CHAPTER 23 KAT
THE FOLLOWING afternoon, Kat bounded up to the PARC with a couple of green drinks in hand.
She may or may not have used her long legs and seniority to her advantage as she muscled her way past the aimless afternoon crowd milling about the Hideaway.
But she was hungry and impatient to find Lee.
They hadn’t had a chance for more than a passing touch and lingering glance with their busy schedules this morning.
Impatience aside, though, after her night with the twins, her soul felt lighter, like maybe she could still do some good for their galaxy after all.
They had stayed up way too late just talking about nothing and Lee.
She was up bobbing somewhere near the top layer of eggshell panels lining the walls as she rounded the landing and strode through the first door on the left.
“It’s been a minute,” Kat said, her bobbing soul dipping a little with the recollections from the last time they’d been up here just before their debriefing last term. But she quickly adjusted her internal barometer as she padded over to the long table spanning the room.
Lee stood with his boots balanced shoulder-width apart in a perfect stance, the muscle pulled tight from his legs, up to the arms clasped across his chest and the messy tangle of hair over his brow as he stared into the spread of holograms already drawn before him.
“How was last night?” he asked, not yet turning away from the file he was reading.
Kat set the drinks down on the table. “It was nice to have some time with Kiara and Kamata. But I missed you.” Coming up behind him, she threaded her arms through his, tangling her hands in his warmth as she peeked over his shoulder to see what he was working on.
“Did you guys make it down to the blaster range?” he asked, craning his head sideways to meet her gaze with raised brows.
“Eventually.” She winked. Let him deduce what he liked.
But their night had been harmless enough.
Some girl talk. A spilled bag of cran-nuts.
And a trip-wired reversal of the anti-gravity chamber, the continuation of a project the twins had tampered with previously…
“We ran into Hanna when we were up in the Hideaway. She sends her love.”
“I’m sure.” Lee’s silent chuckle rippled up his back; she could feel it against her chest as the laughter faded. She swung herself around his body to plant a kiss to his neck, and at the delicious awestruck smile dancing across his cheekbones, peppered those with kisses as well.
Setting her bag down on the floor, she sidled up to the table beside him.
“So what have you been up to?” She nodded to the room, the holoblock he had drawn up on the table before them.
“You’re using the Planning and Research Collaboration rooms—I’m guessing this has something to do with our raider clearances? ”
“Not directly, but yes,” he said, glancing over as if to warn her that she may not like where this conversation would take them.
But Kat only nodded, putting up her mental blinders as he continued.
“I want to learn what I can about the General. And more specifically,” he clarified, as Kat’s eyes narrowed, “his connection to our galaxy’s history of harnessing dark radiation.”
“You want to know why he was after Segura.” Kat filled in the blank for him.
Lee nodded, loosing a tense breath, one of probably many that had been welling up if he was looking into this history.
“I know we’re putting that raid behind us.
But I can’t help but think they are still tied to this somehow.
” He glanced back over at the holotech open before him.
“That initial accident we found occurred over a century ago. That would have been way before his time. But I think I’ve found reference to another—here, take a look at this. ”
Lee expanded the holographic record he’d been studying, scrolling back up to the opening paragraphs.
“The General mentioned something about another operation during our debriefing a few months back. It doesn’t say specifically here that they were attempting to harness dark rays.
It looks like it may have been a sister-project.
A branch off of the original commissioned experiments in the century earlier. But… ”
Kat read over the headline of the paragraphs he’d marked in the report.
Operations Shutdown with New Deaths
Linked to Dark Radiation.
“When did this occur?” Shoving the first hints of panic and compression into her I-really-just-hate-the-General drawer, she did the quick calculation in her head based on the report date.
“Forty-three years ago.” She sucked in a breath.
“This would make it a part of his lifetime.” She looked back over at Lee.
“It’s definitely a starting point. I hadn’t realized there were more of those operations. How can I help?”
After another considerable glance confirming that she was indeed in a good place to help, he motioned to another of the holograms he’d drawn up. “I want you to find me everything you can on the whereabouts of a young Marion Narron.”
It didn’t take her too much digging to locate their esteemed future general in the summer of ‘89. As they’d noted the last time they’d looked up General Narron, he had a long and decorated, and very public campaign leading up to his appointment as General of the AMG’s military units, including a few records indicating that he’d been studying to become a physicist before deciding to pursue the military.
But there was nothing that placed him in direct line with the accident. Either he really hadn’t been around, or they’d have to dip their hands a little deeper into the wreckage.
Kat blinked against the dense holofile she’d opened, the contents of which, fully expanded, would likely take up the entire length of the PARC room they occupied.
Deep enough that she would likely need more than a green juice in her stomach…
“I’m taking twenty,” she exclaimed, sitting back on her hands. She glanced over at Lee and the layered holofiles spread wide over the table. “I also think we could use a couple more sets of eyes…”
Lee dragged his gaze away from the table, the white gleam from the holograms painting the gratitude in the tired lids of his eyes. “You think they’re willing?”
“Void, yes!” Whistler howled to the air vents overhead when they caught him in the hallway outside the Canteen.
