Respect between Enemies – The BetanWerecat
Gundam Seed: "Descending Sword" and after. OCs with appearances by canon characters. The actions of Kira, Athrun, and the others have far reaching effects. Ah, interpersonal relationships! What joys they are. Rated T for language and off screen activity. (Reviews are welcomed but not required. This is written only for my own enjoyment. Flaming me will get you ignored.)
All right, second weekend chapter finished. Mind you, this is a stupid hour of the morning to be up writing, but it is done.
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed.
The recording ended and the lights came up. This was the third time through for some, at least second for everyone. The details were clearer this time as the shock was over now and they could all pay much closer attention.
"Madam Chairman, has this been verified?"
Eileen Canaver smiled grimly. "Oh yes, Councilor Elsman. The recording itself is quite genuine. Just where aboard the Archangel it was made is not certain but it was made there and the two people you have been watching are beyond question Captain Murrue Ramius of that ship and Colonel Ledonir Kisaka of the Kusanagi. It is impossible to date it exactly by internal evidence but it was made at least three weeks ago, well before the destruction of Boaz."
"Is it Junk Guild information?" Elsman demanded to know.
"Again, it's impossible to prove one way or the other. The wrecked two man ship it came off of is a Junk Guild craft. That much we can prove and that much they agree to. But the recording, no, we can prove nothing with it. Our analysis of the materials and the recording methods are inconclusive. Everything is too readily commercially available. It could have been made by a talented college student. And as all know, the Guild's specialty is collecting the detritus of the universe to sort for useful items for resale. They could have found it somewhere. And it was discovered in a cargo space, not in the ships small safe. We can prove the data is real, we can prove nothing about the media it came to us on."
"Then, my son, he isn't really guilty of actual treason." Tad Elsman said very slowly.
"No, he isn't." The Interim Chairman replied calmly. "Questionable judgment at times yes, but not treason."
She leaned back and sighed unhappily. "Nor, would it appear, is Athrun Zala a traitor. A very, very unhappy young man with an exceptionally emotionally damaged response to his father, but not actually a traitor."
"He destroyed Genesis!" Several Councilors shouted that in near unison.
"Yes? You would prefer the late Chairman had actually managed to fire on the Earth and forever destroyed both the Naturals and us?" Eileen demanded icily. "You've all seen the genetic data from the Ito Project and you've all seen the reports that support it from our other leading geneticists. If that weapon had fired and eliminated the human population of Earth as Patrick wished, we would have followed them into oblivion in three generations. Period! Athrun Zala, whatever his motives, saved us all from extinction!"
Her eyes swept around the council table, catching each and every member briefly. "I would also remind you that all the evidence we have very plainly shows us he never went over to the Earth Forces. He did join his former fiancée and her people, but never the Earth Forces. And Lacus Clyne never led her people against the Plants. Against the Council, yes, but never against the Plants. Athrun Zala is no traitor. But he is a divisive element we can not permit to return either."
"Pardon and exile?" Councilor Amalfi asked heavily.
"I'm afraid so." She replied sadly. "It is a terrible thing to do really. The Zala boy has a potential we can really ill afford to lose. But if we discard Athrun, public opinion will be much more receptive to greater pardons for those whose offenses are so much lighter. We lose one and gain back dozens. Each will have to be reviewed individually of course but with his case for a measure, all others should be much better off."
Eileen sat back wearily. That should get the debate rolling nicely. She glanced over at Ezaria Joule. The silver-haired woman was keeping her silence. Dr. Ito's data had been a shattering revelation for her. She believed wholeheartedly in Patrick's vision of a Coordinator's world, free of Naturals and the dangers they posed. Just as well that she didn't know of the small but growing population among the Naturals who were so gene-cleansed they could almost rival Coordinators. That really would have her going about in paranoid circles!
When were they going to have time to take up that issue? She didn't know. It couldn't be ignored forever though. That group might be small now but it was likely to grow rapidly. Those people would be frighteningly fertile and if the policy was deliberate in a family, it would spread with each new generation at a much faster rate than the growth of the more normal Natural population did.
The issue was going to have to wait. What they had on the table now was going to have to take priority. First get their own wayward children home safely and legally. Set up a peace that would last a while. Then it would be possible to worry about a potentially dangerous genetic group down on the planet below them.
