Solfleet: The Call of Duty (64 page)

“Oh my God, I
know him!” Beth exclaimed. “He’s one of the residents here!”

Dylan
glanced back at the corpse on his deck and concluded, “They must have shot each
other.” Then he gazed down at the other man again. “But why didn’t he just disintegrate
like the window did?”

He examined
the rifle more closely. The sniper had used a low setting. But why? Weren’t the
higher settings working properly? Perhaps he’d wanted to make sure he didn’t
kill the girl or set her apartment on fire when he burned through the window.
If so, then that was an important detail. It meant they didn’t just want her
out of the way of something. They wanted her alive. No, more than that. They’d
risked alerting her to their presence and allowing her a chance to escape
rather than risk accidentally killing her. They didn’t just want her alive. They
needed
her alive. She was important. She knew something. But what? And
who were they?

“He may have
saved our lives,” Beth commented.

“What? Oh.
We’ll have to thank him later. Let’s go.”

Dylan
squeezed the rest of the way out between the posts and dropped to the ground,
rolling onto his good shoulder to absorb the shock and then up onto his feet,
crouching low and looking around. The he signaled Beth to join him. She slipped
through the posts more quickly and easily than he had, hung by her hands and
lowered herself as far as she could, then dropped. She landed hard and a little
awkwardly, but managed to stay on her feet.

“You all
right?” Dylan asked. She nodded.

They remained
still for several seconds, watching and listening to be sure they were still
safe. Solfleet’s war games still raged on in the distance, but the apartment
battle seemed to have ended...at least for the moment.

“What was
that?” Beth asked fearfully.

“What was
what?”

“I heard
something.”

Dylan
sighed. He really hated it when people told him that.

She twisted,
first one way and then the other, searching the area all around them. Then she
froze, her eyes fixed in a single direction.

A vision of
Marissa staring into the darkness of the Sulaini commander’s inner hallway
flashed through Dylan’s mind. “Beth?”

“Oh my God,”
Beth said, half covering her mouth with one hand. Dylan followed her gaze to
the pajama-clad man.

“What is it?”
Dylan asked.

“He’s still
alive!” she exclaimed as she rushed to his side.

Dylan gazed
at the man’s chest but couldn’t discern any movement. “Are you sure?”

Beth pried
the pistol from his hand. “Lie still,” she told him, ignoring Dylan for the
moment. “Help is coming.”

The wheezing
man—Dylan could see now that he was trying hard to breathe—stared into space
through glazed, unseeing eyes, no doubt totally oblivious to Beth’s presence,
and let go his life’s last breath. Beth hesitated for a moment, then dragged
her fingers down over his eyelids, closing them. And then, just for a moment,
she bowed her head and closed her own eyes.

The sky had
begun to lighten, but no birds sang songs of greeting to the rising sun this
dawn. Dylan allowed Beth her moment of silence, but when she began to shiver he
knew that it wasn’t just due to the cool air and he told her, “We have to get
moving.”

She looked
at him, then gazed down at the weapon in her hand. She checked its charge and
Dylan doublechecked the rifle he’d picked up. Both were almost fully charged.

They dashed
across the garden and between the two farthest buildings, passing the bodies of
those few early risers who’d been unfortunate enough to get in the enemy’s way.
At least one, Dylan noticed, held a Solfleet-issue pistol in his dead hand.

They put
their backs to the wall of the building on their right and stopped when they
reached its far end. Dylan glanced briefly around the corner and pulled back
very quickly, then crouched low and peeked around it once more, just as
briefly. Then he looked back at Beth and told her, “It’s clear,” and asked, “Are
you ready?”

“I’m scared,”
she confessed.

“So am I,
but that’s good,” he assured her. “Means you won’t make mistakes, as long as
you don’t let your fear get the best of you.”

“I’m not a
soldier, Dylan,” she reminded him. “I’m an administrative specialist.”

“We’re all
soldiers first, Beth,” he reminded her. Then he grasped her hand. “Come on.”

