Among the Stars: Part One - Taking Off

by The Lord of Chaos

Keith's not sure why no one else remembers their past lives, but he's pretty sure that he's not crazy. Lance totally doesn't have crushes on any of the guys who occasionally distract him from his studies. Hunk's pretty sure one of his roommates is breaking several laws. And Katie's going to find out what happened to her family, even if she has to become an international criminal.

2. The Best

A/N: Oh wow, you're still here. Huh.

---

The Best

Hell week was not aptly named. It was definitely hell, but it also lasted for two weeks. Two weeks full of exercise, and screaming instructors, and classes well into the night, Lance was pretty sure he'd never been more exhausted and miserable in his life. Hell week also didn't so much end as it got a bit less intense. Starting week three, they moved on from classes that were mostly Garrison indoctrination to more academic curriculum, and the more time spent in classrooms just meant less time to get screamed at. They still worked out every morning, military training ended in the afternoon so that academic classes could happen in the evening, and they still got smoked whenever someone messed up.

Week three though was also when they got moved out of the big bay style dormitories at the reception battalion and into actual rooms. Lance was sharing with a guy from Norway named Francis Scott, and another guy from Samoa named Aputi 'call me Hunk' Kilisi. Eventually they'd be a team. Lance would be the pilot, Francis would be the science officer, and Hunk would be the onboard engineer. In the beginning though, they did everything separate with their own tracks. Lance was in a class of nothing but support pilots. They were separate from the fighter class. The same didn't go with the engineering and science tracks where cadets in the science track were in the same class whether they'd been assigned to a fighter crew or a support crew.

Hunk turned out to be an awesome dude. They didn't have a lot of time to talk, (by the time they were done with classes at night they were both ready to pass out) but he was warm and friendly and Lance thought they'd get along just fine, even if the other boy was a bit melodramatic and saw doom and gloom around every corner. Francis though had grumbled about having to share a room with an 'airheaded flyboy.' Lance had already been warned that the other boy wasn't there to do his science homework for him, which wasn't ever going to be an issue, but they were roommates and Lance was determined that they'd all get along together eventually.

The limited free time they had after the entry phase was nice, but Lance found more time to miss home. He wondered if anyone else was giving the twins swim lessons.

---

Throughout his first week of training at the Garrison, Keith had a lot of memories pop up from other lifetimes. The training was familiar. Keith had been in various armed groups again and again throughout his past lives, and hell week seemed to show that there were some things that stayed the same from species to species. Primarily, getting yelled at.

"Is that all Cadet?! My grandmother can do more pushups than that! Did you even think about working out before you came here? Just thought you'd coast through, didn't you? That's the sort of performance that gets Cadets shipped back home in their first month."

It was a good thing that Keith's face was pointed at the ground, because he couldn't get in trouble for rolling his eyes. He was doing better than most, so he was pretty sure he wasn't going to be getting sent back to the Shiroganes. Still though, he might as well get the most out of it. He struggled to push himself up once more before falling to his knees.

"Did I say you could stop Cadet?!"

It sucked. It really sucked a lot, but it helped that he could remember some really horrific basic trainings to compare it to. Still though, what really helped him resist the urge to tell the Chief to go screw himself was the knowledge that it was all for a purpose. Everything he did, he visualized the stars. He remembered that there was so much more out there, and when the Garrison finally figured out their hyper relativistic drive, Keith was going to ride out among the stars. Until then, he just had to deal with a few annoyances. Like his roommates.

"Oh my god, go to sleep Gyeong," Barnes said.

One bone of contention was that Keith had never really been able to stay in bed for more than about four hours. He couldn't leave his room after curfew, and there wasn't really anything to do besides homework. He got restless.

"Ugh, is Gyeong doing sit-ups again?" Wilson asked.

"No, he's just pacing," Barnes said.

Keith thought he was pretty quiet about it.

"Just ignore me," Keith said. Barnes was the one who woke up Wilson anyways.

"There's a test in English tomorrow," Wilson said.

Keith groaned. He pulled out his English textbook and a small penlight and tried to quietly figure out what the hell the past participle was.

---

The first night at the Garrison, Hunk became convinced that he had made a phenomenal mistake. He had indeed been sent to the American Division so now he was stuck in the flight engineering program. Somehow whenever he'd thought about joining the Garrison he'd only really thought about the end results. He'd have to put up with space travel for a bit, and then he'd get to play with the best tech in the world. He had never really put much thought into what training was going to be like.

People kept yelling at him. Not just the instructors either. Hunk was at the bottom when it came to fitness somehow, and the instructors made it sound like everyone had to do more because of him. So there had so far been a lot of highly stressed cadets all acting like Hunk was dragging them down. Which he supposed he might be.

He'd been hitting the gym ever since he'd taken the entrance exam, and he could safely say that he hated exercise more than anything, but he hadn't really seen the benefits. Which wasn't to say that he hadn't put on muscle. He'd definitely gotten stronger in the previous months, but he also hadn't lost a single pound of fat, and running was still torture.

The food was another issue. He'd heard horror stories of what people ate when they were in space, but he'd thought things would be better on Earth at least. It was a bit disheartening though, to see over boiled vegetables and unseasoned mashed potatoes and dig into them voraciously, because he had worked up a great hunger. Momma Talia was one of the best Chefs in Samoa, and Hunk shuddered to think of what could happen to his palate if he spent four years eating in the Garrison's galley. The worst possible outcome would be that he actually got used to this food.

So after his first day he'd lain awake on his narrow bed in a wide open bay filled with bunk beds feeling exhausted and sore and like he was either doomed to failure or to misery. After two weeks of feeling like that every night, they'd moved into rooms for three and Hunk was ostensibly rooming with his future teammates, though for the longest time, Hunk felt sure that he'd never get to really work with either of them, because right after that, they'd had their first of many fitness tests and Hunk had immediately been flagged. Now Hunk hardly had any time to get his homework done because he had to do remedial physical training. At the very least, he wasn't the only one.

On the other hand, classes were going alright, though in this instance, alright meant he would have usually been supremely bored but now he was just glad to have a moment where no one was yelling at him and he could gather himself. Instead of taking notes in physics he found himself sketching out ideas for how the hyper relativistic drive could possibly work. The Galaxy Garrison's research was still largely under wraps, so Hunk had wide open playground to work with.

Two months in, and Hunk was no longer technically failing the physical fitness test, though he was getting about the equivalent of a D. Better yet, they'd started going over flight systems and for the first time, Hunk started feeling a little bit like he had a future at the Garrison.

---

"A pilot doesn't need to be able diagnose and fix a system failure on the fly," Lieutentant Commander Botende told them in their first flight operations class. "You have engineers for that. You do need to intuitively know how a damaged or malfunctioning system is going to affect your mission though and to be able to help your engineer prioritize systems. You don't need to be able to analyze deep space telemetry, but you do need to know your sensors capabilities and be able to request relevant information from your science officer."

"A pilot is the leader of a team. It is your ship, your crew, and you must know your ship, its systems, and the jobs of your crew to be effective. You must be a jack of all trades. Your engineer will know how to reassemble the cooling manifold, you will know where to look in the manual and be able to follow its instructions."

Pilots had to be well rounded, and Lance was pretty sure that he'd need help now and then from the rest of his team, but he supposed that was the point of putting teams in the same room in the first place. There was plenty of science and engineering his class would be learning before they ever sat in a pilot's seat.

Classes were fast paced and it often felt like Lance was trying to catch water from a firehose. There wasn't even a question about using his meds. He knew he wouldn't have survived without them. Life went on like that for weeks. Get up in the morning, exercise, clean up, breakfast, military drills, lunch, math, history, and English, then a couple hours to do homework before dinner followed by classes that were basically specialized crash courses in science, engineering, and navigation. And no weekends to speak of, besides a couple of hours for cadets to go to whichever religious service was being offered. Lance found comfort in the hymns, which had many of the same melodies as the ones back home, though they were in English.

Eleven weeks in saw the first quarter over and done with. It had been nonstop and Lance had never been more stressed out, but he'd made it. The end of the quarter came with a small ceremony to mark off the first phase of their training, and the gaining of certain privileges. Like the ability to go off base on the weekends, which they'd actually get the next quarter. More importantly, they got their personal belongings back. Lance finally had his cell phone and that night he'd be able to put on a face mask. The next day, Lance and Veronica would be flying home, but for one evening he was a free man. He was wearing his civilian clothes for the first time since he'd arrived, and with the small stipend he'd been given, he was planning on having some fun in town.

"You've both got to come with me," Lance said. "This is our first chance to really hang out."

"I've got a flight in the morning," Francis said, shaking his head. "And so do you."

"It's five o' clock," Lance said. "We've got plenty of time. Back me up Hunk."

"I have been dying to eat something that wasn't made in the galley," Hunk said.

"Yeah?" Lance said. "Veronica knows the town, we can find whatever you've been craving." He turned to Francis. "Come on, you can come out to dinner right? We'll be back long before curfew."

Francis looked conflicted.

"There'll be girls," Lance said enticingly.

"There's girls here," Francis said.

"Yeah, but you can't date them," Lance said. Dating between cadets was strictly forbidden.

Francis thought about it. "We won't be out too late?"

Lance grinned. "Of course not, we've got a flight in the morning."

Veronica gave him a big hug when they met up. They'd seen each other in the halls of course, but Lance's own time had been so regimented that they hadn't actually gotten to really talk to each other since they'd gotten off the maglev in Tucson. She'd already ordered transport and a few of her friends from her year were there as well.

"Okay, where are we taking you?" Veronica asked as the van drove away from the front gate.

"Anything Samoan?" Lance asked.

"They probably don't have anything Samoan," Hunk said. "I'll be happy with anything Polynesian."

"Well unless you want to go all the way to Tucson, I know there's a Hawaiian place in town," Veronica said. "It's within walking distance of the Dungeon."

"That's great," Lance said. The Dungeon was a nightclub that catered to teens, which basically mean't there was a dance floor, video games, a lot of junk food, and no alcohol.

Veronica had already told him that she'd be seeing more than enough of him over the next two weeks, so Lance and his teammates got dropped off at Leilani's Cafe while Veronica and her friends went off to do their own thing.

