Solfleet: The Call of Duty

by Smith, Glenn

  “It’s not that I never believed it, Commander. I did, for the most part. But the more I think about it the more doubts I have. Especially when I think about your brother. Has anything changed for us in the last six years?”

  Royer didn’t answer, but that was okay. He’d only meant it to be a rhetorical question anyway. He turned back to the window again as he added, “Besides, the potential cost of this mission seems to keep going up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Professor Verne came to see me in my quarters late last night. He suggested that if we do send someone back in time there’s a real chance that person might be stuck there, unable to return home, regardless of whether he completes the mission or not.”

  “Why would he be stuck there?”

  “Because for him our time won’t have arrived yet. For him our timeline won’t exist and a person can’t travel to a place that doesn’t exist.” After a moment he added, “I suspect that’s why Günter hasn’t returned. Not only have he and the clone embryos he took with him failed to put an end to the war for us, they’ve also been stranded in the past for more than six years.”

  “If Professor Verne is correct,” Royer pointed out.

  “Right.”

  She’d avoided bringing Günter into the conversation, afraid that if she did they’d end up arguing about him again. But now that the admiral had mentioned him a few times already she felt free to pursue it further. If they argued again it would be his fault.

  “Those clones were nothing more than a batch of fertilized eggs and a briefcase full of our most advanced cybernetic technical schematics, Admiral,” she reminded him, “and he took them back to a time period well before artificial age acceleration had been perfected. He might still be waiting for them to grow up.”

  “We’ve already been over this, Commander,” Hansen sternly reminded her.

  “And we still don’t know anything for sure, sir, which is why I continue to bring it up from time to time,” Royer fired right back. “We may have sent them thirty years into the past, Admiral, but we did it less than seven years ago. Who’s to say the clones aren’t just a couple divisions of six year old children right now?”

  “I am!” Hansen barked, whirling around and glaring at her.

  Royer sprang to her feet so fast that she almost banged her legs on the front of Hansen’s desk and shouted vehemently, “Don’t you dare yell at me like I’m your delinquent teenage daughter, Admiral! You’re the one who brought it up this time, not me!”

  His laser beam stare could have burned holes through her eyes, but he held his tongue for a moment to give himself time to calm down and avoid saying something he might later regret, and to consider whether or not he felt like taking the time to explain his position on the subject to her all over again. After all, she did have a point. He had brought Günter up first this time.

  In the end, patience won out. “I guess we’re both a little stressed, Commander,” he said. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to bite your head off.”

  “Gladly accepted, sir, and I apologize as well. Your daughter...”

  “Until recently, Commander, my daughter has been a delinquent. And God help me, she still is a teenager.”

  “Through no fault of yours, sir. The delinquent part, I mean. Her mother’s death...”

  “We were talking about Günter,” he reminded her, interrupting. His wife’s sudden death all those years ago still tore at his heart.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Right. I was about to remind you yet again that we sent your brother back to twenty-one fifty-five,” he said, carefully controlling his tone. “We’re fast approaching twenty-one ninety-one now. Assuming for the moment that everything went as planned six years ago, that collection of fertilized eggs is now a large force of thirty-five year old cyberclones.”

  “According to one theory, Admiral,” she pointed out just as she always did, holding her temper in check as well. “But according to another theory...”

  “According to another theory they’re a large force of six year old children,” he recounted for her. “Yes, I know.”

  “Can you honestly say that you know for a fact they’re not just a bunch of six year old children right now?”

  Of course he couldn’t. “Of course I can’t.”

  “That’s right, sir, you can’t. No one can. It’s just as likely as not they are just a bunch of kids right now. Add to that the indisputable fact that all of our research has shown the ancient Tor’Roshans routinely used the Portals for two-way travel...”

