Solfleet: The Call of Duty (13 page)

“
I hope
you can hear me,
” the man’s voice said, coming through much clearer than it
had before, now that most of the white noise had been eliminated. Hansen could
even hear the stress and exhaustion in it now, which made it sound a lot more
genuine than he expected. The man might or might not have been Lieutenant O’Donnell—the
jury was still out on that question—but he was definitely human. Whether that
made him Terran, Cirran, or Sulaini, who could say? But he certainly sounded
like a Terran. More specifically, he sounded like a North American.

“
My name
is Robert O’Donnell. I was a tactical officer aboard the Earth starcruiser
Excalibur.
I am alive, somewhere in Veshtonn space. The
Excalibur
was NOT
destroyed by the Veshtonn. I repeat. The
Excalibur
was not destroyed by
the Veshtonn. The attack was carried out by the starcruiser
Albion
and
two former Solfleet vessels in service with Newstar Corporation. They took us
completely by surprise. Those of us who survived were taken by...
”

As before,
the message ended abruptly at that point with a short burst of loud static that
made Hansen jump. Why couldn’t they have toned that down, too?

“Does
Commander Quinn add anything new to what she said before, Hal?”

“
Only
that her technicians were not able to restore any more of the message beyond
what you just heard. There is nothing further.
”

“All right.
Thank you, Hal.”

“
You are
welcome, Nick.
”

Hansen
leaned back in his chair with a sigh and stretched the kinks out of his stiff neck,
then tried to relax. The Newstar Corporation...again. Back in late ‘82 Newstar
had made an illicit deal with Hansen’s predecessor to develop the recently
encountered ‘Morph Virus,’ as it had promptly come to be known, into a sort of
techno-biological weapon for use against the Veshtonn. A few months later, after
something went terribly wrong at the facilities where the company was carrying
out its illegal research, that illicit deal subsequently became a matter of
public record and proved to be the S.I.A. Chief’s guillotine—the one mistake
that decapitated his career and landed him in prison, and opened the door for
Hansen to step into the job that he’d secretly coveted for so long.

About a year
and a half later, after several secret and unsuccessful attempts at executing a
hostile takeover of the Dunn Corporation’s operations on Procyon IV, the new
denizens of Newstar had hired dozens of mercenaries and raised that hostility
to a whole new level, and that, as it turned out, proved to be not only
their
guillotine, but Newstar’s as well. Their aggression became the guillotine
that decapitated the entire company—the singular cause of the company’s rapid
downfall and ultimate demise.

The Newstar
Corporation had been one very shady company to say the least, especially in its
final few years of life. But to attack a Solfleet starcruiser directly, particularly
in the middle of an interstellar war when they were counting on that very same
fleet for their own defense? That simply didn’t make any sense. Even with a
rogue starcruiser on their side, what could they possibly have stood to gain by
committing such a foolhardy act? If in fact the message was true,
why
had
they done it?

“
Excuse
me, Nick.
”

“Yes, Hal?”

“
Please
do not be alarmed. There is no danger to your quarters or to this station. The
environmental sensor and control systems in your quarters have detected a small
concentration of a potentially carcinogenic gaseous chemical substance
dispersing within the atmosphere of your second bedroom. Shall I... Wait a
moment. Heather has just activated the filter vents. The room’s atmosphere will
be clear in a few seconds. There is no further need for attention.
”

“Wanna bet,
Hal?” Hansen commented, feeling the heat rise in his face as he stood up.

“
I am
incapable of gambling,
” Hal informed him.

He
approached Heather’s bedroom door and, despite the fact that she had locked him
out several hours ago, tapped the ‘open’ button, just in case. As expected, the
door didn’t budge. It was still locked. “Security and safety override,” he said
to the door’s blank, Earth-brown surface. “Icarus Hansen, father, code Heather
zero one alpha.” To the right of the door, the panel’s green indicator lit. The
latches released and the door slid aside, just in time for him to catch a
glimpse of his daughter, wearing only her underclothes as usual, throwing something
into her sink right before she whirled around to face him under the dimmed
lights. Standing rigidly before him, almost at the position of attention, she
seemed afraid to move another inch.