The thing was, that none of them had ever really socialized. Lance had been too focused on staying on top of things, while Francis just seemed to be rather standoffish. Hunk on the other hand seemed personable enough, and he definitely didn't need help with the material. While strong as heck, though, he'd been flagged for not meeting cardio-vascular requirements, so a lot of his study time had been converted into extra athletics time. Lance wasn't sure when Hunk would need to be able to run two miles on a space ship, but the Garrison seemed to think it was a priority.

All in all, even though they'd been rooming together for the past eleven weeks, none of them really knew each other, so there was just a bit of silence in the beginning while they looked at their menus. Lance struggled a bit with the language, his English was good, but mostly focused on being able to follow along in class rather than the terms for all the different culinary words. Eventually he pulled out his phone and aimed the camera at the page and let it translate for him.

"So," Lance said after they'd all ordered and there weren't any menus to take their attention. "Life story. Go." He pointed at Francis.

Francis looked put on the spot.

"Um, I'm from Norway," he said. "I want to go into deep space sensing, and the Garrison is the place to do that."

"Cool," Lance said. He knew how to talk to people like Francis. "Talk to me about deep space sensing, that's stuff like figuring out what's happening in other solar systems, right?"

"Something like that," Francis said. "With any luck, there'll be a prototype of the hyper relativistic drive sometime in the next decade, and when we're ready to leave the solar system we're going to want a list of places to visit."

"You want to be on the first ship out there?" Lance asked.

"That would be ideal," Francis said.

Lance probed him about it all for a while before turning to Hunk.

"So what about you, Geordi, what brought you to the Garrison."

"Geordi?" Hunk asked.

"Star Trek reference," Francis supplied.

"Chief Engineer of the Enterprise," Lance said. "You haven't watched Star Trek until you've watched it in Spanish dubs."

"I don't think you're going to beat Sir Patrick Stewart," Francis said.

"Yeah," Hunk said. "I'm a Star Wars fan."

Lance gasped. "Say it isn't so," he said. "Luke, I am your father, and you are grounded mister."

"Being grounded sounds nice, if I can get a ground job with the Garrison right out of training that would be great," Hunk said. "Seriously. I did not sign up so that I could get sucked out of an airlock."

"You don't want to go to space?" Lance asked.

"Have you watched literally any movie about space travel?" Hunk asked

"You mean like Star Wars?" Lance asked.

"Like the latest Alien movie, or maybe you saw Titanic III: Haley's Comet, and how about that one that came out over the summer about the Orion crash."

"Dude, the guy playing Shiro was great," Lance said. He hadn't really looked like Shiro that much, but he'd sure had the same heroic air that probably followed the real Shiro around.

"The point is, space is hella dangerous, and if for some reason, when all is said and done, and we're done with training, if they want to give me a desk job, I will not be complaining."

"So why the Galaxy Garrison?" Francis asked.

"I love the tech," Hunk said. "The Garrison is the place to be. I'm sort of with you on this, only I don't want to be on the first ship that uses the hyper relativistic drive, I want to build the first ship that uses a hyper relativistic drive. Preferably without ever leaving the ground."

"Well okay," Lance said. "So tell me about Samoa. What's it like in the Pacific?"

"What's it like in the Atlantic?"

"Tropical paradise," Lance said. "A busy tropical paradise. My family owns a hotel in one of the hottest tourist spots in Cuba, only a few blocks from the beach. I've been working there since I was old enough to help out. Are you close to the beach? Do you swim?"

"Pretty close," Hunk said. "Don't swim much, but I've been surfing now and then, what about you?"

"Oh man," Lance said, hamming it up a bit. "Every time I've tried it a tourist on a surfboard tries to murder me by running me over. I've got a scar down my back from the last time. The surf section is dangerous. Forget space travel.

"You've got a scar from surfing?" Hunk asked.

"Dude, I'll show you when we get back," Lance said.

"Well, it didn't get too crowded where I lived," Hunk said. "You should give it another shot."

"Sure," Lance said. "Some time after you go to space."

Their food came eventually, and it was really good. Hunk though seemed a bit critical. After eating galley food for the past three months, Lance wasn't sure how he could complain about anything that didn't look like it had just come out of a mylar bag. They talked more about where they'd all come from; Francis, for the most part, needing to be cajoled into contributing to the conversation, but Lance considered it a victory. They were going to be a team, and Lance was going to be their leader.

The team lasted until they left the restaurant. Francis declared his intention to go back to base, and Lance was grudgingly true to his word and didn't try to get him to stay longer. After his taxi pulled away, Lance took a moment to figure out which direction to head in. He hoped the Dungeon offered up as much fun as it was hyped up to be.

"You and me, Hunk," Lance said. "We're going to be each other's wingmen tonight."

"Okay," Hunk said. "One question. How does one wingman?"

That was not a question that Lance was going to admit not knowing the answer to.

"Well we just help each other out," he said. "You know, with the ladies."

The Dungeon was only a couple of blocks away, they heard the music thumping from inside before they even got close. There was a bouncer at the door, who Lance was pretty sure was there to keep out adults, and also to collect the cover charge. The club was brightly lit inside and it was full of all the cool things Veronica had said would be there. It was also full of a lot of the kids from the garrison who had just gotten their first night off base.

Lance looked around. "Where are the locals?"

"I'm sure there's some around here somewhere," Hunk said.

Lance frowned, realizing that his main plan of impressing some local girl by telling her he was a garrison pilot probably wouldn't have much success when he was surrounded by other pilots from his year.

He threw on a smile for Hunk. "Don't worry about it. You play Mario Kart?"

"I've been known to dabble," Hunk said.

"Come on," Lance said. "Looser buys drinks."

They never did meet any local girls that night, but Lance got the chance to talk to a bunch of his fellow cadets that he'd never talked to before. He stuck by Hunk though, insistent that the evening be a team bonding exercise, even if one of them was missing.

---

They made it back before curfew and the next morning Lance and Veronica retraced their route back to Cuba. Mamá picked them up from the airport and drove them home, asking a million questions, and demanding pictures at every stoplight. Lance got tackled by the twins when he walked in through the door and he made a big show of getting knocked over and exclaiming over how he had been planning out all the fun things they'd do over the vacation.

There was a party that night, as was tradition, and Lance got roped into telling stories about his first quarter by everyone who could get a moment of his time. The twins of course demanded a lot of his time, and he wound up helping them draw pictures of some of the garrison spaceships. He'd missed everyone while he was gone, but helping out in the kitchen that night, Lance realized just how much he was going to miss over the next several years.

Christmas was typical. They had a breakfast of pastries and watched a recording of the Mass broadcast from the Vatican. Presents were opened and then preparations for Christmas Dinner began.

Lance had gathered that Christmas in America was the biggest holiday of the year, but on the island most people didn't make a big deal out of it. Lance's family was a bit of a different story, but for the most part, those who observed it mostly just had small celebrations at home. Living in a resort town though, meant tourists, and people loved to travel to the tropics over Christmas vacation. The whole while the family celebration was going on, they were cycling people in and out of the hotel's kitchens and the front desk. Lance and Veronica certainly weren't immune from the process and Lance found himself helping deliver room service in the morning and then turning over tables in the banquet hall in the afternoon. One nice thing though, was that people tipped really well on Christmas day.

After dinner Mamá made natilla and Lance did his part to make sure the twins didn't succeed in eating their own body weight in the pudding. Tío Mateo had gotten them a new video game, a jungle adventure, so after they'd had their fill, Lance helped them set it up and they played until the twins bedtime.

"So are you making any friends?" Papá asked when Lance got back from a room service run.

"My roommate's pretty cool, Hunk," Lance said. "We don't have much time to say more than a couple of words to each other, but he seems like a friendly guy. My other roommate's a bit standoffish. They're pretty polar opposite personality wise, but they're also both huge nerds."

"You're a bit of a huge nerd yourself," Tío Mateo said from the grill where he was making someone a late night cheeseburger. "Fries should be done."

Tía Ellena pulled the basket out of the fryer. "Are there any nice girls there?" she asked.

Lance was pretty sure she meant good Catholic girls.

"We're not allowed to date anyone," Lance said.

"Did I ask about dating?" Tía Elena asked.

"There's plenty of nice girls," Lance said. "I just haven't gotten a chance to talk to any of them outside of class.

"You could come to the range tomorrow," Tío Mateo said. "Do you remember Berto's girl? Louisa? She's been coming to the range with him. They'll probably be there tomorrow."

"I don't think Lanceito's looking for a weekend girlfriend," Tía Elena said. "He's only here for another week." She said it with a bit of a side eye look at Tío Mateo who'd probably gone through a good half dozen girlfriends while Lance had been gone if history was any indication.

"Burger's up," Tío Mateo said.

"We actually get weekends next quarter," Lance said. "So I'll have more time for socializing." Assuming he could keep up with his studies without spending all his free time studying. Lance grabbed a soda from the fridge and put it on the cart next to the burger.

"Well I hope so," Tía Elena said. "You're fifteen for crying out loud."

Lance wondered if Hunk's family was as interested in his love life. Lance delivered the burger and got tipped in a currency he didn't recognize before going back to the kitchen where Tío Mateo started talking about his time in basic training, something that sounded horrible, but he sounded fond of. No one else seemed to need any late night snacks, and Lance helped Papá finish off the fries before he went to bed.

Leaving home again at the end of the holiday was bittersweet. The twins latched on before he could get into the car, and Veronica, of course, was no help. She just took out her phone and took pictures.

Lance had fun comparing vacations with Hunk as they decorated the dorm room a bit. Now that they were allowed personal items, the Garrison felt a bit less like a prison and more like an actual boarding school. Their second quarter started without much fanfare. The first week was spent on review, and Lance was spending more of his time with Hunk studying in their free time. Francis still preferred to do things on his own.

What was nice was that second quarter they started taking classes together. Not all of them. Flight operations were still specialized classes, they all had to learn their own specialized jobs before they started team operations in third quarter. It was nice to be able to do homework with Hunk, though Hunk was miles ahead of his fellow engineering students, so it was less of a partnership and more that Hunk did his own homework while Lance asked a million questions. It helped keep him focused though, to have someone to work with. He wound up taking Hunk out into town during their first weekend and treated him to the latest action movie as a thanks for putting up with him. Hunk was cool about it all though.

