Solfleet: The Call of Duty (63 page)

Beth stirred
behind him. “What’s wrong?” she asked drowsily.

“I’m not
sure,” he answered. “It may be nothing.”

“Then come
on back to bed.”

“In a
minute.”

Rather than
wait for him to come back to her, she climbed out of bed and joined him by the
window, wrapped her arms around his waist and cuddled up to his side. “What are
you looking at?” she asked.

He draped an
arm around her shoulders and answered, “One of the apartments across the
courtyard. I think something’s wrong.” He let the curtain fall back into place
and looked at her. “Better get dressed.”

“I don’t
want to get dressed,” she told him with a yawn. “I want to go back to bed and I
want you to come back to bed with me.”

Dylan kissed
her on the forehead and said, “I really think we’d better get dressed.” Then he
gently loosed himself from her embrace, and as he started to pull on his
clothes he noticed that instead of getting dressed herself, Beth had taken a
seat at his desk and was watching him. But he would not change his mind. He
couldn’t. He had to be sure that everything was all right over at the blond
girl’s apartment. He had to know that she was safe. Exactly
why
he had
to know, he couldn’t really say, but he felt somehow obligated nonetheless.

He went into
the living room and opened the curtains a few inches, then picked up his
binocs, switched them to night-vision mode, and zoomed in for a closer look at
that dark object. It didn’t do any good. Her deck was so deep in the shadows
that although he could see the object more clearly, he still couldn’t make out
what it was.

A sudden
brilliant flash blinded him before he instinctively pulled back from the lenses—for
one fleeting moment he found himself back in that island jungle, hiding in the
underbrush while the enemy lit up the area with his spotlight—and cursed their
filters for reacting so slowly. But as soon as his sight returned and his
binocs reset themselves, he looked again and discovered that the object had
split into two black-clad men. One of them moved to the right, to the sliding
door that led into her bedroom, then crouched and waited while the other forced
open the door to her living room, threw the curtains aside, and rushed inside.
Gunfire erupted and the intruder stumbled back out through the open door,
tearing the curtains down around him as the writhing remains of the girl’s
mysterious guest glowed bright orange and disintegrated on the couch.

“They’ve got
disruptors!” Dylan exclaimed.

“Who’s got
disruptors?” Beth asked as she ran into the living room in her underclothes,
carrying her trousers and fumbling to pull on her blouse. “What’s going on?”

Dylan set
his binocs aside and coaxed her toward the comm-panel. “Hurry. Call the Civil
Guard.” Then he rushed into the bedroom.

“And tell
them what?” she asked, calling after him.

“Two heavily
armed intruders have broken into the upstairs apartment directly across the
courtyard from here,” he hollered. “There’s been disrupter fire and at least
two people are dead.”

“Dead!”

“Do it, Beth!”

“Oh my God!”
she exclaimed as she tapped the emergency call button. Then, having gotten over
the initial shock of the situation, she asked, “What if they’re not intruders?
What if they
are
the Civil Guard pulling some kind of raid or something?”

“The Civil Guard
wouldn’t be using disruptors!” he answered as he hurried back into the living
room, clutching an older style Solfleet-issue pulse pistol in his right hand. “They’ve
been banned by every member world and protectorate in the Coalition!”

Beth gasped
when she saw his pistol. “Dylan!” she shouted. “What are you doing with a gun
in your home?”

“Nothing
yet,” he answered as he picked up his binocs.

“You can’t
have guns off the base! It’s against Cirran law!”

“So is
murder! Make the damn call!”

“I
am
making the damn call!”

The girl’s
lights came up just as Dylan lifted his binocs to his eyes again. He switched
them back to their normal setting and saw that aside from being dressed in
black, the intruders weren’t wearing any particular kind of uniform. Burglars?
A local street gang? No. Burglars and street gangs wouldn’t have been able to
get their hands on disruptors. Someone much more dangerous then.

He set the
binocs on the floor beside him and threw open the sliding door by hand—the auto
mechanism was too damn slow—then dropped to one knee and took careful aim
across the courtyard at the one remaining intruder, who was still crouching on
the deck and was touching his hand to something on his left shoulder. He hesitated
just long enough to savor the long absent rush of adrenalin that surged through
his veins, then slowly squeezed the trigger.

