The Army Of Light (Kestrel Saga) (10 page)

    
She drew her hand to her mouth to try and stifle a chuckle. “I do hope it’s
closed for good.”

    
“Piece of crap panel,” Shawn muttered under his breath.

    
She noticed he was clutching a red shop towel loosely in his hand. She slipped
it from his grasp, then dabbed the sweat from his brow. “Yes. Space travel: an
exacting science, to be sure.” She couldn’t help but smile at his obvious
frustration. 
Well, we may not be getting anywhere, but at least he’s
trying.

    
He reached up in an attempt to reclaim the towel, but inadvertently grabbed her
fingers in the process. Shawn brought their combined hands down slowly,
then
slipped the towel from her grip. “Thanks,” he muttered,
“but I think I can manage on my own.”

    
She stepped back and leaned against the side of the ship, the words ‘
Sylvia’s
Delight
’ painted in beautiful script above her head as she contemplated
those few words. 
Manage on my own
, she thought. “Does it get any
easier?” she asked dejectedly, not really knowing why she’d asked it, nor
expecting Shawn or anyone else to answer. Thus, she was a bit flustered when a
soft but strong voice did.

    
“We do the best we can.”

    
The words snapped her back to reality. Disturbed that she’d momentarily let her
guard down, she looked back to the grimy shop town in Shawn’s hand. “Please see
that you get cleaned up before we take off. I don’t want to go up there with a
sweaty pilot.”

    
Something had upset her, and though he didn’t exactly know what it was, the
captain decided against saying anything that would make the situation any less
comfortable for her.  He simply nodded and smiled softly.
“Yes, ma’am.”

*          
*           *

    
“Alright Trent, let’s see what she’s got,” Shawn voiced into the Mark-IV’s
cockpit intercom,
then
glanced out of the port window.

    
Trent, holding a small transmitter in his hand, looked up to Shawn from the
hangar floor and gave the captain a quick salute.

    
Melissa, who up to this point had been standing silently next to Trent, could
see the captain moving around in the cockpit, likely throwing switches and
readying the engines for their initial
start up
.
Shawn had been right about one thing: it hadn’t taken long to install the new
stabilizers on the engine—much less time than Melissa had anticipated. Trent
was a truly magician when it came to working on 
Sylvia’s Delight
—assuming
he had the time and the right parts. But time was now a luxury, and none of
them could afford to waste it.

    
Seconds later Melissa could hear a faint buzzing sound emanating from the
vessel. As its pitch and intensity increased, the noises seemed to be coming
from everywhere all at once, even inside her.

    
In the cockpit, Shawn stole another gaze outside, this time directed at
Melissa. She was wearing a bright summer dress, her thick auburn hair pulled
tightly back, and her alabaster skin reflecting the rays of the binary Minosian
suns as they streamed into the hangar. She looked like a sunflower in a sea of
weeds against the dingy hangar floor. As his eyes traveled the length of her
body, they finally rested back on her face, and he realized she was scowling at
him questionably. It dawned on him that, not only had he been staring at her,
but that he’d almost been smiling. He blinked rapidly,
then
redirected his attention back to the ships instrument panel. With a swift shake
of his head, he tried to clear his thoughts of everything around him except for
the task at hand.

    
“Okay, here goes nothing,” he said under his breath. His fingers snapped the
igniter switch and he immediately heard the whine of the engines turn into a
low roar. He looked down to the engine status monitor and saw the impellors on
the engines had begun to glow with a faint blue hue. The sounds and vibrations
of the two engines spinning to life were music to his ears. He reached up with
his right hand and began slowly applying power to the hover controls. As Shawn
watched the altimeter, the ships landing pads slowly lifted from the hangar
floor.

    
Glancing back down to Trent, Shawn offered the mechanic
a
slow thumbs
up. Getting the same gesture in return, he turned his
attention to the ships master control panel—showing a brief summary of the
ships every system. He began to go through the flight checklist as he’d done a
hundred times in the past. His eyes then swept deftly over the panorama of
computer displays and physical gauges above his seat. 
Fluid
pressure?
Good. Solid fuel level looks about right.
Hydraulics?
Everything okay there. Vector control seems to
be in specs, too.
Once he ran through the rest of the preflight list, he
informed Trent via the intercom that the ship was ready for launch.

