The Denebola Space Fleet Academy was everything Joseph Mack Johnson hoped for. It was housed in a space station training facility built on top of alien ruins; had airlocks leading to training grounds and not space vacuum; and actual working anti-gravity in the corridors. It was all so real, but the best part were the fighter training pods. They were amazing.

But there were not enough of them, and even though they were reserved for plebes in the fighter track squads, access wasn’t equal. Plebes in the better ranked companies got first shot at the pods. Then Joe found out he wasn’t in the top fighter designated companies, such as the Flying Cobras or Screaming Eagles; or even in the top grounder companies such as the Mauling Bears. He was placed in the worst of the worst—the Broken Cannon Company—a company of rejects no one else wanted. Their collar pin was a broken cannon spewing filth. Get kicked out of Broken Cannon and there was nowhere else to go or lower: you were out of the academy.

With Joe’s band of friends scattered across the other companies, the local admiral gunning for him for making his son look bad, and no pod access, Joe had to start over. All he had to do was motivate his squad to shoot for the stars, get it reassigned to a fighter track, avoid getting kicked out through demerits while professors were handing them out like candy, and find a few pods to train on.  Well, Joe had been in worst situations and nobody said it was going to be easy. It was time to get started.