CHAPTER 1: KAT
KAT HANNEMAN’S hands were clammy where they gripped the edge of her blankets, the covers strangling her as she stared over at the eggshell panels of the walls.
She could still see it. The blast of violet. The sparks. The dated transport ships as they lifted from that hangar. She could hear the Lieutenant-in-command’s cool voice as he ordered Segura’s destruction, “Let’s terminate this operation.” She could feel the crushing of her skull, the thoughts and emotions staggering from her head as hyperspeed took over and they left it all behind them.
It had been a couple of days since returning home to the Academy. But still, every time she closed her eyes, she watched the General’s silent attack as their blasts slipped through the walls of the defenseless ship and the designs of an entire scientific operation were reduced to nothing. Dust in the stars of the toroidal belt Argos. That entire night was branded in her head, like some holo-vid on repeat, and always with the ship and its blue-green lights in the backdrop.
Home—they were home.
The blankets were still bunched around her in the tangled cocoon she’d created for herself with the latest night horrors. She’d been restless since they’d returned back to the ship. Butshe couldn’t help it. The feelings this last raid had stirred up—the anxiety, the foreboding—she knew them all too well.
Unable to shake the uneasiness, and not ready to fight it again, she sat up, kicking the covers off of her.
Goosebumps pebbled up her arms and legs as she slid her feet down to the cool ground and padded over to the narrow closet where her all-terrain suit lay in a heap on the floor.
She scooped it up, sniffing, the tired fabric a little musty, but it would have to do. Her eyes glanced over the overflowing bin by her desk where a sleeve of the borrowed AMG suit hung limp. Her memories of donning the starched suit on the way back to the Academy were spotty at best. She’d need to commission a replacement soon. She wrinkled her nose at the stale one in her hands and changed her mind. Today. She’d swing by staff to commission a replacement all-terrain suittoday.
Hands still a little shaky, she pulled her T-shirt up over her head and slipped into her suit and boots.
She ignored the overhead brights, fumbling in the dark as she drew up her holoblock for light, the single sentence she’d drafted for her portion of the raid report blinking to life. She didn’t have a clue what she wanted to say. What shecouldsay.
The four squadron leads had given Commander Blanche their personal accounts on everything leading up to finding Segura, when the cruiser’s data went dark. And everything after the General’s crew had picked them up was accounted for.
But those hazy twenty-four hours in between…
How did one quantify the surprise to learn of a ship—of an experiment, operating unassisted and implausible and yet wholly sustainable in the shadows? Or the terror of learning the operation dealt in dark rays, harnessing the very threat that plagued their galaxy as a power source to fuel experiments explicitly banned by their governing body? And then the hope, when they realized these strange, unauthorized experimentscould be the solution they’d been searching for to expunge the dark radiation threat permanently?
And the moment those AMG ships had showed up outside Segura… how did she explain that account?
Drawing in a couple of slow, deep breaths, she put her back to her holoblock, turning instead towards her closet once more.
It would be fine. They would be fine. No decisions had been made yet, no firm conclusions drawn on their fates or the future of dark rays. Right now it was just them and their Commander. She had given them a gift in allowing them time to process and think this through. Even if it felt like no amount of time would be enough to wrap her head around all that had occurred that night.
Hopefully a couple hours would be enough, though, Kat was meeting up with Lee and the other squadron leads before they faced Commander Blanche to go over that final part of the raid.
She took her time rummaging through the cramped tin in her closet. The gift set from Lee’s mom had originally included some balmy cosmetics in too-bright colors. Kat had discarded those. But the tin itself, with its shiny, ornate indents—she’d kept that. It now held odds and ends—like her favorite tube of eyeliner.
She frowned when she opened the dark lid. She hadn’t realized the liquid liner was almost out. Too bad staff wouldn’t help her with that one. She’d have to wait for the next transports to order a refill.
She did her best to make the lines around her eyes as even as possible given her low-pigment situation. The end effect looked a little more feral in her compact mirror than she would have liked. But at least her hair was looking clean enough. She ran a brush through it, tugging softly against the vanilla strands to calm some of the flyaways, before tying it back in its usual ponytail behind her head.
Sighing, she checked her hyperband. It was early for her. But rather than wait around and watch the hours tick by, Kat slipped out into the hallway.
The dim lights of night decorated the grated floors, their golden hues spilling down over her as she walked, casting geometric shapes along the walls. She listened to the reverberating thuds of her boots, a gentle lullaby to her hammering heart with the whirring of the air-recycling vents above.
She could count on her fingers the number of times she had left her room in the past couple of days. Mostly quick trips for green drinks and junk food from the vending machines. Or the dormant hours like this when she couldn’t sleep. And other than setting up their brief rendezvous this morning with Whistler and Zane, she and Lee really hadn’t talked to anyone else. Not outside of their meetings with the Commander and a few brief check-ins with their cadets. She wasn’t sure she was ready to face anyone and explain what they’d been up to, or where they’d been. It was hard enough to live it inside her own head, let alone explain it to the Commander.
Or the General… Kat still had no idea how he factored into all of this.Whenhe factored into this. He was here. They’d confirmed it—or, rather, Whistler had, on one of his trips down to the hangars to check on their former cruiser, Starla. And as to what he made of their actions on that raid… Kat wasn’t sure she was ready to see that side of the spectrum. The Commander controlled their fates as cadets, not him. He couldn’t dismiss them from the Raider Program, could he?Would he?
Was it selfish, that the thing she was most concerned about wasn’t the fates of the galaxy they’d disrupted with Segura, or its people, but rather remaining here with Lee?
She skirted around the edge of the stairway, searching, even though it was still dark for the one face that might push awaythose fears and ground her here. But she didn’t bump into anyone on her way down through the Heptagon. She had run a few laps around the lower training levels, resigned to another tortuous hour in solitude, when one of the training room doors slid open.
She jumped.
“You’re up.” Lee blinked, glancing at her. His hair was a bit ruffled in the front, brown strands tousled where he’d piled the waves over his brow and ear, his green eyes strained. A soft sheen glistened over his brow.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she admitted.
