Solfleet: The Call of Duty (33 page)

“Yours and
mine?” the younger man asked, obviously confused by Dylan’s doubletalk.

“Mine and
Corporal Ortiz’s,” Dylan clarified.

“Oh.”
Walters swallowed hard. “Sorry, Sarge.”

Dylan let
him sweat for another moment, then said, “All right, forget it. It’s over and
done with. But I hope you learned something. That was, after all, Sergeant
Running Horse’s intent when he spoke up. He wasn’t just trying to get you into
trouble.”

“Yes,
Sergeant.”

Deciding
that it was time to finally let Walters off the hook, Dylan looked at Running
Horse and asked, “You weren’t just trying to get him into trouble, were you?”

“Of course I
was,” the sergeant answered, stone-faced.

“You were?”
Walters asked, staring at Running Horse again. “Why?”

But Running
Horse didn’t respond. He didn’t even look back at him, or acknowledge the
question in any other way. Then the laughter started around the table again,
and after a moment, when he finally realized that they’d only been teasing him,
Walters freely joined in.

He was going
to fit in just fine.

Dylan
glanced across the table and offered his silent thanks to Billy, then turned to
Marissa. “And as for you,” he began, smiling, “drink up. You still have another
one coming.”

“Yes, dear,”
she responded, quietly, so that only he would hear.

“Sergeant
Graves?”

Dylan looked
up to find the company clerk standing a few feet to his right. “Hey, Ronny,
what’s going on?”

“You must
really have done it now, Sergeant,” Ronny said melodramatically. “The C-O wants
to see you in his office right away.”

“Probably
needs help with a command decision,” Dylan kidded. “Look what happened when no
one helped him choose a favorite football team.”

“What
happened?” Walters asked.

“He’s a
Cowboys fan,” Dylan answered, himself a Philadelphia Eagles’ fan.

“Maybe he
has cameras in the shower stalls,” Running Horse quipped, smiling again.

“At ease,
Sergeant,” Dylan warned. It was a friendly warning, but serious enough to put
an end to the once more renewed snickering that Running Horse’s comment had
evoked. To the clerk he said, “I’ll be right there.”

“I’ll tell
him you’re on your way so he has a minute to hide the helmet.”

Dylan
snickered and grinned. “As if he’d ever.”

Once the
clerk had walked off, Dylan got up from the table and moved around to Running
Horse’s side, leaned in close to his ear and said, “The shower jokes stop here,
Billy. Marissa and I don’t need the C-O catching wind of any rumors.”

“No problem,
Degger. Sorry.”

“All right,
thanks.” To the table as a whole he said, as he straightened, “Back in a few.”
Then he headed off toward the company commander’s office.

* * *

The company commander’s
office sat at the end of the administration area closest to the center of the
building where it was heavily protected. Dylan knocked on the door and, getting
an immediate response, walked in. It was a standard setup. Government-issue
desk and chair set at a rough forty-five degree angle in the far corner,
flanked on either side and to the rear by the colorful Federation and Solfleet
Army flags, a couple of nondescript chairs for visitors, a half-size bookshelf,
a wall locker, and a large wall-mounted screen that, when it wasn’t being used
as a communications monitor, showed a view of the outdoors as it would look if
the screen were just a regular window. Dylan stopped two feet in front of the
desk and assumed the position of attention, but since he wasn’t in uniform, he
did not salute.

“Squad Sergeant
Dylan Graves reporting as ordered, sir,” he said.

“Relax, Sarn’t,”
the captain said. “Have a seat.”

As his
accent strongly suggested, Army Captain Austin Douglas was pure Texas cowboy,
with longhorn beef for muscle and steak sauce for blood. His most prized
possession was a very old and heavily autographed Dallas Cowboys’ football
helmet, which he proudly displayed right behind his name plate in the center of
his desk for all to see. He often wore an old brown leather Stetson when he was
off duty and had even been known to ride the beautiful mahogany stallion he’d brought
to Cirra with him—no one had yet figured out how he’d managed that one—around
the base perimeter from time to time. Rumor had it that he’d been born and
raised on one of the Lone Star State’s few remaining family-run cattle ranches.
No one knew for sure if that was true or not and for some reason he liked to
keep it a mystery, but the less than subtle hints, at least, were there in
abundance.

