Solfleet: The Call of Duty (81 page)

He stayed
put for several more minutes to make sure the program worked, and despite
having already determined his wisest and most logical course of action, not to
mention his safest, he spent that time reconsidering again what he should do.
But heading for home right away was still the only plausible answer he could
come up with. He didn’t particularly like the idea of running away, but he
liked the idea of inadvertently walking into the hands of the co-conspirators even
less. So he had no other choice but to take the information he’d gathered,
along with what he’d learned from the lieutenant, and do just that. And he
probably had very little time.

The last
page faded. The file closed and another opened. The program appeared to be
working perfectly. The time had come to leave.

* * *

Commander
Royer leaned back in her chair with a sigh and flipped the hair out of her weary,
bloodshot eyes for about the hundredth time. She hadn’t cut it since before her
trip to Cirra, what...three and a half months ago already? Karen had told her
the longer hair made her look even younger and sexier than she already did and
had asked her to let it grow for a while longer. She’d colored out the silver
streak in her bangs a few weeks after returning home, and she had to admit, as
objectively as she possible could, that the woman who’d been looking back at
her from the mirror lately was pretty hot stuff. Karen was right.

But longer
hair could be a real pain sometimes, too.

She gazed
across the shadowy room at her lovely wife’s indistinct form—the light from the
screen glowing in her eyes made it hard for her to see into the relative
darkness—sound asleep in their bed as she had been for hours. Lying naked on
her stomach with the sheet barely covering her bottom, she was at complete
peace with the galaxy. Lucky her. Liz wanted so badly to join her. She wanted
to strip off her panties and pajama top and climb into bed with her wife and wrap
her arms around her and make love to her and then sleep with her until morning.

Nothing but
catnaps and no lovemaking at all for the past five nights. She was exhausted
and horny as hell, all at the same time.

The display
changed, drawing her attention back to the screen. Another article. “Doesn’t
this guy ever take a break?” she whispered under her breath.

“
Please
restate your question,
” the terminal instructed, startling her. She’d
switched off the audio three times already. Hadn’t she? She was sure she had. She’d
have to have a technician take a look at the damn thing.

“Disregard,”
she said quietly.

“Muh?” Karen
mumbled as she rolled onto her back and kicked the blankets away.

“Nothing,
sweetheart,” Liz answered. “Go back to sleep.”

“Hmm.” And
that was it. Karen apparently drifted off, back into the dark abyss.

Liz stared
longingly at her, licking her suddenly dry lips as she gazed into that shadow-veiled
place between her thighs. She spread her legs and slid a hand down into the
front of her panties and started slowly, gently, massaging herself. But then
she decided that she just didn’t have the energy, so she stopped.

She
stretched her arms up over her head and yawned, then brought her feet up onto
the chair and hugged her legs to her body. She glanced at the chronometer in
the upper right corner of the screen but it only confirmed what she already
knew in her tired, aching body and in her mind. It was past 3:00 A.M. The
professor had been working, apparently non-stop, for over a hundred straight
hours, and she’d been doing her best to mislead him for well over the last
thirty, barely managing to stay one step ahead of him all the way. She hadn’t
even taken a shower, and since Karen had been tied up at work for most of that
time—something to do with irregularities in the inventory—her meals had
consisted of nothing more than whatever she could dash into the kitchen and
grab during the professor’s all too brief search queries. Mostly toaster
pastries, dry cereal, and cheese crackers. She was exhausted, disheveled, and
grungy. She felt even worse than she had at the end of her long voyage home
from Cirra.

The article
currently on her screen, the same article that Professor Min’para was at that
very moment reading in his own stateroom, suddenly disappeared and the familiar
laundry list of reference materials began scrolling by as it had so many times
before, each line rolling up the screen much too quickly for her to read in its
entirety. Then it stopped abruptly. Once again the professor had known right
where to find whatever it was he was looking for.

Okay. So he
was an accomplished mentalist. Still, over a hundred hours? How could he
possibly be so alert after so much time?

Royer barely
focused on the title before the first page of the new article replaced the
list, but when it did she recognized it immediately and felt relieved. It was
an article the professor had called up before. At least twice before, in fact. It
was an article that she’d anticipated he would want to read when he started all
this. It was an article that she’d been able to make the necessary changes to before
he ever saw it. Good. Now she had a minute to grab another cup of coffee and a
stim.

She dropped
her feet gently back to the floor and quietly stood up, then grabbed her mug
and headed into the kitchen, reaching up behind her and peeling her
sweat-dampened pajama top away from her back as she walked. The environment was
perfectly controlled. She and Karen always kept it at seventy-four degrees, so
why was she sweating?

She set her
mug on the counter and took her top off—that felt much better—and tossed it
over the back of the nearest chair, then dumped the cold remains of her last
cup of coffee, at least two hours old, into the sink and picked up the
half-full decanter. But the comm-panel above the counter top started flashing
the bright blue-green words “INCOMING COMMUNICATION” before she could even
begin to pour. She sighed, then flipped her bangs out of her eyes again. Who
the hell would be calling her at this hour?

“Receive incoming
communication and open a two-way channel,” she said. Then she glanced down at
her bare breasts as she suddenly realized that she hadn’t specified audio only.
“No! Belay...”

“
Incoming
communication is audio only,
” the panel advised her. “
Security
encryption is engaged. Please provide decryption access code.
”

She sighed
with relief, and even grinned. Good thing it was security encrypted. Otherwise
those next moments might have been pretty embarrassing. “Royer, Elizabeth,” she
said, lowering her voice. “Commander. Beta five dash six one one alpha gamma.
Return audio only.”

“
Positive
match. Access code accepted. Audio channel open.
”

Royer poured
her coffee, then set the decanter back in its place and took a careful sip—oh,
that was good—then said, “This is Commander Royer. Go ahead.” She took another
sip.

