CHAPTER 42 LEE
A JARRING pain was the first thing that Lee noticed the next morning when he met consciousness.
Grappling for the chunk of government plastic prodding his back, Lee shoved his holoblock against the wall as he stretched out his back, now pain-free.
He’d slept at odd angles before, but this one may take the prize.
He propped his head up onto his hand as he glanced over at Kat’s slumped form.
She didn’t have it too bad—aside from where her cheek pressed into his headboard.
He was already regretting falling asleep in his all-terrain suit.
He couldn’t say at what point of the night they’d passed out.
But the slats there would definitely be leaving a mark…
He shifted once more to make himself comfortable, and she sighed. Stretching her toes downward in her sleep, she twisted her head towards him.
Yep. There was a mark.
Chuckling softly, Lee scooted closer to the wall to give her a little more space, which she quickly enveloped, her chest continuing to rise and fall in a gentle rhythm.
He didn’t remember all of last night. He remembered eventually finding their way back to his dorm.
Remembered downing those damned chocolates, as evidenced by the lid that lay askew from their hollowed tin on his desk.
Remembered more stolen kisses, and the little smile playing along her lips, accentuated by glazed eyes as the flavortrip of chocolate and delirium set in.
Careful so as to not disturb Kat, Lee gingerly sat up, pulling his holoblock up onto his lap to get ready for the day. Just under one more week to go; he’d see what he could find.
The brilliant effects of the gold, amethyst, and emerald sparks shooting off from the energy rings had long since dulled to a mere muddle of color as Lee stared past the latest duel going on before him.
He’d forgotten all about the tournament he’d signed up to run earlier this month—back when he’d still been trying to make this work. Honestly, had one more Gamma been signed up to help, he would have already ditched. But it was just Ciela on the roster with him.
He checked his hyperband as a message came in.
The Greatest Romp You’ll Ever Find: tourney still going?
Sighing, Lee typed back a quick response.
Lee: be there soon.
He was supposed to already be out of here, but a whole string of cadets had filtered in to join the tournament as they were closing out that first bracket.
He waved the competitors off as their score readings came in, nodding impatiently towards Ciela to get the clock running for the next duo. But at least they were down to the face-off rounds. Winner take all. It wouldn’t be long.
He wondered what Kat and Nikola had figured out with the communication signals.
Just gauging from Nikola’s reactions during that initial conversation, it sounded like he already had a loose idea in his head.
Maybe he could find a way to scramble or firewall their signals.
It would be nice to have a way to be able to contact Tonya, without risking alerting the entire galaxy to their location.
So many little details to coordinate. It would be a real feat if they could actually pull off everything in the manner—and timeliness—in which they wanted.
He motioned for the next duo to get started, checking his hyperband yet again for messages from any of the others. Jed, or Zane. Whistler. Kat. Nikola… So many friends were in on this now. So many counting on them finding something.
No less than forty-seven minutes over when the tournament was supposed to have finished, Lee hit the lights on the room.
He followed Ciela out to some casual chatter at the cascade of points that would give the Ultra winner a pretty comfortable berth in Academy rankings for a while.
Little did she know they had the entire Academy for the taking.
Come next week there would be two fewer Gammas in the running.
Bidding Ciela good afternoon with an added, “Nice job today—” as an afterthought, he slipped up through the Heptagon, grabbing his holoblock from his dorm, before heading down to find Kat and Nikola.
Upon entering the Hideaway, Lee’s eyes automatically trained on his and Kat’s favorite spot by the green juice bar, the tables sitting mostly vacant tonight.
But after scouring the room, he finally located them, tucked once more into one of the armchair corners of the room.
Hanna also sat there alongside them, face polished as ever under the glow of her holoblock.
It seemed like they were getting two for the price of one, with this project.
“Hey,” Lee called, sliding into the fourth stuffed chair in that corner.
It still felt odd, viewing the Hideaway from this angle.
They could view both the green juice station and the vending machines in one sweeping glance.
He could count on two hands the number of times he’d sat over here in all his years at the Academy.
Most of them occurring during that first year, while he and Kat had still been finding their stride.