  “Yes it has, Commander,” Hansen affirmed. “And I reminded Professor Verne of that very same indisputable fact last night. According to him that research includes a healthy amount of scientific speculation, and he would know better than anyone. So the bottom line becomes this. If the theory he subscribes to happens to be the correct one, then Lieutenant Graves will be trapped in the past forever, alone, never to see his family or his fiancée again. In a sense we will have sacrificed him. And for what? Absolutely nothing because no matter what he does back there, whether he’s successful or not, nothing will ever change for those of us he leaves behind.”

  “So you’re definitely not going to send him back?” Royer asked, dreading what she was beginning to believe his final answer was going to be.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Curve ball. “Wait a minute,” Royer said, adjusting her position. “I’m tired, remember? You’ve got me completely confused here. If you don’t...”

  “My sworn duty, Commander, is to protect and defend the Earth and her colonies against our enemies. If there is even the slightest chance that Professor Verne’s favorite theory is wrong and one of the others is right—a chance that the Timeshift mission will enable me to carry out that duty—then I have an obligation to see to it that that mission is at the very least seriously considered.” True enough. His nightmares didn’t factor into it.

  “Which is what we’ve been doing for months,” she pointed out, even though doing so might have worked against her efforts to convince the admiral to send Graves back.

  “True enough. But not to the fullest possible extent.”

  “So then...you might send him,” she preliminarily concluded.

  “I have to at least consider it.”

  “Even though you don’t think he’ll ever be able to return home again? Even if you have to sacrifice him, as you put it?”

  “A couple days ago you wanted to kill him yourself, Commander,” Hansen reminded her.

  “That’s not fair, Admiral!” she told him, upset by his choice of words. “I never wanted to kill him. I just thought...”

  “You’re right, Commander,” Hansen interrupted, holding his hands up in front of him to stop her. “I misspoke and I apologize.” After a moment’s pause to be sure he chose his next words more carefully, he turned back toward the window, folded his hands behind him and said, “We’re at war, Liz, and war is a very risky business. Soldiers die. It’s unfortunate, but sometimes a few have to be sacrificed to save many more.”

  Royer snickered. “Try telling that to the ones being sacrificed.”

  “I have, on more than one occasion.”

  “You have?”

  “The Battle of Europa, Ganymede, the Martian Colonies...” He drew a breath and his gaze fell to the floor in front of him as he noisily exhaled. “It’s the biggest curse of command, deciding who lives and who dies. It won’t be any easier this time.”

  Royer didn’t know what to say to that. Hell, there was nothing she could say. She’d gotten to know the admiral fairly well over the years, but she hadn’t known he once commanded a combat unit. She’d always assumed he’d served in Security and Intelligence his whole career, and neither he nor anyone else had ever indicated otherwise. At least not to her. Until now. But what could she say? The fact that he’d never talked about it probably meant that he didn’t want to. Probably best to just leave it alone.

  “Sounds to me, Admiral, l
ike you’re trying to convince yourself I’m right—that we should go ahead and send the lieutenant on the mission.”

  “Convince myself?” he asked. He shook his head. “No.” He lifted his eyes to the Earth once more. He’d made his decision. “No, Commander, I don’t need to convince myself. Not anymore. Despite the fact that your words have seemed to contradict your position once or twice, you are right. I know that as well as you do. I just don’t like it.”

  Royer stood up. “Would you like me to tell him, sir?”

  “Yes I would, Commander.” She started to turn. “Stand fast.”

  She stopped and turned back. “Sir?”

  “I’d like very much for you to tell him, but that responsibility is mine, not yours. Do me a favor though? Go get him and bring him back here?”

  “Certainly, sir.” She started toward the door again, but stopped halfway there and turned back once more. “You know, sir, in war soldiers aren’t always the only ones sacrificed.” Hansen turned his head slightly, but didn’t face her as she continued. “In World War Two, for example, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once sacrificed an entire town to prevent the Germans from learning their code had been cracked.”

  Hansen hesitated another moment, then turned his back on the window and asked, “What are you getting at, Commander?”

