“Eighty-five percent good.” She understood it now.
“Nah, I think if I play it right, I can bump us right up to ninety-five.” Whistler winked. But his wink quickly turned to business as they strode the length of the cabin up into the cockpit. Knowing Whistler, he would have selected this particular vessel for its engine capabilities. It would be something special when he was through with it. She could practically feel the phantom thrum of the engine underneath her. She was just itching to test her out.
Soon.
“As to the transmission leak,” Whistler went on, casually motioning to the engine panel below them as if he were merely commenting on the size of the grates, “it will, in fact, not be an actual leak, merely the misalignment of a valve that will have zero effects on the current energy reserve levels or residual problems. They’re fully charged, I might add, and will continue to be kept so, along with the fresh transformer module I plan to swap out prior to your engagement.”
“And the tracking systems—” Kat began to ask.
“Will be fully disengaged with a photon blocker.”
Kat nodded. She tried to think if they were missing anything. But it seemed like he had it all covered.
“I can’t believe you guys are really going,” Whistler said, quietly.
“You’ll say goodbye to Demi for us, if we don’t get a chance to explain?”
“Of course.”
Something in the tone of his voice had her scanning his warm hazel eyes, the jaunty planes of his face, searching for some hint of that usually present crooked grin. But there was onlysomberness and seriousness there this morning. “You will be missed,” Whistler said.
And with the way his eyes caught on her own, with the intensity in them, that light, she really couldn’t believe that not too long ago she’d counted him among the wayward cadets of the Academy. A joke. Or an adversary, even.
Because now, all she saw wasfriend.He was Whistler.
“My friend, like a waterfall,” she whisper-smiled, remembering the silly words to the music that had run through her head those days over break while she was away on Bri’s Bala resort, trying to just ride the wave while she was still numb to everything going on back at the Academy. She had changed. And so, it seemed, had Whistler. “We go on and on and onnnnnn.”
“What?” Whistler choked on a laugh.
“It’s a lyric, from a song. One of Lee’s songs. It’s quite catchy, really. But I think I get it now.” She smiled, again. “I’m glad I had the chance to get to know you.”
And partially because she wasn’t quite ready to make this moment final, and partially because her eyes had already begun to mist over—she was probably one line away from overflowing—she went for theatrics and dramatics. “I’ll have to let Lee know that we’ve already started saying our goodbyes,” she teased, flipping her hair behind her. It was much easier to make light of the moment. Because she was really going to miss this.
Lee caught up to them as they were descending from the skimmer, the action beat buried like their appearance here this morning as Flyn and squadron loaded into their own ship for the morning’s raid. The very bustling they were going to be depending upon as a distraction in the days following.
“So something else I’ve been thinking about that I don’t know if you two have discussed,” Whistler began, stopping them as they cleared the hangar and the central skywalk. The dining sounds clattered over to greet them from the over-eager cadetsfilling up for their morning trainings. Kat could feel her ears perking up. If he had something to add to help them out, she was all for it.
“Say you do find them,” Whistler said. “Gaia, Dyinai, the whole crew. Wherever this base of theirs is, assuming, of course they have things up and running by now, what then? How do you plan to get the skimmer through?”
“Through… I didn’t even think of that. Of course they’d want to have their tech up and running again,” Kat said. And this was exactly why they’d wanted Whistler onboard with them. She expressed as much, with as much flattery and unneeded batting eyelashes as she could manage, which Whistler of course saw right through. But he turned up that crooked grin she’d been missing.
“I’m guessing you have some ideas?” Lee asked, neutrally.
“One,” Whistler said, some of that glee at the challenge sparkling in his eyes. “And I hope you guys don’t mind, but I already took the liberty of looping in a couple of my most trustworthy cadets.”
“Kiara and Kamata,” Lee said under his breath.
“Exactly, the very ones,” Whistler went on, as if he hadn’t already violated their initial request to keep this close. “But don’t worry, I didn’t give them specifics, more of a hypothetical project of sorts.”
“Go on,” Kat encouraged, her interest piqued. Where it was Kiara and Kamata, Kat didn’t particularly mind so much. And he was right, she’d trust them over just about anyone.
“We got lucky last time with our ship’s shield configuration,” Whistler said, flatly. “The way we configured our ship’s energy shields very nearly left us stranded and drained inside those forcefield-shields. And had there been no Segura, we would have been out of commission, likely for quite some time.”
“So what do you propose?” Lee asked, again, the clarity once more in his green eyes, always looking to the next step.
“We’re working on a preset, a sort of custom switchover program, if you will… I’ve been dreaming it up in my free time. We’ll have it done in time, I swear it,” Whistler said, tapping two fingers to the lifeblood of his left wrist as Kat and Lee exchanged glances. “But ideally, we’ll be able to shift between shield configurations with a much more efficient energy outtake. Allowing for an energy life more similar to what we are used to.”
Kat was againexceedinglygrateful they’d opted to bring Whistler onboard. But the shielding had brought another issue to mind. That of sorting out communication. Obviously they wouldn’t want to be shooting out signals left and right alerting the rest of the galaxy or their presence…
