Solfleet: The Call of Duty (98 page)

“
My
loyalty
to
him
?” she asked with irony. “Didn’t you just tell me that he gave me
up like a bad habit?”

“So you’re
doing it for revenge?”

“I’m doing
it for my wife,” she said somberly. “She needs me to be with her.”

“Oh, I see.
So you’re hoping to avoid a prison sentence.”

“Exactly.”

Krieger
almost laughed. The chances of Royer and her wife ever being together again
after today were miniscule at best. But of course he couldn’t tell her that.
Instead he said, “And if staying out of prison means stabbing Admiral Hansen in
the back the same way he stabbed you in the back, then so be it.”

“Then so be
it,” she echoed in confirmation.

“Makes
perfect sense to me. Except for one minor little detail.”

“And what’s
that?”

“I don’t
believe a word of your story.”

Royer
shrugged. “That’s okay with me. But if I were you, Mister Krieger, I’d make
sure my story reaches the president’s ears anyway.”

“Fine,” he
said as he stood up again. “I’ll see to it she hears your story. But if you
think that’ll get you released from custody, you’re sadly mistaken.”

“We’ll see,”
she told him as he turned and headed for the door.

In the
corridor, a medic was tending to the MPs. When he glanced into the room and saw
Royer’s condition, he asked, “What the hell did you people do to her?”

“She got
belligerent,” Krieger answered as he walked by. “They had to subdue her.”

“Looks like
they beat the hell out of her,” he commented. “I can’t treat her thoroughly
enough up here.”

Krieger
stopped dead in his tracks and asked, “Why not?”

“Whoever
called Medbay said there were three people with minor bumps and scrapes, so I
only brought a first-aid kit with me.” He gestured toward Royer. “Look at her.
She needs to be checked for broken bones and internal injuries.”

Krieger
sighed. “All right.” To the MPs he said, “Take her to Medbay.”

“No problem,
sir,” the stockier of the two women responded as she turned and walked eagerly
into the room.

“I’ll meet
you there, and make it quick,” the medic said. Then he followed Krieger down
the hall.

The MPs
approached Royer from both sides. As they unfastened the heavy straps that held
her in the chair, the stocky one said, “Any funny business, Commander, and we’ll
throw you into the wall the way we did your wife.”

“Ronnie!”
the blond complained.

“What about
my wife?” Royer asked angrily, glaring up at the ugly cow.

“Oh, I’m
sorry. I thought you knew?” she taunted, ignoring her partner’s protest. “We
had to go to your quarters and bring your wife in for questioning, but she
wouldn’t come quietly. I just hope I didn’t rip her arms out of their sockets
when I threw her into the doorjamb and yanked them up behind her back to slap
the cuffs on her.”

“Ronnie!”
the blond shouted.

Royer
glanced down. The straps were undone. “You fucking
bitch!
” she screamed
as she shot to her feet and launched herself into her antagonist.

The stocky MP
hit the floor with a loud and very solid thud as her partner grabbed Royer by
the back of her blouse and yanked her back toward the chair. But Royer twisted
and plunged a vicious side kick into the blond’s right armpit, breaking her
grasp and knocking her into the wall, and hopefully numbing her arm in the
process. Then she kicked the ugly cow across her face as she tried to get back
to her feet, flooring her again.

The blond charged
her again—she was a determined little wench—but Royer kicked her square in the
chest for her troubles. She slammed into the wall again and collapsed to the
floor grimacing and cradling her breasts, apparently unable to catch her breathe.
She could only watch as Royer squatted and rolled onto her back, maneuvered the
handcuffs past her boots and raised her arms up in front of her all in one
smooth motion, and then jumped back to her feet, ready to keep on fighting.

