Broken Episode One

  Chapter 4

  He was seething. As soon as he got back to his office, he was going to engage in a good session of sparring with a holographic enemy. He wanted to punch something, and the only way to make that feeling go away was to actually punch something. Preferably something that wouldn’t get him chucked into prison.

  Though he tried to convince himself that he hated being called a hero, he’d hated Miss Chester’s questions even more.

  While she was right, and he did have a past, he couldn’t have it brought into the light. Though in part he wanted people to know where he’d come from, if he told the truth, he’d be stripped of his rank. And if he was stripped of his rank, he’d lose his only reason to exist: destroying the Rebuilders and keeping the Coalition’s enemies at bay so he could slowly expunge his sins one good deed at a time.

  While the Academy command clearly knew of his past and had come to terms with it, the wider populous of the Coalition was still clueless about the kind of man he once was. Though there were rumors, and here and there his old enemies were happy to give interviews, the exact details of all the terrible things he’d done had not come to light. If they did, public opinion would swing against him. Everyone and everything would swing against him. The Coalition Academy would try to keep him on, but they’d have a fight on their hands.

  Or would they?

  The Academy was very good at making heroes. They were also very good at molding public opinion. When they recruited him, they knew his past would eventually come to light. So rather than have it revealed suddenly and sensationally, they released trickles once in a while, but only ever after Josh finished some important mission.

  They were trying to control his image.

  And it sickened him.

  Yet he needed them to continue. Josh couldn’t lose this new life. He couldn’t lose the opportunity to reinvent himself. To make up for everything he’d done.

  Still, he probably shouldn’t have shouted at her like that. That being said, she’d taken it remarkably well.

  Unusually well.

  She’d smiled every time he’d berated her.

  Whenever somebody verbally or physically attacked Josh, his standard reaction certainly wasn’t a smile. It was to fight back.

  It was with these thoughts on his mind that Jack finally made it back to his office. As he programmed the computer to create a holographic sparring partner, he found his hands typing in another command.

  He was looking her up.

  Miss Chester.

  He didn’t know much about her, save for the most important fact: she was the only child of Theodore Francis Chester the Third, possibly one of the richest men in the entire galaxy. Josh knew what that meant: it meant Mimi was a spoiled brat. A kid who’d grown up without a care in the world, with everything she ever wanted delivered at the drop of a hat.

  He did, however, know one other thing about Mimi: she’d been an Academy recruit a few years ago. Then there’d been an accident, her fault, apparently. She’d been kicked out.

  As he read the official report, it painted a different picture. The accident had been just that, an accident. There’d been some kind of fault in an engine system, Mimi had missed it due to inexperience rather than negligence, and she’d been exonerated of any wrongdoing. She’d left the Academy by choice, not by an edict.

  That wasn’t the story the cadets told. He’d heard a couple of them talking about her once. Apparently, she was arrogant, careless, and operated on the understanding that whatever she stuffed up, her father would fix.

  It was easier to believe the cadets over the official report. Not because official reports were usually wrong, just because it felt easier. Labeling Mimi as arrogant and stuck up made it simpler to ignore her accusations.

  Because if he couldn’t ignore her accusations, he’d have to pay attention to them. And he just couldn’t do that right now.

  So, finally satisfied that Mimi could be written off, Josh pushed up. He set his armor to disengage, ensuring it wouldn’t suddenly leap over his body at the first sign of a fight. Then he balled his hands into fists and approached his holographic enemy.

  He was going to do this bare-knuckled. With a man like Josh, that was the only way.