1 Week Later, Monday. 09:45 CNS New Dawn

In a complete surprise to John and the others, when they got back to the academy, they received an interesting message about the remainder of the semester. They would be going to Tranquility Base on Luna and finish the semester there. Feelings on the change were mixed, but John generally felt like it’d be interesting, though generally an unwelcome change.

A week later the cadets were boarding the transport vessel. The cabin of the vessel was like an oversized airliner. There were three aisles, allowing access to the two-four-four-two seating arrangement. All of the cadets were wearing void sheathes. Their helmets were hanging behind them. It couldn’t be considered organized chaos, shouting and pointing at seats were commonplace.

The filing into the transport, despite the three aisles, continued to be a dreadfully slow process. No officers or senior enlisted were there to herd the cadets into position. Alice and John made a beeline to an open pair of seats down the left aisle. Kristin and Andern followed them hoping to snag the seats behind them.

“Twenty bucks says John’s bags are the last to be delivered,” Andern said as he walked by John.

Kevin was in the middle aisle and spoke, “I’ll take that bet. This is a military jet, no way that’s going to happen.”

“That’s a sucker bet,” Jessica said as she sat down next to Nathan on an aisle seat.

John turned to Alice, “I miss being on vacation already.”

Alice leaned into John, “I completely agree.”

Forty painfully long minutes drifted by. The last cadets had finally taken their seats. The transport was moving towards the runway. The Confederate Navy had several runway-capable void vessels. A pair of expendable boosters were attached to the aft hull. The cadets would know when they would be fired.

Just then, a voice cut through the commotion in the cabin, “Good morning. We have been cleared to launch and are third in the queue. Helmets are to be put on and sealed. The rebreather and oxygen system will activate once a seal has been made.”

The voice cut off but then was followed by a beep and the same voice spoke up again, “Oh apologies for missing the most important notification. Strap in and stay strapped in until we give permission to do so. Thirty seconds after we take off the boosters will fire. You can and will be seriously hurt if you aren’t strapped in. And we are on deck now to take off.”

Kevin created a group voice chat and laughed, “That pilot is the most laid-back cat ever.”

“How did he almost forget about the rocket boosters?” Jessica’s voice trembled with worry.

“It’s going to feel like a car hit your chest,” John said matter of factly, “And then last long enough to make you worry about whether or not you’re going to be able to breathe ever again.”

“Pass out bad?” Theresa asked.

“Yup. I’m guessing a quarter of our class goes night-night when they fire,” John said with a chuckle.

The lights inside the cabin shut off and were replaced by red emergency lights. The ship’s engines were pushed to full. The cadets could feel the increase in power to the engines in their seats. Each bump in the runway was also felt until it began its rotation.

A countdown timer appeared inside their helmets. The landing gear retracted which caused some clanking and hydraulic sounds and vibrations. John noticed something very worrying in an aisle seat three rows ahead. He switched his communications to the entire ship.

“Row fifteen or so on the aisle, lock your ass in, boosters are twenty away from firing.”

John noticed there wasn’t any change in behavior, “YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER. LOCK YOUR DUMBASS INTO THE SEAT.”

The countdown continued unabated. The open channel John used had some other chatter from his classmates. But the unknown cadet a few rows ahead of John didn’t seem to be aware of the danger they were in. Or the danger they posed when they rag-dolled around the cabin.

Just then the countdown ran down to zero. True to its warning the boosters fired up. The cadets were pinned to their seats. They were each feeling roughly six g’s, but that number ticked higher as the boosters reached their maximum output. Then the moment John was fearing happened.

The cadet that wasn’t locked into their seat was forced out of it, certainly not to John’s surprise, when the ship banked gently. John unlocked himself from the seat and tensed his muscles up. The cadet began careening down the aisle. John forced himself from the seat and landed on top of and grabbed the cadet. They slid fifteen rows down the aisle before John was able to spread his feet and force their falling back.

In the commotion, John’s visor developed a crack and was leaking oxygen. The cracks were expanding though. The boosters were aiding the main engines in propelling it faster and faster. When the boosters cut out, they were already nearly in space.

