Shower room

Lupus had set a course for the Yugoslav Space Station Lepoglava, it would take 10 days to reach traveling on the propulsion inertia from the Rubin Asteroid belt. They had all agreed not to manually operate the ship for the vast majority of the journey, instead they would let the AI auto-pilot take them there. There was nothing to gain from manual operation and the AI would do the job just fine for such a long trip.

The first order of business for the students, now that the water was restored in the ship, was to take a shower. More than 24 hours have gone since any of them had bathed and this was something that needed immediate attention. The shower room only had 3 shower heads so they would take turns in groups of 3 until everyone was clean.

When their voyage started, the instructors had purposefully prepared the water tanks of all 3 ships to be almost empty. The reason was so they would force the student to work together to activate the pumping station as part of their exam. Now that the tank was full, they could use the water on this voyage without much worry.

The first group was the girls, Ana, Lei Mei, and Hitomi. They undressed and entered the shower room while water poured from the three shower heads. A refreshing feeling after all of the intensity, the hot water relaxed their muscles.

During their bathing, Hitomi grabbed Ana's hand and examined her nails.

"Girl we gotta do something about your nails when we get back to Nova Occasio," Hitomi shook her head while eyeing up Ana's nails. " You’re not getting a partner with these nails, look at them!”

Ana broke free of Hitomi's grip, "We are in the military! There is no time for romance," Ana's cheeks turned red.

"A little elegance goes a long way and love can always blossom on the battlefield," Hitomi gave a cheeky smile and applied shampoo to her pink hair, "Of course, you are invited too Lei Mei."

"OH! That sounds like so much fun!" Lei Mei jumped with excitement, "We can have a self-care day together"

"Hmph!" Ana frowned and pouted but internally she did actually like the idea. While she always took great care of her physical strength, not so much her physical appearance. She was always tidy, but she didn't know much about makeup, beauty products, and other 'girly' things. Ana had always wanted to learn more, but felt too proud to ask Hitomi and was afraid to be mocked by her.

The next group of three were Brigham, Curro, and Ljubiša, the three boys entered and undressed after all of the girls finished. Ljubiša in particular was waiting for this shower given how much stress and running he had to endure this past day. He was accused of being the culprit and he had to run away from the Kortonians, his muscles greatly benefited from the relaxation the hot water brought.

During their shower, Brigham noticed something peculiar looking at Ljubiša's hair. Looking at the roots of his scalp, a small patch of brown could be seen in his red hair.

Brigham asked, "What's that on your head Ljubiša? You have something brown in your hair."

"Oh, this" Ljubiša lowered his head and spread his hair to show Brigham and Curro, "That's actually my real hair color."

"Wow, so you dye your hair red?" Curro said with a confused look on his face. "Why?"

Ljubiša raised his head back and said, "Because I am not first generation like you two. I was born on Earth remember? My hair doesn't have a wacky color like most space kids have. My parents made me do it for the fake identities we have on Nova Occasio. My fake ID says I was born here so we needed to make it look convincing. I was supposed to dye my hair yesterday but since we had a water shortage and everyone knows my secret I thought what the hell, no use pretending."

After they were done the final group was up, Khalid, Roy, and Emidio and the three entered the shower. Khalid felt his wound, from the battle with the Kortonians, sting when the hot water made contact, but it was noticeably better and was on its way to fully healing.

Emidio took out a high-end shampoo he brought with him and applied it to his white hair.

Roy gave Emidio a judgemental glare, "You rich spend money on such useless things, what's wrong with regular shampoo?"

Emidio frowned and turned his head away from Roy, "First of all, it's not even that expensive. Secondly, unlike you, I actually care how my hair looks, but I guess there is no reason for you to care since there are no rules that say you have to."

Ouch, Roy didn't say anything and applied his lower-end brand of shampoo to his head.

"That whole industry," Khalid passionately shouted, "Is a giant scam! I read it in a magazine some old guy gave me for free when I was walking to school. The shampoo industry tricks you with their lies, but it's all a big scam I tell you! Never fall for the big-shampoo industry lies!"

"How do you wash your hair?" Emidio looked at Khalid with concern and horror at what his answer was going to be.

"With soap of course!" Khalid rubbed soap on his green buzz-cut hair. "Soap is all you need, none of that crap they sell you. That magazine had all sorts of truths about the world and the universe. Did you know that the United States actually faked the 1953. moon landing? It's crazy man, if we can now travel in space why would they fake it back then, maybe they wanted to hypnotize us somehow, you never know what these sneaky governments do? Also just between us guys," Khalid leaned and whispered, "President Micki is actually a Kortonian Reptile."

As much as Roy wanted to defend America's honor and debunk the moon landing conspiracy he thought it best to stay quiet. Khalid continued talking about various crazy conspiracy theories he learned from this free magazine of the street with Emidio and Roy giving each other looks of disbelief in silence for the rest of their washing.

***

Most of the crew spent time in the mess hall or their shared sleeping quarters on the ship. Only the captain gets quarters, which were used by Mok, but Brigham would sleep with the rest of Lupus.

There were nine beds and it seemed pointless to separate himself from everyone else. The sleeping quarters were one of the larger rooms of the ship, a row of beds next to each other, neatly made to an obsessive degree, something Celio's military academy and the military at large drill into their own.

Even with Mok gone, the students continued keeping the room exceptionally tidy. Only now in this stress-free moment were they able to fully absorb Mok's death. The day of his death was nonstop action and stacks of problems that needed solving, now there was no rush or danger.

Grief hit the class in waves, they had made a decision to collectively visit his frozen corpse and offer a moment of silence. Mok was gone, forever. No longer there to offer words of wisdom and guidance when they needed it, no longer there to offer encouragement or to teach knowledge about the universe and the deep history of humanity. Lupus couldn't help but wonder how all of this would have played out had Mok been still alive. What would he have done?

Brigham had agonized over his previous decision of abandoning his schoolmates on Hrkar. On one hand, he had felt he made the right call, there was no other way and on the other, the guilt of him being the one who left the survivors to die ate at him whenever he had time to himself. To suppress these feelings he had tried to keep himself busy around the ship, doing various tasks. Brigham also made sure he was always together with someone casually chatting or working and not alone. The weight of his decision was too much on his young mind and he tried to find ways to relieve it.

Emidio went around the ship covertly with Ljubiša, the white-haired boy had a lead and a hunch on the culprit but he didn't feel like sharing his findings with the rest. He needed a witness to his investigation and to avoid suspicion took Ljubiša with him who was happy to help.

***

The next several days were spent in uneventful boredom. Lupus would wake up, eat Lei Mei's prepared meals and hang out in the mess hall, then back to sleep. This trip wasn't going to magically speed up so they had to somehow pass the time. The kids mostly talked, played card games, and a bit of truth or dare.

It seemed like nothing of note was going to happen, but on day 4 the AI signaled an alarm. The crew gathered at the bridge and witnessed a small medical ship being harassed and attacked by a mysterious larger ship.

Why was the larger ship attacking the small medical one, why out here in this corner of the cosmos?