Solfleet: The Call of Duty (19 page)

On the other
hand, maybe she had a point. Maybe someone who’d make the mission personal was
exactly the kind of someone they needed. He decided to play devil’s advocate
for the moment to see just where her head was.

“Then again,
Commander, it might be distinctly
dis
advantageous,” he countered. “There
is something to be said for not wanting someone who’s
too
close to the situation.
Objectivity often provides for a clearer decision-making process.”

“That’s
true,” she agreed, but clearly not without exception, “but since we don’t yet
know exactly what the mission is going to be, I think we should at least keep
him in mind.”

So much for
gaining any more insight into her thought process. “We can certainly do that,
yes,” he agreed. Then he glanced down and nodded toward the handcomp she’d
brought with her. “That his information?”

“Yes, sir,”
she said as she held it out to him. “His official photo and his entire record.”

Hansen
accepted the handcomp and took a look, then suddenly had to gasp for air as a
ghostly chill washed over him. “Oh my God,” he uttered.

Royer sat up
straight as all the color drained from the admiral’s face before her very eyes.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, genuinely concerned. “You look like you’ve seen a
ghost.”

“Nothing,”
he answered, too quickly. He looked up at her and swallowed hard. “Nothing at
all.” He handed the handcomp back to her. “I want an agency recruiter on the
first flight out of here tomorrow morning. That’s our man.”

“Yes, sir,”
she responded, more than a little bewildered.

Federation Center, Four Weeks
Later

Friday, 27 August 2190

President
Mirriazu Shakhar stood before her large twenty-fourth floor office window in
somber silence, folded her slender arms tightly across her narrow chest, and
gazed out over the sharply sloped rooftops of the waking metropolis. The early
morning sun shone through the tinted plastiglass and warmed her chocolate brown
face, which in recent months had finally begun to betray her age. Most mornings
she enjoyed the breathtaking view. Especially at that moment when the sun’s
first golden rays beamed like spotlights from Heaven over the rocky,
snow-capped peaks of the Alps and danced across the sparkling sapphire surface
of Lake Geneva’s southern fingertip. Indeed, losing herself in that living
picture postcard as she sipped from a steaming porcelain cup of oriental green
tea had become a fundamental part of her daily morning ritual over the last
three and a half years since her landslide re-election and subsequent
relocation to the new facility. A part that had no doubt made each day seem
just a little bit brighter than it might otherwise have been.

Most mornings,
but not this morning. This morning was different. This morning she had forgone
her usual cup of tea and had offered the beautiful mountains and the pristine
lake little more than a cursory glance. This morning she suffered from a heavy
heart, for it was the people far below that were foremost in her mind.

Her gaze
fell to the narrow city streets, lined as always with hundreds of brightly
colored decorative flags. Fiery reds and oranges, dazzling yellows, deep blues
and rich ocean turquoise, emerald greens, and royal purples and lavenders
fluttered in the gentle summer breeze. Despite her somber mood, she grinned.
The peace-loving people of Geneva, Allah bless them, certainly loved their
flags.

The people,
she considered as her grin faded. Seen from so high above the old city they looked
so small and insignificant, going about their daily routines like so many
thousands of faceless worker ants, oblivious to the impending doom that was
inching its way ever closer to their world. But they weren’t small and
insignificant at all. They were human beings. They were individuals with lives
to live, families to love, and their own unique purposes to fulfill.

And she was
their president. They were depending on her to protect them and to keep their
families safe. As Commander-in-Chief of Earth’s unified military space forces,
that was every bit as much her responsibility as it was that of the brave men
and women who directly commanded those forces. But in recent weeks it had
become an ever increasingly more difficult responsibility to live up to, and
now that the Veshtonn were closing in on the last remnants of Tor’Kana
survivors, it was very soon going to be nearly impossible.

