Solfleet: Beyond the Call

by Glenn Smith

  “Outstanding, Delta-two! Do you need any assistance?”

  “Negative, Control. Suspect is restrained. We can handle him.”

  “Copy that, Delta-two. See you shortly. Control out.”

  “Come on, Marty,” Schmidt said as he leaned down and grabbed the suspect by an arm. “Let’s take this shit bag to the brig where he belongs.”

  Wallenberg holstered his sidearm and then grabbed hold of the suspect’s other arm and helped his partner lift him up off the deck and onto his feet, but as soon as they started leading him back toward the gymnasium exit he started struggling again. Somehow he managed to break free and start running, but Schmidt dashed after him and kicked his rear foot to the side behind his other one, causing him to trip over himself and fall face first back down onto the deck with a very satisfying thud and airy grunt.

  “You should be more careful, shit bag,” Schmidt told him as he and Wallenberg grabbed him by the arms and lifted him back to his feet once more. “It’s pretty dark in here. If you’re not careful you might trip over something.”

  “Chicken wing him,” Wallenberg said, laughing at his partner’s joke.

  Each of them slipped their inner arm up under the suspect’s arms and grabbed a shoulder, then straightened their arms downward, forcing the suspect to bend forward at the waist and raise his cuffed hands up into the air behind him.

  “Watch your step now, shit bag,” Schmidt warned him. “You wouldn’t want to fall down and bust your ugly face six or seven more times.”

  * * *

  Despite the warning from Security Control ordering everyone to stay indoors, the mother and children had long since left the medbay. It might not have been the smartest thing to do, but Jennifer couldn’t really blame the mother for wanting to take her children home. After all, given the choice between going home and staying there or hanging out in the emergency room’s waiting room, who wouldn’t choose to go home? Besides, the shipyards were a huge facility. The chances of them actually encountering the suspect were pretty slim, so it hadn’t really been that much of a gamble. More than likely they’d made it home just fine.

  She and Commander Ansara, on the other hand, were still sitting quietly side-by-side in the waiting room, all alone now, still waiting for some word from Ashley’s doctors. All they’d told them so far was that Ashley was stable and no longer in critical condition. But while the worst of the danger seemed to have passed, a number of questions still swirled through Jennifer’s mind. Would she recover fully or would she have to live out the rest of her life permanently disfigured? And what about her mental and emotional states? How would nearly being killed in the line of duty affect her on that level, especially if her injuries left her physically scarred? Would she ever be able to return to duty? Would she even want to return?

  “Commander Ansara?” a gentle voice came from a speaker in the center of the ceiling. It sounded like the young woman who’d replaced the older man at the nurse’s desk, but Jennifer couldn’t be sure. She hadn’t really paid all that much attention.

  “Yes?” Ansara answered.

  “We just received a call from Security Control, sir. Sergeant Rasmussen, I think his name was. He asked me to inform you that your suspect has been arrested without further incident and that he’s being brought in at this time.”

  “Thank you, nurse.” He turned to Jennifer and told her, “I’m going back to my quarters to change. Then I’m going down there to get a piece of this guy myself. You want to go, too, or are you going to stay here?”

  “I’m going to stay, sir.”

  “All right. Feel free to give me call if you need anything.” He stood up, then added, “And take the day off tomorrow. Spend it with Ashley if they’ll let you. You’re not going to be in any shape to work after tonight anyway.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Ansara gazed down at her for another moment and then turned to leave, but just then an attractive olive-skinned woman in slightly blood-stained surgical scrubs walked into the room and he stopped. “Commander Ansara?” she asked as she approached them. “Agent Barrett?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jennifer answered as she stood up.

  “I’m Doctor Rhea Zapala,” she began, speaking with a vague hint of some kind of accent. Indian perhaps, or maybe Pakistani. “I’m the chief medical officer and lead surgeon here, and I’ve been treating Special Agent Urbana since they brought her in.”

