by Kass Morgan
Arran could feel the eyes of everyone in the dining hall turning to him, but for the first time in his life, the attention didn’t bother him. Without looking up from his wrist, he hurried out of the room to find his squadron mates.
CHAPTER 7
VESPER
I’ll always be there to catch you, Vee. Vesper grinned at the warm, tingling feeling these words produced when she replayed them in her head, though part of her was afraid to replay them too often lest they lose some of their potency. She wanted to savor them for as long as possible.
Rex was the first person who’d caught a glimpse of the real Vesper—the girl she kept hidden away behind her screen of brash confidence and ambition. Rex was the only person who’d seen her break down, who’d heard her explain why she’d never felt good enough, why there was part of her that always felt like a fraud. He’d seen her, and instead of running away, he’d pulled that girl closer. For the first time in her life, Vesper knew what it was like to be seen—and maybe even loved—for the real her.
Her link buzzed on her wrist. “New message from… sender unknown,” her monitor announced. That was strange. The only time she’d received a similar message, it’d turned out to be from her mom, who’d been stationed at a top-secret base on one of Chetire’s moons.
She opened the message and, to her surprise, saw that it was a video transmission. When the face appeared on her link, Vesper’s knees gave way, and she sat on her bed with a heavy thump.
“It’s me, Orelia,” Orelia said unnecessarily. For the past four months, Vesper had spent two hours a day six inches from her squadron’s intelligence officer. She knew the side of Orelia’s face as intimately as she knew the contours of the simulcraft’s control panels.
Vesper froze as a barrage of emotions battled for dominance. After the initial pang of shock, a wave of hot anger rose up. This was the spy who’d infiltrated the Academy, earning the trust of everyone around her so she could send the school’s coordinates to the Specters.
Yet even the tide of anger wasn’t enough to drown the relief she felt at seeing Orelia alive and well. Or, at least, alive. She looked somehow exhausted and exhilarated. Dark shadows hung beneath her eyes, and sweaty strands of blond hair clung to her flushed face.
“I’m so sorry,” Orelia said, shaking her head. “I know I let you down. I know I betrayed you. But… it’s more complicated than that. I…” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I guess by now you’ve heard that I’m not from Loos. I’m from Sylvan, though I know that’s a name you’ve never heard before. I’m what you call a Specter.”
Orelia paused as if waiting for Vesper to process what she’d just said.
“I know you have no reason to trust me, but there’s something I need to tell you.”
An unsettling mix of nausea and numbness spread through Vesper’s body as she watched a breathless Orelia explain how the Quatra Fleet had attacked the Specters’ planet first and then launched a massive cover-up to conceal the truth. It was like listening to the rantings of a mad person. It couldn’t possibly be true, could it?
“I’m on my way to Sylvan,” the message continued. “I’m going with Zaf—Lieutenant Prateek to broker a cease-fire and propose a peace summit. I don’t know when I’m going to see any of you again, so I wanted the chance to say…” Orelia closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. “I don’t know, really. To say I’m sorry… and thank you.” She opened her eyes and smiled sadly. “You’re the best friends I’ve ever had. The only friends I’ve ever had, really. And whatever happens, I need for you to know that.” Orelia opened her mouth as if to say something else, but the message ended abruptly.
Vesper paced the room, running her fingers through her hair and muttering, “There’s no way.”
“Elevated heart rate detected. Consider taking a few deep breaths and imagining a calming scenario. For more relaxation tips, say—”
“Dismiss and fuck off!” Vesper shouted at her monitor, which, mercifully, fell silent.
There was frantic pounding on her door, and before she had time to answer, Arran burst in. “Did you see this?” he asked, thrusting his link toward her.
“I just watched it.” She shook her head, but the small action was hardly enough to clear it. “I don’t know—”
She cut herself off as Rex stepped into the room, his brow furrowed. “Did you get it too?” he asked, sounding slightly dazed. Both Vesper and Arran nodded. “They’re sending Orelia to organize a peace summit?”
“Apparently,” Vesper said. “Though I have trouble believing that they’d really trust someone who, very recently, tried to get all of us killed.”
