Chapter 5
She woke up to an annoying buzzing. Blinking back the sleep, she realized it was Klutzo. He was zipping above her bed, making an irritating crackling noise.
“What?” She wiped the sleep from her eyes with her sleeves.
“Received important message,” he announced as he made a little loop in the air.
“What?”
“Job offer.”
“What?” Mimi leaped from her bed. She nearly tripped on a pile of clothes, but she kicked them away as she steadied herself. “What do you mean a job offer?”
“GNS saw your report on Joshua Cook. Yop J’k has sent you a message.”
“What does it say?!” She bounced around excitedly.
“It’s 100 pages long,” Klutzo pointed out, still speaking in his excited electronic buzz, “I shall read it all.”
Yop J’k belonged to one of the most verbose alien races in the galaxy. Fascinated by all languages, they would throw every word they could into a sentence, as if they were hoarding them. As a result, their communications tended to be astronomically long.
“Whoa, no, wait up. Just summarize it.”
“He believes you’re someone willing to ask the hard questions. He thinks you would make an effective investigative reporter. He’s willing to give you an assignment to test your worth.”
Mimi slapped a hand over her mouth. She couldn’t believe it. Or could she? Just as her elation peaked, so did her suspicion. Had her dad set this up?
She had asked him to stay out of it, and he’d always listened to her in the past. So hopefully he hadn’t called Yop J’k and begged the guy to offer her a job.
Maybe, just maybe, Yop really was impressed by her questioning skills.
With her stomach still churning with excitement, albeit a little subdued now, she nestled her hands onto her tummy as she got ready to ask the most important question. “Where does he want me to go?”
“He wants you to do a report on the Suqo Interstellar Baking Championship.” Klutzo made another loop in the air.
“A… baking championship?”
“It is a contest in which people compete to decide who makes the most delicious baked goods from across the galaxy.”
“I know what it is. I just thought… I’d get something more exciting for my first assignment.”
“According to the official report, the Interstellar Baking Championship is the most thrilling baking stand-off in all the Milky Way.”
It was useless arguing with Klutzo, so Mimi chose to nod her head instead.
Plus, it wouldn’t be that bad, would it? And Klutzo was right – it probably could get pretty thrilling. The contestants could get pretty heated. Last year two pulled pulse rifles on each other and had a shootout in the donut round.
And, to be honest, she could understand why she wasn’t getting a better assignment as her first job; she had to be tested first. In fact, when she looked at it objectively, this was a pretty good first mission to get.
“The Interstellar Baking Championship is in approximately one standard Earth week. It will take you that long to travel there.”
“Wow, so we have to leave now?”
“We have five minutes to relax,” Klutzo pointed out.
“Five minutes? I have to pack!” Mimi ran out of her room and into the main area of her spacious apartment. It had an incredible view of the bay beyond, and just to the left she could see the sprawling Academy grounds.
As she raced about, she paused for a second to stare at the Academy. To think, she was finally putting the past behind her. She was finally getting her break.
And she had Josh Cook to thank, of all people.
“GNS will fund your transport, and they have sent through your tickets. Due to a glut of travelers heading to the Championship, unfortunately we will not be traveling in style.”
“That’s fine,” she snorted, “It’s been a long time since I’ve been out in a luxury cruiser. I think I can handle cramped spaces and reconditioned food.”
“The transport in question is a modified Class Y tug. It is the only ship leaving Earth today that is headed in that direction.”
“Class Y? Oh… well, I suppose beggars can’t be choosers. It’s my first job, and I’ll be happy to get to it if I have to walk frankly.”
When it came to rating the comfort of transportation vessels, Class Y was practically the worst. It was one above Class Z, which meant the ship technically had to have life support and nothing else. She’d have to bring her own rations and hope like hell she got a seat.
Nothing could dampen her mood as she prepared, though. By the time she made it out the door with Klutzo in tow, she was ready to burst out into song.
She’d been trying for her break for so darn long.
It was finally here.
