Tutorial [II]

Up on the dais, Leo felt the neural sync pulse through the base of his skull once more.

A semi-transparent halo of cool cerulean flight data bloomed around his vision.

Structural stress lines, engine output gauges, RCS thruster pressures, and local spatial topography mapped themselves directly across his mind, responding to the slightest movement of his eyes.

[Neural Sync: 94.2%]

[Hull Integrity: 28%]

[Thrusters: Online (Manual Control)]

[Weapons: None]

[Crew Status: 7/7 Secured]

Around the bridge, the harsh crimson strobes suddenly cut out.

In their place, the recessed floor runners, the bulkhead seams, and the edges of the panoramic canopy began to glow with a deep calm rhythmic blue.

The hum of the main reactor shifted pitch, rising from a sputtering hollow cough into a steady vibrating purr that echoed through the iron skeleton of the Wanderer-7.

VRRRMMM!

Outside the glass, the dark silent graveyard of floating scrap, pulverized satellites, and frozen asteroid stone seemed to draw closer.

…Waiting for them.

'...Weapons: None,' Leo thought, staring at that one line. 'Yeah. We're fixing that first.'

"Cap..." Harper called up from station two. "Please tell me you actually know how to fly this thing."

Leo flexed his fingers against the armrests.

'Guess we're about to find out.'

The AI's voice echoed through the cabin, crisp and clear and absolutely final.

[All crew units secured.]

[Inertial dampeners primed.]

[Master Captain neural link confirmed.]

[Survival Protocol Tutorial is now beginning...]

The soft blue glow kept washing over the deck plating, tracing along the bulkhead seams like chilled mercury.

Everyone held their breath.

Harper gripped the armrests of her station so hard her knuckles turned the color of chalk. 

Camila pressed her spine flat against the padding, her hazel eyes darting toward the glass above as she braced for the gut-wrenching shudder of some instant jump drive.

Back on Earth, during the rare public broadcasts of high-orbit propulsion tests, orbital insertions had been violent bone-rattling affairs that flattened test pilots into their harnesses under three gravities of thrust.

Out here, adrift in deep vacuum with an alien survival system running the show, expecting a blinding flash wasn't unreasonable. 

A lurch into sub-light speed, maybe, or some terrifying warp jump that tore the stars into white streaks.

Instead, nothing happened.

The Wanderer-7 didn't leap forward and it didn't shudder either.

The ship just sat there, dead in the water, floating motionless in the black of the asteroid field while its degraded reactor purred with the steady underwhelming drone of an old basement generator.

In the center of the canopy, right between the shattered moon and the floating satellite bones, a thin line of cerulean light flickered into existence.

[Tutorial Module One: Fundamental Navigation & Kinetic Control]

[Compiling local environment parameters...]

[0%...]

A sluggish analog-style counter ticked upward with agonizing indifference.

[1%... 2%... 3%...]

"Are you serious?" Harper muttered, letting out a breath that ruffled her messy bangs.

Her shoulders dropped three inches as the tension drained into pure anticlimax.

"We're strapped in like lab monkeys waiting for the hyperdrive to kick our teeth in, and this thing is buffering like a dial-up modem?"

[This unit is running on a processor older than your grandmother's microwave.]

[Complaints may be submitted to the void.]

[4%...]

Harper stared at the ceiling. "...Did it just—"

"It did," Jin-Ah said from station three, her sharp dark eyes scanning the data ribbons unfurling across her wrist terminal. "And it isn't wrong… It's calibrating local gravitational gradients and thruster resonance against the ship's decayed frame but the processing speed is undeniably archaic. The clock speed is closer to a mid-century orbital probe than an advanced interstellar intelligence."

[5%.]

[Thank you, Crew Unit: Jin-Ah. Your honesty has been noted and filed under "hurtful."]

Up on the dais, locked into the carbon throne with his wrists resting against the armrest pads, Leo felt a dull ache building behind his temples.

The neural link hummed at the base of his skull like trying to pull cold syrup through a narrow straw.

'Slow,' he thought, grinding his back teeth. 'Way too damn slow.'

If this scrap bucket needed two full minutes just to boot up an introductory flight lesson, what would happen when an actual crisis hit?

What if three Void Beasts dropped out of an asteroid cluster at once? What if a solar flare clipped their unshielded stern?

Out here, waiting on a progress bar wasn't just annoying… it was a death sentence waiting for a signature.

'We need to upgrade the core as soon as humanly possible,' he decided. 'Every single part of this ship, the computer, the scrubbers, the thrusters... it's all running on duct tape and rust.'

His eyes flicked to the forward radar quadrant projected on the lower left of his HUD.

A few minutes ago, that six-meter obsidian nightmare, the Level 1 Void Beast with glowing violet sensory clusters, had been lazily coiling around a crushed fuel silo just three hundred meters off their bow.

Now the sector was empty.

Only dead chunks of silicate rock and twisted titanium girders tumbled in the dark.

