by Smith, Glenn
Truth be told, he didn’t really want to have to send anyone. But if the president ordered the mission then his duty would be to see that it was carried out.
But what if the president ultimately decided not to authorize it, which was very likely going to be the case? What then? Without Timeshift everything depended on the survival of the Tor’Kana race. Everything depended on the success of the Rosha’Kana counterattack.
The mission, dubbed ‘Operation Mass Eviction,’ called for all of the as yet unconquered Coalition member worlds to combine whatever military forces they had left within the vicinity surrounding the Rosha’Kana system and mount a comprehensive, multi-faceted attack into the heart of the Veshtonn occupation. In Hansen’s opinion they had no choice but to go forward and had to do so soon. They had to return the surviving Tor’Kana to their home world as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, the most logical place from which to stage the operation had proven to be the Caldanra system. Considering the latest developments, staging an operation of such magnitude from there was going to prove much more easily said than done.
There was only one thing to do. He wished it could wait. He wished he could give Royer the time she needed to get out there and persuade Graves to join them. But there was no way the Cirrans were going to wait that long. Hell, he was surprised they hadn’t already retaliated.
He picked up his mug and gulped down the last mouthful of his lukewarm second cup of coffee—or was it his third?—then reached for his comm-panel, hoping it wasn’t too late to catch the president in her office before she left to conduct her weekly Federation Network broadcast.
Chapter 23
The day known as Set’Ah, which currently fell on Saturday on the Earth calendar, served as the Cirran equivalent of a Sabbath, so traffic had been very light and Dylan had made it home in record time. As he reached the top of the stairs that led up from the complex’s parking lot, he noticed someone coming down the sidewalk from the general direction of his building. The man gave no indication of having seen him yet. Rather, his attention seemed to be focused solely on whatever the ring-adorned fingers of his right hand were tapping into the small handcomp he carried in his left. He was dressed in casual tan slacks and a dark blue button-down dress shirt, neither of which looked much like they’d just been taken out of the closet, and a lightweight brown leather jacket that matched the color of his dress shoes almost perfectly. His slicked back dark hair looked damp, as if he’d just taken a shower, but that might just have been a generous application of hair gel.
They’d approached to within five meters of each other before the stranger looked up quite suddenly, as if Dylan had startled him. When he did, an odd expression like recognition combined with fear flashed briefly across his face and he seemed to hesitate for a moment—just a slight, barely perceptible stutter in his stride—before he continued approaching. Had Dylan not been trained to observe, he probably would have missed it.
“Good morning,” the stranger mumbled as he passed, nodding slightly, which enabled him to avoid making eye contact.
“Morning,” Dylan responded. Then he stopped, turned around, and watched the stranger stuff his handcomp inside his jacket and trot hurriedly down the steps and out of sight.
There was something not quite right about that man—something about the way he’d avoided eye contact. Dylan felt sure that he’d done it intentionally. And his ‘good morning’ had come without the quick flash of a friendly smile that usually accompanied such a greeting. And then there was that split second of fear. Why? Why would the stranger fear him? Dylan wasn’t angry at him. Hell, he didn’t even know the guy. Maybe he was just shy? No, that wasn’t it. Shyness might explain the averted eyes and the frosty greeting, but not the fear.
A car door closed. An engine started. Dylan watched a small blue sports car, presumably the same guy, pull out of the lot and speed down the road and out of sight, then continued walking toward his building. He’d have to keep an eye on that guy if he ever came back around.
It was an odd thing though. He’d thought he knew everyone who lived in his building, at least by sight if not by name. Then again, the stranger might just have been visiting someone. He might have been a tenant’s friend or relative. Or maybe he’d come out of one of the other buildings and, being unfamiliar with the layout, had taken a roundabout path to the parking lot. Of course, Dylan had been gone for a couple of weeks, too, and since the complex housed mostly Solfleet personnel, there tended to be a fairly high turnover rate. Running across a new face every now and then wasn’t all that uncommon. So maybe he was a new resident. Whatever the answer, he decided there was no point in dwelling on it.
He crept as light-footed as he could up the stairs to his landing—it was still pretty early and Carolyn would still be asleep—and found the front door to be locked. That was as it should have been, although Carolyn rarely ever remembered to lock it. Good for her, this time. He dug his keycard out of his pocket, slipped it into the slot, and punched in his access code. The lock released with a click and the door swung slightly ajar.
He stepped inside, closed and relocked the door behind him as quietly as he could, then stood still in the semi-darkness for a moment, listening for any indication that Carolyn might be up and about. The apartment was completely silent. He slipped off his sandals and kicked them aside, then crossed the living room and opened the full-length beige curtains that hung across the large panoramic window—Carolyn had actually closed them for a change—flooding the room with bright morning sunlight. The vibrant blue and deep green house plants that flanked each piece of furniture and dressed the four corners of the room, many of which Carolyn had brought with them from Earth, seemed to perk up right away, as if the warm life-sustaining light had awakened them from their own nocturnal slumber.
