Kat glanced between Whistler and Demi again, then to Lee beside her, a different sort of sparkfly fluttering to life in her stomach and making loops about her intestines. It seemed she was about to put that trust to the test. She’d do this with him. With Lee, they’d always find a way to make it work, right?
CHAPTER 18: LEE
“ON THREE?” Kat asked Lee later that evening.
They sat at opposite ends of his bed with their feet facing each other, their unopened Placement applications hovering above the holoblocks between them, taunting them with its inevitable pull.
His racing heartbeat pulsed in his ears as Lee sucked in a tight breath. It was now or never… “Let’s do this.”
Locking eyes with Kat’s to ensure they were in sync, he tapped into the message on his holoblock and read off the first line:
“Dear Leland Waters—”
“Dear Kat Hanneman—”
On behalf of the Academy and the Allies of the Mangorian Galaxy, we invite you to apply for Placement within our Raider Program. Your responses, along with your rankings and accomplishments during your time at the Academy, will be taken into account and evaluated for the purpose of reserving your place at your preferred posts.
All applications must be completed within the timeframe as outlined below to be considered for this year’s Raider Placements.
Please see the recommended posts and availabilities below.
Sincerely, Commander Yvette Blanche.
Lee released another too-tight breath, his eyes going wide as he took in the pages and pages of available posts along with each of their lengthy descriptions and qualifications.
Not that they needed all of the pages. He and Kat had talked about one post, and one post alone, for years.
Sector XVII Raider.
The Sector XVII Raiders roamed the outer reaches of their galaxy with a focus on the exploration of the unknown. Their governing territory? Boundless. And accepting a Placement in Sector XVII would take them as far away from here as they could get.
The position title seared across the page. His prospective future was so tangible, he could already feel its burn under his fingertips, just a tap away.
It was a coveted position with limited availability. Placement at one of its posts went only to the top graduating cadets each year. Of course, he and Kat had known this and had been tailoring their Academy experience just so to ensure there would be no issue of plausibility or eligibility when the time came for application.
Request for Co-Raider Placement: (Note both applicants must qualify for Placement post in order to apply.)
He could already picture her name curled around the adjacent line in a messy scrawl, the letters as vivid as any on the page. It had been inked there alongside his from the very beginning.
As he stared at the empty application, more nicknames from their past raids glittered across the expanse of his mind, as if stolen from time itself:
Slinking Monster Defense.
Toroidal Belt Flat-liners.
Defenders of Quadrant III.
Emotion tremored along his jaw. Elation. Excitement. Fear. Uncertainty.
Had all of that really been last term?
Kat’s vanilla-blonde ponytail glowed in the bright lights of her holoblock opposite him, her pert face drawn as she processed the same words on the screen.
He didn’t know why he’d just assumed it would be all easy and uphill after this. Here it was, right in front of them. The moment they’d been working their entire Academy careers towards. And he could picture it.Void,he could picture it as vividly as he could Kat’s name next to his. They’d have their own ship to command as they saw fit, zipping about the galaxy on a whim in between assignments, the missions theirs to interpret, with Kat at the pilot-seat and him hers to command. The speed. The rush. The danger. And only the Commanding General to answer to…
And that’s where the mental picture froze and the dream went dark, his blood running cold.
He blinked, and the image in his head warped, strobing blue-green and then violet before fading to a set of piercing, coal-black eyes—the General’s eyes—staring back at him.