Back when Gamma cadets held the universe in their calloused palms, and the AMG could do no wrong.
It wasn’t time to get comfortable, now.
He opened his holoblock as Kat leaned over, sharing the holo-expanse she and Nikola had been collaborating on while Lee had been trapped down below.
“I think we’ve figured it out—the schematics for it, anyway,” Kat explained, with a crediting nod towards Nikola.
“We’re going to set up the signal with the same framework that worked last time, with the knowledge that there is no actual forcefield blocker at this point.
But Nikola thinks there’s also a way to encrypt it, so that only those keyed to our signal will be able to register the communication for what it is. ”
“Hypothetically?” Hanna asked, eyes not leaving the glow from the holoblock before her.
“Yes,” both he and Kat said, his eyes sliding over hers, the pale grey irises purveying the expressive equivalent to a shrug.
When he glanced back over, he found Hanna observing them over trimmed, darkened, and cocked brows.
Lee matched her stare. And, with a tiny smile, Hanna let her eyes drop back to the latest holograph she was working on. “You two are awfully invested for an extra-curricular research project.”
“Placement?” Nikola supplied, adjusting the black rectangular frames against his nose.
“Sure, that,” Kat agreed.
Hanna just snorted. “Okay, I’ll buy it.” Then she flipped her holograph screen around to face them. “But since we’re talking signals, anyway. I had another idea for you both.”
“I’m all ears,” Kat frowned.
“Let’s see what you’ve got,” Lee allowed.
“I was listening in on how Niko plans to execute this framework for the signal. But what if we took it one step further?” And when she’d attracted a third set of eyeballs, all staring at her with rapturing interest, she grinned. “A decoy.”
“What would that even look like?” Kat considered, expanding the holograph before her to see what she could glean from the diagram.
“Think of it as a mirage, a glimmering signal that’s essentially empty data,” Hanna explained. “We would want it to be something entirely separated, no doubt, so as not to allow them to bridge the gap and connect us to the correlation later.”
“I like the idea of a decoy if you think you can do it,” Lee nodded. “It wouldn’t hurt to have that extra layer, an errant trail to help keep them off our tracks.”
“I’ll work with him,” Hanna promised, when Nikola didn’t respond, the cadet already off and away again as his miraculous brain began its latest stroke of genius.
Late afternoon crescendoed into evening, with Lee going over their list of potential base locations yet again, adding in a note to check back in on one of the star systems once Flyn’s raid report came out this week.
At least he’d gotten one little morsel of wisdom from their little staged chat the other morning.
Nikola and Hanna eventually drifted off, leaving just him and Kat and the waning hours of the night.
One more day, come and gone. The hours had been flying by; they were very quickly running out of them. Too soon they would hit zero hour, and he still had no idea where they were heading.
Pushing his eyes a few more minutes, he craned his neck, guiding him down, down, down the list, watching for that answer to appear that would be their salvation…
But nothing. His mind had gone silent tonight. His head was completely blank.
Swiping the holofiles closed with a hand, he rolled to his feet. He tucked his holoblock under his arm, strolling the short way over to the railing.
He much preferred this view of the Hideaway. Leaning his heavy, useless head over the bars, he stared down over the darkened Canteen. So many afternoons he’d wallowed his time away, right here. Time he would do anything to get back.
And while he waited on Kat to finish up her summation of Nikola and Hanna’s latest developments, he sent out yet another message to Jed, asking if he’d uncovered anything.
He was really starting to get anxious. Fleeing into space in a borrowed spacecraft could be considered an adventure. But fleeing without a destination, with someone after them, and on the lookout for the very same end goal? That was a whole other nightmare altogether.
In all their musings over the years of their continued adventures after leaving the Raider Program, of him and Kat with the galaxy at their fingertips, he’d never factored in the sheer force and power of the AMG.
Should they decide to pursue them, with their influence and their might…
That wouldn’t be freedom. That wouldn’t be excitement.
That would be constant close calls and always looking over their shoulders.
Their stress would become their cage; they would merely be walking from one to the other.