“How much time can you buy us?”
“You’ll have roughly ten minutes.” Jed considered this. “Maybe fifteen if I time the match right. But you’ll want to get out of there pretty quick. Any longer, and the system will recognize the breach, locking you out of the system and likely alerting our fair Commander of the outside intrusion.”
“Ten minutes.” Lee exhaled. “That will be tight.”
“We’ll make it count,” Kat assured him, nodding towards Jed. “We get in there, we get what we need, and we get out.”
They’d gotten very lucky, not just with having Jed on hand, but with finding the Commander away from her suites tonight.
It had taken the last couple of days, scanning the pipeline, with multiple trips down to the Commander’s private hangar to get any grasp on her schedule. But when they learned of the off-ship council meeting happening tonight, it was now or never. If it was ten minutes they had, it was ten minutes they would work with.
“Have you done this before?” Kat asked, to which Jed actually looked confused.
“No.” It was several seconds before Jed said anything more, while he fed the hologram he had opened up on his holoblock what Lee would guess were the breach-paths. “Just know my way around a mainframe,” he breathed.
“Okay, and what of the cameras?” Lee asked, as he adjusted first the shoulders of his suit, and then one of the buckles at his cuff. It was almost time. He could feel the adrenaline already flowing through his veins. This was sort of their last-ditch effort to find something they could use. And as soon as they said go…
“Offline when I say so.”
Lee nodded. “Good.”
Good. They could do this.
He walked through the plan once more in his head. He knew the micro-stakes. And with all the luck the cosmos had granted them, timing also appeared to be on their side, for once. And if anyone ever found out—well they would deny Jed’s involvement to the brief end of their Academy days and beyond.
But they wouldn’t be found out.
This was simple. And in—Lee glanced down at his hyperband, noting the time. In another, say, twenty or so minutes, it would all be another colorful memory of the past.
While Kat combed her hair back into a fresh ponytail, smoothing down the flyaways with her hands, Lee turned to Jed. He reached into his pocket, extending the thin band he’d been carrying around with him over the past few days.
“When you’re done here, if you don’t mind, do you think you could look into this?” he asked quietly. It was another last-minute project. Almost an afterthought, but Lee intended to leave no avenue unturned. Not when he and Kat were gambling their futures on it.
“These were created for radiation tracking purposes,” Jed said, frowning. But he also didn’t hesitate in accepting the band and rolling it delicately between his fingers. The familiarity of the weight and feel on the pads of his fingers was evident with the motion.
“I don’t need to remind you, but be very careful as you work on this,” he murmured over Jed’s shoulder.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Jed agreed, folding it into his hand, before slipping it discreetly into his pocket.
Jed tinkered with the code on his holoblock for another few minutes. But Lee knew the moment the cadet gave his personal approval. Knew by the way Jed sat back in his chair, posture still stiff, rubbing a hand along the hollows of his eyes, even ashe continued to rove over the code, proofing, and reconfirming, going over it again and again in his mind. Lee had little doubt it would do the trick.
“You ready?” Lee asked. And Kat spun back around to face them, face resolved with her vanilla ponytail whipping sharply behind her, and a fresh coat of liner. She flicked those fierce eyes up to him.It’s go time.
She grinned, white teeth flashing under the holograms’ glow. He could see the nerves peeking through that smile, but that likely had very little to do with them flexing the rules tonight, and everything to do with the Commander’s office they flexed the rules around. But Kat was ready, she always had been. Just needed to remember how to stand on those fighting legs of hers.
Lee’s hyperband buzzed.
“Just sent the code. That will reset the timetable and get you into the system. Watch the hour,” Jed said, sinking further into the chair back.
“Thanks,” Lee nodded, double-checking he had the code.
“Feel free to take off once it times out. Just wait until we’re offline?” Kat requested, then she turned back to Lee. “Shall we?”
“After you, m’lady.” But Lee looked back briefly to Jed. “Thanks. For everything.”
And with Jed’s quiet nod, Lee followed Kat out of her dorm.
“Remind me again what we ever had against him?” Lee murmured once they were no longer in sight of her dorm.