The one thing Hunk couldn't help him out with though, of course, was flight operations. It was crunch time for learning all the controls, and protocols, and telemetry, and sensor indicators. Trying to memorize everything in the manual was frankly tedious and not nearly as cool as one might think learning about a spaceship would be. He didn't have much time though, since they'd be starting flight simulations soon enough, and Lance needed to be at the top if he was ever going to transfer.

Of course, now they also had elective courses, and while it was nice to add some not so academic classes, it was also just another area for his attention to go. Combat marksmanship was great though. Everyone had gotten rifle basics in the first quarter, but it was recognized that most people would never be in a position to actually need to know how to shoot one. Higher level classes were still offered though, and the rifles they used were so much more advanced than what he'd had in Cuba. The red dot sight also was a lot easier to use than iron sights. It was the first class where Lance felt like he was ahead of most everyone else. Some of the techniques the instructors taught were a bit different from what Tío Mateo had taught him, but Lance adapted quickly. They started with distance shooting, but they'd be moving into close combat by the end of the quarter. Second years who had passed with high enough marks were eligible for the sniper course the following year.

Lance had also enrolled in small unit leadership, and by the end of his first week he already had visions of himself as a squadron leader. He knew that next quarter when they started full team operations that he'd need to show his leadership skills if he wanted to be considered for leadership positions later on. On top of those classes though, he'd joined the swim team, and while it was fantastic to get back in the water regularly, the swimming pool just wasn't the same as the ocean.

The first few weeks went by slowly, with the promise of their first simulator runs coming up, it was all any of the pilots were thinking about, even with their new classes. Those first few weeks though were the first time he really started to get to know his fellow pilots. They were all excited about what was to come, and so many of them seemed, like Lance, to have something to prove. Mealtimes that had previously been a timed and rushed affair, with instructors breathing down their necks now became more relaxed and they actually got to talk while they ate. All in all, the Garrison was really starting to be fun.

"Did you guys hear about what happened with the fighter class today?" McClintock asked as he sat down across from Lance at lunch.

"They had first go at the simulator, didn't they?" Lance asked.

"Yeah," McClintock said. "I heard a couple of fighter cadets talking when I was in line. Some guy named Gyeong aced the simulator on his first go."

"For real?" Yates asked. "LC Botende made it sound like we were all expected to crash the first few weeks."

"Yeah, well sounds like everyone else did," McClintock said.

"I heard Shiro aced his first go," Evans said.

"Oh, if you listen to half the rumors the dude was practically born in a cockpit," Waleed said.

"I'd believe it," Lance said. "Bet you all I'll be the first to ace the simulator."

"Yeah, right," Yates said. "You can't even sit still in class, what's the bet you spaz out and come in last."

Lance gripped his silverware a bit tighter but laughed it off. "Shots fired," he said. "Just you wait."

Lance spent the rest of the day, and a fair bit of that night daydreaming about acing the simulator. He was going to ace the simulator on his first go and the Garrison would realize they'd made a mistake, and that Lance was supposed to be in the fighter class. He'd get moved up and he'd be vying with this Gyeong guy for the top spot. It was the next day, as luck would have it that Lance met the top pilot in their year. The first thing he noticed was the unruly mop of black hair, followed by the falcon patch with the pilots tab, and then the nametape, Gyeong. Lance felt his heart skip a beat for just a moment as he looked at the guy's face because if you compared the two of them, Lance knew which one of them actually looked like he was an ace pilot, and which of them looked like a support character. Lance instantly wanted to get to know him better. He probably had all sorts of insight on the simulator and he was probably ridiculously cool.

Lance plastered on his best smile and decided to play it casual. "Oh hey, you're the hotshot, aren't you?" he asked. "The guy who passed the simulation on his first go, right?"

Gyeong stopped dead in his tracks and gave Lance a real funny look, like Lance was some new specimen that he'd never seen before. Lance's smile got a bit strained before the guy turned his head away and started walking past Lance.

"Yeah, whatever," Gyeong said. It took Lance a moment to realize he was just being completely brushed off.

"Hey," Lance said indignantly. "Rude."

---

He didn't get to see Shiro too often at the Garrison. First year's schedules were pretty well regimented, and it was a difficult environment for him to adjust to. He was pretty used to being ignored to his own devices. It would be worth it though.

His first quarter done, Shiro brought him back home for the holiday, along with his fiancé Adam. Keith chastised himself for feeling jealous of the attention Adam got. As if he needed Shiro to give him any mind. It wasn't like he was ignored. It was just that everything Shiro took him out to do, Adam came along too.

Winter quarter started with their first go in the flight simulator, and after Keith's first go, he was more excited than ever. He was going to go into space, and he was going to find his soulmate among the stars.

That was a new concept for him, but he'd latched onto it. His first time in the pilots seat had felt so familiar, a dozen memories surfaced for the first time of at least a dozen different ships and planes, cutting through the dark of space or screaming through the atmosphere. He remembered going into a nosedive to evade a fighter, a brief moment of weightlessness. He remembered a dogfight in a biplane that probably wasn't on earth. He remembered strapping in for his first trip into space. He remembered leaving his planet for the last time, the huddled mass of every single civilian he could fit on his ship behind him as they fled the invasion. He remembered the struggle of duty, when all he had wanted to do was turn around and fight; fight and kill the bastards who had taken his soulmate from him.

While the memories of alien fighters were exciting, the word soulmate reverberated around his mind. It had been odd remembering like that. Odd that the first time he remembered his soulmate was a memory of his death. Odd that it was triggered the first time he ever sat in the pilot's seat of the simulator at the garrison, but there he was, living his dream and trying not to get choked up as memories of different incarnations of his soulmate overcame him. Two souls, following each other across the universe and across time, destined to find each other. He recognized his soulmate now in memories throughout his past lives, and suddenly he wondered if his drive to get into space was just his drive to find his soulmate again. He felt the loss of him, the loss he had experienced countless times before, the loss he would feel again, the wound that would be soothed when they were together once more.

He knew that he'd find him though; they always found each other. He was brought up short when he realizes that it is a him. It always was, or, at least it was when they were occupying species that experience gender like that. Keith had been questioning for a while, so remembering his soulmate for the first time was probably the best way he could have come to welcome his own identity. Though having this realization while getting lectured by the instructor and his fellow cadets huddled around behind his seat had been far from ideal.

He didn't get to take his time with the new memories. He was there to get into space, and he was not going to do that if he bombed his first exercise. Remembering his past lives wasn't that much of a cheat in school. It wasn't like he remembered everything. The important things, the formative things, those were the memories he remembered. The pythagorean theorem though? Memories of past lives might help in school, and while he now had plenty of memories of flying a fighter, they were all different, all had different controls. The feeling of flight though, the instinct, that came back to him quickly, and when it was time to run his first simulation it wasn't any trouble at all. He aced it and went to the end of the line while the next cadet took the seat. He had plenty of time then to relish memories of his other half.

He spent most of that night trying to remember more. He usually let memories come as they would, but he struggled that night to pull up as many memories as he could of his soulmate. He usually got by with very little sleep, but that night he didn't get any. A day prior, if someone had brought up true love or the idea of a soulmate, Keith would have scoffed and rolled his eyes. It was different now that he knew he had one; now that he remembered what it was like to feel that way about a person. Not just anyone, though; his soulmate. He had a fucking soulmate out there. He just needed to find him first. He was certain that he would know him when he saw him once more. He remembered lives where he didn't have the memories, where he grew up never realizing that he'd done it all before. When he felt like he'd met his soul mate for the very first time. There was something special about those memories, but he also remembered lives where he had waited for the one he knew he would recognize, lives where he carried the memories just as he does in this life. He remembered the feeling of completeness every time he finally found the one he'd been waiting for.

Meeting Lance one day later didn't feel like that. Oh, he didn't even know the boy's name at that point, but he knew right away. The moment they locked eyes, he knew. In his last life, (at least the life he's pretty sure was his last life); but in his last life, his soulmate had had soft grey eyes. In other incarnations they were bright yellow, or black all through, but he knew when he looks into Lance's eyes that he was seeing into a very familiar soul. He heard a familiar laugh in a different voice. He knew that no one else on Earth seemed to remember their past lives; he knew that none of his human past selves ever remembered their past lives, but he still expected the other boy's face to brighten up in recognition when they first met.

"Oh hey, you're the hotshot, aren't you?" They other boy asked instead, his face bright and animated. "The guy who passed the simulation on his first go, right?"

There was nothing there. Nothing that said he knew who Keith was to him. He felt… forgotten; abandoned once more, the thought that he didn't remember floating through the Plaxas Belt together, or dancing in Crystham Hall left Keith feeling cold. He didn't remember ever feeling like this before; not when he had just been reunited with his soulmate. Getting away was easier.

He brushed past the boy. "Yeah, whatever," Keith said, keeping his voice tight as he tried not to get choked up.

"Hey," his soulmate said, indignant. "Rude!"

He should have been fine. He should have just smiled and started a conversation. Why was he so awkward? Why did everything have to be so hard? Why did he have to screw up every interaction he ever had with anyone? He remembered lives where he had found it easy to talk to people; where he understood people, and where they understood him. He wanted to go talk to Shiro. Shiro was the only person he really got along with. The only person who'd had any patience for Keith since his dad had died. Shiro was getting ready for his mission though. He didn't have time to deal with a problem he couldn't possibly understand.

Keith went to his room instead. There was going to be a test tomorrow in physics, but he couldn't study. He found himself ruminating instead on the brief interaction he had had with his soulmate. He knew what Plavix would have said. Plavix had been an Andoran in an elliptical galaxy far far away. Keith only had a few memories of being him, but he definitely remembered the confidence he had had when he had first spoken to his soulmate.

Shiro would tell him to stop dwelling on the past and start planning for the future. So what was his plan for the future?

Keith worked on his homework, and wondered if that boy made the Garrison his home.

"Home is where your heart is," Keith mumbled as he erased an entire paragraph of halfway coherent analysis on geoengineering theory.

