“Are you sure? You could still change your mind. We have another week or so before the Commander expects our Placement applications. You could take your time and make sure this is what you want. This is permanent. This is different from rebelling against dorm codes or after hours access, or even what we did with Segura.”
“If we do this,” he continued, his voice quieter, slower, enunciating every syllable so that they both might understand to what they were agreeing. “If you follow me on this, there is no coming back.”
But Kat ran her tongue over her teeth. She shook her head. “I told you, we’re doing this together. We look out forusnow. Where you go, I go.”
“Wherever the stars may lead,” he breathed, his breath caressing her face.
“Wherever the stars may lead.”
Their new promises to one another rang through her head as they checked out inspections and cleared their skimmer for flight. They echoed around the ship as they greeted their squadron and ran down the mission overview. And when Leecued up his famed—if somewhat tamed this morning—raid playlist, their promises harmonized with the bridge of that first song. Resonating in gold and glitter as they blitzed into the near reaches of their galaxy.
One last time.
They were doing this one last time.
Late that afternoon they returned back to the Academy. As their homecoming present, they got to drop their sample bins off with the radiology labs.
“That’s the last of it,” Lee said, wiping his palms against the legs of his pants.
“Finally,” Kat groaned. Their latest De Myra planet had turned out to be illustriously mountainous, lending for quite the calf workout as they’d scored a representative sample load. But they had survived. “At least we got to take care of one more planet in need before we go,” Kat stated, aloud, trying to keep the mood light before the aches set in. She had a feeling darker days would be up ahead.
“As much as we are able,” Lee agreed, running a hand through the brown waves tickling his neck. She mentally added getting him a haircut to her massive-and-growing list of things to do before they departed. As it stood, her plans currently included the following:
1. Find evidence that might stall the General’s plans.
2. Covertly say goodbye to all her friends.
3. Flee the Academy.
4. Find Segura and save the galaxy.
It was easy as strawberry pie…
Shoving down a quick dinner and gluttonous splurge of dessert, they slipped back upstairs to get their holoblocks.
“Okay, so logistically,” Kat said, once they were out of range of the lower Heptagon floors, “how exactly do we go about finding Gaia? They have been known to be quite elusive in the past…” The fact that Segura had escaped detection as long as it had was proving to be a greater feat than she ever would have imagined. For their sakes, she was glad; it was their best defense.
But as to her and Lee’s plight, that was going to be a bit of an issue.
“We know they’re doing something with harnessing the dark—” Lee cut himself off abruptly as Ciela and Sean came down the stairs towards them. Tipping his head towards them in acknowledgement, Lee waited until they’d put more distance between them before starting up again. “We know they’re doing something with harnessing the dark rays,” Lee said, his voice lowered. “Maybe we start in that third quadrant and trace its perimeters… I doubt they’d go deeper on such limited resources.”
They swung by Lee’s dorm first to pick up his holoblock, before starting around to hers.
“I wish we had access to the actual mainframe,” Lee lamented. “Maybe they recorded something about transport details, or base weather conditions or something.”
“Same,” Kat said. Although she didn’t admit the fact that their hands were already full as they were. They still had pages of notes on the mainframe they had yet to get through. For all they knew, they could have the answers to the questions sitting right in front of them at this very moment.
Scanning her hyperband at her dorm, she and Lee slipped inside, Lee kicking back on her bed while Kat dug up her holoblock.
She flopped over onto the faded pink duvet next to him where he toyed with a thin, dark-colored band.
“Is that—”
“My radiation band. Yeah,” Lee said, spinning it around his fingers. “I found it last night.”
“I’m surprised you kept it. I honestly have no idea where mine went…” Kat peered around the bits of paper and clothes scattered around her floor.
Lee shot her a bemused expression. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