At first,
neither one of them said a word to the other. They just stood there, not ten
feet from each other, and stared silently at one another like a pair of manikins
in one of the station’s department stores. After about thirty seconds of that,
the admiral folded his arms across his broad chest, but he still didn’t say
anything. Sooner or later, he knew, she was either going to exhale or pass out.
Either way, she wasn’t going to win.

Fifteen more
seconds. “Lights. Full,” he said.

His daughter
squinted against the increased brightness, but not enough to hide her eyes’
glazed, reddish discoloration. As he continued to glare at her, unblinking, a
thin coat of sweat began to appear, first on her forehead and then on her upper
lip.

Any moment
now.

Her
statue-like posture began to falter as she struggled to hold the air in her
lungs. She licked and then tightly pursed her quivering lips. She swallowed.
She clenched her fists.

Any second
now.

Finally,
after almost two whole minutes, Heather let it go and seemed almost to deflate,
dropping her gaze to the floor as a cloud of gray-green smoke poured from her
mouth and nose and slowly drifted toward the filter vents. No doubt feeling a
little dizzy, she leaned back against the sink.

Hansen
unfolded his arms and approached her, but she stepped away, without taking her
eyes off the floor. He peered into the sink and saw the remains of a single,
mostly smoked hand-rolled cigarette floating in about an inch of water. He
stared at it for several seconds, then turned to his daughter.

“Look at me,
Heather,” he demanded. Although he was sure she didn’t want to, he knew that at
that moment she wouldn’t dare defy him.

She looked
up, hesitantly but immediately, and gazed at him with genuine fear in her
unfocused eyes. “You’ve certainly gotten yourself into more than your fair
share of trouble over the years, Heather,” her father began, speaking very
calmly, “but I always thought you were smarter than this. I am very,
very
...disappointed
in you.”

Tears welled
up in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks as she dropped her gaze back to the
floor. ‘Disappointed’ was a word he hadn’t used with her in several years,
despite all the trouble she’d gotten into. The last time he had used it, in
fact, it had nearly broken her heart.

“Perhaps it
would be best for the both of us if I sent you back to Westcott for the year,”
he added, reminding her of the one place he knew she never wanted to go back to.

The Westcott
Boarding School for Troubled Teens, New Haven, Connecticut. He’d sent her there
for most of her eighth grade year after she and some of her friends—some of her
former
friends, now—had formed a sort of gang at Mandela Middle School
and started beating up and stealing from their fellow students. She had
absolutely hated the place and had gone out of her way to try to become a
disciplinary problem there, hoping to get herself kicked out. But after about
six months, once she’d finally realized that that wasn’t going to work, she’d
straightened up and quickly become a model student. The change in her had been
so pronounced in fact, that the Dean of the school, convinced that she had
truly learned her lesson and changed her ways, had contacted the admiral and
recommended that he withdraw her early, take her home, and re-enroll her in her
regular school for the rest of the semester. He had done so, and for the next
several months her behavior had been exemplary. Unfortunately, by the time she
started ninth grade, she’d also started slipping back into her old ways.

Threatening
to send her back to Westcott had been his absolute last resort. If she called
his bluff...

But she didn’t.
Instead, she looked up at him, her eyes filled with horror and rivers of tears
flowing down over her cheeks, then ran to him and grabbed the front of his
shirt. “No, Daddy, don’t!” she pleaded desperately. “Don’t
ever
send me
back to that place! Please!” She buried her face in his chest and sobbed.

“I’m sorry,
Heather, but I don’t know what else to do with you,” he told her
matter-of-factly, fighting the fatherly urge to embrace her and hiding the fact
that her tearful pleas were nearly tearing his heart out.

“Please don’t
send me back there again!” she continued pleading. “I
hate
it there! All
my friends are up here! You’re up here! I don’t have
anybody
down there!”

“That’s not
my problem, Heather,” he responded coldly, trying hard to sound unmoved by her
pleas. “I can’t have you up here with me anymore if you’re going to keep
breaking the law and getting into trouble.”

“I’ll stop,”
she proclaimed, looking up at him. “I
promise
, Daddy. I won’t break any
more laws, I swear. I won’t get in any more trouble, ever again. Just don’t
send me away to boarding school again,
please!
”

Daddy. The
one word in the entire English language that she could use on him like a blunt
instrument to weaken his resolve, and he knew that she knew that as well as he
did. He gazed down at her for a moment, then finally lost the battle and
wrapped his arms lovingly around her and sighed. Surrendering again. But she
was his daughter. His only child. His flesh and blood. How could he possibly
not give in to her desperate, tearful pleas?

