CHAPTER 43 KAT
DOWN TO only two days left on the ship, Kat poked around her dorm room, whipping about in her own mini tornado strike as she attempted to collapse the litter of all her Academy years down to a single pink duffle.
It was the second time she’d pulled it down from its haphazard storage at the top corner of her dusty closet in the last year.
Quite the active season it had been.
She plopped it down onto her rumpled comforter before scurrying up next to her duffle, the faintest aromas of coconut paradise pluming up from its depths. But they weren’t leaving on a mid-term holiday. This time, they’d be leaving for good.
So much time she had spent here. From those initial nights on the ship, when she’d been so excited to get started and get out there, but too anxious to actually go explore the ship.
She’d only left the room when that quiet boy from the transports had knocked on her door and shyly asked her to join him.
She hadn’t realized at the time that she’d be joining him for every adventure after that.
Then there’d been the emotional nights. The ones when she’d been so pissed at Flyn or Zane for out-doing her at the Laser Rounds.
The one’s when she’d been faintly amused at Lee for hiding his first girlfriend’s name from her.
The one’s when she’d questioned if she might ever belong anywhere in this universe…
And yes, she’d spent about as much time in Lee’s dorm as she had inside these four eggshell-paneled walls. But still. This had been her home, her ship, her personal space. Her comfort. Her passion. Her safety… This had been hers.
And in two more days, her world would either get very small, or very large, very quickly. She couldn’t say which she dreaded more.
Leap first, look back later. That had always been her code, her guiding star. But she’d always had the Academy to return home to as well. Where would she even call home after this?
Her eyes danced over the loose clothing strewn about the dorm room floor in various states of wear. The handful of outdated tech jumbled in a small stack near the waste bin. Where did she even begin?
Her hyperband buzzed. Kat read the brief update from Kiara, along with the cadet’s unrequested boss-babe opinion on Kat’s upcoming “extended vacation.” She hadn’t exactly told the twins what they were doing.
But like with Hanna and Nikola, she was positive the twins had pieced enough of it together to understand the gist of their efforts.
A second message awaited her there as well—one from Lee that must have come in while she was digging through her closet earlier. He’d opted to hit the gym for another couple of hours; they both had a lot to work through at the moment.
Lee: how’s packing coming along, starflower?
She smiled, angling across her mattress with her hyperband to snap a photo of the plant now perching solidly on top of her desk. Lee would love this.
“I wonder how well you travel?” she murmured, doubting again, how—ever—she was supposed to keep a plant alive on a tiny skimmer for who knows how long… Her only comfort being that Lee would be there with her. If anyone could keep it alive through some interstellar travel, it was him.
Crawling forward onto her stomach, she hung her upper body over the edge of the bed. She swept her arms underneath while she located the small bundle of defensive tech she’d stashed there the night before.
Heaving them up onto the bed, she carefully laid them out for quick inspection.
Two long-range blasters, a compact striker, and a few stunners.
She’d snagged them from the post-raid staff cart in the main hangar.
It wasn’t much; honestly, she felt very under-protected at the concept of carrying so little.
But the objective of the mission was not a violent one.
The blasters likely wouldn’t even be needed where they were headed; with any luck, they would merely be there for her own peace of mind.
Now if they could just keep them off the inventory radar until their skimmer was out of the hangar….
Returning back to her duffle, she flipped it upside down, shaking it over the edge of her bed. A fair amount of crumbs and the torn foil of a snack wrapper coiled its way down to the floor, before she set it back upright on her bed.
Dragging herself to her feet once more, she scoped around, bending down to retrieve a few of her underthings and her spare all-terrain suit from the mélange.
Without giving herself time to question it, she also tucked the dusty orange top and swimsuit around the sunnies Tonya had gifted her into the bag, right alongside the little makeshift makeup tin.
She didn’t know when they’d ever have a chance to find a pool, let alone something as nice as the resort-planet Bala.
But that was irrelevant. And other than her holoblock which she’d left sitting out on her desk to use over the next couple of days, and her star flower, there wasn’t much more she even cared to salvage.
