Solfleet: Beyond the Call

by Glenn Smith

  “He’s leaving,” Jennifer said as she started sliding out of the booth.

  “Wait,” Ashley said, laying a hand over Jennifer’s forearm to stop her. “I’ll go after him. You look too much like a cop, remember? You might spook him.”

  “But he might be dangerous,” Jennifer protested.

  “Hey, who’s the more experienced one here? I can take care of myself.”

  Ashley had a point. She had been an agent longer than Jennifer had been, even if only a little longer, and she held advanced degree black belts in three different styles of the martial arts. Jennifer sighed. “All right. Tall, lanky, long dark hair and a beard. Really scruffy looking. Dark trousers and a dark turtleneck. Oh, and he walks funny.”

  “Gotcha.” Ashley slid out of the booth as Jennifer settled back. “See you later.”

  “Be careful, Ashley. I don’t think he’s quite human.”

  “No fear.”

  Jennifer watched her friend leave, then looked around for the waiter and held her empty coffee cup up for him to see. He arrived in seconds with a fresh pot. “You won’t sleep for a week with all this coffee in you,” he told her as he poured.

  “I don’t think too much of it’s going to be in me very much longer,” she quipped. The waiter giggled and walked off.

  She’d meant it. Her bladder was finally beginning to protest. She needed to go now, but what if Al-Sharif left the club while she was in the restroom? She might not be able to catch up to him. Hell, she wouldn’t even know in which direction to go looking for him. Then again, he was assigned to the facility. Finding him tomorrow at his workplace wouldn’t pose a problem, unless he went AWOL and hopped a flight out tonight. She sipped her steaming hot refill very carefully and then made her decision. She’d risk it. She had little choice. She needed to go pretty badly now. If luck was against her and Al-Sharif was gone when she returned, then she’d catch up to Ashley and help her take down the civilian. Al-Sharif could wait.

  She set her cup down on the table, pulled the ‘occupied’ card out of its holder and set it next to the cup, and then got up and hurried off toward the restroom.

  * * *

  Although he’d gotten a bit of a head start and was walking at a pretty good clip, Ashley spotted the suspect easily, almost as soon as she emerged from the club. He stood at least a head taller than everyone else in the corridors, and as Jennifer had pointed out, he walked in a funny way that made him sway from side to side more than normal.

  She hurried to close the distance between them, but then hung back far enough not to draw his or anyone else’s attention, she hoped, but not so far as to risk losing sight of him for more than a few seconds at a time. After all, if she lost him, who knew when they might get another chance to apprehend him? Maybe never if he turned out to be the real careful type. And even if they did get another chance at him, he almost surely wouldn’t have whatever he’d just taken out of Crewman Al-Sharif’s pocket on him at that time. After all the man-hours she and Jennifer had put into the case, that probability was absolutely unacceptable.

  She followed him through the myriad of military facilities that made up a good eighty-five percent of the shipyards and out into the Rotunda, a combination office district and shopping mall that served as the center of commercial commerce for the entire facility. He stopped at a souvenir shop and started looking over assorted trinkets of little apparent value as though he had all the time in the world.

  She could take him down right now. She could simply walk up to him, identify herself, and place him under arrest right there in front of dozens of witnesses. Or she could wait. She could continue following him and see where he led her. If he had his own ship, she could identify it for further investigation. She could even call in its registration and have it impounded. Who knew what they might find onboard when they inventoried its contents for the record? A whole crew of co-conspirators, maybe? Perhaps all the evidence they’d need to piece this whole thing together and figure out why the information the crewman had given him was so valuable to him in the first place.

  The choice was easy. She’d wait. She’d follow him... at least for a little while longer.

  * * *

  Jennifer held her hands under the sanitizer for a few seconds, then left the restroom and went back into the club to find that it had grown even more crowded over the last few minutes. Every chair and barstool appeared to be filled and people were already starting to stand along the walls, around the edges of the dance floor, or wherever else they could find a place to stand. The evening’s entertainment, a rock band from the looks of them—two guitar players, one electric and one acoustic, a bass player, keyboards, and a drummer—was taking to the still dark stage, obviously preparing to start their first set. Any moment now the Martian war machine would come to life to announce the start of the show... according to her supervisor... which was one of the things Jennifer thought she would enjoy most about this particular club.

  She glanced over at the bar and was relieved to see Crewman Al-Sharif still sitting there, nursing his drink. She didn’t want to miss the war machine if she didn’t have to. Hopefully, he didn’t want to miss it, either.

  Suddenly, almost as though the war machine had taken its cue directly from her thoughts, the frosted green lights on its bow and at the tips of its wings began to pulsate as an eerie sound like an electronically amplified baby rattle being shaken echoed through the club. Then its long sinuous neck began to swivel, slowly panning the heat ray emitter mounted on its end back and forth from one side to the other as if to scan the audience for a target as everyone fell silent and turned their attention to the stage.