A look of pain flashed across Arran’s face. “She also saved our lives, if you’ll remember.”
“After revealing the location of the Academy and making us vulnerable to attack. I know she was our friend, but, Arran, I watched you almost die on that patrol ship.”
“That wasn’t Orelia’s fault,” Arran said quietly.
“What are you talking about? She’s the reason the Specters knew where to find us!”
“I don’t know… I just think it might be more complicated than that.” He shook his head and let out a long sigh. “I know I’m not making any sense. I think I’m too tired to put words together. I’d better lie down for a bit.”
“Are you sure?” Rex asked, looking at Arran with concern.
“I’m fine. I’ll see you guys later.”
Once the door closed behind Arran, Vesper turned to Rex. “Do you think we should go after him?”
Rex didn’t respond and lowered himself onto the edge of her bed, looking grave. She sat next to him and placed her hand lightly on his knee. To her surprise, he moved his leg to the side, avoiding her touch. “What’s wrong?”
She waited for him to say “nothing” and take her hand in a gesture of apology. To smile and tell her that he needed to study tonight. But he leaned forward, put his head in his hands. “Listen, Vesper… I think maybe we should cool it for a while.” He sounded strangely wooden, like he was reciting from a script someone else had written.
The words landed like a lash on her skin. “What are you talking about?”
He let out a long sigh, then turned to face her, still without meeting her eyes. “There’s just so much going on right now, it seems like we should really be focusing on what matters. Classes, patrol, preparing for the next Specter attack.”
“What matters?” Vesper said, as if repeating the mysterious words would unlock their hidden meaning. What could matter more than finding someone who brought out the best in you? Who made you believe in yourself? Who pushed you and challenged you?
“I mean, maybe if we hadn’t been so distracted by our own drama, we would’ve noticed that something weird was going on with Orelia.”
The hurt and confusion in Vesper’s stomach began to bubble into anger. “So, let me get this right. You’re breaking up with me for national security reasons? Wow, that’s really noble of you.”
Rex stood up and ran his hands over his buzzed hair. “I’m sorry, Vesper,” he said with infuriating composure, refusing to rise to her bait. “But I really think this is for the best.”
“Then why won’t you look at me?”
“I am looking at you,” he said with a weariness that made her heart sink. Just a few days ago, he’d looked at her like she was the only girl in the solar system. And now he was treating her like an irritant, a burden. Something he was better off without. But when she forced herself to look into his eyes, she saw none of the callousness she’d braced herself for. Instead she glimpsed something akin to pain.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked softly, stepping toward him to place her hand on his arm.
“I’m just trying to do what’s best… for both of us,” he said. Though this time, he waited a few moments before shaking her hand off. “I’m sorry, Vesper.”
She watched him go, frozen in place as he turned and left her room. I’ll always be the
re to catch you, Vee. Of all the lies Rex had told her over the past few months, this one hurt the most.
The multi-environment track was blissfully empty, so there was no one to stop Vesper from cranking up the gravity. Before she even finished her first lap, her lungs were burning and her legs had started to tremble. But after her bewildering conversation with Rex, the pain felt almost comforting. It was a relief to empty her mind and focus on nothing except her breath and her stride.
She knew she was better off without him, yet she couldn’t look at her red badge—the same as his—without feeling a stab of pain that had nothing to do with her burning leg muscles.
With a groan, she yanked her foot off the track, but before she could set it down again, she’d started floating. Instead of double gravity, it felt like she was bouncing in half gravity. “Hey!” Vesper shouted. “I was training here.”
A figure emerged from the control room and half jogged, half floated toward her. “I thought you needed a break,” her mother called. “I was worried you’d hurt yourself.”
“You’ve never worried about that before,” Vesper shouted, trying to hide the relief she felt as she landed lightly on the track, then took off again, launching into the air for nearly five seconds.
Admiral Haze fell into place next to her, matching her giant, bounding strides. “Why aren’t you at dinner?”
“Wasn’t hungry.”
“Usually, skipping a meal for an unnecessarily grueling workout is seen as a cry for help. Is everything okay?”
“You’re skipping dinner too, aren’t you?”
