CHAPTER 37 KAT
THE CENTRAL star system of the De Myra Solida grouping consisted of a small handful of planets: De Zolar, De Medis, De Lovia, and De Carmos. Then there were the celestial bodies’ moons and orbiting objects, and a slew of smaller, lesser planets. The list went on and on.
Legs crossed, leaning back on her hands, Kat stared up into the glittering constellations and arcing star trails slowly rotating around the cosmosphere.
This part had been Lee’s suggestion. She and Lee and Zane could sit around collecting data on a holo-spread… or they could be a part of it. And after an evening in the stiff Hideaway chairs, and a morning spent in trainings, he hadn’t needed to ask twice.
Originally designed for astronomy purposes, the cosmosphere projected a three-dimensional, domed holograph that could be programmed to display any configuration of the known galaxies they wished to observe—such as the De Myra Solida grouping and its neighboring star systems.
While Lee kneeled at the center, adjusting the cosmosphere’s locational parameters, she drifted off near De Zolar.
How funny it was to be staring up at these stars.
They’d personally visited a couple of these pinpricks of light in recent months, literally stood on the surface.
Each time, they’d seemed isolated and separate.
Their own miniature tale of destruction.
But staring up at them now, their tales all seemed interconnected.
She hadn’t expected to be back here so soon.
“You guys have been hogging all the fun.”
All three of them looked over, Zane actually climbing to his feet as Whistler crossed through the doorway. He wore his usual crooked grin and a classic French braid as he strode through one of the southern star systems of the glittering dome. He had come knocking after all.
“Welcome to Astrology 101, where we decipher what tomorrow’s breakfast will be as it’s written in the stars,” Kat sang, wrapping her arms around her legs and patting the floor beside her.
Whistler chuckled, slapping hands with Zane as he sat, the mats shuffling under her. “Lee mentioned something about you guys wanting to know about raids out to the De Myra grouping?”
“Yeah. We have reason to suspect Segura may have a base in there somewhere. And that in addition to using us with our raids, the General is also using the shadow markets to track them down.”
“That is quite the mouthful to take in.” She could only guess at the emotion going on in his head as Whistler blew out a breath, blinking down at the mats.
“So this won’t help a ton, I don’t know much about the shadow markets,” he said, once he’d recovered enough to speak again.
“But Ciela and I also had a raid nearby—last term. Next star system over.”
“I can work with that,” Lee called over, still tinkering with the coding.
He’d gotten the parameters where he wanted, halting the stars in their rotation.
Kat pictured little cerise x’s glowing over the planetary objects she and Lee had personally visited and those they’d denoted the night before with too limited atmospheres to support any sort of life.
And if they added in Zane’s and Whistler’s lists… this could actually work.
“It’s an actual physical mass we’re looking for this time, right? Planet-moon-asteroid, whatever, it won’t be another ship hiding in some elusive forcefield?” Zane asked.
Lee scrunched his brow, craning his neck to peer from the code of the cosmosphere’s projection device to the actual lighted dome. “I mean, I’d assume. Unless they have a back stock of mega-ships and crews just at their beck and call, waiting and ready for them.”
“I wonder if the General will try and use that—their shield frequencies,” Kat murmured. “We had that all mapped out in our notes from when we boarded Segura.”
“I mean they probably could have…” Whistler said. And his tone alone had her whipping her ponytail around sideways. “Except for the fact that we wiped them, Nikola and I, during those last few minutes on the cruiser. Before it all went south…”
It was Kat’s turn to gape.
“Don’t worry. I kept a personal copy just in case we ever needed a reference point. They could probably still find it anyway on the mainframe. But we weren’t going to make it easy for them…” He trailed off when they all continued to stare at him.
“I can’t believe you hid that.” Kat shook her head.
“You and Waters aren’t the only ones keeping secrets. We were all there.”
Not for the first time, she felt the seriousness settle over all of them like a cold chill. The goosebumps pebbling her arms a reminder of just whose plans they meddled with and what the repercussions would be if this didn’t work out…
She wriggled her toes, letting the stars carry on in her peripherals.
There were still so many possibilities to narrow down.
This part was going slow. Achingly, and impatiently.
But what had she expected? She and Lee decide to flee the Academy together and they just up and go?
Go how? Go where? That brought up all sorts of logistical issues and dead ends.
They’d be dead in the water before they ever got started.
She let her eyes rove back to the cosmosphere around her. The answers had to be out here, somewhere with De Myra Solida. If they could only find them.
“There.” Completing the sequence, Lee stepped back from the holo-projector.
Kat watched in utter amazement as a dozen or so pricks of light, where her imaginary x’s had hovered, dissolved from the cosmosphere. “What did you—how?” Kat blinked.
