Love is Weak

Chapter 31 - Blind Trust

Keith

When we woke up, Lillian and I sectioned off the unit into three teams. She and I would be the first team, Kiana and Josh would be the second team, and Ava, Adrien, and Ella would be the third team.

"Ella, Ava, and Adrien, you're tasked with creating the diversion away from the central control area," I said. "Ki and Josh, you will be cloaked in the base, but we'll contact you if everything goes downhill. You're basically the back up team while Lillian and I are rigging central control with explosives."

"We are?" Lillian asked, face pale.

"You told me to give everyone a job," I said.

The rest of the unit looked uneasy, as if they knew something I didn't. And given the fact that they'd all worked together for years before I came on, they probably did know something I didn't.

"Yeah, but I didn't think we were going to be running the bombs," she said.

"We're leading the mission." It felt repetitive to say the obvious. "Why wouldn't we do the most dangerous job? We're supposed to keep everyone else safe."

She shrugged, her face still pale, and sighed. "Continue."

"We need to get going now. There's not really anything else to go over."

We stood in silence, looking at the floor. It was going to be a pretty dangerous mission. Instead of commandeering the base, we were just going to explode it. In some ways, that felt wrong, but with the amount of people going on the mission, we wouldn't have any other way to gain this part of the empire. Besides, our directions had been to explode, even though that wasn't necessarily the way the Blades always operated.

"Well," Josh sighed. "To the pod, then."

We walked to the departure bay and boarded our pod. I took the pilot seat as co-lead of the mission with Lillian standing behind me going through our departure checklist. When she was done, she gave me the all clear, and I radioed to control telling them we were ready to leave.

Once we departed, I engaged the cloaking system and flew until we were just out of range of the base's scanners.

"So, we have three entrance points. Point A, the diversion site, Point B, the backup site, and Point C, me and Keith's attack site." Lillian threw up a 3D image of the base. "Josh and Kiana, you two will be loaded at Point B, cloaked, as Keith and I go in at Point C. Ella, Ava, and Adrien, after you drop Ki, Josh, Keith, and I at our areas, you will create the diversion at Point A. Alert us when you are activating the bombs because that's when Keith and I will run to our explosive dropping point. Josh and Kiana, you'll be on call at that point. Any questions?"

There was silence. Lillian took down the map and closed off her notes, making her wrist communication dark again.

"Masks up for comm check," she said, and I wondered why we had never done this before. Lillian didn't usually forget protocol.

"Can everyone hear me?" Lillian asked, her mask up as she spoke through our link.

We nodded.

"Good. Sound off," she said. "Nod every time you hear a name."

"Keith," I said, and everyone nodded.

"Adrien."

"Kiana."

"Ella."

"Ava."

"Josh."

"Alright, we look good," Lillian said. "Adrien, take the seat. Drop Josh and Ki off first."