Tuesday. 09:30 Washington Dulles International Airport, Baggage Claim 3A

True to form the couple waited as John’s bag was made available to pick up. John was muttering something that sounded either as very unflattering or a directed attack at someone. Alice was largely ignoring John’s borderline insane rantings as she was talking to Theresa on the phone. The baggage carousel next to them started.

“Look, their flight landed fifteen minutes after theirs and some of those assholes are going to get their stuff before me. GOD DAMNIT.”

A pair of security guards were walking over to investigate the commotion and saw John waiting. They were aware of his outbursts from his many flights in the past. They smiled and kept on walking, nothing was worth the hassle of trying to calm him down.

“Kristin and Andern aren’t here yet. And it looks like Jessica was on that flight.”

“Good, she can take a cab with us back to the academy. Obviously, she’ll get her stuff before my fucking bag shows up.”

“Actually, I already got it.” Jessica held it up and smiled.

Alice swore steam came out of John’s ears. She giggled a little and hugged John and tried to tell him it’d be ok through some laughter. Whether that made things worse or better she’d never know. Alice and Jessica began talking about their holiday break. Ten minutes later the last bag was dropped off. The girls and John left the area and took a cab back to the baggage area.

11:45 Lounge

“Good lord, someone looks pissed off.” Thomas said laughing.

“Alice, were his bags last?” Theresa asked.

“Every fucking time. I ­really should wipe out their cash balance as penance.”

“NO.” Jessica and Alice said in unison.

“Fine.” John sat down on the couch and put his feet on the couch.

“So, they made it official.” Nathan said.

“Yeah, we have to report back here on the August second.” Brian said.

“One day of orientation, then two days of job specifics. Then we’ll be on our ships after that, and shove shortly thereafter.” John said.

“When are we going to know what ship we are assigned too?” Nathan swore to himself as he made a terrible throw.

“End of the semester. No reason to rush it. Plus, they won’t know the class rankings until around finals time.” John yawned. “Y’all will know when I do.”

An announcement came over the speakers. Lunch was being served now. The group walked out of the lounge and down to the food serving area. They went through the line and picked up lunch for the day. The cadets had a choice between burgers or brats. Or in the case of the boys’ burgers and brats.

“When are Kristin and Andern supposed to get here?” Alice asked.

“Thought Andern said 13:00 or thereabouts.” Thomas said as he was sitting down.

“So, getting back to this ship thing.” Kevin asked. “Do you know who you want as your officers?”

“Well yeah, largely depends on what ship we get. Let’s say I get a destroyer. I’ll need four more engineering and two medical officers, two more command and basically ten or so operations officers.” John took a bit of his brat. Some mustard fell onto his tray.

“What about an escort or corvette?” Theresa asked.

“Corvette is rule of three. Honestly I’m not even sure they use escorts anymore.”

“They don’t, corvettes and destroyers only. They had some old frigates but that was too hard to run a ship with that much inexperience onboard.” Kevin said.

“Oh man, how fun would it be to run a frigate though.”

“Don’t be a dick and ask for that.” Jessica was looking square at John.

“Yeah, we don’t need that.” Theresa said.

“Fun suckers, the whole lot of you.” John sighed, then ate some potato salad and was happy again. “Destroyer it is.”

The group continued their chat. They were going to head to the gym that afternoon and get a good workout in. But a message was sent to them cancelling classes for Wednesday. The downside to that was a four-hour PE session in the morning that was mandatory for them. They also received news that they would have morning PE sessions three days a week plus a weekend until they went to Yeager Station.

“Well, ain’t that message a kick in the balls.” John said after he read it aloud.

18:45 Lounge

“But no class tomorrow. That’s awesome.” Andern excitedly said.

“Dude, I’ll take eight hours of class over a four’ish hour PE session. Did you read what we’re doing?” Kevin said.

“No, it’s just PE.”

“Of course, you are a god damned idiot.” Thomas said.

