Solfleet: The Call of Duty (99 page)

“Not a problem, son. I’ll stay right
where I am.”

“Thank you, sir.”

With the press of one last button
the invisible field suddenly flashed a bright yellow-blue with an
electrical-like snap, then instantly disappeared again. “The barrier is down,”
the guard announced.

“Will you be able to hear me in
there?” Dylan asked Akagi.

“Within the security field, yes,”
the commander answered, “as long as you speak up a bit. You should be able to
hear me with no problem, too. Once you go through the Portal, of course, we won’t
be able to communicate with each other at all. At that point you’re history, at
least from our perspective.”

Dylan glared at the commander with a
disapproving grimace on his face. “Could you possibly have chosen your words
any more poorly?” he asked sarcastically.

“That was a stupid thing to say,
Commander,” Benny scolded.

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” Akagi said with
a complete lack of sincerity. “Now, to activate...”

“No,” Dylan said as he turned and
faced the Portal again. “I’ve been studying the ancient Tor’Rosha a lot over
the last couple of weeks. I’d like to try this myself.”

“Fine,” Akagi said as though Dylan
had insulted him with his request. “Since you’ve got
weeks
of research
under your belt, by all means. Be my guest.”

Benny grinned and nodded, ever so
slightly. Yes. He’d seen it when he and Dylan met. The lieutenant was a born
explorer. He didn’t belong in the Marine Corps or with the S.I.A. He belonged
on an
Explorer
-class starcruiser.

“What’s he going through for, sir?”
the guard asked of Akagi.

“I’ve been wondering about that
myself,” Akagi said. He turned to Benny.

“I told you before,” Benny said,
heading off the question. “It’s classified.”

Akagi shrugged. “Can’t blame a guy
for trying.”

Benny grunted. Then he said, “I have
a question for you, Commander.”

“What’s that?”

He glanced at the guard. “Do you
always let your subordinates shout at you like that?”

“What, you mean like the corporal
there?”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean.”

“Well, I don’t like it, of course.
But it’s not like I’m an officer of the line or anything. I’m a scientist.”

“You’re still a commissioned
officer, Commander, and you’re this outpost’s commanding officer. You should
demand your subordinates treat you as such. Otherwise discipline will break
down, as you can plainly see.”

“Can’t say you’re wrong about that.
Maybe I
should
be a little more by the book.”

“You might want to start by throwing
it at the corporal there.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Dylan stepped inside the security
field’s perimeter. It hummed briefly behind him when the guard reactivated it,
then gave no further hint that it existed at all. He moved forward, raising a
hand toward the Portal, and even though he expected it to feel cool and hard, just
like any other metal object, he’d barely touched his fingertips to the edge of
its rim before he quickly withdrew, just in case.

He’d felt no sensation of electrical
current. No sense of extreme heat or cold. He repeated the exercise,
maintaining contact for a fraction of a second longer, then pulled his hand away
again...still unharmed.

Benny laughed, and Dylan turned to
look at him. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Have you ever seen the film based
on your Admiral Hansen’s favorite old book, ‘Two-thousand One: A Space Odyssey?’”

Dylan shook his head. “I’ve never
even heard of it. Why?”

“The way you approached the Portal.
You remind me of one of the characters in the film’s opening sequence.”

“Oh,” Dylan replied, having no idea
what Benny was referring to. He turned back to the Portal and touched its rim once
more. He pressed his entire palm against it and dragged his hand slowly across
its surface. He heard Benny laughing under his breath again, but chose to
ignore it. Benny had been a good traveling companion. If he found something
about all this amusing, then let him laugh.

The Portal’s rim felt warm to the
touch, but not too hot, and perfectly smooth. Much smoother than he’d expected
it to feel once he noticed the millions, perhaps even billions of minute
pockmarks that he hadn’t seen until he got close. It felt a little like the
surface of a polished white metal deck table that had been sitting in the sun for
several hours.

He withdrew his hand and passed it
through the open space beneath the rim. Nothing. No different than the air
around him. There simply wasn’t anything there.