He crept quietly into the bedroom and found Carolyn still in bed asleep, just as he’d expected he would. She lay naked on her right side, facing the far wall and hugging her over-sized pillow tightly to her bosom, and her her legs were wrapped around the twisted and tangled blankets as if they were making love to her. That was certainly different. Thinking back over the years, Dylan couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept in the nude. The bed was heavily rumpled and the bottom sheet had pulled away from the corner of the mattress closest to her head. Bad dreams?
Being careful not to disturb her, he set his laundry bag down out of the way and treaded lightly into the bathroom to relieve himself. He finished quickly and washed his hands while the toilet flushed, then dried them on a damp hand towel that was hanging slightly askew on the rack next to the sink. Then he stepped back into the bedroom and tip-toed over to the curtains—a matched set to the ones in the living room. Instead of hiding one large panoramic window, they covered a sliding glass door and the two substantially smaller windows of a more conventional design that flanked it. He found the cleverly concealed split in the fabric and pushed the left curtain aside just enough to expose the small green touch-pad set into the narrow strip of wall between the door and the left window.
He tapped the pad and the door slid open, almost without a sound. He stepped out onto the beautifully stained hardwood rear deck and drew a deep breath, filling his lungs with fresh forest air. Roughly nine months had passed since he and Carolyn had arrived on Cirra and moved into this secluded housing complex several kilometers from the base, but he still enjoyed sitting outside and taking in the view whenever he had time.
The smaller, more distant of Cirra’s twin moons was slowly rising into the now cloudless blue-green sky from beyond the snow-capped peaks in the west, its soft gray-white face barely visible through the sunlit atmosphere. Several large birds of prey, some with wing spans he knew to be as wide as six or seven meters, soared in silence at dizzying heights, awaiting their chance to swoop down out of the sky and snatch up any unwary prey—their favorite meal was an animal very much like Earth’s white-tail deer—while untold numbers of the smaller, more timid species sang their morning gree
tings to Caldanra, the mother star, for all to hear. A dense, eternally dark forest of hundred meter tall everblues blanketed the rolling terrain of the surrounding countryside and stood watchful guard over the small city that lay nestled in the deep valley far to the north. No matter the time of day or night, their pleasing pine-like aroma was always prominent and early-morning fresh, no doubt due to the underlying hint of mint that emanated from the bluer female variety.
Now there was irony. Unlike Earth women, not to mention most other humanoid females, Cirran women never wore any kind of perfume because to do so would violate one or another of their innumerable religious taboos. Yet the female trees of Cirra used their aroma in a perfume-like manner to stimulate their male counterparts into releasing whatever it was they released to make little trees. And they bred like rabbits in springtime. Not even the invigorating fragrances of the varied flora in the garden below could overpower the tree-scent much beyond the garden’s own confines.
The trees’ human-like characteristics reminded him of a Bible passage he’d read once, long ago when he used to take a little time each morning to read that ancient text. It came from the book of ‘Luke’ if he remembered correctly. ‘And some of the Pharisees called to him from the crowd, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” But He answered and said to them, “I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.’” If trees could use perfume to seduce other trees, then maybe the idea of stones crying out wasn’t such a stretch after all.
The garden itself—one of four in the sprawling sixteen building complex—was large and meticulously sculpted, and dominated almost the entire courtyard that lay amidst the four identical apartment buildings, including his own, that formed a loose square around it. Several sand-based paths of pale pink and off-white pebbles, many of them speckled with shimmering orange-yellow flecks, meandered among hundreds of varieties of pastel blossoms and exotic blue and green flowering plants. Small wooden bridges provided solid footing where narrow streams of cool, semi-phosphorescent violet-blue water flowed across them. Every dozen meters or so along each one of those paths, larger than life-sized white stone statues of gracefully posed and often scantily clad Cirran gods and goddesses, much like the figures created by the ancient artisans of Europe, stood watch over polished wood and rose-marble benches that sat amidst the flower gardens, waiting for visitors to take rest upon them. The garden was truly an artistic achievement and, except for Marissa, was the most beautiful sight that Dylan had seen in the last two weeks.
He sighed. Marissa. Damn his big mouth anyway. He didn’t genuinely love her, not really, but he’d as much as told her otherwise. So now what was he going to do? He liked her well enough as a person, of course—very much, in fact. She was a great girl who was fun to be with and fun to play around with a little once in a while. He certainly didn’t want to hurt her. But it wasn’t love that he felt for her, it was lust. Pure, unadulterated lust. He would have loved to have had sex with her right there in the shower when he had the chance, but the idea of carrying on a romantic relationship with her held little appeal for him. She was a Marine, and a Ranger at that—essentially one of the guys, except for her gender. Not his idea of serious relationship material at all.
He drew another deep, deep breath, yawned, and then exhaled slowly. He was too tired to think about it anymore. Short as it had been, the FTX had seemed like one of the longest, most grueling ones he’d ever been a part of. Two weeks, bivouacked high up on the barren, hard, dusty gray-faced slopes of the western range. The nights had been bitterly cold, the days almost oven-like. But now, finally, he was home, breathing in the minty, pine-scented air and gazing down at the lush, living garden, enjoying some much needed peace and quiet.
