CHAPTER 21 KAT
THEY WERE having fun taking their time. Even if all she could think about was Lee, and the feel of his body up against hers. The touch, the brush, the heat… It was her last thought as she drifted off into restless dreams, and her first yearning as she awoke alone and squirming beneath the sheets.
She felt like she was on some love-sick hangover. But it wasn’t her fault his lips moved so flawlessly against hers. Or that his body—
Void, it was like he’d been sculpting his body all these years just for her.
She sat up in bed, throwing the covers off of her, letting the chill climb her skin. There was no way she was going out on a raid like this. Not with only one thing on her brain.
Slapping a hand to the plate by her door, Kat skittered out her door and around the dorms.
Shower. Another shower would help.
She rounded the corner. She could get the steam going, clear her head, and that way she wouldn’t sit here thinking about—
“Lee?”
“Uh, morning,” he said, face flushed, his skin all sweaty.
“Were you thinking of me?” she teased sweetly, twirling her ponytail around her fingers. But rather than eliciting the embarrassed tiptoeing she expected, Lee took the step closer, pulling her in tight against him, where she learned just exactly how much he’d been thinking of her.
Delight prickled down her spine. Lower.
“Enjoy your shower,” Lee whispered in her ear, his voice a sensual promise of just how he would handle missing her.
This time it was her ears that heated.
She was even more hot and bothered, grumbling as she padded into the showers. But she found herself smiling silly as she watched the soapy suds slip down the drain.
She took as much time as she could spare, enjoying the feel of the cold soap against her flustered body. But the clock was ticking. And when she couldn’t delay any longer, she switched off the faucet, embracing the pebbling along her upper arms as she toweled off her long hair.
Lee was already waiting for her with a couple of power drinks when she got to the central skywalk. He wore a crisp all-terrain suit, his hair piled hastily over his forehead.
“Did you enjoy your leisure time?” he teased, smoothing back one of the flyaways from her quick hairy-dry solution as he handed her one of the drinks.
“Oh, I enjoyed it over every centimeter of my wet, slippery body.” She gave him a playful wink, although her accompanying laugh took on a lower, huskier quality than usual when she glimpsed downward to see what Lee made of her taunting.
Two points to Kat. These all-terrain suits of theirs left nothing to the imagination.
When her eyes slid back up to his, there was a knowing gleam waiting for her there.
“Just sip your power drink,” Lee tossed out.
Kat grinned, staring out into the stars. This raid would be fun today.
The raid was, in fact, not fun today.
They had Kiara along for the ride, and between Kiara’s innuendo-filled eyes and her and Lee’s latest game of tease, taunt, and torture, it had started out okay.
But the flight out to the De Myra Solida grouping was long.
It didn’t help that they had their raider clearances weighing on them.
But the closer they flew to the star system, the heavier their raid seemed to weigh on her.
She could physically feel the impact of the dark rays poking and prodding at their ship, tearing at the space debris at their sides with its brutal, yet predictable pattern: death.
And more death. Frozen and unmoving, like the rocks and pebbles she kicked up with her feet when they finally disembarked from the skimmer.
Kat had visited infected planets and moons before.
She’d seen them dying with the knowledge of what they were.
But today was different—today hit different.
De Zolar was a wasteland. As she and Lee had confirmed, there was no manifested life present today.
But at this rate, it wouldn’t ever get a chance to get there, either.
Another planet snuffed before it ever had a chance to live.
“Hey, Hanneman.” Lee’s voice cut through the speaker inside her helmet. “You mind if we keep this one short today?”
She didn’t even try to keep her voice steady with the relief flooding her system at hearing his voice. “Yeah, alright.”
They scouted their marked radius, collecting just enough sample matter from the rocky landscape to fill their quota, before she and Lee were ushering each of their cadets off the terra and back into the skimmer.
“Let’s get out of here,” Lee murmured, closing up the loading ramp.
Kat lingered just outside the cockpit as their cadets de-suited and secured their samples, watching Kiara flirt her way into the seat next to their VL, Todd. When Lee got his playlist running, she followed him up to their pilot seats.
“Sending best wishes to De Zolar,” Lee said as he started up the ship, engaging the thrusters. And he probably meant it lightheartedly. But it felt like the dirge at a funeral.