    
“Roger that, Skipper. Try not to hit anything this time,” Trent chuckled,
then
gave the captain a halfhearted salute before shuffling
clear of the ship. Having momentarily forgotten Melissa was still standing too
close to the hovering transport, Trent jogged back to her side, cupping his
hands over her ears so she could hear him over the roar of the Mark-IV’s engines.
“Let’s get out of the way! Come on over here!” 

    
Shawn watched from above as they bounded across the hangar and out through the
open clamshell doors.

    
Seeing that his path was now clear, the captain applied more power to the retro
thrusters and fully retracted the landing pads. He then gradually applied more
power to the engines until 
Sylvia’s Delight
 began to drift
slowly out of the hangar. Her silvery hull shimmered in the sunlight as her
thrusters cleared the thin layer of sand on the concrete landing pad adjacent
to the outer doors. When the cockpit was parallel with the hangar entrance,
Shawn looked down to Trent and once again gave the same two-finger salute that
he’d received from the mechanic. Trent simply nodded in return, which was all Shawn
needed to see.

    
Just as the ship cleared the hangar, Shawn set the engines to full throttle,
the maximum power of the engines springing to life. With a great howl, the
Mark-IV rocketed forward, parting the sands of the beach and the waves beyond
as it skimmed the surface and picked up speed. Soon, all Melissa and Trent
could see was the cloud of ocean spray left in the vessels wake.

    
Shawn guided the Mark-IV up, leisurely pulling on the steering controls while
continuously checking his gauges. Once he was satisfied that everything was
reading normal, he decreased altitude and set the ship in a thirty degree bank
to starboard. 
Sylvia’s Delight
 continued in her slow turn,
nearly one-hundred and eighty degrees, until she was heading straight back for
the hangar. The horizon indicator rose up until it was nearly level, showing
Shawn that the vessel was quickly nearing the ocean’s surface. Now flying more
by feel then by instruments, he set the engines to three-quarter power and
gazed out of the front view port. Within seconds he heard the altitude
indicator buzz in defiance of his position, which was quickly followed by the
synthetic voice of the ship’s computer stating the same thing.
“Proximity warning, Captain.
Please take evasive action.”

    
Ahead of 
Sylvia’s Delight
 was Tericeria, and he was dead
inline
with the Old Flamingo’s hangar.

    
Back on the landing pad, the trajectory of the vessel made Melissa a little
more than nervous.
“Umm, Mister Maddox?”
Melissa
asked, not averting her gaze from the incoming transport. “Is he quite high
enough to clear the building?”

    
Trent let out a chuckle and he sucked at a tobacco pipe she hadn’t seen
him light. “I think so.”

    
Sylvia’s Delight
 suddenly screamed directly over the hangar,
missing the roof by less than twenty feet. The roar was enough to cause Melissa
to flinch and instinctively crouch as she watched the vessel disappear behind
the roofline. The sound of 
D
’s engines began to fade in the
distance as the captain took her into another slow climb, this time to the
South.

    
“I guess he cleared it,” Trent said, laughing and standing tall.

    
Melissa suddenly felt foolish as she picked herself up from the concrete pad.
“That man has got some nerve.”

    
Trent tilted his head down in silent contemplation, withdrawing his hand
from his pocket and scratching at the back of his neck. “Yeah, but he’s got the
spine to back it up.”

    
She pursed her lips and, hearing the telltale wine of the ships engines once
again, turned to face the ocean. She watched as the Mark-IV went into another
dive over the sea,
then
rocketed out between two large
coral formations jutting from the seafloor. Melissa agreed the captain
appeared to have some skill, but this test flight was far from the perils they
might encounter on their journey—where safety nets and spare parts weren’t
exactly plentiful. 

    
“We’ll see about that, Mister Maddox.”

*          
*           *

    
Shawn spent another forty minutes testing the rest of 
D
’s systems
before bringing the ship into a perfect landing, maneuvering the vessel to the
loading dock adjacent to the hangar.

