The Unsound Theory (STAR Academy Book 1) Read online

  “Arne!” The warning voice of the commander cut off Chris’s chatter. Yalena was momentarily confused, before she realized he must be referring to Chris by his surname. “Russo, tell me what you know.” O’Donnell turned calmly to Yalena, and she felt all eyes on her.

  “I heard from Nico that the guys had gone to the hidden room,” she started off, evaluating how best to put this and what to leave out. Her conversation with Eric was at the top of that list. “And I remembered Cooper talking about the hidden room.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, Eric said the room was forbidden for us, and I knew Alec and Dave would never go practice there if they knew that, so we found Heidi, and she confirmed that Chris had given them the code to get in,” Yalena said all that in one breath and then peeked at her roommate for support.

  “I heard Chris talking about this hidden room at lunch. He was saying that all promising pilots ought to train there, or they would have no chance of making it as a first pilot for the yearly mission,” Heidi said. The details she provided made their point more believable, Yalena thought.

  “This is not why the four of you are here, though,” Katarzyna changed the topic. “I personally caught O’Donnell and Flynn out of their room. They came out of the service elevator, which they aren’t supposed to know how to access, I might add.”

  “We weren’t more than ten minutes late,” Eric fought back. “And we were only missing because we tried to warn them about this set-up!”

  “Tried to warn them, or tried to snoop around the hidden room for mission clues?” Chris jumped in.

  “Enough.” The commander raised his voice, and everyone looked down at the table in sync. “I have no time to discuss concerns of such low priority.” O’Donnell’s voice stayed calm, but it called their attention to his final word on the matter. “Unfortunately for Rado and Whitehorse, they were in the hidden room tonight, and even though they were caught before they could access any mission-sensitive material, they shall face the respective punishment. I believe two weeks of daily V-flier repair after classes should do it.

  “As for the rest of you, I take it your actions were motivated by the desire to help your friends. Still, I’m going to award each of you an extra community work shift at the medical ward next week. You’ll help clean up. Let this be the last time you break a rule. Am I clear?”

  He glared around the table at the suddenly intimidated students who mumbled, “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Now, off you go.”

  Yalena still felt like she wanted to say something. Where was Chris’ punishment in all of this? But everyone started standing up and making their way to the door, and albeit a little slower than them, so did she. Then, the commander added somewhat spontaneously, “Apart from Russo.”

  Yalena turned sharply when she heard her surname.

  “I’d like a word.”

  She nodded and returned to her seat. When the door closed, leaving her and the commander alone at the round table, she looked at his brooding face. The resemblance between him and his son was remarkable.

  “You don’t seem to think this is fair.” It was a simple observation.

  Of course, it’s not fair. Yalena wanted to let out her anger, but she couldn’t afford to be disrespectful. “With all due respect, sir, I don’t think it is.”

  “Please, tell me why not.” It was almost annoying how understanding he was when people contradicted him.

  “You spoke to three people who heard Chris bait the Martians in the room, and you still choose to take Chris’ word for it. He did it. I know he did. He was threatened because Alec may be a better pilot, and he handled it like a coward!” Yalena was wary of just how easy it was to hear the personal distrust she held against Chris in these words.

  “I see,” the commander contemplated carefully. “It’s a self-serving maneuver, isn’t it?”

  “So, you see it, too?” Yalena’s eyes opened wide in surprise.

  “Oh, I do. Chris has a propensity for light-hearted egoism, and at times, that can be dangerous.” What wise words he used to sum up the air-headed legend-in-his-own-mind that Chris was.

  “Why don’t you...”

  “Why don’t I what? Punish him?” O’Donnell finished her question. “Teach him a lesson?” He paused. “You see, outside punishment will change Chris’ circumstances, but not his attitude. I could, for example, expel him for making another student look bad. He would argue and blame me—and you, too, for that matter—but he wouldn’t accept his defeat.” His cautious explanation made it clear to Yalena that he knew his students, as well as the way they thought, much better than she could have ever guessed.