---

Lance spent way too much time thinking about the meeting instead of getting ready. Hunk, who loved gossip, had already heard about Lance's interaction with the fighter pilot, so apparently Lance had had a bit of an audience at the time.

"Did you really call him 'hotshot?'" Hunk asked.

"Yeah," Lance said. "It's a compliment right?"

"Sort of," Hunk said. "Also sort of means you think he's a showoff."

Lance groaned. "English is hard."

"You've gotten a lot better since I first met you," Hunk said.

"Not good enough, apparently," Lance said.

"Shouldn't you be more worried about the simulator tomorrow?" Francis asked from where he was sitting at his desk.

Lance groaned and pulled up the manual on his tablet. He went to bed that night frustrated and calling himself nine kinds of idiot.

That following morning when he stopped by medical after physical training he wasn't exactly surprised to find out that he wouldn't be allowed his meds until afternoon classes.

"So who here thinks they're ready to land on Earth?" Lieutenant Ramirez asked about an hour later as they all gathered around the simulators.

Lance wasn't the only one who eagerly raised his hand.

"Well too bad, we're going alphabetically. Abbad, you're up first. Adakai, you're on deck."

Enthusiasm died fast. Everyone was failing. Everyone crashed. Lance though was still halfway convinced he was going to ace the thing, and then it was his turn. Just sitting in the pilots's seat was exciting. The manual really didn't prepare him for all the gizmos and indicators that demanded his attention though. He started eyeing everything he could, making sure he knew exactly what everything did, but before he knew it, the simulation had started.

"You're approaching the atmosphere," Lieutenant Ramirez said. "Are you within your window?"

Lance's eyes roamed around until he found the planar representation of his ship with regards to the atmosphere.

"I need to correct course, Sir" Lance said.

"And that means?"

"I need to ask my science officer, Sir" Lance said.

"By the end of the year, you'll be able to do that yourself," Lieutenant Ramirez said. "But for now, your science officer tells you to correct by five point two degrees."

Lance searched around, his eyes seeming to catch on everything besides what he was looking for. He could hear Lieutenant Ramirez's shoe tapping on the deck besides him. Eventually though he found the dorsal jets and did the quick math for the burn while his eyes were drawn to the oxygen meter which seemed off. Why would the oxygen be that high? Was there a system failure? What was the procedure for that, had they been taught that yet? Was it part of the assigned reading?

"Clock's ticking cadet, you're about to hit atmosphere," Lieutenant Ramirez said.

Lance punched it in and activated the jets. He felt the ship tilt, and his eyes drew back to the oxygen meter before he realized that the ship had tilted in the wrong direction.

"Wait," Lance said, hands flying back to the dorsal jet controls, but before he could do anything else the ship gave a lurch and then a big red sign flashed across the screen. 'ALL HANDS LOST'

Lance looked back to the dorsal jets and realized he'd activated the lower dorsal jets instead of the upper ones. Which meant he'd slammed into the atmosphere at a ridiculously steep angle that would have ripped a ship apart.

"Well you killed us all, do you know where you goofed, Cadet?"

"Wrong dorsal jets, Sir," Lance said, his face burning.

"Well at least you know it."

"Was there something wrong with the oxygen, Sir?"

"Noticed that? There are about a dozen readings here that are out of norm, but none of them will affect a landing. You've got to prioritize your attention Cadet. Simmons, you're on deck, Schiff, you're in the hot seat."

"Yes Sir," murmured Lance as he made room for Schiff, his face burning.

"Well you sure aced it if you were going for the fastest failure," Yates said.

"Oh yeah, let's see how well you do Yates, after you get to see literally everyone else go first."

"Keep it quiet cadets," Lieutenant Ramirez called out.

Lance's face burned even more. He should have watched everyone else have a go, but he found himself going over his own performance again and again.

Lance ran by medical after sim time was over and got a six hour dose before lunch. When he got to the galley he found Hunk and sat with him. The engineering track was supposed to have been doing their own simulations that morning, and Lance asked for every detail Hunk was willing to give, which was a lot. Hunk could probably tell by Lance's own lack of enthusiastic retellings, that his own simulation hadn't gone well, and there were times it looked like he was physically restraining himself from asking about it.

It was as he and Hunk were on their way to history class that Lance found himself once more face to face with Gyeong, and crap, he hadn't planned on meeting him again so soon. How exactly did one apologize for sounding like a jack ass on accident?

Gyeong's eyes locked with Lance's for a moment and Lance suddenly felt a bit stupid, and then the boy's eyes fell on Lance's shoulder and his whole body seems to shift backwards.

"You're a cargo pilot," Gyeong said, as if he was disgusted by the idea.

Lance bristled. "Oh, so that's why you couldn't give me the time of day, well just you wait Gyeong, I'll be wearing a falcon on my sleeve when I graduate."

The other boy opened his mouth to say something, but Lance wasn't going to let him get the upper hand.

"Yeah," he said. "And I'll be top of the class too, just you wait."

The other boy seemed to be at a loss for words, which was a bit of a surprise, since assholes usually had too much to say as it was.

"See Hunk? I've got him speechless." He turned towards his roommate who had his arms crossed and was giving Gyeong a disapproving look.

Gyeong for his part finally came up with something to say. "Why don't you focus on flying your cargo ship in a straight line, Sanchez, before you talk big like that?" And with that the other boy stormed off.

"I can too fly in a straight line, and I'll be flying circles around you," Lance said to the boy's back. The flow of cadets moved on as the spectacle ended. "Did you see the mullet on that guy?" Lance asked Hunk as they walked away.

---

Today was a fresh start, he kept telling himself. He kept looking for his soulmate in all of his classes but he didn't lay eyes on him. He wondered if the boy was in his second year, though he'd looked just a bit younger than Keith himself. Keith hadn't looked at the other boy's uniform when he was right in front of him, so he had no idea how many shoulder stripes he wore.

By the end of the evening, he had a tentative plan. Give an apologetic smile, bring up the simulator and see if he wanted any tips. Brush off the day before. It would be fine; he hoped. His soulmate was always a caring person, but not necessarily always especially forgiving.

It wasn't until lunch period that he discovered why he hadn't seen his soulmate around anywhere. He'd assumed his soulmate would be a fighter pilot, he'd felt sure of it. But there he was, only one stripe on his shoulder; he was in Keith's year. There was his nametape, Sanchez, good to know, and there was his section patch, right under the pilot tab… He wasn't prepared for the patch to have a Pegasus on it.

"You're a cargo pilot," he said, disappointed. Not the words he'd been meaning to open with.

"Oh, so that's why you couldn't give me the time of day, well just you wait Gyeong, I'll be wearing a falcon on my sleeve when I graduate."

Keith opened his mouth but nothing came out. This wasn't how he had planned for this to go. He couldn't just tell the other boy that they were soulmates, and he didn't think he'd said the word 'sorry' within the past decade.

"Yeah," the other boy said. "And I'll be top of the class too, just you wait."

Fuck, this wasn't going the way it was supposed to. Why did his soulmate hate him? He'd messed everything up. Why couldn't the other boy just remember? Keith remembered him, he remembered a hundred different versions of him, why couldn't his soulmate remember just one. People were looking at them. People were staring at him, at the stupid face he was making as he tried to think of something to say. Why was everything so fucked up?

"See Hunk? I've got him speechless." There was another boy, besides his soulmate. He was looking at Keith with eyes that said 'back off'. Keith snapped.

"Why don't you focus on flying your cargo ship in a straight line, Sanchez, before you talk big like that?" he asked as he stormed off.

"I can too fly in a straight line, and I'll be flying circles around you," the boy said. Keith felt like he already was. Stupid, stupid, why did he say that? Why did he lose his temper?!

He skipped lunch. He wandered off to the East wing where the support section trained. It didn't take him long to find the pilot's board. Sanchez, his nametape had said Sanchez. He skimmed down the list. It was too early for any rankings to be out so the names were still alphabetical. There he was. Sanchez, Lance. His soulmate's name was Lance. Lance hated him. It shouldn't have been surprising. His own mother hadn't cared enough to stick around. No family had ever fought to keep him after his dad had died. Why shouldn't his soulmate be any different? Why was Keith so different? It was a while before he got the conversation with Lance out of his head, and when he did, another thought took it's place.

Lance didn't remember his past lives. No one else on Earth ever remembered their past lives. If no one else, then at least Lance should, but he didn't. So why did Keith? It wasn't the first time he had asked the question, and as he often did when he let himself think about it, he pulled out the only thing he had left from his mother. The dagger she had left with his father when she had disappeared into the night. The dagger that was sharp as a razor, hard as a diamond, never needed sharpening and could cut through about anything. The dagger with the strange glowing symbol in the middle of the quillon that tickled at the back of his head like a memory from so many lifetimes ago.

He glanced up at his ceiling, as if he could look out to the sky beyond. The stars held the answer. Traveling beyond the sky was his destiny, there were so many things out there greater than what was held on Earth. He'd known that for a while, and now he knew that he had a soulmate who was chasing the stars too.

He knew better than to tell anyone about his thoughts about the origins of the dagger, of his own origins. If anything, thoughts like that were a bigger secret than the memories of his past lives. He wrapped up the hilt that night with a strip of cloth from an old t-shirt. He needed to stop thinking about the dagger. He needed to stop thinking about his mother, and he needed to stop thinking about Lance, give things some time to cool off.

He focused on his classes after that while only occasionally stalking his soulmate. He took every moment he could get in the simulator and worked out whenever he needed a change of pace. They'd opened up the electives for first years at the beginning of Winter quarter. Keith had signed up for as many as he could. He was in Close Quarters Combat, Astronomy, and Art. The first combat lesson he had after meeting Lance for the first time had come with a memory of sparing with his soulmate in a park, a few lifetimes ago. He had looked around but he already knew that Lance wouldn't be there. They didn't have any electives together. Lance, he would later find out, had taken Combat Marksmanship and Small Unit Leadership, in addition to joining the Garrison swim team. Which was for the best. The less they interacted, the better; for now.

---

Off his meds, Lance would have probably spent the rest of the day going over that altercation over and over again in his head, but on them he only cycled through it about a dozen on and off throughout the day. Who was Gyeong to look down on him like that. Just because he'd gotten into fighter class, just because he got lucky on his first go. The guy probably thought he was better than everyone else, but Lance was going to show him, just like he was going to show the rest of the Garrison that he had what it took.

