Everyone took their places in line, waiting for a command. Seven days after takeoff, the crew had its first official briefing since leaving Earth. Mia found herself longing for the planet; it was her first time there, and she didn’t even get to see much aside from the spaceport!

She took a quick glance at the guy beside her. Leon, was it? He smiled at her, but didn’t say anything, thankfully. He almost destroyed her reputation trying to talk to her last week, and she was dead set on not letting that happen again.

Putting that aside, she focused on the two captains standing before her. The lieutenant spoke first.

“As you can probably tell,” he tapped the ground with his foot a few times, “we’re no longer in zero gravity!”

“Microgravity.” corrected the captain.

“Yeah, that! While we’re not exaaactly at standard Earth gravity, this is close enough.” Emil put a finger to his head. “Correct me if I’m wrong, bro, but this is the same amount of gravity as the community ships and Lunaria, right? So for us and Mia, we should feel basically at home!”

“Correct.”

The blond fistpumped. It was nice that he had so much energy, but it made Mia all the more aware of his age. At her age, she had nowhere near enough experience to be a lieutenant captain, but here he stood at 18 doing just that. Maybe this was fine, because as she understood the job, it was mostly doing maintenance checks for the captain. The 19-year-old captain. Sure, the captain himself was the same age as her, but he seemed more contained, more responsible. He got them into space without killing them, so that was a good start. Gotta stay positive!

Emil had no trouble doing that. “Before we get started, I’d like to congratulate everyone for not having any really bad cases of space sickness!” He absentmindedly pulled one of his curls into a line. “Especially since I was kinda sick myself and in no mood to tend to anyone else. Great work, everyone!” He clapped. “So with that outta the way, Captain, tell us what we’re doin’!”

The captain cleared his throat. “We’ll have to begin training with the jet armor on our way to the moon as I mentioned when we first entered the Earth’s orbit. Since we’ve had a week to get accustomed to the lack of gravity, this would be a good time to start. Before we do--”

Mia froze, even though she’d already been standing perfectly still. The captain stared directly at her. She panicked. What did she do wrong this time? Did the captain have a vendetta against her specifically?

“Ranger Wattson, Ranger Summers. I forgot to mention it last week, but you two should switch places in the lineup. My mistake.” He tipped his hat.

Mia and Leon swapped spots. Now, Mia was at the end of the line.

“Thank you. Before we start,” continued Captain Galhardo, “I have to assign each of you a partner. One to test the jets and the other to watch them from the cameras on the observation deck.”

Partner. Mia cringed at the word. Flashbacks of group projects turned solo flickered through her mind. By nature, a partnership like this couldn’t turn out that way, but even still, she preferred to work by herself.

“There is one small problem, though.” The captain’s eyes wavered back and forth across the group. “There’s an odd number of you. For now, I’ve decided that the best option is to have one group of three and cycle out the members. Does anyone not want to participate today?”

Mia thought about raising her hand. She really thought about it. However, she wasn’t sure about her standing with the captain. First impressions mean a lot, and even though he knew otherwise now, he did initially think she caused trouble during the last meeting. Sitting out now might send a bad message. She didn’t raise her hand. Someone else did, though.

“Ranger Kelly?” asked the captain. “Very well.”

“Thanks, Cap.” Ranger Kelly responded. “By the way, don’t worry about assigning me to a group or anything. It’s not like I need anyone to watch me.”

“That’s not possible.” In one fell swoop, the captain materialized a small booklet from his cape, flipped it open, and flipped a finger along the pages before stopping at one. “Interstellar Forces Handbook Chapter 11 Section 13: ‘In space, no star ranger may perform any extra-vehicular activity without the surveillance of another star ranger using an Interstellar Forces-issued observation panel.’ It’s the very reason we have to be in groups of two or more.”

“Wait!!” Emil interrupted. Up until now, he’d been rubbing his chin, squinting at someone intently. “I know where I saw you!” A wide, chipped-toothed smile spread on his face. “You’re the guy! The cool jet tricks guy! We saw you a couple times when we visited one of the bigger vessels, and I thought you were so cool! I wanted to be just like you! I even waved at you once and you waved back!”

“Oh, you were that kid...?” answered Ranger Kelly. “I barely remember.”

The lieutenant’s happiness only grew. “You remember??” He turned to his brother with breakneck speed, causing the captain to recoil fearfully. “Can I be partnered with Aiden? Pleeeease?”

“S-sure, okay… I. Guess you can take over until further notice.” Captain Galhardo regained his composure. “Now that that’s taken care of, assigning the rest of you to partners should not be a problem.”

Mia weighed her options, which proved to be simple enough since there were only three. First, Roxie Allen. She was obviously the best choice; though Mia had only known her for a year, the petite, curly-haired bubbly girl earned a place in Mia’s heart. Working with her would be equally as good as working alone. Then there was Jun. While it would be nerve-wracking to work with a national hero, from her experience, Jun didn’t talk too much. Mia’s time as an observation panelist on the Moon Base taught her that jet fliers like that were golden. Plus, Mia liked Jun’s personality. Finally--

“That leaves Rangers Wattson and Summers to be paired up.”

Over Ranger Summers’s head, Mia could see Jun and Roxie already celebrating. She didn’t even hear them get called! They were much closer anyway, so this was best-case scenario for them…

“Hi Mia! I didn’t see you much last week!” Leon greeted. “You didn’t get too sick, did you?”

“Oh, no. Not too badly, but it was a little hard to eat.”

“Same here. I guess we kept missing each other!” He smiled. “I hope we get to talk more now, especially since we’re partners and everything.”

Mia smiled in return, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the bucktoothed ranger. He seemed eager to get to know her, but she was eager to not be known. This would be a problem. From her experience, these types tended to be the most persistent, and while that worked with Roxie, Mia remained apprehensive.

“I can’t wait to try out the jet armor!” continued Leon. “Unless you wanna go first. The captain did say we should probably choose now.”

“He did?” Great. More important info missed. “You can go first!” she conceded. Mia wasn’t too experienced with the jet armor, and having a stranger watch her flounder in space didn’t sound like her idea of a good day.

“Thank you so much!” Leon’s enthusiasm felt palpable. “This has been on my bucket list for years!”

“No problem.” Mia smiled, genuinely this time.

“Okay!” Emil clapped. “Everyone got their roles for today sorted out? Those who wanna go outside the ship, come with me.” He turned to Aiden. “Sorry Aiden, I figured it’d be good if at least one of the captains go out with the others this first time, but I promise I’ll let you show off next time!”

“Ok.”

The captain coughed.

What followed was the most unenthusiastic ‘Yes, sir’ Mia ever heard in her life. How did Aiden even get into the IF with that attitude?

After Emil descended the staircase along with Leon and Jun, the rest followed Captain Galhardo into the observation deck. With a press of a button, three observation stations rose out of the tiled floor, conveniently in front of the window. It was time to get to work.