“You truly are brilliant, aren’t you?” She laughed under her breath, recovering.
But Lee just dropped down gracefully beside her, joining them on the matted floor as he leaned back on his hands.
Together they stared up into the glowing, holographic dome of distant stars.
Close enough she could reach a pinky out and snag Lee’s if she wanted comfort, or catch Whistler’s crooked grin for support.
Far enough apart that she had space for her thoughts to waft around her, in concentric circles all her own.
“It’s funny how the dark radiation has claimed all of these,” Whistler pointed up to the central planets of De Myra, trailing his finger outward from De Zolar, up to De Carmos, one of the smaller planets near the edge. “But it somehow skipped entirely around Star System Zeta over here.”
“All these years—all these destroyed planets—and we still don’t understand the dark rays,” Lee mused. And Kat’s thoughts again soared out to Segura. How much of this had they already pieced together, only for the answers to be evaded, hidden, and secreted away?
The AMG certainly had a way of suppressing history.
Hours later, after Zane and Whistler had both taken off with promises to continue looking into De Myra and the Commander’s mainframe notes, she and Lee packed up the holo-dome.
“There are still so many,” Kat said, as the last of the glowing holographic wisps of their galaxy disappeared into the little projector tech. “We’ll never narrow it down in time.”
“We’ll find something. Some way to pinpoint and hone us even closer.”
“And if we don’t?” Kat asked, flicking her eyes towards the starry-eyed boy beside her.
“Then we go one at a time, crossing them off one by one, landing moon by moon, until eventually, we find them.”
He talked like they’d have infinite energy reserves. Unlimited time. Like it was actually doable.
But he made her want to believe it could be done. That it was possible.
And she’d bet on him. Every time.
After returning the cosmosphere tech back to the secondary storage bay under the stairs of the training levels, they started back up towards their dorms. “Did you know Whistler and Zane were in this deep?” she asked as Lee ran a hand through the long hair sweeping low over his brow.
“Zane and I had talked a little.”
“And Whistler?”
“You know as much as me. But I think we aren’t the only ones questioning our place in the Raider Program anymore.”
“I just hate this. We have no coordinates to help us locate the base. And no new evidence to stop the General from condemning them. I feel so helpless.” Kat pulled at her ponytail, yanking down from the crown, as if their tangling strands were the cause for all of her problems.
When Lee didn’t respond immediately, she looked over at him.
She was glad she had, because beyond the weary posture they all seemed to carry these days, beyond the frustration from today, he had that look on his face.
Determination. Grit. And a spark.
Thank the void for that spark. She let his mind process in silence. And when she thought she might not be able to stand it a second longer, his eyes flicked to hers. The glint of years of all-nighters, and laser round matches. The reason Leland Waters ran the Academy. After her, of course.
“Maybe there is some place we can snag a couple more answers,” Lee said, finally. And Kat couldn’t help the slow grin that seeped across her lips.
“Talk to me, Waters.”
His idea was ludicrous.
But then again, they usually were. You didn’t get brilliant genius without a little of the arcane to get you there.
“You want to break into the Commander’s suites?” she demanded for probably the third time—at least the third time aloud, since he’d brought up the idea a good ten minutes ago from the privacy of her dorm. And yet every time he responded she was just as flabbergasted as the last.
Lee shrugged, arms crossed over his chest where he stood facing her star flower in the window.
“If that’s where we find her mainframe, then yes.
I know that message we found pretty much required that she hand everything over.
But part of me wonders if there isn’t more to find.
Something that slipped through the cracks…
Something so trivial she may not have considered it essential to pass along…
Just anything to point us towards them.”
Kat pursed her lips. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t wondered all these years about her very-recent ex-idol’s quarters and whereabouts. The luxury. The rank. The Commander certainly had her own bathroom, and if she also touted her own walk-in closet…
But to actually break in…
“I doubt our security clearance extends that far,” she mused. Not that they had ever tested it beyond the Command wing.
“Hence the break-in,” he reminded her with more patience than she would have extended to him.
Her curiosity got the best of her.
“Let’s say we do finagle our way in. What would we even look for? A recap from what was discussed when the General was here at the Academy? Present mission assignments around De Myra?”
“And if we’re lucky, some orders coming directly from General Narron. Anything we can find tying back to Segura,” Lee nodded.
As she’d already begun cementing her resolve into doing the thing, anyway… May as well do it right. “So how do we do it?”
“We’re going to need some help.”
She nodded, running the pad of her thumb along the tips of her fingernails while she thought. To break in, they’d need a hacker, someone they were sure could get them in. One already ambivalent to rules, and adjacent to rebelliousness.
“I think I know of just the one.”