The Army Of Light (Kestrel Saga)

by Fender, Stephen

  Melissa was surprised that Shawn stood their silently. In truth, Shawn was at a loss for words.

  Krif leaned forward, the leather of his chair creaking slowly as he did so. “Aren’t you going to say how glad you are to see me?”

  Shawn took a step closer to Krif’s position. “Somehow, ‘glad’ just doesn’t do this experience justice.”

  Melissa didn’t budge from where she stood, but neither could she be silent any longer. No one was getting anywhere. “You know this man, Mister Kestrel?”

  “Sure do,” Shawn said with his eyes still locked into Krif’s. “This is Richard Krif. If he had any friends they’d call him Richard but, since he doesn’t, everyone just calls him Dick.”

  Krif glared at Shawn. “That’s Captain to you, ace.”

  “Fine,” Shawn replied, shrugged his shoulders and turned to Melissa. “This is Captain Dick.”

  Krif snapped up from his chair like a bolt of lighting. He slammed his palms down on his desktop, rattling a pen free of its resting place and spiraling to the deck. “Watch your mouth, Kestrel, or I’ll have your ass tossed in the brig.”

  Shawn smirked. “If it gets me out of your presence then I’d say it’d be a pretty good deal.”

  Melissa put a soft hand to Shawn’s shoulder to try and diffuse the quickly deteriorating situation. “Mister Kestrel, please.”

  Shawn quickly jerked away from her touch, his eyes never leaving Krif’s.

  Krif nodded his head in Melissa’s direction. “You better listen to your girlfriend there, hot-shot. It might save you a lot of headache.”

  “Cut the crap, Krif. What are you really doing here and what do you want?”

  Richard pulled his hands free from the desk, and Melissa fully expected to see to impressions where he’d slammed them a moment before. All at once Krif’s countenance seemed to change as a razor sharp smile crept across his face. “What I’m doing here is classified. And, as for what I want, I wouldn’t concern yourself with it. I have what I came for.”

  Melissa watched as perplexity washed over Shawn’s face. “You came all the way here to get your hands on me?” he asked. “If you wanted to have a reunion, you could have just sent me an invitation. I’d have gladly declined.”

  “Please,” Krif scoffed. “Your role in all of this is secondary, at best.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?”

  Krif slid out from behind his desk and made his way to within a few feet of Shawn. He kept his voice low and calm, which instantly put Melissa on alert. Krif, already the size of a small bear, was like a hungry predator inching ever closer to a wounded animal. She fought the urge to step closer to Shawn, although she had no idea what she’d have done once she got there. “It means that you were a secondary objective on this mission, and it’s one that I strenuously disagreed with right from the start. The fact that I had to send two of my pilots out to save your ass should be proof enough of that.”

  “There were four Temkorian’s!” Melissa countered.

  “He’s handled worse,” Krif sneered. “In fact, I was half tempted to just sit back and see how long you’d last in that old bucket of yours.”

  Just like old times. Shawn knew Krif was looking for any way to get under his skin and, just like the last time they’d met, he wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He sidestepped Captain Krif’s remark and continued. “That still doesn’t answer my question, Krif.”

  “At this point I could give a rats rear about your questions, Kestrel. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not exactly on a pleasure cruise here. I have more important things to do than chase you and our little lost lamb over there all across the goddamn sector!”

  Shawn was preloaded with a retort when suddenly it faltered at the edge of his lips. He shook his head, trying to figure out if he’d just heard Krif correctly. “Did you just say… lamb? I’m sorry, did I miss something here?”

  Krif rolled his icy eyes in frustration, then looked to Shawn dumbfounded. With a veil of confusion fully obscuring Shawn’s face, Krif had no alternative than to get to the point. “Our agent, Mister Kestrel. Our undercover intelligence operative right behind you, who just so happens to have caused me more of a pain in my rear than my last five physicals combined.”

