Solfleet: The Call of Duty (47 page)

“I think
standing her up would be a lot better, Sarge,” Marissa advised. “Provided her
legs will hold her, that is.
Sitting
her up will put pressure on her
genitals and I think she’s got enough problems there already.”

“Yeah, you’re
probably right,” Dylan agreed, clenching his teeth as his ribs mercilessly
reminded him not to try to lift too quickly. He relaxed. “Okay, let’s do that.”

Marissa
slipped her hands under the girl’s armpits and sat her part way up to get a
better hold. She whimpered, but offered no resistance. Dylan raised her knees
just enough to wrap his arms around them. “On three,” he said, knowing that lifting
her was
really
going to hurt. “One, two,
THREE.
” They lifted.

Dylan clamped
his jaw down tight but couldn’t hold the scream in, and then collapsed to his
knees when he started to crouch down to set the girl’s feet on the floor. Thank
God she was small and slender. He grunted his way back to his feet and handed
Marissa’s rifle back to her, then pulled off his TAC-vest and shirt, replaced
his vest as quickly as he could, and held his shirt out to the girl. She
accepted it eagerly with a nod of thanks, pulled it on, and buttoned it to the
collar.

“All right,”
Dillon said through clenched teeth. “Let’s go.” They took the girl gently by
the arms and led her out of the room.

“I’m cut, burned,
and half blind,” Marissa commented as they hobbled up the hallway toward the
main door, “You’re in pain and barely able to walk, and this poor girl is...well,
whatever is wrong with her. Aren’t we a sight to behold?”

“Fire in the
hole!” someone warned, just as they stepped outside.

“Ortiz is
out of it,” Dylan advised the others over the comm-link. “She’ll be taking...”

A huge
explosion suddenly rocked the main hall and the shockwave knocked Dylan and
Marissa and the girl backward to the ground. Seconds later the entire building
crumbled into a pile of rubble. The armory went up in a thunderous eruption of
flames as well, but its specially designed structure directed the blast and
subsequent detonations of ammunition and explosives upward, into the night sky.

As a shower
of smoldering debris rained down on the compound, terrorists and Sulaini
Regular Army troops alike poured out of both ends of the barracks, only to be mowed
down by Matrewski, Greenburg, and LeClerc at one end and Shin at the other
before they ever had a chance to join the fight.

Dylan jumped
up, his pain quenched by the mad rush of adrenaline that surged through his
bloodstream, but as he and Marissa helped the girl back to her feet, dozens of
huge, muscular, heavily body-armored Veshtonn blood-warriors began to appear
all around them, seemingly out of nowhere. The compound screamed with
pulse-rifle and automatic weapons fire. Seconds later a pair of Solfleet
assault shuttles soared into view and hovered just meters off the ground, their
onboard and pod-mounted weapons firing in all directions while friendly troops
dropped to the ground firing from both sides.

Dylan caught
a glimpse of Shin as she collapsed motionless to the dirt. Then something
burned his thigh. He glanced down at it, and just as he realized that he’d been
shot, his right shoulder exploded in a burst of searing agony so intense that
he couldn’t even scream as he stumbled backward to the ground, dragging the
girl down on top of him.

“Sergeant
Graves is down!” Marissa hollered as she bent down to pull the girl off of him.
But she lost her balance and fell as well. She struggled to her hands and knees,
only to fall face down into the dirt again. The world was spinning. She couldn’t
find her balance.

The battle
raged on.

Dylan’s pain
faded to numbness. Good. The wound wasn’t that bad. He rolled onto his stomach,
retrieved his rifle, and staggered to his feet, determined to stay in the
fight. But as he plodded forward, unable even to raise his rifle, his head
suddenly snapped back and his knees buckled. He collapsed, his legs bent up
underneath him, his buttocks on his heels and his shoulders and the back of his
head on the ground. Somehow, through sheer force of will, he managed to sit up
again, and he felt his own warm blood flowing into his left eye and down over
his cheek and neck. Everything slowed down and the world around him began to
spin out of control.

Idiot!
Standing up and walking toward the enemy like that!

Why hadn’t
the enemy soldiers come charging out of the barracks a lot sooner?

Funny, the
thoughts that crossed a person’s mind as they died. Wasn’t his entire life
supposed to flash before him or something?

