Solfleet: The Call of Duty (14 page)

“Of course,”
Forrest continued, ignoring the page, “she might just be aggravated as all hell
over being stuck down here while her wounded ship limps helplessly toward home
under someone else’s command.”

“That much
seems pretty certain to me,” Rawlins said. Then he tapped the comm-link at his
neck. “Rawlins here,” he answered. “Go ahead.”

“
We’re
within magnified visual range of the jumpstation, sir,
” Lieutenant Irons
advised him. “
Still maintaining complete communications silence, per your
orders.
”

“Are the
emergency nacelle teams in position?”

“
Affirmative,
sir. Standing by for instructions.
”

“All right.
Set course directly for the jump ring and adjust our velocity to allow them
time to complete the installation on the run. Smallest possible safety margin,
Lieutenant. Then have Sergeant Noonian send them a flash message on a tight
beam and advise them. Be sure he gives them our
exact
course, speed, and
E-T-A to the ring. Clear?”

“
Clear,
sir.
”

“Rawlins,
out.” He tapped the channel closed, then gave Forrest one final bit of advice. “Remember,
Doctor, your patient is still the captain of this vessel. Do whatever you have
to do to take care of her, but show a little more restraint in enforcing your
instructions, will you, please?”

“I will if
she will, Commander.”

Not exactly
the complete capitulation he wanted, but it would have to do. “Fair enough,” he
said. “Let me know if there’s any change in her condition. I’ll be on the
bridge.” He stepped out of the doctor’s office nonchalantly, but once out of her
sight he left the Medbay as fast as he possibly could and headed back to the
bridge, relieved that the confrontation was finally over.

* * *

What he had
intended to be a quick detour to Engineering had turned into a long and very
detailed technical briefing courtesy of the very stressed out chief engineer,
so by the time Rawlins finally made it back to the bridge, Commodore Van den
Engel, commanding officer of the Rosha’Kana jumpstation and of all Solfleet
personnel permanently assigned to the sector, had long since deployed one of
his station’s two mobile repair isolation gantries—‘RIG’ for short. The
engineers who’d been assigned to retrofit the emergency jump nacelles to the
Victory
had begun to accelerate it back toward the jump ring, paralleling the
Victory
’s
course per Rawlins’ request, and Ensign LaRocca had split the viewscreen’s
image to show both the RIG on the left and the jumpstation on the right.

Even
magnified ten times, Rawlins observed as he approached the command station,
both the jumpstation itself and its enormous ring were still far too distant to
readily identify, or even to differentiate between without the ship’s scanners.
Especially without the telltale point of flickering bright blue-green light
that normally served to make a jump ring in standby mode so easily
identifiable, even from such distances. There was good reason for that, of
course. Because of its relatively close proximity to the all too porous border
of enemy space, the Rosha’Kana station’s ring, unlike those of all of Solfleet’s
other jumpstations, always remained de-energized and dark until it was actually
needed. Otherwise it would have been too easy for the Veshtonn to locate and
destroy.

But the RIG
was another matter entirely. Basically nothing more than a self-propelled,
semi-cylindrical construct of crisscrossed heavy-duty latticework that served
as both a portable dry-dock and a secure mounting platform and external power
source for numerous construction and repair modules, it was nonetheless
gargantuan—larger even than the jump ring. In all his years in the space
service, Rawlins had never actually seen one of them before. Pictures and
computer generated images, yes, but never the real thing. Despite its relative
simplicity, he found it to be quite impressive.

“Status
report, Mister LaRocca,” he requested as he sat down.

“The RIG has
matched our velocity and is closing on our port side at five point five meters
per second, sir. Contact in approximately one minute.”

“Ensign...uh...Engineer?”
Rawlins prompted, forgetting the young man’s name again.

“Ensign
Zurilkowski, sir,” the engineer dutifully reminded him for the umpteenth time
since they’d met. “Commander Marshall reports ‘ready’. Two teams per nacelle are
in place and standing by.”

“Thank you.
And...I’m sorry I keep forgetting your name.”

