Solfleet: The Call of Duty (18 page)

Wait a second.
Liz. Of course. If anyone could tackle it, she could. She’d always been
dependable, hardworking, and extremely well organized. As his executive officer
and deputy chief of the agency, she always stayed on top of things. She kept
their headquarters running like a well-oiled machine. She wouldn’t have any
problem finding the time to do it, and she’d do it gladly, once he told her why
it had to be done.

He leaned
forward and tapped the ‘direct call’ button with her name on it. “Commander
Royer, are you there?” he asked.

“
Right
here, sir,
” she responded after only a few seconds.

“Are you
busy?”

“
Always,
but not with anything that can’t wait a few minutes. What can I do for you, Admiral?
”

“Would you
come to my office, please?”

“
Yes, sir,
I’ll be right there.
”

“Thank you.”
He closed the channel and sat back to wait for her, and realized that he was
actually looking forward to spending a few minutes with her. Her office was
only a short walk up the hall, but with everything that had been going on
lately—his medal and promotion ceremony, the mysterious message from the
alleged Lieutenant O’Donnell, and especially his ongoing struggle with Heather
over her bad behavior, not to mention whatever Royer herself had been busy with
lately—he hadn’t seen her in almost a week.

Elizabeth
Royer was a woman much like many others he’d met over the years. She’d grown up
in the fresh, clean outdoor air of the United States’ Midwestern plains and
looked no older than her thirty-eight years. In fact, a physically fit and
genuinely attractive woman, she actually looked several years younger than that...except
for that one narrow streak of premature silver that had slowly grown into her
golden bangs over the last few years, which in his opinion only complemented
her natural beauty.

Nearly a
decade ago, long before she’d started working
for
him instead of just
with
him, he’d considered pursuing a relationship with her on a more personal
level—something he hadn’t done with anyone since his wife’s tragic and untimely
death a year or two before that. He soon came to realize, however, that Royer
was all business, or so he concluded at the time, so he quickly gave up on the
idea. It wasn’t until several weeks after she was assigned, when her wife
finally arrived on station, that he learned she was married. After that he put
the attraction out of his mind and eventually grew content with their strictly
professional relationship.

At least
that was what he’d been telling himself for the last several years.

His door
buzzer sounded. “Come in.”

The door
slid aside and Commander Royer strolled in. She was wearing duty fatigues, her
platinum hair was pulled straight back and tied into a simple ponytail—both
rarities for her—and she was drying her hands on two or three crumpled up paper
towels. “Good afternoon, Admiral,” she greeted him cheerfully as she approached
his desk. “Long time no see.”

“You’re in
an exceptionally good mood, considering,” Hansen commented.

“Technicians
finally showed up to replace my terminal,” she explained. She tossed the paper
towels into the wastebasket beside his desk, then took a seat across from him
and crossed her legs.

“Doing the
heavy work yourself?” he asked.

“No, but I
decided that since I had to move my desk anyway, I might as well take care of a
few other jobs while I’m at it. I’ll be back in my class-B’s tomorrow.”

“That’s
fine,” he said, waving the non-issue aside. Then, getting to the matter at
hand, he continued, “Listen, Liz. I’m sure you’re aware by now of what’s
happened in the Rosha’Kana system.”

“Yes, sir, I
am,” she confirmed. “I read the message first thing this morning. Any word on
the whereabouts of the
Victory
?”

“As best we
can determine, she made it to the jumpstation. What happened to her after that
we don’t know yet.”

“So she did
jump out.”

“Apparently.”

“Well, I
guess that makes her luckier than some.”

“Luckier
than quite a few, I’m afraid. Total Coalition losses have yet to be determined,
but we do know that
Solfleet
’s losses have been heavy.” He paused for a
moment and reflected on the staggering numbers that had crossed his desk
earlier in the day, then snapped out of it and got back to business. “Anyway, I
called you in here because there’s something I need you to do. Top priority.”

“Name it,
sir.”

He could
have done just that. As her superior officer, he could have told her what he
needed her to do and left it at that without giving her a reason or explaining
anything. But that wasn’t how he operated, especially with his own executive officer.
People were just naturally more willing to do things when they knew
why
they
had to do them.

“The Earth
Security Council held an emergency session this morning. MacLeod came up to see
me right after.”

“He came up
here himself?” she asked, amused. It wasn’t at all like the chairman not to
delegate his various tasks to his underlings, especially those that involved
off-world travel.

