Solfleet: Beyond the Call

by Glenn Smith

  “All this just happened two nights ago, Ash,” Jennifer reminded her, hoping to keep her from feeling too discouraged. “Healing is going to take a little time.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Ashley acquiesced as she seemed to be starting to fade out a little again. She lay there quietly for a few moments, seemingly struggling to keep her eyes open—perhaps her effort to keep up her side of the conversation was taking a lot out of her—then drew a deep breath and asked, “So what about you, Jen? How are you doing? How’s the case going?”

  “Ah yes, the case,” Jennifer acknowledged. “I have good news and bad news and some more good news regarding the case. The good news is, both of our suspects are in custody and the military has been granted exclusive jurisdiction over the civilian. The bad news is, the S-I-A has taken over the investigation.”

  “What? But... that’s your investigation,” Ashley pointed out. “You initiated it yourself.”

  “I know, but it’s not as bad as it sounds.”

  “Why isn’t it?” Ashley asked her, beginning to fade again.

  “They’re going to keep me posted on their progress. Well, assuming their chief approves, that is. Commander Ansara already did on our end.”

  Ashley drew another deep breath, exhaled slowly and hesitated for another moment, and then conceded, “I guess that’s better than nothing.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not actually the other good news,” Jennifer told her.

  “What is the other good news?”

  “They assigned the case to Special Agent Chris Reese.”

  “Okay. I’ve... I’ve heard the name before, but...” She shook her head slightly, struggling to stay conscious. She was beginning to fade fast.

  “Remember that blond-haired stud at Manny’s?” Jennifer asked her. “Pete Helsingr?”

  “Uh huh,” Ashley managed to grunt as her eyes narrowed.

  “That’s him, Ashley,” Jennifer told her almost gleefully. “That’s Chris Reese.”

  Her eyes having closed, Ashley smiled slightly and very briefly and asked, slurring her words and in little more than a whisper, “No shi’?”

  “No shit,” Jennifer assured her. “And he asked me out to dinner tonight.”

  “So...” Ashley shook her head and opened her eyes again, and asked, “So why are you sitting here with me?”

  “I haven’t decided if I’m going or not.”

  Ashley turned her head, looked at her through eyes once more beginning to narrow, and forced herself to say, annunciating as best she could, “You be’er go, or... I’ll ki’ your ass.”

  Jennifer grinned. “But what if...”

  Ashley moaned and rolled her head across her pillow, turning away. “Ge’ outta here.”

  Jennifer watched her friend finally slip back into unconsciousness. “Okay,” she replied as she stood up. “Do you want your blankets?”

  “Mm,” Ashley faintly whispered. And then she was gone.

  Having no clue what ‘Mm’ was supposed to mean, Jennifer pulled the blankets back up over Ashley and then leaned down and gently kissed an uninjured spot on her forehead.

  She would go to dinner with Chris, she decided as she stood straight again. She’d go home, change into something more appropriate, and then go out on her date. “Thanks, Ashley,” she said quietly. She touched her friend’s shoulder gently and then left her alone to rest.

  Chapter 18

  Still feeling every bit as happy and alive as she’d been feeling when she woke up, which was a lot more happy and alive than she’d felt in a long time, Jennifer tapped the observation room door closed behind her, walked over to the small coffee service table in the back corner, and poured herself a second cup. She couldn’t help but smile again as she stirred in a teaspoon of sugar. It had been a long time since she’d woken up and rolled out of bed in the morning feeling so good. Nearly a year had gone by since Ernesto left and she’d almost forgotten how nice it felt to wake up, roll over, and snuggle up against another warm body first thing in the morning.

  Actually, now that she thought about it, she realized that wasn’t exactly true. She’d slept with Ashley a few times since they started working together and had rediscovered some of that nice feeling snuggling with her. But that, of course, was entirely different. As quietly intimate as those mornings might have been on some emotional level, they had also been perfectly innocent. They’d only slept together because they had worked hard into the wee hours of the morning in one or the other’s quarters and had exhausted themselves to the point of falling asleep. Neither of them had ever expressed any thoughts or feelings of romance or attraction toward the other, and there certainly hadn’t been anything sexual involved.

  No. Climbing into bed with Chris hadn’t been like drifting off to sleep with Ashley at all, she concluded as she poured a little cream into her coffee, regardless of the fact that she hadn’t originally intended to sleep with him, either. As a matter of fact, the only reason she’d decided to accept his dinner invitation in the first place was that Ashley had talked her into it. Well, maybe that wasn’t really the only reason. He was, after all, a very, very attractive man. But it had been Ashley’s coaxing that had finally made her decide to go. But then she’d had a really good time with him. He’d been the perfect gentleman, warm and friendly, thoughtful and funny. He’d even walked her home afterwards, and before she knew it she’d invited him inside for a nightcap. One thing had led to another, which had led to another, and the next thing she knew she’d invited him to spend the rest of the night with her.

  The only down side to it all, as far as she was concerned, was that she hadn’t gotten very much sleep. They’d had their nightcap and made out on the couch a little, and then gone to bed and had sex for two or three hours. They’d talked for a while afterwards, which was when she’d invited him to stay, and then had sex once more before falling asleep in each other’s arms. Then they’d woken up early and showered together before he finally went home to put on a fresh suit for work. At best she’d gotten maybe three and a half hours.

  She yawned as she stirred her coffee—she might have felt more happy and alive than she had in a long time, but awake was another story entirely—then tossed the stir stick into the small waste basket under the table and took a seat in one of the four thinly padded chairs arranged in a single row facing the large monitor mounted on the wall, each bearing a set of simple camera controls. She crossed her legs and tugged downward on the hem of her skirt, then palmed her cup to wait for her coffee to cool enough to drink.