He sidled over to the ramp and
ascended to the pedestal to study the hieroglyphs on the control panel.

“Can you read them?” Benny shouted.

“I haven’t had much practice, but I
think so. Some of them anyway.” He found the basic symbol that could mean
either ‘begin’ or ‘start’ or ‘engage’, depending on its context, and touched
his wrist to its center. Why he had to use his wrist he didn’t know, but that
was what the research notes he’d studied had indicated humans had to do. At
first nothing happened and he thought maybe he was doing something wrong. But
then a sudden bright white flash and a loud rumble exploded in the air around
him as though an intense thunderstorm had decided to strike directly overhead,
practically scaring him right out of his boots. A steady, quiet, gentle hum
like that of a high-voltage electrical generator immediately followed.

Dylan cursed a tirade under his
breath as his vision slowly returned and the ringing in his ears quieted, then
paused a moment to wait for his heart to stop trying to pound its way out of
his chest. Then he turned to Benny and asked, “What the hell was that?”

“Hell of a rush, isn’t it,
Lieutenant?” the laughing guard joked.

Dylan glared at him. “Very funny,”
he resplied sarcastically.

“Nothing like a good rush of
adrenaline to make the day worth living, is there?”

“You’ve never been in combat, have
you?”

“Oh, big hero,” the guard said. “You’ve
been in combat. So what?”

“At ease, soldier!” Benny shouted.
He knew ‘so what.’ He’d seen the horrors of combat first hand just as Dylan had,
and damned if he was going to let someone mock a fellow combat veteran.
Especially another service member who ought to know better.

The guard fell silent.

Paying no further attention to his
silenced antagonist, Dylan took out his twenty-five year old handcomp, turned
it on, and set it to record. Then, anticipating another burst of the Portal’s fireworks,
just in case, he continued examining and manipulating the controls.

Some of the symbols were completely
unfamiliar—maybe they were of an older dialect than the one he’d studied—but he
still managed to make fairly steady progress...for a while. But then he reached
the point where he had to enter his destination time and location, and no
matter what he did, no matter what sequence of buttons he pressed, he couldn’t
get the Portal to respond.

“Need some help, Lieutenant?” Akagi
asked without disguising his attitude of superiority when he’d apparently
watched in silence long enough.

“How do you enter the destination?”

“You have to speak it, Lieutenant,
in ancient Tor’Roshan, using their system of spatial coordinates and their
measurement of time.”

Dylan straightened and turned to
him. “Then I guess I need some help, Commander.”

“I thought you might,” Akagi said as
he started toward him. The guard lowered the field for him without waiting to
be asked.

* * *

Recently assigned Crewman Joey
Nelson and his newest friend, Crewman First Class Theodore Petrakos, sat in the
small communications room playing poker. Actually, at less than three meters by
four meters, it was more like a communications
closet
, or as they affectionately
called it, ‘the cell.’ It housed so many consoles and pieces of specialized communications
equipment that barely enough room remained for them to set the card table up
between them.

As usual, Theodore—everyone called
him Ted, he’d told Joey when they were originally introduced to one another—was
cleaning up. Fortunately for Joey they never gambled with real money. Just a
gentlemen’s game for them, although Joey was beginning to suspect that Ted didn’t
know how to play like a gentleman. The guy won all the time.
All
the
time. No one could be that lucky, but Joey hadn’t actually caught him cheating
yet, so discretion being the better part of valor, he continued to keep his suspicions
to himself. After all, there weren’t very many people assigned to the remote
outpost. To risk alienating the one who’d been first to befriend him when he
arrived would be just plain stupid.

“Your deal, Joey,” Ted said,
grinning with victory once again.

“When are you going to start losing
for a change?” Joey asked him as he collected the cards and started shuffling
them.

“I never lose,” Ted answered,
shaking his head. “Don’t know how.”

“Yeah well, you’re turning me into a
expert at it. I’d be more than happy to teach you.”

“No thanks. I’d rather keep winning.”

Joey finished shuffling and started
dealing. “So I’ve noticed. You sure as hell won a lot last night.”

“What do you mean?” Ted asked. “We
didn’t even play last night.”