Though the sun was shining and the birds were actually chirping as she raced across the city to the secondary transport hub, the day wouldn’t turn out quite as nice as promised.
…
Josh took a seat on the rust bucket of a transport. By the time he sat down, she was already full to the brim. Though he usually traveled in Coalition cruisers, this mission was different. He’d been sent to look into a potential smuggling ring, and the captain of this very vessel was suspected to be involved.
Though Josh usually dealt with Rebuilder tech, when there wasn’t an imminent threat, the Coalition used his skills elsewhere. Plus, he had a unique perspective when it came to smuggling rings; unlike the other Coalition officers sent to investigate, he’d been in one.
He knew exactly how operations like this worked.
He tried to arrange himself in his seat so the springs under the threadbare foam didn’t dig into his butt. It was a thankless task, but eventually he found a position with his legs sprawled out before him and his scuffed boots lodged against a raised section on the floor.
He wasn’t in his uniform, hence the scuffed boots. He was in civilian clothes, as, according to his ticket information, he was visiting a resort ship out in the Nubria Cluster.
He hated resorts, even though technically he’d never been to one. Still, the very idea of them irritated him: rich folk swanning around spending all their money while others waited on them like slaves.
Just thinking of it brought up one prime example: Mimi Chester.
It wasn’t the first time he’d thought about her since her “interview.” For some reason, she wouldn’t get out of his head.
“Holy crap, speak of the devil,” he said as he watched in surprise as none other than Mimi Chester walked onto the transport.
At first, he couldn’t believe it. What the hell was a spoilt brat like her doing on a tin bucket transport? Was she lost? Or was she looking for him?
“Take your seat,” the Captain said to her as she let him scan her wrist device, no doubt checking she had a valid ticket.
“Sure, one question, though… umm, are there any bathrooms on this ahh… cruiser?”
“Yep, but the gravity ain’t working in there. Hasn’t worked for years.”
“Oh. So… we have to sleep in our seats until we get to our destination?”
“If you want to sleep, yeah.” With that, the Captain walked off.
“Oh wow, I can’t believe this is my first assignment,” Mimi muttered to herself as she clearly looked for a seat. “This is just—”
Josh watched her turn his way. It took her a second, then her eyes grew wide.
He crossed his arms.
“Take your seat,” the Captain suddenly snapped at her.
“Oh, I’m just looking for a place to sit,” Mimi said politely.
“There.” The Captain pointed to a seat next to Josh.
Mimi looked sick, but nodded and made her way over.
“Oh my god, it’s you,” Mimi muttered as she took her seat, immediately closing her arms around herself.
“Correct, it’s me.” Josh leaned back in his seat, enjoying the sound of the leather creaking as he crossed
his arms. “And no, you can’t have an interview. If you turn that on,” he pointed to the recording orb with a stiff finger, “I will throw it against the wall and stamp on its memory circuits. Got it?”
Though she looked uncomfortable to begin with, she didn’t gasp or swallow. He’d just threatened her, and all Mimi Chester did was bite her lip awkwardly. “… Throw it against the wall and stamp on its memory circuits? That’s not the usual threat I get. I thought the only legal action you could take against an unsolicited recording was to wipe its memory banks, not crush them under your foot.”
Josh crossed his arms stiffer. “I think we’ve both ascertained I’m not an ordinary Coalition officer.”
“Yeah. So… maybe I should find somewhere else to sit.” Mimi pushed up from her seat, neatening her casual clothes as she did. For somebody who was the daughter of the richest man in the galaxy, she sure didn’t dress like it. She was in plain gray pants with a light blue tunic on top. They didn’t match, and here and there they were slightly threadbare.
She had a pretty face, though. It was probably genetically engineered, he thought meanly. From her red cheeks to her sparkling eyes to her lustrous brown hair, no doubt her father had picked her out of a catalog. It didn’t matter that genetically engineering humans was illegal and that Mimi really wasn’t pretty enough to justify such an accusation, Josh didn’t edit his thoughts.
