Solfleet: The Call of Duty (54 page)

“Whatever,”
the frightened girl answered, shrugging her shoulders. “I can’t go to prison,
Commander. I’ll do
anything
to avoid that. I’ll pay you whatever I can
scrape together, I’ll deny you ever saw me if I get caught later, I’ll...I’ll sleep
with you if...”

Royer raised
a hand to stop her. Had the girl seen the glint of lust that had doubtlessly
flashed through her eyes a few moments ago? Maybe so. Then again, while she’d
certainly never gone out of her way to advertise it, the fact that she was
married to another woman was no big secret within the agency, or anywhere else
for that matter. Maybe O’Donnell had just figured that she might be up for a
little action on the side. And maybe, Royer considered as she gazed into the
younger woman’s eyes...maybe she wasn’t entirely wrong. It wasn’t like the
thought hadn’t crossed her mind a few times over the last few minutes. Would it
really hurt to take this beautiful, fresh young woman to bed for a night or two
and then cut her loose afterwards, as long as she swore never to mention it to
anyone?

Yes, it
would. It would hurt, in more ways than one. The knowledge that she’d had a
fugitive in custody and had let her go for something as cheap as a romp between
the sheets would hurt. The memory of having had sex with another woman behind Karen’s
back would hurt and would haunt her for the rest of her life. And it would hurt
Karen as well. It would break her heart, in fact, if she ever found out.

“You’re a very
beautiful young woman, Stefani, and I admit...” She stopped, realizing it would
be best for her
not
to admit to being attracted to her. “We can discuss
how you might be able to help yourself when we get to the field office,” she amended,
hoping that her momentary lapse hadn’t given O’Donnell the impression that she was
thinking her offer over. “It’s less than a mile up the street.”

She stood up
and faced her prisoner. “Let’s go,” she prompted. O’Donnell looked up at her
through tear-filled puppy eyes. “Now,” she added.

O’Donnell
wiped away her tears, then stood up and offered her hands to be cuffed. Royer
glanced down at them, then took a step backward and started to turn away, but
stopped when O’Donnell only stared at her and didn’t move to follow. “I said, let’s
go,” she ordered in a more authoritative tone of voice.

O’Donnell dropped
her hands to her sides and asked, “How are you going to shoot me in the back when
you don’t have a gun?”

Royer
stepped right up into her face, almost close enough to kiss her, stared her in
the eye and answered, “You’re right. I don’t have a gun. But I’ve been running
track since grammar school, so if you try to escape I’ll have no choice but to
chase you down and kick your ass all the way to the office. Now, if you think
you can outrun me or come out on top in a fight, go for it. If not, I suggest
you come along quietly.”

O’Donnell
stared back at the commander for a few seconds, then dropped her gaze to the
ground and said, “I promise, I won’t make any trouble.”

“Wise
decision,” Royer told her with conviction. Then she pointed her thumb behind
her and said, “This way. Now.”

O’Donnell
fell in beside her and they headed up the street.

Two
beautiful, sexy blonds from Earth, walking side-by-side up the street, Royer
mused as they walked in silence. One in form-fitting, skin-tight jeans, the
other in one incredibly sexy mini-skirt. No one who happened to see them would
ever guess who they really were, unless O’Donnell went back on her word and
tried to escape, of course.

“I meant
what I said, Stefani,” she pointed out with that thought in mind, just to make
sure the girl clearly understood her and didn’t have any doubts. “If you try to
run I
will
make you regret it.”

Having
completed the solemn tour of his ship nearly half an hour ago—touring the ship
before going into battle was a centuries-old tradition that he’d eagerly
carried on ever since his first command—Captain Erickson stood alone on the
forward observation deck and gazed out through the wall-sized transluminum window
at the enormous task force that had assembled over the last nine days. Over the
last twenty minutes or so he’d counted two hundred and nineteen ships floating
out there, and those were just the ones he could see. All totaled, over a
thousand Solfleet and Coalition heavies had come together for Operation Mass
Eviction. How could the Coalition
not
emerge victorious employing such
an overwhelming force? Even a few of the more space-worthy Tor’Kana vessels
they’d rescued were involved in one way or another. A political necessity, he
surmised. One with which he couldn’t disagree, too. After all, it seemed only
right that as many Tor’Kana vessels as possible should be directly involved in
the liberation of their own home system, no matter what role their condition
might relegate them to play.

He gazed at
the only one of them he could see, which also happened to be the only one of
them intended to see direct combat during the campaign. The others weren’t
nearly battle-ready enough to be sent into the fight, so they were going to fill
supporting roles such as floating hospitals or resupply ships. He couldn’t remember
its name, but looking at it, the first word that popped into his head was ‘conglomerate’.
All four of its original jump nacelles, one of its fusion engine cowlings, and
a large section of its forward hull had been lost in battle during the
first
Rosha’Kana campaign. The nacelles and cowling had since been replaced with the
newest Solfleet models—their light blue-gray skin looked almost white against
the vessel’s shimmering black coating—and the hull section had been replaced by
a bright yellow-white emergency armor patch of Trindeah design. At a glance,
the replacement parts looked more like a cluster of drifting debris than
components of a larger vessel, which when he thought about it might actually
have been an advantage.

