The Army Of Light (Kestrel Saga) (6 page)

    
As she stepped through the doors, Shawn instantly regretted some of his words.
When had he become so callous, especially to someone who obviously needed his
help? There was a time when he would have leapt right through those doors after
her, and he immediately wondered what was stopping him from leaping now. He
stalled for a moment, hoping he wasn’t about to make the same kind of mistake
he made about
Donatue
III. Throwing caution to the
wind, he took his hands out of his pockets and began to jog after her.

    
“Hey, lady!
Hold on a second, will you?”

    
Outside, he rushed up beside her before she could reach the waiting taxi.
“Look, I’m sorry. I’m just not accustomed to women such as
yourself
coming around here, that’s all.”

    
She stopped in her tracks halfway to the vehicle and turned towards him.
“Women such as me?
What on Third Earth
is that supposed to mean? Is that some kind of uncouth pilot jargon?”
She burrowed an accusatory finger into his chest.

    
He gently placed a hand on her wrist. “That’s not what I meant to say—” he’d
started, but didn’t get a chance to finish. The statuesque woman—in an
exceptional show of agility—grabbed Shawn’s hand and twisted it around his
back. He immediately fell to his knees in pain and tried to steady himself with
his remaining hand.

    
“I will warn you, sir, that I’m trained in multiple martial arts. Perhaps
you’ll take this as fair warning the next time you attempt to touch me.”

    
“Hey, you started it,” he grunted. When she put more force behind her hold, he
felt the pain stretch all the way down his back. “Okay! Yeah, sure,” he managed
through gritted teeth, “whatever you say, lady.”

    
She released his hand with a shove and let him stumble to the ground, then
continued toward the waiting hover cab. Shawn collected himself and sprinted at
the vehicle. Just as she opened the door to get in, Shawn used his body to push
it closed. “I think you and I need to have a serious chat.”

    
“I gave you fair warning, Mister Kestrel. I don’t want to hurt you, but if you
don’t step back I’m going to have to deal with you.” In anticipation for just that,
she placed her handbag on the hood of the cab. “Please step away from my car,
Mister Kestrel.”

    
He raised his hands slightly. “I just want to talk—” the words were barely out
of his mouth before he was struck in the cheek with her balled fist. More
stunned than hurt, he was surprised by her feline-like reflexes. Still, she was
a lady, and he couldn’t strike at a woman—no matter how much this one was
asking for it.

    
“You’ve got the wrong idea!” he shouted, accurately deflecting another blow
intended for his face, but not the consecutive kick to his shin. As he
reactively grabbed his wounded leg, he knew he’d have to choose his next words
carefully, but they were out of his mouth before he could stop them. “If you’d
only get off your high horse for a minute we can talk!” Correctly deflecting
the ensuing punch she threw at his face, he locked her outstretched arm
underneath his left. Then, using his right arm, reached behind her knees and
scooped her off the ground, then just as swiftly plopped her on her rear-end in
the soft sand.

    
She was stunned, but based on the sneer she was giving him, certainly not down
for the count. Fearing her next onslaught would be aimed at his
groin,
the captain abruptly sat on her legs and leaned over
her, pinning her arms down with his hands. Her pleasing, yet oddly familiar
perfume wafted across his nose, distracting him for only a millisecond. “Okay
lady, cut the crap. Who are you?”

    
She struggled mightily against his grip, but he was deceptively strong. She
relented as she tried to catch her breath. “If I tell you, will you promise to
get your filth off of me?”

    
He nodded in affirmation, not really sure if he meant it. “Sure.”

    
“My name is Melissa Graves.”

    
The name from his past was an instant shock to his ears. Shawn hurriedly jumped
off Melissa, as if he suddenly realized he was straddling a venomous snake. As
the two got back to their feet, he took a long look at her face. He tried to
look past the sculpted cheekbones, the
well formed
lips, and the light peppering of freckles. He stared into her brilliant emerald
eyes, and for a split second something was revealed, but it was fleeting.
“Okay, now that we’ve got that established
,
what do
you want from me?”