The world
faded until all was darkness.

The Next Morning

Monday, 30 August 2190

Admiral
Hansen woke with a gasp, drenched in a cold sweat, and panted heavily as he
struggled to catch his breath, propped up on his elbows and clutching the
bottom sheet in his white-knuckled fists before he even realized where he was.
What the hell... Of course. The damn nightmares again. He’d thought he was
getting used to them, but apparently not.

He drew
several slow, deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth, to
calm himself down. Then he lay back again. His sheets and pillowcase were cold
and damp with his perspiration, but that was nothing new. He’d grown used to it
again, weeks ago. What
was
new was...was what was old. For the first
time since Dylan Graves had shown up in his nightmares, he’d been absent. The
nightmares had reverted to their original form as if the sergeant had never
appeared in them at all. But why? What could it mean? If he really had been dreaming
the events of a parallel timeline these last several weeks—having no other
explanation for the phenomenon, he’d come to believe that to be the case—then
why had those events suddenly stopped intruding on his mind now?

Günter?
Could all of this have something to do with Liz’s brother? Had he finally done
something after all this time? Had he altered their reality in some unforeseen
way all those weeks ago and caused his nightmares to change? If so, then what
had happened to change them back? And perhaps more importantly, why?
Why
had
they changed back? If Günter had done something to cause this, what had
happened to undo whatever he did? Was history set in stone after all? Was the
flow of time, in the end, unalterable?

Questions.
So many questions.

Questions
better left for morning, he decided. He was too sleepy at the moment to think
straight. He closed his eyes, yawned, and settled in to go back to sleep.

His alarm
suddenly pierced the peaceful silence. He sighed. Monday morning already. Hadn’t
he just laid his head back down a few seconds ago?

Those one
day weekends—
working
weekends, to be more accurate—were getting old in a
big hurry. But with the state of affairs in the galaxy being what it was, his
self-imposed six and a half day work weeks were more necessary than ever.
Still, it would be nice to enjoy two days off in a row once in a while. He
couldn’t remember the last time he’d had two days off. He couldn’t remember the
last time he and Heather had spent just a Saturday
or
a Sunday together,
let alone an entire weekend.

No wonder
she’d always had such a hard time staying out of trouble. He hadn’t spent
nearly enough time with her over the years since her mother died. He hadn’t
given her the guidance she’d needed growing up until it was too late, and then
only in the form of long angry lectures and often harsher than necessary
punishments that, admittedly, didn’t always fit the offense. But with so much
responsibility resting on his shoulders, what real choice had he had? Tens of
thousands of lives had depended on his agency’s operations every day. They
still did. If it hadn’t been for... No. No excuses. He was her father. He owed
it to her to be her parent as well. That was as much his duty as anything else.

At least
school was finally starting up again. That would take some of the pressure off
of him.

Yes, school.
What had no doubt been a short summer vacation for Heather had been three very
long and trying months for him. Shoplifting, stealing from her friends’
parents, using narcotics... A few years ago he never would have believed her
capable of doing any of those things. He’d tried to raise her well. He’d tried
to teach her right from wrong and instill good moral principles in her.
Obviously he’d failed, because she’d done all of those things many times over.
And each time had felt like a sledge hammer to his gut.

And then there
was yesterday. In some ways that was the worst thing she ever could have done.
Not the trespassing. That was no big deal—illegal, yes, but in the grand scheme
of things, a slap-on-the-back-of-the-hand kind of offense. Not the wearing of a
much more revealing bikini behind his back than the one she’d shown him,
either. Deceitful, yes, and therefore irritating, but in the end he understood
her need to do that. Peer-pressure could be a powerful force. No. It was the taking
her top off in public that distressed him so much. Despite everything she’d
done—despite every illegal act she’d ever committed, she was still his
daughter. She was still his baby girl. ‘The apple of his eye,’ as Royer had
once referred to her. The thought of her lying half naked on a beach full
people had torn at his gut like nothing else and had left him so utterly...so
utterly what? Shocked? Devastated? Hell, he couldn’t even define what he’d
felt. But whatever it had been, it had left his mind and heart spinning in such
a whirlwind that he hadn’t even been able to decide how to punish her.