The Interim Chairman leaned forward to listen intently as Tad Elsman began to outline a plan for a pardon for Athrun Zala. Well, well, he had taken her hints the other day to heart. There was nothing spur of the moment or half done in this no matter how he tried to make it sound like it. She kept the smile off her face as she listened. Oh, yes, this would work. And after this, it would make forgiving Dearka Elsman a rather simple matter too. She almost snorted aloud. And some thought Tad wasn't clever!
Adrian sat in the antechamber outside the Board of Inquiry trying to be patient. Yuri was wilting in the chair beside him. Their interviews were over. For all their anticipation and nerves, they had been mere formalities. However, Captain Thoms had been in there over two hours now with no word at all coming out of those closed doors.
He heard a small sigh and glanced over to see Yuri settling bonelessly into the chair, asleep at last. He sighed himself. At least his friend wasn't so gnawed with worry that he couldn't rest. Or maybe he'd just exhausted himself. Either way, the fidgeting would stop now.
Perhaps twenty minutes later, the sound of a door opening brought him up with a snap but it was not the right door. Instead, Commander Yzak Joule stepped silently out of the second Inquiry boardroom. Adrian eyed him uncertainly. Joule was just standing there, eyes down and hands fisted. That was the Inquiry for Dearka Elsman and his friend's stance didn't look promising.
"Commander?" He asked quietly.
Joule's angry blue eyes stabbed at him. "What Ito?"
Adrian was suddenly pissed. "You aren't the only friend Dearka has, Joule!"
The silver head turned back, hiding the eyes behind the fall of the hair again. "I'm aware of that."
"Then talk to me, damn it!"
For a long minute, Adrian didn't think he would. Then Yzak tipped his head back to glare at the ceiling. He was tense as an over-wound spring but although he was angry, he wasn't in the kind of rage a seriously negative result should have triggered.
"Why did he ever listen to that damn Zala? Even if he was fighting the Earth Forces, why off that deck? We were supposed to sink the legged ship, not join her! I don't care if she had turned against them by then! What was he thinking to fight alongside those people?"
"Oh." Adrian nodded slowly. "The Board of Inquiry didn't like that eh? Stupid idiots! The Archangel wasn't an enemy any longer! She'd chosen to be something damn close to an ally. Her pilots, especially Freedom's pilot, saved all the Plants from the nuclear attack! Why are they blaming Dearka for helping them do that?"
"You don't have any more brains than Athrun!" Joule shouted, jarring Yuri back to wakefulness. "What kind of idiots are you two? The legged ship is not an ally!"
"Archangel isn't exactly an enemy anymore either, Commander." Yuri noted quietly before Adrian could say anything he'd never be able to take back. "They haven't been one since Alaska, when their own people threw them away. Besides, unless I got the story wrong, Dearka didn't even consider the idea until the Battle of Aube, when the Alliance attacked and the Archangel stood against them to defend the Aube because that was the right thing to do."
Joule's angry eyes glared at the wounded man. "You're nuts too, got that Lubbek? A ZAFT Elite has no business fighting alongside the legged ship, period. No excuses!"
"The Commander is respectfully requested to go soak his head." Adrian snapped. "Only a complete imbecile turns down that much help in a shooting war. They had the brains to ask for Dearka's help! Why can't you have the smarts to see how useful theirs was to us?"
"Enough Ito!" Captain Thoms order snapped through whatever retort Yzak Joule might have planned to make. "You don't tell ZAFT Commanders to soak their heads, Elite. Understand me?"
Adrian jumped to his feet and braced to attention. "Yes Sir!"
Thoms left him standing there and turned to Yzak Joule. "Has there been a decision Commander?"
The younger officer turned away. "They reinstated him but they've dropped him from the Elites. Damn it! Dearka is an Elite! But the Board has decided that's the punishment for his bad judgment."
"Uhm. While I doubt either you or Dearka will appreciate my saying this, we've all gotten off lucky here. When you consider what this Board could have done, well, taking his red coat is pretty minor."
Yuri coughed and Adrian struggled to keep his face blank. Put that way, yes, they had all gotten off very lucky indeed. Still, it was a damn shame that some narrow-minded bigot had seen fit to throw Elsman out of the Elites. Mouth aside, he had both the skill and the experience that more than qualified him for the group. They were shooting themselves in the foot by discarding a talent like Dearka.
Yzak must have seen some of his thoughts in his face despite his best effort at control because his reply, although directed at Captain Thoms, spoke straight to Adrian.
