Max decides that tomorrow when they’re both well-rested and fed, would be a much better time to ask Nico about her Innate Ability, so he lets sleep overtake him. Tonight’s rest is much easier to achieve than usual. The pure exhaustion of the day’s exercise has overcome every obstacle to drag him instantly into slumber.

He wakes up to a small hand on his chest, shaking him gently. “Get up and get dressed, the cafeteria opens in ten minutes, and we’re going to fix your hair first. They let it slide yesterday, but if you don’t tie it back or cut it, they’ll most likely penalize you today.”

Max chuckles happily as he gets into his uniform. The white pants with a black Academy logo polo shirt and a black beret seem to be the male cadet version of fatigues, the less formal summer uniform for general purposes. That should do for the morning lessons, and it’s what Nico picked, though the female version of the first year cadet uniform uses a dark gray shirt instead.

According to what they found online, the girls are much more likely to wash out of piloting classes, and the logistics and operations staff all wears shirts in that same gray, but a different style, while infantry Cadets wear green uniforms. If they make it to the third year in the piloting program, all Cadets in the program wear the same black shirts, but with a stripe on the collar to mark them as pilots in training.

It’s a bit annoying to Max that they put the data screens so far up the wall. Even for the adults, they’re above eye level, plus they’re touch activated, and he can’t reach them without a stool. But Nico doesn’t need to, it seems. She can make them work from wherever she is standing..

“What did you have in mind for my hair?” Max asks, grabbing his beret from his locker.“Regulation Crew cut work for you? Or do you like it longer?”

A regulation crew cut sounds absolutely amazing to Max, but then he thinks of Sargeant Zamm, with his flat-top haircut and blonde hair that closely matches Max’s own.

“Can you do it like Sargeant Zamm? How good are you at doing hair?” Max asks quietly, not wanting to wake anyone in the surrounding rooms.magic

“I do my own, but don’t worry, I have a digital clipper.”

Max isn’t sure exactly what that is, but it sounds professional, so he nods. A digital clipper turns out to be a mesh towel of sorts. It sits over his head, adjusts shape to whatever Nico is instructing it to do with that strange ability of hers, and then with a wave of buzzing, Max has a brand new haircut, safely within regulations, and Nico collects the blonde tresses of his perm.

She ties one small portion in a bundle and tosses the rest in the trash bin. The bundle she places on the top shelf of his open locker and then pushes it closed with a smile.

“A keepsake to remember your first days of pilot training. According to the screen, we’ve got introductory core studies from seven in the morning until lunch, and then physical training from thirteen hundred until sixteen hundred.”

Max doesn’t understand her timekeeping system, so he gives her a confused look.

“Oh, sorry, that’s one in the afternoon until four in the afternoon. They’ll likely go over that this morning in the core studies class, but the Kepler military counts the whole day in a row, all twenty-four standard hours. Hundred is the double zero that means right on the hour. Fortunately for us, Kepler Terminus has a disbarred length day.”Come to think of it; Max had heard Dave using terms like that before. But without a set schedule, learning to tell time wasn’t a priority for him. He can read a digital clock well enough to know when food delivery should be arriving, though.

“Thanks for the haircut, but aren’t those things usually attached to a tablet or something?” Max asks, changing the topic as they head for the mess hall.

“Controlling nearby Technology is my Innate Skill. It was too warm in the car on the way home from the hospital, so I rolled down the window, and that was that. My Innate Ability was set.” Nico laughs.

She makes it sound so basic, but she can navigate menus and set the shape of a digital mesh without seeing the software, so it’s not a weak or simple skill that she awakened.

“I can see other people’s surface thoughts,” Max says quietly, not wanting to alert the whole class to his ability.

“Now that’s handy, you’ll always know when they have a surprise planned. Just keep me in the loop; I detest surprises.”

Max suspects few things surprise her, with a lifetime of military memories and the ability to search through technological devices. He isn’t sure that she can hack or bypass passwords, but with a skill like hers, she’s probably learned how to by now. Even he learned the trick to cracking basic security from Dave so he could Pirate games off the Data Net.

Being the first ones to breakfast, they’ve got time to custom order, so they both get fully loaded omelets with Battered bread, an egg-covered pastry concoction Nico drenched in syrup.

An hour before class started, Major Payne came to the top floor mess hall to eat and found her two star pupils going over the cafeteria schedules on one of the wall screens. The worker nodded to indicate that they’d already eaten, so Major Payne wondered what they were up to. Were they meal planning from the available options? That’s a bit unusual for twelve year olds, even if their mental growth has been enhanced.

“That’s today, but the next day, everything served downstairs looks strange at lunch. If we come back up here, they’ve got the Coconut Soup which looks pretty good, and the chocolate protein shakes.” Max says to Nico, who sighs sadly.

“It’s a long walk, but that’s fine. The schedule says the seniors get out of training an hour after we do, so we should be able to sneak in dinner from the downstairs cafeteria and recover before they get out of class both days.”

The Major is a bit shocked, not only at their knowledge but their planning skills and the fact they hacked the class schedules. Or maybe they asked someone at lunch yesterday? That’s a possibility, though the seniors usually don’t give much help to the first years.

They disappear, and the Major quickly finishes her meal and starts to work. “EVERYBODY UP! Classes start in thirty minutes. Get dressed, get fed, and get to class on time if you don’t want to run laps all afternoon. Literacy Skills are in the South Wing, room seventeen.”

She and her Sergeants will be escorting the main group there of course, since it’s their first day, but she’s eager to see who all might manage to make it to the class on their own and who won’t even think to fall in with the group.