And then,
out of the blue, Mirriazu had called just to say ‘hello’ and had asked him how
Heather was doing, just as she always did when they talked. Naturally, their
conversation had turned to what Heather had done—among other things, the president
was the mother of six very successful grown children, so Hansen had taken to
asking her advice whenever he found himself at a loss for what to do—and she
had been quick to remind him that sexual curiosity and sexual awakening were
all a part of growing up. They weren’t something to be punished.

Hansen
sighed. His baby girl was indeed growing up.

His alarm
seemed suddenly to grow louder. He reached up to his headboard and tapped the
chronometer’s faceplate, silencing it, and the lights immediately came up to
their full intensity. He shielded his eyes for a few moments until they got
used to the brightness, then rolled out of bed, yawned, and went into the
bathroom.

The twin
pairs of recessed ceiling lights and the strip light above the large rectangular
mirror all flared up to maximum as soon as his foot hit the bathroom floor. He
paused in front of the mirror and looked closely at his face. Still smooth and
clear, and rash-free. Three full days now and the new brand of beard retardant
was still doing its job without triggering his normal allergic reaction. It felt
so
good not to have to shave every morning anymore.

He went to
the bathroom and washed his hands, then grabbed his toothbrush out of its
charger, inserted a new toothpaste cylinder into its handle, and started
brushing his teeth.

So what did
it mean? Why was Graves gone from his nightmares? Could it be due to some action
the universe itself had taken to undo something Günter might have done? Maybe...
He snickered, spitting tiny droplets of watery toothpaste onto the mirror. How
the hell was he supposed to figure out why the sergeant had disappeared from
his nightmares when he didn’t even know why he’d started appearing in them in
the first place? Better to leave it alone and not drive himself crazy. After
all, he had enough to worry about in the real world.

He finished
brushing, rinsed off his toothbrush and put it back in its charger, then rinsed
out his mouth. Then he dampened a length of toilet tissue, cleaned the
spattered toothpaste off the mirror, and tossed the tissue into the bowl and
flushed it. Finally, he locked the door that led into Heather’s bedroom, then
untied his drawstring, stripped off his pajama pants, and stepped into the
shower.

Ten minutes
later he stepped back out, towel-dried what little moisture the warm air dryer
hadn’t already evaporated from his skin, and wrapped the towel around his
waist. Then he knocked twice on Heather’s door. “Heather,” he called. “Time to
get up.”

Despite the
fact that she always looked forward to summer vacation and then moaned and
groaned when it came to its inevitable end, Heather had always liked school, or
at least the social life that came with it. In all the years he’d been waking
her up for it, he’d never had to call her twice. So, without bothering to wait
for an answer, he unlocked her door and walked back into his bedroom to get
dressed.

He opened
his closet and stood staring at his uniforms, hung so perfectly square on their
large padded hangers. Another weekly planning meeting with the Joint Chiefs.
Yet another opportunity to dress up—one of the fleet’s many unwritten rules
stated that a flag-grade officer should always look his or her best for such
occasions—and strut around like a peacock in heat in front of his peers. He
shook his head. If those deskbound, paper-pushing bureaucrats at Solfleet
Headquarters would spend half as much time worrying about how to fight the war
as they did about protocol, maybe they’d actually be winning the damn thing by
now.

He sighed.
At least today’s meeting wasn’t just going to be the same old review and
rehashing of the same old strategies. Today, they would turn the tide. Today, they
would begin to take the war back to the Veshtonn. Today, deployments for the
Rosha’Kana counterattack would finally commence.

Actually, the
staff meetings weren’t as bad as all that. Not anymore, anyway. Generals Christian
Alexander of the Army and Kristjana Jóhannsdótir of the Aerospace Force were
usually pretty laid-back and would most likely show up in their class-B’s for
comfort, though with all their accoutrements in place. The always squared-away
Marine Corps Lieutenant General Hayes, on the other hand—did that guy even
have
a first name?—was guaranteed to show up all spit-and-polished in his best
class-A’s. Maybe even in his dress grays. At the opposite end of the spectrum
though, Command Fleet Admiral Chaffee, one of the most anti-protocol officers
Hansen had ever met, was just as likely to show up in his class-C’s, or even
his duty fatigues if he felt so inclined. After all, they were a lot more comfortable.
And besides, Chaffee was the commanding officer of the entire Solfleet now. It
wasn’t like he still needed to impress anyone.