CHAPTER 28 LEE
The imagery was still fresh in his mind as he slipped on his all-terrain suit, getting ready for the Laser Rounds competition later this morning.
He supposed he could blame all the research they’d been doing on the General the last few weeks. It was rubbing against barely healed scars and over-exposing fading memories. But the ship, and those lights. Those still gleamed all too vividly.
He couldn’t shake the dream. So instead of heading down to breakfast, Lee slipped down a floor lower.
The soft aromas of warm earth, jasmine, and garana oils cushioned his senses as Lee took on a plot of cross-pollination testing for a new vitamin supplement. If only life was as simple as splicing these garanas. Maybe he really should consider an alternate career in space farming.
He blamed Kat for that second tangent. He’d even sent his mom a message last night asking what she knew about Leland I.
His ancestor had lived decades and eras before him.
A century even. The galaxy had probably been a very different place back then.
Perhaps one that had favored curiosity, and exploration…
Back before they figured out the more lethal dark ray properties. And the plans had all switched over to words like “Desperation” and “Preservation…”
The unfaltering blue-green lights fanned out over his gloves, creating little water-like ripples of light as he collected more of the garana oils in a dropper, carrying it over to the jasmine samples he had waiting.
Scientists.
Segura, Gaia, all of her crew—they hadn’t been rebels, or radicals out to defy the AMG.
They’d merely been scientists who’d fallen for the wrong idea at the wrong time.
That it was dangerous was an understatement.
Lee could still picture the rows of holding cells that had lined the walls down in that basement lab by their particle accelerator.
The readings of joules and delta-grays displayed on those monitors.
It gave him chills just to think about the amount of energy and power they’d had at their fingertips with those shields.
And although he begrudged General Narron’s motivations and his methods, it was smart to question their validity.
Whether or not harnessing the dark rays was the solution to their galaxy, they’d known what they were doing.
Segura wasn’t another half-baked experiment fresh from the shadow markets, a frantic response to a new star system claimed by dark radiation.
They’d figured it out. They’d probably learned more about them than anyone else alive.
Lee picked up a trowel from the plot before him as a message came through on his hyperband, their lab results from their last raid. But as he glanced back up at the dirt, and the blue-green lights above it, his hands stilled. They’d learned more about them than anyone else alive.
They’d known about the dark rays.
They’d known about the AMG’s stance on harnessing them.
Lee was willing to wager they knew of, or had been in very close conversation with, the other dark radiation experiments that had gone full supernova. One of which a young General Narron had also been a part…
And in the aftermath, they’d known enough to go under the radar to hide it—to protect what they knew. A knowledge they feared someone might find threatening.
Lee set the trowel back down into the soil. Letting his elbow rest there at the soft-curve metal encasing the plot, he expanded the holographic message above his wrist, scanning through the various lists of tests ordered by the AMG for their dark ray samples.
And there, once again, beside General Narron’s signature, was the notation for a radiation signature of which he was all too familiar.
00:00:00
The alarm blared out over the arena, leaving a hollowness in its wake as the holodisks cut across the darkened landscape, whistling and whirring in neon color. Blazing reds. Blizzards of blue. Torrents and waves of pink and green and orange.
The Gammas claiming the floating islands around him with their glowing vests painted a very different fervor from the last time he’d been in here. They fought for the upper hand, for ground, for glory, flitting around like the buzzing static from the RIMs.
Lee played their game for a while. It was a game he knew well.
For seven years, Lee had participated in the Academy’s exercises and fulfilled her quotas.
He’d let himself be molded and shaped with each rigorous AMG training proposal, taking it in stride—taking it to heart.
He’d made himself the best of the best to honor the paradigm he represented, for the hopes and possibilities they wielded.
And when he had needed that ideal—that honor to count the most, it had betrayed him, crumbling down around him. A fortress made of salt. What was an acolyte who no longer believed in his cause?
Raider.
Lee could feel the eyes of the adoring younger cadets on his body.
The eyes of his friends on his face. The pride of the Commander for her top cadets for their accomplishments, and their position, and the glory they stood to gain with this next step.
