CHAPTER 19 KAT
LATE MONDAY morning, Kat headed over to Mission Assignment and Briefing to meet Lee.
It was barely a week into term, and they were already getting their first raid assignment. Between this and her trainings and their Placement applications, she felt like she hadn’t had a single moment to breathe.
Not that she had made any more progress where Placement was concerned. She was very experienced, as it turned out, at dumping her uncertainties off to the wayside and letting them simmer for too long until she was sprinting anxiously up stairways and fluttering across skywalks.
She tried to convince herself that her nerves were just excitement at the prospect of going out into the field, which was better than the alternative: that she’d been subconsciously sabotaging her squadron lead role by cutting things to the last minute to fuss over her new plant instead.
She rounded the landing to find Lee leaning outside the room with his back to the wall. A sweep of his medium-brown hair tangled just above his brow. He looked much too scrumptious and put together for this early in the morning; it set her heart thumping for an entirely different reason.
“You were almost late,” he said, pushing off the wall, his green eyes glimmering as he took in her frazzled appearance. “Rough night?”
Leaping those last couple of centimeters up onto her tippy toes to bring her head even with his, she slung her arms around his neck. “I think you know what my night was like.”
Lee wrapped an arm around her waist to hold her there, smoothing the hair from her cheek. He planted a teasing kiss there before she could shove him off.
It was business time.
But she didn’t wander far. She merely allowed the crackling promise of later to take his place while she bit her lip and stared back at him. There was one way to make the nerves go away.
Nolan arrived, then, looking snootier, and if it were possible, even more wound up than usual.
He lowered his hyperband as he reached them, glancing warily between her and Lee.
But what did he expect, some outburst? She had nothing today.
She stole a glance over at Lee as she crossed her arms over her chest, but he looked as confounded as she.
“Nothing we can help with?” Lee prompted.
“Not unless you happen to hold the secrets to the galaxy,” Nolan grumbled. And from that edge to his face, she partially believed he was serious.
But as Nolan once more glanced down at his hyperband, the planes of his face shifted, dropping back into the usual couldn’t-be-bothered disposition he favored.
“It’s time,” he murmured.
Scanning his hyperband at the door, he stepped to the side, leaving she and Lee to navigate the weirdness as they took their places in the middle of the room.
She was used to the imposing ergonomics of Mission Assignment and Briefing.
The feeling, like her submission to the Commander, was the only thing holding her aloft—like these eggshell panels would surge forward and swallow her if she slipped up.
She expected it. But today, the room also felt empty and swirling with too many unknowns.
They could have used a couple more bodies in here with them to fill that space this morning. That extra line of defense at their sides to ground them and validate their suspicions.
At least she and Lee were on the same page.
Throwing her shoulders back, she tucked her arms into the practiced position, ready to withstand another mission as she awaited inspection.
A whisper skated the nerves of her spine as their Commander entered the room.
Commander Blanche looked poised as ever in one of her preferred, light ecru pantsuits.
A crisp stack of badges lay against her chest, her red hair styled neatly at the base of her neck.
She had her usual professional demeanor.
But like Nolan, she also appeared agitated.
There was a forced sort of calm in her blue eyes as they sprang briefly from Kat to Lee.
“Good morning, cadets. As dictated under statute 4A of the Academy bylaws, with respect to the Raider Program of the AMG, the Allies of the Mangorian Galaxy, I have recommended your squadron for the following mission.”
Kat shoved the intrigue aside as the Commander turned to the holoblock behind her, drawing up with her the representation of a star system from nearby Quadrant II.
“The De Myra Solida grouping has long played host to dark radiation. Our roaming, military-grade sensors consistently monitor the star system’s radiation spikes.
However, the dark radiation was only recently confirmed among its outer reaches, including the rocky planet, De Zolar.
With this assignment, you will be investigating the intermediate effects of dark radiation on De Zolar’s molecular-biological environment… ”
Dark radiation. And they were back.
She blinked past the strain of her eyes, all other thoughts rushing from her head as she took in the star system, the grouping of De Zolar on the outskirts, and its neighboring planets and moons. More planets kissed by the dark rays.
She’d known this would be coming eventually. Their Commander would have to trust them with a dark radiation mission again, it was their galaxy’s number one threat. And as raiders in a galaxy riddled with it, they’d be encountering its presence many more times in their future.
What she hadn’t counted on was the helplessness that surged like an invisible wave. They were still no closer to finding a solution to the dark rays. If anything, she felt further from that secret than ever. She was the ship, adrift, lost outside her usual gravitational fields.
And yet, Commander Blanche plowed on with the discipline of decades before her. The fearless Commander who put even the AMG council in shadow.
“Your mission is to collect samples representative of De Zolar’s climes, canvassing at least a ten-kilometer radius.
As these rays are highly charged and extremely dangerous, for this mission there will be a time allowance of six hours to support the shields on your spacecrafts.