But Hansen
was in no mood to joke about it. Instead, he looked her square in the eye and
told her, “They’re talking about using the Portal, Liz.”

She stared
at him, suddenly every bit as serious as he was. “Using the...” she began, choking
on her words. She cleared her throat, then tried again. “Using the Portal how,
sir?”

“To send an
agent back. Try to alter the timeline in order to avoid the Coalition defeat in
the Rosha’Kana system.”

“You uh...you
didn’t tell him about...”

“No, of
course not,” he assured her, shaking his head, “I’ve never told anyone outside
the operation about that.”

“Good,” she
said, exhaling with relief. “I’m not ready to go to prison just yet.”

“Don’t
worry, neither am I.”

Six years
earlier, during a particularly dark time in the war, Doctor Günter Royer, one
of the world’s premier biotronics and human genetic engineering experts and a
man who also just happened to be Commander Royer’s older brother, had conspired
with them and gone through the Portal on a similar type of mission aimed at
altering the past in order to change the present. Actually, his mission had
been to
add to
the past, but essentially that meant the same thing. He’d
taken enough stolen genetic material and advanced biotronics designs with him
to fast-grow and augment several divisions of cyberclone soldiers, given enough
time. Unfortunately, he’d never returned from the past, assuming that he ever
made it there in the first place, and as far as Hansen and Royer could
determine, nothing about their present had ever changed.

And now they
didn’t even know if he was alive or dead.

While the
three of them had proceeded according to what they’d felt at the time to be in
the best interests of Earth and her colonies, their actions had nonetheless
violated at least two of the Earth Federation’s highest laws. The first was the
law banning travel through the Portal for any reason, which, like the Portal’s
existence itself, was classified as ‘Top Secret,’ and whose violation carried a
possible death sentence. The second was the Brix-Cyberclone Cessation Act of
2162, which had put an immediate stop to all human cloning and enhancement
programs and permanently outlawed any subsequent resumption of them. In
addition, they’d violated one or more standard laws against willfully
endangering a private citizen. In fact, it might even have been possible to charge
them with Manslaughter, although proving such a charge in court would likely have
been difficult at best.

“So what’s
the mission, Admiral?” Royer finally asked. “What exactly is our agent going to
have to do once he or she arrives wherever or whenever they’re going?”

“They haven’t
worked out all the details yet. MacLeod just wanted to give us a heads-up as quickly
as possible so we could get started on selecting someone.”

“Selecting
someone?” she asked. “That’s not going to be easy without having at least
some
idea of what skill sets the mission’s going to require. We have thousands
of agents with widely varied experience. How do we know who’s best suited to
go? What kind of experience is going to be the most valuable?”

“We
don’t
know. Not yet.”

Royer
exhaled loudly again, but she found no relief in it this time. “What exactly
do
we know, sir?” she asked. “What do you want me to do?”

“We don’t
know much,” he answered honestly. “Review our agents’ service records and
compile a list of the ten most likely suited for the mission.”

“You want me
to review
all
our agents’ records, sir?” she asked, a little disconcerted.

“No,” he
answered, shaking his head. Obviously, that would be a monumental task. “No,
not all of them. Disregard all those who are married and/or have children. In
fact, I want you to exclude everyone who has dependants of any kind. Parents,
siblings, I don’t care what. See how large a list that leaves you with, then
narrow it down as you see fit.”

“Yes, sir,
but that’s still going to take a while.”

“You have until
one week from today, Commander. I need those ten names no later than next Wednesday
morning the twenty-eighth. You can work from home if you want to. In fact, I’d
prefer it if you’d work from home. The fewer distractions, the better.”

“Then I’ll
do that, Admiral. Thank you.”

“That’s all,
Commander.”

“Yes, sir.”
She stood up, but before she turned her back on him she asked, “May I ask you
what
you
think about all this, Admiral?” She knew Hansen to be a passionate
man, especially where the wellbeing of the personnel under his command was
concerned, and she’d always found it easier to know how to approach her
assignments when she knew where he stood on a particular issue.

He considered
her question for a moment, then answered, “Without knowing your brother is all
right, I hesitate to send anyone else through unless it’s our absolute last
resort. But when the time comes, if the order comes down, I
will
send
someone through.”

She gazed down
at her feet for a few seconds, then lifted her eyes back to his and asked,
somewhat hesitantly, “Any chance that person might be assigned to search for
Günter as well?”