They
scrambled the fifty meters across the grassy front yard to the cover of the
next building. From there they only had a few more meters to go to make it to
the thick four-foot tall bushes that hid portions of the stone wall from view—the
wall that surrounded the wide open parking lot, twenty feet below. They
high-crawled over to it and peered down over the lot from between two of the
bushes.

“There they
are,” Dylan said, pointing toward the center of the lot where the kidnappers
were hurrying as best they could toward a common commercial cargo van’s opening
back door, the one still carrying the unconscious girl over his shoulder.

“What do we
do now?” Beth asked.

“Wait here.”
He threw her a stern look. “I mean it this time.”

He rose to
his feet but still crouched as low as he could as he rushed to the right,
toward the top of the slate-gray steps that led down to the lot, closing the
distance between himself and his prey. Sirens wailed in the distance, echoing
through the hills, but they were still at least a few kilometers distant.

He popped up
for another look. The van’s back door stood open and the kidnappers were almost
there. He raised his rifle, aimed into the cab, and squeezed the trigger. The
muzzle flash glared red in his sights, and when it faded the driver had slumped
over the controls.

The
kidnapper carrying the girl lifted her off his shoulders and rolled her into
the back of the van, then jumped in behind her as the probably-Terran suddenly returned
fire into the bushes around Dylan’s position. Dylan ducked under the deadly
shower and glanced over at Beth. She was on her knees and rising to join the
firefight. He scrambled and tackled her flat onto her back.

“Ouch! That
hurt!” she hollered, slapping his arm.

“Sorry,”
Dylan told her, unfazed by her outburst.

“What are
you doing?” she continued to protest. “I could’ve hit him!”

“And he
could’ve
killed
you!” he fired back, silencing her.

The shooting
stopped as suddenly as it had started. Dylan jumped to his feet, rifle raised
and ready to fire, but it was too late. The van was already speeding away. “Shit!”
he exclaimed angrily as he lowered the rifle. He drew a few quick, deep breaths
to try to relax as he started pacing back and forth, but it didn’t work.

Beth stood
up and brushed herself off, then started to tremble. “What was all that about?”
she managed to ask between her own heavy breaths.

“I don’t
know, but...” Suddenly he remembered. He looked at her, his eyes wide with
urgency. “The handcomp!”

“What
handcomp?”

“The
Solfleet handcomp they were working with!” he answered as he took off running past
several curious and frightened onlookers toward the girl’s building.

Beth took
off after him but quickly fell farther behind, losing more and more ground with
every step. “What Solfleet handcomp?” she hollered.

Dylan bounded
up the front stairs and dashed into the girl’s apartment, right past another
black-clad intruder—he just caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of his
eye—who was at that moment rifling none too gently through the girl’s closet.
He dove forward and rolled up onto his knees against the back of the couch,
then turned and fired, blasting the rising enemy out through the doorway to die
at Beth’s feet.

She stared
down at the dead man in horror, looked up at Dylan, and then suddenly raised
her pistol and fired toward the kitchen.

Dylan swung
his rifle around in time to see yet another enemy fall. Then he looked back at
Beth. She was just standing there, breathing heavily through her gaping mouth,
her eyes wide with terror and her body frozen still as a statue, still aiming
her pistol at where her victim had been standing.

“It’s okay,
Beth,” he told her calmly as he cautiously approached her. “It’s all over now.”
He reached her side, being careful not to step into her line of fire, then
carefully pried the pistol from her hands. “See? I told you you were a soldier first.”

She looked
at him as though she couldn’t comprehend what he’d said. Then she started to
cry. “I’ve never shot anyone before,” she told him as the tears flowed down over
her cheeks.

Dylan stepped
into her, intending to take her into his arms and comfort her, but at that
moment someone fired off two rapid shots and she yelped and fell backwards to
the floor. Dylan watched in horror and disbelief for a single split second
before his instinct and training took over again. He dropped straight to the
floor as he spun toward the kitchen and fired, nearly cutting the wounded man
in half, then quickly bounced right back to his feet and whirled around in a circle.
No more enemies...for the moment.

