Solfleet: The Call of Duty (24 page)

“Based
solely on a nightmare?”

He faced her
again. “I know it sounds crazy,” he admitted. “Hell, I can’t explain this gut
feeling of mine any more than I can explain his appearance in my nightmares in
the first place. Maybe... I don’t know. Maybe I’m just losing my mind. Or maybe
somehow, in some...some kind of parallel timeline somewhere...in one of
Professor Verne’s alternate universes perhaps, we’ve already sent him back on
the Timeshift mission and he somehow got himself assigned to my team
afterwards.”

“Which, if
true, means that he was unable to return to his own time,” she concluded.

Hansen
sighed. “At least up to that point in time. A logical assumption, unfortunately.”

“But even if
you are correct, how and why would that effect your nightmares?”

“Hell if I
know,” he answered honestly. Then he faced away again and cleared his throat. “We’ve
never dealt with time travel before.” He started pacing again. “Maybe this
theoretical parallel timeline is somehow connected to our own. Maybe they
intersect or are intertwined in some way. I don’t know. All I
do
know is
that I’ve got a very strong hunch that Dylan Graves
must
be the one we
send back, if we send anyone at all.”

“Ordinarily,
I would trust your hunches more than most other officers’ facts, Nick, but this
is all very strange.”

Hansen
snickered. “You’ll get no argument from me.”

“What if you
cannot convince Sergeant Graves to join your agency?”

“Then we’ll
have
to send someone else, assuming you approve the mission.”

“Regardless
of what your gut tells you?”

“I feel very
strongly that it has to be him, as I said, but I won’t allow my feelings to
interfere with my duty. If you do order the mission, then I will send
some
one.”

“Perhaps we
should call the professor back in here and discuss...”

“Absolutely
not,” Hansen insisted, rudely cutting her off. Under her slightly perturbed
glare he returned to his seat and took more care to guard his tone. They were
friends, but she was still the president. “I still have a few enemies in
powerful positions above me, Mirriazu. If word gets out that I’m having those
nightmares again after all these years, some over-zealous fleet doctor
somewhere is apt to declare me unfit for duty. Let alone for command of the
agency. I remind you, though I’m sure it’s unnecessary, you agreed that all
this was off the record. I’m counting on you to keep it just between us.”

“Very well,”
she agreed. “I assure you, I’ll do that.”

“Thank you.”

“And
on
the
record, Admiral, if your gut, as you say, tells you that Sergeant Graves must
be the one, then I want you to do your very best to recruit him. If the
question of our survival comes down to my approving this mission, I’ll want to
be confident that you have someone you believe to be the very best choice for
the job standing by.”

“Understood,
Madam President.”

“In the
meantime I want you to continue with your duties as if this resolution were
not
an option, because right now I consider it to be our
very last
resort,
and I doubt very much that that will ever change.”

“Also
understood,” he assured her. “The Joint Chiefs and I are meeting on Monday to finalize
plans for a Rosha’Kana counterattack.”

“Very good.
Now, if you will excuse me, Nick, I have a lot of bureaucratic nonsense to
attend to.”

“Certainly.”
Hansen stood, but the two of them had long since gotten over the need for
formalities between them—the use of each others’ first names acted as a sort of
signal between them, for one to let the other know that they were communicating
as friends rather than as professional colleagues—so he didn’t bother snapping
to attention and saluting. “Try to have a good day, Mirriazu.”

“You also,
Nick. Say ‘hello’ to Heather for me, and please, express my deepest apologies
for missing her birthday.”

“I will.”
And with that, he turned on his heel—not quite a picture perfect about face—and
headed for the door.

She watched
him go and almost let the door close behind him, but she had to know. She hit
the button, holding the door open. “Nick,” she called out.

Hansen faced
around and, when she waved him back in, stepped back into her office yet again.
“Ma’am?”

“You said
earlier that you are a soldier and a patriot. I understand that, but I really
want to know your opinion of this whole ‘Timeshift Resolution’ question,” she
told him frankly. “Is it worth all this attention or not?”

Hansen
considered his response very carefully. There were things he knew, things he’d done
through the years and things he’d learned as a result that he couldn’t admit to
her no matter how long they’d known each other. No matter how long they’d been
friends.

“I live in the
here and now, Mirriazu,” he began. “My concern is for the security of Earth in
the here and now. I don’t know anything about time travel, altering the past, or
creating a new reality. To be perfectly honest the whole thing sounds like science
fiction to me, regardless of the change in my nightmares or anything else. What
I
do
know is that the Veshtonn have taken over the most important star
system in the Coalition and that we’ve got to take back, and fast, before it’s
too late to make any difference.

“The Rosha’Kana
counterattack, Madam President. In my opinion,
that
is where we should
concentrate our efforts.”

“So you
agree with Professor Verne, then,” she tentatively concluded. “You stand
against the ‘Timeshift’ mission.”

“I will
continue to do everything I have to do in order to be prepared to go forward
with it, should you give the order. But to tell you the truth, I think it’s a
waste of time and effort.”

“Despite
everything you’ve said in the last few minutes.”

He hesitated
for the briefest moment, then avoided the question altogether by answering, “You
asked my opinion.”

The president
considered his answer for several seconds, then thanked him and sent him on his
way.

As he
strolled down the hall, all alone—Chairman MacLeod and Professor Verne hadn’t
stuck around to wait for him, and why should they?—he had little doubt that,
given the proper training, Graves could indeed accomplish the mission. The
bigger questions were one, was there still enough time to convince him to join
the agency and send him through the academy, then get him to Window World and
through the Portal before the Veshtonn swept through that sector? And two, if
he did make it back twenty-two years into the past, and if he did succeed,
would his actions really give them a second chance at survival? Would they even
know it, if and when he brought about a change?