  “Your what?” Shawn asked in bewilderment, still trying to wrap his head around Krif’s words. As his brain slowly interpreted what he’d heard, he turned to face Melissa. “Oh, right. She’s an OSI agent, just like I’m the Prince of Persia,” he was almost laughing, but no one else seemed to sense the joke. “You’ve been off the mark before, Krif, but this time you’ve really taken the cake. I mean, there’s just no way she could—” but his words faltered once he saw the look on her face. She wore a curious mix of remorse and exhaustion. The feeling in the pit of Shawn’s stomach—the one that usually told him he’d made a huge mistake—came back with a wallop when Melissa mouthed the words ‘I’m so sorry’ across the otherwise silent briefing room.

  His shoulders slumped as the weight of it all fell over him like a lead blanket. “No. No. Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me?”

  From behind him Shawn could overhear Krif chuckling in delight. “Wait… wait just a second. Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that you didn’t know? I mean, you honestly didn’t have a clue who she really was?”

  “She never really said,” Shawn replied stoically in Melissa’s direction, kicking himself for having never asked the question. Not that she would have told him the truth, anyway.

  “Well maybe you should’ve asked her, hot-shot,” Krif chortled, “because she’s gotten you into a whole heap of trouble. I’ve got to tell you, though, that the look on your face right now has made everything thus far worth it.” Krif stopped just short of putting a hand on Shawn’s shoulder. “You should see the look on your face, Kestrel. You look like a fish gaping for its last few breaths of air.”

  Shawn, ignoring Krif’s words, stepped a half pace closer to Melissa. “You… you’re and intelligence agent?”

  She cast her eyes to the deck, then nodded silently.

  “You’re in the OSI?”

  Another slow nod as she brought her eyes up to meet Shawn’s

  “The OSI? As in, the Office of Special Intelligence?”

  To this she rolled her eyes. “Yes, Captain. The OSI.”

  She looked at him, and saw that there was no way to interpret his expression as anything but what it was. He was hurt. While the thought of full disclosure had crossed her mind while they were on Persephone, Melissa had no idea that the revelation would affect the captain so profoundly—much less how she now felt about it. “I never lied to—”

  “You knew!” Shawn all but shouted. “You knew this whole time who I was, didn’t you?

  “No, I didn’t know about—”

  “Yes! Yes you did! You intelligence spooks know everything,” his hand fluttered around as he spoke. “And I fell for it… hook, line, and sinker.”

  “Mister Kestrel, please. If you’d only let me—”

  “You’ve manipulated me at every turn to help you find your father, didn’t you? I’ll bet the Admiral isn’t even your father, is he? Maybe he’s just another agent… or… or your husband or something. Or someone who owes you a great deal of money? Or both. Am I right? Was that a lie, too?”

  “Mister Kestrel!” she said in astonishment.

  “I can’t believe it. You lied to me, and to Trent… and then you lied to Toyo.”

  “No,” she said flatly. “I’m pretty sure Toyo knows.”

  “Oh, great,” Shawn threw his arms up in defeat. “So now I have two people holding back on me.”

  “If I could just explain—”

  “And what was that song and dance about wanting to know some old war stories about your father, and all the tears in your eyes? I mean, you really had me going there for a few minutes. You’re some kind of world class actress, let me tell you.”

  Krif spoke up from behind Shawn. “I’m just glad we finally ca
ught up with her for an official debriefing before it was too late.”

  If it were possible, Shawn’s eyes went even wider. “You… you’re in cahoots with this piece of space garbage?” he asked as he pointed a thumb back in Krif’s direction. “It’s all been one big lie after another, hasn’t it, lady?”

  “If you’d only stop talking for a moment—”

  “And now I’m in the thick of it… whatever it is. I’m sandwiched between Sector Command, the OSI, Jacques De Lorme, and God knows who else. I can’t believe this. And I can’t believe I wanted to kiss you.”

  She was about to reply when the words in her mind impacted squarely with the words that had just entered her ears. It was like a hover car accident, with consonants and vowels flying in a dozen different directions, all of them trying to get out of her mouth at the same time. “Wait, what did you just say?”