Nothing
happened.

“What the...”
He stared at his weapon in disbelief, then aimed and squeezed the trigger
again, and again nothing happened. “Damn it!” he cried.

“What’s
wrong?” Beth asked, pulling on her trousers. “What happened?”

“
Nothing
happened!” Dylan angrily replied. Then, being careful not to shout too loudly,
he exclaimed “That stupid bitch!” He turned and threw his weapon at the couch
so hard that it bounced off the back cushion and landed with a clatter on the
coffee table.

“What!”

“Carolyn
drained the power pack!”

“Why would
she do that?”

He picked up
his binocs again. “She always hated having a weapon in the house. Damn it! Damn
her
!
I should have known she’d do something like that!” He looked
back outside just as another weapon whined and a glowing beam of crimson
flashed across the courtyard from somewhere directly above and struck the girl’s
bedroom window, engulfing it in a brilliant flare of superheated energy.

“That shot
came from your roof!” Beth exclaimed as she rushed over to Dylan’s side and
then dropped to the floor to pull on her socks and boots.

“The Civil
Guard better hurry!” Dylan commented in response.

“They’re on
their way!”

The energy
that had engulfed the window dissipated quickly. The intruder leapt through the
gaping hole that it left behind and trampled over the curtains’ smoldering
remains as he dashed to his left after the fleeing girl. He grabbed her by the
hair and tackled her through the doorway into the living room, but she somehow
managed to twist around as they fell and landed on her back. She fought a
valiant fight, punching and kicking and slapping and kneeing and trying to push
him off, but it wasn’t enough. He wrestled her onto her stomach and cuffed her
hands behind her back.

Cuffed?
Might the intruders have been agents of some government agency after all?

The girl obviously
hadn’t given up yet. The moment her captor sat back and started to relax she
flipped over again, somehow freed one of her legs, and kicked him solidly
across the side of his head. He fell hard against the window—a wonder that it
didn’t shatter—but recovered quickly and launched himself at her as she
struggled to get back on her feet. He stumbled forward and grabbed her by the
handcuffs, yanking down on them as he fell and pulling her back down to the
floor. She landed hard on her back and tried to kick him again as he jumped up,
but this time he stepped in and blocked her attack with a forearm and then
dropped to his knees, laying his shins across her legs and straddling her
pelvis. Then he backhanded her across her mouth, bringing her struggle to an
abrupt end.

He stayed
put for a moment, probably to make sure there wasn’t any fight left in her,
then stood up. He rolled her onto her stomach against only minimal resistance
then slid one arm up under the cuffs and grabbed her hair high enough that he
pulled her head up off the floor. Then he lifted her to her feet and held her
steady as he forced her to walk forward ahead of him.

“It’s too
late,” Dylan said. “They got her.”

“Who are
they?”

“I don’t
know. C-U-F maybe. That girl’s definitely involved in something big. She had a
visitor tonight who I think was some kind of agent. Probably S-I-A.” He looked
at Beth and stood up. “I’m going after the guy on the roof.”

“Going after
him with what?” she asked, grabbing his jersey and standing with him.

Dylan stopped,
turned and stared at his discarded pistol. Beth was right. Given his present
physical condition, he was helpless to take anyone on without a weapon. “There’s
got to be some way to help her,” he said, more to himself than out loud.

“How?” Beth
asked.

Dylan
sighed. “I don’t know.” He turned back toward the deck and grabbed up his
binocs again.

Another
intruder walked into the girl’s apartment, right through the front door. He was
dressed in black like the others but wasn’t masked, so Dylan made a conscious
effort to take as good a look at him as possible. He stepped over the body of a
fallen comrade as though it were so much trash and walked over to where the other
attacker was holding the girl. Dylan hadn’t even seen the dead one before. That
first blinding flash must have been the shot that took him out of the fight.