“You know we’re just asking you to help us dig through some holofiles, right?” Lee clarified, despite the fact that neither of them should have been at all shocked by his casual enthusiasm.
“With my crew, back in the old stomping grounds. It’s totally affadelic, wouldn’t miss it. Did you get Accetta yet?”
“On it,” Kat beamed.
Sure enough, they found Zane a few minutes later, just starting through the line with his tray.
“I’ve got a proposition for you,” she cooed, slipping up alongside him, lips curling up in a grin.
“No.”
But after a few portions of rice and tofu curry, accompanied by both Gammas, she and Lee returned to the PARC.
They didn’t have to stake territory as the four of them claimed their former spots along either side of the long table, Whistler running a finger the length of the table as if challenging the pristine room to dare something like dust. But when she stole a glance around, she noticed the slight uptick of Whistler’s lips, and the spark of clarity in Zane’s dark eyes.
“So what are we after, exactly?” Zane asked.
“Anything and everything connecting the General to Segura,” Lee stated, and he raised his brows. “And everything in-between.”
“Zane and I will take the known sister operation, see if we can’t find some connection there,” Lee said.
“And we get baby Narron,” Kat beamed.
“He wasn’t a babe at the time—” Zane corrected her. She caught Lee’s subtle shake of the head.
Rolling her eyes, Kat turned to Whistler. “I just dug through his notable accomplishments high level this afternoon and couldn’t find anything. But there’s got to be something in there, something to insinuate the General’s involvement. Some glutton of youth maybe?”
“Rebel rockstar,” Whistler murmured, eyes twinkling across the table.
Alas…
“I don’t know how he even has any room left on that jacket of his,” Kat grumbled an hour later.
“I’m sure it’s a very nice jacket, though,” Whistler agreed.
She slowly scrolled back through the grossly long list they’d compiled of each and every public award or promotion the General had ever received during those prime years.
Including but not limited to the Galactic recognition for a paper he’d co-authored on—even her eyes tripped over the dense title as she re-read the name in her head.
The Half-Life Stability of Molecular Fragmentation.
She swore, if she found one more “future of leadership” award…
“Hang on, what’s this one?” she said, pointing, as Whistler clicked into the representation of a gold-coated bird in flight.
“A Raven? It’s from ‘89,” he murmured. “‘Given to a loved one upon the death of a scholar for distinguished service in the fields of science…’ Accepted by a Lieutenant Marion Narron on behalf of Dorn Lewell.”
“Lewell… I just read that name somewhere.” Kat sifted between the glowing holograms she had open before her.
Whistler cleared his throat. “Listen to this. ‘On the day of the malfunction, despite the AMG’s best efforts to evacuate the premises, a small number of civilians were trapped in the blast. Among them were chief scholars, Ervwyn, Gail, and Lewell of the Mangorian–Drevix unit. Their deaths are to be celebrated at a private ceremony with only the families.’ That sure sounds like our accident. ”
“But why would it have been accepted by—”
Kat’s mouth opened and closed as she stared at the two names gracing the research paper cover.
The Half-Life Stability of Molecular Fragmentation
Co-authored by Marion Narron and Dorn Lewell
“They were colleagues. He wasn’t just alive during this operation, General Narron was working with them before that accident.”
“We may have found something as well,” Lee said a moment later, eyes slipping further down the holofile he was reading. Kat sat up in her chair while Zane expanded a second hologram from he and Lee’s glowing stash at the center of the table.
“It doesn’t tie into General Narron specifically,” Zane clarified.
“But if we cross reference the timeline of that accident forty-three years ago with the AMG Laws and Federations, we learn that it was only a couple of years afterward that they made it illegal to harness the dark rays. Something about the fragility of human lives…”
“‘The decision to suspend any such future acts was made in conjunction with the much earlier amendment and the AMG’s decision to pull funding from like operations,’” Lee read off the statement from the press report.
“But what I’m more curious about with these are the timelines.
According to this one, this all happened around the same time that the first regulation on verinity production started up. ”
“Verinity… As in the same verinity presently driving our energy landscape?” Whistler asked.
“General Narron’s entire Preservation Initiative has been about those energy developments,” Kat said slowly, reading between the lines as she met the clarity and approval in Lee’s brilliant green eyes.
“He’s afraid… If harnessing the dark rays was accepted as a viable energy source—if Segura was allowed to operate, it would put his plans at risk… ”
“These are volatile operations. He’s a smart guy, protecting his investment and capitalizing on the galaxy’s greatest source of wealth. Control the energy landscape, control the galaxy,” Zane murmured darkly, with a mix of trepidation and reluctant awe.
“Yeah, well, Genius Tycoon or not, the General still scares the shit out of me,” Whistler said.
Kat couldn’t help the laugh that escaped at Whistler’s words.
But her eyes were still on Lee, the soft glow from the holograms splaying over the planes of his face.
They were getting warmer with this, with the General and his Preservation Initiative.
General Narron was intimately acquainted with harnessing dark radiation.
He probably knew a great deal about their operations and their methods.
But with the desperation in which he’d been hunting Segura, and the fervor in which he’d sent those attack ships…
It still felt like he was hiding something.
And Kat wasn’t sure she wanted to find out what.