Chapter 5
Lieutenant Karax
It had been several days now.
Several days of perfecting the Sora program. And several long, hellish days of not being able to concentrate.
For a second.
There was no news on Sarah. Not a word. She still had a personal civilian communication device, but she wasn't picking up.
She'd gone through all the correct steps in quitting the Academy, and though she'd had an altercation with Morq, she certainly hadn't committed any crimes. That meant he couldn't rely on the security network to track her down. Bottom line was she'd done nothing wrong, and if she didn't want to be contacted, that was her right.
It was driving him mad.
But it wasn't the only thing driving him mad.
In the few seconds he scrounged together the attention to focus on his task, he couldn't shake the feeling the Academy was making a mistake.
He kept trying to explain his misgivings to the Admiral, but he had nothing more concrete than an ever-growing sense of foreboding that shadowed him like a storm cloud.
He had no idea how a program like Sora could work. She was too smart, too adaptable. He'd attempted to gain access to the program's source code, but the trader's had denied his request.
As he walked along the corridor, he tipped his head to the side, staring out the windows.
He wanted the view to distract him. The bay beyond was particularly blue today, like a gem. The sun glinted off it, refracting around the glass buildings of the campus.
The view was lost on his tumbling mind.
His WD beeped. Rather than bring it up and check on the urgent message, he swore under his breath.
It would be the traders again. With more questions. They wanted to push this deal through as quickly as they could. He kept trying to tell them it had nothing to do with him. That he was just here to make sure it would work.
They seemed to think everything was riding on his decision.
Karax wished he had that power. If it were up to him, he'd have kicked the traders off campus on day one.
He brought up a hand and wiped it down his tense brow, fingernails dragging over his skin and probably leaving red, irritated tracks.
His smarting flesh was a distraction. One that couldn't last.
His goddamn WD beeped again.
He brought it up reluctantly and thumbed the receive button. “Karax here.”
“No more wait,” one of the traders said in his distinctive halting tone.
Karax clenched his teeth so hard he was sure his WD picked it up. It would probably sound like a rasp over metal. “I'm currently detained,” he lied.
“Inappropriate. Must move now.”
Karax rolled his eyes, pinched his nose, and hissed a breath through his teeth. “We're moving as fast as we can—”
“End this message now. You will come to facility.” The message abruptly ended.
Karax wanted to grab his WD, wrench it off his wrist, and smash it against the wall. Heck, in his current mood, he half wanted to take it to the armory and shoot it.
Instead, he shifted his jaw from side-to-side, locked his unwavering gaze on the floor, and marched forward, body as rigid as a flag pole.
He didn't get far. Just as he was wavering between kowtowing to the traders or ditching them, he ran into Cadet Nora Falcone.
Not literally. But she did run right up to him, her cheeks flushed.
She didn't pause to say hello. “Do you have her contact details yet?”
He could have drawn her up on her curt demand. He didn't.
He understood exactly what she was going through.
Reluctantly he nodded. “I've got them, but she's not receiving calls.”
Nora looked desperate. “Give them to me – I'll see what I can do.”
Karax hesitated. Even though he'd promised Nora he'd share Sarah's contact details, technically it was against the Academy's privacy rules.
He could get in trouble for breaching them.
Nora didn't drop his gaze. She gritted her teeth and spoke through them, “She doesn't have any family, Lieutenant. She'll be out there on her own....”
Guilt shifted through his gut. He opened his mouth—
“We have an obligation to look after her. She doesn't have anyone else.”
His stomach sank even further. “Fine, I'll hand on her details.”
Nora clasped her hands together, closed her eyes, and whispered an emotional thank you.
He let his hand drag down the back of his head as he clenched his teeth. “I'll send them through to you—”
“Now,” she demanded.
Again, he could have pulled her up on that.
He didn't. He understood the desperation flickering in her gaze – if only because he knew it was matched by his own.
He didn't pause. He brought up his WD, typed in a few commands, and sent it to the cadet.
Almost instantaneously, her WD beeped. She yanked it up, eyes drawing wide as she brought up a jerky finger and tapped it over the screen.
Half a second later, she let out the breath trapped in her chest. It wheezed through her teeth, sounding like air escaping a cracked pipe.
“You won't regret this, Lieutenant. I will get in contact with her,” Nora said with quite some determination, “And make sure she's okay.”
“Let me know when you do.”
With that, he turned away. And for the first time in days, the guilt started to lift.
