CHAPTER 34 LEE
HANDS TUCKED neatly behind his back, Lee stared blankly into the eggshell-colored panels lining the walls inside Mission Assignment and Briefing.
To protect and preserve life. That was the raider mission. A foundation built upon the belief that there was still something worth saving with their galaxy.
He traced the gleaming facets of the raider symbol mounted there beneath the holoblock with his eyes. It was polished like everything onboard the Academy. And yet he wondered how many still bothered to notice it, or if it had just become part of the landscape.
The broken triangle was a representation of a diffracting prism, symbolizing how they might fulfill that raider’s mission.
Cadets came to the Academy to learn and train so they might go out and spread that light.
They were the beacons who would help the AMG re-align all the broken paths and loose ends of their galaxy.
It all went back to that basic foundation.
But what if the paths weren’t broken, and the endings not loose?
What if their galaxy had never needed re-aligning, but had simply been overlooked and neglected.
What if the thing it had needed most hadn’t been protection, but rather trust, and understanding?
The open minds that might take the time to ask what was really going on.
General Narron had painted Segura out to be the villain, and him the white knight, carefully dispelling “dangerous threats” under his Preservation Initiative and the prerogative of a better energy tomorrow.
The evidence of past and present breakthroughs only supported his claims when it came to the dark rays.
Had Lee never met Gaia—had he never set foot onboard Segura, he would never have questioned that there might be another way.
But again, Lee had.
Commander Blanche had been merely doing her due diligence as Commander when she’d relinquished the fate of Segura with their mainframe.
She was looking out for her cadets, doing as Commanders did best. And when the option presented itself, she had set aside her own beliefs and behaved exactly as she ought.
Lee didn’t need to adjust his posture when the Commander’s precise and measured steps crossed over the threshold. He held his shoulders and back rigid, like the broken triangle on the wall, perfectly polished and conformed to the AMG’s raider military standards.
“Good afternoon cadets,” Commander Blanche began.
And Lee watched her, emotionless, as their Commander led them through their next assignment with the fluidity and skill from too many before and the confidence of many more to come. And she would continue to do so, in her pressed, cream-colored pantsuits, with not a red hair out of place.
There had been a few months in there where he’d believed her to be more.
When he’d believed her to be above duty and organization.
A gladiator for what was good and right.
But then, like the General, like probably many before her, she’d fallen back in line.
She had never forgotten her place. It was Lee who had confused the game, forgetting for a second who he was and what he stood for.
His fault wasn’t to the AMG and the Commander in helping the people of Segura escape. He’d failed himself, by taking this long to realize as much.
Lee studied the glittering coordinates Commander Blanche had drawn up on the holoblock.
She was sending them back out near the De Myra Solida grouping, a star system bordering the coordinates of their last raid.
More dark rays. It wasn’t surprising their sensors would have been triggered along the same timeline.
But today it was an awakening. The dark radiation was spreading.
And while they waged their political battles and asserted their dominance, it cost them yet another star system.
There would be more, too. They would keep losing, until eventually they lost something critical.
It was planets and experiments now. But with each one, they gave away the chance of a tomorrow.
Segura had challenged that. They had questioned the dark rays.
And unless someone stepped in, that curiosity and that fire would be stamped out, swept away with whatever other secrets lay dormant out there with the ashes of Argos.
Maybe the way to finally win against the dark rays wasn’t through pure might and strength and tech.
But through trust and the courage to try.
With Commander Blanche out of the way, her involvement sealed away in photon ink, there was nothing stopping the General from going after Segura, from tying off all the loose ends in the galaxy.
He’d won the council. He had the resources and the funding and who knew what else.
And where they all came together, Lee was certain would not be all green juice and rainbows. Everything came with a cost—or a risk.
Someone had to warn them.
Someone had to stop him.
And if someone wanted to find answers and find out what they knew, that someone would have to find them before he did. They were running out of time.