  “You know what? Forget it,” he said, his voice dropping down to a semblance of normalcy as he stepped to within a foot of Melissa. “I thought you were trouble the moment I laid my eyes on those legs of yours in my hangar. I just knew you’d be nothing but trouble. And I was right. You’re nothing but a lying, manipulative piece of—”

  “Shawn!” Melissa shouted, then with lighting fast reflexes reached out and slapped him hard across the cheek.

  “Hot damn,” Krif belted out. “That’s what I’m talking about! I’ve wanted to do that for years!”

  Shawn rubbed at the red imprint quickly forming on his cheek, speaking even more calmly than before. “I thought you promised you wouldn’t hit me anymore.”

  Melissa, obviously still spun up over Shawn’s outburst, wasn’t relaxing as quickly. “I promised that I wouldn’t punch you, and I’d silently included no longer kicking you into that agreement as well, even though it was against my better judgment to do so at the time. However, there is no contract in the universe, spoken or written, that takes away a woman’s right to slap a man if she feels he’s gotten out of line with her.”

  “You know, I wish I had a video recording of this,” Krif injected. “That way I could watch that slap in slow motion right before I go to bed at night.” He smiled and then patted his stomach. “Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to live with the memory. Thanks for that, Miss Graves. Really.”

  Satisfied that, for the moment, she’d silenced Shawn, she turned her wrath towards Krif. “Since we’re all through with pretenses here, let me make one thing perfectly clear to you, Captain. I’d watch my words carefully, unless you fancy the idea of scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush. I am a senior, level-seven OSI operative. I’m not at all like the rookie field agent that’s regularly assigned to this vessel. I’m a command agent, working directly with Beta Sector intelligence. As such, I easily outrank you and anyone else on this ship. I can pull operational command from you, your crew, or this ship at any time I like.”

  Krif narrowed his eyes and leaned in close to her, so close that she could smell the cheddar cheese he had on his broccoli for lunch. “Are you sure about that?” he whispered menacingly.

  His tone put her back on the defensive, although she was loath to reveal that to him. “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Then you need to check your facts, lady,” he sneered. “Once you went AWOL, your clearance level was immediately revoked. Your former rank and title mean exactly jack squat right now.”

  There was something in his tone that gave her pause. “We’ll see about that,” she said resolutely. “All I need is a transmitter and I’ll get the OSI Director on the vid-net personally. Then we’ll see who’s suspended, Captain.”

  Krif smiled wickedly. “The ships currently under a communications blackout. Besides, why waste the channel bandwidth when you can talk to him in person?”

  She cocked an eyebrow in confusion. “What?”

  “He’s here, now, onboard the Rhea.”

  “That’s impossible,” she tried to sound confident. “The Director has hardly ever left the home system, much less the Central Core worlds.”

  Krif sighed deeply. “Then that might explain why he’s really pissed off about being here. You see, I don’t exactly know what information you’ve stolen, or what secrets you’ve got locked in that thick skull of yours that the OSI wants back so badly. And frankly, I don’t care. What I do know, however, is what a man looks like when he’s been jerked around,” Krif motioned to Shawn’s angered expression. “I give you Exhibit-A. The Director was no less upset when he came onboard, and I’m sure he’s even less congenial now that he’s been waiting nearly a half an hour for you to report to him.”

  She didn’t want to give Krif the satisfaction of seeing her sweat. “Where?”

  He waved his arm in the direction of the door, “As soon as you’re through, take a right. Briefing room three will be the third door on your right. And, just in case you decide to get lost again, I’ll escort you there myself.”

  Melissa glanced at Shawn, but seeing the anger seething beneath his skin, refrained from saying anything that would only make things worse—if that were even possible. She turned to leave the room, wondering at the same moment if she’d ever get the chance to explain it all to him. Telling half-truths and lies came with the territory when one decided to become an OSI agent, but this time the situation was… different. She was different, and he was different. She’d not only wounded Shawn, but something inside herself as well, and it left a bad taste in her mouth. However, with the Director of the OSI waiting down the hall, she only hoped there would be time for her to explain it all to Captain Shawn Kestrel later.