    
Unfortunately, the waiting containers, heavily laden with armaments and
ammunition bound for
Welga,
were marginally unstable.
Using a small
gravcart
, Trent could only pack one at
a time into the ship—which was making for a long loading procedure. Melissa had
sat idly by, surveying the procession first with curiosity, which had since
morphed into boredom. In an attempt to disrupt the monotony, she stretched her
back and headed for Shawn’s office.

    
She opened the door unannounced, and was greeted by Shawn holding a small
computer tablet up to a light suspended from the ceiling. He didn’t acknowledge
her presence as she walked to the front of his desk. She regarded him for a
moment, watching as his eyes squinted slightly, moving the tablet away from his
face and then back again.

    
“Well,” she began in astonishment, “this has turned out to be a rather
enlightening day for me.”

    
“How so?” he asked, his eyes intent on what he was reading.

 
   “First, I’m nearly wounded by your poor throwing ability and
serious lack of aim in the hangar. Then I’m almost decapitated by you and that
ship of yours while you’re out joyriding around the island; which, by the way,
I won’t be forgetting anytime soon. And now there’s this.”

    
Shawn narrowed his eyes, moving the tablet within an inch of his face. “I’m a
little busy. Could you be more specific?”

    
She folded her arms defiantly. “It appears that I’ve hired the services of a
blind pilot. At least that would explain everything that’s happened so far.”

    
He sighed heavily, his eyes still searching the screen of the palm sized
computer. “First off, I throw just fine… and I hit everything I aim for. Secondly,
I can assure you that I would never have decapitated you. That beautiful hair
of yours might have clogged the engines I just repaired. And third, I’m far
from blind. My computer’s backlight isn’t working, and it’s hard to make out
this weather report that just came in. But, you go ahead and keep on saying
things you think are important, and I’ll go ahead pretending it means something
to me.”

    
Melissa threw her arms at her sides; hands clamped into fists, and spoke
through a clinched jaw. “Just hurry up, Captain. We’re wasting time!”

    
He raised an eyebrow at his device. “Trent is still loading the crates. We’ve
got a few minutes.”

    
“He might move faster if he had some help, you know?”

    
“Well, you don’t seem to be doing much. I’m sure he’d appreciate the offer,
although all we have left is an old two-wheeled hand truck.”

    
She watched as he continued to stare at the worn out computer. “If you didn’t
use antiquated equipment, we’d be in space by now. Haven’t you ever heard of a
holographic terminal? It’s time to get with the twenty-fourth century, Mister
Kestrel. We’re all waiting for you to arrive!” Then she turned and stormed out
of the office, slamming the door behind her.

    
Shawn finally glanced up from the pad and smiled at the now firmly closed door,
the blinds covering its solitary window rattling back and forth. Melissa
definitely had William’s fire, of that there was no doubt. Shawn remembered
fondly the last time William’s anger had been directed at him. It had come
after a particularly ugly brawl with a Kafaran destroyer—one that Shawn had
decided to take on all by himself. Shawn, a junior lieutenant at the time, had
easily bitten off more than he could chew, and it was only by sheer luck he’d
managed to incapacitate the much larger vessel. That outcome had allowed him to
avoid the court martial he would have surely received from disobeying Williams’
orders, but didn’t help him bypass the verbal lashing he received from Graves
during his debriefing.

    
He chuckled at the recollection, remembering fondly that Graves had even taken
to inventing a few new choice words to describe Shawn’s recklessness, but then
Shawn brushed the memory aside and finished deciphering the day’s weather
details. “Special Report as of thirteen-thirty local time,” he read aloud to
the empty office. “Ceiling estimated at five-thousand feet, sky clear, lower
scattered clouds at sixteen-hundred feet, visibility twenty miles; temperature
seventy-five degrees; winds northwest at five knots.” 
A
perfect day to get out of trouble.
 
He smiled once again
at the blinds as they came to a slow halt. He gave the computer a thoughtful
glance, as if he were saying goodbye to an old friend for the last time, then
tossed it into a nearby wastebasket. 
With my luck, at the end of all
this I’ll either have enough money to buy a new one or I’ll be dead.