We expect you out of there before then. Any questions? ”
Kat’s fingertips dug into her back as she counted the Commander’s usual three-second waiting period.
But Commander Blanche didn’t wave them off.
Instead, a fourth second passed before her gaze focused back on them once again.
And it wasn’t quite a smile—Kat wasn’t sure the Commander had ever smiled on the job—but there was definitely some 175 degree action going on with her mouth as Commander Blanche once more addressed them.
“I said the same to a couple of your fellow cadets earlier this week. But I would like to express my personal enthusiasm at your forthcoming Placement applications. You both have bright futures ahead of you, and I will be including my personal recommendation with your applications when they come through for the post of your choice. It’s been a trying year, to say the least. But I have full confidence in your abilities to excel as raiders long after you leave the Academy walls behind you. ”
“Thank you, ma’am,” she heard Lee pronounce.
Grasping for her own response, Kat echoed Lee.
It was almost too good to be true. Unless the latest updates had been a mistake, they were getting to graduate the program with top rankings. They had the endorsement of their Commander, of all people. There was no longer anything standing in their way.
So why did it feel like she was celebrating a false victory?
It felt like opening her Placement application all over again.
So much for pomp and circumstance. The pomp was still there.
But the circumstance… her circumstance felt jumbled and scattered, like she’d been tossed onto a conveyor belt before she had all her wires attached and was now barreling out heading straight into the galaxy.
She barely listened as Nolan did the rundown on their raid files and mission reports. And when they were dismissed, she listlessly followed Lee back out to the hallway.
“We have her blessing,” Lee said.
Kat scuffed her boots on the grated floors, still barely believing her ears. She was breathless and wanted to burrow and scream all at once.
She settled on listening to the steady tread of Lee at her side as they grabbed their holoblocks, before heading back down to the Hideaway. They had their pick of the tables while everyone else was in trainings.
“So why were you almost late this morning?” Lee asked, reaching around her to set his holoblock down on the good table near the railing.
“Got distracted.” She eyed him, enjoying watching the acrobatics as he attempted to situate the tech with her still standing between them.
“Is it still alive?” Lee shot her a sidelong grin, guessing correctly at her reason for being almost late—yet again.
“Ha ha.” She sidestepped around him, cradling her holoblock in her arms as she perched in one of the chairs. “Yes, it’s alive. My star flower and I were just sharing a little one-on-one bonding time, is all.”
Lee’s grin tapered off a little as he sunk into the other chair, his too-perceptive eyes stealing over her again like he was piecing it together from her appearance from that morning. “What kind of a bonding time?”
“It’s not like that,” Kat laughed, but it felt fleeting and false.
She trailed her fingers over where he rested them on the table’s surface.
“Not entirely, anyway. I just took a little extra time to make sure she’s comfortable.
She doesn’t like when I turn on the overhead lights first thing in the morning or rush out. ”
“Uh-huh.” Lee raised his brow, his mortification turning very quickly to amusement.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Kat sighed dramatically. “It’s a chick thing.”
“Uh-huh,” he said again, eyes already rolling over to his holoblock to prep for the raid. She set hers down on the table, drawing up a holofile at random.
“Just for the record,” Lee said quietly, once he had the raid files open before him. “From what I’ve seen, the star flower is pretty resilient.” She didn’t miss the double meaning, not as his bright green eyes met hers over the light of the holotech.
They would weather this wouldn’t they? This new tension that ate at her whenever she thought of her future, or taking another mission. It was all about getting used to the idea again. Dark radiation or no. Academy or the stars.
But instead of opening up her raid files, her eyes dipped down to her holoblock as she slid her fingers along the heavy coating atop the tech.
“There’s just so much to learn about the dark rays still.
I feel like we’re constantly behind, chasing down a battle we’ve already lost. We should have the answers to stop this.
Look at De Zolar…” And she wondered, not for the first time, whether there was someone out there who might have known more than they let on, the same someone who might have been able to provide them a solution had they been given the opportunity to exist.
“If De Zolar was going to get hit with dark rays, they were always going to get hit with the dark rays. The past few months doesn’t change that. But—” And Lee met her gaze again across the table. “No planet deserves that fate.”
They didn’t deserve it. But the dark rays continued to spread.
And they would keep spreading if no one did anything.
“I guess that raid is still coming down the pipeline,” she said, grinning weakly.
“‘Cadets discover wonder tech and then use it to save the galaxy.’” She’d meant it to be lighthearted and joking.
But everything was hitting too hard today.
Digging into her holoblock for real, Kat tucked her legs up under her.
“De Zolar’s got one thing going for them,” Lee said after a minute, his eyes scanning down the planet’s flyover statistics. “By the looks of it, only microscopic life was ever present. There’s no manifested species on the line with this one.”
Lucky them.