That night he struggled long after his meds wore off to try and memorize the arrangement of all the controls and indicators. Come the end of the week and they were back in the simulators, and this time it wasn't the whole class crammed into one simulator, all getting the same experience. They were broken down, four to a simulator, and they got to run through each of the three exercises twice. Lance still found himself having difficulty figuring out where he was supposed to be looking at any given moment while also remembering each and every procedure and protocol that had been crammed into him so far.

Of course, this time everything was being graded and evaluated. Lance didn't need to look at the pilots board to know he was near the bottom, though that didn't stop him from looking at it every time he passed it.

Veronica tried to cheer him up that weekend, and Lance wound up on a video call with her and a good chunk of the family Saturday evening.

"Have you lost weight, mijo?"

"No mamá, I've gained weight," Lance protested. "I'm in the middle of a growth spurt. They just sent me back to supply for new uniforms."

"You do look a bit thinner," Tía Ellena said.

"Lanceito's swimming again," Veronica reminded them. "He's on the team. Remember when he was competing and you were worried he was wasting away?"

"Coach Isidro asked about you," Papá said. "I saw him in town last week."

"Well if our teams do well enough, we might see each other at regionals," Lance said. "How's Luis, I haven't seen him online, Junior year too much for him?"

"Luis has a girlfriend," Marco said.

This devolved into gossip for a while.

"Are you going to services?" Mamá asked as the call was winding down.

"I am," Lance said. "It's not the same though, in English. The songs, you know?"

"Well you don't have to pray in English," Mamá said.

"I know," Lance said. "I love you all."

And there were a bunch of rejoinders and then the call was over leaving Lance a bit melancholy.

"Should I pray that I start getting the cockpit right?" Lance asked. "What I really need is more time in the simulator."

"Couldn't hurt," Veronica said. "Hey, remember when you turned that wagon into a rocket ship for the twins?"

"Hey, I didn't know they were going to take it to the top of the hill," said Lance for what felt like the thousandth time.

"I'm saying you could make your own simulator," Veronica said.

"How am I-"

"Not the whole thing," Veronica said. "Just the important parts."

"Huh," Lance said. "Well, you're helping."

"Come on," Veronica said. "Lets hit up the student store."

They wound up with a bunch of colored markers, some packing tape, and a couple of big empty cardboard boxes from the loading dock. Francis looked up at him skeptically when he walked in.

"Francis, prepare to be inspired," Lance said.

"I am overcome with a great doubt," Francis said.

Lance waved him off.

The boxes got cut up and after a while they'd fashioned a good sturdy shell. After that came the very painstaking process of drawing in every dial, nob, screen, switch, and button that was in the cockpit, while very carefully referencing the schematics in the manual.

"Our room's never going to pass inspection with that thing there," Francis said. "How long are you keeping it?"

"Forever dude. It'll fold up and fit in my wall locker."

Veronica left Lance to do the drawing after a while and got on his laptop and started writing up scripted scenarios.

"If anything," Lance said. "I think just having to draw out and label everything is a big help."

"Well our dorm room now looks like a five year old lives in it," Francis commented.

"Yeah, yeah," Lance said. "I know you think it's awesome."

A couple hours later and he had a good facsimile of the real deal.

"Ready?" Veronica asked.

Lance checked his work over once again. "Yep."

"Alright, your ship has just completed launch and you are within your orbital window to set a course for Mars."

"Okay," Lance said. "I need my science officer to confirm relative trajectories."

Veronica nodded. "He gives them to you, but was that the first thing your should have done?."

"Post launch systems check," Lance said. "I instruct my engineer to start post launch procedures, and I start my own checks."

"Call out everything as you check it," Veronica said.

It was a bit easier after he'd just drawn everything in.

"Main engines are green," Lance said, pointing to the indicator. "Cabin pressure and temperature are normal…"

It went on and on like that, though Veronica had a number of reminders for him. Eventually though, she had her own schoolwork to take care of.

"Go through the manual," Veronica said. "Make your own scenarios. Turn each one into an audio recording and go at it in your spare time."

"Thanks Veronica," Lance said.

"Any time," Veronica said, giving him a hug. "Don't forget your actual homework."

"I won't," Lance said. He started flipping though the manual once she left.

"Any idea where Hunk is?" Lance asked.

"They've got the new plasma induction regulator in from testing and a bunch of the engineering cadets went to go watch it get taken apart."

"Huh," Lance said. "So, want to help me make a few scenarios?"

"I told you I'm not doing your homework," Francis said.

"This isn't homework," Lance said.

"Well, it's not my homework," Francis said.

"It will be," Lance said. "Next quarter we've all got to work together. We're going to pass and fail as a team. Don't you want to get as much out of those exercises as you can?"

Francis frowned. "Well then we're waiting for Hunk."

"That's right, we do this as a team," Lance said.

Francis shrugged and turned back to his tablet. Lance pulled up the voice recorder on his laptop and started recording the scenario Veronica had already made up for him. He'd run through it three times by the time Hunk got back. Hunk laughed a bit at the cardboard mockup when he walked in, but he took much less convincing than Francis had.

Come Wednesday, and the support pilots were back in the simulators. Lance still found himself distracted easily by the myriad of lights and all the information that kept popping up in front of him, but he was doing a lot better at finding everything right away, and remembering protocol. Lance thought it was a bit like the rifle. The more he practiced the more it would become second nature.

The following week their class got a visit from Shiro. They'd found out the day before and Lance had spent the night before daydreaming about having a perfect run in the simulator in front of the famous pilot. Everyone else was plenty excited about it too, and talk about Shiro was buzzing at his table at breakfast that morning. When Shiro finally walked into the simulator bay where they were all gathered, Lance thought to himself that he really did look like an action hero movie star. He seemed larger than life and he had an air about him that seemed to command attention and respect.

Shiro talked about his time as a cadet, and how he'd struggled in the beginning, and that made Lance's heart soar, to know that his hero hadn't always been at the top. Lance got nervous when it was his turn in the simulator. Shiro was standing right behind him, giving him pointers and Lance had to stop himself multiple times from daydreaming that one day he'd get to serve under Shiro, that they'd explore space together. Which was silly, since they were both pilots, but some day, the garrison was going to be building great big ships that would travel the stars, and they'd probably need more than one pilot. Heck, Lieutenant Shirogane would probably be the Captain of one by then.

"Ease up on the thrust Cadet," Shiro said. "Throw in a bit of counter, this is a delicate operations."

Lance blushed dark red. "Yes Sir," he said, making the adjustments and forcing himself to stay focused the rest of the simulation.

"Good work, Cadet," Shiro said at the end, clapping him on the shoulder. "Work a bit more on those micro adjustments."

"Oh, right, thanks, I will, um Sir," Lance said, sliding out of his chair and heading back to the rest of the class.

"Why are you blushing?" Yates asked. "Did you bomb?"

"I'm not blushing," Lance defended. "It just gets hot in there, you know? Also I did great."

"Uh huh," Yates said.

---

Comparatively, Winter Quarter was going great for Hunk. They'd cut back on his remedial physical training, since he was no longer failing, and classes had started to really get interesting. They were taking apart flight systems, getting their hands dirty, and really getting into how everything worked. On the weekends, there were frequently seminars put on by scientists and engineers from the Garrison. Their first weekend back there was a great talk about intra-system connectivity feedback that had left Hunk reevaluating some of his concepts for the Hyper Relativity Drive.

Of course the Garrison was still the Garrison. The food was, if anything, less palatable. He'd had to take one combat related elective or extracurricular and had wound up on the wrestling team. It wasn't that it wasn't a little bit fun, it sort of was, but it felt like a waste of time. He was an engineer, he was never going to need to know how to fight someone. It was enough of a waste of time that they'd taught everyone to shoot a rifle during first quarter. He could have been doing something productive, but instead he was learning to put someone in an arm bar when there had never once in history been any sort of close quarters combat in space or on Mars or on the moon. There hadn't even been any sort of combat in space for over two decades. Yet the Garrison was still a military institution.

The one waste of time he was generally happy for was Lance. The guy was pretty cool and hated galley food about as much as Hunk did. He also let Hunk talk non stop about whatever he was working on. By the third week of Winter quarter, Lance had managed to find all of the best restaurants in town and regularly got Hunk out of his own headspace enough to go find something better than bland grits and overcooked strip steak.

"Okay," Lance said. "Titanium Man or Excelsior?"

"Oh, Titanium Man wins hands down," Hunk said.

"Ahah," Lance crowed. "I knew you were going to say that."

"Because I'm right?"

"Because you've got a huge bias towards technology based supers."

"No I don't," Hunk said.

"Cyborg, Rocket, Dr. Pain," Lance listed a bunch of them, ticking them off on his fingers. "They're all engineers dude, or they were 'created' by engineers."

Hunk thought about it while he grabbed a handful of garlic truffle fries from the platter in-between them. "They're just naturally better," he said.

Hunk would have probably preferred to have just lived in a room with other engineers. But if he had to share a room with a pilot, he was glad it was Lance. The guy was serious about his studies but he also took time to chill out, and they shared just enough non-school related interests to get along really well.

Hunk hadn't been all that psyched about Lance's cardboard 'mockpit,' in the beginning, but he appreciated that Lance wanted to be the best. Hunk was starting to realize that his chances of transferring to the European Division for their Developmental Engineering track was dwindling, so in the end, Hunk needed to be the best as a flight engineer. If he was going to transfer to a ground position in any sort of good time after graduation, he needed an excellent record, and a part of that was going to be, unfortunately, flight operations. Lance was already getting them started on working together, and while he'd have rather been drawing up blueprints with his fellow engineering cadet, Sarah, he recognized that Lance's obsession was probably going to pay off.

---

It was a month into winter quarter by the time he actually got to see Shiro in anything more than passing since the holiday.

"Hey cadet, how much homework do you have this weekend?" Shiro asked when Keith answered his knock.

A lot, really.

"Just a bit," Keith said. "Ah, Sir."

"Wanna see a space ship?" Shiro asked, waving away the Sir.