Hansen gazed
at her for several moments. Difficult though it might be, someday she was going
to have to let him go. Then again, he knew what it felt like to lose someone. Where
was the harm in trying, if the opportunity presented itself? “I don’t have a
problem making that a secondary mission, Liz, assuming our agent doesn’t go
back to a point in time beyond what Günter’s target was.”

Royer
nodded, then turned and left Hansen’s office.

* * *

She went back
to her office first, to delegate all of her routine daily and weekly tasks as
well as her other current, more sensitive assignments to a few of her closest
and most trusted subordinate officers. After all, there was a war on and the
galaxy wasn’t going to stop spinning and wait for her to return to work. Then,
as those officers repeatedly assured her that she had nothing to worry about, she
reluctantly left for home.

As she made
her way toward her quarters, all she could think about was the daunting task
that lay ahead of her. The agency employed more than ten thousand sworn, credentialed
covert agents—closer to eleven or twelve, if she counted those who served in
administrative positions along with the active field operatives—the majority of
whom did
not
have dependents of any kind. Theirs wasn’t exactly a career
conducive to a happy and successful family life. Hansen had given her a week to
complete an assignment that could easily take two or three if not more, and
although she’d be working from home, she knew she was facing some very long and
tedious days ahead.

Eleven Days Later

Sunday, 1 August 2190

Sweating
profusely and writhing in agony on the deck, while at the same time crying for
his slaughtered family, Federation Vice-President Jonathan Harkam somehow still
managed to reach out and grab the front of Hansen’s jacket in his quivering,
blood-stained fist. He pulled him closer, bared his clenched teeth and spat
streams of red saliva over his chin as he grunted against the pain, then stared
up at him through red, swollen eyes.

“Please!”
he managed to force through the pain. “Oh God, it burns! Make it stop!”

Hansen
took hold of Harkam’s wrist with both hands and tried with all his strength to
pull free of his desperate, vice-like grip, but the dying man only tightened
his grasp to the point where Hansen thought he heard a finger snap and pulled
him closer. “Mister Vice-President,” Hansen responded as calmly as he could. “I
can’t just...”

“Yes you
CAN!” the dying vice-leader of the unified free world roared.

“Do it,
Major.”

Hansen
whirled around as far as the vice-president’s grasp would allow and glared wide-eyed
at...at the squad sergeant—the only one of his men who’d managed to survive the
attack with him.

“He’s the
vice-president for God sake!” he reminded him.

“He’s
suffering, sir,” the sergeant pointed out. “There’s nothing more we can do for
him now.”

“I can’t
just kill him!” Hansen insisted.

“Yes, you
can.”

Gasping
for every breath, Harkam jerked Hansen hard, drawing his attention back to him.
“Please, Major!” he pleaded, crying openly now, barely able to speak through
the agony anymore. “Do it!” He coughed suddenly, spewing a foot-high fountain
of dark, red-brown blood that barely missed Hansen’s face when he recoiled,
then splattered back over his chin and his suit coat. “Do...it,” he begged once
more.

“You’ve
got to do it, sir,” the sergeant told him. “There’s no other option.”

Hansen
knew in his heart that the sergeant was right. Harkam’s entire family had been
brutally slaughtered and the vice-president himself had been pumped full of...of
whatever it was that damn beast had pumped him full of. If the poor man’s cries
were to be believed, then he was literally burning to death from the inside
out.

He drew
his sidearm and slowly pressed the muzzle to the vice-president’s temple. He
drew several short, deep breaths and licked his suddenly very dry lips. But he
just couldn’t bring himself to squeeze the trigger.

“It’s the
humane thing to do, sir,” the sergeant pointed out.

“DO IT!”
Harkam shrieked through the pain, his tears tinted red with blood. Then he
suddenly started shaking Hansen violently back and forth as he lost whatever
control he’d been clinging to and convulsed, screaming and crying even louder
than before. “OH GOD!” he screamed, spitting and coughing up blood. “DO IT!”

“Do it,
sir,” the sergeant repeated.

Hansen
closed his eyes and turned away. “Forgive me,” he whispered. Then he drew a
long, deep breath, and squeezed the trigger.

Hansen woke
suddenly but realized immediately that he was safe in bed—that it was only the
nightmares again. They’d haunted his sleep every night for the last two weeks,
and quite frankly he was starting to get used to them. He’d even accepted the
presence of the unidentified squad sergeant who’d first appeared the night
before he learned of the Coalition’s devastating loss at Rosha’Kana, although
he was still a little curious about where that sergeant had come from in the
first place.

