Solfleet: The Call of Duty (88 page)

“What!” she
gasped, glaring at the comm-panel. “A shootout between whom?”

“
My
agents and the marines, ma’am.
”

“Are you
kidding me?” she shouted. “Your agents traded gunfire with the United States
Marines?”

“
I’m
afraid so, ma’am.
”

“In the
middle of New York City and in broad daylight? What the hell were your people
thinking? Are they fucking
crazy?
”

“
I don’t
know, Commander!
” he shouted back. “
Four of them are dead and the fifth
one probably isn’t too far behind them, so I can’t very well fucking ask them,
can I!
”

“Don’t
forget who you’re talking to, Preston!
Jesus Christ!
Admiral Hansen is
going to blow a gasket when he finds out about this!”

“
Yes, ma’am.
”

“What about
the... What about subject-one? Where is he now? Do you have him in custody? Are
the marines all right?”

“
One of
the marines was wounded, but word is it was just a leg wound and he’ll make a
full recovery. Subject-one was wounded as well and is in the intensive care
ward at one of the local hospitals where we can’t risk going after him.
”

“Why can’t
you risk going after him?”

“
My
people tell me there’s too much security around him.
”

“That didn’t
seem to matter to you at the fucking Federation Building, did it?” she asked sarcastically.
He didn’t respond. “My
God
, Mister Preston! You’d better pray he dies in
that hospital! How the hell am I going to break this to the admiral?”

“
I don’t
know, ma’am, but I sure don’t envy you the task.
”

She stopped
talking to think for a moment. Then she told him, “Keep subject-one’s name out
of the news, Mister Preston. I don’t care what it takes. Threats, blackmail, payoffs,
I don’t care. Just keep his name out of the news. Do you understand me, Mister
Preston?”

“
Yes, ma’am.
I understand you perfectly. Anything else?
”

“Yes. Be
ready to travel at a moment’s notice.”

“
All
right. Where might I be going?
”

“That’s ultimately
for you to decide, but if Hansen finds out about this the farther the better,
for your own sake.”

“
What do
you mean ‘if’ he finds out?
”

“Leave that
to me.”

“
Got it.
Sigma one-seven, out.
”

Royer
slapped the panel, closing the channel, then leaned down on the counter,
resting on her forearms, and let her head sag forward. “I do
not
believe
this.”

Loson Min’para.
A Cirran mentalist. A university professor. How the hell had he gotten himself
caught up in the middle of an Earth Federation political conspiracy? If that
even was in fact what was going on.

Well beyond
frustrated, Chairman MacLeod switched off the professor’s handcomp and set it
down among the others on his abnormally cluttered desk, sat back in his
oversized black leather captain’s chair, and rubbed his tired, burning eyes. He’d
been at it non-stop for hours, but he wasn’t any closer to the elusive answers
than he had been when he began. ‘Cyberclones,’ the professor had said. ‘Desperation.’
‘Conspiracy.’ What did it all mean? What had the professor stumbled onto that
was so vitally secretive that someone had felt it necessary to kill him in
order to keep him quiet? And who exactly
was
that someone? Vice-Admiral
Hansen and his deputy, Commander Elizabeth Royer? Their names were certainly
prominent enough in the professor’s materials. Were the two most senior
officers of the Solfleet Intelligence Agency really involved, as the evidence
seemed to indicate, spotty as it was? Were they the ones who had something to
hide? And what did this Lieutenant Dylan Graves person the professor had written
about have to do with any of it?

Questions.
Nothing but questions. Questions and no answers. Where were the answers? Where
in God’s endless universe were the answers?

His stomach
rumbled. He glanced at his watch. It was late, long past even his ‘later-than-anybody-else-on-Earth’
dinner time. He hadn’t eaten anything since lunch and he was hungry to the
point of getting the shakes.

Like it or
not, he was going to have to stop soon.

He leaned
back in his chair as far as it would go, propped his feet up on the corner of
his desk, and laced his fingers behind his head. He closed his eyes and took a
few moments to mull over what little bit he had been able to figure out.