  “You’ve made it very clear, sir, where the line is that you won’t cross, and it’s certainly not my intention to test your patience on that subject any further.”

  “That’s wise,” he assured her.

  “But I have to ask you, sir... What should we do about Miss DeGaetano? She is, after all, the lieutenant’s fiancée, and she was with him and Min’para the other night. Introduced them to each other, in fact. She obviously knows what’s going on.”

  Hansen sighed. Just what he needed, yet another loose end to clean up. But that was the nature of the business he and the commander had gotten themselves into all those years ago. He’d known that from the beginning. They both had. Now they had to deal with it. “You are definitely too smart for my own good.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Don’t be. Your thoroughness is one of the reasons I’ve kept you around all these years.”

  “Damn. I thought it was my sparkling charm.”

  “Yeah, that too. Anyway, I don’t think the lieutenant would say anything to her about the mission itself. It’s classified top secret, and as far as he knows it’s sanctioned.”

  “Agreed, sir. But the other matter...”

  “...does present us with a problem,” Hansen finished for her.

  “Yes, sir. It does.”

  He turned to gaze out the window again. Somehow he found it easier to issue bad-tasting orders that way. “Put some eyes and ears on her, Commander. Have her followed...discreetly. Monitor all of her communications, activities, etcetera. You know the drill.”

  “Yes, sir,” she responded quietly, pretty sure she knew what he must have thought of his own orders.

  “Observation only, Commander. I don’t want her movements restricted or her personal life interfered with in any way without my authorization. It’s bad enough we’re about to steal her fiancé away from her, probably forever. I don’t want to hurt the poor girl any more than I absolutely have to.”

  “Yes, sir.” With that, Royer left the office to fetch Lieutenant Graves.

  He stood there, staring down into space, and then back up at the Earth. Was it his sense of duty to Earth and the Coalition that had led him to decide to send the lieutenant back, or was it really his nightmares that were motivating him? Could he possibly be that selfish?

  * * *

  Sometime later—Hansen had lost track of time and had no idea how long he’d been standing there staring out his window—the door opened again. “I’m here with Lieutenant Graves per your request, Admiral,” Royer said, announcing their arrival.

  “I take it you wanted to see me, sir?” the lieutenant asked, obviously not pleased.

  Hansen grinned. Apparently, Liz had been less than polite in delivering his invitation to the lieutenant. “Take a seat, Lieutenant,” he said. Dylan did so. “Did you and Miss DeGaetano enjoy the festivities the other night?”

  “She enjoyed them, sir. I tried to, but I find the harsh reality of what’s happening to the Tor’Kana to be a little distracting.”

  “You hid it well enough, just as we had to. You see, there still aren’t very many of us who know about the Tor’Kana situation. If word got out...”

  “Yes, sir, I know,” Dylan said. “Panic. You made it very clear that it’s classified.”

  “Yes, I did. Anyway, Commander Royer and I have discussed further the matter of your first assignment and made some decisions. As of this morning I’ve decided to reconsider your mission assignment choices.”

  “There’s another choice, sir?”

  Hansen finally turned his back on the window and started to answer, but then he noticed the lieutenant’s appearance and held back. Rather than report in uniform, which would have been the appropriate thing to do, he’d pulled on a pair of old jeans and a button-down shirt that he hadn’t even tucked in.

  And Dylan knew exactly what the admiral was looking at. “She barely gave me enough time to throw this on, sir.”

  The admiral looked at Royer and told her, “Another five minutes wouldn’t have made a difference, Commander.”

  “Sorry, sir,” she responded. “I’ll keep that in mind next time.”

  Setting the issue of the lieutenant’s appearance aside, Hansen looked him in the eye and said, “No, Lieutenant, there’s not another choice. There’s only one choice. You’re going back.”

  “I’m... Wait a minute, Admiral. You gave me a choice. You said...”

