Solfleet: Beyond the Call

by Glenn Smith

  The policeman approached, somewhat cautiously at first, as though he were concerned that Dylan might suddenly jump up and attack him. Then, when he’d come to within a couple feet of him, he leaned in, raised the small cylinder in front of him, and sprayed Dylan’s forehead with the contents—most likely some kind of antiseptic because it burned like salt and alcohol. Then he swapped the cylinder for a self-adhesive bandage, which he applied over the wound. Finally, he tore open a moist wipe and proceeded to clean the blood from Dylan’s face.

  When he finished he resealed the wipe in its wrapper and pocketed it, then stepped back and pulled a handcomp from its belt pouch and tapped in an entry. He turned completely around, obviously creating a three-hundred sixty degree visual record of the location, and then resumed questioning the cadets. “Did you notice anyone else in the alley, or leaving the alley before you discovered the victim?”

  “No, sir. No one,” Cosgrove answered.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, sir,” Cosgrove assured him.

  The policeman tapped some more information into his handcomp. Then he asked, “What exactly were you doing in the alley in the first place?”

  “We weren’t in the alley, sir,” Josh answered. “I mean, we were in there when we found him, of course, but...”

  “We were walking by the alley and heard him moaning,” Cosgrove interjected, saving his nervous friend from possibly talking them both into a jail cell. “We decided to investigate, to see if someone needed help.”

  “I see.” The policeman entered more information into his handcomp.

  “If I may ask, sir, are you going to have to write up some kind of a report?” Cosgrove asked him.

  The policeman looked up from his handcomp and glared at Cosgrove as though the cadet had just asked him the most asinine question in history. “This man has obviously been assaulted, son,” he pointed out. “I don’t see that I have any choice in the matter. Do you?”

  “I suppose not,” Cosgrove replied, visibly discouraged. “It’s just that life at the university is tough enough for us as it is. We’re both first-year pre-med students and R-O-T-C cadets. Our days are filled to capacity with classes and studies and... The last thing either one of us needs is to get ourselves wrapped up in the local judicial system.”

  “We’ll avoid that if we can,” the policeman told him. “Now, either of you gentlemen know this man?”

  “No sir,” the cadets answered in unison.

  “So you’re just helping him out of the kindness of your hearts?”

  “Yes, sir,” Cosgrove answered, sounding a bit taken aback by the policeman’s sarcastic undertones.

  “He is a fellow service member and all,” Josh added.

  “I don’t know,” the policeman said, his tone more skeptical now than sarcastic. “I got a lot of years working these streets. I don’t come across too many good Samaritans around here. Not even among you cadets. I think maybe I should take you all down to the precinct house until I can identify this man and sort out exactly what happened to him.”

  “He’s already told us his name,” Cosgrove informed him.

  “Yeah?”

  “My name’s Dylan Graves, Officer,” Dylan interjected. “Sergeant Dylan Graves, Solfleet Security Police.”

  “Yeah, I recognize the uniform,” the policeman informed him. “Do you have some I-D to go with it? My twelve year old son could buy a surplus uniform.”

  “Yes, I do,” Dylan reached into his breast pocket, pulled out one of the false identicards Commander Royer had provided him with during his mission prep—it felt like they were all still there, although he wouldn’t know for sure until he got a chance to check—and held it out to the policeman, who leaned in just enough to reach out and take it from him then backed away again. The policeman slipped the card into his handcomp’s reader and gazed at the screen. Then, just a few seconds later, apparently satisfied with Dylan’s identification, he pulled it out and handed it back, and asked with a much softer and more civil demeanor, “Do you have any idea who did this to you, Sergeant Graves?”

  “I don’t have a clue, Officer,” Dylan answered, shaking his head only briefly, which he immediately regretted, as he slipped his identicard back into his pocket behind the other ones. “I can’t even say for sure that anyone did it to me. I don’t remember how I got to this part of town in the first place, so for all I know I might have cracked my head on something and knocked myself out.”

  “Or, for all you know, these fine young cadets might have assaulted you,” the policeman countered. “As unlikely as that might seem.”

  “It wasn’t them,” Dylan assured the policeman. “I’m sure of that much. I’ve never seen either one of them before now.”

  “How can you know that for sure if you can’t even remember how you got here?” the policeman asked.

  “I just know.”

  The policeman appeared to think that over for a few moments, then decided, “All right. I’ll accept that for now. Contact us immediately if you remember anything that might be helpful. Same goes for you two,” he added, pointing at both cadets in turn. “For now I guess you better go ahead and get him to your doctors. That dressing I put on his wound is only good for the short term. If I need anything else from any of you, I’ll contact you through the university.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cosgrove responded when Josh didn’t say anything.

  “And don’t worry, Sergeant Graves. I got eyes and ears all over this neighborhood. If you were assaulted, sooner or later I’ll find out who did it. No way in hell will I or any other officer in my department tolerate a cop being attacked. Not in this city.”

  “Thank you, Officer. I appreciate that,” Dylan told him.

  “You’re welcome.” With that, the policeman waived them off. “Go on.”

  The cadets helped Dylan back to his feet and led him away.