“
Sigma
one-seven here, Commander,
” the caller said first to identify himself. Sigma
one-seven. The agent in charge of the surveillance on Min’para. “
I’m sorry
to disturb you at such an ungodly hour but subject-one is finally on the move. He
signed out of his guest quarters and bought a ticket for the oh-five-thirty flight
to Cirra.
”

Min’para? “That
can’t be right. He’s...” Then it hit her. “Oh, that clever son of a bitch.”

“
Ma’am?
”

She let go
another heavy sigh, shaking her head, not caring that her bangs fell back
across her eyes again. How could she have let herself be fooled so easily? “He
knows we’re onto him, Mister Preston. Damn it all! He must have programmed his
terminal to keep calling up research materials at random.
That’s
why it’s
been scrolling down the list so damn fast.”

“
Say
again, ma’am.
”

“Never mind.
Put someone on that flight with him. Someone he couldn’t possibly have seen
yet, even in passing. But have him hang back as much as possible. Apparently,
subject-one isn’t as naive as I thought he was.”

“
Understood.
”

“And, Mister
Preston.”

“
Yes, ma’am?
”

She drew a
breath to speak, to give the order, but hesitated. She’d given a lot of thought
over the past several hours to the choices she might have to make and to the
orders she might have to give, should the professor make a run for it. She was
painfully aware of how dangerously close to insubordination some of those
choices might bring her—how close some of them
would
bring her, but one
question had lingered in her mind the entire time. How was her disobeying
Admiral Hansen any worse than the both of them disobeying the president?

She sipped her
coffee again and then chose her next words very carefully. “Whatever happens,
we cannot allow subject-one to visit our embassy when he gets home. Or any of
our other governmental or otherwise sensitive facilities for that matter. He
claims to be Cirran and his documents support that claim, but he could just as
easily be a Sulaini spy, and we’re still not exactly sure why he’s here or what
he’s up to. He
may
very well be a C-U-F terrorist, or even a professional
assassin.”

“
Understood,
Commander. For the record, is use of deadly force authorized?
”

She closed
her eyes. There it was, the question she’d known she would eventually have to
answer. The moment she’d been dreading, the moment when she had to decide
whether or not to act on her own in direct violation of the admiral’s explicit
orders, was at hand.

“
Ma’am?
”

She opened
her eyes and drew a deep, deep breath, then exhaled very slowly.

“
Commander?
Are you still there?
”

“Yes, Mister
Preston, I’m still here.”

“
Did you
copy my question?
”

“I heard
you.”

“
And?
”

Another deep
breath. Another sigh. Her hesitation only served to prolong the inevitable and
she knew it. Preston needed an answer and he needed it right away. She sipped
her coffee and flipped the hair out of her eyes one more time. “And, Mister
Preston,” she began, “if you find yourself in a situation where you have no
other choice, you and your team are authorized to use whatever force might be
necessary to protect Federation and allied personnel and resources from potential
harm. Royer out.”

The panel
went dark.

She poured whatever
was left of her coffee down the drain and set her mug in the sink, then turned
and was startled to find Karen standing in the doorway, leaning against the
jamb with her arms folded beneath her breasts.

“What’s
going on?” she asked, gazing at her through barely opened eyes.

“Nothing,”
Liz answered as she went to her. “Just business as usual.”

“Does that
mean you’re finally coming to bed?”

“Yes, it
does.” Liz took Karen into her arms and kissed her.

“About time.”

Liz smiled. “Miss
me?”

“Always.”
They kissed again, and then walked back into the bedroom.

Professor
Min’para settled into a chair against the back wall in the passenger terminal’s
gate-3 waiting area, in the corner farthest from the corridor and directly
opposite the ticketing and check-in counter, hoping that would put him far
enough out of the way to avoid being noticed by anyone. He would have preferred
to delay his departure until late morning when the terminal would no doubt be
filled nearly to capacity by a bustling crowd of commuters with whom he could
easily blend in, but he’d had to weigh that preference against his need to get
off the station as soon as possible, before the conspirators figured out that
he knew they were onto him and came after him. As it was, there were only a
very few people scattered here and there.

He’d known from
the beginning that the program he’d left running in his stateroom wouldn’t continue
to fool the conspirators if he left it running for too long, so he’d set it to shut
down automatically at seven o’clock to make it appear as though after more than
a hundred straight hours of intensive research, he’d finally had enough and
gone to bed. He’d based his plan on the admittedly unlikely hope that they
would stand by for the next several hours and wait for him to wake up and
continue, but he didn’t dare bet his life on that. If he was lucky, he’d bought
himself enough time to escape the station undetected.

Activity at
the ticket counter caught his attention. He looked up, anticipating the
boarding call, but was disappointed to see that it was only another passenger—a
distinguished looking gentleman dressed in a simple but impeccably tailored
gray suit—buying a seat on the flight. He glanced up at the chronometer above
the counter. There was still an hour to go before the flight would begin to
board. He sighed. Another whole hour.

Might as
well have been another day.

Having
apparently completed his transaction, the gray-suited gentleman stepped away
from the counter and walkerd over to the rows of blue hard-plastic chairs that
filled most of the waiting area, but rather than taking a seat in one close to
him, he bypassed nearly every row, finally entering the next to last one. The
row directly in front of Min’para’s.

Why that
one? With over a dozen empty rows to choose from, why had he bypassed so many
and chosen the one that would bring him so close?

As he
approached he flashed a friendly smile and nodded to the professor and greeted
him with a simple, “Good morning.”

“Good
morning,” Min’para returned as the man walked by.

The man
turned away and headed toward the front again, but then stepped to his left and
took a seat at the near end of the single row of the chairs that faced the
large windows looking out on the moored vessel.