What
was
known to the troops at large was that he’d been an infantry officer ever since
he completed Officer Candidate School, and that he’d been the commanding officer
of Bravo Company, 111th Infantry Battalion, 2
^nd
Infantry Division
for the last year and a half. The Black Berets of 4th Platoon, 7th Marine Corps
Ranger Battalion, though not actually assigned to Bravo Company, had been
attached for administrative purposes to the Highly Mobile Light Infantry unit
ever since their arrival on-planet, and were, as far as any outsiders were
concerned, just one of the company’s four regular Army infantry platoons. So
even though he himself wasn’t one of them, Captain Douglas was still
technically their company commander.

“Thank you,
sir,” Dylan said as he sat down.

“You been
thinkin’ ‘bout applyin’ for trainin’ as an Intelligence agent, Sarn’t?” the
officer asked.

Dylan
snickered, then answered, “No, sir. One of their recruiting officers came to
see me a couple times before the F-T-X, but I told him I wasn’t interested.”

“Was it a
Lieuten’t Pillinger who came to see you by any chance?”

“Yes, sir, that’s
right.”

“Well shit.
If I’d’a known you’d already turned that li’l thorn in the saddle down, I’d’a
tossed him out on his boney little ass as soon as he showed his face in my
office. He came out here to pester me three days in a row after you folks
rolled out, right through the weekend, and he asked me the same damn thing
every time, too.”

“What was
that, sir?”

“He wanted
to know if I thought there was a chance you might consider joinin’ the S.I.A.,
and he asked me to pull you outta the field so he could meet with you and
explain the so-called benefits of such a career change.”

Dylan
harrumphed. “I’ve gone through two career changes already. The last thing I
need is to go through that again.”

If Douglas
was at all aware of how Dylan had come to join the Rangers, he chose not to
address it. It wasn’t relevant to the matter at hand anyway. “I tried to
explain to the little piss-ant that I couldn’t just pull you out from under your
L-T like that, but the boy seemed to have a little trouble graspin’ the idea that
I don’t have full C-O authority over you Marines the way I do over my own regular
Army grunts.”

“He didn’t
happen to mention to you just exactly what it is the S-I-A wants with me, did
he, sir?”

“Far as I
can tell they wanna rope you into bein’ one of their covert agents,” the
captain answered, stating the obvious. “Anythin’ beyond that, I have no idea.
Hell, Pillinger wouldn’t even admit to
that
much.”

Dylan shook
his head as he gazed past the captain’s shoulder at the Solfleet Army flag.
Then he asked, “Why me?” He’d meant it to be a rhetorical question, but the
captain threw an answer out anyway.

“I imagine
it’s ‘cause you’re a damn fine Marine, Sarn’t.”

“There are a
lot of fine Marines in the Corps, sir.”

“Well, look here,”
the captain said as he leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know much about this
whole situation, but I already hit the greens with your new L-T a few times. I
think I can safely say that he’d be willin’ to let you go, but only if it’s
your
choice
to go. I know he’d hate to lose you, but I think he’d be
willin’.”

“He’s not
going to have to worry about it, sir.”

The captain
grinned. “Well good. I’m glad to hear it, and I’m sure he’ll be pleased as
punch to hear it, too.”

“If they
happen to contact you again, sir, you can tell them once and for all that I am
absolutely not interested.”

The captain
sat up in his chair again and, still grinning, said, “If they contact me again,
Sarn’t, I’m gonna sick your lieuten’t on ‘em. When you Marines are back here in
my A-O, I can do shit like that.”

Dylan
smiled. “Yes, sir.”

“All right,
Sarn’t. That’s all I needed you for, and I know you’re tired. Thank you for
your time. You’re dismissed.”

“You’re
welcome, sir,” Dylan said as he stood up.

He snapped
to attention, then turned to leave, but just as he reached the door, the
captain said, “Oh, and don’t you go and forget to buy that pretty little filly
her second cup o’ coffee, now, ya hear?”

Dylan turned
and stared at the captain’s completely expressionless face for a moment, then
responded with a rather apprehensive, “Yes, sir.” Then, once he was sure the
captain wasn’t going to say anything more, he left his office.