“Timed ten-kilometer run, followed by pushup and sit-up tests to start. There’s a fifteen-minute break to get hydrated, then there’s lifting weights for forty-five minutes. Another short break and it’s a sixty-minute obstacle course run. Another break, then it’s laps.” John said looking at Andern. “You are going to get fucking destroyed tomorrow.”

Theresa and Jessica finished their game of cornhole. John and Alice got up and were going to play Kristin and Andern. The latter of which began to regret his excitement about Wednesday.

“So, John, back to the ship.” Kevin smiled.

“Dunno what more to say. Assuming y’all don’t go off the deep end and fail I pretty much want all of you on my ship. Will need some names but I have a good idea who some others would be to fill in that would work with our dynamic.”

“That’s going to be so much fun.” Brian said.

“It won’t be all fun and games, it’s going to be a hell of a lot of work. And I will be demanding and expecting excellence out of everyone that serves under me.” John smiled.

“Party boat not going to happen then?” Thomas asked.

“Definitely not.”

“And yet you call us fun suckers.” Brian smirked.

“Touché.” John smiled.

“Where are we going for spring break?” Andern asked.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at him. There was an awkward silence, then lots of smirks and smiles developed. Then everyone began talking over one another to see who could break the news to their clueless friend. Theresa ended up winning, not because she brought the best argument to tell him, but she just blurted it out.

“You daft idiot, there is no spring break.” Theresa said.

“It’s more like a weekend on station.” Jessica added.

“Actually, it’s more like a couple individual days off than a weekend.” John corrected.

“No, you are all lying.” Andern dropped the bags and grabbed his tablet and was scrolling through things.

“That my friends, is a broken person.” Thomas said laughing.

Andern dropped his tablet, he was on the verge of tears. “Why are they doing this to us?”

“Honey, do you think we get spring break when we’re deployed? Shore leave is what, two- or three-days tops?” Kristin was shaking her head.

“But. But. Spring break?” Andern was fully defeated.

“Bud, look at this way, you get a taste of a proper schedule on a ship, then you get all summer off. It could be worse.” John tossed a bag and dropped it on the board to prevent any bags from sliding in the hole.

“Life is just not fair.” Andern picked up the bags and tablet he dropped.

“I’d say truer words have never been spoken but we clearly know that isn’t the case.” Brian changed the channel on the TV.

“We got next game.” Kevin interrupted.

The game continued but John and Alice ultimately won. When the couple sat down in the recently vacated loveseat John opened his tablet and was looking through some data. He hadn’t been entirely honest with intelligence and keeping most of the development work on the amplifier to himself.

The amplifier was still doing its job and doing it exceedingly well too. But it appeared that John’s abilities were noticeably higher than they first were before all of his practicing. That was proof, at least in his case, that it was possible to improve a psychic’s capabilities.

“What are you looking at?” Alice glanced over at the screen.

“Some data with the new suit. It’s only a sample size of one but I think one of my theories may be proven true.”

Just then a communications officer entered the lounge. “Cadet Lief, secure call for you.”

“Roger that.” John got up and walked out of the room.

Halfway to the office the officer looked back at John and asked a question. “How the hell have those cornhole boards not been confiscated?”

John laughed. “You’d think that with as much focus on orders and compliance that they’d be all over that but no. No one uses any of the lounges here.”

“Well, I’m not one to say anything. Damndest thing I’ve ever seen here.” The officer laughed as he opened the door. “Room three.”

John walked in and secured the room. He accepted the waiting call at the terminal. “Flavio, what do you want?”

“Good evening my friend. I think there’s something we can help each other with.”

John rolled his eyes. “Probably going to hell for this, but why not. What could it be that helps both of us?”

“You had a run in with a couple rats that we’d like eliminated.”

“I fail to see how that’s a favor to you when I’d do all the fucking work.”

Flavio started to laugh. “That is why I like you John. I’m sending you intel. Their group is planning on something at Yeager Station next month. When your there.”

