The Unsound Theory (STAR Academy Book 1) Page 11

  “You might be right about that.”

  THE REST OF THE HOLIDAY on Unifier was odd. With nothing to occupy her during the break but some reading to get a head start on for the new semester, Yalena found herself replaying the signal again and again for hours on end. It may have been her imagination, but even when she tried to focus on something else, she sensed a hum through the air, as if the weird noise was playing in the background all the time. In the week leading up to New Year’s Eve, that hollow feeling left her longing for the days when she used to think Unifier was packed and claustrophobic. People breathed life into the space station. With most of them gone, it was a ghost ship.

  Yalena caught herself scanning the world around her, paying attention, spying on it, as if searching for something out of the ordinary. She never meant to do that. It was as if the signal had awoken her subconsciousness, and it trapped her in an alert state of mind she couldn’t shake. She told herself it had to be the sound of echoes in the space station, but the signal screeched inside her head incessantly.

  And at night, when she desperately wished for sleep, she was twisting, turning, seeing circles, and hearing the now-familiar hum drill into her brain.

  Chapter 13. The Generalist

  THE WOODPECKER HAS joined the conversation.

  The Woodpecker: Woot-woot!

  Yalena has joined the conversation.

  Yalena: That sounds more like an owl.

  The Woodpecker: You’re in high spirits, considering...

  Yalena: Considering I’m being blackmailed, yes.

  The Woodpecker: The Woodpecker doesn’t blackmail. He reminds people that everything leaves a trail. More than two hundred years into the digital age, and they still forget that somehow.

  The Woodpecker: Beats me.

  The Woodpecker: Are you still there?

  Yalena: You know exactly where I am. Don’t pretend that you don’t.

  The Woodpecker: It’s called polite chit-chat.

  Yalena: I’m sure you’ll see me move on whatever program you use to keep tabs on us, but I actually have to go. There’s a New Year’s Eve dinner for those of us still here.

  The Woodpecker: You got this all wrong, you know. I’m only trying to figure you two out. You could save me the time.

  Yalena: If you want to know what’s going on, you’ll have to ask Eric.

  The Woodpecker: I’d rather ask you.

  Yalena: Why?

  The Woodpecker: Because you’re on board. You’ve bought into the premise. I want to know what kind of thing could convince you to do that.

  Yalena: I can’t help you.

  The Woodpecker: Then perhaps my initial suspicion was right. If you can’t tell, it means it’s something bad. Stealing information? Maybe securing yourselves the two most coveted spots for the first-year mission?

  Yalena: It’s not what you think. We’re not doing it for ourselves.

  The Woodpecker: Am I supposed to take your word for it?

  Yalena: Yes.

  The Woodpecker: ?

  Yalena: You can take my word for it because I got Jen involved. She’s my best friend here. I’d never put her in this position if it wasn’t important.

  The Woodpecker: If you say so. But just be warned, The Woodpecker will be watching if you decide to browse unauthorized profiles again.

  The Woodpecker has flown off.

  Yalena has left the conversation.

  YALENA DESPERATELY wished Heidi was still around as she got ready for the dinner. She would have shared anecdotes from all her past celebrations and provided an endless supply of curious little factoids about living on Mars, the Moon, or wherever. On her own, Yalena didn’t have any, and it made her feel like dull company.

  “Relax. You don’t need any preparation,” Eric had said the day before when she’d voiced her concern. “Dana’s cool, my father knows you, and Cooper is a great distraction.”

  Still, a dinner with the three O’Donnells stirred some emotions Yalena couldn’t shrug off so easily. Firstly, she wouldn’t be able to switch off her brain, so she knew she’d memorize everything they said and compare it to what she knew of the signal.

  Restlessness: one; Yalena: zero.

  Then, there was that itch of discomfort that she’d be the only outsider at the table. No other Academy student had stayed behind, and eating with the equivalent of a royal family on Unifier would be more than a little unnerving.

  Discomfort: one; Yalena: zero.

