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.

Loten slowly retracted his finger and seemed to calm down a little, Harlan shot one last disdainful look at Cai and turned around to continue on his way. Cai knew he should take this opportunity to let them walk away and let things stand as they were. He could also make matters worse.

Easiest choice he ever made.

“You’re absolutely right Harlan, I wasn’t part of the Academy back then… but isn’t that the worst part for you?” He shouted after them. His fellow cadets froze in their tracks, giving him the opportunity to continue.
“Weren’t you chastised by your daddy because it took you five whole years to get here while a filthy little surface mole did it in under two?”
Harlan turned around, the lines of his face setting into a rapidly building fit of anger. He stepped closer, daring Cai to speak again.

Cai’s face twisted into a mocking grin and, against better judgment, he decided to stoke the fire a little hotter.
“Bet the regent of Atema was really happy to hear his prodigal son was getting outclassed by a kid from Svartheim’s labor districts. Don’t blame him, to be honest. I’d be pretty mad too. I mean, for all the money he put into raising you you’d expect–”

Cai was rudely interrupted by a burly fist hitting him square in the jaw. His vision went white, his ears started ringing and a flash of intense pain hit him a split second after the punch did. It felt as if a massive gong had been rung and knocked out all his senses.

He was so dulled by the impact that he didn’t notice he was falling right up until the back of his head slammed against the glass floor, sending another wave of pain through his skull.

Harlan said something to him but the droning in his ears turned every word into a vague blur. The excited cheering of Jörda and Loten wasn’t making things any clearer. It was probably something along the lines of: “Stay down unless you’re hungry for another.” 

Yeah, such unimaginative crap is exactly what Harlan would say, but that didn’t take away that Cai’s appetite for sucker punches had indeed been sated. 

He groaned and sat up, feeling dizzy like he’d never been. The warm, coppery tang of his own blood flash-flooded his mouth and he felt that two of his teeth had been smashed out of their sockets.

He didn’t spit them out; he swallowed them. His body could use the calcium to speed up the regrowing process.

He slowly got back on his feet, a little unsteady at first, but the mind-numbing pain was starting to fade. His pupils contracted again, bringing the walking brick that was Harlan back into focus. 

The older cadet was looking down at him dismissively. He clearly thought the fight was over, Cai smirked. He was gonna love the feeling of giving that spoiled idiot a taste of his own medicine. The fact that he was not hungry for another fist meeting up with his face just meant he had to dodge the next one: “Not a problem now that I’m ready for it.” He thought to himself.

He put his fists up and took a fighting stance, drawing a surprised frown from Harlan. The First Mate followed suit after a few seconds. Jörda and Loten were starting to look a little more concerned now that the fight had turned into something more serious and even the two Voidsailors moved in to intervene.

They were all too late, Cai threw the first punch this time. Where Harlan might have had the benefit of raw strength, Cai was quick as water. There was no way his opponent could hope to evade or even block him. 

Except he did, Harlan’s body moved down faster than Cai had believed possible and his fist went completely wide. His eyes widened in shock as he tried to cancel out his own momentum, but he’d put too much energy in that one attack: He was wide open for the counter that would undoubtedly follow.

It came even quicker than he had anticipated: a kick to the gut powerful enough to knock the wind out of him sent him to the floor for the second time in less than sixty seconds. 

“When did Harlan become athletic enough to kick like that?” He thought, whimpering softly as his lungs worked desperately to get his air supply back on track.

He could hardly believe Harlan had been hiding something like that; he never showed speed or kicks at their physical combat training. Maybe he’d underestimated that snob after all

Someone entered his field of view. Even with his blurry vision, Cai could see the figure’s hair was so blonde that it appeared almost white against the black- and gray ceiling of the voidport. 

A pained grunt that sounded like it was made by Harlan was the final piece Cai needed to solve the puzzle:

Harlan hadn’t dodged him at all, nor had he been the one to kick him, no. 

The two fighters had both been taken down by someone else. 

"Hey Veriss–” Cai began, but after one glare from the team commander he wisely cut himself off: She was furious, and that was far scarier than the glass floor that had started this whole mess could ever hope to be.