  Chapter 2

  Mars Orbital Shipyards

  Special Agent Jennifer Barrett of the Solfleet Criminal Investigations Division lounged comfortably in her old sweat pants and a tee shirt, stretched out in her over-stuffed living room recliner, fully engrossed in the climactic final chapter of Jack Grist’s latest crime novel, ‘A Dish Best Served Cold.’ No doubt like many of his millions of other loyal fans, Jennifer had loved the great Jack Grist’s work since the very first time she’d ever read it. She’d read every novel he’d ever written just as fast as she could get her hands on them. A dozen and a half world-wide best-sellers so far and still going strong with no end in sight. The downside to reading his work with such voraciousness, of course, was that he only published a new novel every two or three years, so she always had to wait a long time after finishing one for next one to hit the market.

  She grinned with approval as she came to the novel’s end, thoroughly pleased with the unexpected twist and surprising conclusion. Jack Grist had done it again... as if she’d ever had any doubt.

  She glanced at her watch. Normal duty hours were over and most of her coworkers had probably already gone home for the night. But even now, this late in the day, she still felt a little ill at ease about having sat home all day, almost as though she’d done something wrong by not going in when most everyone else was at work. She hadn’t done anything wrong, of course. The agent-in-charge had given both her and Ashley the day off to rest up and prepare for tonight’s operation. But it still felt strange to have not gone in. Perhaps when she had a little more time as an accredited agent under her belt taking time off wouldn’t make her feel so uneasy... she hoped.

  Still, despite those uneasy feelings, it had been a pretty relaxing day. For the first time in months she’d slept in until almost ten o’clock and had eaten a simple breakfast alone, at her own table. Then she’d showered and dressed, gone out to lunch with Ashley, and then returned to her quarters where she’d quickly changed back into her sweats and proceeded to laze around for the rest of the day, watching virtuavid movies and reading her Grist book.

 
She turned off her reader and set it on the end table, then raised her hands up high and stretched from head to toe as she yawned. Then, as she relaxed again, her thoughts turned to the operation she and Ashley were going to conduct soon. Though they’d only planned it a couple of days ago, it had seemed a long time in coming. They’d worked hard and put in numerous extra hours to reach their current point in the investigation.

  Nearly two weeks had passed since she’d stumbled onto… onto whatever it was she had stumbled onto. She’d spent that entire Tuesday in the office programming her computer terminal to interface with the Solfleet Personnel Database. That way she’d be able to run routine audits on the financial records of all Solfleet personnel assigned to the shipyard... strictly for investigative purposes, of course. She was, after all, a fully trained and accredited gold badge-carrying Special Agent with Solfleet’s Criminal Investigations Division—she still couldn’t believe she’d actually made it through the Academy—so she had that kind of authority. And, as her own new personal motto stated, a proactive agent was an effective agent.

  She’d just tied in the program and ordered a test audit when the computer came back with a hit. A review of what it found had revealed that a very large deposit had recently been made into the payroll account of one Crewman Omar Al-Sharif from Personnel, in an amount roughly equivalent to one year’s worth of his salary. Jennifer had only been a working agent for a few weeks at the time and was only just beginning to feel her own way along, taking shots in the dark to discover for herself which proactive investigative methods might prove the most productive for her and which ones might be a waste of her time. She’d only run the preliminary audit to test the program’s functionality. She certainly hadn’t expected to find anything on the first run through, and truth be told, the fact that she’d inadvertently stumbled onto something of likely significance so quickly had left her a little flustered and a little unsure of what to do with it.

  But flustered or not, she’d soon figured out exactly what she had to do according to the proverbial book, and she’d done it without any hesitation. She’d briefed her supervisor on what she’d discovered and how she’d discovered it, and under his direction had initiated an official investigation. Her very first. But rather than begin by interviewing the crewman as her older and much more experienced supervisor had suggested, she’d decided, ultimately with his approval, to approach the case more covertly.

  She’d started by sitting down and talking to Al-Sharif’s commanding officer and senior supervisors, one at a time, in confidence. She’d learned from those interviews that the crewman was one of those so-called problem children of which every unit seemed to have at least one. The kind of young troop who always managed to get himself into some kind of trouble wherever he went. He was highly intelligent, but professionally an underachiever. He maintained a poor attitude toward his duties, didn’t get along very well with his immediate supervisor or coworkers, and didn’t have very many friends if he had any at all. He never seemed to have enough money and was feeling particularly disgruntled over a recent reduction in rank he’d been given as a result of his breaking restriction after receiving non-judicial punishment for picking a barroom fight for the second time in less than a month. According to what she’d learned in the academy about the psychological profiles of different types of criminals, Crewman Omar Al-Sharif was the perfect candidate for recruitment as a spy by the enemy.

  Yes. He matched the profile perfectly. So perfectly, in fact, that he could have been the spy recruiting poster boy, had such a thing existed. But when she’d pointed that fact out to her less than impressed supervisor and asked him whether or not she should brief someone from the Solfleet Intelligence Agency, he’d responded with a lecture about how the two agencies operated independently of one another under differing and very specific mandates. In short, she couldn’t brief the S.I.A. for a whole slew of procedural reasons, not the least of which was the fact that she didn’t yet have any solid evidence that Al-Sharif had actually committed any illegal act. Let alone one that might indicate he was spying for the enemy.