  Last, but not least, should Cooper bring a date, there might be the chance of a distraction or—more likely—it could make things worse, positioning everyone on a half-hearted triple date.

  Awkwardness: one; Yalena: zero.

  That delightful cocktail of emotions would no doubt be magnified by the irritability she hadn’t been able to shake for days. The signal hissed like a rattlesnake inside her head, never leaving her truly alone with her thoughts.

  Great, Yalena thought, smoothing down the pastel green dress she had borrowed from Heidi’s arsenal. I’m losing on all fronts.

  Despite the faint Christmas music in the background and the red, green, and white decorations found in the corridors, Yalena couldn’t help but shudder thinking of the desolate space. There was something ghostly about the space station around the holidays. With most of its staff and students gone to see their families elsewhere, it felt empty and characterless—something she never thought she’d say about Unifier.

  She smiled a little when her Berry advised her to follow the candy-stripe markings on the floor to the dinner. It was probably the same venue they’d used for the welcome event, although with this many synthetic Christmas trees, she’d never be able to tell. Grateful that the room was bathed in soft candlelight, Yalena waved Eric over.

  “There will be around a hundred people at this party, according to my last count,” he answered the question on her face.

  “That still feels like too few,” Yalena whispered, thinking of the thousands of personnel Unifier usually hosted.

  Eric made a face before he led her over to one of the tables at the center. “I imagine my home must seem really empty to you these days, but not tonight. Gathering all the remaining crew in one place will do wonders for the atmosphere, trust me. And you have an honorable spot at the O’Donnell table.”

  Yalena let out a burst of flat, nervous laughter. “Lucky me.”

  Eric tugged a little on his tie. Being the O’Donnell heir became him. “Don’t worry. The signal won’t come up. I’m sure of it.”

  By all accounts, he guessed right. The promised shop-talk quiet dinner lived up to the expectations. That was until Dana, who seemed to know exactly how to tweak her comments depending on which of the three O’Donnells she was addressing, turned things in a more personal direction.

  “Didn’t Jea want to come tonight?” she asked Cooper.

  His smile was stiff. “We’ll never know.” Yalena thought he was baiting her to argue back, but Dana’s investigatory focus showed she knew better than to fall into that trap.

  “I talked to her recently,” Dana said. “She might be coming back to Unifier for a project.”

  Cooper scratched his chin, obviously looking for a way out of the topic. Yalena and Eric shared a look. His eyes said, “You don’t know the half of it,” so Yalena just pursed her lips and cut a piece of the asparagus on her plate. The awkward vibe on the O’Donnells’ table aside, the mere presence of actual food would be enough to build a nice memory of the dinner. The import must have cost a fortune, but eating grilled asparagus and anticipating the real steak that had been promised left Yalena’s mouth watering. No uniformly-shaped protein bars that only varied slightly in flavor and color. Not tonight.

  “Don’t forget we also have the Spring Gala in April,” the commander reminded them, less than impressed by Cooper’s reactions. “I’ll definitely invite her. She’s been doing a great job on the Moon Area 7. I suspect we’ll see Jea rising in the ranks in the next few years.”

  A
ll his comments were directed at Dana, simply intended to engage in the conversation she’d started on the topic, but Yalena didn’t miss a huff from Cooper. It gave her more than an intuitive inkling of the kind of relationship he’d had with this Jea in the past. Engulfed in her thoughts, Yalena felt surprised at the little elbow jab from Eric next to her. She glanced at him and then back to Cooper in a flash. This was probably part of the less-than-comfortable discussions families sometimes had. Even in her two-member household, she’d experienced a few.

  “What’s the Spring Gala?” Yalena asked. Without looking at him, she sensed Eric nod.

  It worked. Instead of Dana sneaking peeks at Cooper and the commander talking shop, glossing over the unsaid bits between the lines, there was an opening. If they had to lecture a newbie on the social events calendar at STAR Academy, they’d have less time to dwell on the personal.