“All right,”
he acquiesced. “We’ll give it one more try, and I do mean
one
more. But
if you get into trouble again...”

“I won’t,
Daddy. I promise.”

“All right.
But you
are
going to be punished for this. And first thing Monday
morning we’re taking whatever stash you’ve got in your room and turning it over
to the Civil Security’s narcotics agents. You’re going to tell them everything
you know about your dealer and anything else you might know about drug
trafficking on this station. Understood?”

“Understood.”
She looked up at him, her red, glassy, unfocused eyes like those of an innocent
puppy, albeit a puppy high on narcotics. “I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you,
too, Princess.”

Three Days Later

Earth Standard Date: Tuesday, 20
July 2190

Apparently
having reached her wits end, Doctor Forrest had called up to the bridge a few
minutes ago and urgently requested Commander Rawlins’ presence. As marched
purposefully through the wide central corridor on his way to Medbay, his
pounding heart, which he was starting to feel in his head as well as in his
chest, served to remind him of just how much he was
not
looking forward
to confronting the captain, regardless of the fact that he’d had those few
minutes to prepare himself for the inevitable showdown. Not when he was going
to have to take the doctor’s side against her.

Captain Suja
Bhatnagar might have been a little on the petite side physically, but like most
of her peers, at least those whom Rawlins had had the opportunity to meet over
the years, she exuded an almost larger than life presence wherever she went.
There was just something about being a starship captain that filled a person
with a kind of impenetrable self-confidence. Or, perhaps it was that abundance
of self-confidence that enabled a person to achieve that lofty position in the
first place. Either way, it had the effect of encouraging others to tuck tail
and run whenever they found themselves in opposition, and unfortunately for
Rawlins that was exactly where he was about to find himself.

Her injuries
had turned out to be much more serious than the medical technicians who’d
carted her off the bridge had realized. According to Doctor Forrest, who’d been
kind enough to put it into layman’s terms for him so he could actually
understand what she was talking about, not only had the captain broken her
right pelvic bone, she’d also cracked the back of her skull and severely
bruised her brain. That being said, the doctor had considered her to be lucky,
further explaining that if she had hit her head much harder, she might well
have broken her skull clean through and suffered much more severe or perhaps
even immediately fatal trauma to her brain.

As it was, she’d
suffered internal bleeding and had required immediate emergency surgery to
relieve the slowly but steadily increasing pressure on her brain. She’d remained
unconscious for the next two days and Rawlins had been worried sick, despite
the fact that Forrest had assured him that the prolonged bed rest was the
absolute best thing for her. But earlier this morning, when she finally did
wake up, Bhatnagar had wanted no part of any prolonged rest, bed or otherwise.
Doctor Forrest had always accused starship captains of being the worst kind of
patients, and now Rawlins had heard the proof of that assertion. Not yet able
to stand up on her own or even to focus clearly on her surroundings, the
captain had nonetheless demanded that she be released from Medbay and returned
to duty status immediately. Her ship was still in a combat zone, badly damaged
and at great risk, and that was all she cared about.

Naturally, Doctor
Forrest had refused to comply with that demand, after which the captain had
threatened to have her arrested for disobeying a direct order. While that order
hadn’t carried any real weight, given the fact that the doctor’s professional
medical judgment rightfully overruled it, it had set the stage for an ugly
confrontation that had only ended when Forrest and two of her staff held the
struggling captain down on her bed—not too difficult a task in itself,
considering her weakened state—and sedated her. Strictly in order to prevent
her from further injuring herself, Forrest had later explained to the Executive
Officer.

What a
circus that had been, Rawlins reflected as he paused just short of the Medbay
doors’ sensor range. And with the captain already fuming over that, this
confrontation promised to be even worse.

He took a
deep breath and exhaled slowly to calm his pounding heart, never more thankful
than he was at that very moment that the responsibility for all medical
decisions lay squarely on Doctor Forrest’s shoulders rather than on his own.
Then, deciding that he was as ready as he was ever going to be, he stepped
forward.

“...right
now, Doctor!” he heard the captain shouting vehemently as the doors parted and
he stepped inside. “That is a direct order!”