  “How is she, Doctor?” Jennifer asked, quietly wondering why Ashley’s lead surgeon was only now coming out to talk to them for the first time.

  “She’s responding well to treatment, for the most part. The P-P-G burns on her hands and around her face were a lot more serious than we originally thought and we almost lost her twice. Judging from how heavy and narrowly focused the blast was, my guess is that she was hit from no more than three feet away. Now, why such a close range shot didn’t burn through her hands completely I cannot say, but thanks be to God it didn’t because it appears she was hiding her face behind her hands at the time.”

  “Which suggests that whatever happened to her eyes happened before she was shot with the P-P-G,” Ansara reasoned. When Jennifer looked at him he looked back at her and explained, “You don’t command C-I-D agents for this long without picking up a few things.”

  “Exactly right, Commander,” Zapala confirmed. “Something had already happened to her face, in particular to her eyes, and her instinctive reaction to that event, whatever it was, was to bury her face in her hands. If she had taken that P-P-G shot directly to her face...”

  “Wait a second,” Jennifer interrupted, raising a hand to silence the doctor. “What do you mean ‘something’ had already happened to her face? Don’t you know what happened?”

  “Right now that’s the big question, Agent Barrett. There’s no bruising or blunt force trauma in or around the swollen area, so we know she wasn’t beaten with anything. Her blisters indicate some sort of chemical burn, but so far we haven’t been able to isolate and identify any foreign substances in the tissue.” She drew a deep breath, exhaled, then finished her preliminary report by adding, “Until we do that, I’m afraid there’s no way to know whether or not she’ll ever regain her natural sight.”

  “Her natural sight!” Jennifer gasped. “But I thought... You mean she’s blind?”

  “For now, yes,” Zapala answered calmly, “but it may only be temporary. If it proves not to be, then we can look into giving her biotronic implants. Either way, her blindness will not be permanent, assuming the optic nerves themselves are not damaged.”

  “What about her burns, Doctor?” Ansara asked. “How bad are they?”

  “Those on her ears and around her face are going to require minor tissue regeneration. Her hands, however, are another story entirely. The skin was burned away completely and roughly fifty percent of the internal soft tissue was destroyed beyond repair. Most of the bones were damaged as well. The bottom line is, we can reconstruct them, but after we do that she’s going to need several weeks or perhaps even months of physical therapy to regain complete use of them.”

  “But she will regain use of them?”

  “Yes, I think so. I don’t foresee any problems with that. No physical problems, at least,” she clarified after a moment’s consideration. “I’ll be more concerned about her psychological condition by then, I think.”

  “Why?” Jennifer asked.

  “She’s just been through a very traumatic experience, Agent Barrett. Such things have a way of changing people—of making them withdraw from others and turn inward. Sometimes they become suicidal.

  “Ashley won’t have that problem,” Jennifer assured them both. “I’ll be right there by her side all the way.”

  Zapala smiled. “I’m glad to hear you say that. She’s going to need a friend.”

  “In the relatively short time they’ve been working together they’ve become more like sisters than friends,” Ansara pointed out. “Practically inseparable.”
<
br />   “That’s good, sir,” Zapala said. “That’s exactly what Agent Urbana is going to need.”

  “Can I see her?” Jennifer asked.

  “In a few minutes. We’re moving her to the intensive care unit. She’ll be asleep, but you can look in on her if you like, once we’ve settled her in.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Now, if you’ll both excuse me, I have to take care of her admission.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Ansara said as Zapala walked away. Then he turned to Jennifer and said, “I’m going to go now. Try to get some sleep tonight, all right.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He laid his hand on her shoulder, gave it a gentle squeeze and said, “I’ll talk to you later,” than left the emergency room.

  Jennifer glanced down at her chair, but decided to stand for a while.