  “Oh, you’ll love the Gala,” Dana said. “It’s not just a celebration, like the Snowflake Ball was. It’s actually the beginning of your Academy careers.”

  The sharp punch of insecurity Yalena felt in her stomach was unexpected. Foolishly, she had been looking forward to a breath of fresh air in the new semester. Having survived four months on Unifier and passing her exams, she nurtured hope that she’d feel a sense of belonging in the second part of the year, or—dare she even dream—a sense of mastery—the feeling that she finally knew what she was doing. It didn’t seem like that was in the cards, though.

  “Careers,” she murmured. They had to already think of careers.

  “There’s nothing to be nervous about,” the commander said. Was her shock that easy to read? Hopefully, just for him. “You can always change your mind afterward and shape your profile in the direction you want it to follow.”

  She shot Eric a quick look to check if he knew all this, but of course, he did. His expressions said as much.

  “The Gala is an Alumni event,” Eric said. “It’s great for networking, since we’ll get to meet most of the STAR Academy alumni and ask them about their current jobs. They’re also scouting for talent for the organizations they work for.”

  “If you want to make an impression, that’s the place to be,” Dana said, probably hoping to lift Yalena’s spirits and get her excited for the event. The only thing that sentence did was make the girl want to hide, though.

  Having found out that she’d been invited up here in a desperate attempt for the O’Donnells to foster an alien signal hacker at STAR Academy—a mission she was already failing at, hard—she’d started to cruise. She’d never even asked herself what she would have wanted to become in space society. After all, she had barely started to scratch its glossy surface to find substance underneath.

  She knew it would make her seem silly, inexperienced, and out of place, but Yalena couldn’t help the question gargling in her throat. “Isn’t it too soon to say?”

  Cooper’s hands smoothed the champagne-colored tablecloth. “Don’t let it get to your head,” he replied. “There’s plenty of time to figure things out. When you meet the alumni, just be yourself.”

  “Cooper’s right,” the commander said, his voice level as he poured more bubbly into Dana’s glass. “The Gala is meant to give you opportunities. You can talk to anybody about their job, get ideas for life after graduation.”

  “Exactly,” Dana said, “not to mention that the main attraction at the Gala is always the reveal of the new spacecrafts for the yearly mission. You won’t have to put up with business talk the entire night.”

  Yalena had tried to imagine flying off to one of Mars’ moons or a specific asteroid on the belt to perform experiments or collect probes with the rest of her classmates. Having known them for a few months, she couldn’t picture them as model scientists. Instead, it would be Natalia half-flirting with Alec, half-arguing with everyone else. Eric brooding. Yalena avoiding Nico and Jen’s attempts to figure out her secret agenda with the commander’s son. And Heidi cheerfully blabbing on about flying and space. A rag-tag gang if there ever was one.

  “Have you ever thought what you might want to do after graduation, Yalena?” Dana posed the question casually, while the meat was being served. The serving bot had come close to the table to allow everyone to place their dishes on the bottom shelf and replace them with a generous portion of red meat with Béarnaise sauce. The smell of it made Yalena miss Earth more than she realized.

  “I haven’t settled on anything in particular yet,” she said, then removed her gaze from the milky sauce on her plate just in time to witness something flash across Dana’s face. Was it surprise or disbelief?

  “Making the decision isn’t as cumbersome as students often make it out to be,” the commander said, provoking an internal exclamation from the girl.

  No kidding. The task she would be given was already set, and even if she were to be inspired by something else, what were the chances she’d be allowed the freedom to pursue it? Her lips thinned, waiting for a well-scripted argument meant to nudge her in a direction that she already knew she was boxed into. But none followed.

  “Tell me, what subjects have you enjoyed the most so far?”

  It was a simple enough question, and her mind immediately ruled out Space Travel, but she couldn’t point to anything she’d engaged deeply with. The embarrassing silence hung between them.

  “What you’re experiencing, Yalena, isn’t anything to worry about,” the commander continued. “You have a profile we refer to as a generalist.”