His previous
experience from six years ago was
not
encouraging.

As his
private shuttle crossed out of Earth’s atmosphere and into the cold, dark vacuum
of space and fell into orbit, Admiral Hansen sat totally oblivious to the wondrous
beauty of that giant turquoise jewel that was mother Earth hanging just outside
his window. While it was true that he’d seen her from that same perspective literally
thousands of times before and could readily see her that way again whenever he wanted
to, it wasn’t just her familiarity that blinded him to her majesty. It was
distraction. It was preoccupation. He’d left the president’s office hours ago,
but his thoughts still lingered there.

Her question
about whether or not a hypothetical time-traveler would have the means to
return home had caught him off guard—he hadn’t expected her to think that far
ahead so soon—and for a moment he’d feared she might follow it up with a few
more questions he wouldn’t have wanted to try to answer. Questions that had
been touched on but not yet asked of him directly. Questions he’d asked himself
many times over the past six years. Questions like, even with the recall
device, was it really possible for a time-traveler to return to the future he
came from, since for him, once he’s in the past, that future would not yet
exist? Or, if a traveler is in the past for six months before he affects a
change, would six months pass for the people he left behind in the future as
well, or would that change come immediately for them because it happened in their
past? Or finally, as he’d asked himself outside the president’s office, would a
time-traveler’s actions really give them a second chance?

Would they
even realize any change had occurred? That remained perhaps the biggest
question of them all.

Thank God
the president hadn’t taken the time to research the various theories for
herself before the meeting. Who knew how many more questions she might have
come up with?

“
Admiral
Hansen?
” the pilot’s voice called out over the intercom. “
Sir, we’re on
final approach to Mandela Station. If you’re up and about, please return to
your seat and fasten your harness, sir.
”

“I’m already
strapped in, pilot.”

“
All
right, sir. Thank you.
”

Mandela
Station, the United Earth Federation’s enormous international space complex,
contained an enormous combined military and civilian space dock facility,
separate office areas for each group of representatives from both the member
nations of the Earth Federation and the member worlds of the Coalition, dozens
of commercial corporations’ offices, literally hundreds of smaller businesses,
a myriad of recreational facilities, and Solfleet Orbital Headquarters. Not to
mention atmosphere-controlled housing facilities for all the residents and
their families. It floated, or rather free-fell, high in geosynchronous orbit
above a different part of the Earth every month, visible to the naked eye on
clear nights to the people far below. This particular month it had hung over
New York City. In September its maneuvering thrusters would carry it south,
over Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.

All totaled,
Hansen had been assigned to the station for well over half of his career—long enough
that it had become his permanent home. Not that that was necessarily a bad
thing. That kind of stability was virtually unheard of in the life of a
soldier. He was very fortunate to be able to enjoy it, even at his level, and it
had made raising his daughter as a single parent a lot easier than it otherwise
would have been. Relatively speaking, of course.

He was also fortunate,
he reminded himself once more, to still
have
a career, and not just
because he and Commander Royer had so far been able to keep what they did six
years ago a secret. As Chairman MacLeod’s allusion to the tragic incident of
twenty-plus years ago had reminded him, his career
might
have ended long
before he and Royer ever even thought about sending her brother through the
Portal. Long before he ever met Royer, for that matter. If the fleet hadn’t so
desperately needed to garner as much positive public opinion as possible at the
time, things probably would have turned out much worse for him.

But as fate
would have it, the needs of the fleet had not only saved his career, but had
also guaranteed his continued ascent through the ranks. The only downside to
the whole deal was the fact that even if he served for another thirty years, he’d
probably still never see another field command.

He thought
about stopping by his quarters and changing into his class-B’s before heading
to the office, but by the time his shuttle docked and he disembarked, he’d
changed his mind. Commander Royer would be anxious to talk to him as soon as
possible. She could be quite abrasive when she wanted to be, even with her
superiors, and if he made her wait longer than necessary, she’d want to be.
Besides, the station operated on Greenwich Mean Time. The work day was already
half over, so why bother?

He made his
way directly to the agency’s offices and greeted the commander’s wrinkled old
crone of a secretary with a slight nod of his head and a “Good morning, Misses
Applegate,” as he passed by her desk and approached the commander’s desert-rose
door. Somehow, even while sitting in her chair, the elderly woman managed to
look down her crooked, hooked nose at him, and she offered no reply whatsoever.
She’d been close to Jonathan Harkam and his family back in her slightly younger
days, had apparently thought of him like a son, and had never forgiven Hansen
for what he’d done. Her coincidental employment with the Solfleet Intelligence
Agency was just one more cruel twist of fate in Hansen’s life.

He touched
his finger to the buzzer and the door slid aside, disappearing into the
desert-tan wall to admit him.

“Come in,
Admiral,” Royer said from her seat behind her artificial cherry desk. She was
talking to a young ensign in class-A’s who was seated across the desk from her,
the stubble-haired back of whose head Hansen didn’t recognize. He sat up straight
as a board when Royer spoke, and upon turning and seeing the admiral he
practically jumped to his feet, nearly tripped on the leg of his chair, and
snapped to attention. Royer, on the other hand, made a slight adjustment to her
pinned-up platinum-blond hair as she stood, but never actually made it to the
position of attention before Hansen spoke and eliminated the need. Not that she
ever really tried to anyway.

“As you
were,” Hansen said automatically. Then, without having to look, he reached back
to the left of the door and tapped the ‘hold’ button, preventing it from
closing behind him—a silent signal to Royer telling her to dismiss the ensign
immediately, and that he would be staying...at least for a little while.

“Good
morning, Admiral,” Royer said cheerfully as he approached her desk. “How was
your flight?”