  Chapter 9

  A huge explosion suddenly rocked the main hall and the shockwave knocked Dylan and Marissa and the girl backward to the ground. Seconds later the entire building crumbled into a pile of rubble. The armory went up in a thunderous eruption of flames as well, but its specially designed structure directed the blast and subsequent detonations of ammunition and explosives upward, into the night sky.

  As a shower of smoldering debris rained down on the compound, terrorist and Sulaini Regular Army troops alike poured out of both ends of the barracks, only to be mowed down by Matrewski, Greenburg, and LeClerc at one end, and Shin at the other before they ever had a chance to join the fight.

  Dylan jumped up, his pain quenched by the mad rush of adrenaline that surged through his bloodstream, but as he and Marissa helped the girl back to her feet, dozens of huge, muscular, heavily body-armored Veshtonn blood-warriors began to appear all around them, seemingly out of nowhere. The compound screamed with pulse-rifle and automatic weapons fire. Seconds later a pair of Solfleet assault shuttles soared into view and hovered just meters off the ground, their onboard and pod-mounted weapons firing in all directions while friendly troops dropped to the ground firing from both sides.

  Dylan caught a glimpse of Shin as she collapsed motionless to the dirt. Then something burned his thigh. He glanced down at it, and just as he realized that he’d been shot, his right shoulder exploded in a burst of searing agony so intense that he couldn’t even scream as he stumbled backward to the ground, dragging the girl down on top of him.

  “Sergeant Graves is down!” Marissa hollered as she bent down to pull the girl off of him. But she lost her balance and fell as well. She struggled to her hands and knees, only to fall face down into the dirt again.

  The battle raged on.

  Dylan’s pain faded to numbness. Good. The wound wasn’t that bad. He rolled onto his stomach, retrieved his rifle, and staggered to his feet, determined to stay in the fight. But as he plodded forward, unable even to raise his rifle, his head suddenly snapped back.

  Dylan jumped in his seat and snapped instantly awake, but it took him a few moments to remember where... and when... he was. He drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly as he wiped the sweat from his brow. The nightmares again. When would they ever end? Would they ever end? Until about a month ago he’d thought he’d finally gotten over them several months earlier, not too long after he was wounded again while trying to rescue his neighbor from the kidnappers he’d seen grab her right out of her apartment. But then they’d returned, sometime during the night following his last mission briefing. As he recalled, they’d frightened Beth even more than they’d frightened him.

  Beth. That had been their first night together and she’d been wounded as well. Now they were engaged to be married. If only he hadn’t...

  God, he missed her.

  A metal-on-metal clanging noise drew his attention back to the present. Well, back to the current present at least. The other passengers had begun unfastening their harnesses and standing and retrieving their carry-on items from the storage bins. He gazed out the window to his left and saw that they had already docked, then unfastened his own harness and stood up, being careful not to bump his head on the bottom of the storage bin right above him. He yawned and stretched as best he could, then stood in place while he waited to disembark.

  During the nine months he’d served with the Rangers, he’d grown accustomed to having to deal with the nervous, gut-wrenching anticipation of combat that had often accompanied him aboard those flights that had carried him into it. But this time, armed with the knowledge that he wasn’t flying into harm’s way, he’d actually been able to relax and enjoy the flight into space. At least until he dozed off, which was something he’d almost never been able to do on any flight before, even as a child. Had it not been for the nightmares returning to haunt his slumber, the flight to Mandela Station might actually have been a restful one.

  A few minutes later, when the passengers finally started shuffling forward to disembark, he shuffled right along with them and made his way up through the long, over lit, plastisteel-gray aerobridge, starting and stopping, starting and stopping, again and again and again. Like cattle being herded into a corral, he mused, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

  A pair of glances out through the long transluminum windows on either side of the tunnel quickly reminded him of the first time he’d ever experienced that view, more than a decade ago, back in Basic Training. He and about two-hundred of his fellow recruits had been marching by twos like Noah’s animals to the ark on their way to board the S.S. Terceira for the trip to a world Solfleet had nicknamed ‘Lucifer’s Lair,’ where they were due to go through Final Phase—a world they’d never reached, as it had turned out. The tunnel lights had suddenly dimmed and a flashing light from somewhere off to his right had caught his attention. He’d looked out and had seen the starcarrier U.E.F.S. Victory floating majestically in the distance, her numerous running lights blinking in unison every few seconds, probably preparing for departure.