“Not unless
you give me your word that you’ll stay put, Captain!” he then heard Doctor
Forrest reply just as firmly, but much less audibly by comparison as he made
his way through the outer offices and into the Intensive Care ward. The light
blue-green privacy curtain had been pulled around the captain’s bed, shielding
it from view, despite the fact that the rest of the ward was empty.

“Doctor Forrest?”
he called to announce his presence as he approached.

“Thank God!”
she exclaimed. “Come in, Commander, please!”

Rawlins
swept the curtain aside to find the doctor standing over and glaring down at
the captain, her lips pursed with stubborn determination and her arms folded
defiantly across her chest. Upon seeing him, Bhatnagar quickly pulled her
blankets to her chin and held them there as he stepped in.

“Captain,”
he greeted his commanding officer with a nod, glancing briefly at the freshly
changed bandages wrapped around her head and wondering again if the doctor had
been forced to shave off all that beautiful black hair.

With her jaw
clenched, her nostrils flared, and her lips pursed even tighter than the doctor’s,
Bhatnagar appeared as though she might explode at any moment, and when she
looked away and didn’t answer, Rawlins looked at the doctor and calmly asked, “What’s
going on here, Doctor?”

Forrest
looked his way and drew a breath to answer, but the enraged captain beat her to
the punch. “Commander Rawlins, it’s about time you got here!” she barked,
glaring at him through angry, dark eyes like lethal lasers. “Doctor Forrest is
under arrest for disobeying a direct order! You will call the Security Forces and
have her taken to the brig immediately!”

Rawlins
gazed at her, taken aback. He’d seen her upset before, but never so furious at
one of her officers as she seemed to be now. “Exactly what order has she
disobeyed, Captain?” he asked, acting as though he might be prepared to comply
if the doctor’s alleged disobedience warranted it. No point in making her mad
at him, too.

“The order
to give me something to wear!”

For the
first time since he walked in, Rawlins noticed that the captain’s shoulders
were as bare as her arms. “You mean...”

“Yes! I mean
I’m completely naked! She knocked me out again and stripped me bare!”

Rawlins
looked at the doctor, but he didn’t have to ask.

“It’s not
like I slugged her across the jaw, Commander,” Forrest explained. “I gave her
another sedative. It was either that or strap her down like some kind of
violent mental case.”

When Rawlins
kept staring at her without saying anything, she became defensive and added, “She
tried to sneak out of here twice today, which, by the way...” she pointed out
as she looked down at the captain again, “is a willful violation of the order
I
gave
her
to stay here and not try to get up!” She turned her eyes back
to Rawlins again and continued, “My authority as the chief medical officer aboard
this ship...”

“I’m aware
of your authority, Lieutenant Commander,” Rawlins assured her, reminding her at
the same time that her rank was subordinate to his own—sort of an unspoken
message meant to caution her against overstepping her bounds. “And you, I
trust, are just as aware of the captain’s religious beliefs?”

“Thank you,
Commander,” Bhatnagar interjected.

“Of course I
am, sir,” Forrest responded more calmly, “and I’ve already briefed my staff.
Only my women are providing the captain’s care. I’m not even allowing the men to
step inside the curtain to see if she needs anything.”

“Stop
talking about me like I’m not here, both of you,” Bhatnagar insisted. “Commander
Rawlins, I gave you an order. You
will
call the Security Forces and you
will
have Doctor Forrest taken into custody and confined to the brig immediately!”

Rawlins
gazed down at his commanding officer. This was it—the moment when he had to
back the doctor’s actions against the captain’s orders. The moment he’d been
dreading for the last several hours. “Unfortunately, Captain, Doctor Forrest’s
authority takes precedence over yours in this matter, and you know it,” he
said. “If she says you’re not ready to be released, then there’s nothing I or
anyone else can do about it.”

“Traitor,”
she responded more calmly than he’d expected her to, her tone of voice more
conceding than accusatory. Her glare, however, could have burned right through
his head.

“But, at the
same time,” he continued, looking at Forrest again, “you need to respect the
captain’s beliefs and give her something to wear, Doctor. And I mean right now,
even if you
have
banned the men from looking in on her.”