“Any questions?” Commander Blanche asked, glancing between them, with ever the air of triumph for who she believed to be her prized cadets. Those set to pave the way and build the bridge for the next year of cadets to follow.
And in those few seconds, Lee considered demanding answers and explaining all he suspected. But it wouldn’t change anything, he would still be right back here. It hadn’t been enough then, it wouldn’t be enough now.
As Commander, she was under direct order by the General of the AMG to stand down. She couldn’t do anything where the people of Segura were concerned.
And as raiders, they would also be required to submit and fall in line.
But while he was a Gamma cadet, while he was just Lee Waters… he might still be able to do something.
Revitalizing the mask on his face as the Commander went into detail on their objective, he accepted the details and logic as they were, knowing his raids with the Academy were numbered.
Commander Blanche let some of her triumph linger even after the appropriate pause for questions. So Lee was expecting some of her directness when she addressed each of them by name.
“Cadets Waters and Hanneman, I wanted to remind you of the approaching Placement deadline. I’m sure you’re aware of this, but on behalf of both myself and the AMG, we eagerly await your applications.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded, and he heard Kat echo a similar sentiment at his side.
“Very well, then. I expect we will hear from you soon.” And with that, she turned to her commanding secretary once more. “Secretary Nolan, if you will.”
Lee very carefully avoided Nolan’s eyes when he glanced between them. Lee wasn’t sure what the Commander’s secretary had intended when he’d sent them those files. But he was fairly certain it wasn’t this.
He was leaving. Of that, Lee was sure.
But sitting next to Kat in the Hideaway while they ran through the usual pre-raid motions, her vanilla-blonde ponytail swaying as she prattled on about how many more times they’d get sent out to the De Myra grouping, Lee had no idea how to bring it up.
It had felt like the longest day of Lee’s life.
His stomach had long since gone numb to the sparkflies banging around his insides.
Would she see this coming? She had to know where his head was at after the last few weeks, they’d danced around the idea several times. His mouth went dry, his palms sweating as he wiped them yet again on his pants.
He’d made her a promise only yesterday that he wouldn’t ask her to do anything she wasn’t comfortable with.
And where she’d just been burned by the Commander, that wound still raw and aching, how could he ask her to do this, to burn yet another bridge and go with him?
He was very aware of what he could lose.
Of what they stood to lose. The gravity of this latest decision.
But he was also very ardently aware that he wasn’t going anywhere without her.
It was he and Kat and the stars. Always.
Sighing, Lee braced his hands on the table.
“Hey Kat—”
“Lee—” she said at the same time.
He huffed a laugh, as the breathy reprieve ghosted along his ribs. “You first,” he said.
“I was just going to say, I think I’m going to call it an early night. Maybe catch up on some lesson stuff for Neha since we were out yesterday and she’s taking over my cadets tomorrow.”
And he knew that made him a coward for putting it off one more day, but Lee was grateful. He really truly did not want to screw this up when the stakes were already this high.
“I’ll walk you,” he said, climbing to his feet.
“What were you going to say?” Kat asked as they started up through the Heptagon.
“Oh, uh, just that I was thinking I’d squeeze in a workout tonight.”
“That’ll be nice,” Kat said, her face carefully neutral as he stole glances her way.
They stopped outside her door. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow,” she asked, fiddling with her holoblock when they stopped outside her door.
And Lee pulled her in for a kiss, holding her there as he studied those laughing eyes that were much too good for him. “See you tomorrow,” Lee agreed, capturing that bubbling joy for what he wagered would be a very restless night.
Afterward, Lee slipped around to his portal door to drop off his things. He was almost to the door again when he scuffed his boot on something on the floor. And when he bent down to see what it was, his fingers caught on a thin band.
Holding it carefully in his hand, Lee stood back up, staring at the dark band—his radiation monitor from Segura.
He must have knocked it onto the floor weeks ago, he hadn’t even realized he’d misplaced it.
He rolled it between his fingers again, letting it sit there in his palm.
And here he was again. “Did you also leave something here for us?” he asked the quiet dorm.
