“Twitch, can you help us with Hyperspace-Navigation?” Hootch asked me, as we were just finished with our lunch. Looking up, I realised that he was the spokesperson, maybe because he was my wingman most of the time, for three others, all looking hopeful. I felt a bit of a sudden headache, realising that their sudden interest was most likely precipitated by the fact that the instructor had hinted that there would be another test soon. It was something that eluded me, sure, specifically learning something for a test, that I could understand. But not a subject as vital as Hyperspace-Navigation. It was, quite literally, what kept the fleet going where it was supposed to go and these four thought it was fine to just learn enough to skate by on a test? Moronic, in my opinion, but I wouldn’t let my squad-mates down.

“Sure, all four of you?” I asked back, just to make sure. They just nodded with hopeful looks on their face making me regret my decision to help them already. They looked far too secure in their assumption that I would be able to bring them up to speed. I took out my tablet, to make sure I wasn’t forgetting a class or appointment. Afternoon classes were elective, so I gave them another look, and asked if they had time. My next class was three hours away and it was free-time I was willing to sacrifice. Again, I got a set of nods, so I stood and waved for them to follow me.

“You owe me another one, Hootch. And the rest of you, you owe me one.” I gave them the evil eye and again, there were nods. At least with that, I wouldn’t have to pay for my drinks when the squad went out the next time.

We made our way to one of the rooms set aside for small study-groups and I connected my tablet to the wall-screen, so that I would be able to pull up the relevant slides from our lecture.

“Where do you want me to start?” I asked, just to make sure we wouldn’t go over stuff they already knew.

“Could we go over it from the beginning? It never made real sense to me, how we go about plotting a course, so maybe, if you explain it from the beginning, I finally can understand.” Candy asked. She, at least in my opinion, had been given one of the worst nicknames in the whole squad, even if she seemed to like it. But, for someone with a penchant to wear candy-red lipstick whenever regulations allowed, it might just be something she liked. Not my cup of tea, but who was I to judge.

Her request, on the other hand, caused the previous headache to intensify, there was no way we would be able to cover two years of Hyperspace-Navigation in a reasonable timeframe. We could try, but I doubted it would help her.

“Well, Teddy, why don’t you give a general explanation how to plot a hyperspace-course?” I asked the other guy, hoping to use his explanation as a jumping-off point.

“Um, sure.” Teddy, named for both his size and the fact that he had an incredible amount of body-hair, muttered before taking a moment to gather his thoughts before beginning to explain.

“Generally you hop from one system to the next. The best overall course is the one that has the shortest jumps with the shortest distance. The more important criteria is jump-length and it is better to make extra jumps than to include a singular, overly long jump.”

“Right.” I nodded at his explanation, before starting to show graphics on the screen. “The biggest problem with Hyperspace-jumps is precision. Think of it this way, even a short, interstellar hop of five light years means that even if you only want to hit the right system, you are aiming at a target that’s akin to hitting a target the size of a hand,” I demonstrated by drawing a circle, about five centimeters in radius, “from half a kilometer away.”

I paused to let that simple, basic fact sink in.

“That should explain why we try to keep the distance down. Even the best calibrated hyperspace-drive has a margin of error and that’s assuming you know exactly where you are and where you want to go. That’s where it gets tricky and there’s also the reason why we don’t simply jump in small hops through the deep dark.” I continued, pulling up a new set of slides.

“Hyperspace and real space are inertially connected, meaning velocity carries from one space into the other but sadly, the exact nature of that connection is currently unknown. In addition, there seem to be currents, for lack of a better word, in hyperspace that are subject of debate and scientific inquiry.” I paused, thinking of the paper I had read the evening before. It was dealing with such hyperspace currents and proposing methods to measure them. Sadly, such measurements were still deep in the theoretical stages.

Those currents may change the velocity of a ship in hyperspace, either accelerating it or slowing it down. What’s worse is that, at times, the change in velocity is a change in real-space velocity while hyperspace-velocity seems to be unaffected. There are mathematical thesis being proposed that try to model that influence but, frankly, those give me headaches just from trying to understand them. What it boils down to is, don’t try to jump through the deep dark without a specialised ship. You will get lost and with each hop, you have a chance to break your hyperdrive and if that happens outside a system, you are dead, even if you are still moving.” I looked them over, trying to get them to realise the foolishness to leave something as vital as Hyperspace Navigation to a last minute cram session.

“What do those specialized ships got that makes them special?” Jinx asked, sounding interested. She had been given her name after a particular streak of bad luck, culminating in her simulated death in a fiery explosion. Not only had the Flight Instructor been unable to explain what had happened until he pulled the full simulator-log, the explosion had taken out the complete squadron and the heavy cruiser we had been launched from. The reason for the explosion? The moment she had been launched from the heavy cruiser, a micrometeor had impacted in just the right, or wrong, way to set off both her antimatter-torpedoes.

Once everyone, including the Flight Instructor, had stopped laughing, she had been named Jinx and the name stuck.

“Explorer-Type ships, they have greatly beefed up Navigation-computers and better scanners, not to mention a secondary hyperspace-drive. They can’t jump faster or further than normal ships, their energy-systems are generally only able to charge one hyperspace-drive, but if that one drive breaks, they have back-up.” Hootch explained, surprising me with his knowledge.

“What he said. The better hard- and software allows them to determine their position and velocity from relative stellar position and drift. Theoretically, every ship is able to do that. But to do it with a precision that allows you to plot a viable course? That is a lot more difficult.” I added, to make sure they understood the problem.

I continued to explain the intricacies of Interstellar Navigation until my tablet started beeping at me, reminding me that I had to be in class in the next ten minutes. I set the others, at least Jinx and Teddy who had another free period after this one, up with more exercises they could complete on their own.

It made me wonder just what they had been doing during the previous classes and how they had managed to keep their grades in an adequate range. Sure, they were at the bottom of the class-ranking but, unless they majorly screwed up in the near future, they would graduate with the class. They wouldn’t get a good posting, that was dependant on grades, so it was likely that they would sit on some station orbiting one of the many mining colonies. Just the idea made me shudder, from everything I had heard, those postings were mostly an exercise in boredom and breeding bunk bunnies.

I had higher aspirations than that, but who was I to judge. If they had enrolled and endured the, at times, torturous training, just to sit on a station for their enlistment, that was their choice.

With that in mind, I made my way to my Advanced Plasma-Systems class. It was a class normally aimed at second-year students on an engineering-track but I had taken it and wasn’t regretting it. Sure, I wouldn’t work in the engineering-department on a capital ship but I’d fly my own fighter through the void, so knowing what made it move felt like a good idea. Frankly, I wasn’t much in the leadership departement, it was simply not something I excelled at, so I had considered the best way to rise in the ranks.

Obviously, being a good pilot was important, maybe the most important thing, but other metrics were just as important. In my case, I wanted to be an excellent second-in-command of a squadron, which would hopefully allow me to get where I wanted to go.