***
Jayson sat with Sarah in the corner of Academy’s lunchroom. It was designed in the fashion of a mobile diner and could roam the grassy streets of the Academy. It even had magnetic levitation, like the ships, built in for a smooth ride. The diner looked as though it could be over a hundred years old; it was just a tapered metal rectangle with windows. It might have served as a bus once. Sarah wasn’t there for the food; she was grilling Jayson about his run-in with the blonde assassin.
‘Did he look like he was the one in charge?’ she asked.
‘Yeah…’ Jayson swallowed, his throat parched. His face was blotchy and red, but he didn’t want what little sympathy Sarah might offer. ‘Yeah I guess so, he was on their ship the whole time. Could have been the commander I guess.’
‘What did he look like?’
Jayson sighed. ‘Light, wavy but short hair, strong jaw, I didn’t catch his eye colour, uh, high cheekbones... a girlish face, but he was tall and muscly too. Log on to the server and I’ll show you,’ he added, and connected to the Academy’s satellite communications network.
‘I didn’t know you had an iPC already,’ Sarah said. ‘Use a direct connection. Here’s my iPC address…’
‘Yeah it’s new. I can do it, all right? Get off my back.’
Sarah put up her hands in surrender. She connected to the local network and an image of the man on the Osprey came into her own iPC’s vision. She let out a small gasp and tried to cover it with her mouth.
‘You recognise him?’ Jayson asked, his voice breaking. He took a sip of recycled water. Sarah nodded and looked out the window of the diner, lost in a long bottled up memory.
‘His name is Rhys Fletcher.’
‘And?’
‘And... nothing. Looks like he got a promotion if he’s running his own Confederacy black ops squad now.’
‘How do you know him?’
Sarah got up. Her hands were clenched into fists, rage concealed beneath the surface. ‘You should have killed him when you had the chance,’ she managed.
Jayson just nodded and Sarah left, leaving him to expel his grief in private. Jayson never expected to feel this loss for Matt and Zoe. He hadn’t been their friend, they just worked together on occasion. He tried to contain it as he allowed his head to fall into in his hands. Through the blur of suppressed tears he saw a dark brown patch on the leather seat near where Sarah had been sitting. An ancient blood stain perhaps? No, it was ancient tomato sauce. He wished he had some now. His stomach grumbled as it loosened his nervousness from the fire fight.
It was frowned upon for him to eat in there; the pilots had their own kitchen adjacent to the hangar. But the diner reminded him of his time wandering down the American east coast. There was at least one Confederate patrol in each town with over a hundred people, so it wasn’t too hard to relieve them of some supplies as he moved from town to town.
Jayson blinked his eyes clear. He pushed himself out of his seat, popped a pie sachet into the hydrator on the service counter, gave it a minute, and then yanked out the concoction. He returned to his seat with a steaming hot bacon and egg pie, and stared out over the field where Casey was playing with a new toy in front of a group of students. The gun fired two blasts in quick succession, and Casey almost fell over laughing. Jayson wasn’t finding anything funny at the moment. He was poking at a piece of pie with his fork and dreaming of real coffee when Richard came in and sat across the table.
‘I heard what happened to Matt and Zoe,’ he didn’t mince words. ‘That’s pretty rough eh. You’ll be all right.’
‘I never even learned their surnames,’ Jayson said. ‘I don’t belong here.’
‘All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you,’ Richard said in a solemn tone.
‘Don’t do that.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t quote your favourite movie or book to pass yourself off as wise. You spend too much time in your library. Why can’t you say anything original? Something you believe, not a fictional character.’ Jayson knew he was being too hard on Richard, but he was angry. He pushed his pie over the table and got up. ‘You can have it, I know how you people get when you don’t get any pie.’
‘You people... what do you mean by that? Skinny?’
Jayson looked down at Richard, sitting in the booth with a perfect straight face, fingers interlocked on the table. Jayson’s jaw wobbled but he caught himself, then let the laughter and tears pour out of him. He sat back down, his anger dissipated.
‘You’re all right Richie,’ he said between coughs as he tried to get back under control.
Richard shrugged, ‘I have been, and always shall be your-’
‘Okay, okay don’t push it,’ Jayson said, miming a defensive posture with his hands.
There was a pause. Jayson looked out over the field again, but Casey was nowhere to be seen and the students were fighting over who should get to use the new gun. It had almost turned into a tug of war with the gun serving as a rope. Jayson smiled at the sight of games he never got to play as a child. ‘I’m too young to be feeling this old,’ he said.
Richard huffed. ‘In this line of work, we’ve been lucky to make it this far. Val’s pushing thirty you know. She should be getting ready to retire or go teach new pilots.’
‘Mm hmm…’ Jayson trailed off, his attention on the children laughing and playing outside. They didn’t stand a chance against the might of the Confederacy. ‘The nerve it must take to bring a child into this world. I don’t think I could do it,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘But I want to live. I need to be on the winning side.’ Could I really join those assassins in Korinthos? At least I’d be safer. ‘I won’t end up like Matt and Zoe.’
Richard wasn’t listening; he’d picked up a fork and broken off a slice of pie. He had his eyes closed as he let the smell of heavily processed bacon and eggs wash over him.
‘Mm just like Georgie-’
A screeching siren blared throughout the Academy, followed by a muffled announcement over a distant PA system. Richard’s eyes snapped open.
‘Get to the auditorium; they’ll want to have all the pilots there. I’ll find Val and meet you!’ He had to shout over the noise of the siren. The lights outside the diner winked out as they switched over to a backup internal generator. They came back on, dimmer than before to save power for defensive systems.
‘I didn’t even know there was a siren in this place!’ Jayson covered his ears and leaned in to be heard.
‘It can only mean one thing!’
‘They’ve found us.’