Started. It would take a heck of a lot more to eke it from his bones and muscles.
No matter how hard he tried, Lieutenant Karax simply couldn't shake the feeling that Sarah Sinclair was in trouble. Or if she weren't in trouble, she would be soon....
...
Sarah Sinclair
She'd found some work.
She'd answered an advertisement around town for one of the Zhangjiajie floating bars.
She'd never heard of them until she'd arrived here.
Nightlife culture was a different thing around the Academy. Regulated. Watched over.
You had very few options if you didn't want to run into the E Club or the Security Forces.
Out here it didn't matter.
Zhangjiajie was right at the foot of one of the transport elevators that manned some of the Earth's mega structures in orbit. Everything from Station Zero to the shipbuilding yards.
As such, it was a worker's city, packed full of aliens who worked hard during the day and played hard at night.
Though the city itself was packed full of bars and clubs, that's not where she wanted to work.
That's why she'd used what little money she had left to hire a returning bubble transport to the Zhangjiajie floating mountains.
Just outside of the massive city that had sprawled through the mountains over the last several hundred years. Those mountains were jam-packed with breathtaking natural phenomenon. Tall stacks of fingerlike rock formations capped with dense green growth, magnificent waterways and wondrous creatures of the water, earth, and sky.
As the persistent fog and mist crawled through the valleys beneath the mountains, they seemingly cut them off from the ground, and you could be forgiven for thinking the peaks detached from the very earth and floated through the skies.
They didn't.
But the famous floating bars of Zhangjiajie did.
As her returning bubble transport beeped that she'd arrived at her destination, it hovered low to the ground, and the glass door in its side opened. She hooked a hand on it, threw her bags onto the damp forest floor below, and jumped out.
As soon as she disembarked, the bubble transport beeped. “Returning to dock. We hope the passenger has had a pleasant ride. Please consider using Zhangjiajie Returning Transports again. Enjoy your day.”
Without another word, the bubble transport shot up into the sky, into a bank of clouds, and out of sight.
She pushed a hand up and over her eyes as she watched it.
It was nothing more than a transparent round ball with a seat inside. Nowhere near as versatile, maneuverable, or ultimately safe as a mini cruiser. Still, it had gotten her here.
She leaned down and picked her bags up, ignoring the dampness they transferred along her back and down her plain civilian tunic.
Sarah Sinclair hadn't been off world that much. A couple of times with Academy training, sure. But she hadn't ventured through the galaxy.
And yet, as she pushed her way through a rock path cut through the dense undergrowth... it reminded her of something.
Deep down, she felt something churn in her gut. A long-forgotten memory, maybe, just the feeling... she'd been somewhere like this before.
She swallowed it, literally, as she sucked in a gulp of air.
There was one thing she couldn't deny as she made her way forward, her boots trudging over the mossy, damp rocks.
That feeling was distant now. The one that told her someone was walking over her grave.
She could barely feel it. Yes, it was still there, right at the edge of her mind, but it was no longer as terrifying and uncontrollable as it had been at the Academy.
She tilted her head, bringing a hand up and pushing a branch from her face.
She should have left the Academy years ago. She should never have joined.
Her civilian communication unit suddenly beeped. She wasn't wearing it, but it reverberated through her bag.
Frowning, she wondered whether she should ignore it.
She knew full well who it was.
Lieutenant Karax.
And she knew full well what he wanted to say.
That she was a coward for quitting the Academy. That she needed to return, face up to what she'd done.
She didn't need to hear that.
So she ignored the call. Five minutes later, however, her communication unit began to beep insistently once more.
Though Lieutenant Karax had been trying to contact her continuously over the past several days, he wasn't usually this persistent.
Letting out a terse breath, she stopped, unhooked her bag from her shoulder, let it slide down her arm, and yanked open the flap. She pulled out her communication unit.
And stopped.
A picture of Nora's smiling face hovered over the screen.
... Sarah's stomach sank. It felt like it plunged through her gut, down past her legs, and sank into the center of the earth.
She couldn't face her friend.
Before she could stop it, a message began to play.
Nora's voice.
“Please, Sarah, please just answer. I need to know that you're okay. Please.”
Sarah screwed her eyes shut, trying to damp back the tears that threatened to splash down her cheeks.
Before she knew what she was doing, she thumbed the accept button. Still standing there with her eyes screwed shut, she technically faced her friend. “Nora, you don't have to worry – I'm fine.”