  Back and forth, back and forth, the emitter scanned, its otherworldly resonance the only sound in the otherwise silent room. Jennifer couldn’t help but smile. She’d watched the old 1953 film only a few days ago. As best she could tell, the sound effect that Manny had come up with was a nearly perfect recreation of the original. Actually, she’d watched both movies, but the original was by far her favorite, despite the overly melodramatic acting style that had been so common back when it was produced. Well, that and the fact that the leading lady had portrayed her character as little more than a terrified weakling who needed a big strong man to protect her. Such was the way of Hollywood back then.

  The sinewy neck stopped suddenly in mid swivel and the heat ray emitter glowed bright orange, then pulsated yellow in the center as the bass player started strumming a heavy beat. The house lights went dark as the heat ray ‘fired’ its flickering white strobe light, accompanied once again with a near-perfect recreation of the original screeching sound effect. Then the three green floodlights embedded in the machine’s belly snapped on, bathing everyone and everything on the stage in a ghostly green aura as the band broke into its first hard-rocking number.

  The crowd exploded into thunderous applause. Manny was truly a master!

  The strobe light stopped and the house lights came back up, though to a significantly dimmer level than before. Then, as the band played on, still awash in the green glow from above, Jennifer glanced back at the bar to make sure Al-Sharif was still...

  He was gone! He’d slipped away in the dark while everyone’s attention, including her own, was focused on the start of the show. “Damn it!” she exclaimed aloud, though no one could possibly have heard her over the music. But then she decided that it was all right. After all, there was no point in worrying about something that it was already too late to change. No problem. She and Ashley would go to his workplace and arrest him tomorrow. For now she’d just go catch up to Ashley and help her take down the other guy.

  She squeezed up to the bar between two scantily clad girls who barely looked old enough to be there, flagged down the bartender, and handed him her identicard. “Cash me out, please,” she hollered over the din. The bartender swiped her card through his machine and handed it back to her, entered his code, and then held the keypad out to her. She held it close to her body where no one else could see
it—better safe than sorry—and tapped in her personal code, then pressed her right thumb to the scanner pad, which lit bright white for a second and then blinked off. “Thank you,” she shouted as she handed the pad back to him. Then she made her way quickly toward the exit.

  She snatched the beer off Manny Junior’s head as she passed, then handed it to one of the little green ladies at the door on her way out. “Complements of Manny Junior,” she told her as she passed her by.

  “Thanks,” the lady replied, confusion twisting her features.

  As soon as the doors closed behind her and she could hear herself think, she pulled her comm-link from her jacket’s inside pocket and hooked it over her left ear. “Charlie-six, this is Charlie-seven, come in,” she called as she started down the corridor, but Ashley didn’t respond. “Charlie-six, come in, please. It’s Jennifer.” Still no response. She ducked into a sitting area off the side of the corridor to escape the occasional passersby’s curious glances and prying ears, and then lowered her voice to a near whisper. “Ashley, it’s Jennifer. Come in,” she pleaded, growing concerned. “Ashley, come in, please!” Still nothing. No response of any kind, and she was really beginning to worry.

  She tapped her link. “Security Control, this is Charlie-seven.”

  “This is Rasmussen,” the answer came immediately. “Go ahead, Charlie-seven.”

  At least she knew her comm-link was working properly, though she almost wished that it weren’t. “Have you heard from Charlie-six in the last few minutes, Sergeant?”

  “Not a word, Charlie-seven. Isn’t she with you?”

  “Negative. We split up. She hasn’t called in for the S-P backup?”

  “Negative, Charlie-seven.”

  Jennifer drew a deep breath to try to relax, hoping... praying that nothing terrible had happened to her friend. Why the hell had she let her go off on her own? “All right, Sergeant,” she said. “I can’t raise her on the link. Tell your people to start searching for her.”

  “Will do, Charlie-seven. I’ll let you know if we hear anything. Security Control, out.”

  Jennifer left her comm-link in place over her ear and hurried back into the corridor. She picked up her pace until she was almost jogging, until she reached the first cross corridor, where she stopped. She looked one way and then the other. Not knowing which way to go, she decided to try calling her again. “Charlie-six? Ashley? Can you hear me?” Still nothing.

  She looked up and down the cross corridor again. Which way?

  * * *

  Doing her best to maintain her same discreet distance, Ashley followed her suspect across the heart of the crowded Rotunda and out the other side, through a veritable labyrinth of twists and turns, across a pair of elevated walkways, and down several side corridors. Were it not for the fact that she’d been stationed at the shipyards for several months already and had spent a lot of her spare time wandering through the shops and exploring the civilian side of the facility, he’d have gotten her completely lost. As it was, she still had to remind herself where she was and go over and over how to get back to the military side in her mind in order to avoid it.

  She lost sight of him when he rounded a corner about forty feet ahead of her and she felt that momentary surge of panic again that had set her heart pounding every other time he’d done that—at least a couple dozen times already, and she’d feared losing him each and every time. Once again she thought about quickening her pace to close the distance between them, but she didn’t dare run the risk that he might notice her following him if she closed that gap too quickly. After all, despite her persistent fears, she hadn’t lost him yet, so better to maintain her distance. And even if she did lose him, it wasn’t like he’d be a difficult target to reacquire. Besides, the crowd was beginning to thin, so tracking him was only getting easier.