His name was still there at the top should he finally decide to seal his place and accept that identity.
But Lee had never cared much for glory.
He dodged a loose throw, stepping back from the hiss as another cadet met the steamtrap below. His toes bit turf as he hurtled to the next island, rolling to catch the next holodisk. The violent violet gleamed against the edge of the couple meters-wide island.
And although months had passed, he was right back where he’d been the day they returned to the ship after Segura. Right back where he never should have left.
Lee barely registered the dwindling numbers.
The match now clustering as he claimed yet another island, parrying the holo-disks flying around him.
But still he didn’t strike back. He merely resisted, holding back.
Drawing things out. Until the cadet next to him with her vanilla-blonde ponytail directed three consecutive disks his way.
“What’s got you?” Kat hollered.
“Everything.”
His eyes darted again over to the willowy figure of his Commander and her secretary, imagining the third figure that had twice now graced these stands.
The General had chosen his side. The Commander was holding down a side. Levy had drawn a line on the ship when she’d quit the program, choosing yet another side.
And here he was, still walking that line.
Who was he kidding? He was the real disappointment in all of this.
Lee waited the appropriate span of time for the premature shots to hang wide, and for the last of the mediocre players to get taken out of the game.
Waiting, until only the top contenders remained.
Until “Gamma Squadron Lead, Lee Waters”could be expected to fall.
And when the first strategized holodisk whipped his way, Lee flipped into the shot and took it down to the steamtrap.
“What in void’s name?” Kat berated him the moment they were out of range of the other cadets. He’d made a breakaway for the showers after the match ended, but she’d still caught up with him.
It was deja vu.
“Today was a rough one,” Lee said, tapering his pace enough for her to keep up, if not suitable for proper conversation. But that was all for the better too. He hoped to minimize the casualties.
“You took yourself out,” she accused.
“I took out Sean first,” he grinned, an emotionless, dead thing. Or, rather, Sean had taken himself out. But Lee had been there.
She stepped into his path as they reached the showers, leveling him a stare so that he was forced to regurgitate yet another noncommittal comment, knowing full well he’d have bedlam to answer for after this. “I must have misjudged the timing.”
With a frustrated sigh, Kat pivoted on a heel, vanilla ponytail whipping behind her. Lee didn’t bother to duck, feeling the sting for the whiplash it was.
Yep, he’d be answering for this later, and he welcomed the reckoning.
Loosing a breath, Lee strode into the showers. He let the hot water pound into his face and down over his shoulders in bulleted rivulets while the steam frenzied and raged around him.
He wasn’t quite ready to ante up. Not to himself, and definitely not yet to Kat. He wasn’t quite sure how he was going to spin this one. If he was even capable this time.
More cadets flooded the other shower units, and still Lee stayed under the hot water, as it cycled down and around the tiles.
The first heat of cadets had mostly funneled back out by the time Lee finally turned off the water, toweling off his face as he pulled his all-terrain suit from the refresher pod. His skin was raw and flushed. His mind reeling.
Kat was waiting for him when he got to his dorm, hair still damp where it sprawled down her back. But rather than aggravating him, something loosened at her presence, his lungs expanding.
She didn’t speak to him. She just stood there tapping a foot, the muscles in her body drawn and tight while he scanned his hyperband, taking a step back to let her in.
But Kat didn’t sit down. She wasn’t looking at him either. She merely crossed her arms tightly over her chest as she glared into the smooth panels of the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he began. He’d said that way too much lately. And he feared he wasn’t quite done.
But she ignored it. “What’s really eating at you?” Her pale grey eyes flashed as she dared him to try to evade her questions again. “And don’t try that ‘I wasn’t in the mood’ jargon again, I know you, Lee Waters.”
And it was his name on her lips that reconfigured the response in his brain.
This wasn’t just some girl in his life. This was Kat-fucking-Hanneman, his co-squadron lead and partner.
She was stubborn and wild, and a void’s-damned force that was going to shake his world and demand he meet her halfway regardless if he was ready for it or not.