  And then, adding insult to injury—at least that was how she’d felt about it at the time—Mister Personality had assigned Special Agent Ashley Urbana, herself still a probationary agent, though only for a few more weeks, to help conduct the investigation. The jerk might as well have just called her incompetent right to her face and gotten it over with.

  Fortunately, being partnered with Ashley had turned out to be a good thing. Ashley was a very nice person, though somewhat introverted perhaps, was extremely intelligent and well liked in the office, and had made it clear that she would work with her as an equal partner rather than as a superior. As the ‘newbie’ in the office, Jennifer had been feeling like she didn’t entirely fit in with the other agents. Working so closely with Ashley had brought an end to all that. Over the last week and a half the two of them had conducted both stationary and roving surveillance of Al-Sharif at least five or six times together, had run several additional public and private records checks on him, and had even obtained a warrant to tap his communications. In the short time they’d worked together they’d become pretty good friends.

  The results of the wiretap—funny that it was still referred to that way, considering that communications networks hadn’t actually used wires in more than a hundred years—had been the breakthrough that brought them to where they were in the investigation. In exchange for another large deposit into his account, Al-Sharif was to meet his contact at the NCO club in a few hours and pass him a data-chip containing a comprehensive list of all military and civilian personnel currently assigned to the shipyard. In addition to their names, the list was to include fleet service or employee identification numbers, security clearances and access levels, current and most recent previous job assignments, marital status, equivalent dependent identification information, places of birth, and homes of record—everything anyone might ever need to track them down or steal their identities.

  Exactly what Al-Sharif’s benefactors, whoever they were, wanted all that information for, neither Jennifer nor Ashley had dared venture a guess. The possibilities were endless. But the as yet unidentified party’s request—actually, it had sounded more like a firm demand—had seemed so urgent that it had prompted Jennifer to go back to her supervisor and ask him once more about bringing the S.I.A. into the investigation. His answer had been another resounding ‘No,’ but then he’d qualified it by telling her that he might reconsider, depending on what they learned after they made the arrests.

  And if everything went according to plan, she and Ashley would make those arrests this very night.

  As Jennifer thought about all the possible outcomes, she couldn’t help but imagine the lofty heights to which this investigation might lift her. What if she’d discovered a major spy ring and identified its members? What if her dedication to duty and proactive efforts directly resulted in the protection of vital information or technology or other resources? How incredibly awesome would it be if the first proactive investigation she’d ever initiated on her own drew the interest and attention of those sitting at the highest levels of Solfleet Central Command itself? She might be awarded a pretty high-profile commendation when all was said and done.

  Provided she didn’t screw the whole thing up, of course.

  She glanced at her watch again. It was time to start getting ready. Time to go to work and make a name for herself—to show everyone what an effective agent she could be. Feeling a little anxious as well as confident, she got up and went into her bedroom, pulled off her clothes and tossed them onto the bed, and then went into her bathroom to take another quick shower. When she finished she stood under the warm air dryer for a couple of minutes and then went back into her bedroom, brushed out her still slightly damp shoulder-length auburn hair, and then sat down at her dresser to apply her makeup and to go over the plan in her mind.

  First she’d stop by the office to set things into motion. Then she’d hea
d to the NCO club. She and Ashley would arrive there separately within a few minutes of each other. They’d meet at the bar and then move to a booth—they’d have to be sure to pick one that would allow them to keep an eye on the traffic entering and exiting the club—and have dinner together. To the rest of the customers, and more importantly to anyone who might be conducting counter-surveillance on behalf of the suspects, they’d appear to be nothing more than two young women enjoying an evening out together. While a few uniformed security policemen stood by not far from the club, ready to back them up if the need arose, she and Ashley would wait for Al-Sharif to show up, meet his contact, and hand over the chip.

  The rest would depend on what the suspects did after the exchange took place. Hopefully, they would split up and go their separate ways. That way she could follow one while Ashley followed the other. They could call in the security police and arrest the suspects separately, and then keep them apart during the entire interrogation process. They wouldn’t even have to be told that the other had been arrested if there appeared to be an advantage to working it that way. But if, on the other hand, the suspects left the club together... well, she and Ashley would figure out how to work with that, too. Of that Jennifer had no doubt.

  Felony arrests, a successful investigation, the recognition of her superiors and her peers, and maybe even a medal. All good things to be sure, but the immediate reality was that tonight’s operation was going to be a potentially dangerous one, given the fact that they didn’t yet know who they were dealing with, and as the time drew closer Jennifer started feeling more anxious. She’d never actually made a felony arrest before. She’d been trained to do it of course, but she’d spent nearly all of her three years with the United States Army’s Military Police Corps patrolling smaller, relatively quiet installations and had spent her months with the Solfleet Security Police in the communications center. She had very little practical experience in the field when it came to serious law enforcement work. Still, she wouldn’t have traded this opportunity for the world. After all, opportunities to conduct operations like this one were the reason she’d chosen to join the C.I.D. in the first place.