Solfleet: The Call of Duty (52 page)

“Synthetics?”

“Synthetics.”

Dylan stared
down at his right hand and flexed his fingers, slowly, several times. “I really
lost my arm?” he asked.

“Yes, you
did. But don’t worry. The doctors tell me that it’ll be as good as new after it
heals. You’ll be back on the ice or punching and kicking the heavy bag and
throwing your sparring partners to the mat in no time.”

He flexed
his fingers a few more times, then gazed back up at the woman who seemed to
know an awful lot about him, and said, “You mentioned there was a third shot.”

“The third
shot was another solid metal projectile, fortunately a much smaller caliber. It
destroyed your left eye and shattered the surrounding bone, but deflected away
from your brain.”

Dylan
glanced around the room as if for the first time, testing his vision, particularly
his depth perception. “But I can see fine.”

“It’s
biotronic, like the rest of the synthetic replacements.”

“Biotronic,”
Dylan repeated, looking back at her. “So I’m like some kind of cyborg? Like the
cyberclones?”

The woman
drew a sharp breath at that and withdrew, sitting straight-backed in the chair
as if his question had somehow slapped her right across her face. She took a
moment to compose herself and then answered as though his question hadn’t affected
her at all. “You’re not a clone, obviously, but in a manner of speaking, yes.
In that regard you’re like a cyberclone, if you define the term loosely enough.”
Once again, she stood up. “Think about that, Sergeant, while you’re pondering
your various options.” She turned and started toward the door.

“One more
thing,” Dylan said, ignoring the woman’s sarcastic reply.

She stopped
and looked back over her shoulder. “Name it.”

“My squad.
My wife mentioned they didn’t all come back and the damn doctors won’t give me
any straight answers about anything. All they do is tell me not to worry and
feed me a bunch of medical jargon about my own condition.”

The woman
faced him once again. “Frieburger, Baumgartner, and Leskowski all came through
it all right. Running Horse and Ortiz were wounded but also made it back alive.
As for the others...” Dylan’s gaze fell in sadness as he sighed. He knew what
was coming next. “Well, suffice to say that things didn’t go as well as planned.
You and Running Horse will recover completely, though how in God’s name he
managed to survive the explosion that killed Private Walters is beyond me.
Marissa Ortiz, on the other hand, is still questionable at this point. They
gave her a new heart, but she’s still listed in grave condition.”

“A new
heart?”

The woman
nodded. “My understanding is that hers had a small tear in the wall. It didn’t
go all the way through or she would’ve died almost immediately, but it weakened
the wall’s integrity enough that even a small amount of exertion might have
been sufficient to cause her heart to burst. I’m sure they had no other choice
but to replace it.”

“My God,” he
said, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. “How critical is she? Can I go
see her?”

“You’ll have
to ask the doctors about that, but I doubt you can get up and move around on
your own with all that hardware on you.”

Of course he’d
have to ask the doctors. How would she know if it was all right for him to
visit Marissa? “She had some pretty nasty burns on her face and around that
gash across her chest,” Dylan sadly recalled. “When she’s out of danger will
she be all right? I mean, she’s so pretty. She won’t be permanently disfigured,
will she?”

“Again, you’ll
have to ask the doctors,” she answered neutrally. “Though these days they can
do things you wouldn’t believe.”

“So I’ve
noticed,” Dylan commented, glancing at his hand again. Then he asked, “What
about the rest of my squad? The ones who didn’t make it back?”

“Some of
their remains have been recovered. A few of them still haven’t officially been
accounted for yet, but...”

“Haven’t
been accounted for?” he asked with a spark of hope. “Then there’s still a
chance that some of them...”

“I said they
haven’t
officially
been accounted for,” she pointed out. “And while
there’s still a small chance that some of them might actually be alive
somewhere, it wouldn’t be a good idea for you to get your hopes up. I promise
you we’re looking into all possibilities, but you have to realize that neither
the C-U-F nor the Sulaini Army is known for keeping prisoners of war alive for
very long.”

“But a small
chance is still a chance,” Dylan optimistically pointed out. “We have to go
after them.”

“As I said,
we’re looking into all possibilities.”