And he loved her for it.
Relenting, and letting a few deep breaths course through him, Lee sank backwards onto his bed. He rested his hands loosely atop his stomach, staring up at the ceiling while he let the muscles rise and fall.
“How do I explain this one?”
Breathing through the second pulse, Kat’s raging heartbeat so tangible that he could feel it like his own, he sat up again, stomach muscles clenching as he leaned his elbows against his thighs.
“It’s like…” he began, shaking his head in his hands. Why was this so hard to get into words. With each clear thought he drummed up, one born of anger and despair followed suit.
“It wasn’t enough.”
He lifted his head, staring into the paneled walls of another room. The truth of the idea reeled inside of him, like the cold side of a moon, exposing her face. “Destroying their ship. Claiming their mainframe, it wasn’t enough. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”
“See what?” Kat asked. She still stood there, arms crossed over her chest, but her feet had paused their jittering.
“He’s going after Segura.”
Kat’s brow lowered, her arms going slack by her sides. “What do you mean. They disappeared, they fled. How do you know?” Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this.
“I just got our test results back from that last dark rays’ raid. They confirmed what I feared. He’s using their radiation signature again to try and track them down. He’s using us too, Kat, with all that sample matter we’ve been collecting.”
And he didn’t imagine the stroke of anger that crashed down over her face.
“He said something at our debriefing that day, too,” Lee said, remembering those harsh words the General had tossed out. “‘…It is a risk every single day radicals are left to experiment on our galaxy unattended.’ He plans to go after them.”
Lee scratched at the green plaid beneath his fingertips. He’d been so preoccupied with his own future that he’d missed what was blaring in their faces.
Zane hadn’t. Zane had had the forethought to question the General after their debriefing way back then.
And Levy—Lee wasn’t about to bring her name into this. Not for the guilt that he hadn’t thought of their friend in a number of weeks, and only today remembered her for the fact that she’d found resolution where he couldn’t.
But Lee? He’d been cautious, holding back from putting any weight on himself and Kat, all the while it was catching up to them anyway. He’d allowed his excuses to become a crutch. One he’d leaned on for far too long. But the fact remained, he was here now. He still might be able to help them.
“They know something. Gaia, Elia—even General Narron himself—they all hinted at it. Something about his history, or his plans. Something worth destroying them over.” Lee shook his head as he thought it over.
“General Narron has put years of resources into this—decades. He isn’t about to let all of that go to waste over one ‘rogue ship.’ He isn’t going to stop, no matter where the Council sided on whether to harness their research.
No matter how much destruction lay in his wake.
Gaia is a danger to those plans—her people are a threat.
And as long as they are out there, he’s going to keep going after them.
” Lee pictured the headlines in the articles they’d dug up, and the thousands of shadow market raids.
The Raven, and the new, virtually invincible AAIR division now monitoring incoming supplies.
General Narron had the entire system oiled to run like his personal machine.
“He’ll find them again, too,” Lee murmured as that grim understanding settled into him. It was only a matter of time.
“What about Commander Blanche? She’s got a say with the council. How much power does she hold against him?” Kat asked softly.
“I don’t know.”
Lee pursed his lips as he thought over their options, and all they’d learned. The General had been around this for a long time. He’d had years to set his plans in motion, and years to harden his verdict.
But Segura had been around longer.
He opened an arm up for her as Kat sank down onto the bed beside him, the orange blossom from her hair mingling with the smell from his soap as she curled into him. As he rested his cheek on her damp hair, soaking up the feel of her warm body next to him.
“So what do we do?” she asked, casting her pale grey eyes up towards him.
And he almost kissed her for her sheer faith in him.
But it wasn’t just faith in her eyes, it was the confidence, and the determination.
The recognition and belief that together they really could do whatever it was they set their hearts upon.
And he did kiss her, then, brash and unyielding, and desperate as her lips moved with his. Never again would he let that pouting mouth go to waste.
“What do we do?” he repeated, still staring at the swelling curve of her bottom lip with wonder. “I believe it’s time we pay Nolan a little visit.”