CHAPTER 39 KAT
COMMANDER YVETTE Blanche’s office was not eggshell.
Not on first appearances, anyway. One of the side walls was made up entirely of thick-paneled glass, from grated floor to concealed overhead lighting.
It cast the rest of the office in a midnight shadow.
The other did include the celebrated eggshell-colored panels, but they were softened by the sizable zen-garden that spanned a good portion of the length, and a half dozen sculpted metal vases of overflowing greenery in breeds Kat had never seen before.
The far wall was almost entirely obscured by gilded plaques from what Kat guessed were from her Commander’s raider days.
Her heart stole peeks at the pretty glass, even as her feet carried her across the room.
She’d probably read about a lot of their contents in her search the other day.
So this was what becoming the Commander afforded you.
A pretty office and a ship-full of cadets who would worship your shadow.
Despite the racing clock, she took a few steps closer to that far wall to see what these plaques boasted.
A single logo drew her focus. “The Bureau of Planetary Land Management… Lee, several of these were awarded directly from the BPLM. I wonder what she makes of the General’s activity there… ”
She may have stolen a second—more appreciative glance—at that back wall as she followed Lee towards the broad desk that dominated its own fair share of space in the large room.
A holoblock sat neatly atop it. And facing them, a plump ivory chair, positioned perfectly beneath the spotlights overhead.
Kat didn’t hesitate before plopping down atop its plush cushions. It seemed they’d picked the right suite.
Shooting her a dubious look, Lee took up a spot behind her, looking on over her shoulder as she drew up the mainframe on the Commander’s perma-standing holoblock. They had the coding loaded and ready to initiate their entry within a matter of seconds.
Her breathing shuddered as they waited for the token blips to be accepted onto the hub.
And then they were in.
They already had their list of priorities and courses of action plotted.
As anticipated, the Commander was a very detailed and organized leader.
And in the work of mere seconds, they were sorting through mission statuses.
They grabbed everything dark radiation-related, dropping it into a temporary shared folder Jed had set-up to coordinate with their access.
The seconds sprinted by. “Three minutes,” Kat murmured, eyes darting from her hyperband to the security camera mounted by the doorframe in the corner of the room.
“Switching over.” Lee ran a quick search for Segura’s mainframe, using everything he could think of. Key terms. File names. Loose snippets from the formulas they’d discovered in the Commander’s notes. It was a shot in the dark, but if they could find anything else that might be helpful to them…
But each of them were coming up blank. Not even an encrypted file of her notes was apparent.
“She really has rinsed her hands of everything,” Kat groaned, flicking down through the folder’s contents.
Switching gears one more time, Lee’s fingers hesitated over the holo-keys as they drew up the Commander’s messages.
“What are you waiting for?” Kat demanded, eyes darting back down to her hyperband.
“Feels too invasive.” Lee blew out a breath, the stray hairs fluttering over her ear.
“It is,” Kat agreed, meeting his gaze. She reached over to lay her own hands overtop the backs of his. “And that is why you are you.”
He squinted, trying to see what she was getting at.
“But I am me. And we are in this together. A team. And invasive or not, we have lives on the line. Futures—our futures. And our galaxy. We need to know if she has any secrets up her sleeve.”
Swiftly, but not roughly, she pulled his hands away from the keys and began sifting through the Commander’s messages.
She paused when she landed on a copy of a project proposal from General Narron for QIII: “a more sustainable future.”
“There they are again, the BPLM,” Lee murmured, tracing over their signature in the corner.
Kat’s eyes darted once more to the plaques on the wall. Except with QIII… “The land’s already dead…”
They didn’t have time to mull over it before they were also copying it into their too-light shared folder.
They’d already seen the thread between Commander Blanche and General Narron with her formal admittance of their faults. But lower down, they found another thread—a separate thread. An earlier thread.
“Who was that message directed to?” Kat asked.
Lee expanded the hologram. “From Commander Blanche to Secretary Nolan. Dated back to the day of our initial post-raid meeting. The one held solely between us and the Commander…” He trailed off, but Kat’s eyes traced along the body of the message.
A splice of communication that was never meant to be seen by outside eyes.
Keep digging, there has to be something here we can use. I know my cadets, allegiances don’t shift like that. This could be it, this could be the answers we are looking for. We can’t afford to lose this one, but we also can’t act on belief alone, he already has the council in his pocket.
Find me something tangible, Nolan.
Kat’s hands had stopped moving long before her eyes glazed over. The words rolling through her head came this time from the stern voice of a woman with pristine red hair and a gorgeous set of power suits.
I know my cadets.
Find me something tangible, Nolan…
The phrasing threw her, so at odds with the previous communication they had read from their Commander.
Not personally accountable.
Their faults.
I know my cadets.
We can’t afford to lose this one.
The words slapped around and around in her head, a punch to the gut. A wrench in the heart. Each making less sense than the other.
They were the best. They were her best. The Commander should have requested her squadron again.
Her team. They could have conducted another internal review.
A dozen. Void, she could have thought of something—anything.
There had to be something in here that they could have found, if she’d only tried a little harder.
Kat had always looked up to Commander Blanche, with her fancy title, and her accomplishments; her importance and her power. And an office full of nice things.
But daydream as she liked, Kat had never cared much for nice things—she’d never had any. And all the prestige here? Under these current circumstances, it just felt empty. Hollow.
She wondered what it would have been like had she seen this office at an earlier time. Because here, today, it was just another reminder of what Commander Blanche hadn’t been willing to give up. The discipline that had gotten her here in the first place, Kat realized with a sigh.