"It isn't minor to me! And it means that the veterans who are left are going to have to work that much harder to pick up the load with him gone."
"Yes," Thoms flicked a sidelong glance back at him that slapped Adrian in the face, "they will won't they?"
"Leave him alone, Yzak." Dearka said quietly. "I knew what I was doing. And it came out better than I thought it would really. When I went to get the Buster from Morgenroete, I was sure I'd just signed my exile papers. In fact, I don't know why I haven't been tossed out like Zala has."
Adrian looked over to see the other pilot standing just outside the Board's door. When had he arrived there? He looked again and blinked. Someone had moved fast. Dearka was wearing a regular's green uniform instead of the familiar red. That, damn it, that looked wrong on him!
Dearka's eyes met his for a second. He saw regret and disappointment but not crushing loss. There was even relief there too.
A soft snap of the fingers drew his attention back to Captain Thoms. Lance nodded ever so slightly to Dearka, then motioned the two of them to go. Whatever was going to happen between Elsman and Joule was none of their business. As Adrian closed the door behind the remnants of the Thoms Team, Yzak was still standing silent and motionless in the middle of the room.
They were outside before Yuri asked hesitantly, "What do you think will happen to Dearka now?"
"Joule has asked for him as a Team member." Thoms replied. "I suspect that request will be honored. Both as a means of rewarding Joule for his unwavering loyalty and as a means of seeing to it Elsman has someone to keep a very sharp eye on him from now on. Their friendship is well known. It is expected that Yzak will hold Dearka on a fairly short rein to keep his friend out of trouble for the foreseeable future."
"And you sir?" Adrian asked bluntly.
"I've received a promotion to Commander. And I will be rebuilding the Thoms Team. But it will be a much larger unit this time. We lost a lot of experienced people at Jachin Due, too many of them in our mid-level leadership. So there will be promotions handed out now. For reasons known only to senior Command, I was chosen for one of them."
"If I offer congratulations, will you hit me?" Adrian asked quietly.
"No." Thoms replied. "But then, you have a promotion coming too."
Not many things could really make him trip on a smooth walkway but his commander had just found one. Adrian almost went face first to the ground. If Yuri hadn't grabbed his arm, he probably would have.
"WHAT?"
Lance stopped to wait for him to get his feet back under himself and catch up. "Yes, you heard me. I will have eight sub-teams of six mobile suits each reporting to me. As my Second, you needed a title to go with the expanded authority. I believe you will find your new papers have already arrived at our new offices, Captain Ito."
Like a total fool, Adrian blurted out the unadorned truth instead of stopping to think of a tactful way to say it. "But I don't want to be an administrative officer!"
Thoms' eyebrows rose slightly. "Did I ask you first? Did anyone? No? Then you have two choices; you say 'thank you sir' and learn to live with it or you resign. Your choice. I advise thinking it over for a few days before you actually do anything irrevocable."
"Why? Why me? I have no skills for this! I'm a mobile suit pilot!" Adrian protested.
"And you're a very good one." Lance Thoms agreed. "But that isn't something you can be for the rest of your life. You've told everyone you plan to stay in the ZAFT. If so, you need more skills than just piloting mobile suits. I believe you have the makings of a commander; with the potential to be every bit as good at that as you are as a pilot. And this is where you will start learning how to become that commander. Do you understand me?"
He wanted to say no. He wanted to refuse the promotion on the spot. But he couldn't. Because he did understand what Thoms was telling him. And it was more than one message he was being given here.
The most obvious one was that he was in the clear for any and everything that might have happened during Second Jachin Due and his stay on the Archangel. Since he'd gone aboard her wounded, unconscious, and with his GuAIZ so ruined he couldn't have resisted even if he had been awake, he was regarded as having been captured rather than having surrendered. Then too, he'd never actually been known to have fought beside her personnel. So he carried no black mark on his record for that either. The only people in the Plants who knew he would have willingly stood with her hadn't chosen to tell the Board of Inquiry. And what wasn't known, he couldn't be held accountable for.
He was also being told Lance Thoms believed in him. That Thoms thought he was good enough to be Second in a unit that size. Thoms trusted him to learn how to do the job quickly and to do it well. Because a Second was the man who it all fell on if the Commander was killed in action.
Thirdly, he was being given a position that would offer Kayla some real protection as well. For the truth was she was not going to have the easiest time of it up here as the Natural wife of a ZAFT officer. The greater his rank and responsibilities, the less people would bother her. Yes, he really was going to have to look this gift horse over very carefully, teeth and all, before he said a final yes or no.