The newcomer
appeared to be middle-aged and Caucasian. He had dark hair, some of which had
gone gray, a dark beard, and...and dark eyes! He had dark eyes! “He’s not
Cirran
or
Sulaini,” Dylan observed. “He’s Terran.”

“What?”

“I said he’s
Terran, unless he’s wearing colored lenses for some reason.”

“A
mercenary?” Beth suggested.

“Possibly,
but more likely a traitor. Mercenaries rarely involve themselves in hostilities
against their own governments these days. Too much like starting a fire in your
own back yard.”

The probably-Terran
reached out and grabbed a fistful of the girl’s tank top, tore it off of her,
and then stuffed it into her mouth. Then he pulled a pistol from inside his
shirt—even older than Dylan’s from the looks of it—and rested the muzzle
against her throat. He said something, then slowly slid the weapon down over
her right breast and then across to her left, making little circles around her
nipples. Then, finally, he slid it down between her breasts, over her stomach,
and pushed the muzzle down into the front of her panties.

The girl suddenly
kicked him between the legs with what looked like all the force of an angry
mule, actually lifting him off his feet before he doubled over. He backed off
and dropped to his knees in obvious pain as his partner tightened his hold on
their feisty prisoner and slapped her two or three times on the side of her
head.

“Good girl,”
Dylan muttered.

“What’d she
do?” Beth asked.

“Kicked him
square in the nuts. Looks like she hurt him pretty badly, too.”

After a
minute or so the probably-Terran climbed back to his feet, though he must still
have been in a lot of pain, and leveled his pistol at the girl’s chest. He
shouted something, then squeezed the trigger.

She flinched
as a small silvery dart that Dylan could barely see stung her in the center of
her chest and stuck there. Her legs began to quiver. She appeared to be struggling
to stay on her feet. Then her knees buckled and she collapsed. Her captor eased
her to the floor, then pulled the dart out of her chest and slipped it into a
concealed pocket in his shirt. Then, seemingly at the probably-Terran’s direction,
he pulled off her panties and used them to bind her ankles together. Finally,
he lifted her up off the floor, threw her over his shoulder, and hurriedly
followed the probably-Terran out of the apartment.

Dylan’s mind
started racing. There were only two of them now, not counting the one on his roof
of course, assuming he was still up there. One was carrying the unconscious
girl while the other was doubtlessly still in a lot of pain, so both were
moving slowly. If he could get to the roof and eliminate that one first...

But as Beth
had already pointed out, the enemy was armed and he was not. So how?

The
screaming whine of some kind of energy weapon suddenly filled the air as a
blue-white beam lanced skyward from below, just beyond Dylan’s deck. Another
beam of crimson answered the shot from above and the two flared bright purple
when they crossed. Then they ceased together, and the roof shook with a loud
thud and the rumbling of something heavy as it rolled down toward the edge.

Dylan and
Beth looked up in unison as the last of the attackers—those they knew about at
least—fell hard to his deck. Dylan rushed to the doorway but stopped short of
actually running outside. The man lay motionless, face-down in an expanding
pool of dark blood. The back of his shirt had burned away and what was left of
his charred and boiling flesh still glowed where the energy hadn’t quite dissipated
yet. Beyond the body, near the deck’s edge, a disruptor rifle lay idle, just
waiting for a new owner to claim it.

“Ask and ye
shall receive,” Dylan commented. Then he lay prone and started to crawl
outside.

“What are
you doing?” Beth gasped.

“Stay here.”

“Like hell!”

She dropped
to her stomach and followed him out, cringing and grinding her teeth as she
clamped her jaws shut against the smell of scorched flesh and eviscerated
inards that assaulted her nose and turned her stomach. Reluctant to do so, she nevertheless
crawled right through the warm, sticky, oozing blood and over the lifeless body
to the deck’s edge. Dylan grabbed the rifle, glanced quickly to the ground
below to be sure it was safe, then started to squeeze between the railing
posts.

“Look over there,”
Beth told him, pointing.

Dylan looked
to where she was pointing. Below them and off to the right another man lay
motionless on his back in the middle of a small patch of flowers, holding a
small pistol. He was dressed not in black, but in light-colored pajamas, the
front of his shirt stained with blood.