Zane exhaled loudly, the closet was just as extravagant as the rest of the room. After his shoes were on, he looked over at Zane. “We
should get over there as soon as possible, in case anyone comes back to cover their tracks or something.”

  Apparently Zane wasn’t the only one being paranoid, though most of the time he was only worried about himself. He was surprised to find Sky so willing to accept the idea that something other than a standard emergency occurred. “You seem pretty convinced that this was intentionally done.”

  “Yeah, I do. Besides, like you said, the odds of that many failures all occurring at once are, and I quote, ‘incalculable.’” Sky smiled. “I know I’ve been tough on Aurora in the past, but she proved herself today. And no matter my history with her, I don’t wish her harm. In all of my flying experience, I’ve never seen so many failures occurring at the most inopportune time. Something just doesn’t feel right. Even Aurora had some doubts, but Lieutenant Colonel Jackson is positive it’s a maintenance issue.”

  During Sky’s speech, Zane studied his body language, looking for signs of falsehood, but it looked like he was being honest. Neither broached the topic of who could have been responsible if their suspicions proved correct, but there was no need to think about it until Zane knew for sure.

  “I didn’t expect to find anyone else with my same suspicions,” Zane admitted. “And don’t feel too bad. I haven’t been easy on her either. I’m beginning to realize she gets treated that way a lot. The last name Titon may be doing her more harm than good.”

  Sky nodded and looked thoughtful for a second. “Yeah, maybe. Do you have a thing for her or something?”

  Zane kept his face blank, playing for nonchalance. “Not really, I’ve kinda been a dick to her.” It killed him a little to down play his feelings.

  “Then why are you going out in the middle of the night to help her?”

  Zane raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know. Why are you?”

  “Look, it’s okay if you’re doing it just to get in her pants.”

  This conversation wasn’t going where Zane thought it would. “I’m not trying to get with her.” It even sounded like a lie to Zane’s own ears.