  “So, what is the solution then?” She wasn’t willing to let this go. “Just let him think he can do this without suffering any consequences?”

  “The only thing that will be a real punishment for Chris in this case,” O’Donnell started again, and Yalena should have expected he had an answer, “is if he were to simply lose his coveted number one pilot ranking. Not disciplinarily, but fair and square. Now, that can only happen if he is at the Academy to witness Alec take it from him.”

  Yalena made a face as she evaluated this. Regardless of what Chris’ attitude was, his talent was supposed to be unprecedented. “Do you think Alec is good enough to come out on top?”

  “Oh, yes. He’s quite the rising star,” O’Donnell said, smiling as Yalena’s face finally softened. “And believe me, after tonight, he’ll have plenty of motivation.” His expression was conspiratorial, drawing a smile to Yalena’s lips. “Goodnight, Yalena.” It was strange to hear him call her by her first name. Maybe he didn’t care about formalities when they were in private.

  “Goodnight, Commander.” She rose from her seat and headed for the door, feeling no trace of the anger that had haunted her all evening. Before she left, Yalena couldn’t help but hesitate for a second. Guilt was eating away at her. What did she get for stealing from the commander? Nothing but jumbled irregular circles, hand-drawn on every blank page she touched.

  “Is there anything else on your mind, Yalena?” O’Donnell asked. He must have seen her hold her hand over the exit button for a few moments, completely still.

  “I have one question, sir, if I may?” When he nodded, she pushed past the discomfort she felt, asking, “What would you do if you felt something was very meaningful, but you couldn’t explain why or what it meant to anyone else?”

  She was willing to bet it was the weirdest question he’d ever heard.

  “People generally trust in proof, not feelings,” he said. “It can be a challenge for more intuitive people, like you, to fully grasp that. You may feel something is right, but in this world, if we want others to follow us, we can’t be selling hot air. We need to present proof first and ask for support second.”

  That blossoming hope that he might believe in her hazy sixth sense about the signal as passionately as his son did disappeared into thin air. Remarkable, for something she never knew was there at all. Her jaw stiff, Yalena nodded.

  “Anything else I can help you with?”

  She forced herself to sound normal. “Can I ask why we have a curfew?”

  “I always thought you freshmen would need an excuse to be in bed by eleven.” He seemed younger as his face lit up. “But I beg of you not to share this with Eric. It’s a parenting choice.”

  YALENA LET OUT A DEEP sigh of relief as the door behind her slid closed. What a tense evening, she thought, but she stopped, surprised, just a step away from the door. The evening wasn’t over yet.

  Alec was leaning against the corridor wall, his green uniform being the only colorful spot against the all-white background. He seemed too calm given that it was well past curfew and way past what he’d been allowed to get away with tonight. His tanned complexion helped him look fresh even under the strong artificial light, and he somehow exuded a level of energy and optimism.

  “Can I walk you back?”

  “We live on the same floor, you know.
” Yalena’s newly recovered good mood shone as she tried to mock him.

  “Well, when you put it like that...”

  It was a little strange to walk down the empty and superbly white corridors all alone, steps echoing in the ghostly silence.

  “You raised the alarm tonight,” Alec said before they had even left the Academy floor. Yalena noticed there was a trace of surprise in his voice, even though he sounded casual. “You must detest the guy.”

  “Not as much as you, apparently,” she said, recalling Chris’ split lip. “Nice work on his face.”

  “Pretty boy got off easy.” The Martian accent made that sentence sound funny, rather than menacing. “What were you doing with him?” Alec let a sincere question slip out.

  “Could I say I was young and naive? And you’re one to talk!” She feigned offense. “What are you doing with the wicked witch of the West?”

  Alec made a face, letting her know her words hit right in the bullseye, but he didn’t break the line of mockery they’d been building up. “Now, that’s a good question.”