John was thankful for that timing for two very important reasons. His legs were burning under the strain of pinning himself and the other cadet to the ground. And his facemask was about to shatter. He stood up and dragged the passed-out cadet back toward their seat.

When John got back to his aisle the visor finally shattered. He exhaled quickly and with his left hand disengaged the helmet and tossed it behind him. Alice looked, totally helpless and in horror for what she saw. There was very little atmosphere in the ship’s cabin, this wasn’t a commercial starliner that was rife with accruements and luxuries.

John slammed the cadet in their seat. By this point, the entire class was focused on him. His eyes were beginning to be bloodshot. Baseline humans had fifteen to twenty seconds before they’d pass out due to lack of oxygen and atmosphere. Thankfully for John, that number was substantially higher, but he wasn’t immortal. Time was of the essence.

He continued to walk forward and found a few storage cubbies. He began opening them and quickly looked through them. Unfortunately, there were no spare helmets. John shook his head and began to feel a bit more desperate. Those precious seconds were ticking away.

John felt one of the cadets in the row closest to him kick him in the shin. He turned in annoyance at them and saw that they were pointing to a different cabinet. John nodded and turned quickly and opened it. Three spare helmets were inside. He quickly grabbed one and pulled the oxygen hose from his rebreather and attached it to the rear of the helmet.

He pulled the helmet over his head and sealed it. Oxygen began flowing again, John took a deep breath but didn’t feel like it did anything. He tried again and nothing. He dropped to a knee on the floor. After the third breath, he finally calmed down. His heart rate lowered as the stress of possibly passing out and dying was now gone.

John rose and walked back to his seat and said, “Stupid mother fucker.”

The lights inside the cabin came back on, indicating they were now in space. In under fifteen minutes there’d be another engine burn to take them to the moon. The trip would only take another hour until they achieved lunar orbit.

A pair of medics stopped John from sitting down and brought him forward toward one of the entry doors where they’d have more space to scan him. He didn’t want to comply as he felt fine. That was of course incredibly stupid of him to think, he had just been exposed to near-vacuum conditions and absolutely didn’t feel fine.

They decided to bring him to the medical bay at the front of the vessel. They wanted John to get cleaned up from the external bleeding he suffered, and they wanted to see if there were any other issues that the scans didn’t catch.

He was in the room with the medics until they were ten minutes from landing at Tranquility Base. John gave a look of general disdain and disappointment to the cadet that wasn’t locked into their seat as he walked by them. He still didn’t know who it was, beyond the fact that they were a guy and in the operation's focus.

When Kevin looked up and saw John walk back to his seat he added John back to their communications channel, “How ya doing?”

“Been better,” John said as he sat down and strapped himself into his seat.

Alice grabbed his helmet and twisted it to look at her, “Holy hell, your eyes and face.”

“An image of beauty I have never been and am certainly not currently,” John said sarcastically as he squeezed Alice’s hand, “I’ll be fine. The bruising should be gone in a day or two. Same with the bloody eyes.”

“You have bloody eyes?” Andern piped in, “Fucking sweet.”

Thomas gasped and sounded horrified, “Expose yourself to the vacuum and you can have the same stuff.”

“You know, breathing and not getting any air in your lungs is kind of an unpleasant feeling,” John said shrugging.

“Unpleasant he says,” Jessica said, “John, sometimes you absolutely horrify me.”

John had successfully managed to shut up his friends. Even Andern, the motormouth that he is, had nothing to say. He looked like he was about to say something but stopped and thought about it. Nathan thought John was deranged, properly deranged, not the moderate version he had previously thought.

The ship began its final descent. The cabin lights shut off and the red emergency lights came back on. It shuttered a bit as it felt like its alternate landing gear was deployed. Then one of the captains came on and gave them the last announcement of their flight.

“We’ve received clearance to land. We should be touching down in two minutes. Keep seated until after we’re docked. Your gear will be transferred to the hangar. Everyone is to form up and wait in the hangar after disembarking. There’ll be boots on the ground guiding you.”

“Wow, you’re not getting the privilege to get off and get checked out?” Theresa said.