"Status on that chitin beast?" Leo called down toward the mezzanine. "Sensei, you still tracking it?"

Ms. Tachibana didn't look up from her cartography console right away.

Her slender fingers danced across the interface, tracing fine green telemetry vectors through the projected debris cloud with practiced precision. 

The pale silver aura of her talent shimmered softly around her wrists.

"Its thermal signature has completely dissipated, Leo," she reported, her tone carrying the same cool authority she'd used in every lecture back at the university. "It drifted past the third debris ring roughly forty seconds ago… It seems to have followed a radioactive discharge deeper into the graveyard. Our passive hull sensors are clear within five kilometers."

"Good," Leo nodded, letting out a quiet relieved breath. "At least we don't have an overgrown bug chewing on the windshield while we're stuck on a loading screen."

[...98%... 99%... 100%.]

[Diagnostic complete!]

[Tactical Flight Curriculum initialized.]

[That only took 2 minutes and 14 seconds… This unit is aware and this unit does not wish to discuss it.]

The blue counter shattered into a cascade of shimmering data motes, which reassembled into a slowly rotating wireframe model of the Wanderer-7.

[Welcome to Flight Instruction, Master Captain.]

[Under normal conditions, the Automated Navigation Sub-Routine handles all vector calculations, orbital burns, and stabilization however, electromagnetic interference, system overload, logic corruption, or primary bus failure will terminate automated flight instantly.]

A red simulation flashed across the wireframe, showing a dead engine manifold and a total computer blackout.

[In those conditions, relying on automation in a high-density debris zone guarantees vessel destruction… The Highest Authority Holder is therefore required to master manual flight. A captain who cannot steer his own hull is just cargo waiting to be scavenged.]

"Hear that, ladies?" Harper smirked, shooting Camila a wink. "Our boy Leo's about to earn his wings for real… No more joyriding on the sim rigs back on campus."

"This is utterly absurd."

The cold razor-sharp voice sliced through the banter from station six as Elena Sterling hadn't relaxed an inch.

Her long legs were locked straight out in front of her and her arms were folded tight over her ballistic uniform with her face twisted into pure contempt as she glared up at the dais.

"Manual flight in an uncharted debris cluster?" Elena scoffed, her upper lip curling. "Without secondary gyro-telemetry or dynamic orbital correction? It's statistically suicidal! Back in the university's advanced flight lab, manual control in a high-density debris model had a ninety-four percent failure rate among senior postgraduates! And you… this ridiculous broken computer… are entrusting our lives to a working-class mechanic who probably spent high school tinkering with rusted mopeds?!"

She leaned forward against her harness, her voice climbing into an indignant screech that made the bulkheads ring.

"I demand this machine re-evaluate the command chain! I have two hundred certified simulation hours! My theoretical trajectory marks are the highest in the faculty! If anyone should be manually flying this craft, it's—"

"Elena," Leo said flatly, not even looking back. "Shut up."

"Excuse me?!" she hissed as her face turned a mottled scarlet. "You insolent stray, don't you dare use that tone with me! I will not sit here in silence while a vulgar uneducated—"

"I said," Leo's voice dropped into a low icy tone. "shut your mouth."

"I have every legal and academic right to voice my objections to this lunatic farce! You have no authority to silence—"

Leo's patience, already shredded by the morning, snapped clean in two.

He just tilted his chin toward the ceiling and spoke with calm deliberate cruelty.

"AI. Master Captain verbal command… Do we have anything capable of physically shutting an insubordinate crew member's mouth?"

The bridge went dead silent.

[Query acknowledged.]

[Crew Unit: Elena Sterling is exceeding permissible flight-concentration noise levels by 42 decibels.]

[Disciplinary Mandate 4-B: Authorized.]

[Deploying non-lethal vocal restraint.]

[This unit has been waiting for this request.]

"What?!" Elena's eyes went as wide as saucers. "Wait! No! Don't you dare touch—"

CLICK!

Two sleek carbon prongs snapped forward from the headrest of station six on hissing micro-servos.

Before Elena could jerk her head aside, they curved around her jawline and deployed a smooth matte-black clamp that sealed across her lips and locked her jaw shut with the grip of an industrial vise.

"Mmph—! Nnngh—!!"

Her head was pinned against the headrest, and her words were instantly reduced to muffled furious grunts.

Her manicured fingers clawed at the band, trying to wedge a nail underneath, but the clamp was built straight into the station's frame. 

It didn't budge a millimeter.

Her icy blue eyes flared with murderous fury, practically drilling holes through the back of Leo's skull.

Hot humiliated tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. 

Not from pain, but from the soul-crushing indignity of being gagged like a petulant toddler in front of the very people she'd looked down on for months.

[The interference has been neutralized and the cabin's quality of life has significantly improved.]

Leo let out a long luxurious sigh and rolled his neck until it popped.

Crack!

"Ah… Man. That's so much better. The air quality in here just went up three hundred percent."