“Kidnap job?”

“No, we believe this has been ongoing for some time. Doesn’t involve you directly, but you may be able to root them out and stop them.”

“And what do you get out of it?” John leaned back in his chair.

“That’s where your skills come in. We’d like you to get the paperwork on a couple contracts.”

“Which if I’m in place to stop this bullshit I might be able to see.”

“Sending you over the details.” Flavio smiled as he cut the call.

John read through the document and smiled. The contracts are supposed to be public but someone in the first fleet made them confidential, so they weren’t part of the public record. Like they should be. They were however stored on Yeager Station, and he may be able to retrieve them there. John shook his head; it wasn’t likely he’d end up in the right place to see them, but Flavio did him a favor.

John logged into the intelligence network and researched what Flavio was talking about. Surprisingly there weren’t any leads. John decided to not contact the director over this, but he did open up a file. At the very least it would help him with the station chief should anything happen while they were on station.

John got up and walked back to the lounge. He sat down next to Alice and joined in on the conversation. The group switched over to talking about the wedding. The girls were very excited about going dress shopping. The boys decided to go to Jack’s Axes to have lunch and throw axes at targets.

Wednesday. 08:50 Gymnasium

John was stretching. He finished his 10k in thirty-five minutes. That wasn’t nearly as quick as he could have run it, but he didn’t want to push it too hard. The proctors running this exam wouldn’t let him do anything else yet. John complained about sitting around doing nothing, so they agreed to let him do the push up and sit-up tests.

He continued stretching at the side of the track. When his friends came by, he shouted words of encouragement. Thirty minutes later everyone was done running. They were cooling down and ready to take the next test.

John walked over to grab his water bottle to fill it up. Alice was walking at his side, though a bit more winded and slower than him.

“Tell me honestly, could you have finished more quickly?”

“Yup, I’m not inclined to explain to anyone why I could set a world record here though.” John smiled.

“You’re going to care about records in the next part, are you?”

John jumped up and smiled. “Hell no, but I’m no strongman so not much worry there.”

Alice just laughed at how muscle headed her fiancé could be. The rest of the group caught up with them and were drinking water.

“Don’t sit down, keep stretching. You’re going to feel worse by sitting down.” John said.

“I know your right, but god damn that hurt.” Kevin poured water all over himself.

“How much time do we have?” Andern looked like he had a foot in the grave.

“Ten minutes or so.” Nathan said as he slowly walked over to the rest of the group.

John kept on encouraging his friends while insisting they keep stretching. When the resting time was up the group headed to the weight room. This room was massive. There were dozens of stations for each exercise.

John was going to go in and just try to beat his personal bests. He decided against it and opted to max out reps. John started out on the squat station. He did thirty-six reps at four hundred twenty-five pounds. Next station was the clean and jerk where he did twenty-two reps at two hundred eighty-five pounds. John kept on stretching when he wasn’t lifting. Andern was at the bench press station near John.

“Dude, your kind of freaking me out with all that stretching.”

“Reduces the chance for injury and speeds up the healing process.” John said.

“Still looks weird man.” Andern smiled.

“What’d you bench?” John asked.

“Only twelve reps at two hundred fifteen.” Andern shook his head. “Not my finest hour. Where are you headed next?”

“Overhead press.” John fist bumped Andern as the station switch call was made.

John walked over to the new station and impatiently waited his turn. He continued with the stretching and hopping up and down in place. Anyone outside of their class would think he was high on something. In truth it was mostly excitement laced with adrenaline and endorphins. Nathan was watching.

“How many reps was that?”

“Twenty-four at three hundred thirty-five. What’d you do for squats?”

Nathan was smiling. “Fifteen at three hundred seventy-five.”

“Nice! It is going to be easy to sleep tonight.”

“No shit. So why the big focus on PE?” Nathan felt like asking the obvious question.

“Want us to be in tip top shape for when we’re going to be in space.”