    
Melissa leaned back against the side of the waiting taxi, still catching her
breath, and appeared to search for the right words to say. “Well, apparently
you saved my father’s life,” she said as she brushed some sand from her dress. 

    
“Just so we’re both on the same page, we’re talking about Captain William
Graves, right?”

    
“It’s Admiral William Graves now, but yes. That’s correct.”

    
Well, there it is. I’m talking about a man I haven’t seen in half a decade
to a woman I’ve never met that just beat the crap out of me—one that supposedly
is his daughter. If I kept a diary, this would be one hell of an entry. 
”Let’s
all just put the brakes on real slow, okay?” He held up his hands nervously,
not wanting to further aggravate the capricious woman. “Now, maybe I saved him…
and maybe he saved me. Those kinds of things happen in war. It’s no big deal.
If you want me to recount some old stories to you, I’m sure William could just
as easily—”

    
“No! No he can’t ‘just’,” she threw her hands to her sides in
frustration,
smacking them hard against the fender of the
taxi cab she forgot was holding her upright. She took a breath and seemed to
collect herself before continuing
slowy
. “You see…
he’s… he’s missing.”

    
Shawn blinked once, then twice. William, the man who had a better sense of
direction—both in and out of the cockpit—than any man Shawn had ever known, was
the least likeliest person in the galaxy to get misplaced. “I’m sorry, did you
say… missing?”

    
“Yes. And… and I need your help to find him.”

    
After picking the pieces of his pride out of the sand, Shawn willingly invited
the woman who had just pummeled him up into his office for an attempt at a
civilized conversation, and possibly a glass of water. He still wasn’t sure if
talking to her and, by default, inviting any of her troubles into his life was
the wisest of maneuvers. He tried not to think about it, instead focusing on
what she really wanted and what kind of explanation she could give about what
happened to his old friend, William Graves. The best case scenario, considering
the current state of Shawn’s business, was that he would send Melissa on her
way with no more or less help than she’d arrived with. The worst case scenario,
of course, was that she attacked him again with little to no provocation and
this time damaged something vital.

    
Was she for real, this quintessential damsel in distress? Or, was she
an escaped mental patient
who hand no more claim to the last
name of Graves than she did to Washington or Lincoln? The latter was probably
the likeliest scenario. However, the simple fact remained that she was easy on
the eyes when she wasn’t trying to knock the captain’s lights out, and her
voice was somewhat soothing when the two weren’t verbally sparing with one
another. Shawn mentally agreed with himself to give her fifteen minutes of his
time before he sent her
away.There’s
no harm in
that,
is there? He watched as she shifted uncomfortably in
her chair and fixed her medium length skirt, the top of one knee visible for a
split second
. Okay, maybe thirty minutes of my time. Then that’s it.

    
More important than her toned legs, William was apparently missing. If this
woman had any spark of truth to her story, Shawn knew he owed it to William to
find out what it was—even if to debunk it. Unfortunately, Shawn knew very
little of what his old commander had been occupied with the last few years. Of
course, there had been the occasional correspondence exchanged from somewhere
inside the Inner Sphere, letting the captain know that Graves was well and that
he was enjoying his retirement. But, it’d been almost a year since the last
transmission, and it wasn’t like Graves to go more than three or four months
between correspondences. In fact, it disturbed Shawn that it’d taken the
arrival of this woman to pique his concern for William. But now his
daughter was here, the one William had never mentioned he had, searching for a
man who had simply vanished into thin air. While it all seemed incredible, it
went without saying that, for the time being, she definitely had Shawn’s full
attention. Her story was too fantastic not to, even if it was a bit
unbelievable. 

    
Once she’d made herself as comfortable as she was going to get in the unforgiving
padding of an old chair, she’d wordlessly produced a simple letter from her
handbag and gave it to Shawn, which he read aloud.

