The Admiral and the Assistant

Young Kinnit's heart was triphammering, and she bounced on the balls of her feet. She stood on Lookout Rock, just outside her home cave and watched the skies with barely-contained anticipation.

Of all the Kobolds on Takkar, she had been chosen to go to the Naval Academy! She squeaked with joy and danced in place.

She had studied so hard for this opportunity, and now it was paying off. She, Kinnit, the little Kobold, was going to go to the stars.

The noontime sky was bright blue and the sun shone down, warming the green trees of her home. The forest she'd grown up in spread out before her, their tops nearly level with Lookout Rock, their emerald leaves turning in the breeze.

Kinnit ignored it all. Her eyes were fixed on the sky. Every bird and stray wisp of cloud sent her heart soaring.

Oh, when would the shuttle get here?

She bounced from foot to foot. She'd already said her goodbyes to her family, and today, for the first time, she would be in space. She would look at the stars directly. Her future was close enough to touch.

A faint smudge appeared in the blue sky. She covered her mouth. Was it...?

It resolved itself as a shuttle. She let out a little bark of joy and hopped around in a circle as the blocky vessel dropped through the atmosphere. She watched in wonder as it neared.

It slowed as it neared the ground, then landed nearby, as gently as a leaf landing on the surface of a pond without breaking the surface tension. It sat for a moment, settling. Then the hatch opened.

A young man stepped out, looking at some data on his scanner. He glanced around Lookout Rock, then fixed his eyes on her.

"Are you..." he glanced at his scanner. "…Kinnit?"

"Yes!" she yelled. She ran over and tore around him in a circle, burning off some of her excited energy. "Yes, I am!"

"All right." The young man lifted his arms uncomfortably, trying to avoid bumping into her as she ran around him. "Alright, well hold on. We're going to have to sit down in the shuttle. Understand?"

"Scio!" she cried. The young man's brow wrinkled in confusion. Then she realized that in her excitement, she'd answered him in Old Imperial. She laughed at her own mistake. "I mean, I understand!"

"All right. Let's board." He climbed back into the shuttle.

Kinnit rushed after him, but paused just before entering. She took one last look at her home, with its blue skies and green trees. Then she turned and clambered into the shuttle.

She stopped, staring. She'd never been in a shuttle before. She'd read about it, of course, but being inside one was an entirely different experience. The interior was cool and dim, and smelled faintly of machine oil.

"You need sit here," the young man said, "and strap in. Have you been in a shuttle before?"

"No, never," she breathed.

"Okay, I'll help you strap in."

Kinnit sat in the seat, vibrating with nervous energy while the young man showed her how to secure herself.

Once she was strapped in, he sat at the pilot's console and strapped in as well.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

"I have been ready all my life," she said.

The portal powered on: a narrow display that let the pilot look outside the shuttle. Kinnit leaned over so she could see around him. Though her view was limited, she could see Lookout Rock. And there was the cave entrance. The thick green of the trees surrounded them.

The floor hummed under her feet, and the engine began to whine. She began panting slightly, in both fear and excitement. What if they crashed? What if the shuttle exploded? What if the pilot died suddenly?

Without warning, they swept into the sky. Faster than she could comprehend, Lookout Rock shrank below them and vanished. The entrance to the cave, too, disappeared, lost in the visual noise of the vast, verdant forest.

She gasped in shock and delight.

"The forest is so huge," she said. "I never knew it was so big."

Almost before she was done speaking, the horizon bent, becoming rounder, and she was treated to the mysterious transition: from looking at the ground to looking at a planet. The sky darkened, and stars appeared. Her fascination with the stars tore her eyes from her home. Her eyes widened, taking in the depths of space. As the shuttle continued to climb, the stars resolved from the fuzzy, winking lights of her skies to sharp, gleaming pinpricks scattered with careless abundance across a sky blacker than she had ever known.

Stolen novel; please report.

Kinnit wished the journey were slower so that she could take it all in.

"We'll be docking with the transport in about ten minutes," the young man said.

Kinnit was silent, watching the little slice of space she could see through the pilot's portal.

"Where did all the stars come from?" she breathed quietly. "I never saw so many."

"Ah, the atmosphere filters out a lot of light," her pilot said. You can see a lot more stars up here than you can downplanet."

Kinnit was so transfixed that she nearly forgot to breathe.

Soon a shape resolved itself in front of them. A long and blocky transport ship appeared. A dark hole opened in the side.

The shuttle landed smoothly in the docking bay. The bay repressurized, and the shuttle's hatch opened.

Kinnit poked her head out, awed by the size of the docking bay. It was almost half the size of her home cave, and this was just where they could land a ship inside of another ship.

The more she experienced the Imperium, the more she loved it.