  The Victory. How different she had looked the last time he saw her.

  This time things were very different. Tonight, except for the vessel he’d just arrived on, this particular docking bay appeared to be empty.

  The Victory had been one hell of a big ship compared to her sisters. As a matter of fact, with the exception of the brand new six-nacelle battlecarrier Excalibur that he’d seen on his way to find Benny, the Victory was probably still the largest vessel that he’d ever laid eyes on. And judging from the condition she’d been in the last time he saw her—judging from the incredible pounding that she’d obviously taken—he’d probably find her the focus of some of the tallest tales in Solfleet history when he got back home to his own time.

  Assuming he ever did get back home.

  Finally, he passed through the airlock and stepped out into the large passenger terminal, where official representatives of various organizations were standing by, waiting to assist anyone who might need directions to a particular area of the station or some other sort of help. Most of the represented organizations were civilian, though a few did somehow relate to the government, but all of them were strictly Earth-based... which, of course, made perfect sense, given the time period. Solfleet’s representative turned out to be a fairly tall and very attractive young female crewman with long sandy-blond hair and blue eyes, and Dylan noticed immediately that she was wearing the short-sleeved and very short-skirted class-C uniform that, in his own era, the women of the fleet rarely if ever wore anymore. She certainly had the legs for it.

  “My goodness!” the young woman exclaimed, looking Dylan over as he approached her. “What on Earth happened to you, mate?” She spoke with a strong Australian accent.

  As he drew closer to her, Dylan realized that she was even taller than he’d thought. In fact, she was nearly as tall as he was. “Is that how you always greet new arrivals?” he asked her in return, smiling warmly so she’d know she hadn’t offended him. She really was very pretty—probably why she’d been selected for this duty.

  She smiled back at him. “Not at all,” she a
nswered. “I usually just say ‘Good evening and welcome to Mandela Station,’ but then new arrivals don’t usually show up wearing a uniform in such poor condition.”

  “Yeah, well...” he half-replied, self-consciously looking himself over. “I uh... I ran into a little trouble back in Philadelphia.”

  “I should say so,” she agreed, readily accepting his explanation. “Allow me to welcome you to Mandela Station anyway, and to Solfleet Orbital Headquarters, where being seen wearing a uniform in that condition in public by the wrong people can bring you a lot more trouble.”

  “Of a kind very unlike the trouble yours could bring, no doubt,” he mumbled.

  “What?” she asked, inspecting her own appearance with genuine concern. “What do you mean, Sergeant? What’s wrong with my uniform?”

  “Nothing,” Dylan told her, shaking his head and grinning. “It looks fine, really.”

  “Then why would you...”

  “It’s late,” he offered. “I’m just a little punchy. Thank you for the warm welcome.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said, letting his comment pass. Then she asked him, “Is this your first time on Mandela Station?”

  “First time in about twenty-three years, yes,” he quipped. She wouldn’t understand the meaning behind his answer, of course, but he enjoyed making the joke nonetheless. Apparently, he was a little punchier than he’d realized. “So tell me, how do I find the...”

  She pointed off to her right. “Exit the terminal through those double doors over there and turn right,” she answered before he could even finish asking. “You’ll find the baggage claim area straight down that corridor. After you pick up your bags, take the conveyer to the fourth corridor on the left and follow that to the end. Go through the doors and you’ll be in the station proper. If you need directions from there to wherever you’re going, you can get them from the computer interface panels along the corridor walls.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Sergeant. And may I suggest you stop by Logistics first? This place is teeming with brass around every other corner. It wouldn’t do to be seen looking like that.”