CHAPTER 7 KAT
MORE EXPLOSIONS.
And that blue-green light.
Her heart pounded in her chest in anticipation of the hyperjump coming up. They were running from something. Or racing towards something. She couldn’t quite remember. But she wasn’t ready. The ship—her friends— And with the squeezing sensation setting in—
Kat jolted awake, opening her eyes as she sat up, her breaths staggering in sharp bursts and gusts as she searched for a destination she couldn’t see.
She gazed around at the eggshell panels on her ceiling and the bright stars outside her window, letting the comforting scent of her room—and the traces of Lee—ease the jagged edges of the nightmare prodding her heart as her head caught up to consciousness.
Her breathing eased, the pain in her sternum lifting. It had been just that, a nightmare, nothing more. She was okay, and those lights were behind them, and they were right back where she was supposed to be.
She glanced over to the side of the bed where Lee had been, her bed feeling overly large.
And maybe her dream-terrors were completely unfounded.
They were keeping their head down and charting the safe path, her life was no longer in danger of spiraling out of control.
Her head was probably groggy after climbing and a late night on the ship.
But maybe some primal part of her was aware of how quickly they could veer off this path. Of how easily this new happiness could be wrested from her.
And that scared her more than anything.
To distract herself, and even give her some semblance of control over her fate, she read through the messages on her hyperband, stark reminders of the trainings she would be running this morning. Welcome back, Hanneman.
Her hyperband buzzed as she was memorizing her schedule.
Lee: good morning stardust
She grimaced at the nickname attempt, begrudging him for being so chipper in the mornings. But she couldn’t resist the sparkflies in her belly that fluttered to life when his name appeared on the screen. She typed back a quick response so he’d know she was awake.
Kat: you left too early last night;)
With the sparkflies to carry her and bat her dream terrors away, Kat flitted over to her closet, pulling on her all-terrain suit.
Things with Lee were going well. Like so well. Had she known it would be this easy, she would’ve let him in months ago.
She beamed down at her hyperband as a second message came through.
Lee: we can remedy that
She shouldn’t be this excited to see him, she’d been with him just last night.
Pushing past the heat starting to pool in her core at the mere thought of another night like the last, she jammed her feet into her boots and slipped down through the lower levels of the Heptagon, to the Canteen.
“Hey there.”
Kat whirled, nearly sending the oat bar flying from the tray she’d been filling. A smile danced across Lee’s lips as he righted it for her.
“What, no stardust this time?”
“Just trying things out.” Reaching over her shoulder, he plucked a couple things for himself, plopping them down alongside her own pickings on the tray.
He caught her staring at him when he went to grab one of his black plums. And the knowing smirk he shot her had her toes grinding into the grated floor.
Why couldn’t every day on the ship be a stay-in-and-makeout-with-your-hunky-guy day?
Lee carried her tray over to their table, Kat walking alongside him with very deliberate steps, as she warred against dragging him off into some hidden closet-panel right here and now. The thought of instead spending the next four hours in cadet trainings was a very specific brand of torture.
“It feels like we’ve been away for ages, are we sure it’s only been a couple of weeks?” Kat mused.
“We’re getting close to the end of term. Then we get a break.” Lee chuckled.
“And it couldn’t come soon enough. Hopefully my new suit gets here by then,” she sighed.
She was stress-dissecting her currant-and-grain muffin as another message came through her hyperband.
“More training stuff? It hasn’t been that long,” Kat groaned, setting aside her muffin.
“Not training stuff,” Lee said tightly, his face drawn as he studied the message on his own hyperband. “Our reports just came out.”
Conscious of the cadets sitting at the tables nearby, Kat expanded the message, skimming its contents.
The versions of the reports she was reading here today were quite short.
They included the mission timeline and initial coordinates, the radiation spikes, and some of the magnetic activity around Segura’s shields.
As expected, all mention of the actual ship and everything they’d encountered beyond those shields had been scooped out and truncated for higher clearance only.