“Beth!” He
dropped to his knees and laid the rifle down beside him. He spotted a pair of
small holes in a growing bright red smear of fresh blood high up on the right
side of Beth’s already blood-caked blouse. He lifted the material from her skin
and then poked his fingers into the holes and tore it open to check her wounds.
Two streams of fresh blood trickled down her shoulder and mixed with the darker
coagulated blood that already stained her flesh.

So she’d
been hit twice, by bullets judging from the look of her wounds.

One of the
rounds had cut through her bra strap and entered above her breast. The other
had struck just above her collar bone. That one was just a graze relative to
the other. A fairly deep one, but a still a graze. Neither wound would be fatal
if she got help soon enough, but shock could be if she didn’t. He had to do
something to stop the bleeding right away or all the help in the world wouldn’t
save her.

Her sleeve.
It wasn’t spotless but it was cleaner than the rest of her blouse, so it would
have to do. He laid his right hand over both wounds and applied pressure, then
rolled her onto her side as gently as he could with his left. He straddled her
and used his legs to keep her from rolling back, and as he pulled on her sleeve
he spotted a bleeding exit wound at the base of her neck, just to the right of
her spine.

“That’s
good,” he told her, speaking as calmly as he could manage, hoping to keep her from
panicking. “It went right through.”

Her sleeve
finally tore free. He pulled it off her limp arm and folded it over several
times, then laid it over the exit wound as it was clearly the most severe. “See
if you can reach around with your left hand and hold this in place,” he said.
With much effort, and with his help, she managed to do as he asked.

The sirens
were drawing nearer.

“Hang in
there, Beth. Help is almost here.”

He spread
his knees apart and gently laid her back, hoping that her body weight would put
added pressure on the wound at the base of her neck and help stop the bleeding.
Then he stood up, reached over the back of the couch, and grabbed both cushions
and the folded blanket that was still draped over the arm. He stacked the
cushions beside her legs, then lifted her legs off the floor and slid the cushions
underneath them for support. Then he shook out the blanket and laid it over her
to keep her warm. “This will help prevent shock,” he told her.

“I can’t
breathe!” she cried, wheezing, gasping for air.

Dylan tossed
the blanket aside and tore the hole in her blouse wide open. A circle of bubbly
red foam was dancing over the wound above her breast, which he realized indicated
that her lung was probably collapsing. He laid the palm of his hand over the
wound and pressed down firmly, trying desperately to create an air-tight seal.
He glanced around but saw nothing within reach that would do the job any
better.

The sirens
were drawing closer.

He wanted to
sit her up and hold her in his arms, but he knew that if he did that he would
only worsen her condition. “Help’s almost here, Beth,” he told her again as he
gently stroked her cheek with his free hand. “Just a couple more minutes.”

As he
continued to reassure her, his biotronic shoulder began to throb painfully and
he started feeling faint. Then he spotted a narrow rivulet of blood trickling
down over his arm and mixing with hers.

He’d been
hit. Of all the luck. But Beth still needed him and he was determined to stay
strong for her. Medical care and the chance to rest would come soon enough.

One by one
the sirens fell silent. The Civil Guard had arrived. Everything would be all
right now.

Beth, and
his hand over her wound, seemed to drift off into the distance as a bad case of
tunnel-vision suddenly washed over him.

Everything
would be all right.

He looked up
and the world of color around him faded to so many shades of gray.

Everything
would be all right.

Those shades
of gray deepened and darkened and ran together.

Darkness
swallowed the world.

That Same Morning

Friday, 24 September 2190

Admiral
Hansen thanked the Tarko City station commander for his call and closed the
channel, then leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on his desk, and sipped
his fresh cup of coffee. If it weren’t for the fact that Liz’s ship was still
missing, he probably would have been angry as hell at her for what she’d done. Furious
even. But as it was he was too concerned for her safety and wellbeing to be
too
angry.