    
My dearest Melissa,

    
If you are reading this letter, then the outcome of my mission is uncertain,
and you will need to take up my assignment where I failed. I’m so sorry for
this, but you must consider this my final order.

    
I wish I could have seen your smile one last time. It is difficult to say with
any certainty if the OSI will be able to decipher the true nature of what I’ve
discovered, let alone the scant amount of personnel in Sector Command that have
been made privy to it. My darling, please know that there is a fundamental
truth out there, and the foundations of the lives we’ve made for ourselves are
built on shifting sands. If this mission is a failure, the entire sector may
well be in jeopardy, if not mortal danger.

    
My only request to you in this matter is that you find a man named Shawn
Kestrel. He saved my life on more occasions then I can remember. While I
consider you one of the strongest people I have ever known, and certainly one
of the brightest, his help will be invaluable in the task I’m laying before
you. His last known location was in the
Antara
islands on the planet Minos, near the Outer Rim

    
It is absolutely vital that my mission be completed, and I have full confidence
in your abilities to make sure that it will be. I’m sorry to have laid this
heavy burden upon your

shoulders
,
but you and Shawn are the only people in the galaxy I can trust. 

    
Love always,  

    
William

    
Shawn breathed deeply as he processed the weight of the words, still holding
the letter loosely in his fingers as he conjured the image of his old friend in
his mind. William was really missing, or worse, dead. The cryptic message
to Melissa meant one of two things: either she knew more than she was revealing
about Bill’s mission, or she truly had no idea where to turn to from here. Were
he to go with his gut instinct, Shawn would agree with the latter, but he’d
been wrong before. He began to rub his chin absently as he contemplated their
next move, regretting that he hadn’t shaved that morning while he did so.

    
While it was true that he’d saved William in the past, the admiral had likewise
done the same for him. Shawn owed his life to the man several times over, of
that there was no question. Unfortunately, Shawn was stuck at the moment with a
broken ship—powerless to do anything to help his friend or his somewhat frazzled
daughter. He looked across the desk to Melissa, who sat silently staring at
him, her stoic countenance possibly the result of any number of emotions.

    
“So, you’re William Graves’s daughter?” he asked rhetorically. He hated
rhetorical questions, so he wasn’t sure why he’d asked it at all.

    
She rolled her eyes, probably at Shawn’s lack of verbal prowess. She swallowed,
then straightened her blouse and held her chin high, obviously very proud of
the distinction. “I am.”

    
Shawn’s eyes shifted back to the letter.

    
“My father never mentioned he had a daughter?” she asked as if he didn’t
believe her claim.

    
Shawn pursed his lips and shook his head once before he answered. “No. Then
again, it wasn’t common to talk about our families during the war. Most
everyone considered it bad luck.”

    
“How dreadful,” Melissa said with a shocked expression. “It’s ridiculous that
people were afraid to talk about their loved ones because of silly
superstitions.”

    
Shawn placed the letter back on the desktop separating them. “Well, it may be a
silly superstition to you, but I never talked about my family and I made it
through the war just fine. Others… well, they weren’t so lucky. So whether you
believe it or not, we believed it. And, if it helped get some rookie pilot back
to the carrier to fight another day, then I say we did the best we could.”

    
She hesitated thoughtfully before responding. “A moment ago you said ‘our
families’. Does that mean you also had loved ones that you—”

    
“No,” he snapped with a scowl,
then
softened his voice
and expression. “No disrespect, but I don’t believe the details of my life
outside of the friendship I had with your father are on the table for
discussion at the moment.” The words were delivered far more harshly than he’d
intended.

 
   Melissa’s mouth open slightly as she looked down at her hands
folded in her lap. “I’m sorry, Captain. I should have known better. My father
hardly ever spoke of anyone in his command, at least the ones under him during
the war. It’s probably as hard for you to believe that I’m his daughter as it
is for me to believe that you—”