  If they were both still alive.

  The moment Melissa and Krif had exited the briefing room, Shawn let out long held breath with a deep sigh. Paying little attention to who else was in the room, he paced to the wall near where Krif had been standing and pressed a small blinking switch near a recessed panel. A section of the wall slid into an alcove to reveal a near panoramic view of the stars, with the planet Minos far below. Shawn leaned himself against the five foot tall window frame and stared at the beautiful blue-green world, watching as congealing cloud formation inched across the western ocean, casting a dark shadow over the otherwise unblemished surface.

  After a moment of silence, Lieutenant Commander Brunel walked up beside him and peered out of the view port as she spoke. “Captain Kestrel, may I ask you a question?”

  In truth, he’d forgotten she was still in the room. Not bothering to turn from the visage of the slowly receding planet, he shrugged his shoulders. “Go ahead.”

  “What happened between you and the Captain? Why do you dislike each other so much?”

  He grunted. “Dislike is far too soft a word.”

  “Well, what word would you use?”

  Shawn smirked and turned toward her. She was standing close, much closer than he’d assumed. It surprised him, but he didn’t move away. “I’m not really sure anymore. I used to call it hate. But, it’s been a long time, so maybe it’s festered into a deep loathing by now.”

  “I’d still like to know why, though.”

  “Is it important?”

  She seemed to search for the answer. “Sure. Well… actually, maybe. Honestly, I really don’t know for certain.”

  He sat himself on the corner of the briefing room table, arms folded across his chest. “It’s a long story.”

  She glided to his side and propped herself against the table beside him. Her dark eyes sparkled under the florescent lights, and she smiled pleasantly. “I’ve been told I’m a good listener. Was it during the war?”

  “Something like that,” he offered. “We had a… falling out, you could say.”

  “I wouldn’t say. After all, I’m not one to gossip, Captain,” she said with a grin. “Though, I’ve heard more than a few stories about you from some other pilots. I guess I was just curious about the legendary Shawn Kestrel.”

  Shawn shifted his eyes from the desk, briefly scanning the strikingly attractive pilot that had admittedly saved the lives of both
he and Melissa. Her dark hair was spilling over her shoulders in a very un-military like fashion—a sign of lax regulations—and he wondered what other changes had occurred in the service since the end of the war. The corner of his mouth turned up into a half smile as he considered her statement. “It’s classified.”

  “That’s a little childish, Captain,” she beamed.

  “Maybe I’m simply playing it safe.”

  She jerked her head back slighly, a look of doubt washing over her face. “Well, now that doesn’t sound like any of the stories I’ve heard about you.”

  “That’s the funny thing about stories, Commander. Sometimes there’s very little truth to them.”

  She looked away, as if considering what he’d just said before she advanced in her questioning. “My call sign is Raven. It’s… well, what everyone calls me.”

  He nodded. “Alright then. Raven it is.”

  “Well, that’s not really what I had in mind. Being that you’re a civilian, and considering that I’m off duty for the next twelve hours, I don’t think I’d mind if you called me Roslyn.”

  Shawn suddenly realized that she was standing dangerously close. “Roslyn,” he repeated softly.

  “Shawn,” she repeated in the same tone, adding a wink at the end.

  He wanted to ask her what was to be done with him, his ship, and his mechanic. But, before the conversation got any more involved, Krif reentered the briefing room in a rush. Shawn leaped away from the table in surprise, putting as much space between himself and Roslyn as he could. Brunel, on the other hand, hadn’t moved an inch, still leaning casually against the table as her eyes shifted from Shawn to Krif, then back.

  Krif locked eyes with the attractive pilot, then hurriedly tossed a metal file folder onto the pristine desktop. “Lieutenant Commander Brunel, would you excuse us, please? Mister Kestrel and I have a few things to discuss.”

  She lifted herself smartly from the table “Yes, sir.”

  Krif caught her attention just as the doors opened for her. His tone was lower, barely above a whisper. “Commander, I’ll debrief you at 1630. I’d like to go over your flight recorder data.”