"Yes, sir, I'll think very carefully about this."
"You do that, Adrian. And understand this too, I specifically asked to keep you. I had a lot of other people I could have had. But I know you and I know what you can do. Moreover, I know how you take care of the people who are your responsibility. That, above all, is what I want in my Second. Just so you know why I hung this job around your neck."
He nodded slowly. "Thank you, I think."
Yuri laughed. Lance Thoms just grinned. Adrian could only sigh. He was in so much trouble now!
The last two and a half weeks had been brutal. She'd spent every waking hour either in a debriefing session, talking with a reintegration therapist, over at the hospital trying to get someone to let her out of the damned cast, or, worst of all, trying to get it through some impenetrable skulls that she was not going to reenlist. Kayla had a shrewd notion that dress uniform had been intended for a grand public announcement of her intentions to stay in Air Command. For sure no one had mentioned it since it had been included in her inventory and that was the only thing she could imagine it being useful for.
She was grateful beyond imagining to Murrue Ramius for her advice to plan out her story and stick to it like glue. It had seemed like overkill at the time but damned if the Archangel's Captain hadn't known what she was talking about! Murrue had pointed out that while she and her people were going to Aube, Kayla was going back to North America, the hotbed of Blue Cosmos.
"You were months up in the Plants." Murrue told her. "They'll want all the details they can get. And they won't believe you if you tell them you can't remember. So you will need to have a story planned out to the last detail and so memorized you can recite it in your sleep. Because they may ask you then you know!"
"The one person above all you must never mention by name is Adrian. You tell everyone too much just by the way you say his name. Come up with an alias for him or just never give him a name at all. In fact that would be safest. If they ever have the slightest hint you've fallen in love with an enemy soldier, you will end up in prison and they will destroy the children. You must never give them that hint."
Kayla flexed her right arm, free of the cast at last. Unless she'd made some mistake she'd not noticed, and that no one had let her see that she was making, they knew nothing of her heart. Moreover, she had a copy of her final medical report as well. Unless it lied to her instead of them, they would know nothing of the children either.
She checked the small room one last time to be sure nothing was missed. The spare uniforms were folded on the tautly made bed. She had elected to keep the dress uniform, why she wasn't sure. It was packed in the duffel with the personal items and the three changes of civilian clothing she'd bought yesterday. This was the last interview she was going to have to go through. When she was done with this one, she'd have her discharge papers and she'd be out of the service.
She picked up her cap and set it squarely on her head. The duffel went over her shoulder. She dropped the key with the duty officer and signed out of the BOQ for the last time.
Waiting at the curb was the all-weather cycle she'd also bought yesterday. It was a fifth or better hand machine but it was in excellent condition. And it was sturdy. A must for the roads it would be traveling soon. She stowed the duffel in the small luggage compartment and rode over to the Separations Office.
She arrived fifteen minutes early. Parking was simple as most who were exiting the service either drove full size vehicles or would be using mass transit. There was ample space for her cycle. She took the precaution of parking as close to a major foot traffic lane as she could and she locked the cycle and luggage compartment separately. There were people unhappy with her departure; she had no intention of giving them any easy opportunities to stop her.
Once inside, Kayla decided there was enough of a crowd here to make use of her training at being inconspicuous possible. The goal was to get in and out as quietly and smoothly as she could. Today, being ignored was pretty much a good thing.
She joined the line at the registration desk quietly. She kept her voice down when she got to the head of the line and she moved both quickly and quietly. Others in the line were much more outgoing and cheerfully noisy. Kayla moved among them rather like a ghost.
She didn't think she was really noticed much at all. Certainly she had her final interviewing officer assigned and the room noted in near record time. She slipped away from the table with her documents in hand and went in search of Room 216A. It wasn't hard to find.
Up to that point things had gone mostly as she'd planned. It was when she walked in the door that she knew there was a problem. The office was comfortably sized and reasonably appointed, with a better than average desk and a better than average chair for the person being interviewed. Those weren't the problem. The trouble was the very sharp mind clearly evident behind a pair of world-weary gray eyes.
"Good morning, Lieutenant Grayhawk." The man stood and returned her salute properly. He wore a Naval Commander's uniform. That was unusual in and of itself. Air Command personnel weren't usually seen by Navy officers. He indicated the chair and she sat quietly.