"I've seen a bunch of spaceships since I've gotten here," Keith said, a bit confused.

"I mean one that hasn't been decommissioned and put on display," Shiro said. "Come see the Heracles."

"Your spaceship," Keith said, suddenly understanding.

"My spaceship," Shiro nodded.

"Can I go inside?" Keith asked.

"I can't even go inside," Shiro said.

"But it's your spaceship," Keith said.

"We start running on board drills in two weeks after the engineers finish their tests," Shiro said. "But for now it's off limits. Now, if getting an up close and personal look at humanities biggest ever spaceship just isn't your cup of tea I suppose I could find someone else to show off to."

"No, I want to go," Keith said. "Just let me get my jacket."

Shiro got a hoverbike from the motor pool and they rode out into the desert to the launch pad. It was the first time Keith had been off compound since he'd arrived and there was something about the expansive desert with its plateaus and canyons that seemed to call to him. Like there was something out there for him to explore, even though he knew he belonged in space. He told himself that it was nothing, but he felt the call of the desert the rest of the day he was out there with Shiro.

The ship was massive, though Keith knew most of it was fuel to get out of Earth's gravity well before the ion drive kicked in.

"Why don't they build it in orbit?" Keith asked.

"Everything's experimental," Shiro said. "We've got the best of the best working on her, and most of them aren't up for months without gravity."

"You'll be on the lookout for aliens, right?" Keith asked.

"Are you still watching Ancient Aliens?" Shiro asked.

"What? No!" Keith said. "That stuff's stupid. But that doesn't mean they aren't out there."

"When I first met you, you asked if I'd seen a chupacabra out in the desert here," Shiro said.

"There could be," Keith said. He had plenty of memories of crazy creatures out in the cosmos.

"So what about aliens visiting way back when?" Shiro asked.

"It's mostly just racist crap about how the Egyptians couldn't have built the Pyramids," Keith said. "But aliens definitely exist, and you better make sure they don't try to eat you." Not the best way to die, he'd remembered that when the latest Alien movie had come out.

They walked around the launchpad, Shiro pointing out all the different parts and telling him about his two crew mates. He pulled out his phone and showed him a photo that looked like it had been taken over dinner with the Holts. Keith just shrugged at the picture of the happy family. He was a bit miffed at the thought of a man with a wife and daughter waiting at home while he took his son and got in an experimental spaceship and visited one of Pluto's moons.

"So your instructors have a lot of good things to say about you," Shiro said.

"You're checking up on me?" Keith asked.

"You got in with my recommendation," Shiro said. "Just making sure you're adjusting all right."

"Classes are okay," Keith said with a shrug. "The simulator's nice, but they won't give me any of the advanced scenarios yet."

"Yeah, it'll be a while," Shiro said. "Just hang in there."

A light started flashing on the side of the launch pad and a door on the ship opened, letting a bunch of people in clean suits out into a glass airlock.

"I think the engineers are on lunch," Shiro said. "Want to go say hi?"

Keith gave him a pained look. Socializing wasn't his thing.

"Okay, okay," Shiro said, holding up a placating hand. "Though that brings me to another thing."

Keith gave him a wary look.

"A couple of your instructors mentioned you seem pretty withdrawn."

"I'm just focusing on my studies," Keith said.

"And that's great," Shiro said. "I just wanted to make sure everything was going alright."

Keith thought about it for a moment. It wasn't exactly an answer to Shiro's question, but he didn't really have anyone to talk to about anything.

"I'm gay," he said.

"I'm glad you felt comfortable telling me that," Shiro said. "Do you have any questions? Any issues?"

Keith shook his head. "No, but I just sort of figured it out a month ago and there's just some… stuff tied up in it."

"I was about your age when I started figuring things out too," Shiro said. "It's a journey, but you don't have to figure things out on your own."

"I know," Keith said. "I mean you've been helping me figure it out since before I met you."

"Oh?" Shiro asked.

"You've got a loose floorboard," Keith said. He always looked for hiding places when he got to a new home. None of his foster parents had ever found his dagger, but Keith often found things that other kids had hidden away, including some pamphlets in Shiro's old room.

"Oh!" Shiro said. "Jesus, that was ages ago. Is Captain Marvel still guarding my hidden treasure?"

Keith gave him a questioning look.

"Wait, is that why you're not getting on with your classmates? Is someone giving you trouble for being gay? That's an EO violation. They can't do that."

"No one's giving me trouble," Keith said. "No one knows."

"So what's going on?" Shiro asked.

Keith considered how much embarrassment he was willing to deal with.

"There's a boy I like," he settled with.

"Okay?"

"I keep putting my foot in my mouth when I talk to him and he hates me," Keith said.

"Ah," Shiro said. "So, when you say he hates you?"

"I might have commented on him being a cargo pilot," Keith said. "Things sort of devolved after that."

"So what do you like about him?" Shiro asked.

Well he's my soulmate, for one, Keith thought. "Well," Keith said. "He's very good looking."

"Okay," Shiro said, but the pause afterwards let Keith know he was expected to say more. He tried to think about his soulmate of the present, from what little he'd seen in the dining hall or in the corridors.

"He's really full of life," Keith said. "And he smiles like the sun and he hates me and it's so frustrating and then I can't think when he's around."

"He probably doesn't actually hate you," Shiro said.

"Well he definitely doesn't like me," Keith said.

"Look, Keith," Shiro said. "Patience yields focus. Give it some time and maybe you'll see things in a clearer light; figure out a way to get along with this guy. But Kieth, while I'm a firm believer in fighting for what you want, sometimes there are people you just aren't going to get along with, and you're not going to do yourself any favors trying to change that. Give it some time, but don't forget that there are other people here at the Garrison."

"Plenty of fish in the sea?" Keith asked. That might apply to others, but he knew that there was only one person for him. At least, there was one person who the universe at least seemed to think he belonged with; who wouldn't abandon him, even though he already had because Keith ruined everything. He hated being Keith.

"Not quite," Shiro said. "If this guy's important to you, then he's important to you. But there's other sorts of relationships you can have with people here. I made a lot of good friends when I was a cadet. One of them became my fiancè"

Keith had never been good with friends. Even before he had become a foster kid and gotten moved around a lot.

"Are things difficult with him?" Keith asked. "Because you're ace?"

Shiro had never told him that, but there had been those pamphlets.

"We make things work," Shiro said. "There's a lot more to relationships than sex. Now, I don't need to remind you about the Garrison's policy on dating each other, right?"

"I think there was a briefing on it," Keith said. There'd been multiple reminders.

"You can be friends, you can get close, but you've got to wait for anything more than that."

Keith nodded, hoping to forestall a lecture. He knew he'd be waiting a long time.

They toured around the launch pad for a bit before stopping at the facility's small galley for lunch. Keith found himself talking a lot more than he had in a long time. He found himself telling Shiro a lot more about himself than he'd ever told anybody. There was a familiarity to Shiro. Not like with Lance, but close. Like they'd known each other a lot longer than they had. Keith wondered if maybe Shiro reminded him of big brothers he'd had from past lives because he was a big brother from a past life. Maybe soulmates weren't the only ones who followed each other from life to life. Maybe Shiro had been Kohvar. He hadn't been so tempted to tell anyone about reincarnation in a long time. It was late in the afternoon when they got the hover bike back to the motor pool.

"I'm having dinner with my crew mates," Shiro said. "Want to come?"

"I've got a lot of studying to do," Keith said. "Um, today was cool."

"Watch out for Lieutenant Mir's midterm. She likes to test on the supplemental reading."

"Good to know," Keith said. "I'll, um, see you around?"

"Count on it," Shiro said.

Keith retired to his dorm room. As was usual, his roommates were off studying, or whatever, with their friends. Keith had the room to himself and for the first time in a while he managed to study without being distracted by thoughts of Lance. He couldn't keep his mind off of him for too long though. Lance was there in the galley when Keith went for dinner. Loud and full of life, like always. A shining beacon in the darkness; he had a small gaggle of students from the support section around him. They all looked like they were having a good time. He felt a bitter anger that he wasn't there, sitting next to Lance. An anger at himself for not being the person his soulmate wanted. An anger at Lance for not remembering him. An anger at the twist of fate that had left them at opposite ends of the room instead of fitted together, like two halves of a whole that they were supposed to be.

He left to the training deck where he worked out some aggression on a training dummy with a practice sword. It wasn't anything they trained with in Close Quarters Combat, but it reminded him of the Geom Do lessons his dad had had him enrolled in before he died. It had been the most his dad had ever acknowledged their Korean roots.

Oddly enough, it was randomly hacking at a practice dummy with a wooden stick that lead Keith to make his first sort-of friend at the Garrison. Nam Pak was part of the after class martial arts group, and when he asked Keith if he'd like to learn how to properly use a sword, Keith agreed on a whim. A whim that probably had nothing to do with the fact that Pak was attractive and might just be a distraction away from Lance.

As things went, between studying, extracurriculars, and occasionally getting to see Shiro, Keith didn't have too much time to worry about his soulmate. This went fine until the Garrison hosted a swim meet. Keith did a very bad job of telling himself that he went to show school spirit and not to see Lance compete. He definitely wasn't there to see Lance in a speedo.

Try as he might, he couldn't get the other boy out of his head. Not when he had lifetimes of memories of them together. Not when the other boy had such a magnetism to him. In the end, he was weak. He'd find himself checking the pilot's board in the support section, or sitting nearby in the galley. When the first rankings had come out, Lance had been near the bottom, but a couple months in, and he was at the top of the list for the support section. On rare occasion, Keith would find himself in the observation deck when the support section had free simulator time. A few people gave the falcon patch on his uniform a look, but no one commented on the fighter pilot keeping tabs on the cargo pilots.

Lance, had skill. Keith didn't need to see the rankings to understand that. Where Keith flew by the seat of his pants, mostly on instinct, Lance was very technical and analytical of every situation. Where listening to him talk at a mile a minute on a constantly changing topic could lead one to think that Lance was scatterbrained, watching him fly showed him to be hyper focused when he needed to be. If he had one flaw, it was that he was trying to prove himself a better pilot than he was.