Finding out about his ancestor had felt like a breath of fresh air.
A source of strength for him as he stood on the threshold of the biggest decision of his life.
As another former raider who’d actually declined Placement, maybe it was a sign that Lee was making the right decision.
Even if he hadn’t expected to find that resolution so soon…
But he couldn’t help but wonder whether, if Leland I had had a Kat in his life, would he still have left the raider life?
And if he hadn’t, would there have ever been a Thea?
Would Lee have ever happened? Maybe there was a reason he was here today.
Maybe there was a reason he’d found the band again right after deciding to go after Segura.
And maybe it really was just karmic synergy and the cosmos extending their twisting threads once more.
Tucking the band into the pocket of his all-terrain suit, Lee slipped down to the training levels. Let’s see if he couldn’t wear down some of that anxious energy.
A handful of cadets were in the training room, but they paid him no heed as Lee swept past them to where Zane finished up some reps. He met Lee’s gaze briefly in the mirror, completing a set, before setting the dumb bells back down on their rack.
Lee was settling down onto the bench when Zane crossed over to him. He had a water bottle in his hand, and a towel draped about his neck. “I’ll spot you,” Zane nodded, setting his water down beside the bench.
Fine, perfect. Lee could use the spot.
“How many kilos?” Zane asked coolly, adjusting the towel against his neck.
“Ninety.”
Zane pursed his lips. He looked as if he might advise otherwise and against it. But then he nodded, coolly. “Ninety.” He loaded up an even distribution on each end of the barbell.
Once Lee was situated on the bench below, the desperation and frustration pounding up his arms and down his torso, he curled his fingers around the bar. “Let’s go.”
He grunted out ten reps, then looked up again at Zane. “Add.”
Like before, Zane looked as if he might interject. But instead, he added the weight to either end.
“Let’s go.”
Lee grunted out another ten. “Add.”
Another ten.
Another.
Lee wasn’t sure if Zane would have obliged or not with one more add after he finished that set. He might have, if he’d felt Lee really needed it.
But Lee was done. His craze-induced fuel spent.
He slowly sat up, arms and chest shaking from the force, his brain too exhausted to do more than allow oxygen back into his body.
He sat there for a few minutes, before common decency reminded him of the favor offered him.
He went to offer it back in exchange, but Zane just shook his head, instead taking a seat on the next bench over, facing him.
He didn’t say anything. But he didn’t leave yet, either.
“You good?” Zane asked.
Lee snorted. He didn’t remember the last time he had been good. Maybe when he was ignorant. When all he cared about was completing the program. When his biggest worry was getting Zane off-top of Kat.
“I’m thinking of doing something—different.” Lee flexed a hand in front of him, studying the veins there, the way they tightened, even as the rest of his arms still shook, swollen.
“How different?” Zane asked, suddenly serious.
Lee only raised his eyes to meet Zane’s gaze for a second before dropping it again.
“I see.”
This time, Zane didn’t try to talk him down. He didn’t reprimand him, he didn’t demand explanation beyond a simple, “I’m assuming you’ve thought this through.”
“Too much,” Lee said quietly, his shoulders loosening some as the door at the end of the hall opened and closed again, leaving just the two of them.
“They’re losing a good one,” Zane said, finally, meeting Lee’s gaze again. No hint of the seven-year long feud they’d suffered through. No shaming, either. This was one squadron lead to another.
“They’ll be okay. They’ve got you. I imagine your dad’s proud,” Lee offered.
“We’ll see if Dad is around for the ceremony.” Zane shrugged. A gesture that was anything but casual.
In a way, having this conversation with Zane felt almost like a warmup for the explanations he owed Kat. But for reasons he couldn’t explain, he also felt he owed it to Zane to know where he’d ended up. This was more than just posturing. Somehow they’d actually become friends—of a sort.
Lee had run out of energy as quickly as it’d come. He and Zane left the gym at the same time, parting ways when they reached the dorms, and Lee went back to dreading making it through one last raid tomorrow.