“I’m not talking about poker, Ted.”

“Then what...”

“I’m talking about Noelle.”

Ted sat back in his chair and
nervously ran his fingers through his thick, dark curls and scratched his
scalp. “What about her?”

“I saw you sneak her into your room,”
Joey answered.

“Oh.” He started picking up his
cards, one at a time. “Did anyone else see us?”

“Not that I know of,” Joey answered.
He finished dealing and set the deck face down between them, then picked up his
hand and started rearranging his cards. “But you’d better be careful. She’s
still a newlywed, you know, and I hear her husband’s a pretty big guy.”

Ted picked up his last card, but
didn’t pay it much attention. “Yeah, I know.”

“And he’s an MP, too.”

“Yeah, Joey, I know,” Ted replied
impatiently. “You don’t have to remind me. Besides, it’s not like I was on the
hunt for it or anything. It just sort of happened. She actually started the
whole thing.”

Joey snickered. “Yeah, I’ll bet.”

“I’m serious. A bunch of us hung
around the dining hall for a while after you left. We were talking about what
being assigned to this god-forsaken place for six months can do to a
relationship. First she mentioned how tired she was of sleeping alone while she
waits for her husband’s transfer to come through. Then I said something about
how I only get involved in casual relationships because I like to change assignments
a lot. Next thing I know she’s leaning over and asking me if I’m making her an
offer, so I said... Well, you’ve seen her so you can probably guess what I
said. We went to the rec-room and shot some pool for a while, then went back to
my room for a couple drinks. One thing led to another and the next thing you
know...”

“
Joyeux Noël
from Noelle.”

Ted grinned, despite his discomfort.
“Exactly.”

“Any regrets?”

“What, are you kidding me?” Ted
asked, wide-eyed. “She’s twenty years old and fucks like a bunny in heat. She’s
coming over every night from now on.”

“What?” Joey asked, looking at his
friend like he had two heads. “Are you nuts? What about her husband? What are
you going to do when he gets here?”

“End it, of course,” Ted answered as
though it should have been obvious.

“End it? Just like that?”

“Yup,” Ted answered with an
exaggerated nod. “Like I said, I only get involved in casual relationships.
This one’s no different. That’s the agreement. We’ll stay friends after her
husband gets here, but the rest is only temporary. Sex, sleep, more sex, and so
long. Once he gets here, we both pretend like nothing ever happened.”

Joey harrumphed. “I’ll believe that
when I see it.”

“Trust me, you’ll see it.”

“I hope so. You’ve been a pretty good
friend to me since I got here. I’d hate to have to sit through your funeral.
But in the meantime you guys better be more careful. If anyone besides me ever
sees you two together like that, you’ll have to live in fear every day, knowing
that someone might talk at any time. Who knows what Akagi would do to you if he
ever found out?”

“Yeah, I hear you.”

“Good.” Joey leaned in a little
closer, lowered his voice, and asked with a grin, “So how was she?”

Ted smiled from ear to ear as he,
too, leaned closer and lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “She was awesome,
Joey. Like I said, she fucks like a bunny in heat. You wouldn’t believe how
many times she...”

“Hold on a second,” Joey
interrupted, his grin fading as he straightened and dropped his cards face down
on the table. He pointed over Ted’s shoulder at the console behind him and
said, “The message panel’s lighting up like a Christmas tree. Looks like
something pretty important is coming in.”

Ted looked back over his shoulder at
the panel. Sure enough, a new message was coming in. As he watched, the
decryption and decoding protocols automatically engaged—he’d set them to do
that so he wouldn’t have to get up—and prioritized the new message as ‘URGENT’
over everything else. “What the...” He stood up, dropped his cards, and stepped
over to the console for a closer look. “Holy shit,” he muttered, puzzlement
apparent on his chiseled face.

“What’s wrong?” Joey asked.

“It’s coming in on a tight jumpspace
beam directly from Earth.”

“A direct beam?” Joey asked, full of
doubt as he got up and went over to join his friend. A direct beam to
this
outpost?
“Are you sure about that?”