Speaking of
the Trindeah, theirs was by far the largest contribution to the task force—four
hundred ninety-five ships, eighty-five of which were fighter carriers that also
served well as battleships. Their design, in fact, was what Solfleet had based
its battlecarrier project on. When the Trindeah agreed to support an operation,
they
really
supported it. Hell, in a pinch they might have been able to
pull this campaign off all by themselves.

As Sol’s
closest neighbors, the three simian-like races of the Centaurian Alliance had
also committed a large contingency of forces to the fight. Whether that was
because they genuinely cared about their human allies or only because they knew
that if Sol fell they’d likely be next, who could know for sure? Then again,
who cared, as long as they were there? The Centaurian infantry fought in
roughly platoon-sized units like large packs of angry wild animals and were
real berserkers when it came to hand-to-hand combat. Erickson almost pitied the
crew of any Veshtonn ship the Centaurians might happen to board during the upcoming
battle.

“
Bridge
to Captain Erickson,
” O’Connor’s voice called from the ceiling.

Erickson
tapped his link. “Go ahead, Ensign.”

“
We just
received word from the task force commander, sir. It’s time.
”

Time. Time
to get underway. Time to go to war. “All right. I’m on my way.” He closed the
channel and gazed out at the black sea of ships one more time. “And so it
begins.”

Ten Days Later

Earth Standard Date: Saturday, 18
September 2190

Still hot and
winded from her more strenuous than usual late evening workout—she usually
limited herself to a few stretching exercises at night and saved the more
vigorous stuff for the early morning—Commander Royer kicked off her sneakers as
she double-locked her stateroom door behind her. She pulled off her socks as
well and dropped them to the floor, then started to undress as she crossed to the
room’s lone window, a small circular one that reminded her a lot of an old sea
ship’s portal.

She was
aware of course, as she dropped her sweat-soaked tee shirt to the floor and
pulled off her shorts, that there wasn’t much to see from amidships in a
civilian passenger liner in jumpspace. The stars had long since gathered into
their distant rings of colorful light directly ahead of and behind the ship,
and the only way she was going to see either one of them was by going up to one
of the observation decks where she would no doubt also find a few dozen of her
fellow passengers, no matter what time of day or night she went. And the pair
of Solfleet escort cruisers that had accompanied them out of the Caldanra star
system had split off and taken up their own positions ahead of and behind them
just prior to the jump two days ago, so she wouldn’t see them, either.

No, no sea
of stars in jumpspace. The resultant narrow streak of bright green light when a
lone stray star or two occasionally whipped by was all the show she had to look
forward to out there. Nevertheless, despite the field grade rank she wore and
the position of leadership she held, she hadn’t been assigned to a ship’s cabin
with a window of any kind in several years—traveling as a lowly nobody simply came
with the job—so she intended to make the most of it while she had the chance,
no matter how insignificant that ‘most’ might be.

As if on
cue, a single bright green point of light whipped by, and another followed a
few seconds after. Two at almost the same time—what a treat.

“So much for
that,” she said aloud. She peeled off her sweat-soaked sports bra and panties,
then picked up the rest of her clothes and stuffed everything into her laundry
bag. Then she went into the bathroom—the lights flickered on automatically and
came up to full brightness, their only setting—and stopped in front of the
mirror.

“Oh my God,”
she mumbled, startled by the sight of woman she found looking back at her.
Several random locks of her pinned-up hair had fallen loose and were clinging
to her exertion-reddened face. Her skin glistened under the mirror lights as if
coated with baby oil, and rivulets of perspiration were running down between
her breasts, over her abdomen, and into her damp pubic hair.

She couldn’t
remember the last time she’d worked out so furiously. Thirty minutes of
stretching, then an hour on the weight machine, followed by an hour of aerobics
and
a five mile run on the treadmill. Judging from her appearance she’d
damn near killed herself, but it had sure as hell felt good at the time.
Amazing how much energy a person could build up over a few weeks of forced
celibacy, especially when that person was forced to spend part of her time with
a beauty like Stefani. That sexy young thing had sorely tempted her on more
than a few occasions during the week they’d spent working things out together. Intentionally,
too, once or twice, but more often simply by happenstance, and she’d come real
close to giving in a couple of times. But now that she was finally on her way
home to Karen, she felt relieved—she was
very
relieved—that she hadn’t betrayed
her trust.

She couldn’t
wait to get back home.

She let down
the rest of her hair and shook it out, then stepped into the bathtub, drew the
curtain, and set the shower water for medium temperature and heavy flow. She
would have loved to take a long, hot, soothing bubble bath, but she’d realized
as soon as she saw the tub that it simply wasn’t big enough for her to stretch
out and bathe in comfortably, even by herself, so that, too, was going to have
to wait until she got home. Instead, she closed her eyes and stood motionless
under the warm stream for a while before she started to soap up, and she spent
that time thinking back over her previous week’s work.