  Yalena chortled at his admission. No one could ever pretend not to have noticed Natalia’s dark side. The quiet corridor echoed with their laughter, and Yalena tried to stifle her giggles, hoping they didn’t wake anyone up. She was about to turn to the door and enter the code, but Alec spoke again.

  “Thanks, you know, for tonight.” There was something simple, honest, and appreciative in his words.

  “Sure.” She nodded, suddenly flattered he’d gone to all this effort just to thank her.

  Chapter 17. Back in Business

  THE WAVE OF GOSSIP that followed Alec and Dave’s adventure into the hidden room was unprecedented, even by STAR Academy standards. Somehow, everyone knew what had happened, or a version of it. Yalena and Eric’s involvement in the story was the part that received more than generous attention, and even more so—speculation. The versions ranged from Eric staging the whole thing to rebel against his father to Yalena making Eric interfere because, for some unexplainable reason, she was being mean to Chris. Needless to say, the frog-like mouth behind that last one was Natalia—the major source of gossip.

  Yalena, however, noticed the rumors hardly bugged her this time. Everyone who mattered to her knew the truth, and it made her feel lighter and free, even if the only thing that had changed over the past few days was the lunch table arrangement. Eric, Jen, Nico, and Yalena now found themselves at the biggest table with the Martians, where Heidi never left Dave’s side and Alec and Reid threw in jokes, usually at the expense of the inexperienced pilots.

  Positively at her happiest, Yalena felt the days fly by. With Alec eventually ending whatever was going on between him and Natalia, the gossip the Moonie liked to spread quieted. Yalena certainly hoped it taught Natalia a lesson in sensitivity, which she desperately needed. By the time they finished the extra detention hours, the only excitement in sight was the Spring Gala, which Yalena’s mind drifted off to in the depths of their morning Space Travel classes.

  The students had been sitting in the plain, white, oval classroom for the past hour, looking at the holographic design of a migration ship without necessarily seeing the point Professor Howards was trying to make. His voice was quiet and monotonous, and to make matters worse, he repeated his sentence over again once he had finally finished it.

  Having drifted off more than once during class, Yalena tried to force herself to listen. She had peeked at the extra difficult homework they would have for the day after, and it gave her some motivation to put the Gala temporarily out of her mind.

  “So, we’ve used the Galactic Coordinate System almost exclusively since the Migration for providing coordinates for an object. What’s interesting about it is that it assumes the Sun as its center. Its primary direction is aligned with the approximate center of the Milky Way. This makes it a rather convenient universal system, since we do not necessarily use Earth as a center nowadays.”

  Yalena’s fingers slid across the surface of her tablet, already browsing through the reading for their next class. Jen elbowed her, nodding at the hologram representation of the Milky Way galaxy hanging above the round table.

  “Pay attention,” she whispered, making Yalena snarl on the inside.

  Even though Jen was right, she could hardly focus on anything but counting down the minutes until the end of class. In a last-ditch attempt to engage with the topic, she opened a blank page and noted down a few of the main points the professor had made. It was an exercise in futility, and after a few bullet points, she drifted off into doodling.

  Tiny circle. Dash. Huge circle. Long dash. Tiny circle. Tiny circle. Long dash. Tiny circle and then another bigger one, intersecting with the last one in the string. It was as if her fingers had memorized the motions and moved the stylus on their own.

  This is what obsession does to me. Yalena shook her head, glowering at the page. Maybe the signal wanted to be understood, or maybe she was drawing the same sequence over and over again out of guilt for abandoning her conscious attempts to crack it.

  “In order to record the location of any object in our solar system, we just need to calculate the angular measure of its galactic longitude and latitude. Let’s have a look at this example,” Professor Howards said, motioning up with one hand, making numbers appear in the hologram. “RA 19h 11m 13.4s and Dec -21° 54' 37.9"—does that seem familiar?”