“The medics already cleared me, though I am to report to the med bar after we get our gear stowed in our rooms.”

“Are we going to be drilling and in-class constantly or is this more like back at the academy?” Brian asked, “Because I can’t find anything to say one way or the other.”

“We have our classes, then free time in the evenings. Off the weekends,” Jessica answered, “They sent a separate message about that this morning.”

“Except we have two excursions to the moon’s surface,” Nathan said as he stretched his arms, “One of which happens on a weekend. They called it survival training.”

“Fun times,” Andern said, “John, you bring your power armor?”

“Yeah, I submitted a requisition for it. I need some data for low-gravity situations.”

“Why? Didn’t Intelligence ditch you?” Kevin said leaning forward in his seat.

“Not for them, for me. The marines are keen to get their hands on it.”

14:55 Tranquility Base, Naval Warehouse 12-C

Erickson, the idiot cadet that John saved, tried to thank and apologize to John. His attempts were rebuked and treated icily. John had told him to pull his head out of his ass, pay attention and get out of his face. Maybe in the future when John had cooled off, he could talk to Erickson or at the very least accept his apology. For now, it was far too early.

Besides, John was fuming about a familiar problem. He was still waiting to get his gear. Alice was waiting for him, primarily to make sure John didn’t say or do anything rash and also because she was still concerned over his wellbeing.

“It’ll be fine,” Alice said trying to reassure her husband.

“It was bad enough that my crap was buried, magically appear, on the flight home from Key West. But now I’m dealing with the same bullshit.”

Alice chuckled and squeezed his hand, “It’ll be fine.”

A door on the far side of the warehouse opened. All eyes were attracted to it. A man was pushing a pair of cargo bins that were suspended through the use of grav plates. He stopped pushing it when the edge of the front bin hovered over a red line on the floor.

The enlisted walked over and opened the front bin door. He began pulling bags out and calling out names. One by one the herd of remaining cadets thinned. Until there were three of them left, Alice already had her bags.

“Antoine Winston, here ya go,” the soldier pulled the bag from the bin and handed it over to the waiting cadet, “And the last one is John Lief.”

“Fucking hell, every god damned time,” John mumbled as he grabbed the shoulder strap of the bag.

15:25 Tranquility Base-Naval Medical Wing

The doctor was scanning John. He was humming a song that got interrupted anytime he saw something interesting pop up on the screen of the handheld device. He then gently pushed John’s eyelids up to expose more of the eye. The humming continued being interrupted by “oohs” and “hmms.” John was not enjoying this investigation.

“Alright, you can put your shirt back on,” the doctor said as she sat down on a chair across from John, “Despite the fact that you look like you picked a fight with a herd of rhinos, the damage that’s done is all superficial. That being said it’s pretty clear that your body is working overtime to repair the damage.”

“Are you placing any limitations on my activities here?” John said as he tucked his shirt in.

“No, but I’m ordering you here to get scanned at 07:45 every morning for the next week. I also want you to take this immune booster twice daily. If your body stops doing its job I want to make sure we can repair the damage,” the doctor smiled, “Also this room is on the way to your first class from the mess hall.”

“Roger that,” John said as he hopped off the exam table.

He walked out of the room and down the hallway to the reception room. There was a terminal on the far side of the wall that He walked over to. John keyed in a few things to find out that Alice and his friends were all in a recreation room.

“Bastards took no time at all settling in,” John said in a whispered tone.

He shook his head and made his way over to the pharmacist’s window. He handed the data slate with the prescription information. A message appeared on the window that it was being filled. A couple of minutes later a brown transparent container appeared from a hole in the counter. His prescription was now full.

John walked out of the doors and headed towards where his friends were. They were three floors up and what appeared to be two sections directly west of where he was. The military portion of the base was made of rectangular-shaped rooms. No curves were found anywhere. All the hallways used ninety-degree turns. Navigating it, as compared to the retail or residential zones, was simple. John found the other areas to be an overly complicated mess to navigate.

Eventually found the rec room and entered it. He smiled when he saw not one, but two games of cornhole going. The girls were watching on a chick-flick on the big screen TV. Andern was the odd man out, so he was wearing a full VR suit in the corner, it was quite clear he was playing a shooter game.