“You’re home early,” Carolyn said as she stepped out onto the deck behind him, pulling her bathrobe on around her. She made it sound as if it were some kind of miracle.
So much for the peace and quiet. But at least she couldn’t give him the old ‘you’ve ruined my plans again’ speech, since she’d only just climbed out of bed. For that he felt eternally thankful.
“We cleaned most of our gear in the field as soon as we broke camp last night,” he told her. “All we had to do when we got back to the base was put everything away. We knocked out our leadership debriefing and got released by about four-thirty this morning.”
He leaned close to kiss her good morning as she reached his side, but only because it was the proper thing to do. His heart certainly wasn’t in it. Neither was hers apparently, as at the last second she turned her face away so that his kiss landed on her cheek.
She tied off her robe, then leaned on the railing next to him and gazed down into the garden. “In that case you should have been home over two hours ago, shouldn’t you?”
“They had a big breakfast buffet set up for us when we got back. They put a lot of hard work into it and there was a ton of food there. I knew you’d still be asleep, so I stayed and had breakfast with some of the guys.”
“Of course you did,” she said sarcastically. “Just you and some of the guys. No big deal. God knows there’s nothing more enjoyable than spending time with some of the guys. Especially right after you’ve been with them day and night for two solid weeks. Certainly wouldn’t want to go home and get into bed with your wife.”
He looked at her. If that was an invitation—it didn’t sound much like one, but she had slept in the nude, knowing that he was coming home—he was certainly ready to accept after what had almost happened back in the shower stall. “It’s still early,” he pointed out.
She returned his semi-amorous gaze with a much colder one of her own. “I’m up now,” she pointed out, her tone making it very clear that she had not been extending an invitation.
Dylan didn’t respond to that. How was it that she could go for days or weeks at a time without seeing him or even being able to speak to him and still greet him with such a poor and spiteful attitude? He just couldn’t understand it.
“So how did this latest in a very long chain of field training exercises go?” she asked, changing the subject. What she didn’t say with words came through as clear as crystal in her icy tone. She didn’t much care how the FTX went. The question, like his attempted kiss moments earlier, was only offered out of perceived obligation.
Dylan shook his head, almost imperceptibly, thinking about Marissa again. The urge to ask Carolyn for a divorce had been weighing heavily on him for several months. So far he’d been able to resist it, to bite his tongue and not bring up the subject. But now that he’d come so close to telling Marissa that he loved her—he didn’t truly love her, he reminded himself, but perhaps he could learn to love her, given the chance—now that he’d held her in his arms and kissed her and very nearly made love to her...
‘How’d the field training exercise go?’ Carolyn had asked. “It was a little too long,” he answered. “Only two weeks, but somehow too long.” And then, for whatever it might be worth, he added, “I’m really glad to be home,” even though he wasn’t.
She didn’t respond. A quick glance her way confirmed that she wasn’t even listening to him. Not really. He could have asked her what was wrong, but if he did she’d only refuse to discuss it as usual. She’d just insist that nothing was wrong, which would annoy the hell out of him and most likely touch off an argument because if there were nothing wrong then there was no good reason for her to behave the way she was behaving. Then again, she’d never needed a reason, had she? God! He was so sick and tired of her childishness!
Yes. He’d be much better off if he didn’t bother to ask. That was a lesson he’d learned a long time ago, the hard way. Don’t ask. Just don’t ask. He’d tried it for the first time right after Ranger school, and again soon after they moved into their present home. Eventually he’d quit asking for good, preferring the long periods of not speaking over all that arguing. Now that he and Marissa had started...whatever it was they’d started, he wasn’t all that sure he cared about his
marriage any more than Carolyn did, despite the fact that he’d always tried harder than she had to make it work.
“Too long,” he repeated, referring both to the length of the exercise and to what he was beginning to see as a pointless struggle to save an already failed marriage.
She peered at him out of the corner of her eye. “And what about the platoon’s resident beauty queen, little Miss Marissa? I’ll bet she didn’t think it was too long.”
Dylan looked over at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on, Dylan. We’ve been to a lot of unit social functions since we got here. I’ve seen the way she watches you. She wants you in a bad way.”
“You’re imagining things,” he told her as he looked away.
“Am I? Then why are you so uncomfortable all of the sudden?”
“What makes you think I’m uncomfortable?”
“Look me in the eye and tell me there’s nothing going on between the two of you.”
“Oh, here we go again,” he remarked as he straightened up. She was going out of her way to pick a fight, and she wasn’t going to give up until she got one. He should have asked her what was wrong after all, he now realized. Her refusal to discuss it would have led to a short argument, then to one of those long periods of silence between them, which would have been uncomfortable but a lot easier to deal with than her petty, jealous accusations.
Especially now that there was actually something to those petty, jealous accusations.