Solfleet: The Call of Duty

by Smith, Glenn

  Hansen hung around backstage for a while and politely accepted congratulations from the other three Chiefs of Staff, his friends, those of his associates who had been available to attend, and anyone else who took the time to make their way back there, all the while looking for his daughter and waiting for her to find him. Then, when he finally decided that she wasn’t going to show and that no one else intended to come his way, he started gradually making his way toward the nearest exit. Admiral Chaffee stopped him long enough to hand him a bag full of enough new rank bars and pins to outfit the rest of his uniforms, and a few more people offered their congratulations as he happened to cross paths with them, but it didn’t take him very long to break free of the masses and head for his quarters.

  The Distinguished Service Cross with Valor device, he reflected as he strolled through the wide earth tone corridors. He’d certainly never expected to be awarded another one of those. Of course, were it not for Admiral Chaffee going to bat for him, he probably wouldn’t have been. For that matter, were it not for the fact that his longtime friend Mirriazu Shakhar happened to be the president, he’d probably still be on the outside of the admiralty looking in. Even after so many years, O’Shea still held a huge grudge against him. The son-of-a-bitch probably wasn’t even sick. He probably just couldn’t stomach the thought of not only having to pin a medal to his old rival’s chest, but also having to promote him on top of it.

  Of course, Hansen went on to reflect as he had so many times before, he was damn lucky to still be in the fleet at all at this point, and he knew it. Liz, too, for that matter. The threat of exposure had been hanging over their heads for six long years now, and he’d worried about it damn near every day. He’d worried that the truth might finally come out, and that both of their careers might suddenly come to an abrupt and shameful halt. And yet at the same time, more than once, he’d almost wished for it. At least then the knowledge of what they had done—of what he had done—would have stopped feeding the fear that still haunted his every waking hour. He’d have been freed from his chains. He’d have taken whatever he had coming to him, and he’d have moved on.

  But so far that hadn’t happened. Might he actually make it to retirement, he wondered? He was already eligible, but he was not yet ready.

  As a flag-grade officer, he’d been assigned family quarters fairly close to the bulk of the fleet’s offices and other non-industrial facilities, so it only took him a few minutes to walk home. He raised his right hand toward the security panel as he approached the door, but instead of waiting for him to log in as a locked door should, it slid aside, disappearing into the bulkhead, and released the ear-splitting clamor of screaming engines and screeching tires, blaring sirens, and blazing guns into the corridor. He sighed and shook his head in disgust. Typical fourteen year old, forgetting to lock the door and playing her beloved virtuavid games so ridiculously loud that she wouldn’t have heard anything if a whole gang of juvenile delinquents broke in and started busting up the place. When was that girl ever going to learn?

  He stepped inside and closed and locked the door behind him, then went into the living room and found her stretched out on the couch in nothing but a pair of white flower-print panties and an old threadbare tee shirt that looked about three sizes too small for her—her typical stay-at-home garb—totally absorbed in her deafening game.

  “Hi, Dad,” she shouted over the mayhem without taking her eyes off three-dimensional action that she commanded through the elaborate, multi-buttoned game controller she held in her hands long enough to spare him an acknowledging glance—a high-speed multi-vehicle police chase through the streets of old Detroit from the looks and sounds of it.

  “Turn that down, Heather!” he shouted over the blaring sirens. “In fact, shut it off!”

  Heather hit a button, freezing the action just as one very unfortunate police officer drove his motorcycle off the end of a seaside dock, then turned and stared up at her father as though he were little more than an annoying distraction. “What do you want?” she asked coldly.

  “First of all, how did you even hear me come in over all that noise?” he asked.

  “It’s not that loud, Dad,” she told him, her tone of voice betraying the obvious fact that she considered the idea that her game might actually bother somebody to be totally ridiculous.

  “Yes it is that loud, and I want it turned down before you restart it. Otherwise, you’re going to lose it for a while. Understood?”

  Heather drew a deep breath and exhaled sharply and quite dramatically as she rolled her eyes, then said, “Fine. Anything else?”