Not long
ago, Lieutenant Dylan Graves had been a Solfleet Marine Corps squad sergeant stationed
on the planet Cirra in the Caldanra star system with a Special Operations
Ranger unit. During a mission, the specifics of which were still classified, he’d
apparently fought in close quarters against something that had almost killed
him. Something so completely alien to his experience that he couldn’t even
begin to identify it. Or even describe it, for that matter. But his memories of
that conflict had
allegedly
been altered,
presumably
through the
application of a memory-edit, which
might possibly
have been ordered by
either Admiral Hansen or Commander Royer...or perhaps both. A memory-edit
which, for reasons as yet unknown, had apparently not been entirely successful.
If
it had ever really been performed at all.

He opened
his eyes. That was it. That was the extent of what he’d been able to figure
out. A few simple facts loosely laced together by little more than wild
allegations and presumptions.

He stared at
the half dozen handcomps and the piles of data chips that were strewn across the
well worn surface of his desk. Why all the material on cybernetic and biotronic
technologies? And why, according to Professor Verne, who despite their personal
differences had been good enough to cross-reference what MacLeod had forwarded
to him against the identical reference materials in Drexel’s own library, had
someone gone to all the trouble of altering or deleting certain parts of some
of the publications, while leaving other parts untouched? And what the hell did
any of that material have to do with aliens and memory-edits?

More
questions. MacLeod yawned.

The sudden,
multi-pitched warble of the door tones pierced the lingering silence with what
at that moment seemed comparable to the blare of an emergency klaxon, startling
him nearly out of his skin. He glanced at his watch again and was surprised to
see just how late it really was. Who in their right mind would expect to find
him in his office at this hour? For that matter, who in their right mind would
be
in their office at this hour?

The tones
warbled again. “Come in,” he called out.

The door
swung open and his personal executive secretary stepped in carrying a covered
tray. “Good evening,” she said.

MacLeod
dropped his feet to the floor, sat up, and laid his arms across the arms of his
chair. “Kathleen. What are you doing back here so late? You got off work hours
ago.”

“Yes, I did,”
she replied. “And when I left, you were wearing that same look on your face
that you get when the day ends before your work is done.” She shoved the
handcomps aside and set the tray down in front of him. “I figured you’d still
be here and I knew you probably wouldn’t have eaten anything yet, so...” She
lifted the lid to reveal a large plateful of steaming spaghetti in meat sauce,
green beans, and Italian garlic bread. “I brought you dinner.”

He smiled
down at the food and took a big whiff. “Oh my God, this smells fantastic,” he
told her. Then he looked up at her again. “I really do appreciate this, but I
don’t have any...” She reached into her pocket and whipped out a set of
silverware wrapped in a napkin, which she then set on the tray next to the
plate. “Thank you.”

“I also
brought this,” she said, pulling a bottled soft drink from her coat pocket. “And
there was a gentleman outside dropping this off,” she added, handing him an
envelope along with the soda, “...just as I arrived.”

He set the
bottle aside and tore open the envelope. Inside he found a single sheet of
paper folded into thirds, which he unfolded and began to read silently.

“What does
it say, if I may ask?” Kathleen inquired.

“It’s a
summary of a series of coroner’s reports,” he answered without looking up.

“Coroner’s
reports? Whose?” she asked with concern. “Who died?”

He refolded
the paper and stuffed it back into the envelope, which he then set aside, and
looked up at her. “Thank you for the dinner, Kathleen,” he said abruptly. “It
was very kind of you, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave now.”

“You want me
to go?” she asked, clearly disappointed.

“I’m sorry,
but I have a lot of work ahead of me. I promise I’ll eat first.”

She sighed. “All
right.” She leaned down and gave him a quick peck on the lips, then asked, “Coming
by my place tonight?”

“If I manage
to get out of here sometime before sunrise, yes, but don’t count on it.”

“All right,”
she said as she turned. Then, as she walked toward the door, she added, “If I
don’t see you tonight, I guess I’ll see you here in the morning. Goodnight,
Brian.”