However, in place of their conclusion summary, a new addendum had been added.
“‘…crossing into matters of intergalactic trade and security, Commanding General Narron has assumed responsibility for the recourse.’” Kat read aloud. “‘Recourse’—what does that even mean?”
“Nothing good,” Lee said, still reading beside her.
Kat glanced around again at the cadets sitting at other tables nearby, lowering her voice. “They did get away, didn’t they?”
“The people of Segura? Yeah. As far as we know. I imagine the General would be pursuing far different measures had they not.”
At least they had that going for them.
“It’s fine. It’ll be fine. Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s not a big deal. Standard procedure,” Lee said offhandedly, but there was a jerkiness to his movements as he also glanced around them. “I don’t see Zane or Whistler in here. I wonder if they’ve seen it yet.”
“Why do we always get the bad news when we’re sitting here?” Kat groaned.
Lee grimaced. But they were two for two now on the bad news front. And she definitely wasn’t gunning for a third.
“You wanna head down early?” Lee asked.
Kat was all too quick to jump to her feet. Her appetite had vanished before she’d even started. “Yep, I’m done here.”
They dumped their tray, crossing over into the training levels without a second glance.
There wasn’t nearly as much foot traffic down here this early, so they didn’t have to watch their words. Although maybe it would have been easier to pretend everything was normal if they had.
Maybe it really was fine. Maybe this was some kind of politico slogging. Some formal lingo they used in place of “the Academy cadets screwed up and left me nothing.”
Stopping outside her training room door, she voiced as much, to which Lee gave her a too-appeasing grin.
And now she was just stalling. “I’ll catch up to you later?” She may as well go in and make sure her lesson plans were in order. It was going to be a bumpy day.
“Good luck, Hanneman,” Lee called, lingering with her before heading down a staircase with much more confidence than she had.
She could focus and make it through her trainings. It was only four hours.
Despite her ill ease going into this morning’s courses, her trainings were going swimmingly. A breeze. Delightful, even.
Her first year Rads worshipped the ground they walked on.
She overheard several still talking about Lee’s Laser Rounds performance Saturday.
Her second hour went well, too. And by the time she strolled in to resume Basic Ship Schematic Diagnostics with her VLs, she had relaxed back into her role as invincible Gamma Squadron Lead.
As fourth years, they had a general grasp on the overall systems and structures of their present ship models. What they lacked was the experience of actually working with them; they’d only just begun piloting ships this last year. Which led them back to diagnostics.
“Today, we are going to continue with the engine conversion system.” Kat drew up the holo-representation of one of their skimmer ship schematics.
Her fellow Gamma, Cesi, had been taking them through the schematics in Kat’s absence.
“As you know, each Academy ship in our employ is equipped with a verinity-core cell. Thanks to the verinity, the energy cells are essentially infallible, with a lifetime longer than yours. However,”—she pointed to several key spots along the convertor—“each of these connection points presents an opportunity for engine failure.”
The dark-haired cadet sitting in the front row raised his hand. “Have you ever gotten into trouble?”
“What?” She blinked past the image forming behind her gaze. A warning light flashing against the dash. The jostling as they passed through a shield powered by a very different source of energy…
“From the verinity-core cells. The energy. Have the engines ever failed under your control?”
“I’ve seen many issues arise over the years,” Kat said quickly, recovering. “Another reason it’s so essential that the entire squadron be well-versed in diagnostics. Let’s move on—”
A second cadet in the back raised their hand, this one wearing the most vibrant purple contacts she had ever seen. “Is that what happened on your last raid—the one you and all those Gammas were out on? You guys were out a long time. So was it engine failure? Or did something worse happen?”
This time Kat straightened. It seemed word was finally making the rounds.
She cleared her throat, palms warming even as she tried to brush it aside.
“Our case was a little more complicated than that. If you like, I can draw up a case study sometime. We were dealing with certain external factors. Like I said, thankfully, the squadron as a whole was prepared—”
“But that girl still got kicked out,” the dark-haired cadet said. “So what happened?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss—” Kat began.