The pair of friends high fived and moved on to their next stations. For John it was power cleans. Once again John appeared overly excited and bouncing around with energy. Kristin and Theresa were in the same group at the bench press. They were looking at John’s uncontained energy.

“I swear something is wrong with him.” Kristin pointed at John.

“Obviously he’s got a screw loose. But he’s still good people.”

“Yeah, he is. Oh, look it’s time for him to go. That’s a lot of the big plates.”

“He’s not stopping. Good god that is almost freakish.” Theresa was trying to not laugh.

“He more than doubled the reps as anyone else with what, ninety pounds more than anyone else?” Kristin’s jaw was open, stunned with what she was witnessing.

The girls were next in line to do their lifts and took care of them. John was still bouncing around with boundless energy. How he would maintain that level of excitement for the lifts no one would ever find out. But the actual answer was overly simple, he just loved to lift weights.

The groups switch to their next stations. Only two stations were left for the cadets. John had lunges and the bench press left. He kept up with his animated excitement while waiting his turn at the lunges. Brian and Thomas were at the clean and jerk station.

“How are y’all doing?” John asked.

“Tired as fuck.” Thomas said as he was shaking his arms.

“My legs are jelly, not sure how I’m doing the squats.” Brian was exhausted.

“Well, I’m next up. Give ‘em hell.” John fist bumped the two.

He did twenty-six reps at three hundred fifty pounds for his lunges. They rotated to the last station. John was still bouncing up and down. Alice was doing squats.

“Settle down big guy.” Alice slapped John’s back.

“But I’m so excited.”

Alice couldn’t hold her laughter in. “I think people in orbit could see that.”

“How are you feeling?”

“I feel like I should be more tired than I am.” Alice was also stretching constantly. “You should pay more attention. You’re up.”

John turned around. “Three hundred twenty-five please.”

The helpers at the station put the weights on the bar. John swung under the bar and was getting stationed on the bench. When he started to bench the cadets in range turned around and watched him. Thirty-nine reps later John set the bar back and jumped off the table.

“He is way too damned excited.” Jessica placed a hand on Alice’s shoulder. “Way too excited.”

“He has a one-track mind.” Alice smiled. “Shitty part though is we’re not even close to being done.”

“Right? We have an hour run over the obstacle course.” Theresa walked up and joined the conversation.

“How the hell are we going to walk tomorrow?” Alice asked.

“Well, aside from the muscle-bound idiot I bet everyone is asleep after lunch.” Kristen joined the group as it was making its way to the main door out to the yard.

The obstacle course run was punishing. People not in the military would have called the sixty-minute run a cruel and unusual punishment. For John it was simply Wednesday. He was running through the course with a near reckless abandon. He was leaving nothing out on the course. This was an unwise thing for John since they still had a fifteen-minute cooldown run to wrap up the PE session.

“Hey dumbass, you should stretch and keep moving.” Andern started laughing halfway through saying that.

“Damnit, I wanted to say that.” Thomas shouted.

Alice looked down at him. “You didn’t say on ‘On your left’ this time, so you weren’t an annoying prick.”

“Did he forget about the cool down run?” Jessica tried resting on Alice.

“Ahhhh. Fucking hell.”

“Answer is yes, yes he did forget. Oh, this is going to be awesome.” Nathan said as he and Kevin walked over to John and helped him up.

“Thanks. Man, the next part is going to hurt.”

The warm down run was as bad as John thought. He hit his physical limit that morning, something he hadn’t done in a very long time. When the run was done John fell to the ground after he drank some water. His friends got around him and started laughing at him. John was laughing too. Their first day of the spring semester was upon them.

The cadets retreated to the locker rooms to change. After that they went to the cafeteria and inhaled their food. Most went back for seconds or thirds. John was in the latter category. After lunch the friends retreated to the lounge. No games of cornhole were be played. The TV was on but all that was happening in the room was snoring. Every last one of them was sleeping.