“You’re not
the first, sir,” the young man commented without any resentment evident in his
tone.

Rawlins didn’t
doubt that one bit. Still, he felt a little ashamed of himself, regardless of
whether the ensign resented it or not. As the ship’s executive officer, not to
mention its acting
commanding
officer, he knew he should make whatever
effort was necessary to remember the names of all those he worked with, especially
those who served with him on the bridge. Not to do so set a poor example for
the department heads, and probably wasn’t very good for the morale of those
whose names were forgotten, either.

“Tactical?”
he called for next, putting his deficiency behind him for the time being. He
could review the crew roster later, when the ship was safe.

“All
operational sensors show clear, sir,” Lieutenant Irons reported from the
comfort of her brand new, enhanced comfort chair.

“Sensors?”
he asked, peeling his eyes away from the screen and looking over at her. “Haven’t
you been running active scanners, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir.
Twenty-four hours a day as ordered, but I had to shut them down a few minutes
ago or we would have risked overloading some of the RIG’s more sensitive
equipment.”

“Right,”
Rawlins conceded. “Sorry, Lieutenant.” He faced front again, disappointed in
himself. How could he have forgotten something so basic so easily? The long
hours must have been getting to him. But as quick as he was to question
himself, he was just as quick to put his doubts behind him and move on.

Four hours
to go. Four long hours from initial linkup with the RIG to their jump, and then
they would be home free, assuming of course that they didn’t run into any
problems with the installation of the nacelles. And assuming the Veshtonn didn’t
show up out of nowhere all of the sudden to spoil the whole party.

“RIG pilot
is requesting final authorization for docking, sir,” Noonian reported as that
approximate minute to contact came to an end.

“Authorization
for docking is granted, Sergeant,” Rawlins responded, “by authority of the executive
officer,
U.E.F.S. Victory.
”

Noonian
started to transmit his message, but then hesitated and looked over at the
commander to request verification. “Shouldn’t that be by authority of the
acting
commanding
officer, sir?” he asked innocently.

Rawlins
turned his chair—the
captain’s
chair—toward the communications NCO and
asked, “Has Solfleet issued change-of-command orders that I’m unaware of,
Sergeant?”

“No, sir.”

“Then I have
to assume Captain Bhatnagar is still the commanding officer of this ship.
Wouldn’t you agree, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir,”
Noonian answered sheepishly. “Transmitting now.” Seconds later the RIG deployed
its tethers and linked up with the
Victory
, and the combined teams of
the station’s and the ship’s engineers got to work.

Rawlins
sighed. Four hours. An eternity, with nothing to do but sit patiently and wait.
As patiently as possible anyway.

Before long
it dawned on him that it would probably be a good idea to retire to the captain’s
ready room for a while and get some rest. But as he sat there and surveyed the bridge,
he suddenly realized just how comfortable he felt right where he was. After
three days of essentially
being
the ship’s captain—never mind the admonishment
he’d just given Sergeant Noonian—he was indeed beginning to feel quite at home
in the command chair, and that made him wonder. Should the captain’s injuries
turn out to be severe enough to prevent her from ever returning to her duties
as the
Victory
’s commanding officer, might the job then fall to him by
default? On a temporary basis almost certainly, but what about in the long run?
Between this and his previous assignment, he’d served more than enough time as
an executive officer, and he was, after all, eligible for promotion. If he...

He shook his
head, banishing the thought from his mind. Suja was still the captain, and he
was her executive officer. For him to contemplate replacing her in the
immediate future, especially when she was so seriously injured and out of
action, was not only disloyal, but in his eyes was despicable as well. The starcarrier
Victory
was Suja Bhatnagar’s ship until Solfleet Central Command said
otherwise.

He sighed.
Four long hours.