  “Yes,” he answered firmly. “How many times do I have to tell you not to lie around in your underwear before you finally stop doing it? What if I had one of my men with me right now?”

  “I guess he’d of gotten one hell of a thrill, wouldn’t he?”

  The admiral started to respond, but his words caught in his throat. He didn’t like her answer, but as much as he wanted to disagree with it, he couldn’t. Still about a month shy of her fifteenth birthday, Heather already had the body of a curvaceous twenty-one year old, and she was pretty good at strutting her stuff when she wanted to be, too—a fact that no father could have missed in a daughter so young, no matter how straight-laced and proper he might be. Like her mother, God rest her soul, she was very beautiful, with long strawberry-blond hair and piercing emerald-green eyes. She was, often to his annoyance and exasperation, an incredibly sexy young woman—an incredibly sexy very young woman. Far too sexy for her own good, he often feared.

  “That isn’t funny, Heather,” he finally responded. “You cannot lie around here in your underwear with the door unlocked. Anybody could have wandered in here.”

  “God, Dad, don’t be so paranoid!” she chided him in disgust. “We live on a space station for God sakes. Nothing’s gonna happen.”

  “All right, all right,” he surrendered. “Forget the lecture for now.” It was an old argument anyway. There would be plenty of time to continue it later—again. “Right now I’m more curious about why you didn’t come to the ceremony this morning after you told me you were going to be there.”

  “I’m sorry,” she told him, not sounding sorry at all. “I overslept, okay? Congratulations on once again being recognized as the Hero of the Galaxy.”

  He stared at his daughter in silence, totally at a loss as to what to say to her. Why did she have to be like that? Sure, her mother’s death had been hard on her. He understood that. It had been hard on him, too. But eleven years had passed since that tragic day. How long was she going to hold onto her anger? How long was she going to blame him for their loss?

  She must have seen the hurt in his eyes, because she dropped her gaze to the floor.

  “Don’t forget,” he said, changing the subject as he started toward his bedroom, “you have an appointment with your probation officer. Two o’clock.”

  “When have I ever forgotten, Dad?” she asked rhetorically.

  He stopped short and turned back toward her. “Excuse me?” he prodded as he slowly approached her again. “When have you ever forgotten? Is that really what you just asked me?”

  She glared back at him, but apparently knew better than to push him any further.

  “Admiral Hansen?” his secretary’s voice called through the link insignia pinned to his collar, heading off what had promised to be a verbal storm of a response.

  He tapped the pin, hard enough that it hurt and forced him to swallow and clear his throat before he answered. “Go ahead, Vicky.”

  “Sir, Lieutenant Young would like to know how soon you’re coming in.”

  “As soon as I change uniforms,” he told her. Then he asked, “Why? What’s going on?”

  “He’s holding an incoming live transmission on standby—your eyes only.”

  “All right. Have him tell the caller I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If they can’t wait that long, have him make a
n encrypted recording of the message and I’ll review it first thing when I get there.”

  “Will do, Admiral. Thank you.”

  He tapped his collar pin again, more gently this time, to close the channel. Then he told Heather, “I have to change and go to work. We’ll talk about your attitude later.”

  Heather harrumphed. “What else is new?”

  He shook his head, not knowing what else to say or do, then escaped into his bedroom to change. Six more weeks before school started up again. He was beginning to think his patience might not last that much longer.

  Chapter 2

  Admiral Hansen hadn’t been issued his new class-A uniforms yet, but he had been issued everything else, and as he pulled his new black-on-tan class-B jacket on over the new tan button-down shirt that went with it, he gazed into his full-length mirror and admired its design. It looked a lot better with the fleet’s customary black trousers than the slightly longer brown one had, and he really liked the way the new cut tapered down to his waist and made him look as if he were in even better physical condition than he really was. Whether that effect was achieved by design or simply by happy coincidence, who knew—and who cared? He certainly didn’t. He liked it, and that was all that mattered. Most of all, though, he liked the fact that once he got to his office he could take the jacket off and work in comfort, and still be ‘in uniform’ if someone happened to stop by.