Keith himself always flew with the goal of surpassing his own ability, but at the slightest excuse, Lance would try to fly the cargo simulator like it was a fighter jet. It was trying moves he hadn't trained for, in a ship that wasn't designed for them that would occasionally see him receive a mission failure and a lecture from Lieutenant Commander Botende.

There was an odd solace to keeping tabs on Lance, but most of the time it left him morose. It was after one such viewing that he wound up needing to bleed his aggression off on Pak on the combatives deck after dinner.

"Patience yields focus," Shiro's voice called out across the training floor.

"Officer on deck," someone called out and they all came to attention. "Good evening, Sir."

"As you were, Cadets," Shiro said. "I'm just here to observe."

"Any pointers, Sir?" Wilshire asked. The Heracles launch was the biggest thing happening at the Garrison just then and most people had probably read Shiro's bio. Everyone in the martial arts group knew that First Lieutenant Shirogane had brought the Garrison gold at the International Military Sports Council's World Combatives Championship three years running while he'd been a cadet.

"Well I believe I gave one when I came in," Shiro said. "You can't always brute force your opponent. Sometimes you need to have the patience to assess for weaknesses. You'll hear this a hundred times before you graduate, but 'slow is smooth, smooth is fast.' Don't lose yourself so much in the fight that you can't focus on what you're doing."

Keith knew that Shiro was talking to him, and was grateful that he wasn't directly being called out.

"Thank you, Sir," Wilshire said. "Alright, let's show Lieutenant Shirogane what we've been working on."

Shiro stayed till the end and pulled Keith away when they had cleaned up.

"You're doing really well," he commented as they left.

"Thanks," Keith said. "I'm surprised you have any time to come and mentor cadets."

"I don't really," Shiro said. "This whole next week is nothing but simulations, and preflight checks. I've got three physicals scheduled before we launch, and I'm trying to spend as much time as I can with Adam. I wanted to tell you though, Mom and Dad are coming for the launch, and I've got your name down on the list."

"Oh," Keith said, rubbing the back of his neck and feeling a bit awkward to be included as a part of the family. "It'll be weird with you off planet," he said.

"You'll get used to it," Shiro said. "To be honest, this is the longest I've been on Earth since I graduated. Just focus on your lessons, and maybe also your crush."

"He still hates me," Keith said.

"Have you talked to him since?" Shiro asked.

"No," Keith said, knowing that Shiro probably thought him foolish.

"Maybe try that," Shiro said.

Keith shrugged.

"Alright," Shiro said. "I've got to get to a briefing, I'll see you next Wednesday."

"Yeah," Keith said. "I'll see you."

A week later, the Heracles launched, and Keith watched it with equal parts worry and jealousy from the observation deck. Being out there once more, Keith felt again as though there was something out in the desert that was calling to him. Something that was waiting for him. He ignored it. Space was calling to him, that was the only thing that mattered. There wasn't anything on Earth for him.

---

Time went on, and Lance slowly started to climb through the rankings. By the end of the quarter, Lance was getting close to the top, and time in the simulator was starting to become fun. Of course he couldn't help but to compare himself to that Gyeong jerk. Every now and then he'd pass by the fighter section and see the guy's name right up there at the top. That was also around the time that the Heracles launched, which was definitely the coolest thing ever. Lance had put up a poster that showed Shiro superimposed in front of the ship, and on the morning of the launch, he and about half the garrison climbed up onto rooftops around the base to watch it shoot off into the sky.

Spring break was fun. It was only a week, so they weren't flying back home, but Veronica was eighteen, so she was able to check Lance out of the Garrison. They hopped on the maglev and went to California with some of Veronica's classmates. They got a couple of hotel rooms and spent the week going to Disneyland and the beach and checking out Hollywood. What was really cool though, was meeting all the high school girls on their spring break. It certainly wasn't Varadero, but it was still great.

Lance managed to end his Spring break with a girlfriend, which had Veronica rolling her eyes, and of course she told everyone about it during their next video chat. It didn't last of course, and Lance spent a depressing afternoon wondering how the life of a space pilot would mix with a romance. He didn't exactly have time to sulk, of course. Spring quarter brought Total Crew Operations, and now Lance was joined in the cockpit by Hunk and Francis, and it was really starting to feel like he was piloting his ship through outer space. It didn't take much cajoling to get them to join him frequently during free sim, and when he couldn't get that, he still had his cardboard mockup.

Flying in the simulator was becoming an obsession, and he couldn't wait to get to do the real thing. He'd watch videos from promotional material that the garrison had put out for the latest fighters and came away with all sorts of things he wanted to try in the simulator. He even tried to persuade Lieutenant Commander Botende to let him try out the fighter simulator, but that didn't fly.

Things were going pretty well in Combat Marksmanship as well. They started team operations in Spring Quarter, and Lance had been made a team leader. Their swim team on the other hand was somewhat lousy. There wasn't much competition for Lance on the team, and they never did well enough collectively at meets to advance them. It was mostly just a chance for Lance to get in the water.

Most everyone on the swim team though really enjoyed swimming, so Lance got along great with everyone. The swim team captain was this guy Pascal in his last year as a cadet. Lance always felt self conscious when the guy was swimming in the next lane over. Like anyone glancing their way would compare the two of them and find Lance lacking. The guy was tall and ridiculously good looking, and he looked like he should be the fastest swimmer on the team. Sometimes it was a bit like a sucker punch to his stomach when he glanced his way. Lance never really felt like he could talk to him like he could with the rest of his teammates. There was no way Lance was ever going to measure up to a guy like that, even if he were the faster swimmer.

Still though, swimming was going well. Everything was going well. Everything was just clicking into place for him. All of the hard work was paying off and Lance was truly looking forward to whatever challenge the Galaxy Garrison decided to throw at him next.

---

There was so much pomp and circumstance for the launch. The Galaxy Garrison's first manned trip to the edge of the solar system had attracted so many higher ups, international figures and press, and then there was Katie and Mom. They weren't even going to see Matt or Dad. Argonauts going on long term missions were quarantined before launch. The whole thing seemed pointless to her, but Mom always went to Dad's, and now Matt's, launches, and Katie suspected that this one was going to be a bit harder on her than the ones in the past, so Katie went along for the privilege of watching most of her family leave for over a year.

"Come on Katie," Mom said. "There's going to be a speech."

"There've been three speeches so far," Katie said.

"They're going to recognize us," Mom said.

"We're not doing anything," Katie said.

"It's just something they do sweetie," Mom said. "They recognize that these missions take a toll on the family that gets left behind."

"Did you ever ask Dad to stay behind with you?" Katie asked.

Mom shook her head. "I would have never let your father ask me to stay grounded back before I joined the development team here."

"But you did stop," Katie said. "Why couldn't he?"

"Your father, and Matt, are forging a path for humanity into the cosmos," Mom said. "That's what this is all about. A future where mankind isn't trapped in one-"

"I got that, Mom," Katie interrupted. "I got that about a couple of pompous speeches ago."

Mom sighed. "It's hard to explain to someone who's never been up there," she said. "Come on. It's hard for them too. They'll be watching from the cockpit. Commander Simmons is going to give a nice speech, and then we can wave to the camera and let them know we're here for them."

Katie huffed and let Mom drag her off. They sat on the small stage set up in the observation deck next to Shiro's family and then they listened to Commander Simmons rehash some of the points that had already been made, about exploration and mankind's drive.

"Of course these sorts of missions take a toll on the family who stay behind. We're joined today by Lieutenant Shirogane's Mother and Father, Fujinuma and Sugita, as well as his fiancé Lieutenant Adam Ward, and his foster brother, Galaxy Garrison Cadet Keith Gyeong. Here for Commander Holt and Ensign Holt are Commander Holt's wife Colleen and his twelve year old daughter Katie. Though our ships have gotten faster, we continue to travel farther and farther, and the Kerberos mission will be one of our longest expeditionary missions in a long time. As our brave Argonauts have been preparing for their daring mission, the support they have received at home and from their loved ones has been instrumental to their wellbeing. They can all take comfort from the knowledge that the Galaxy Garrison family will be right here for them every step of the way. Now, I would like to present a token of our appreciation to the families of our crew."

Katie, Mom, and Mrs. Shirogane got bouquets of flowers, ugh, while Adam, Mr. Shirogane, and Shiro's brother got commemorative lapel pins. Katie knew that she was on camera, and that Matt and Dad were watching, so she resisted the urge to roll her eyes and just smiled. Then they were at the ten minute countdown, and they all stood to wave at the camera. Mom threw an arm around Katie before the camera feed was cut and then everyone went to the windows and waited. The countdown felt ominous, and then a bright light erupted underneath the Heracles and it shot off into the clear sky and disappeared. Mom held her as she cried.

---

Months went by in a comfortable routine. Spring quarter started soon after the launch, and Keith kept an eye on updates on the Heracles in-between classes as it made its way towards Kerberos. Keith kept busy. He pined after Lance, he studied the blade, and he ignored the feeling that told him he should just walk out the doors and start wandering through the desert.

One of the draws of watching Lance fly recently wasn't actually seeing his pilot skills, but how he interacted with his crew.

The first few months, pilots just focused on learning to fly, but the start of the third quarter had led to the introduction of total crew operations, and where Keith struggled to work with his crew, Lance took to the task easily, usually knowing how to direct his crew, even if he didn't know exactly what the solution to any given dilemma was.

It was a few weeks after the Kerberos Launch and Keith was using Lance Watching as a way to keep his nerves about Shiro's mission at bay rather than looking for something to distract him from Lance. Lance was running a critical systems failure simulation; trying to dock using flight propulsion after a micro jet failure.

"Lance, do you think you could make this a bit smoother?" Lance's flight engineer, Hunk, asked.

"You try doing micro adjustments without the micro jets," Lance said. "Besides, we've got to get you used to this. Can't be throwing up when we're dodging comets in the Kuiper Belt."

"That's not how the Kuiper Belt works," Lance's science officer commented.

"Crud, Lance, we just lost flight jets also," Hunk called out.

Keith frowned. That meant a mission scrub. He'd looked forward to watching Lance try to dock the cargo simulator with just flight jets.

"Trajectory?" Lance asked.