“I’m eating after this,” Admiral Haze said. “So why aren’t you with your friends?”
Vesper hesitated, unsure how much to confide. Admiral Haze wasn’t the type of mother who had the time or inclination to follow the ups and downs of her daughter’s love life. Nor was she particularly fond of Rex, whose cockiness and Devak manners seemed to count for more than his brilliance in the simulcraft. But Vesper felt that she had to tell someone about what had happened, and at least she could count on her mother’s discretion. “I just had a strange conversation with Rex. I think… I think he just broke up with me.”
To her credit, Admiral Haze managed to arrange her features into a vague approximation of concern. “What’d he say?”
Vesper gave her mother the short version, partly because she didn’t want to relive the painful details, and partly because she knew her mother would only be able to feign interest for so long.
To her surprise, instead of responding with something like Don’t waste your time worrying about him; you can do better, her mother simply nodded thoughtfully and said, “That must’ve been hard to hear.”
“It was,” Vesper said cautiously, not quite sure what to make of this unprecedented amount of sympathy. “Especially since everything seemed to be going so well.”
“It’s a stressful moment… for everyone,” Admiral Haze said. “And people react to pressure in different ways. Perhaps Rex just needs a little time to process everything.”
“Maybe,” Vesper said. “We had just gotten some pretty shocking news.” She told her mother about the message she, Arran, and Rex had received from Orelia.
Admiral Haze came to a sudden stop. “She told you about the mission?”
“Is… is that okay?” Vesper asked as she tried to catch her breath.
“No, it’s certainly not okay that an admitted spy relayed sensitive intelligence.”
“We haven’t told anyone,” Vesper said quickly. “I promise.”
Admiral Haze muttered something under her breath, and Vesper braced for a prickly retort, but her mother merely let out a long breath.
“So it’s true? About sending a peace envoy to the Specters?”
Admiral Haze’s eyes brightened. “Yes, although we’re trying to keep it under the radar for now.”
Vesper stretched her arms out to find her balance in the low gravity as she stared at her mother in wonder. For her whole life, all she’d ever heard was that the Specters were bloodthirsty killers who couldn’t be reasoned with—who wouldn’t stop until every Quatran in the solar system was dead. “Do you think peace is really possible?”
“I hope so. The fighting has gone on long enough. It’s time to find a diplomatic solution.”
“Do you actually believe what Orelia said? About us attacking them first?”
Admiral Haze glanced over her shoulder, then lowered her voice. “I’m starting to. I’ve done some digging, and there’s a disturbing lack of documentation from that period, which is certainly suspicious.”
“But surely people want to know the truth, don’t they? What does Commander Stepney think about this?”
Her mother pressed her lips together, and when she spoke again, her voice was slightly strained. “Commander Stepney is having a little difficulty adjusting to the new circumstances.”
“But he must be coming around if he signed off on the peace envoy.” Admiral Haze looked away, and Vesper felt her stomach sink. “Mom… he knows, right?”
“I’m doing what I need to do to protect the solar system, Vesper. If there’s a chance of stopping this war, then nothing else matters.”
CHAPTER 8
ARRAN
Arran hesitated in front of the door that led to the Research and Development wing. That mysterious portion of the Academy required a much higher security clearance than Arran’s—a fact he’d learned the hard way once after making a wrong turn, setting off an alarm, and receiving a security escort back to his proper domain. But today was different. He’d received orders that, after his classes ended, he should report to Lab Four in D Wing where, presumably, the new technology team was meeting. However, there was no guarantee that anyone had updated his security clearance, and Arran didn’t want to risk triggering the alarm.
How did Orelia do it? he wondered. How had she managed to bypass every security measure in the Quatra Fleet? How had she arrived in the Quatra System to begin with? Who’d helped her forge all the necessary documents to gain admission to the Academy? That alone was an extraordinary accomplishment, never mind what she’d managed to achieve once she’d arrived.