“She’ll just
try to sneak out again, Commander,” Forrest warned, shaking her head. “I will
not allow her to further aggravate her injuries,” She looked at the captain, “
or
her doctor.”

“Why, you
insubordinate...”

Rawlins
sighed, then looked down at the captain once more. “Captain Bhatnagar,” he
began. Then, when she looked up at him, he looked her right in the eye and
said, “Under her authority as the ship’s C-M-O, Doctor Forrest has ordered you
to stay in Medbay and remain in bed until such time as she determines you are
healthy enough to be released. That is a lawful medical order, Captain, and if
you violate it I will have no choice but to relieve you of your command, place
you under arrest, and return you to Medbay under a twenty-four hour guard...for
the good of the ship, as well as for your own. Do I make myself clear, Captain?”

For a moment
Bhatnagar only stared back at him, expressionless. Then her eyes narrowed as an
angry, almost evil smirk slowly appeared on her lips. “I’ll get you for this,
you mutinous son-of-a-bitch,” she warned.

Rawlins drew
a deep breath and recoiled, then exhaled slowly, this time to hold his own
temper in check. Then he pointed out to her, “The fact that you would even say
such a thing, Captain, especially to me, tells me that Doctor Forrest is
absolutely right to keep you here.” Then, to the doctor, he said, “At least
give her back her underclothes, Doctor. Then come see me in your office.”

“Her
underclothes won’t fit over the hip brace I put her in, and that cannot come
off for some weeks yet,” Forrest informed him.

“Then come
up with something else, and give her a medical smock to go over it.”

“Yes, sir,”
Forrest acquiesced, clearly still not in agreement.

Rawlins
concluded with, “Get some rest, Captain.” Then he turned to leave.

“Commander
Rawlins,” Bhatnagar beckoned, suddenly much more calm than she had been. Once
he turned back to her, she asked, “What’s our status?”

Suddenly all
business? So be it. If it kept her in Medbay and out of trouble, Rawlins had no
problem at all filling her in. After all, despite her hostile attitude, the
Victory
was still her ship, whether she was presently sitting in command or not.

“Still no
further enemy contact since that lone battlecruiser the other day,” he began. “We
made brief contact with the jumpstation afterwards. They’ll have a pair of emergency
jump nacelles rigged and standing by for on-the-go installation when we get
there, which should be any minute now.” He started to turn away again, but then
hesitated and, hoping to set her mind at ease once and for all, added, “We’re well
on our way home, Captain. There really is no reason for you to worry about
anything at this point. Please, just stay here and rest. Give yourself time to
heal.”

She gazed
silently at him for a moment, then said, “Only if you promise to keep me
informed of any changes.”

“You have my
word on it, Captain.” And with that, he left her side and went to Doctor
Forrest’s office to wait.

When the
doctor arrived a few minutes later, she resumed their conversation by pointing
out what to Rawlins couldn’t have been more obvious. “The captain isn’t
herself.”

Rawlins
snickered. “She called me a mutinous son-of-a-bitch, Doctor,” he reminded her. “I’d
say ‘isn’t herself’ qualifies as the understatement of the century.” But then
he qualified his agreement by adding, “Although, you and your staff did...strip
her...of her dignity, Doctor. As the ship’s captain, that kind of personal vulnerability
isn’t something she wants anyone to see in her, under
any
circumstances.”

“Captain or
not, she’s still a human being, Commander. It was necessary.”

“Be that as
it may, I wish you’d called me first. If I’d had the opportunity to present
that action to her as one possible way of enforcing your order, maybe she would’ve
complied before you actually had to do it.”

When it became
clear to him that Doctor Forrest had nothing more to say on the subject, he shifted
gears and asked, “Any idea why she’s acting the way she is?”

“The brain
is a funny thing, Commander,” she pointed out. “Ask me why her vision was so
out of whack when she first woke up and I’ll tell you it was because she took a
severe blow to the back of her head that affected her vision centers. But ask
me why her core personality seems to have changed? Why she’s suddenly become so
much more aggressive?” She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. “I can
isolate the specific area of the brain and identify any
physical
damage,
but to explain why she’s acting the way she is? That’s not so easy.”

“I thought
medical science had mapped the human brain a long time ago.”

“It did, but
there’s still a lot we just don’t understand.”

“
Bridge
to Commander Rawlins,
” the ceiling speaker called.