Emerald Flight: Homecoming: Buried Secrets

Hawkes was asleep in his quarters when the incoming message signal chimed. He came awake instantly. There were only a very small number of conditions that would cause an audible signal to sound once he had gone to bed. Almost none of them tended to be harbingers of good news.

He moved quickly to his desk and activated the display. To his surprise, he found the message to contain text only. While not alarming in itself, that occurrence was rare. He noted the security encoding of the message, relaxed somewhat, and began reading the message.

His relative relief did not last long. Instead, it was transformed into a different form of disquiet.

The Captain has resigned.

Hawkes recalled the information that he had.

She had gone—reportedly been sent—to the resort on Kauai. From there, she had left suddenly to return to Quebec.

That event had caught Hawkes’ attention when it had happened. He had then let the incident go when it appeared unrelated to any official Fleet business.

Her father lives in Quebec. So a personal matter?

He had contacts that might be able to tell him what had happened, particularly if it was a matter of public record. If that was the case, though, he could probably find out for himself. As it was unlikely that it was a matter of Fleet security, he really had no business looking into it further. The implications of her resignation, though, he found troubled him deeply—far more so than he would have anticipated.

Change was a fact of life in the Fleet—something his more than two decades of service in it had demonstrated to him many times during those years. One could expect to change commanding officers and physical postings almost without notice. It was simply something that happened and he had long ago accepted that.

So why was this one affecting him so strongly?

Picking up one of his tablets, he opened the message there and turned off the larger display. He studied its contents again as he walked over to the small kitchen area. Almost automatically, he prepared coffee, placing the dark gray mug under the spout and waited for it to fill. The strong aroma alone was nearly enough to further energize his mind.

With the filled mug in one hand, and the tablet in the other, he made his way to the armchair near the window. He considered activating its tinting, but realized that there was no need. It was still night. Dawn was still hours away in this part of the world.