"You're coming in at a fifteen degree tilt at thirty-six degrees from main axis. At a hundred and thirty knots we will impact twenty meters from the docking port at twenty-five degrees from the carrier's vertical axis in two minutes if you don't fire emergency reverse thrust jets before then," his science officer told him.

Lance sighed heavily. "For the record," Lance said with an air of great disdain. "I am acknowledging that procedure dictates we break off our approach and wait for a rescue crew."

"But instead of following procedure and passing the simulation, you're going to do something that's going to crash the simulator and cause me to throw up," said Hunk.

"I'm not going to crash the simulator," Lance said, a radiant smile on his face now. "This isn't even a test, this is what free sim is for, let's see what we can do. Francis, pull up the flight corrections for a coolant venting and reverse engineer how a port side heat dump would change our trajectory. Hunk, what exactly is wrong with the flight jets?"

"Ignition's fried," Hunk said. "That's not a two minute fix."

"Does the fuel pump still work?" Lance asked.

"Technically yeah, but you're not going to get much thrust just from the venting of a bit of fuel. They're not even supposed to go off if ignition doesn't work."

"I just need to correct the tilt after we get everything we can from a heat dump," Lance said. "Can you bypass whatever inactivates the jets when ignition doesn't work?"

"Give me a minute."

"We also need to slow down," Francis said. "Emergency jets aren't meant for docking."

Lance nodded. "Executing half burn of emergency reverse thrust jets," he said.

"That's not a thing," Francis said as Lance activated the emergency jets and the simulator lurched at the sudden intense deceleration. Lance then manually shut the entire system down to interrupt the process halfway. The ship's telemetry knew if you were on a collision course, so activating the emergency reverse thrust engines executed an automatic burn that would eliminate forward momentum in relation to the object. After a manual shut off though, he would have to wait for the system to reboot before he could use them again.

"Are you crazy?" Francis asked.

"It's a simulation," Lance said. "We're just getting as much out of it as we can. Do you have the heat dump corrections?"

"Heat dump should bring our tilt to ten degrees, but it'll also cause a minor rotation. Your breaking maneuver slowed us to sixty knots. You've bought us another minute until impact."

"I can work with that," Lance said. "Hunk?"

"Hold on," a sick sounding Hunk said.

"I need those jets," Lance said. "You can throw up after I get them."

"Please don't," the simulator tech's voice came over the comm, the first actual intervention from the faculty since Lance had gone off protocol. Lance ignored it. "You've got this, Hunk," he said.

"He's not going to get them in time," Francis said.

"Yes, he will," Lance said buoyantly. "Initiate port side heat dump," he ordered.

Francis activated the coolant vent which earned a groan from Hunk as the ship's trajectory changed slightly. Keith held his breath.

"Status?" Lance asked.

"My calculations were correct," Francis said.

Keith gave a bit of a sigh of relief, eagerly awaiting the next step.

"Hell yeah," Lance said. "That's what I'm talking about."

"Jet shutoff's been bypassed," Hunk said.

"That's my man," Lance crowed. "Okay, now watch me land this bird."

"We're not landing, we're docking," Francis said.

"Oh, so you do have faith in me," Lance said triumphantly as he activated the flight jets, which would only be spewing unignited fuel.

"Our rotation's been corrected," Francis said after a couple of minutes.

"Activating lateral jets," Lance said. "Keep an eye on the airlock."

"You've over corrected," Francis said.

"Shoot," Lance said. "Taking us back."

"You're going to run out of maneuvering fuel," Hunk said. "You're bleeding the system dry."

"Can we siphon from main propulsion?" Lance asked.

"The process takes too long," Hunk said.

"Tanks will be empty in five," Francis started. "Four, three, two, one."

"Shoot," Lance said. "Where are we at?

"Well, we have no maneuverability, and we're going to impact five meters above the airlock. You've also got to bring us down to at least two knots."

"How long of a burn is that on the emergency jets?"

"Eight seconds," Francis said. "But they're not meant for precision, or to have their systems shut down mid burn."

"Let me worry about that," Lance said.

"The system also hasn't rebooted yet," Francis said.

"It'll happen when it happens," Lance said. "Hunk, what can we do to get those five meters down to an acceptable margin of error."

"There's nothing else, Lance," Hunk said.

"There's always something else." Lance said. "What else is on the exterior that could alter course."

"De-icing solution?" Francis asked. "No, that comes out at barely a trickle."

"Emergency parachute," Hunk said.

"The emergencey chute relies on a pilot chute, it doesn't get jettisoned off," Lance said.

"But the panel that covers it does," Hunk said.

"Awesome," Lance said. "Francis, pull up the schematics."

"This is crazy," Francis said.

"This is the time for crazy," Lance said. "And hey, emergency jets have rebooted. Starting eight second burn… now."

Keith counted down the eight seconds in his head with Lance. Lance again manually shut off the system. They heard a clunk.

"I don't think emergency jets are going to come online again," Hunk said, sounding miserable.

"If I did it right, we won't need them," Lance said. "Francis?"

"We are at four knots, impact point hasn't changed, impact is now in forty-five seconds" Francis said.

"Awesome," Lance said. "Let's see those schematics."

"The chute hatch weighs thirty-five kilos, and it gets jettisoned off with a force of a hundred and fifty newtons."

"Run the calculations for me," Lance said. "No time to make it perfect."

They waited in silence as Francis worked.

"This isn't exact," Francis said, hesitantly. Lance motioned him to go on impatiently. "Okay, you need to blow the hatch five seconds before impact, too early and we'll overshoot the airlock."

"Throw a countdown to impact up on my screen," Lance said.

Keith glanced at the monitor that showed everything Lance saw on his instrument panel. The countdown started with thirty-two seconds.

"Oh no," Hunk said. "Wait guys, I don't think the chute will deploy in the vacuum of space."

"Well how does the ship know if we're in a vacuum or not?" Lance asked.

"Atmospheric sensor topside," Hunk said. "You can't just turn it off."

"Pull the sensor input cable from the main computer," Francis said.

"I don't have time to figure out which one-"

"The sensor cables are all blue, aren't they? We don't need sensors now. Pull all of them," Lance ordered. "Then strap in for impact."

Hunk opened the main computers access panel and yanked a whole section of cables out in one go before running to his seat as a number of alarms all started blaring at once.

"Activating chute!" Lance called out. Keith tensed up. Five seconds later they impacted, with the simulator giving a great lurch.

Lance let out a 'woop.' "How'd we do, flight?" he asked.

The simulator tech came back on the PA. "Docking was a success," he said. "But at four knots you've likely damaged your ship and the airlock needlessly."

Keith smiled.

"Yes!" Lance said. "I'd like to see Gyeong pull that off."

Keith gave a very small gasp at the use of his surname.

"Carrier damage is not an acceptable outcome for this scenario," the simulator tech said.

"Oh, come on, flight" Lance said. "What if I was carrying injured personnel in need of emergency medical treatment?"

"Given that that wasn't part of the scenario, that would make this a mission failure," the simulator tech said. "Lucky for you then that this is free sim and you aren't being graded."

"Thank you flight," Lance said as respectfully as he could while trying not to sound like he was rolling his eyes. "Hey, good job guys, I couldn't have done that without you."

"Pull that during class and we'll have words," Francis said.

"Admit it," Lance said. "That was cool."

"Yeah, it was cool," Francis said grudgingly.

"Don't think you're getting out of there without plugging all those sensor cables back in, cadets."

"Roger that flight," Lance said, clearly not eager to let the high of his success be trampled by having to reset the simulator. "Francis, let's get those schematics. Hunk, are you going to be okay to get them back in, or are you still going to be sick."

"Going to be sick," Hunk said.

"Off my ship, Kilisi," the flight tech said.

"Thank you, flight," Hunk said, before rushing out and leaving Lance and Francis to get the ship reset.

Keith eyed Lieutenant Commander Botende in the corner of the observation deck where she was taking notes.

He walked over and cleared his throat after coming to the position of attention.

"Haven't had enough of the simulator Cadet Gyeong?" Lieutenant Commander Botende asked. "I don't normally have fighter pilots observing support operations."

"The simulator's never going to be enough, ma'am, I need time in the real thing" Keith said honestly. "Sanchez pulled off a pretty good save."

"I don't discuss other cadet's performances," Lieutenant Commander Botende said. "I will say, that from what I've seen, you would have probably wound up in a yelling match with your flight crew trying to accomplish the same maneuver. Cadet Sanchez was right about that. Something for you to work on."

Keith bristled at that, but knew to hold his tongue. "Yes ma'am."

"Was that all?"

Keith struggled to remain at the position of attention. "Do pilots ever move from support to fighter class, ma'am?"

"Not often, Cadet," Lieutenant Commander Botende said. "Only if they show a great deal more promise than we'd initially assessed, and if there's an opening. Enjoy the rest of your evening, Cadet."

Keith bit his tongue at the dismissal.

"Ma'am," he said as he took a step back and stalked away. It was time to get off of the observation deck before Lance came up to watch the next iteration.

Keith hadn't expected for Lance to bring him up during the simulation. A part of him was ridiculously giddy at the thought that Lance was still thinking of him, while realistically he knew that Lance had only thought of him out of spite.

---

Katie had wound up downloading a bunch of spatial data from the internet and had built her own computer model of the solar system and all the other ships and probes out there so she could keep proper track of the Heracles. Kattie got to write to them, keeping them up to date on what was happening around the Garrison and the progress she was making on her projects (the ones she wasn't keeping under wraps). Mom was on the team that analyzed all of the systems reports to keep track of how all of their experimental tech was functioning during the mission, so of course she was plenty busy, but she made sure to spend whatever time she had at home with Katie.

Matt kept sending updates, constantly gushing about sensor readings and the onboard experiments they were running. Though she'd spent a lot of time being a bit bitter, it was hard not to let his enthusiasm affect her. The science at least was cool. Dad wrote too, and sometimes she and Mom would snuggle up on the couch to read his letters together before watching one of the horrible cyberpunk movies that Matt had always forced them to watch when he'd been younger.

---

A/N: Thank you for reading. I'm sort of caught between wanting Klance to happen now, and wanting to put them through the wringer before they can get their happily ever after. An alternative title for next chapter is 'Katie is a badass.'