The ugly cow
rose to her feet at the same time and charged, but Royer stepped aside at the
last second and tripped her. Then she made a run for the door, but the
surprisingly resilient blond was on her back again in an instant, choking her
from behind and trying to force her to the floor. Royer jabbed her elbow sharply
into her ribs once, twice, three times...aain and again until she finally heard
a telltale crack and the young woman fell away. She spun around and punched the
ugly cow across her bloodied face with both fists, sending her sprawling across
the table. Then she bent down and grabbed the blond’s sidearm out of its
holster. She ran for the door, slapped the release, and charged into the
corridor.

“Freeze,
Royer!” the ugly cow shouted at her back.

Royer turned
without thinking, the MP’s sidearm still in her hands.

A sharp
CRACK
pierced the air and reverberated through the hallway.

Dylan shook his head in quiet
disbelief as he read on. How could man ever have been so cold-blooded and
murderous? He’d known what was coming, of course, as the chapter carried him
out of the twentieth century and plunged him into the tumultuous war-filled
years of the early twenty-first. He’d learned all about those dark days in his
Anti-Terrorism/Force Protection training classes. But as the events of Tuesday
morning, September 11, 2001 unfolded in black and white before his eyes he
couldn’t help but feel stunned and amazed all over again, and he wondered, what
if someone were to go that far back in time and prevent those terrible attacks?
Or perhaps even farther back than that? What if someone were to kill Bin-Laden
and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein as children—or even Germany’s Adolph Hitler for that
matter—before they ever had a chance to come to power and begin their murderous
reigns of terror? How incredibly different the world might be.

He heard a knock at his door.

“Come in.”

The door swung open and Benny
stepped inside. “It’s later,” he said.

“What?” Dylan asked, looking up.

“Commander Akagi just received his
confirmation of your orders.”

“So I’m going through?”

“You’re going through.”

Dylan set the reader aside, sat up
on the bed, and dropped his bare feet to the floor. He’d had plenty of time to familiarize
himself with the details of what Hansen and Royer expected him to do once he
arrived in the past, and to get used to the idea of actually doing it. And
taking the ‘a mission is a mission’ approach, he believed he had done so. But as
he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, he realized that was
all
he’d done—gotten used to the
idea
—because he’d known in the back of
his mind that there was always a possibility, albeit a slim one at best, that
the whole thing might be called off. But now that the final word had come, now
that his orders had been confirmed and nothing remained to stop him from going
through the Portal, he realized that the prospect of actually going through
with it, of actually traveling backward in time, made him nervous. No, more
than that. It scared him. He felt honest to God afraid.

“Are you all right, Dylan?” Benny
asked as he pulled up a chair and sat down in front of him. “You don’t look so
good.”

“I don’t know, Benny,” he answered
honestly. “I thought I was ready to do this, but... I can’t believe we’re
really going through with it.”

“I’m a little surprised myself, to
be honest with you. As far as I know, nothing like this has ever been tried
before. But Admiral Hansen is nothing if not decisive.”

“I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Sure you can,” Benny reassured him.
“All you have to do is walk out onto it. Think of it as wading into a swimming pool.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Dylan
told him as he stood up and started pacing back and forth from one end of the
small room to the other. “Going through the Portal will be the easy part. It’s
knowing what’s at stake that scares me. Everything depends on me—depends on
what I do back there. Or what I don’t do. What if I make a mistake, Benny? What
if I fail?”

“That doesn’t sound like the Dylan
Graves I’ve come to know.”

Dylan stopped his pacing and looked
at the old captain. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I haven’t known you very long, but
I think I’ve gotten to know you pretty well. You’re confident, determined, and
very sure of yourself. You’d never have made it as a Ranger squad leader if you
weren’t.”

“Yeah, but this is totally
different.”

“I’ve known Admiral Hansen for a
long time, Dylan. He wouldn’t have chosen you for this mission if he didn’t
believe you could pull it off.”

“Admiral Hansen chose me for this
mission because I’m the son of the
Excalibur
‘s captain, Benny. He said
so himself.”

“And because he shares Royer’s faith
in your ability to succeed. Don’t forget that.”

Dylan snickered. “I wouldn’t put too
much faith in anything Commander Royer says, if I were you.”