"I am Commander Ross." He informed her. "In accordance with the law, this interview will not be recorded in any way. You are free to speak your mind here and to know what you say will stay in this room."
"Yes sir. Thank you." Kayla replied blandly.
One eyebrow rose. "I see. You don't have much faith in that 'not being recorded' promise, do you?"
"I have no opinion regarding it sir."
"I would appreciate it if you didn't bother to flat out lie to me like that." Ross told her bluntly. "Silence is preferable to being lied to. Please consider that going forward from here."
"Yes sir."
Ross smiled grimly and opened the file on his desk. "I have some news for you. You have been promoted. You are now Captain Grayhawk."
Kayla blinked. This she hadn't expected. "I beg the Commander's pardon, promoted?"
He looked up, eyes suddenly keenly alive. "Oh yes. It has been decided you should have rank to match your reputation. If you were Navy instead of Air Command, you'd be a Lt. Commander like the late Mu La Flaga."
He snorted in disgust. "The lardbrains who live behind desks don't understand your kind, Captain. They believe they can buy you with this."
She took his advice and kept her mouth shut. He grinned like a shark as he realized she was going to give him the silence he'd asked for instead of lies.
"Yes, they believe they can buy you. Let me tell you what I believe, Captain." Ross leaned back, eyes narrowing as he studied her closely. "Understand before I get started, I can't prove anything I'm going to say here. Well, I probably could if I wanted to force the issue but it isn't worth it. I've met your personality type before. You do not bend. You can break, which effectively destroys any useful function you might have, but those like you don't bend. And that's why it isn't worth proving any of my suspicions. You are useless as you are now and you would be useless broken. I see no need to waste the time."
"Interesting outlook."
He smiled, a somewhat bitter but genuine expression. "So is yours. Captain, you were once a very loyal and valuable asset to the Alliance. That you no longer are is our fault much more than it is yours. You see, I've actually read all these reports on you. Unlike anyone else who has read them lately, I've paid more attention to what wasn't there than to what was. Grayhawk, you do not work for us anymore and you never will again."
She let one of her eyebrows rise at that.
Ross nodded. "Yes, I understand you. You see, I flew over the site where JOSH-A had been only a week after it was destroyed. I know what happened there. I know what is truth and what is propaganda lie. Moreover, I have a psych assessment of you done shortly after you enlisted and a new one done this week by a person whose judgment I trust. The combination of this data tells me you could not survive that treachery and continue to serve the people who did it."
Kayla sat still as a stone. This bastard was every bit as sharp as he'd looked. Well, he'd asked for silence, she'd continue to give it to him. She had no faith that there was no recording being made at all. Simple survival said she had to assume there was one.
The Commander eyed her with genuine curiosity now. "Sometime after you've been a civilian for a while, I may drop by the Double Hawk Ranch. I would like the real story of how you survived that battle and I know I don't have it here. Or say rather, I don't have all of it here. Because I do know you were captured by ZAFT and all evidence says it was at JOSH-A. So some of this is fact."
He tapped the report. "Our agents next place you in Carpentaria a few days later. You apparently came close to starting a riot on the docks. You were then rushed into a transport and immediately sent up to the Plants. Once there, we have no record of you."
Ross looked at her questioningly, inviting her to fill in the blanks. She looked back, face blank, mouth shut. He smiled coolly.
"For your information, we actually did manage to keep track of our POW's during the war. There were never all that many of them, space battles tend to be very final and neither we nor ZAFT were much inclined to take prisoners during our land exchanges. But there was one place we could never get any data from. When a POW went into the Ito Project, we lost all track of them until they came back out. You were never placed in any of the regular POW facilities. You went directly into the Ito Project, and, unlike any other woman ever taken there, you were held there over two months before you managed your own escape."
She shrugged, neither confirming nor denying his assertions.
Another quick smile tugged up the corners of his mouth. "Dr. Roland Ito is a brilliant man. The Project is a remarkable effort to save the Coordinators from themselves. If he succeeds, they will be the new species the late Chairman Zala claimed they were. But he hasn't succeeded yet. That is where you come in."
Kayla just stared at him, daring him to go on.
He took her up on it. "Dr. Ito needs very specific kinds of genetics to add to the Coordinator population. He's been helping himself to what he could find among our POW's. We know that. We also know that we can protest from now until the sun goes nova but it won't do any good. Those stolen genetics will be neither returned nor destroyed unused. Which brings me to your medical records since you escaped."