Everything else was a mere remnant of her time here.
Rewrapping the blasters tightly in the towel, she nestled them up against her duffle. One more thing, done and out of the way.
She sat there, leaning back against her headboard, lingering, in case another message came through from the twins or Nikola, before deciding to head back down and find them herself. She left the room quickly without looking around her. She had no plans to get lost down memory alley again.
It wasn’t hard to track down Nikola. She’d barely entered the Hideaway when she spotted him.
He sat nestled in his corner, accompanied by the idle Sunday afternoon chatter, and big shocker—Hanna, once more.
They had dragged over a little corner table and had their holoblocks open atop its surface.
But instead of having their heads buried in the coding and tech schematics, a green juice rested in each of their hands. A leisurely Sunday, indeed.
“Hey—you two.” Kat approached cautiously, entirely thrown off by their casualness. It was much too easy-going. Like, was she interrupting a date?
But Nikola looked over, eagerly beckoning her to take one of the armchairs perpendicular to them, while Hanna met her gaze, almost equally excited about something.
“What’s going on?” Kat asked, hovering just over the seat.
“It’s all ready to go.”
“All of it? Communication signal, decoy and everything?” Kat dropped down into the third armchair, sitting up nice and straight.
“I used a process quite similar to what we did before…” Nikola’s voice dropped a few soundbites.
“I basically replicated the build we used on Segura with an added layer of framework. Your recipients will need to upload a specific line of code in order to receive any of the messages or signals. But you shouldn’t have any of the breakage issues we had last time. ”
“And the signal will be secure?” Kat verified. That part was new.
“Secure and non-traceable,” Nikola nodded, but he glanced glowingly over at Hanna, through the gap between his eyes and his molecular-protection specs.
“That part was actually thanks to Hanna. Along with her idea to create the decoy, she implemented a trigger that also acts as security guard. Upon interception—even without an actual breach occurring—transmission will immediately shut off. Of course, you will have to resend your communication. But that shouldn’t be an issue. ”
Kat turned to thank Hanna for this twist of luck in their favor, and found her formal rival and co-cadet smiling at her. How was that for a twist?
“There’s really no thanks necessary. Consider it a going-away gift,” Hanna said, with much more humility than Kat had known the cadet to possess. “For both of you. May you find whatever it is you seek.” And there was only earnestness in the cadet’s gaze.
“With your blessing, I’ll go ahead and send this over,” Nikola said. “I believe you said Zane was going to help coordinate the installation?” Nikola asked.
Kat nodded, slowly, glancing between the two of them.
Nikola had worked quickly.
Hanna as well.
And with the twins’ and Whistler’s work also wrapping up…
She couldn’t believe this was happening and that she was even thinking this right now. But even with her show of optimism with Lee the other night, it really looked as if they might pull this off.
She was still dazed and dripping with disbelief when Lee caught up with them. His hair was freshly washed, the beginnings of a curl dangling just over his brow. And her favorite earthy scents nearly sent her dragging him back up to his dorm as they crashed over her, again and again.
The corners of his lips turned up as his eyes briefly, but not shyly, traced over her, no longer ignorant to her inner longings.
Seemingly reluctantly, Lee redirected his gaze over to Nikola and Hanna, politely receptive and gracious as he accepted news of these latest developments on the communications front.
She somehow managed to resist tugging on that loose curl as they got through Hanna’s contribution, the temptation returning tenfold at the first break in conversation when Lee looked back towards her.
But behind those glittery feelings and sparking emotions, another tension lay.
An agitation and frustration that not even hours in the gym could erase.
They were two days out from their arranged departure and still hadn’t uncovered the location of Segura’s base. And while they may have beat the odds in securing logistics on the ground floor, without that direction, their immediate future was still shrouded in a fog.
They were spared the work of smothering that tension and coming up with more exciting things to say by Nikola and Hanna standing up first, excusing themselves, to replace their drinks with some snacks from the vending machines.