Second Earth (13 page)

  
“So I see,” she said with a nod. “Come on
in.” She moved out of the foyer and Shawn slipped inside.

  
He glanced around the spacious cabin, which
took several minutes due to the fact that the compartment was easily twice the
size of his own.

 
 
“They
gave me an admiral’s stateroom,” she said, sensing his curiosity.

  
“They?”

  
“Well, Captain Krif,” she answered.

  
Shawn gave her an approving nod. “Looks like
the captain is getting pretty soft in his old age. I’m shocked he didn’t offer
you a coat closet.”

  
“I don’t think that would’ve sat well with
the Director of the OSI.”

  
“Probably not. Still…it’s not too shabby.”
Shawn moved to sit on the exceedingly comfortable couch placed below a series
of wide view ports. “This must be how the upper crust lives.”

  
“Shawn Kestrel, if you are implying in any
way that I’m using my position as senior agent to—”

  
“I can see your mind reading skills haven’t
improved.”

  
Apparently
they haven’t.
Melissa sighed, and then slipped into a comfortable position
next to Shawn, tucking her legs under her as she leaned toward him. “Well, I
did score a fourteen on my PSI test.”

  
“Really?” Shawn asked in surprise. While
that score didn’t denote she was a master mind reader by any stretch, it did
tell him that she had a much higher than normal mental processing power. “It’s
probably what makes you an exceptional agent.”

  
“Exceptional?” she asked in astonishment.
“You really think so?”

  
The commander smirked deviously. “You’re not
the only one who can check records, you know.”

  
She narrowed her eyes. “You pulled my file?”

  
His smile was all the answer she needed.

  
“And you read it, I take it?” she continued.

  
Shawn leaned closer to her and dropped his
voice to just above a whisper. “Now, that would break this little circle of
trust we have between us, wouldn’t it?” he asked as he wagged his finger back
and forth between them for emphasis.

  
Melissa stood and walked over to a tall
cabinet on the far side of the bulkhead and removed two glasses. Each contained
an amber-colored liquid. “For you,” she said, offering him one of the glasses
and resuming her position next to him. By the smell, Shawn could tell it was
whiskey. They toasted and took a sip. “You’re right about breaking my trust. It
would have.”

  
“I know. In all honesty, I couldn’t help but
pay you back for your own indiscretion.”

  
“Oh really?” she asked with a raised
eyebrow.

  
“I took a look at your academy transcripts.
You know, a little itsy-bitsy peek.”

  
Melissa was about to take another sip, then
noticed a twinkle in Shawn’s eye. He grinned, and all at once she realized what
he must have seen in the record file. She immediately brought her free hand up
in a gesture of surrender. “Look, I can totally explain that…”

  
“You failed your cadet cruise,” Shawn said
as he reveled in the truth he had uncovered. “Not so perfect after all, are
we?”

  
She pointed an accusatory finger at him, but
her tone was still friendly. “It was an honest mistake.”

  
“Your reviewing officer didn’t seem to think
so.”

  
“It was my first cruise!”

  
“Um, ninety-five percent of cadets only
need
one cruise. I saw that you got sent
back for a second helping.” He smiled and took another drink. “So, come on. Out
with it.”

  
“With what?” she asked.

  
“I’d like to know what happened on that
first cruise. I mean, up to that point your record was stellar. So what
happened?”

  
“Why don’t we discuss it after we see what’s
on this disk?”

  
Shawn placed his drink on a nearby table.
“You’re stalling.”

  
“I am
not
.
I’m simply trying to get the reason for this meeting out of the way.”

  
“I see,” he said slyly. “And here I thought
you wanted me to join you for dinner.”

  
“I do.”

  
“But only because of what’s on that data
drive we found on Second Earth?”

  
Melissa nodded curtly. “It’s important.”

  
“The drive?”

  
“No,” she smiled. “Dinner. Dinner is
important, and I don’t…I just don’t want to eat alone tonight.”

  
The commander smirked approvingly. “Now,
that wasn’t so hard, was it? A little honesty goes a long way, Agent Graves.”

  
“I know. I know. I’m…trying, Shawn. I really
am.”

  
He could see the struggle going on behind
her eyes, and he silently wished there was something he could do to help her.
“I can see it,” he finally said. “And…I appreciate the effort. It’ll help us
work better together.”

  
So
,
she thought.
That’s all he sees me as? As
his supervisor? His coworker?
“I didn’t call you here under orders,
Commander. Or, for that matter, to issue them once you were here.”
There, that sounded completely
unintentional.

 
“Well, that’s a good thing. I don’t take
kindly to getting orders over dinner.” He folded his arms tightly across his
chest.

  
Melissa got the distinct impression that he
was about to withdraw.
Okay, that didn’t
work. Think fast. Salvage the situation. More casual. Calm. Assertive. You can
do this.

  
“I wanted you here because I didn’t want to
be alone tonight.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them,
and the look of shock on Shawn’s face gave her the affirmation she needed that
they were the wrong ones.
Whoa! That was
way too casual!

  
“I mean…I mean what I said before…before I
said what I just said…about not eating alone. Here. In this room. Alone. By
myself.”