“Regardless, you were their choice,
and for good reason. And,” he added as he stood up and started toward the door,
“you accepted this mission with your eyes wide open, knowing exactly what was
expected of you. So at this point it’s your
duty
to see it through.”

Dylan grinned, finding Benny’s
frankness humorous, even if Benny hadn’t meant it to be so. How many times had
he resorted to that tactic himself? How many times had he reminded one of his
own subordinates of his or her duty to get them to do what they were supposed
to do? Now Benny had done the same for him. And the old captain was right,
whether he liked it or not. It
was
his duty to see the mission through. “I’ll
be out in a few minutes.”

“I’ll be in the recreation room,”
Benny told him as he left.

Dylan had showered and shaved
earlier—priority one upon arrival in the past, buy some more beard retardant—so
all he had left to do was get dressed. He went to the closet and pulled out a
uniform. This time, one that he’d never worn before. The one that he’d brought
with him specifically for the mission. The blue utilities that enlisted
Solfleet Military Police troops had worn two decades ago.
Security
Police,
he reminded himself. The branch hadn’t changed over to the current Military
Police/Security Forces doctrine until 2172 when someone high enough up in the
chain of command to do something about it finally realized that assigning
military law enforcement officers to landing party and away team missions
without providing them with a lot of additional specialized training was just a
plain bad idea.

He dressed quickly—anxious energy, no
doubt—and grabbed up his quarter century old equipment, then went by the
recreation room to retrieve Benny. They headed out together.

Commander Akagi met them outside the
tunnel entrance, and as they descended the stairs to once more walk beneath the
ancient ruins, Benny just kept on talking, hoping to ease Dylan’s nerves. Akagi
flashed him several irritated looks along the way, but not until they reached the
stairs that led up to the Portal site did the old captain finally clam up. But even
then his silence didn’t last for very long.

“How do you feel now, Dylan?” he
asked as they approached the ancient relic.

“To be honest, Benny, I’m still a
little nervous.”

“Only a little?”

Dylan shook his head. “No.”

“Deactivate the security field,”
Akagi said to the guard manning the post. “Mister Graves here will be going
through the Portal.”

“Sir?” the bewildered guard
responded.

“You heard me, Corporal!” Akagi
snapped. “Drop the goddamn field!”

“Yes,
sir!
” the corporal
shouted disrespectfully.

Akagi glared at the junior NCO for a
second or two but didn’t say anything else. Over the last twenty hours or so
since Sedelnikov and Graves had arrived, he’d made no secret of the fact that
he didn’t like the idea of letting someone step through the Portal, whether he
was on a sanctioned mission or not. What he
had
kept secret, and what he
truly resented, was the fact that someone other than him had been chosen to do
it. He was envious. He’d been denied permission to go through time and time
again. Denied permission to travel into the Earth’s past to conduct first-hand
historical studies. Denied permission to actually live and experience every
historian’s fantasy. And now this...this
kid
was going through. This kid
who couldn’t care less about Earth history. This kid who hadn’t the faintest
idea of what an incredible opportunity had been handed to him on a silver
platter. Why him? What right did he have? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at
all.

The security field was still active.
“I said drop the damn field!” Akagi shouted.

“I am dropping the damn field!” the
guard shouted as he jumped to his feet. He stared curiously at Dylan’s outdated
uniform as he finished entering a sequence of commands and a sort of hostility seemed
to burn in his eyes, as though he blamed Dylan for his being yelled at. Then, as
soon as he was ready to shut down the field, he said, “Captain Sedelnikov, I’ll
have to ask you to keep your distance. Please stay there with the commander,
sir.”

Dylan could see in the guard’s face
just how much he enjoyed that little taste of authority. It reminded him of the
former high school friend he’d originally enlisted with. No wonder they’d stuck
this guy way out here in the middle of nowhere. Chances were no one could stand
to be around him for very long.

“You don’t have to worry about me,
mister,” Benny responded. “I’m much too old to do any of that kind of
traveling.”

“You’ll still have to keep your
distance, sir.”