  Thank God the class-A’s were the only ones whose fleet-wide issue had fallen behind schedule. Six months of wearing those ugly chocolate browns were more than enough.

  Yes indeed, the newest new uniforms were a vast improvement over the previous new uniforms. Now, if Solfleet could just manage to stick with them...

  He gazed at his jacket’s accoutrements as he fastened it—particularly at the three shiny gold-plated starbursts fastened to both sides of the black collar. Vice-Admiral Icarus Hansen. Vice-Admiral. Had a nice ring to it, and it had been a long time coming—especially for someone who had started out on the fast track almost since day one out of the academy the way he had. From a young Security Police platoon leader to a tough-as-nails infantry company commander and combat veteran to a field-grade Security Police detachment commander, all in his first seven years of active service. His was a promotion rate that still stood unparalleled anywhere in any of the fleet’s five branches, including the combat arms specialties. If it hadn’t been for all the political fallout over that one horrific incident over twenty years ago...

  Except for the little star cluster next to the bronze ‘Valor’ device on his Distinguished Service Cross ribbon, the rest of his accoutrements remained the same. He took one last look, then went back into the living room. No surprise, Heather was still lying there playing her game in her underwear, but at least she’d turned down the volume.

  “Clothes, Heather,” he sternly reminded her as he passed her on his way to the door.

  “I will, Dad! God!” she exclaimed. “I’m in the middle of a level here!”

  He didn’t have time to argue. He set the door to lock behind him and headed out.

  * * *

  The almost intoxicating fresh brewed aroma of his favorite blend of Columbian coffee wafted over Hansen like a warm summer breeze as soon as he walked into the reception area outside his private office. It might have seemed a bit old-fashioned, the pretty young personal secretary serving coffee to the older executive, but every morning Vicky met him a few feet inside the door with his large personalized ‘official’ black and tan Mandela Station Command Staff mug in hand, and every morning he gratefully accepted it from her with a friendly smile. This morning was no different. Despite the fact that he barely slowed down as he walked by her, she handed his mug to him with all the precision of a relay racer handing the baton off to the next runner, and she did it without spilling a drop.

  “Thank you, Vicky,” he said automatically, without even sparing her a glance.

  “You’re welcome, Admiral,” she responded pleasantly, but with a hint of disappointment evident in her tone. “Good morning, and congratulations by the way.”

  He’d forgotten to greet her properly, he realized immediately—something he’d promised himself a long time ago that he would never do. He stopped halfway to his office door and turned back to her. “I’m sorry, I have a lot on my mind this morning,” he told her. Then, to correct his oversight, he said, “Good morning and thank you.”

  “That’s okay, Admiral.”

  He drank in the sight of her with a few quick covert glances over the rim of his mug as he took a long careful sip of the steaming brew. She’d dressed in finely tailored dark blue business attire over a silk blouse like mother-of-pearl and a pair of those black pleather knee-high boots that seemed to keep coming back into style every couple of generations or so. She’d pinned her long, wavy, light brown hair back on the sides, away from her soft, smoothly sculpted face, but had left the rest of it loose to flow freely down her back, presumably to help her maintain an air of femininity in the otherwise all business atmosphere. All in all a very professional appearance, as usual, though her skirt could probably have been a little longer.

  “Where’s Lieutenant Young?” he asked her quickly when he suddenly caught her eye, hoping he hadn’t made her feel uncomfortable as he realized that his glances likely weren’t as covert as he’d thought they were.

  “He said something about meeting with someone from the Criminal Investigations office,” Vicky answered. “He wouldn’t tell me what it’s about, but he seemed to think you already knew about it. He recorded the caller’s message as you instructed before he left.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Hansen passed his mug from his right hand to his left as he turned and approached his office. He punched his access code into the wall panel to the door’s right, then pressed the palm of his hand to the scanner plate and looked directly into the coin-sized camera imbedded in the center of the door. “Hansen,” he identified. The plate glowed white for one second, analyzing his palm and fingerprints while the camera scanned his iris. Then the door slid aside and he went in.