  
The surprise on his face morphed to
understanding. “Ah, okay. For a minute I thought you wanted me to…you know—”

  
“Oh! Oh, no. I mean, really.”
Was it getting warm in here? The ship’s
internal temperature controls must be acting up. I’d better put in a
maintenance request for that tomorrow morning at quarters.
It took all her
inner strength to stop her hand from rapidly fanning her face. “Wow…just…no.”

  
Shawn slipped closer to her on the couch and
gazed into her emerald eyes, lowering the tone of his voice as he came within
arm’s length of her. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”

  
She covered her mouth with her hand and
closed her eyes, not sure if she wanted to laugh or cry. “I think I’ve done a
sufficient job of that myself.”

  
He reached up and took ahold of her hands,
pulling them away from her face. “No apologies.”

  
She opened her eyes and stared back at him.
“It must be the whiskey.”

  
Shawn nodded, then leaned in several more
inches. “It must be.”

  
As the enticing aroma of his cologne wafted
past her nose, her pulse quickened as he drew nearer. But as much as she wanted
to find out what his current intentions were, she needed to get a handle on the
situation. Melissa turned from him and stood quickly, then strode toward the
wall-mounted safe beside her bed. A minute later she returned with the gold
computer cartridge and held it up for Shawn’s inspection, careful to stay a
just outside arm’s reach. “We really…
really
need to see what’s on this.”

  
“What about dinner?”

  
“What?” she asked. Still flustered, her
train of thought was slightly different than what had come out of Shawn’s
mouth. “Oh, yes. D-dinner,” she stammered. “It’s on its way from the officers’
mess hall right now.”

  
“Wait a second; you get room service, too?”

  
Melissa opened her mouth, but before she
could respond the door chime sounded. “Ah, that must be it now.” She went to
the door and collected the food tray from the waiting crewman. “Thank you. I’ll
call when we’re finished.”

  
“It’s really hot, ma’am, so you may want to
give it a few minutes to cool down,” the crewman said just before he departed.

  
The door to Melissa’s quarters closed, and
she placed the tray on the large circular table in the corner of her stateroom,
motioning Shawn with a tilt of her head to join her. “First the data drive,
then we eat.”

*
* *

  
Shawn leaned back in his chair as Melissa
accessed the data drive. Within seconds, a video file opened to the scene of an
vacant, decrepit office. The camera pointed at an empty desk in the center of
the image. Behind the desk was a large glass window, its blinds slightly ajar
and filtering in the sunlight. Shawn and Melissa instantly recognized it as the
office from which they’d retrieved the gold disk on Second Earth.

  
There was a noise from outside the periphery
of the camera, and then a figure stepped into view and sat stoically behind the
desk. It was Admiral William Graves, dressed in his dark gray Sector Command
uniform. The two clusters of silver stars that denoted his rank flashed their
reflections into the camera lens as he obtained a comfortable position in the
chair. Shawn could see that the admiral had aged well in the last several
years, and hardly looked any different than the last time the two were together
during the Galactic War. Except for the white tips of his extensive moustache
and the patches of gray hairs forming near his ears, he looked like the same old
“Wild Bill.”

  
Admiral Graves reached into his desk,
withdrawing what appeared to be a frequency scrambler, very much like the one
Shawn had seen Melissa use before to conceal a conversation. William flipped
the device on, placed it beside him on the desktop, folded his hands beside it
and began speaking.

  
“Melissa, I can only pray that it’s you
who’s found this message, and that it’s still not too late. My dear, I need you
to understand that billions upon billions of lives are at stake, and what I’m
about to tell you will irrevocably alter the state of affairs for the galaxy as
we know it.”

  
Melissa turned silently to Shawn, who wore a
blank expression. They turned in unison back to the monitor as William
continued to speak.

  
“Let me start by giving you a brief history
lesson. Years ago, as the Great War was nearing the end as we have come to know
it, the Kafarans were making plans for a major push into Beta Sector. This
surge—had it been successful—would have wiped out countless scores of people
from dozens of races along the front lines of the war. Sector Command, working
closely with the Office of Special Intelligence, presented a classified report
to the Unified President and the Council that stated, unequivocally, that our
government would not survive such an attack. As you can imagine, with the threat
of annihilation hanging in the balance, this sent a wave of panic through the
upper echelons of our government.

  
“The President ordered two special
committees formed. The first would lead a team of delegates into the heart of
Kafaran territory and vie with the enemy for a truce. The second committee,
based around a select group of Sector Command scientists and the Unified Office
of Research and Development, were to begin working on a new weapons platform
that could be used to offset the balance of the war in our favor. It was felt
that if the first committee failed, there would be no other alternative than to
keep fighting.”

  
A series of images filtered across the
screen, giving Shawn and Melissa a brief glimpse of the emissaries as they
appeared before leaving Darus Station.

  
“Unbelievable,” Shawn gasped. “I was never
told about a peace delegation.”

  
Melissa nodded solemnly. “Most people
outside of the OSI weren’t privy to that knowledge.”
 

  
The images of the twelve delegates faded
from view, and Admiral Graves sighed heavily before continuing. “As most
thought would happen, the First Delegation of Representatives never returned
from their mission. They were good people, each and every one of them, and when
they died the last hope for a peaceful resolution to the war died with them.