As Arran stood in the hall, trying to decide what to do, three young officers approached—two men and a woman who looked just a few years older than Arran. They weren’t cadets, nor did they look like the senior officers who periodically traveled to the Academy to meet with Admiral Haze. They were heading for D Wing, Arran realized, which meant that they must’ve also been recruited for the new tech team. As they passed, two of the three shot Arran curious looks, which he understood. In a place as bustling and regimented as the Quatra Fleet Academy, it was unusual to see a cadet standing around, looking anxious—let alone one from Chetire, since these officers would’ve graduated before the Academy began accepting Settlers.
Heat rose to Arran’s cheeks as he imagined what he must look like—an awkward, lost first-year cadet standing in the way of officers here on real business. For a brief moment, Arran fantasized about turning around and going straight to his room, the one place where no one could make fun of his accent, his clothes, or the fact that he’d never been off-planet until he boarded the Academy shuttle.
You’re not that person anymore, he reminded himself. Your squadron won the tournament. You saved the Academy from a Specter attack and won the Medallion of Valor. You were handpicked for this new division. This is where you belong. Arran took a deep breath to steady his racing heart. He was going to show the solar system—Dash, his father, everyone—what Chetrians were made of.
Arran strode purposefully into D Wing, wincing slightly as he crossed the barrier. But the alarm never sounded; his clearance had been upgraded.
It didn’t take long to find Lab Four, a large room that contained workstations on one end and a conference area on the other. At the moment, everyone in the room was gathered in the conference area. The lights were dim and the chairs had been arranged to face a glowing screen. A cursory glance d
idn’t reveal anyone Arran recognized, so he sat down in the closest empty seat. A few minutes later, a tall, slim boy with purple-streaked black hair slid into the seat next to him. It was Rees—a quiet first-year Loosian who mostly kept to himself. Arran had always found him intriguing. Unlike other cadets who existed on the fringes of the Academy social scene, Rees didn’t seem shy and awkward. Instead, he projected a detached curiosity, as if he preferred to watch and observe from a distance. It was a little intimidating, actually. Arran wasn’t sure what to make of someone who wasn’t anxious to fit in and make himself liked. Even Vesper, the most confident person he knew, clearly cared about winning respect and admiration, although it seemed enviably easy for her to dismiss anyone who didn’t admire her as an idiot.
Unsure whether or not Rees was expecting him to make conversation, Arran pretended to fiddle with his link, which was easier said than done, given that links didn’t function in this highly secure wing of the Academy. Luckily, he didn’t have to keep up the ruse for long. A moment later, Commander Stepney strode to the front of the room and everyone scrambled out of their seats to salute and stand at attention.
He was accompanied by a young woman Arran didn’t recognize. She had short, unruly, curly black hair and was casually dressed in a combination of civilian clothes and military attire—an unbuttoned captain’s jacket over a T-shirt and loose gray trousers. Her outfit violated nearly every tenet of the Quatra Fleet dress code, but instead of seeming sloppy or rebellious, she gave the impression of a scientist too busy with important research to bother shining a pair of regulation shoes every day. “Welcome, everyone,” she said. “I’m Captain Alexis Mott. I’m heading up this newly formed research group, and I’m delighted that you were all able to make it today. I know many of you weren’t given much notice, but we don’t have any time to waste.”
She turned to Commander Stepney and nodded as he said, “As you know, the location of the Academy has been compromised. Ten days ago, a squadron of first-year cadets managed to prevent what would’ve been a devastating attack. Four days ago, a second Specter craft managed to enter our solar system undetected. This time, they succeeded in detonating an electromagnetic pulse that damaged one of our patrol ships. Cadet Sula Trembo was killed in the blast, and had it not been for the bravery and quick thinking of her fellow cadets, more lives would’ve been lost. Evidently, since the last round of attacks, the Specters have made certain technological advancements. For years, we were able to detect the enemy the moment they slowed from light speed, which allowed us sufficient time to prepare for an attack. We cannot afford to lose that advantage. That’s why I asked Captain Mott to head up this new initiative. You’re here because you’ve been identified as the brightest engineers and theoretical physicists in the fleet. We need you to determine how the Specters are evading our radar and upgrade our systems to protect our fleet from similar attacks. It’s a tall order, but this room is full of people who’ve achieved the impossible, and I have no doubt you’ll rise to this challenge as well. For now, I leave you in Captain Mott’s capable hands.”