Dylan
settled for that...for the time being. “And the mission?”

“Sorry,
Sergeant,” she said, shaking her head. “Any and all actions that we may
consider or act upon during this process are classified.”

“No, I mean
our
mission. The mission that put me here.”

“Oh. Well,
your mission was successful, for the most part. The royal couple is safe, the
royal consort is recovering from her injuries, a healthy amount of intelligence
was collected, and the Sulaini presence on the island is no more. I only wish
the Sulaini commander had been there at the time.”

“Yeah, the
commander. I’m glad you mentioned that.”

“Why?”

“Because,
number one, I want to put Ortiz in for a decoration. She saved my ass in the
commander’s office,
after
she was wounded. Or in the same building anyway.”

“I’ll pass
that on to your L-T. And number two?”

“Number two,
I’ve been wondering what the hell a force of Veshtonn blood-warriors was doing
at a Sulaini terrorist compound on Cirra. For one thing, how did they get there
in the first place without our knowing about it? And for another, what the hell
was that...that
thing
that almost killed me?”

The woman’s
eyes narrowed as she sat back down again. Whether they did so out of curiosity or
suspicion, Dylan didn’t know. “What thing that almost killed you?” she asked. “You
mean the Sulaini soldier who tried to beat you to death with his rifle?”

“What? What
Sulaini soldier? What are you talking about?”

“What are
you
talking about?”

This woman
seemed to know just about everything about him
and
his entire career.
Was it really feasible then that she didn’t know how he was wounded? Not
likely. “I’m talking about that thing that was hiding out in the Sulaini
commander’s office building. That...alien...creature that would’ve snapped me
in two if Marissa...that is, if Corporal Ortiz hadn’t turned it into Swiss cheese
when she did.”

“Alien
creature?” the woman asked, wearing a puzzled look on her face. “I’m...I’m
sorry, Sergeant. I must have missed something. What alien creature are you
talking about? What did it look like?”

“What alien
creature am I talking about?” Dylan asked, exasperated. “The alien creature
that burned Marissa! The one that damn near crushed my ribs into powder!” The
bewildered expression on the woman’s face told Dylan that despite her intimate
knowledge of him and his career, she really didn’t know anything at all about
any alien creature being on that Cirran island.
Why
she didn’t know he
couldn’t venture to guess, but she was going to find out right now. “It looked
like...like...awe hell! I don’t know
what
the hell it looked like! I can’t
remember! I see the damn thing in my nightmares all the time, but when I wake
up I can’t remember what the hell it looks like! What about its remains? We
killed it so somebody must have found it! You must know
something
about
it!”

“Sergeant
Graves,” she said soothingly, “Corporal Ortiz was cut by shrapnel and burned by
chemicals in one of the explosions. Your ribs were broken by a rifle butt in
hand-to-hand combat with the Sulaini regulars. Aside from a couple dozen
Veshtonn blood-warriors, whose presence we are certainly investigating, there
were no alien creatures there.”

“You’re
wrong, lady,” he responded more calmly, his head hurting again. “Or whoever
told you that was wrong. That’s not how it happened at all. There
was
a
creature. I keep seeing it over and over.”

“Seeing it
where?”

“I told you,
in my nightmares! I have nightmares about the battle every night now and it’s
there every time. It was there!”

The woman
sighed. “All right, look. You’re seeing something in your dreams.”

“It’s not
just in my dreams!” Dylan insisted.

“Yes, it is!”
the woman insisted right back. And then she continued, “Dylan, listen to me.
You’re seeing something in your dreams—some kind of alien creature. Okay. But
it’s not real, whatever it is. It wasn’t there.”

“Yes it was!”

“No it wasn’t!
Think back, Dylan. Think about the battle. Replay it in your mind. Do you
really remember this alien creature being there?”

“Yes, I
really remember it being there! I see it every damn night!”

“I’m not
talking about in your nightmares! Ignore them for the moment. Think about the
actual battle ten days ago. Go through it, step by step, as you actually
remember it.”