A sudden,
rapid
knock-knock-knock
on his door diverted his train of thought.

“Dad, are
you up yet?” came Heather’s muffled voice from the other side. “Come on.
Breakfast will be ready in two minutes.”

Breakfast?
Since when did Heather get up and make breakfast—especially on a Sunday
morning? She must have wanted something.

“I’ll be
there in a minute,” he told her. Then, as he sat up and dropped his feet to the
floor, he remembered. Two weeks had passed since she’d gotten caught stealing
again at Nigel Worthington’s store. Actually, two weeks and a day had passed, but
the way he always measured it in regards to handing out punishment... She’d
gotten herself into trouble on a Friday, so her two weeks had started that
Saturday and had run through the entire Saturday two weeks later. At any rate,
her punishment had come to its end.

He stood and
stretched, then changed into a pair of shorts and a tee shirt and headed into
the kitchen, where the mouthwatering aromas of cinnamon French toast, spicy
Italian sausage, and fresh brewed coffee overwhelmed him seconds before he got
a look at what she’d prepared.

“I’m really
impressed, Heather,” he told his daughter, who had actually dressed decently
for a change, when she greeted him with a rare smile.

She must really
have wanted to get out of their quarters for a while. Not that he could blame
her. By grounding her he’d essentially grounded himself as well because he’d
had to stay home in order to enforce it—except for normal duty hours, of
course, during which he’d simply posted a guard outside their door—so he knew
exactly what it felt like to spend every evening for over two weeks at home. He’d
had to do it more than a few times over the years, and he knew that as a young
teenage girl, it had to have been doubly hard for her.

“Thank you,”
she said, smiling even more brightly as she set his plate and his coffee down
on the table. “Consider it an apology for all the trouble I’ve caused you over
the years. Especially with Mister Worthington.”

He took his
seat, leaned over his steaming plate and took a big whiff, then looked at his daughter
and said, “Smells like a good apology to me. I accept.”

Heather gave
him a hug and a kiss on the cheek, then set her own plate on the table across
from him and sat down. “Helping the police bust that guy last week means
yesterday was my last day grounded, right?” she asked hopefully as they started
to eat.

“That was
our deal, yes,” her father answered as he chopped the sausages into bite-sized
pieces with his fork. Then he asked, “Why? Have you already made plans for
today?”

“Nothing’s
confirmed yet, but Corrine called me this morning and asked if I could go to
the beach with her. Is it all right?”

‘Nothing
confirmed’, he reflected with a grin. She’d been around military people so long
she was starting to talk like them. He asked, “You’re actually asking my
permission?”

“Isn’t that
what I’m supposed to do, Daddy?” she asked in return.

“Yeah, I’m
just not used to it.”

“Well, get
used to it, because I realize now that it’s a matter of respect and that I
should have been doing it all along, so I’m going to be doing it from now on.”

She was
really laying it on thick. Either that or—dare he hope?—she really had finally
seen the error of her ways. He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, as
usual, and told her, “Yes, you may go to the beach.”

She smiled, jumped
up, and hugged him again. “Thank you, Daddy.”

“You’re
welcome, Princess,” he responded, hugging her back. “Have a good time, but
please, don’t come home
too
late.”

“I won’t,”
she promised.

“And
remember, even though you’re not grounded anymore, you’re still not allowed in
Mister Worthington’s store without me.”

“I know. I
won’t forget.” She returned to her seat, and for the first time in a long time,
in much
too
long a time, they enjoyed their meal together.

Less than an
hour later, as Heather happily left for the day, Admiral Hansen wandered over
to his recliner with a nice big cup of coffee, sat back, and picked up ‘2001: A
Space Odyssey’ for the first time since he’d pulled it off the shelf eleven
days ago, hoping that he might actually make it past page one this time. It had
been a good choice then, and was an even better choice now, because not only
did it have little to do with politics, at least when compared to the rest of
his library, and nothing at all to do with interstellar war, it most especially
had nothing to do with little girls growing up and becoming beautiful young
women.