“Sarah!” Relief exploded through Nora's tone. “Where are you? What happened—”
“You know exactly what happened, Nora, you were there,” Sarah's tone dropped unavoidably, the raw emotion of the past few days welling up and infiltrating her voice.
Nora paused. “I'm so sorry. Sarah, I'm so sorry. But you have to come back—”
“There's no way that's going to happen. I'm fine without the Academy,” she put a lot of emphasis on saying the word fine.
“Sarah, we're all worried about you.”
Sarah couldn't help but snort. “Who is this we, Nora? You're the only person who ever cared—”
“That's not true. Lieutenant Karax has been trying to contact you ceaselessly since you left.”
Sarah snorted again, this one so derisive it was completely at odds with her usual soft character. “Why? So he can reprimand me? He doesn't have any authority over me anymore—”
“Sarah, just wait for a second. He wanted to say sorry. He feels guilty over what happened. Just hear him out.”
Sarah pressed her lips together. No, that wasn't quite right – she ground them together, harder and harder, as if she was trying to turn her flesh to dust.
“I know what you're thinking, but I'm telling the truth. And so is he. I genuinely think Lieutenant Karax wants to apologize. And he's worried about you.”
“... There is nothing to be worried about. Like I said – I'm okay.”
“Where are you?”
“I found my own feet. I'm fine,” Sarah insisted.
“Sarah...” Nora suddenly paused.
Sarah frowned. Even though she wanted to end the conversation, there was something pressured about the silence that got her attention. “Nora?”
It took a few seconds for Nora to reply. “The Academy's on yellow alert.”
“What?”
“Listen, I have to go. I'll call you back. You will promise to answer, won't you, Sarah?”
Sarah considered telling Nora never to call again.
But she couldn't do that to her friend.
She dropped her gaze and stared at her already muddy shoes. “I'll pick up. Good luck with your alert. I hope it's not serious.”
Nora let out a relieved laugh. “Who cares if it's serious? All that matters is we've reconnected. I'm so sorry for everything that's happened, Sarah.”
A few tears touched Sarah's eyes. She nodded feverishly. “So am I.”
“Alright, gotta go—” Nora's line was cut off.
Sarah frowned. She brought her communication unit up and tapped it a few times. Maybe she was making this up, but it didn't sound as if Nora had ended the call – it sounded as if the communication line had suddenly gone blank.
After a few more seconds of prying and prodding at the device, trying to figure out if there'd been a problem with the feed, Sarah gave up.
The yellow alert was probably a drill. And once it was over, Nora would call back.
Though an uneasy feeling fluttered through Sarah's stomach at that, she also felt a scrap of relief.
While she had absolutely no intention of going back to the Academy, it would be nice to keep Nora as a friend.
And as for Lieutenant Karax... maybe she'd give him one more chance, too.
If he called, perhaps she'd do him the dignity of answering.
As Sarah pushed the yellow alert from her mind and crammed her bag back on her shoulder, she kept her communication device clutched in her hand. Though she'd gone to put it back in her bag, she'd stopped.
She wanted to hold onto it for now.
She continued her trek.
In another few minutes, she crossed over a mist-covered hill and looked down at a stunning sight.
The floating mountains of Zhangjiajie.
They were breathtaking. She'd never seen anything like them. They pulled up into the sky, sheer rocky sides struck through with waterfalls. With their dense foliage-capped tops, they looked more like megalithic trees than mountains.
She stood there until she spied the bar.
While the mountains themselves were one thing, the floating bar was another. She'd read up about it before she left the city. During the day, it was separated into units where the staff lived. Little pod-like structures that drifted off through the floating mountain range and nestled against the craggy peaks.
At nighttime, when the bar kicked into gear, the pods joined together and floated around the mountain range to make the best use of the view.
It's one of the reasons she wanted to work for this bar, specifically – as it provided not just a source of income, but bed and board.
Plus, she adored the idea of having her own small pod ship that she could park against any number of these beautiful peaks. She could wake up to dusk setting through this incredible mountain range, light penetrating the craggy peaks and ever-present mist.
It was nearing dusk now, and as she tipped her head back, she saw the stark oranges and purples play against the horizon far above.
She pushed her bag higher up her s
houlder, drew in a deep breath of the pure, clean air, and strode forward.
Though she wanted to say she'd put the Academy and her past behind her, her mind kept flicking back to Nora.
To the yellow alert. And once or twice, to Lieutenant Karax....