He closed
his eyes and thought back as she suggested, and he thought hard. Sure enough,
as his memories played themselves out, he couldn’t place the creature anywhere
among them. As a matter of fact, the more he thought about it the more clearly
he remembered events occurring exactly as she had just described them. He
remembered Marissa being wounded in a chemical explosion. He remembered being
beaten repeatedly with a rifle in brutal hand-to-hand combat. And he remembered
being shot...three times. He drew a deep breath and sighed.

“That’s it,”
the woman said. “Now tell me, do you remember this alien creature of yours
being there?”

“No,” he
admitted, hesitantly, as he opened his eyes again.

“Of course
you don’t, because it wasn’t there. Seeing it in your nightmares is probably
the result of some kind of post-traumatic stress or something. I’ll let the...”

“So now you’re
a doctor?” Dylan asked sarcastically.

“I’ll let
the doctors know what you told me,” she responded sternly, clearly growing
weary of his attitude. “They’ll help you work it out. Now why don’t you get
some rest?”

“I would,
but people keep coming in and waking me up.”

She stood
up. “I’ll be in touch.” With that, the visitor turned away one final time and
left the room.

“But...it
was so real,” Dylan mumbled.

Hoping to be
mistaken for someone who belonged there by any members of the hospital staff
who might happen to pass by her, Commander Royer let her hair down and combed
her bangs forward with her fingers to hide her eyes, then grabbed the medical
chart off of a nearby patient’s room door and gazed down at it as she strolled
back up the hallway toward the large supply closet she’d borrowed the lab coat
from. The ruse worked perfectly. Several personnel did pass, both from ahead of
her and from behind, but none of them challenged her, and as far as she heard—she
was, of course, listening very carefully—none of those who weren’t alone said
anything to whomever they were walking with about not knowing who she was.

She paused
in front of the closet door and pretended to study the chart while she waited
for the last of them to walk out of sight. Then, when she couldn’t hear any
more footsteps, she looked around to make doubly sure that no one was watching
her, then ducked inside and closed and locked the door behind her, relieved
that no one had locked it while she was visiting Graves. Finally, she pulled
off the lab coat and hung it back up on its hook, then drew a deep breath and
stood there to enjoy a moment’s relief.

She smiled,
finding humor in her success. Hiding in plain sight the way she had was one of
the oldest and most often used tricks in the proverbial book and it had worked
like a charm once again. She’d infiltrated the hospital, reached her objective,
and would now make her escape completely undetected for the second time in as
many days, right under everyone’s noses.

None of that
would have been necessary, of course, if that arrogant chief of surgery had
simply bowed to the legal authority she’d claimed to have like a good little
administrator and given her access to the sergeant in the first place. But no,
that would have been much too easy. Instead, he’d thrown his rulebook in her
face and denied her that access, just because she wasn’t a member of the
patient’s family. So what if she wasn’t related to him? She had official
business to conduct.
Important
official business. And so what if the chief
of surgery also happened to be a commodore? That didn’t give him the right to
interfere with her. If he hadn’t been the sergeant’s doctor, or if she’d been
able to identify herself as an agent instead of having to pose as a legal
officer... Damn doctors had far too much authority, in her opinion.

Oh well. It
never hurt to stay in practice.

She opened
the door a crack and peeked out to make sure the hallway was still clear, then
slipped out, made her way quickly to the nearest public exit, and left the
hospital as quietly and as inconspicuously as she had entered it.

Once outside
and in the clear, she slowed to a more comfortable pace and strolled toward the
shuttlebus stop as though she didn’t have a care in the world, but halfway
there she changed her mind and decided to walk. After all, the agency’s local
field office sat less than a mile outside the main gate, and although the day
was still young and this world’s notoriously unpredictable late summer weather
could take a turn for the worse at any moment—interesting how the northern
hemispheres of both Earth and Cirra happened to go through the same seasons at
nearly the same time—it had so far turned out to be a beautiful one. Moderately
warm with bright sunshine, little if any humidity, with a gentle breeze and not
a cloud in the greenish-blue sky. A perfect day. A day not unlike those she’d always
made the most of as a young girl, back on the family farm...except for the greenish
tint to the sky, of course. Besides, she had a potentially serious problem on
her hands and she needed some time to think things through.