Commander-in-Chief.
Even after nearly nine years in office it was almost funny when she thought
about it, as long as she didn’t think too hard. The enormous weight of all that
responsibility resting squarely atop her narrow shoulders. Career officers,
battle-hardened admirals and generals with enough fire power at their disposal
to level an entire planet, all of them waiting for her to make the tough
decisions that would guide their next actions. Decisions that would determine
where their troops would fight and where, inevitably, many of them would die.
And she’d never even served a day in the military.

For the last
several years there had existed a small but steadily growing movement in the world.
A semi-organized group of vocal citizens, mostly military veterans, who
believed that no one who hadn’t served in the military should ever be allowed
to serve as the military’s ultimate commander—should never be allowed to serve
as president. Perhaps they made a good point.

“
Excuse
me, Madam President?
” her temporary secretary’s voice called down from the
small speaker recessed in the center of the cloud-white ceiling. She sounded
tired, poor girl. A Political Science major, she’d just begun her senior year
as a foreign exchange student at the University of Geneva last week, and
already her studies were keeping her up very late at night. She’d been a great
help over the last couple of months and the president sincerely hoped she’d
find a way to work it out so she could stay on to the end of her internship in
the spring.

She also
hoped that mankind would be around long enough for it to matter.

“Yes,
Regina?” the president finally responded without turning away from the window.

“
Chairman
MacLeod and his party are here to see you.
”

She sighed. MacLeod.
He’d been a real pain lately. She didn’t really
want
to see him, but she
had to. “Send them in, please.”

“
Right
away, ma’am.
”

Two quick,
solid raps on the old-fashioned wooden door—at least she liked to think of it
as real wood—immediately followed the intern’s acknowledgement. The door wasn’t
really made of wood, of course. No one used real wood in construction anymore
and hadn’t for over a century. To do so wasn’t legal anymore. Federation law
protected what was left of the world’s forests. Not that the Federation
actually ruled over the governments of its member nations. It didn’t. But some
laws, those that the majority of nations had agreed really were for the good of
the world as a whole, had been put into place and were enforceable everywhere
on Earth. Anyway, the door looked like real wood and was beautifully crafted.
That was good enough.

It would
have to be.

Having
waited a few seconds for a response that never came, Brian MacLeod, easily the
International Council on Solar Affairs’ most outspoken and paranoid sub-council
chairman, pushed the door open and led the way into the spacious but sparsely
decorated office. “Thank you for seeing us on such short notice, Madam
President,” he said to the frail, sixty-three year old Bantu woman’s back as he
approached her broad, darkly stained oak desk—an almost priceless antique that
had been in her family for countless generations. “I realize how extremely busy
you are these days.” A hint of the old Scottish brogue, which he’d learned over
many years spent in the United States to effectively disguise, made itself
evident in his boisterous voice—a sure sign that he felt unusually anxious
about this particular meeting.

As well he
should, the president thought, after the way he’d spoken to her earlier.

She turned
around to greet her visitors properly, but under the circumstances none of the
normal pleasantries seemed appropriate, so she merely acknowledged each one
with a slight nod of her head. As she’d requested, as if ‘either-bring-them-with-you-or-don’t-bother-coming-at-all’
could be considered a request, two other gentlemen accompanied the chairman.
Professor Joseph Verne, the highly-regarded, sophisticated yet approachable and
always ‘professorly’ dressed head of Drexel University’s award-winning physics
department was out of his element in the presence of the president to say the
least, and it showed in his awe-filled yet nervous expression. The recently
decorated and promoted Vice-Admiral Icarus Hansen, on the other hand, a
long-time trusted friend and confidant, appeared perfectly relaxed.

Admiral
Hansen brought up the rear and closed and locked the door behind him. Never one
to let himself be outshined by members of what he’d long ago branded as ‘the
human sub-culture of poorly disciplined civilian suits’—at the time he’d been
referring not just to the apparel, of course, but to the people who wore it as
well—the admiral had donned his brand new black and tan class-A uniform for the
impromptu meeting, complete with all of his ribbons and gold-plated
accoutrements, several of which, though he’d earned them in the truest meaning
of the word ‘service’, he owed in some way or another to her unwavering
support.