  Yalena suppressed a yawn. Her eyelashes felt heavy, and the mere fact that she was seeing them meant she undoubtedly looked as bored and sleepy as she felt. She tried to shake it off and focus on the gray numbers high above her. Now that Professor Howards mentioned it, something felt familiar about those digits. No surprise there, though. With all the reading she’d gone through for the past six months, she must have glanced over most meaningful coordinates.

  “It’s not worth memorizing coordinates,” Natalia said, sulkier than usual after the break-up. “Planets and asteroids are in constant motion. The orbit matters far more than momentary coordinates.”

  “That’s true, Khanna,” the professor said. “But we still have these coordinates to stare at, because they are the last known location of the Farsight migration ship before it entered into acceleration mode, speeding out of our solar system, falling out of reach for our radars and losing radio contact with Earth.”

  DANG! Yalena jumped in her seat. With an involuntary tremble, she swept her water glass off the desk. As if in slow motion, it fell and smashed into tiny pieces on the floor. For a short moment, Yalena’s heart raced as she repeated the last sentence in her mind: the last known coordinates.

  It finally made sense.

  Yalena realized all eyes were on her, and it was too late to pretend nothing was going on. Knowing she had to find a way to speak to Eric right away, she gave into the slight feeling of dizziness caused by her sudden revelation. She slid off her seat, landing heavily on the floor amid the water and pieces of glass.

  “Dear girl! Are you all right?” Professor Howards stood up from his seat, his aged face worried. “Rado, would you...” But before he had finished his sentence, Alec had already come to help Yalena to her feet. He did so effortlessly, like she was light as a feather.

  “Can you stand?” he asked in her ear, still supporting her. Yalena nodded, realizing that due to the shock of her discovery, she barely had to pretend to be feeling out of it.

  “I just got dizzy,” she said, hardly convincing herself, let alone the number of worried faces around her.

  “That’s understandable,” Professor Howards said. “You’re not used to being in space for so long, dear. Get her to the medical ward, please, Rado. Maybe somebody should go with you?” The professor’s eyes scanned the room for another volunteer, but before he could make a suggestion, Eric was out of his seat and at her side.

  “I’ll take her, professor.”

  “Oh, of course, O’Donnell. Thank you.”

  Alec and Eric supported Yalena, one on each side, almost carrying her out o
f the room amid their classmates’ worried and curious looks. As soon as the door closed behind them, Yalena forced her weak knees to obey. They couldn’t give in now.

  Eric peered at her, concerned. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine. I just had to get out of there,” she said and let go of the two boys. “I didn’t really faint.”

  Alec eyed her with disbelief. “The logical inference being that you fake-fainted?”

  “Yes. No.” She stalled. She couldn’t say much else in front of Alec, could she? “I really am fine.”

  Eric came closer and squeezed her arm. “You’ve got it, don’t you?”

  Perhaps it was the longing look in his eyes, the way he seemed to have forgotten that Alec was around, or the pressure that had built up inside Yalena over months of trial and error, but she couldn’t help giving him a hint.

  “We’ve been looking at it all wrong.” Now that she finally knew what the signal was, she couldn’t keep it in a second longer. “It’s not a code; it’s a map.”

  “How is that possible?” Eric asked immediately, his mind working so hard she could almost hear it.

  “We were searching for a message, for words or patterns, but that’s not what it is. What I heard and what I’ve been drawing are numbers. Coordinates. I need my tablet. I’ll show you.”

  Alec narrowed his eyes at them, as if hunting for an explanation. “What’s going on here?” Yalena met Eric’s gaze, but neither of them said a word. They’d both slipped up too much already. “It has something to do with you two sneaking around at the ball, doesn’t it?”

  Yalena lowered her gaze, frowning at the realization that he’d noticed that. Even if Eric had spoken of bringing other people on board in the past, something made her feel Alec, as sharp as he was, might not make the cut. Still, a plan had already started developing in her mind.