  “What does that mean?” she said, feeling less dumbfounded than the question would normally suggest.

  “It means you tend to do well in multiple disciplines, even in subjects you don’t feel passionate about. You focus on the big picture, the connections between intertwined topics, rather than achieving excellence in one area.” He raised his glass and tilted it slightly toward her, as if to celebrate that ability, before he took a sip.

  Yalena felt Eric’s eyes burning and turning her face scarlet. Hadn’t he said she was meant to decode the signal? Inexperienced as she was, she could still tell that wasn’t a task meant for a generalist.

  “If you’re nervous about it, though,” Cooper said after swallowing a generous bite, “you could look for something specific and start there. It doesn’t have to be a class. What about an assignment you enjoyed doing?”

  That was easy. She didn’t have to think twice. “The essay we did on the Interplanetary Act for Human Rights.”

  “There you go,” he gestured, swinging a fork theatrically and pointing it to the commander.

  “Interesting,” O’Donnell said, ignoring Cooper as he bowed for having served that information up for examination. “There might be a future for you in space legislation.”

  Dana observed Yalena with newfound interest. “Definitely.”

  “We’re still relatively new in the domain of space legislations,” the commander said, answering the blank expression on Yalena’s face. “I see that every time we select projects for the near world funding rounds.”

  “How does that work?” She could distantly recall Eric and Heidi’s mentions of this fund, but nothing would be better than hearing from the man on its board.

  “Science teams from across the near worlds present projects in a bid for funding each spring. Then, the board gathers and decides what next steps to take. It’s difficult work. We’d like to support all science efforts, but funding is limited.”

  “Sometimes, the harder choice is to try to foresee the implications of each mission in the long-term future of our solar system,” Eric added.

  “Give me an example.” Yalena felt a vein on her throat pulse. She wished they’d had more time to discuss this in class. Somewhere deep down, that intuitive call she’d made to stay on Unifier over the break brought her satisfaction now.

  “All right. Why haven’t we landed humans on Enceladus yet?”

  “It must be too far,” she guessed, “or too expensive. I imagine that getting humans settled on one of Saturn’s
moons would pose bigger challenges than Mars or our Moon did.”

  “What if money wasn’t a problem?”

  “You just said that funds are limited.” She let out a sly smile.

  “We said that the money is not enough to fund all projects, but if we chose that one alone, we could go ahead with it. So, why haven’t we?” Cooper’s use of “we” stood out to Yalena, but she didn’t ask if he was a part of that board as well. The realization that her ability to think on her feet was being tested made her struggle for an explanation.

  “We still haven’t ruled out some sort of life in the geysers of Enceladus.”

  “Correct.” Cooper took a sip from his champagne glass. “It’s an alien contamination risk. Us being the aliens in that case.”

  “What we’ll need in the future will be exact laws on how to act in such situations. It’s new territory for us. We just went ahead and moved onto Mars and the Moon, but we won’t be able to do that every time. Having no clear guidelines for potentially already-inhabited places makes us shy away from sending missions there.”

  “Nobody wants to bear the risk and end up being the one to blame if things go south,” Yalena said, turning to the commander.

  “I think you may understand these conundrums better than you think,” was his brief reply.

  “You should introduce yourself to Jea the next time she comes by,” Dana nudged. “You two might have an interesting chat.”

  “Here we go again,” Cooper whispered so only Yalena and Eric could hear. Then, before Dana and the commander could try to make out the hushed words, he said louder, “If you’ll excuse me, now that everyone’s finished their food, I feel it’s time to mingle.”

  With that classy excuse, he rose from the elegantly decorated table and headed for the bar, where it didn’t take him more than a few seconds to strike up a conversation with some pilots. Seeing his seat free up, some of the STAR Academy professors approached and louder chatter spread out. Eric signaled Yalena to follow him away from the table. She flashed a smile and excused herself, even though a part of her didn’t want to get into another discussion about the signal right in the middle of what felt like the first night she’d started to truly feel home on Unifier.