Before he’d
allowed her to leave, the one condition he’d required Heather to agree to was
that she put on her swimsuit and let him see her in it first. He’d been to the station’s
artificial beach many times over the years and he’d seen the suits that typical
teenage girls liked to wear these days. Some were okay, or at least acceptable,
but others were much too skimpy in his opinion, leaving far too little to the
imagination for decency’s sake, and where Heather was concerned, his opinion
was the one that counted. No way in hell was he going to let his daughter wear one
of those.

Heather had complied
with that condition without argument, and although he’d found her suit to be adequate—as
he’d expected, she’d bought herself a new bikini, but to his surprise she’d actually
chosen one that was age appropriate—he’d nonetheless been taken aback by how...how
sexy she’d looked in it. There simply wasn’t a more parent-appropriate word for
it. Like it or not, his little girl was growing up.

Back to his
escape. ‘Primeval Night, Chapter 1: The Road to Extinction.’

The door
buzzer sounded.

Hansen
dropped his hands, and the book, to his lap and sighed. Who the hell would be
coming to see him on a Sunday morning? He set the book aside and got up. The
buzzer sounded once again as he approached the door. “I’m coming,” he announced,
less than patiently. The fact that whoever was on the other side couldn’t
possibly hear him didn’t even occur to him. Not that it would have made any
difference.

“Open.”

The door
slid aside to reveal a tired looking Commander Royer, standing there holding a
handcomp in blue jeans and a plain black tee shirt with her hair cascading
freely down over her shoulders. “I’m sorry to bother you on a Sunday morning,
Admiral,” she said before the door had even finished opening, as if she knew
beyond any doubt that she truly was disturbing him.

“That’s all
right, Commander,” he told her. “Come on in.” He took a step back and to one
side. “I assume you’re here about that list of agents you’ve been working on?”
he asked as she stepped in and quickly glanced around, as if to make sure they
were alone.

When the one
week he’d originally given her to research their agents’ files and come up with
a list of the ten best candidates for the mission had ended on Wednesday, she’d
come into the office first thing in the morning with her recommendations but had
made it clear that she wasn’t completely satisfied with any one of them, for an
assortment of reasons, and had asked for more time. As was often the case with government
agencies, the Earth Security Council’s discussions and deliberations had been moving
along much slower than expected, so he’d been able to give it to her.

“Yes, sir, I
am,” she answered. He gestured toward the couch, and followed her over to it.

The council
had started focusing its attention on the starcruiser
Excalibur
and had
pretty much settled on trying to prevent its destruction, but hadn’t even begun
to discuss how best to go about doing that. Why it had taken them an entire
week to start looking more closely at that situation was beyond him,
considering the intelligence the O’Donnell recording had provided them with. At
any rate, he had filled Royer in on that and on everything else he’d learned
during the week, and had given her one additional week to work on the list. He
wasn’t at all surprised that she’d only taken half that time.

Royer sat on
the leading edge of the corner of the couch closest to the recliner, looking as
though she wasn’t quite comfortable being alone with him in his quarters,
despite all the years they’d worked together. Hansen wondered for a moment why
that might be, but at the same time realized that that was a topic for another
time. They had business to discuss.

He turned
the recliner to face her, then sat down and leaned forward, resting his elbows
on his knees. Their mutual posture betrayed their mutual states of mind. This
was an official meeting, not a social one.

Why did she
look so on edge?

“Where’s
Heather this morning?” she asked.

“She just
left for the beach,” he answered. Then, wanting to get down to business so he
could salvage the rest of the day to relax, he asked, “So what have you come up
with?”

“Sergeant
Dylan Graves,” she answered succinctly.

“Sergeant
who?” Hansen asked. Whoever Dylan Graves was, he’d never heard of him.

“Squad
Sergeant Dylan Edward Graves. Son of the
Excalibur
’s Captain Richard
Graves,” she explained. “He’s one of our Special Operations Marines, stationed
on Cirra. Not one of our agents, obviously, but he has a pretty impressive
record, and uh...I was thinking, if this mission is going to somehow involve
the
Excalibur
, then it might be advantageous to have its captain’s own
son carry it out.”

Hansen
considered that for a moment. Was that what had her so on edge—her decision to
step outside their normal operating parameters and recommend a non-agent for
what promised to be the most vital mission they’d ever have to prepare for?
Understandable, he supposed, given the familial relationship. But a Marine wouldn’t
have had the kind of training he’d need in order to carry out such an
assignment. At least, not enough of it to have a shot at actually succeeding.
Add to that the fact that the captain’s own son would almost certainly make the
mission personal and the results could potentially prove disastrous.