She stared out of the tempered glass as they accelerated up to hyper speed, watching as they left tiny pin pricks of light behind them.
She pictured each as some morsel of food, sacrificed to the unquenchable dark beast. Each morsel, left abandoned, left to fend for themselves eternally in the vast and unfathomable ocean of emptiness.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, or how many of those star kilometers back to the Academy they had covered when Lee’s voice echoed into her headset. “Hey. You want to talk about it?”
He slipped his hand over to hers, entangling it with his own. The warmth radiated up the length of her arm, cradling her heart against the cold burrowing inside. And although his gaze was currently focused on the dashboard ahead of them, she could feel his wayward attention.
“No.”
And then she sighed. “It’s just, this planet meant something.
It isn’t just another number on a star chart.
It’s a tiny fraction of our galaxy that’s being slowly stripped away.
All because we can’t just man-up and try things.
Like—like they did.” She voiced that last line quietly, the faintest echo of her grumbling reverberating back up to her through her headset.
And no, she couldn’t with full loyalty voice it now, any more than she could have on the ship these past months.
The dark rays were probably getting to her head.
“Maybe it wasn’t real. I don’t know. Maybe it was all just a pretty trick of the lights.
But again, at least they tried something.
They had actual plans, data, a whole crew that was passionate about their cause.
Shouldn’t that count for anything?” Kat glanced back down at their hands, suspended in space.
She and Lee were the real miracle to come out of everything.
She couldn’t say at this point who she believed: Gaia or General Narron.
But she believed in what she had with Lee.
He was real, and still holding her when all else was going up in smoke.
“It should count,” he said, quietly. And she could see the gears turning in his head, the tension from the warring thoughts as he gripped her hand tighter. “It should count,” he repeated, some of that tension escaping with his words.
She squeezed his hand once more before tucking them down under her legs.
She had Lee. That was all that really mattered.
Together they could get through anything, whatever came their way.
She truly believed they had defied the odds in coming this far together.
After all, they were both still with the Academy, breathing, going on raids, surviving.
Maybe the reverberations could have a cosmic effect too.
Maybe if they loved each other hard enough, and deep enough, it would carry a ripple beyond the two of them, with enough to change the fates of the galaxy.
They landed back inside the main hangar, most of their cadets taking their leave.
Kat had barely set foot inside the cabin, boots thudding heavily on the grates beneath her, when Kiara waved her over.
“No Todd, then?” Kat asked, feigning a grin for the twin’s sake.
“He’s still a guppy,” Kiara said quickly. She took one look at Lee and then at Kat’s fading grin, and wrinkled her nose. “That’s it. We’re going to go find Kamata.”
“Kamata? Why?” Kat asked.
“That’s you and me, I mean. Sorry Lee,” Kiara called over her shoulder, looping her arm through Kat’s as they swiveled to face him.
“This whole trip has been much too dismal for my taste, even your playlist was a bit of a downer. We’re in need of a shake up, so I’m claiming your girlfriend for the night. ”
“Oh, we haven’t labeled things—” Lee started to say.
“Don’t even try to deny it. I’ve seen you two.” Kiara rolled her eyes.
“Do you want us to help with the samples?” Kat twisted back around, yanking free as she remembered the bins they’d stowed beneath the observation deck.
“I’ve got them.” Lee tapped the side of one of the bins with his boot before dipping his head from Kiara to Kat. “You take care of her.”
Kiara saluted him, her black zircon piercing glinting under the lights as she grinned back at him with clear mischief in her eyes.
Lee pulled Kat in close. But what began as a swift parting hug, quickly evolved into something risqué and borderline indecent as he pressed his body into hers, her eyes glazing at the contact as the heat stormed up her spine. Then she caught the smirk on Lee’s face as he started to pull away.
“Nice try,” she breathed. Reaching up to her tiptoes, she pulled at his earlobe with her teeth, just sharp enough to make him quiver. “I’ll be thinking of you tonight. Maybe we’ll have to bring out the big guns.”
With Kiara still chuckling behind them, she let her friend take hold of her arm once more, physically hauling her away.
“Thank you,” she mouthed over her shoulder.