Not knowing
what else to do with them, Admiral Hansen shoved his hands in his trouser
pockets as he paced back and forth from one end of the Narcotics Investigations
office to the other, pausing every few seconds to glance at the row of six
surveillance monitors that Detective Sergeant Franco had reluctantly set up for
him there. Each member of the squad had his or her own specific part to play in
the operation, so none of them had been available to stay behind and watch with
him. He’d changed into the most nondescript civilian clothes he owned before coming
so as not to attract too much attention, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling
that he was being watched himself—that the eyes of every cop who happened to
walk down the hall outside turned to him at every opportunity. In or out of
uniform, they knew who he was, and he knew it. They probably knew why he was
there, too.

He took a
seat on the distinctly uncomfortable chair that sat facing the monitors and
slid forward to its edge, rested his elbows on his knees, and started wringing
his sweaty hands as he stared anxiously at the far left monitor—the one tuned
to the camera that focused on the public area just outside the main entrance to
the Rotunda’s maintenance offices. According to the timer in the lower right
corner, twenty-seven minutes had passed since they started recording. Almost
half an hour and so far, nothing—no Heather, no narcotics dealer, and strangely
enough not very many passersby. Then again, maybe that wasn’t so strange. Maybe
the Rotunda never got that busy on a Tuesday night.

Half an hour
of pacing back and forth across the office, of sitting down and fidgeting, of
standing up and pacing back and forth again. Half an hour of watching and
waiting. It felt more like half the night, but at least he
could
watch. Not
that that hadn’t taken some doing.

The narcotics
team, or the ‘Narco squad’ as he’d overheard some of their fellow police officers
affectionately referring to them, had an apparently well-earned reputation for
being an exceptionally effective team. It also tended to be quite secretive about
its methods, so Hansen initially hadn’t had much luck convincing Sergeant
Franco to allow him to observe the operation. But once he found out how long
the squad had been after this particular dealer and just how badly they wanted
to get their hands on him—the sergeant himself had let that useful little gem
slip out somewhere along the way—all he’d had to do was threaten to withdraw
his hard-earned permission for Heather to help them out. Faced with the loss of
his only inside resource, Franco had finally given in.

But monitors
or not, what still occupied his mind most prevalently at the moment was the
question of why he’d ever let Franco talk him into allowing Heather to get
involved in the first place. Just what the hell had he been thinking, anyway?
Narcotics enforcement was a dangerous business, perhaps more dangerous than any
other area of law enforcement, and she was just a fourteen year old girl. Still
a child.
His
child. Not even a high school sophomore yet. Far too young
to be playing undercover cop. And yet there he was, sitting idly by, watching
and waiting while she prepared to walk straight into what was probably the most
dangerous situation she’d ever gotten herself into.

He rolled
his head around to stretch the kinks out of his neck. Why had he let Franco
talk him into it? Why? Because Heather had sided with the detective, and even
after all these years, Daddy’s little girl still had Daddy wrapped around her
little finger. That was why. That was
exactly
why. One thing he was sure
of, though. Had they been in an open city down on Earth instead of in the
closed and relatively safer environment of Mandela Station, he
never
would
have given in. He’d have doled out her punishment, and that would have been the
end of it.

But they
weren’t on Earth. He
had
doled out her punishment, but as usual that had
not
been the end of it. First, in lieu of sending her back to Westcott—as
with most everything else, he’d let her plead her way out of that, though he hadn’t
really intended to send her back there in the first place—he’d grounded her for
an additional five weeks, bringing her total sentence to seven. Then he’d
revoked her social communications privileges for the duration, effectively
isolating her from all of her friends for almost a month and a half. Grounded
for seven weeks with no comm privileges of any kind—confined to her home like
an inmate to her prison cell. In the opinion of several other parents he knew,
whom he’d happened to run into after church the next day, that was the worst
punishment that any almost fifteen year old girl could possibly ever be subjected
to.

Not
surprisingly, Heather had agreed with their assessment wholeheartedly, claiming
that such a long separation from her circles would prove devastating to her
social life. She’d offered to do anything it might take to avoid ‘ruining her entire
life by having to serve that much time,’ especially since her birthday fell in
the middle of it. All the cooking and cleaning, getting a part-time job for the
rest of the summer, attending drug abuse counseling—all very good ideas as far
as her father was concerned.