* * *

By the time
he returned to the table with two fresh cups of coffee in hand, everyone but
Marissa had gone. He set one down next to the empty mug in front of her, then
took a seat across the table. Earlier, when the others were there with them, no
one would have given the fact that the two of them had been sitting next to
each other a second thought. But now that they were alone, it wouldn’t have
looked right.

If she took
offense, she gave no outward sign of it. “What did the C-O want?” she asked.

“That
Lieutenant Pillinger guy from Intel came to see him about me a few times after
we rolled out to the field. He just wanted to know what was going on.”

“Jeez, doesn’t
that little twerp understand the meaning of the word ‘no’?”

“Apparently
not.”

An
uncomfortable silence fell over them, during which they both took several slow,
cautious sips of their still too hot to drink coffee. Then, after looking
around to make sure there wasn’t anyone within earshot, Marissa lowered her voice
and said, “I want so badly to kiss you right now.”

Dylan shot
her a ‘what-the-hell-are-you-doing-saying-that-in-public’ look and quickly
glanced around, then gazed at her without actually giving the question a voice.

“I wish you
could come up to my room and stay with me for a while,” she added.

“Marissa...”

“I know,”
she said as she gazed sadly into her mug. “You can’t. You have to go home to
your wife and pretend to love her.”

“That’s not
fair.”

“I know. I’m
sorry.”

Dylan drew a
deep breath and let it out, slowly, then asked, “Would it make you feel any
better if I told you that I want to stay with you?”

She looked
up at him again, with just the slightest of smiles. “A little. Maybe.”

“Well I do.
But you’re right, of course. I can’t.”

“Of course.”

After
another brief, uncomfortable silence, she asked, “So what are we going to do
about this, Dylan?”

“I don’t
know,” he answered honestly, shaking his head. “I’ve been asking myself the
same question.”

“Don’t
transfer me,” she said abruptly. “I couldn’t take that. Not now. Not after we’ve
finally been honest with each other.”

“I’m not
going to transfer you,” he assured her. “I’d be lying if I told you the thought
hadn’t crossed my mind, but to tell you the truth I don’t want that any more
than you do, for a number of reasons. We’ll just have to figure out something
else.”

Their
conversation moved on to other things as they shared what little time they had.
Then, once both their mugs were empty, they stood together, traded a knowing
look, which was all they could risk in such an open area, and said their
good-byes. Another few seconds passed between them before Dylan reluctantly
excused himself and went back down to the locker room to grab his laundry bag.

That done,
he headed for home.

The third
report had turned out to be a special supplement to the first, and had been
filed by the commanding officer of all Solfleet forces assigned to the
Caldanran system—the system Sergeant Graves was currently assigned to, and for
which Commander Royer would be departing this very morning. As it came to a
close and the wall screen shut off, Admiral Hansen propped his elbows up on his
desk and rested his chin atop his folded hands with a sigh. The situation was
even more critical than any of them had realized. They were going to have to do
something. Fast.

Veshtonn
scout ships had been probing the Caldanra system’s outermost boundaries for
over three and a half years, ever since the Caldanran Intervention, conducting
small hit and run raids, probably for the purpose of gathering intelligence on
the strength, locations, and reaction speed of Coalition defenses in the area.
The Veshtonn were nothing if not patient. Until recently, Coalition space
forces, led in that particular region by three Solfleet carrier groups, had
managed to hold them off with little difficulty. But the Veshtonn had had over
a month now to establish a firm foothold in the neighboring Rosha’Kana star
system and build up their forces there. Their intrusions on Caldanra had gone
much deeper into the system lately and their offensive actions had been much
more bold and aggressive. Now Hansen understood why.

The war
between the Cirrans and the Sulaini dated back at least half a dozen millennia,
if not more. The actual reasons for their mutual hostility were unknown to
outsiders, buried deep in ancient myths and legends that neither side talked
about. What was known was that both peoples were the descendants of a single species
as human as Terrans themselves who had originally evolved on Cirra and had
broken into two major warring factions at some point in their ancient history. Through
thousands of years, the two sides had never learned to live in complete peace
with one another. Even the Sulaini migration a century ago to the only other
habitable planet in the system had done little to quell their conflict.