Her Heart
Chapter Two
I studied myself in the holographic mirror. I decided that I looked quite good in the lightly armoured bodysuit. My long, blonde hair and big brown eyes matched the creamy colour of the suit.
I sighed and tried to smile as I walked out of my chamber. I stopped at my favourite window, and gazed outside the Academia. The galaxy looked especially dark today. Crest Moon was hidden behind Pyropus, the bronze planet.
Today was May 6, year 2896, the day of my acceptance test. This test would decide my fate; whether I would join the war effort or become an engineer for the council. I personally had no preferable choice.
I walked into the Bonding Dome. Pods from each battle ship were scattered along the high walls. Instructors and students were floating around on their gliders, trying to figure out which pod was theirs. It was loud and hectic; my migraine was already kicking in.
"Hey, Rhea!"
I heard my name and spun around to see May-Brooke grinning at me. She floated down from a pod near the bottom of the wall and hugged my tightly.
"I'm really nervous," she whispered.
I hugged her back. May-Brooke was my best friend. She was the first one to talk to me when I entered the Academia.
"Don't worry about it," I reassured her. "You have been studying for this since 2890." Although I tried to sound convincing, I didn't really believe it. Many battle ships rejected their masters. Each ship was custom made from the masters' DNA, but it was up to them to 'seal the deal', as the instructors liked to call it. It's not like the ship had any feeling or emotions, it was just a machine, but a very powerful one at that. And that was the exact reason so many rejections happened. The masters of the ship did not have a powerful enough energy to control the ship.
May-Brooke pulled away from me as a low ringing sound echoed through the dome.
"I'll see you after the test," I yelled, running toward the glider rack.
I quickly powered up a glider and floated up to the pods in section D. An instructor handed me my slick helmet and the door to a silver pod opened with a quick whoosh.
I nervously walked into the cramped space and sat down in the comfortable seat. The black dashboard before me faded transparent and holographic control panel in a crescent shape instantly surrounded me.
To the untrained human, it would have seemed like a million colourful buttons and graphs, but I had been training for this exact moment for three years. I was completely ready.
I nervously gripped the control stick to my left.
-You may now start the bonding process- a mechanical voice said, from the inside of my pod.
I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. Just as I was about to pull the lever down, I heard an excruciating scream from outside my pod from the left. I quickly turned toward the sound and my heart started racing. Thomas was in that pod. I heard the faint sound of gliders surrounding the outside of my pod on the left. The door to Thomas' pod whooshed open and people ran inside. I heard the panicked voices, and suddenly they disappeared. I guessed they had taken Thomas to the emergency facility.
Tears formed at the crests of my eyes. Thomas had been studying at Academia since he was ten years old. After six years of hard work, his ship rejected him. It wasn't uncommon for students to be rejected, but it was still painful to hear, especially that scream. Thomas would be lucky to survive.
I trembled all over. I rested my head on the back of my chair and took some deep breathes. I had to do this. I had trained three years, although it was only half the time a student was supposed to train. I had been accepted into the Academia at age thirteen, when normally students enrolled at age ten.
Suddenly I ached inside. I missed my old life, yet oddly I could not remember much of it. I vaguely remembered my parents, their images in my mind slowly fading with time.
I gripped the control stick tightly and rapidly pushed it forward.
And then it happened. The control panel began to twitch and error. The pod began to siren from the inside and shake uncontrollably.
"This is the control tower. Is there a problem with the pod?"
I scrambled out of my seat and grabbed the transmitter behind my seat.
"Something is wrong!" I cried. "But I'll try to fix it!"
I jumped back into my seat, breathing heavily. I swiftly searched the system with the control panel.
"Overriding?" I asked myself out loud, very confused. How could the system be overriding? I searched the system some more, but every time it came to that conclusion.
I slid down my seat and removed the cover under the control panel. I searched through the hundreds of different coloured wires. I started pulling them out and putting them into different sockets. The ship must have been malfunctioning. These ships, never in history, have overridden. A human didn't have enough energy to override the nuclear weapon. It just wasn't possible. Either the ship rejected you because you didn't have enough energy, or it accepted you because you had JUST enough energy.
I fiddles some more with the wires when my pod door whooshed open. Four instructors rushed into the small pod, all cramped behind my chair. I stood up and saw the confusion in their faces.
"The battleship rejected you," one said slowly. "We need to take you to the emergency facility."
I stood there, confused. "The ship didn't reject me," I said.
"We got a rejection form this pod in the control tower," he explained.
"She's telling you the truth." A man said from behind them. The instructors gasped and moved into the corner of the pod as he walked in. He was incredibly tall and thin and wore a long, white jacket. His glistening, brown hair was tied together around the centre of his back. But the first thing I noticed was his shining, golden eyes.
He grinned. "The ship didn't reject her. She rejected the ship."