“Goodnight,
Kathleen.”

Thirteen Days Later

Earth Standard Date: Tuesday, 21
December 2190

For the
first time since he and the old captain had left Mandela Station, Dylan donned
his Military Police uniform. Then he went forward to join Benny in the cockpit.

Two weeks.
Actually, fifteen days. A long time to be cooped up in such a small vessel with
only one other person for company. The ship had seemed so spacious and
comfortable when they started, too. Spacious and comfortable enough for two
people, at least. Funny how the bulkheads had seemed to close in on them as the
time passed slowly by.

Still, the
trip had been as relaxing as it had been long and Benny had suffered no
shortage of tall tales with which to fill the time. Dylan had heard stories of everything
from espionage and murder to epic space battles to heroic pets alerting their
masters to imminent danger. He’d heard more stories of discovery, such as that
of the relatively primitive Naku, a hardy humanoid race whose frozen world had
become a Coalition protectorate almost as soon as it was discovered. He’d heard
stories of unusual anomalies in space and of alternate universes, though he
seriously doubted the authenticity of those particular tales. Each successive
story had seemed more bizarre than the one before and Dylan couldn’t help but
wonder, though he’d never voiced his doubts, just how many of them had been
nothing more than figments of Benny’s imagination.

Of course, Dylan
had managed to squeeze in a few stories of his own, too. None of them had been
as fantastic as Benny’s adventurous tales, but at least they’d all been true.

He gazed over
at his traveling companion as he strapped himself into the copilot’s chair and
contemplated all that he’d learned about the man behind those piercing
jade-green eyes. Not the old Solar Defense Command officer or the highly
skilled technician, but the man himself. The human being. His interests
differed from Dylan’s. He had different tastes in music and art and
entertainment, and immensely different recreational preferences. After all, he
was a man of a different generation. More than that, he was a man of a
completely different century. Dylan had been shocked to learn that Benny had
been born in 2079, back during the pre-jumpspace days when sleeper-ships were
the newest and most state-of-the-art method of interstellar travel known to
man. The days when a single deep space assignment could last an serviceman’s
entire career. He looked as though he was only in his mid-sixties and he was as
healthy as a man a decade younger than that. Not bad for someone with one-hundred
twelve years of life experience under his belt.

Yes.
Figuratively speaking, Dylan and his traveling companion were men of entirely different
worlds. And yet, as they had discovered over a few shots of vodka—actually, over
an entire bottle of vodka—they were of one spirit. That of duty and honor, of
loyalty and service to one’s home world. And as their journey through deep space
had progressed, so too had their unlikely friendship.

But now that
journey was coming to its end, and so too was their time together. Dylan was
back in uniform, back on the job. Benny had spun his last tall tale and was
fully engaged now with bringing the
H.G. Wells
out of jumpspace.

“Counting
down,” the old captain said. “Three...two...one...jump.”

As Dylan
watched, the violet-blue ring of stars directly ahead began to lighten to more
of a blue-green shade and swell outward in all directions. Then, suddenly, it
exploded into millions of sparks like a thousand burning embers snapping in a
campfire all at once as the stars darted back to their true places all around
them. Normal space.

Where the
ring of stars had been, a small, seemingly dead dark orange and red globe now
floated, growing larger and larger until it eventually filled the window. As
they drew closer to the planet, what Dylan had at first thought was a thick,
rolling blanket of dark storm clouds instead revealed itself to be a series of
long, narrow, curving ranges of rocky, charcoal-peaked mountains separated by
wide expanses of deep, almost featureless rust-red valleys and plains. They
looked so much like row after row of giant, rotting, decay-blackened shark’s
teeth that Dylan could almost smell the fishy stench in his imagination.

Which
reminded him... “Where are the oceans?” he wondered aloud.

“There aren’t
any oceans,” Benny told him. “Window World is a lot like Mars, but with a
breathable atmosphere and temperatures that don’t vary nearly so much in
extremes. In fact, the average temperature at the outpost can be uncomfortably
warm in the summer, even at night.”