He’d put his trust in their hands anytime.
His squadron.
He clung to where he and Kat’s pinkies touched as he watched them battle for rank. She didn’t blink a match later, when he broke away to select a lighted vest further down the deck by another appreciated face.
“Hey, thanks for the tip-off this morning,” Lee murmured to Whistler as he pulled on a vivid violet lighted vest.
“Don’t mention it,” Whistler said, fishing his braid away from the buckles as he adjusted his own burnt-orange vest. “Starla says hello, by the way.”
“How’s she doing?” Lee asked, trying to remain detached from the welfare of their late cruiser as he let his eyes wander up the line of Gamma cadets getting ready to claim their islands. Near the end, Flyn talked strategy with Ness and another Gamma, Marco. Lee nodded briefly towards them when they glanced his way.
“They put her through the ringer with their investigations. The Commanding General ordered a full sweep of the premises when they got her back.”
“And now?” He zeroed back in on Whistler.
“She cleared,” Whistler said vaguely. Something about the idea of the General poking around their ship rubbed him the wrong way. Something to unpack later, because right now they had a match to play.
“Good luck today,” Lee called as he went to find Kat again.
Her bubblegum pink vest was already claiming an island by the time Lee weaved back through the throng. He hopped up to the nearest one as the steam trap below them gave a hiss. And as the arena around them awoke, the islands took their ascent fifteen meters into the air.
Lee had his hand on one of the glowing holodisks and was waiting on the buzzer when his neck began to tingle, like someone was watching him. He rubbed at the spot above his spine as he glanced around him, first at the glowing vests of the other Gammas, then over to the stands.
His eyes landed on the pale, cream-colored pantsuit of his Commander. Beside her, every muscle of his body rigid, stood her secretary, Nolan. And on her other side...
There.
The cold, dark stare of their Commanding General bored into him. He was still on the ship, then.
Lee knew that venomous look all too well by now, knew of what he was capable. And even through the dim lighting of the arena, the General’s eyes gravitated towards him and his fellow cadets. A reminder and a warning of just how insignificant they were in his eyes. Cadets could be dismissed. Raiders, replaced. And activity that flew too far to the wayside, erased from history.
The General’s gaze grazed over Lee again. As if frenzied from finally finding the source, the prickles along his neck intensified, climbing up to his face, but Lee met General Narron’s gaze and held his stare, refusing to back down. Not here. Not on his turf.
As the countdown on the holo-screen overhead finally began its ticking, Lee dragged his eyes back over the arena, pretending to survey the other cadets and mark faces.
“I’ve seen that look a time or two. Any game plan I should know about today, Waters?” Kat asked.
Lee wasn’t sure whether or not she had seen the Commanding General out there in the stands, or how much shehad read from his body language. But he slid another disk from the stack at his feet, testing his grip on each before flicking his eyes over to Kat, her hair glowing faintly pink at the ends.
“I’d hang wide, if I were you. You might catch some strays,” he answered.
As the buzzer sounded, Lee began the opening movements of his little orchestration. If it was discipline the General wanted to see, it was discipline Lee would give him. This was the Laser Rounds—Lee had practically written the playbook.
Glowing holodisks zipped around him from all directions. A neon melee to the untrained eye.
Lee swiped a disk from the air, keeping his momentum as he sprinted to the edge of his floating island and launched himself away from the clusterfuck of holo-madness.
But they were seasoned Gammas. He’d had to take much more care than that in setting up this particular ruse.
His boots bit turf as he landed, releasing a tempered breath as he scooped up a second holodisk. This one he also carried with him as he aligned his next strike.
Whistler winked as he danced into the fray nearby with his signature aerial interception. Almost deliberately shielding Lee from view as Lee moved again, stealing down to the island a half level below. Working his way around the playing field.
He took a moment to catch his breath, collecting the glowing disk from an errant throw.
His plan had worked out nicely thus far. They were down to a fraction of the Gamma cadets. Nearly all of the natural co-squadron biases and ally-ships had been broken thanks to Lee’s little process of unnatural selection.
Aside from he and Kat, that is. Her bubblegum pink vest danced along the far edge of the arena, hanging wide, as he’d suggested. A blur of grace and speed.