“She was our year, she must have done something.”
“I bet she’s not the only one at fault—”
“That’s enough.” Kat cut them off, ponytail whipping behind her as she sliced her hand through the air.
Fourteen nervous faces peered back at her.
“When you are fortunate enough that you get invited out on a raid, you can talk to me about fault and squadron roles. And as to the cadet you are all wondering about”—this time Kat did intentionally show her fangs, despite the frostiness settling in where the heat had been—“she had other plans for herself. But you ought to hope that someday you are as good of a raider as she was.”
Lee was waiting for her at the base of the skywalk when Kat finally got out of her last training.
His face fell as she approached. “They got to you, too.”
“They did.” She forced a joyless smile as some straggling cadets went around them.
“It doesn’t matter that we’re keeping quiet under Command regulation, or that most of our squadron had no idea what they were signing up for when we went out on that mission.
Rumor’s probably been circulating for a while.
You should have heard my Ultras. Power-mongering gremlins,” she grumbled, recalling some of the specific comments they’d made.
“They were even less strategic about their gawking than my VLs were.”
“I’ll raise you my Xs.”
“Showoff,” Kat muttered. But at their mention, she perked up. “Did you get a chance to talk to Nikola?”
“Yeah, yeah I did. He’s putting up a much better front than I expected—he has it better than you and I, that’s for sure. Part of being a squadron lead, I guess. But the rest of his year seems to be leaving him pretty much to himself, which is great for Nikola.”
“It’s the molecular compound protection glasses.” Kat tapped the skin under her eye. “I need to get me some of those. Speaking of, did he say anything about Hanna? She’s still seeing him, right?” She adjusted her pack, preparing to head back into the Canteen, and into the flames.
“He didn’t mention anything,” Lee said, glancing back around the training levels. She noticed he made no move to cross back over into the main Heptagon.
“There’s more,” she guessed when he continued to avoid meeting her gaze. “Waters,” she scolded.
Lee paused. “Your cadets didn’t sound overly inventive with their presumptions about what happened on that raid, did they?”
“I mean, one of my Ultras asked me why we even felt qualified in accepting a mission that big. Rather petty if you ask me. As if the mission parameters weren’t dictated to us directly by the Commander.” She shrugged. “So the usual.”
But Lee didn’t share in her merriment at the ridiculousness of it all, his face carefully neutral.
“Why, what did they say to you?” she demanded.
“It’s not what they said, it’s what they’re implying.” Lee scuffed his boot against the grated floor, dragging his heel along it before kicking down once more. “With all the secrecy surrounding the raid and with Levy—and now the reports… We look like we screwed up, Kat.”
“We…” She could barely blink past the ire forming under her eyelids. She was all for playing dirty. But this?
“We screwed up?” she snapped, finally finding her words again. “How dare they. As if we didn’t know what we were bartering when we crossed those magnetic fields. As if we chose to go out there in the first place. And to drag Levy into this too, as if her quitting is—what—a product of our mistake?”
“I know.”
She dragged a hand through her hair, the strands feeling dirty and sticky under these new rumors. There were so many bigger things at stake. So many real fears without dragging ego and shame into it.
“Any chance we get another space alligator attack?” she chirped in shaky tones. The heat had cooled so abruptly in her blood that it left her off-kilter.
“I’m not sure any sort of creature would be enough,” Lee admitted.
She met his grimace. “We’ll probably take a few hits here before this all blows over.
I haven’t spoken with any of the other Gammas yet personally, but I don’t think the younger cadets come to these deeper assumptions all on their own. ”
“And that’s it. That’s all they’ve got?” she ground out, a bitterness solidifying like gelatin in her blood. “Wait until Zane and Whistler get involved.” She didn’t imagine their pride would take so well to that.
“We’ll be fine,” Lee said, echoing his sentiment from this morning as they at last started over towards the main Heptagon to join the rest of the Academy.
So much for breezy.