Legacy: Beyond the Veil

On the Rings: Part two

Careful there little Mole, you might plummet all the way back to Svartheim!"
The sneering callout was followed up by a push against his back, making him stumble onto the glass, but he managed to –just barely– keep his footing.

Cai made a quick turn to face his assailant, but he already knew who he'd find behind him. Sure enough, there stood the blocky bastard three years his senior.
Cadet Harlan "Bulwark" Koha was what you'd get if you combined all the stereotypes of the Academy into one person: He was strong, he was smart, his dad was filthy rich, and he loved to rub all that in your face every chance he got.

He was flanked– as always– by his two lackeys, the three of them looking down at Cai with their usual snobby grins. All four of them wore the same uniform emblazoned with the same emblem, his crewmates.

"Scared of heights, are you?" Asked Harlan teasingly. "Hate to break it to you, but you may have chosen the wrong job, surface dweller"
Jörda cackled out at that, a shrill and unpleasant sound. Her laugh always reminded Cai of a flock of poultry making a ruckus. Perhaps chicken, or rather turkey? Cai wouldn't know, he'd never seen either bird with his own eyes. He just imagined them to sound like that.

"Good morning to you too, Harlan, Jörda, Loten. I'm impressed you managed to roll out of your bunks this early."
Cai knew perfectly well that picking a fight with these guys wasn't the smart thing to do, he didn't really care.

"With the pace you were going I could've slept in for another hour or two and still beat you to the briefing. I bet that without that little nudge just now you'd have been shaking in your boots at this here edge all morning."

Cai shrugged, he hated to admit it, but Harlan did have some kind of a point.
"Sure, I'll give you that. But now that I'm here it's not too bad, so thanks, I guess." With those words, he turned around and briskly marched over the glass, trying his hardest not to look down as he did.

"Aw, look at that! Our little mole is trying to look brave!" Said the lanky Loten, a born and bred Voidsailor. Cai always felt he might've made for a pretty decent friend, if not for his constant sucking up to their crew's First Mate.

Cai was going to ignore him, but then the taller guy dashed past him and leapt in the air in front of Cai. His heart skipped a beat as he watched his fellow cadet kick down at the glass floor. "Crash!" The older guy yelled as he came down. He fully expected the glass to shatter, blowing him and everyone else in the corridor into the hard vacuum below.

That, of course, didn't happen. Loten took a look at Cai's face and burst out laughing, he was quickly joined by Harlan and Jörda, who were catching up. Cai even heard one of the professional voidsailors further up suppress a chuckle.

He quickly straightened up his face again and cursed it for letting his inner fear shine through. He felt his cheeks get red again but forced his heart to slow, fighting back the embarrassed blush.
"Real mature Loten, yeah." He said in annoyance. He didn't really want to escalate the situation any further, but his anger was slowly but surely pushing that restraint aside.

"I do remember something about you making planetfall on Three, didn't you empty your stomach the second you saw an open sky for the first time? Filled up most of your helmet, didn't it?"

Loten's self-satisfied smirk was quickly wiped off his face and he angrily pressed his index finger into Cai's chest, but Cai held his ground.
"You don't get to try and humiliate me with things you didn't see for yourself, get that?"

"Hah, let him bark as he likes, that twerp wasn't even part of the program back then, he's just repeating the stories Maxin told him." Said Harlan, who wrapped an arm around Loten's shoulder. It was an awkward gesture, given that Loten was so much taller than the First Mate.