  He reached back and tapped the ‘close’ button, then crossed to his desk and set his mug down in front of his chair. Then, as he sat down, he noticed that the ‘message waiting’ light on his communications panel was blinking amber, indicating that at least one message coded as ‘Other Intelligence’ had been received and decrypted. He called up the list of new messages and was relieved to see that the one he’d already been told about was the only one waiting for him. No new update on fleet actions waited for his review, which meant the fleet hadn’t suffered any major losses over the last twenty-four hours—especially significant, given what was currently happening in the Rosha’Kana system. He reached out and tapped the message on his screen, then picked up his coffee and sat back.

  One of the large rectangular panels that made up the wall directly across the room from his desk came to life and displayed the frozen image of a red-haired, ghostly white-skinned but rather regal looking woman at least twenty years his junior, but probably more like twenty-five. She was wearing the older brown Naval tunic, which indicated to him that she wasn’t stationed on or around the Earth—otherwise she would have received her new issue already—with the single gold diamond of a lieutenant commander on her collar. Hansen couldn’t see much of the room behind her, but judging from what little he could see, she wasn’t aboard a ship.

  “Play recording,” he said.

  “Admiral Hansen, sir,” the woman’s image began, suddenly vibrant and full of life. “My name is Lieutenant Commander Kathleen Quinn. I’m the new operations officer at the agency’s Europan office. First of all, on behalf of all of us, congratulations on your award and promotion. Second, the station commander has asked me to brief you on some information we just received.

  “Less than forty-eight hours ago, several platoons of Marines from the Tripoli and a few other assault carriers boarded one of the Veshtonn command cruisers currently engaged
in combat in the Rosha’Kana star system. One team managed to hack into the enemy vessel’s computer and copy a large amount of data. A lot of them were killed in action, but the rest did manage to make it back to their ship with the data.”

  Hansen sighed, then bowed his head and closed his eyes, saddened by the loss of those Marines. Killed in action. She’d said it so coldly, so matter-of-factly, as if the poor souls had been nothing more than empty uniforms to be assigned a casualty number.

  “About half an hour ago,” she continued without pause, “one of our best decryption and decoding specialists, a Crewman Stefani O’Donnell—remember that last name, Admiral—came to us with the following audio file, which she stated she’d just received from her counterpart on the Tripoli minutes before. It’s a little difficult to make out, sir, but give it a listen. I’ll be back after it plays.”

  Quinn’s image suddenly froze—she sort of resembled a frosted ice sculpture with that pale white skin of hers—and a moment later Hansen’s office filled with white noise and short bursts of thundering static. Then someone began to speak beneath the noise. The voice sounded weak and was barely audible, and not entirely understandable, but every few seconds it came through just clear enough that Hansen was able to identify it as a man’s voice, and the language he was speaking in as English.

  “I ho... ...can hear me,” the voice said, still dropping in and out, but suddenly breaking through the white noise much clearer than it had been. “...name is Ro... ...Donell. I was... ...officer aboard the Earth starcruiser... ...caliber. ...alive, somewhere in Vesh... ...ace. The Excalibur... ...NOT destroyed by... ...Vesh... ...epeat, the... ...ot destroyed... ...eshtonn. ...attack was carried out... ...cruiser Albion and two... ...star Corpora... ...ly by surprise. Those of... ...vived were ta...”

  The message ended abruptly with one final blast of static, but that, too, quickly fell silent. Then Quinn’s image came back to life.

  “That’s exactly how Crewman O’Donnell received it, sir,” she reported. “As I said, she brought it to our attention immediately, along with some very interesting personal information. Turns out her father, Lieutenant Robert O’Donnell, was assigned to the starcruiser Excalibur when it was lost twenty-two years ago. We’ve confirmed that, just so you know. We also confirmed that neither he nor any trace of his remains were ever found, and that his name does appear on the list of M-I-As from that incident.