But he did watch in barely subdued glee as she walked over to one of the flight crew and asked for another seat. When the man told her that the only other seat was on his lap, Mimi politely declined and made her way back.
Josh shot her a sarcastic smile. “What, you didn’t immediately call daddy and get him to buy you a transport instead?”
She sat down next to him, adjusting her ugly tunic until it sat neatly across her knees. Then she set her recording orb down, as far away from Josh as she could.
They dwindled into silence.
It was uneasy.
Though she wasn’t rising to his bait, that didn’t matter. He had this urge to keep insulting her. So as the transport started with an ominous rattling gurgle, and Mimi made a worried noise, Josh took the opportunity to lean a little closer. “Not too late to get out.”
It was her turn to lean closer to him. “Not too late to start acting like a commander.”
“I’m a special commander.”
“Does that mean you have special dispensation to act like a dick?”
He snorted, but before he could continue the conversation, the engines hummed into life. No, hum wasn’t the right word – they roared. This transport had such little insulation between the engine room and the main deck that it sounded like they were inside a storm.
He watched Mimi cup her ears uncomfortably.
“It’s not going to get better. As soon as we hit faster-than-light speed, it’s gonna get a hell of a lot worse,” he told her, raising his voice to be heard over the engines.
“Why are you even on this transport? You’re a Coalition officer, don’t they usually ship you to missions in a little more style?”
He laughed, maybe a little too loudly. “Sorry, you’re talking to me about traveling in style? How many luxury cruisers have you been on, Miss Chester?”
“Don’t call me that. I’m just Mimi. And to answer your question, one.”
“What, you don’t book a luxury boat every time you head to the store?”
“No, I walk.”
Josh took the opportunity to smile at her snidely as he thought of what to say next.
She got there first. “Let’s not start this. I’ll agree to leave you alone if you agree to leave me alone.”
“You didn’t leave me alone at that briefing. I’m not sure if this is a fair deal.”
She turned to him. She had particularly pretty, piercing blue eyes. They were an odd pale shade that reminded him of the sun reflecting off a clear lake. “Special Commander, no offense, but you’re a member of the Academy. You have a public role, and you’re entrusted with a great deal of responsibility. But you also have a lot of power. Now not everyone may appreciate that the Academy has an excellent PR machine, but it does. When a company is so used to controlling its public image, it becomes even more important to keep asking hard questions. You may think I’m harassing you, I’m not. To be honest, I appreciate you’ve had a different upbringing to mine, and I appreciate you did what you had to to survive. All I want to know – and all the galaxy deserves to know – is whether you crossed the line one too many times. Only you can answer that right now.”
Josh’s gut clenched. A mix of nerves, anger, and shame washed through him.
Her words had cut way too close to the bone.
“Considering your past, I wouldn’t lecture me, if I were you,” he threatened.
“My past? You mean what happened at the Academy? I’d never encountered an engine fault like that – I was a third-year student. You think I did it on purpose? You think I was too arrogant to waste my time with looking? Well, guess what? Unlike your past, mine’s been thoroughly documented. The whole exercise was recorded for training purposes – you can see me making the mistake if you’d like. You can read through the numerous logs. As an officer, you can probably read the actual deliberations of the committee that acquitted me. It’s all there, because I don’t have anything to hide.”
Josh felt the heat of anger rise through him. “Every cadet thinks you made a mistake because you were too cocky to do the job properly. With your daddy there to fix your mistakes, you don’t care what you do.”
“Cocky? You want cocky? How about ignoring evidence in favor of hearsay. Three qualified engineers testified that the engine fault was virtually undetectable, and only a seasoned pro would have picked it up. I know what the cadets say about me, I also know that it’s easier to paint me as a target than look at their own responsibility. That training exercise should never have been approved. We were too young and inexperienced.”
“Really? You think you can exonerate yourself by pushing the blame onto your teammates. I see you didn’t stick around the Academy long enough to learn loyalty.”