  “I know what I said, Lieutenant, but now I’m saying something else. The only constant in military service is change. You’ve been a soldier long enough to know that.”

  “Yes, sir, but this is...”

  “You’re going, Lieutenant. That’s a direct order, if it needs to be.”

  Dylan stared deep into the admiral’s eyes. He’d given Professor Min’para’s words a lot of thought over the weekend and was convinced that he’d already been subjected to a mind-edit. Further, he felt sure that Commander Royer was the one directly responsible for it. And he could see clearly now, as he’d only suspected earlier, that something serious was bothering the admiral. But what? Aside from the memory-edit, what were the admiral and the commander trying to hide from him? What was it that they were so afraid to reveal?

  Whatever it was, it was up to the professor to discover it now.

  “You know, Lieutenant, there is one other possible benefit to this mission that we didn’t talk about before,” Royer said.

  “What’s that?” Dylan asked doubtfully.

  “In addition to saving your father’s life, not to mention the entire Coalition, you may also save the lives of your Ranger squad.”

  Dylan thought about that for a moment. He had to admit she had a good point, and that might have been enough to make him change his mind if it had mattered anymore. It didn’t, of course. The admiral had just given him a direct order to, for all intents and purposes, disappear. He had no choice but to obey that order. At least for now. But later? Later might be another story entirely. What would they say, he wondered, if he told them that he knew they’d subjected him to a memory-edit? Might the admiral let him off the hook?

  Or might Royer kill him where he stood?

  Better to keep his mouth shut until he knew the answer. “Well,” he finally responded, throwing up his hands. “If you’re going to make it a direct order, I guess you’ve got your man.”

  Commander Royer grinned. “Outstanding,” she said.

  “That may be your opinion, ma’am,” Dylan told her flatly, “but I have a fiancée who I’d prefer not to leave behind, and who I’d very much like to still be engaged to when I return.” Addressing Hansen, he asked, “May I ask now how you propose to send
me back, Admiral?”

  Royer reached into her jacket and took out a small envelope, which she handed to Dylan. “These are your identicards and instructions. You may use the reader in my office down the hall to review them. You’ll find the equipment you’re going to need in a small bag next to my desk. The bag is yours to keep, but...”

  “Well that’s mighty generous of you,” Dylan cracked.

  “...but don’t take it back with you,” Royer finished, ignoring his remark. “The company that manufactured it didn’t exist until a few years ago. You won’t need it anyway.”

  “Understood.”

  “Any questions?” Hansen asked.

  Dylan snickered. “Hundreds, sir, but I’ll start with, ‘What if,’ etcetera.”

  “We obviously can’t plan for every contingency,” Royer answered for the admiral. “But I know you to be a man who thinks fast, Lieutenant. You’ll know what to do if you run into any difficulties back there.”

  “Thank you, Commander. That’s very comforting.”

  “Enough of the sarcasm, Lieutenant,” Hansen warned. “On your way.”

  “Yes, sir.” And with that, Dylan stood up, glared briefly at Royer, and then turned and left the officers to their business. And as the door closed behind him and he headed down the hall, he reminded himself that he was one of ‘the officers’ himself now.

  Chapter 54

  Dylan stood in front of the full-length mirror and gazed at his reflection. Dressed per his recorded instructions in his old charcoal-gray and black Military Police uniform, another uniform he’d held onto despite believing that he’d never wear it again, he couldn’t help but think back to that time not so long ago when he’d worn it every day. Those had been good years. He’d worked with a lot of good people, some of whom he still thought about from time to time. There had been some hard times, too, of course. The occasional loss in the line of duty of a fellow MP or other shipmate, an idiot supervisor who didn’t know squat about how to be a leader—of course, no one would ever be able to hold a candle to Sergeant Carlson—a marriage that had grown steadily more troublesome as time went on. But looking back he couldn’t help but wonder what might have been, had he never left the Military Police.