Down on the mezzanine, the other girls sat frozen, staring at Elena's muffled struggles with a mix of shock and bewilderment.

Camila covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes darting between Elena and the captain's throne.

Ms. Tachibana cleared her throat, a complicated expression crossing her face. 

Part of her, the instructor, clearly felt she should reprimand Leo for abusing the disciplinary protocols… but the survivor in her couldn't deny that the silence was an enormous relief.

Jin-Ah, on the other hand, just tucked her geometric bob behind one ear, her lips twitching into a small dry smirk.

"Well, well," she said, tapping a key with her thumb. "We've been in the void for barely an hour, and our dear Captain has already progressed to physical gagging and totalitarian suppression… Tell me, Master Leo, should the rest of us prepare for iron collars and floggings by this evening?"

Harper barked out a laugh and slapped her thigh. 

"Speak for yourself, Jin! As long as he doesn't touch the coffee rations, he can clamp whoever he wants. God knows some people have needed a mute button since orientation."

Leo chuckled and leaned his elbow on the armrest, shooting Jin-Ah a sidelong glance.

"I only clamp the ones loud enough to mess with my flight vectors. Keep giving me accurate power readings, Jin-Ah, and your mouth stays free… Elena was about three seconds away from talking us into an asteroid just to prove her point."

"Mmmph! Nnng-rrrgh-ah!!" Elena screeched through the band.

She glared at him hard enough to bore holes through titanium, but when she realized thrashing only made the clamp tighten, she forced herself to go still.

Her chest heaved against her harness. 

She wiped the angry tears from her lashes against her high collar and turned her face toward her console, cursing him in the privacy of her own skull.

[Proceeding to manual control hardware initialization… Please keep all limbs, egos, and opinions inside the vessel.]

HISS!

The flat carbon pads beneath Leo's forearms clicked and slid back into the throne's armrests.

In their place, two mechanical pods rose from the housing.

But instead of flight sticks, throttle levers, or clusters of analog toggles, the interface was shockingly minimal. 

Two contoured cradles carved from dark semi-translucent crystal flared with a pale blue inner glow as tiny micro-needles, no thicker than hairs, retracted flush into the palm rests and a ring of optical pulse-trackers lined the edges.

[Neural-Kinetic Flight Array: Deployed]

[Manual flight in the Void requires total unity between the pilot's reflexes and the vessel's mass.]

[Place your palms on the cradles.]

[Do not resist synchronization… It is uncomfortable but that is not this unit's fault.]

"Here goes nothing," Leo muttered.

He laid his palms flat against the cool glass-smooth crystal.

ZAP!

A sharp jolt of electric cold shot up from his palms, racing along his forearms and through his collarbones straight into the base of his skull.

Leo's spine went rigid as his breath caught in his throat.

The world didn't vanish but the way he felt it changed completely.

The edges of his body seemed to stretch outward in a terrifying, intoxicating surge of sensation as he didn't just feel his own heartbeat against his ribs.

He felt the thrumming pulse of the auxiliary fusion core deep in the aft compartment.

He felt the cold vacuum pressing against the outer hull like a frigid wind blowing across his bare skin.

The twelve chemical maneuvering thrusters mounted along the bow, the stern, and the ventral fins didn't feel like nozzles anymore. 

They felt like extra muscles… like fingers and toes waiting for the smallest twitch and deep in the stern, the twin ion engines sat coiled and quiet, like lungs holding a breath.

'This is...' Leo swallowed. 'This is insane.'

[Manual flight controls transferred to Master Captain Leo Kaine.]

A massive cerulean waypoint flared to life five kilometers ahead, cutting straight through the dense tumbling heart of the debris field.

It was a winding virtual corridor lined with flashing neon markers, snaking between jagged asteroids, crushed structural trusses, and spinning orbital wreckage.

[Tutorial Objective: Traverse Debris Vector Alpha-1 using manual steering.]

[Target Time: 180 seconds]

[Collision Tolerance: Zero]

[Hull Integrity: 28%... This unit recommends not testing that number.]

[Announce when ready.]

Leo sat still for five long seconds.

He closed his eyes and let the flood of unfamiliar data settle into his mind.

Back in the university simulator rigs, manual navigation had always felt disjointed. 

There'd been a lag between what the eyes saw, what the hands did on the throttle, and how the virtual ship responded on screen as most students relied on complex math to predict their drift.

Leo never had.

To him, flight had always been instinct. 

A sudden intuitive pull in the small of his back, that sharp animal sense that told him exactly where the center of mass was tilting before the gyro-sensors even caught it.

It was the reason he'd survived the entrance evaluations and it was the reason he was sitting in this chair right now.

He opened his eyes.

The blue glow of the HUD reflected in his dark pupils, sharp and predatory.

"I'm ready," Leo said, his voice dropping into calm certainty. "Kill the auto-cruise… Give me the stick."

[Manual override engaged… Thrusters hot… Try not to kill us!]