“We were all part of E Club, though I’d only just joined. I’m not sure if you know what E Club is, as you kind of skipped standard training, but it’s full of people who think they’re the best and brightest. I think I was only invited to join because of my dad…. Anyway, Carinthia Forest wanted to organize a special training group to undertake battle simulations outside of classes. Cadets who go through more simulations have a higher chance of graduating as an officer, rather than a standard ensign. The harder the simulations, the better. So the E Club made them brutal. It should take a team of proper technicians to set them up and ensure safety protocols are working – all we had were undergrads. I was stuck with checking the engine systems. I wasn’t qualified. Once I finished, I realized I couldn’t trust my work, and I told them I wasn’t comfortable with the simulation going ahead without another person checking. They ignored me.”
Josh opened his mouth, but she put up her hand.
“Before you ask, that’s on the footage too. I even made a note in the log. And you want to know why I was stuck with engineering duty even though I wasn’t even studying engineering? Because they all wanted to take part in the actual simulation. I wasn’t bothered.”
“So what, you think this makes up for what you did?”
“Yes, I do,” she said flatly.
“You think your teammates are the ones to blame? Well, I’ve got news for you, you made the mistake.” He stabbed a finger her way.
“Yeah and no. I missed the fault – there’s no doubting that. But we should never have been there.”
“If you couldn’t handle the assignment, you should never have accepted it,” he said indignantly.
“Really? That’s it? That’s the solution? I was a weak link, end of story? So it will never happen again, then?”
“What?”
“I’m asking you if a training accident like that
will happen again. Surely if it was just my fault, then you get rid of me, and you’ve fixed the problem.”
“I’m not saying it will never happen again,” he conceded gruffly. “I’m saying you can’t dilute your responsibility by shifting the blame onto others.”
“Oh, for a second there I thought you were actually interested in stopping things like this from happening. Because if you were, you’d look at the culture within the E Club and the Academy as a whole. Having experienced that culture, I can absolutely guarantee you that it will happen again. Those cadets think the only way to get ahead is to push themselves. The Academy encourages that.”
He had to laugh. “The galaxy out there is pretty dangerous, Miss.” He leaned a little closer to her as he hissed the word Miss. “I’ve got news for you, the only reason you enjoy the peace you do is that men and women push themselves every day to keep you safe.”
He was expecting her to cower back. She didn’t. She looked him right in the eye, not even bothering to lean away, considering how close their seats were.
“I know that.”
“Really? It sounds like you take it for granted. It sounds like you’re all too ready to turn on your teammates, even though their only crime is trying their hardest to be the best they can be.”
“To be heroes?” She asked.
He opened his mouth to say an emphatic yes, but the word stuck in his throat.
Hero. He hated that goddamn word.
“What if the cadets in E Club aren’t trying to be the best they can be, what if they’re trying to be heroes?”
He shrunk away from her questions.
“What if they live in a culture that’s steeped in this myth of Coalition heroes single-handedly saving the galaxy? What if they’re bombarded with stories from the Academy’s press wing day in and day out espousing the incredible deeds of a few? What if they graduate thinking that the only way to save the galaxy is to become a hero? Do you think that will ensure peace, Special Commander?”
It was his turn to lean away from her.
“You don’t need to answer. We both know it won’t. You might be a lot of things, but you don’t strike me as dumb. I think you appreciate more than most that painting a world of heroes and villains only ever hides the truth. It simplifies complex situations into good and bad, epic and dull. It prevents us from ever finding peace, because a hero always needs an enemy.”
Josh stood up. It was a knee-jerk reaction. His body was so tense with anger it felt like he’d snap.
She looked up at him, never blinking once.
Mimi was turning out to be a lot of things, but he couldn’t deny she was brave.
And terribly goddamn obstinate.
“I’m going to find another seat,” he managed as he turned on his heel.
“I’m pretty sure the only one that’s left is on the Captain’s lap,” she quipped from behind him.
His back was rigid, his shoulders so stiff it felt as if they’d burst out of his top. Without another word, he walked away.
Her words followed him.
A hero always needs an enemy….