She’d
visited Sergeant Graves in the hospital two more times—first on Friday, two
days after he mentioned his nightmares to her, and again on Sunday, two days
after that—to try again to talk him into joining the agency, but he still hadn’t
given in. She had thought she was wearing him down at one point when he asked
her a question about the typical daily life of an Intelligence agent, but he’d
suddenly regrouped and reinforced his resistance right after that. He’d even
told her not to bother answering his question just seconds after he’d asked it,
before she’d even had a chance to try. And then on Monday the doctors had
released him from the hospital unexpectedly and sent him home on convalescent
leave. She’d tried to talk to him there as well, but he’d refused to even
answer his door.

Except for
having taken Stefani O’Donnell into custody, it had appeared at that moment
that her trip had been a complete waste of time. But then she’d experienced her
epiphany. It had been at that very moment, while standing in vain at the
sergeant’s front door and looking around at the apartment complex he lived in,
that the initial idea for her admittedly underhanded scheme had first sparked
to life in her devious mind.

Convinced as
soon as it came to her that she could make it work, she’d sped back to the
office and had gotten the ball rolling immediately. She’d called in every favor
and had pulled every string she could in order to rush things through as fast
as possible—she’d wanted to leave for home as soon as she could, after all—and
when she’d contacted the admiral to update him on her progress, or rather the
lack thereof, she’d conveniently ‘forgotten’ to mention anything about having
found and apprehended Stefani O’Donnell, having already decided that it was
better to provide him with legitimate grounds for deniability, just in case.

She only
hoped that she could count on the Tarko City station chief, whom she’d left in
charge of the whole operation, to comply with her explicate instructions—to report
only
to her and to keep his mouth shut otherwise.

She washed
her hair and rinsed herself off, then turned off the water and stood under the
dryer, combing her fingers through her hair until it was barely still damp.
Then she stepped out of the tub and went back into the room.

She opened
her underwear drawer and reached in, but then changed her mind. The room was
warm and she was alone, so why bother wearing anything? She’d already had her
dinner
and
her workout. She was in for the night and it wasn’t like
anyone was going to come by to visit. She closed the drawer, then turned on the
flatscreen monitor—the stateroom was little more than a passenger cabin, too
small for a virtuavid unit—propped up the pillows, and sat back on the bed to
find something to watch.

“Play.”

The screen
lit up to reveal a familiar handsome young starship captain in spicy-mustard command
gold sittinig at the equally familiar briefing room table aboard his ship,
hands folded, his fingers interlaced. “
They used to say if man could fly
he’d have wings,
” he calmly began. “
But he did fly. He discovered he had
to
.” A somewhat older gentleman appeared on the screen for a moment, and
then the captain returned and, briefly pointing his finger and waving his hand
around for emphasis, continued, “
Do you wish that the first Apollo mission
hadn’t reached the moon, or that we hadn’t gone on to Mars and then to the
nearest star? That’s like saying you wish that...you still operated with
scalpels and sewed your patients up with cat gut like your great, great, great,
great-grandfather used to. I’m in command,
” he went on as the camera
started slowly moving in closer. “
I could order this,
” he added as the
music began, “
but I’m not. Because...Doctor McCoy is right...in pointing out
the enormous danger potential in any contact with life and intelligence as
fantastically advanced as this, but I must point out that the possibilities,
the potential...for knowledge and advancement is equally great!
” The music
grew louder and more dramatic. “
Risk. Risk is our business. That’s what this
starship is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her.
”

“Change,”
Royer said, sighing and rolling her eyes. Was there any place in the entire galaxy
where that centuries-old program
wasn’t
still shown? It wasn’t a bad
show and had certainly been a hit in its time, but it could be a bit
melodramatic for her taste.

The picture
flickered and changed to yet another famous chef on another studio kitchen set
doing another cooking show. She rolled her eyes again. “Change,” she repeated.

The picture
flickered again. Big, colorful, overstuffed furry animals bounced through a
bright green meadow of carpet and paper flowers. “Change.”

“...
back
to the ten o’clock news,
” the anchorman was saying. “
I’m James F.
Alexander.
”

Royer
glanced up at the wall clock. 2040 hours. So it was a recorded rebroadcast, at
least a day old.

“
If you’re
just joining us and missed our top story, don’t worry, because tonight our top
story is also our only story. The regular news will be broadcast one hour later
than normal so that we might bring you this very special report.

“
To
summarize for those of you who have just tuned in, several sources have
reported to I-P-N that less than thirty-six hours ago a Coalition task force
comprised of over one thousand Solfleet and allied warships invaded the Rosha’Kana
star system in a massive counterattack aimed at pushing out the Veshtonn forces
that invaded and subsequently occupied that system approximately two and a half
months ago. No Central Command officials could be reached for comment as they
are understandably quite busy, but while we don’t yet have any official reports
pertaining to what we understand to have been dubbed ‘Operation Mass Eviction,’
we do have with us tonight, Retired Major General...
”