“Indeed I am
busy, Mister MacLeod,” the president finally responded. Unlike the good chairman,
she never bothered trying to suppress her accent when she spoke English. But
she’d received all of her higher education in the United States just as he had,
so she had learned to annunciate her words precisely enough to make herself
clearly understood. “But these days we must be prepared to do anything and
everything on short notice,” she continued. “We live in very desperate times,
and we are all looking for an answer to the dilemma that had befallen us. And,
I must admit that I am most curious as to the details of this particular proposal.”

“Well, ma’am,
I’ll certainly be glad to...”

“Nevertheless,”
she interrupted as she stepped behind her desk and sat down, “I would not have
agreed to see you at all concerning this matter had you not in return agreed to
let me hear both sides of the argument for myself, from someone other than you
alone. This so-called ‘Timeshift Resolution’ of yours is, to say the least, a
most unusual proposal, and if there ever comes a time when I am forced to make
an ultimate decision one way or the other, it will no doubt be the most
difficult and possibly the most final decision a president has ever had to make
for her people. And from what I understand, there were not nearly enough
affirmative votes among the members of the Earth Security Council to override a
veto, should I choose that avenue.”

That last
statement lingered in the air between them, sounding very much like a threat,
which was exactly how she’d intended it to sound. The Chairman knew he had his
work cut out for him.

“Well, we
appreciate your time, nonetheless, ma’am,” he said.

She nodded
politely in response, then said, gesturing across her desk toward the three
antique, wooden high-back chairs that she’d inherited along with the desk, “Please,
gentlemen, be seated.”

She waited
while all three settled in. Then, without further preamble, she got right to
the point. “All right. So the Earth Security Council has passed this
resolution. I understand the basics of what you are planning, Mister MacLeod,
but I have not had an opportunity to familiarize myself with the details, so I
would appreciate it if you would do so now. And while you’re at it, please
explain to me exactly why you think this action could be the answer to our
problem.”

“I’d be glad
to, Madam President. It’s our opinion...”

“Ah, excuse
me, Mister Chairman,” Professor Verne interrupted, clearly as annoyed with MacLeod
as the president seemed to be. Apparently, the two of them had already exchanged
a few words of their own before their arrival. “What you are about to say might
be
your
opinion, but it’s not
my
opinion at all.”

“Please,
Professor,” the president said before MacLeod could respond to his protest, “I am
well aware of how adamantly opposed you are to this resolution. That in fact is
exactly the reason why I asked for you to be here this morning. You will have
ample opportunity to voice your concerns, I assure you.”

“Of course,
Madam President,” Verne said, acquiescing to her authority immediately as he nervously
scratched the ever-present light brown stubble on his cheeks and chin. “I uh...I
apologize.”

“Accepted.”
To MacLeod she said, “Please continue.”

MacLeod
nodded his thanks to her, mimicking the characteristic polite response she
often gave to others, secretly pleased that the professor had interrupted him
so rudely, thus helping him to appear to be the calmer, more reasonable of the
two, which he had little doubt he was anyway. But in deference to his well
educated yet clearly misguided opponent, he did decide to alter his choice of
words.

“It is the
opinion of those of us who support this resolution,” he began again, glancing
briefly at the professor, who seemed sufficiently pacified for the moment by
the modification, “that preventing the destruction of the starcruiser
Excalibur
twenty-two years ago might reverse and ultimately enable us to prevent the
recent string of Veshtonn victories from ever occurring, including, most
importantly, the one that brought us all together this morning.”

“I am
already aware of your opinion, Mister MacLeod,” the president pointed out. “I’ve
been aware of it ever since you interrupted my meeting with the Joint Chiefs to
personally hand me a copy of the resolution. What I want to know are the
specifics of
why
you believe this to be the case, and how you intend to
go about doing it. But,” she quickly interjected, raising her hand to cut off
his reply, “before you start over and possibly waste my time, I have a simple
question for you. You’re talking about time-travel. You’re talking about sending
someone more than two decades into the past to change our history. Can we actually
do that, or haven’t you determined that yet?”