"You've seen some very interesting people in your brief time back, Captain." He flipped through several files slowly. "Dr. Two Bird appears to be an old family friend. It would explain why something so fundamental is missing from his report. However, the rest of the people you've seen are all members of a highly organized and equally illegal network that specialized in 'saving babies', any and all babies, regardless of the health of fetus or mother. The conclusions are obvious. You're pregnant. The father is a Coordinator and so is the child."
"A woman who makes a choice like yours is almost certainly fond of the father." Ross remarked quietly. "No Natural who has chosen a Coordinator partner is going to remain in the Earth Forces military. She can't afford to. Add that to your response to treachery and there is no question of any chance that you'd reenlist."
"You are correct, I will not reenlist." Kayla said calmly.
Commander Ross shook his head. "Very well. Then I will wish you luck, Captain. Unlike some, I believe you've earned the right to choose your own path in life. The one you've elected won't be easy. Being a Natural in the Plants will be about as difficult as being a Coordinator is here."
She'd been listening and watching the man. His conclusions were so accurate he had to have a mole in the medical group at the very least. But some of the rest of it now, the viewpoint was off somehow. There had been something just not quite right from the beginning. Then he'd spoken about being a Natural in the Plants and suddenly she knew. It was insane but it made sense. The question was why?
"You're a Coordinator, aren't you Commander?" Kayla asked.
His head came up and he stared hard at her.
"Yeah, you are." She nodded. "You've got those very clear eyes."
He shook his head. "No, I'm not the Coordinator."
"If you aren't, you're damn close." Kayla told him flatly. "Half-blood maybe?"
The smile this time was odd. "Very good. Not accurate but still, very good."
"A Coordinator can reproduce with another Coordinator by natural means," she said slowly, "but the resulting children will vary widely in their abilities. Some will even fall into the range of 'Natural'. That's what Dr. Ito told me. Looks like the old goat knew what he was talking about."
"A very knowledgeable man." The Commander agreed.
She eyed him for several minutes before asking. "So now what?"
"Now, Captain, you take your discharge papers and leave the service. I advise you also leave the base and go at least twenty miles before you stop to change clothes. Your decision is not popular with some very influential folks. There is no record of this interview. Believe me, if there were, you would have just given me cause to get rid of it."
"Why?"
He had no trouble interpreting that question. "Because I want to. I have a foot in both camps, Captain. I have brothers fighting on both sides. And I dislike the lies told about Alaska. Then too, I'm not at war with unborn children, any unborn child."
Ross suddenly added dryly, "I hope the father is worth the risks you've taken for him."
"I think so." Kayla replied simply, then asked, "Anything else?"
"Yes, we will do a bit of playacting at the door. There is recording equipment active on the other side. That's why there is a damper plate in the door, so no one can read anything off the vibrations of the door itself."
He stood. "By the way, here are your new pins. You should probably put them on before you go."
She took the box he held out. Sure enough, it held two pair of Air Command Captain's pins. One set was for an everyday uniform, the other for a dress uniform. So he hadn't been joking when he spoke of this new rank being someone's idea of a bribe. Stupid, ignorant bastards!
She exchanged the Lieutenants' pins for the new Captains set. Commander Ross gave her another of his odd smiles as he handed over her discharge papers. Those went immediately into the nearly indestructible sleeve she'd brought for them. She sealed them in too. Only then did he accompany her to the door.
Once outside the office, she turned and saluted. He returned it, then offered his hand. Kayla took it.
"I regret you have such heavy family commitments Captain." He said briskly, reminding her of the 'playacting' they were supposed to do. "You could have had an outstanding career in the service."
She shook her head in apparent regret. "Unfortunately it just isn't possible. However, I have several brothers and sisters who have elected to make the military their life's work, Commander. The Grayhawk name will be well represented. But someone has to go home to help my parents with the ranch and I'm nominated."
He smiled. "I see. Well, good luck."
"Thank you sir."
They exchanged a final round of salutes and she marched off smartly. He'd advised leaving quickly and going a good way before stopping. She'd take that advice. With her papers to hand, she had no trouble at the main gate. Fifteen minutes after leaving the Commander's office, Kayla Grayhawk was on the open road rolling north for Colorado and a sheep ranch tucked hard against a mountain. She took with her a lot of questions about one naval Commander as well.