"We'll be going through jumpspace in a couple hours," the pilot said. "Until then, feel free to hang out wherever."

"Oh... okay. Thank you. You mean I can just... go wherever? In the ship?"

He shrugged.

"Sure. That will keep you out of any sensitive areas," he said, pointing at the golden collar fused to her neck, "but it's just a transport ship. It's not like there's military secrets or anything."

She smiled and thanked him, then wandered out into the hallway.

The halls were spacious, clean, and well-lit. Over-lit, to her eyes. Her home cave was dim, illuminated by torchlight, but here there was non-stop bright white light. She blinked a little, trying to adjust.

She walked down the hall, poking her head randomly into rooms as she passed. Some of them were storage rooms filled with incomprehensible equipment. Some were meeting rooms with rounded, modular furniture. One was a janitor's closet with some cleaning supplies and a mop bucket.

It was all exciting to Kinnit. Because it wasn't just a mop, it was an Imperial space mop. She was on a real spaceship. Actually up in space. And she was going to travel through a jumphole.

This was the best day ever.

She found her way to a little room with a bank of seats. A scattering of cadets lounged, waiting for the journey to continue. They chatted with each other excitedly. Kinnit sat at the end of the row of seats, too overstimulated by the situation to try to make conversation.

"Jumpspace in five minutes," came a voice over the intercom.

Kinnit grinned and gripped the arms of her seat. She'd been reading up on jumpspace. Apparently it could be unsettling for those who were new to it, but everything she'd read reassured her that all modern ships had buffering to help with the sensation of jumpspace.

Kinnit couldn't wait. She wondered if she'd be able to tell when they entered the jumphole.

The transport ship tipped into jumpspace, and Kinnit's world unwound around her. Time and space ceased to exist. The number of dimensions seems to shift, second to second. Everything around her distorted and stretched out and squashed, all at once.

She would have screamed, if she'd had a voice.

They popped back out into realspace.

She was hunched over, panting and clinging to the arms of her seat.

"Two point one relative minutes in jumpspace," came the voice over the intercom. "We are now in the Chidus sector."

She rolled her eyes wildly.

That was intense. Was jumphole travel always like that? Was that even something you could get used to?

The other cadets in the room looked similarly impacted. Maybe it wasn't just her.

She cleared her throat and sat up straight. If she was going to work for the Imperial Navy, she'd better learn to handle jumpspace with decorum.

She shifted uncomfortably in the Imperial clothes she was wearing, trying to maintain a serious demeanor. Her outfit was a simple smock and pants. She was used to more primitive covering that allowed more freedom of movement, but this is what they wore in the Imperium.

The transport jumped three more times on their way to the Naval Academy. It didn't get any easier to bear, but she did handle subsequent journeys with much more aplomb.

At last, they arrived in the Vippe system. Home of the Naval Academy. Her home for the next three years.

If she could pass all her classes.

She clenched her fists with determination. She would pass. No matter how much work it took. She had to become part of the Navy.

She had tasted the stars, and she would never let them go again.

"All cadets and trainees, please report to the docking bay for transfer to Atlas station."

Kinnit's excitement rose again. The Naval Academy was the only school in the galaxy that was completely housed in a massive space station.

She marched back to the docking bay. Milling there was a crowd of cadets. A transport shuttle was parked in the bay. It was much larger than the one she'd ridden up from Takkar. Cadets began filing onboard, and she followed.

They all got settled and strapped in. It took Kinnit a few extra minutes to figure out the straps since she didn't have anyone helping her this time, but she managed. Nobody else seemed to have any trouble strapping in.

The shuttle was crowded and noisy. Most of the people onboard were dressed in the powder-blue jackets of the Navy, laughing and joking and cutting up. Kinnit felt out of place in her smock and pants in the midst of so many sharply-dressed cadets.

Nearly everyone on board was a Terran, though there was one mouse-like person against the back of the transport shuttle with her nose buried in a book, and another frog-looking boy was chatting animatedly with a group of Terrans. She didn't know what species the two non-Terrans were, but she was going to learn.

She was going to learn all the things.

It was a wonder to her that the people on board were packed in so tightly, but none of them were touching. They say in rigidly aligned rows, neither climbing on each other nor resting on each other. Each Terran was an island, keeping themselves upright.

Intimidated by the coldness of the crowd, she fingered the golden collar around her throat. She was the only Subject Species on board.

The view portal in this shuttle was much larger. She could see the stars wheel as the shuttle shifted its vector to align on Atlas station.

Her breath caught as the station came into view. It was a long, white tube, rotating slowly. The shuttle was flying to one end of the station, where a docking bay opened, waiting to receive them.

She had to force down a squeal as the shuttle entered the massive docking bay.

Her new life was beginning.