  As she drew nearer the corner, she glanced down at the highly shined surface of the deck and across the side corridor to the far wall, looking for any reflections or shadows that might indicate he was waiting for her just around the corner, ready to attack. She saw nothing like that, so proceeded around the turn...

  ...and barely caught a glimpse of him as he turned the other direction down another side corridor nearly twice as far ahead of her as he had been only moments ago. Her heart pounded as the panic surged through her once more, but this time she knew that panic was justified. The suspect had quickened his pace significantly! He’d spotted her! He knew she was following him and was making a break for it!

  She broke into a jog and ran all the way to that next corner where she stopped, but only briefly. Again, no reflections or shadows. She peered first and then stepped around the corner. Nothing. Nothing! He was gone! She’d lost him and he was going to get away!

  She hurried after him, noticing for the first time, now that the crowd had thinned, just how loudly her boots clomped on the deck, their noise echoing through the corridors—obviously not the wisest choice, those boots. She soon reached another four-way intersection. Still nothing! Nothing in any direction! “Damn it!” she exclaimed. Which way?

  She heard a yelp and then a crash from somewhere down the curved corridor to her right. A tumultuous noise like that of a stack of hard plastic plates tumbling to the deck. “Hey, watch it, asshole!” someone down there shouted afterwards. She took off running in that direction. It had to be him. He’d collided with someone in his rush to escape. No more covert operation. No more roving surveillance. This was an all-out pursuit.

  She nearly ran over a young, clean-cut and well-dressed professional type who was in the process of spouting off a variety of colorful epithets while he tried to pick several handcomps up off the deck without dropping them again, one of which she accidentally kicked several meters farther down the corridor as she ran by, instantly making herself the target of his second tirade. She apologized without slowing down, then soon reached a T-intersection and spotted the subject running full speed—and she’d thought he walked funny—down the corridor to the right, still well ahead of her but not as far as before. She ran after him.

  Two right turns. He was doubling back.

  “Halt! Police!” she shouted. But he kept running. “Stop!” She was gaining ground. It was only a matter of seconds now before she would catch him.

  He glanced back at her briefly and then kept running even faster.

  “I said STOP!” she shouted.

  Thirty feet. Twenty feet. Ten. Five. She dove into the backs of his knees and threw her arms tightly around his legs, bringing him down like an all-star safety making a great open field tackle. But as she started to scramble back to her feet, knowing that she had to gain full control over him as quickly as she could, he drew a leg back and kicked her hard in her chest, knocking her several feet backwards to the deck with a resounding thud. Then he jumped back to his feet and started running away again.

  “Son of a bitch!” she shouted, cradling her aching breasts in one arm as she struggled to get up off the deck.

  She ran after him again, and this time, thanks to his making a wrong turn and coming to a dead end, she caught up to him quickly. He turned and faced her, stared at her through almost demonic eyes as his chest rose and fell with deep, rapid breaths.

  “All right!” she shouted. She was winded as well, but not nearly as out of breath as he appeared to be. “You tried your best. You tried to escape, but you failed. It was a good try, but you got caught. That’s just the way it is.

  “My name is Special Agent Ashley Urbana, Solfleet Criminal Investigations Division. You’re under arrest for unauthorized possession of classified information, bribery, and suspicion of conspiracy to commit a criminal act.” A bit of a stretch that last one, but it sounded good. “Now turn around and face away from me, get down on your knees and cross your ankles, and put your hands on top of your head and interlace your fingers.”

  He made no move to comply.

  “Do it now!” she demanded. “Do it now or I’ll drop you right where you stand!”


  Still, he did not comply. Maybe he didn’t understand English. Ashley pointed first at him and then down at the deck and whirled her finger around in a circle. Then she waved her whole hand down toward the deck. Surely he’d understand what all that was supposed to mean. But he still didn’t move a muscle. He only stood there and stared at her, so she started walking toward him, cautiously but not too slowly. She didn’t want him to think she was afraid of him.

  Suddenly he roared like a madman and swung his hand at the side of her head like some kind of wild animal batting at its prey, but she had quick reflexes and easily ducked under the swipe, and then rammed her fist straight into his gut with all her might, forcing the air from his lungs and doubling him over. Then she sidestepped and kicked down and out to the back of his nearest knee and struck the back of his neck with the blade of her hand, and he collapsed face down to the deck.

  She dropped quickly to one knee, planting it squarely and firmly in the center of his back before he could gather his wits enough to try to fight her again. Then she grabbed his arms and interlaced his fingers behind his back and held them together that way as tightly as she could. “My God!” she exclaimed when her eyes fell on his long, pointed, jagged-edged fingernails. “You, my tall, lanky, funny-walking friend, are in serious need of a manicure!”

  She reached up with her free hand to tap her comm-link and found only her ear, and only then realized that she hadn’t communicated with anyone for the entire time she’d been following the suspect. She hadn’t even notified the SP patrol assigned to back her up that she was on the move. No one knew where she was. She reached down inside her top and pulled her comm-link out from the middle of her bra where she’d hidden it, then hooked it over her ear and gave it a tap. “Charlie-six to Security Control,” she called.

  “Security Control here. You okay, Charlie-six? Where are you?”