“It’s not like that,” Kat laughed, but it felt fleeting and false. She trailed her fingers over where he rested them on the table’s surface. “Not entirely, anyway. I just took a little extra time to make sure she’s comfortable. She doesn’t like when I turn on the overhead lights first thing in the morning or rush out.”
“Uh-huh.” Lee raised his brow, his mortification turning very quickly to amusement.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Kat sighed dramatically. “It’s a chick thing.”
“Uh-huh,” he said again, eyes already rolling over to his holoblock to prep for the raid. She set hers down on the table, drawing up a holofile at random.
“Just for the record,” Lee said quietly, once he had the raid files open before him. “From what I’ve seen, the star flower is pretty resilient.” She didn’t miss the double meaning, not as his bright green eyes met hers over the light of the holotech.
They would weather this wouldn’t they? This new tension that ate at her whenever she thought of her future, or taking another mission. It was all about getting used to the idea again. Dark radiation or no. Academy or the stars.
But instead of opening up her raid files, her eyes dipped down to her holoblock as she slid her fingers along the heavy coating atop the tech. “There’s just so much to learn about the dark rays still. I feel like we’re constantly behind, chasing down a battle we’ve already lost. We should have the answers to stop this. Look at De Zolar…” And she wondered, not for the first time, whether there was someone out there who might have known more than they let on, the same someone who might have been able to provide them a solution had they been given the opportunity to exist.
“If De Zolar was going to get hit with dark rays, they were always going to get hit with the dark rays. The past few months doesn’t change that. But—” And Lee met her gaze again across the table. “No planet deserves that fate.”
They didn’t deserve it. But the dark rays continued to spread. And they would keep spreading if no one did anything. “I guess that raid is still coming down the pipeline,” she said, grinning weakly. “‘Cadets discover wonder tech and then use it to save the galaxy.’” She’d meant it to be lighthearted and joking. But everything was hitting too hard today.
Digging into her holoblock for real, Kat tucked her legs up under her.
“De Zolar’s got one thing going for them,” Lee said after a minute, his eyes scanning down the planet’s flyover statistics. “By the looks of it, only microscopic life was ever present. There’s no manifested species on the line with this one.”
Lucky them.
CHAPTER 20: LEE
HOURS LATER, Lee and Kat still commanded a table near the railing of the Hideaway. Its surface was now dotted with empty chip bags and green juice cups, the room teeming with post-training cadets. Thankfully, they’d managed to get through the majority of their raid files before the traction started picking up.
“Do you ever think about why the dark radiation targets where it does? What the common thread is in all of this?” Kat asked, head sinking down onto her hand as she toyed with the straw of her latest green juice. “De Zolar and the De Myra grouping are nowhere near the next dark-ray infested system.”
“That we know of,” Lee said. They knew first-hand how many secrets were kept even from raider-level security status. “Whatever the triggering factor, they definitely drew the short stick for this galaxy. It’s too bad for them, too. I read in one of these reports that they used to have part of the trade route pass through, back before the dark rays interfered.”
“Which file?” Kat flicked her eyes over to the holofiles drawn up before her as if she’d somehow missed some critical input.
“I read it here somewhere,” Lee said, sifting between his own holofiles. “I think I’m just glad we didn’t have to be the ones to confirm that death sentence.”
“Do you think it was Academy raiders?” Kat dripped a lazy search into the database, reading aloud as she typed, “Past raids to De Zolar…”
Lee snorted. “That’s not going to service us any…” His voice trailed off as a string of scripted and very obviouslyclassifiedfiles appeared in the glowing holograms above her holoblock. “Leads,” he finished. Lee scrunched his forehead, eyes gaping. “How in thevoiddid you pull those up?”
“I have no idea.” Kat sat up in her chair, untucking her legs from beneath her as file after file came up. “Pretty sure those aren’t supposed to be appearing for me.”
She flicked through to the control settings on her holoblock to read through the bit of code detailing the security allowances. “Hang on—” She scooted to the side to make room for Lee as he crowded in beside her. “According to our update history here, we neverlostour clearance upgrade from a few months ago. We never did confirm that, did we?”
“I didn’t think we needed to. But it’s sure looking that way.” Rather than retreating back to the other side of the table, Lee dragged his chair over with his holoblock, flipping it backwards as he straddled the backing. Kat watched with drawn breaths as he replicated the same search for his own access.
A matching string of files appeared between them.
“One loose clearance is a coincidence,” Lee muttered.
“And two?” Kat asked.
“This has Nolan written all over it.”
They were nearing the dinner hour, but Lee hadn’t come up with any plausible explanations for why they might still have their security clearances nor what they should do about them. He knew he should be wary, but a part of him was relieved for the chance to hyper-stress over something tangible.
“It has to have been Nolan, though, right?” Lee asked, bracing his hands on the back of his chair. “No one makes mistakes like this. And there’s no way we have them purely for enhancing our raid experience with knowledge of trade routes.”
“He has been acting super sketchy. I wonder if he thinks we’ll turn him in,” Kat said thoughtfully, sitting back, legs once more tucked beneath her.