She also realized that sitting here now, with the paths they’d chosen and the choices she’d made, this was the closest she’d ever come to being like her.
Right before she left that dream behind.
“Uh, Kat—”
Kat startled, looking over just as the holograms blipped dark.
“Pretty sure we were just shut out…”
Kat blinked, still drawing out of her head.
The holograms didn’t regenerate. Ten or fifteen minutes, their time was up. “Void. That’s it?” The sudden disappearance of the mainframe’s holograms made the lighting in the room seem off. A certain darkness settling in. “Did you have a chance to save that last message?”
“I didn’t.” Lee’s face fell, but it was probably for the best. It didn’t prove anything. It gave her false hope, if anything. Their Commander had still given up and conceded everything shortly afterwards.
There weren’t any obvious alarms blaring, despite the mainframe having locked them out, but Jed’s warning still rang in her ears.
“Think anyone’s coming for us?” she murmured.
“I’m not too anxious to find out,” Lee said, already straightening the holoblock back to where they’d found it on her too-clean desk and wiping down the surface with his forearm.
She stole one last look about the luxurious office.
She would never learn what lay throughout the rest of the suite.
If the Commander had her walk-in closet.
She would never find out what could have been.
“Let’s get out of here.” Heaving herself out of the extravagant chair, Kat didn’t even glance at the office around her. She’d already bid this life farewell.
They paused before the door. This was it, this would be their tell if all was well. She didn’t need Lee to say it, but she was grateful when he did, as he placed his hand to the glass panel and breathed, “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Lee stepped out first. Kat was sure her heart was pounding even louder than her feet on the grates as she wordlessly followed him out into that broad hallway.
So far so good.
“Maybe Jed was wrong,” she mused as they cleared that first section of hallway.
Lee just looked over at her. “Maybe.”
They were within leaping distance of those split-paneled double doors when Nolan rounded the corner.
Both she and Lee stopped in their tracks. She was slow to catch herself and wipe her features as surprise and suspicion illuminated the Commander’s secretary’s face.
She didn’t dare glance over at Lee or the gig was already up.
“Nolan,” she called dismissively with much more bravado than she could feel with her already-bouncing heart. Swishing her ponytail behind her, she strutted right past him, praying to the cosmos that Nolan didn’t call her back.
And then she heard Lee’s murmured, “Good evening,” his steps corporate and measured as he strode after her.
Placing a hand to the glass, the doors split open. Hastening her pace by several hairs, Kat didn’t stop walking until she’d cleared that entryway and heard the doors close again behind them.
The doors were just out of sight, when she pivoted, leashing the Command wing at her back as she pressed herself against the wall. She listened to her breaths come in heavy gusts, as Lee slumped back against the wall beside her, his breaths matching hers.
“That was a close one,” she huffed, backtracking through the last sixty seconds in the Command wing. “Too close.”
“Eh. We’ve had closer. That Kafron beast?” he said on short breaths. She looked over to spare him the glance and found his eyebrow arched, face still devoid of tension—or buried with humor.
“I’ll give us that,” Kat laughed, breathlessly, still watching him. The thinnest layer of sweat beaded across his brow. With a finger, she trailed it over the moisture on his forehead.
Her co-conspirator, her forever co-pilot, and her final stand.
Always.
She let her hand drop with a sigh. “I wanted us to find something.”
They hadn’t found anything they could use today.
Disregarding the stack of mission assignments that might at best give them another couple of coordinates to cross off their star map.
And that message between their Commander and Nolan, a message, which, if anything, just made her resent their Commander even more.
What were they doing here?
She was very much at risk of spiraling back into helplessness. Back to the place she’d been three months ago.
Was there even hope for any of them, or were they still so far in over their head?
She felt Lee’s fingertips at her throat and under her chin, his touch an echo to hers only seconds ago.
She let him guide her eyes back to his with the softest pressure.
And, although bleak, there was some of his signature clarity there in those green irises.
He allowed her to soak up that quiet strength and that willingness to keep fighting.
Because he would, wouldn’t he—he would keep fighting, for as long as it took?
And when she was ready, she nodded. A mechanical notion, in all its brevity. But she was ready for them to break this downward spiral if they could.
“This—today—it doesn’t change anything,” he said, quietly, slowly, his hand still gripping her chin. Like he needed her to hear these words, to understand these next words. “I’m still in this—with you. You and me.”
She swallowed back the fear pulsing from her lungs. “Even if we turn out to be wrong, and we’ve thrown our lives and our careers away, and everything has gone up in smoke and flames, even then?”
A little smile turned up his lips. She held her breath as he tucked some loose strands of hair over her ear, the bareness cool in his wake.
“Even then. Until those last wires on our spaceship have lost their currents.” And he held his hand out for her as he stepped away from the wall.
Offering her a hand up to meet him there.
“Which brings us to our next matter of business.” His warm hand engloved hers as he pulled her off the wall after him. That fighting spark was back in full force and alighting his eyes.
“Oh yeah? And what’s that?”
“We’re going to need a ship.”
Her mouth parted, her only surprise she’d show as she let all her remorse for the path not taken pool down around the boots of her all-terrain suit.
She left them behind her, coiling back into the cool calculation place inside of her.
If they were going to do this, she needed to be one hundred percent onboard.
Which meant she was already behind.
“And Kat,” Lee said, spinning her around to face him and holding her there with his eyes this time. “We did learn ‘something’ today,” he said, guessing—or knowing—where her head had gone minutes earlier. “We learned the Commander believed us.”