Wing Commander #08 Wing Commander The Movie by Peter Telep

Author:Peter Telep
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Wing Commander
ISBN: 0061059854
Published: 2010-09-20T16:00:00+00:00

Deveraux's academy instructor had said those words to her graduating class, words that lived in Deveraux with the same vitality as the day she had first heard them. She could repeat every sentence, every cadence of his speech, having turned a heartfelt reminder into a personal pledge and prayer that she repeated before every mission.

When she had left the bridge with orders to lead a strike force to take out the Kilrathi ConCom ship, she had headed directly to her quarters to shower, change into a clean flight suit, and sit at her desk to meditate.

No one had ever taught Deveraux how to meditate; in fact, she wasn't sure if she did it correctly. She had read that proper meditation can lessen levels of cortisol, a hormone released in response to stress. She also knew that meditation enhanced the body's recuperative functions.

But what she really searched for, what remained at the fringe of her thoughts, was a sense of true identity. A sense that she wasn't just the product of an orphanage, that her parents' lives meant something to hers, that the feeling of emptiness would not lie locked in her heart forever, that somewhere inside lay a key.

Deveraux had yet to find that key. Perhaps she did need lessons in meditation. And she didn't ask for much. She had no aspirations to attain conscious union with the divine or experience divine grace; she simply wanted to feel good about herself. She opened her eyes, reached across her desk, and switched on the holovid player.

A small girl seated on the edge of a picnic blanket glimmered at the foot of her bunk. A young man rolled a pink ball toward the girl, while a young woman looked on with a proud grin. Intermittent buzzing resounded over their voices, and the picture flickered with static.

Deveraux swore over the disc's age. She would have to mail it off to a company for restoration, but she would hate parting with the vid, even for a second. That family, sometimes looking so distant, so unfamiliar, sometimes looking like her exposed soul, remained the only visual record she had of a life that had suddenly ceased. Sure, she could make copies of the vid, but knowing that her parents had touched the same disc rendered it irreplaceable.

A ring from her hatch bell startled her. She stood, paused the holovid, then moved to greet her visitor. Not many people came to see Deveraux, owing to her admonishments about the value of privacy during stand-down. She touched the open key.

And lost a heartbeat.

"I need to talk to you." Blair leaned on the doorjamb, his face long, his eyes reflective pools.

She forgot to breathe. She glanced to the holovid, the figures frozen—

Blair pushed his way past her.

"Hey. You can't barge into my—"

He spun and tossed something to her. "I wear it for luck."

She caught, then examined the cross.

"It was my mother's," he explained.

"Is your luck at odds with our mission?"

That drew a long sigh from him. He shifted away, surveying the rest of her quarters, his gaze falling on the paused holovid.

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