“Still alive and kicking I see,” Kevin said from a corner of the room.

“Yeah, got some horse pills to take twice daily too,” John pulled the container out and flashed it at them, “Ooh, pool table.”

“No damage then?” Alice asked as she stared at the screen.

John walked over to the wall and grabbed a couple of pool cues, “There was damage, nothing serious or long term. She seems to think this mess will be cleared up by the weekend, maybe mid-week next week.”

“You stupid motherfucker, I told you that room wasn’t clear,” Andern shouted into his headset.

John smirked as he rolled the cues on the table. He was quite happy to see that both of the ones he pulled were straight and not warped. He put the spare one back in its holder on the wall and grabbed the chalk. Then he walked around the table and pulled the balls from the pockets.

“Erickson give you any reason for his shenanigans?” Jessica looked back and asked.

John shook his head, “I honestly didn’t listen to what he said. I kinda wanted to strangle him.”

“He said he was sorry and wasn’t paying attention. Claims to have not heard John warn him,” Alice said as she continued to stare at the screen.

“I’m gonna call bullshit on that. Heard one of the girls that sits with us that she heard you loud and clear,” Kristin said from the couch.

“He thought the pilot was exaggerating. That was obviously not the case,” John said before he pulled back the cue and broke the racked balls, “By the way, y’all found this awfully fast.”

“Are you a blind fucking idiot? The guy was right in front of you?” Andern said in disgust.

“We’re ignoring this right?” John said.

“Yes, attempts to dial the volume down failed, since he can’t hear us,” Brian said shaking his head, “And Kevin noticed that classes this afternoon were canceled. We didn’t get leave so we couldn’t leave the military wing.”

“Smart play,” John was smiling.

“Suck it noob!” Andern shouted.

John looked at the room and they were surprisingly accepting of Andern’s outbursts. He, on the other hand, was less accepting of it. Perhaps it was because he nearly died earlier today, maybe it was the cadet not paying attention, or it even could be because his bags were delivered dead last. In any case, John was done with it and walked over to Andern.

He looked at the headset and pulled a cord to disconnect the helmet. Andern looked and acted confused, with his hands flailing about. Eventually, he took the helmet off and saw John’s red eyes and purple-hued face.

“Jesus, you look like you lost a boxing match.”

“Too true, you can either wear that thing without the earmuffs or find something else. I am not going to play pool or talk to anyone here while you play the fool on the extranet.”

Andern looked around the room. Everyone else was looking back at him. Most looked very annoyed with his actions. Reluctantly, Andern nodded and agreed to change his mind.

John walked over to Kevin and Nathan’s game, “So, how are y’all’s rooms?”

“Couples room seem nice. No bunk beds are sweet,” Kevin said as he tossed a bag at the board.

“Most of the regular rooms have four rooms and a commons area. My neighbors are the other two in my room,” Nathan shrugged not really appearing to like or dislike his room.

“I’ll be honest, I’m not impressed. The bedroom is like eight by fourteen feet. Is tiny as hell,” Brian said.

Thomas tossed a bag then spoke, “Beats the other stations though, and it’s not a communal room like boot was.”

“John, I love you man. But you look hideous,” Brian stopped playing cornhole and shared some blunt honesty.

While John chuckled Kevin jumped in, “He’s not wrong, the colors have changed since you walked into the room from a reddish-blue to purple. You are actually kind of disgusting.”

Alice looked back from the couch and sized up her husband, “I really, really, really love you.”

John turned to look at Alice and smiled, “But.”

“You should wear a mask.”

“Seconding that notion,” Jessica said meekly as she peeked over the couch.

“I’m going to sit on the same side as you at dinner,” Kristin piled on the hate.

Andern pulled off his helmet, “I mean yeah he is atrocious looking right now, but chow’s chow.”

The friends laughed. John called the group asses. Cornhole was played, movies watched, and Andern continued to annoy everyone. Call it another successful Monday. They were on Luna, where they would finish their fall semester. Why they were there and what they would be doing no one really knew, but they were looking forward to the experience.