Lee had gotten so used to the feel of the skimmer, the soft purr of the engines, that he barely noticed it anymore as he stared out that front window of the ship. They blitzed past star systems and space ports, the unwritten and the invisible, their former raid barriers come and gone, vanishing behind them like so much else as they headed for the only place they now knew to go.
From what they’d gathered thus far, no one had been able to follow them or track them down. Which was a good sign. They’d wanted that thoroughly confirmed and dismissed before they drew near their destination.
As they did now.
They were only another hour, maybe less than that out, before they reached coordinates and learned what awaited them.
He spun the thin radiation band around his wrist. He still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that there had been coordinates encrypted to their radiation bands. He had that last message from Jed engraved into his vision.
Found this buried in the code. Good luck—J
The questions looped tirelessly around his head. Had that instruction always been there, just waiting for the right person to find it? Or had it been added later, just in case a raider, who’d displayed a sense of honor, decided to show them mercy?
They’d freely shared their radiation protection. And now they’d find out if they’d share their secrets, too.
“Hey,” Kat said, coming up beside him. He hadn’t even heard her enter the cockpit. She had some black smudged under her eyes, her vanilla-blonde hair hastily thrown back into a ponytail. But she looked happy—rested, that was for sure. He hadn’t seen her sleep that well in weeks.
“We’re getting close,” Lee said, nodding towards the radar scanner opposite Whistler.
“We should see it soon,” Whistler agreed, his voice echoing through Lee’s headset.
“I wonder what she looks like,” Kat mused. According to AMG records, the moon had fallen off the trade route years ago with the rise of dark radiation in the star system. And although records showed that there had once been quite the vegetation and water supply, the records were dated. Dismissed. They could only guess at what sort of planetary conditions they’d find out here.
“Do we have any idea how long this base of theirs has been active?” Whistler asked, his voice echoing through Lee’s headset.
“Only that it exists,” Kat murmured, squinting off into the distance, waiting to catch a glimpse. “Only by word of mouth.”
What would be waiting for them today? Gaia’s team had fled Segura barely a few months ago. That didn’t give them much of a head start to get operations off the ground and moving again.
“I wonder if they expected us—expectedsomeoneto find them again,” Lee added, having long since stopped seeing the stars flashing past the broad window.
“That’s a dangerous gamble,” Whistler said.
“Especially with the AMG,” Kat agreed.
“It depends how dire the stakes,” Lee said with a low voice. “I don’t know what was intentional and what wasn’t. But I do know that Gaia knew what she was doing. I was with her in those last moments before all chaos broke loose. She could have demanded we return them at any time. She could have quarantined us on day one.” Lee flexed his left hand, the band a brand against his skin. “I think it was a trust move.”
And he didn’t know why this part of it all had struck such a chord with him, or why it even mattered. But it had gotten them here. And maybe that had been the goal.
He slipped his hand into his pocket, tucking that mystery away for now. They still had a long road ahead of them. And whether or not Segura was the solution to all of their dark radiation problems, it was the next step down their path to uncovering the truth about their galaxy.
They had two missions.
They were going to learn what they could about Segura.
And then they were going to figure out what it had to do with the General and all he had planned for the rest of them.
And despite the clarity of his mission goals, and the earnestness with which he now trod, Lee was wholly unprepared when the faded green orb appeared outside their window, the tiny blip on the radar screen growing closer and closer.
“We have De Carmos So-i, within sight,” Whistler said over their headsets. And Zane also strode up into the cockpit to witness their destination for the first time.
As a squadron, they watched the abandoned moon grow until that faded green was various hues of greens and browns and charcoals, like they’d expect with any washed-out and wasted land mass.
They drew nearer, the dashboard beginning to short, the lights flickering. And as the first jostling of their skimmer began, Whistler shifted over to manual. A ballet for the masses. “Buckle up. I think we’re here,” his voice called through their headsets.
Lee pushed off from the dash, slipping back into one of the standing harnesses as Zane did the same. They knew enough now to recognize it for the cloaking device it was.
Which meant something was already up and running.