  Her skirt. She hadn’t worn a skirt to work since her first day on the job, and as she gazed down at her bare legs she started wondering if maybe the one she was wearing now might be a little too short for professionalism’s sake. In fact, she was beginning to wonder why she’d worn a skirt at all. Sure, it was ‘business’ enough for work, despite being a little short, and it matched her blouse and her jacket nicely. And sure, she expected to spend the whole day sitting behind a desk in one office or another. But as Commander Ansara had told her on her first day, a nice pair of comfortable dress slacks was always the more practical choice, especially for a woman in her line of work, regardless of what a particular day’s work might be expected to consist of.

  Oh well, she conceded as she sipped her coffee tentatively to test its temperature—still a little too hot to drink. While she’d always agreed that Ansara was right about dress slack being the better choice, and while she knew she probably should have kept that in mind when she got dressed this morning, there wasn’t anything she could do about it now.

  The monitor came on suddenly and displayed an image of the unoccupied interview room on the other side of the wall as though it were a window, which she assumed meant that Chris had arrived in his office, which in turn probably meant that the prisoner was being brought up from the confinement facility and that Chris would be starting the interview soon. From what she could see on the screen, the room looked pretty much like the ones back in the C.I.D. offices
. Spotlessly clean, a little too brightly illuminated by three rows of ceiling lights, unadorned plain white walls, with a small rectangular table and three identical chairs the only furniture. Two of those chairs sat at the end of the table farthest from and facing the door. The third sat at the other end with its back to the door, security straps hanging from its arms and the back of its seat. As far as she could tell there was nothing else in the room. Like all the other interview rooms she’d ever seen, it was barren and cold, with nothing to distract whoever might be unfortunate enough to find themselves sitting at the wrong end of the table.

  So what did the passion-filled night she’d spent with Chris mean for her and Ernesto, she wondered, turning inward once more to her own thoughts, carefully sipping her still steaming coffee while she waited. She hadn’t thought about him since before last night’s dinner, hadn’t worn his pajama shirt to bed, and hadn’t felt at all bad about either change. Instead, she’d given herself over to Chris completely. She’d made love with him for hours and slept with him, and then showered with him, and she’d thoroughly enjoyed every moment. So where did that leave Ernesto? Had she finally let him go and moved on?

  The interview room door slid open and a pair of security policemen practically dragged the handcuffed prisoner inside—he wasn’t really resisting them, but neither was he cooperating to make it any easier for them—and sat him down in the single chair. Both SP’s were rather tall, muscular gentlemen wearing stern, almost angry expressions on their faces, and the looks in their eyes betrayed their shared desire to pound mercilessly on the prisoner for a while. And why not? He’d tried to kill a cop.

  Yeah, that was him all right, Jennifer confirmed in her own mind, staring daggers at his image while the SP’s removed his handcuffs and strapped him tightly into the chair. His clothes were gone, having been replaced with the standard ill-fitting bright orange jumpsuit issued to all prisoners, but she recognized that leathery skin, that long unkempt hair and beard, and those deep set bulbous light blue eyes easily enough. Yeah, no doubt about it. That was the same... person, to use the term loosely, whom she’d seen in Manny’s. That was the low-life freak son-of-a-bitch who had nearly killed Ashley. She couldn’t have forgotten him if she’d wanted to, and she hadn’t wanted to. She was so looking forward to finding out what kind of chemical he’d used to burn her, and admittedly would have welcomed an opportunity to use the same thing on him. Wishful thinking, she knew, but it was the thought that counted, and the thought made her feel better... a little. Never in her life had she ever wanted to hurt someone as much as she wanted to hurt that... that person at that moment.

  The SP’s tugged on the restraints one last time. Then, apparently satisfied they were tight enough—Jennifer wondered if maybe they’d tried to cut off his circulation—they exited the room, leaving the prisoner alone. The small light bar at the bottom of the wall panel beside the door changed from green to red almost as soon as the door closed. They hadn’t wasted any time locking the door behind them.

  Most prisoners started glancing around the room as soon as they found themselves alone. That was the natural thing to do when one found oneself in unfamiliar surroundings. Look around. See what there was to see. Identify anything that might prove useful in some way. But not this prisoner. No, this prisoner sat still as a statue and stared at the wall directly ahead of him like he didn’t care one way or the other about what might happen to him. He didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t flex a finger or bat an eyelash. He barely even seemed to be breathing. It was almost as though he’d died just sitting there. As a matter of fact, were it not for the fact that Jennifer could just see his scrawny chest rising and falling ever-so-slightly beneath his jumpsuit, she might have started worrying that he really had died. Not that she cared one damn bit about his well-being, of course, but she did care about Federation security, and in the interests of Federation security they needed to find out what he was up to.

  She started playing with the camera controls so she’d know how to use them by the time Chris showed up. There wasn’t a lot to them. Just three small metal joysticks—one controlled the elevation, the second controlled left and right pan, and the third controlled the zoom—and a pair of volume dials for gain and output. They were crude, probably an afterthought, but sufficient.

  As though right on cue, the light bar at the bottom of the panel changed to green again, the door slid open, and Chris strode into the room beaming with self-confidence. Whether that confidence was born of his skills on the job or his skills as a man she couldn’t be sure. God knew he’d demonstrated the latter very effectively. But whatever the source—she liked to think it was coming from some combination of the two—the expression on his face was one of total victory.

  He’d dressed in a perfectly tailored black suit and a dark blue-green dress shirt, and had worn a pair of highly shined black dress shoes. Freshly shaved and with his golden hair clean cut and neatly combed, he couldn’t have looked more professional if he’d wanted to, at least in her opinion, which she had to admit was probably less than objective. But despite of all that, despite his obvious confidence and his professional appearance, the prisoner still didn’t move a muscle. It was like he hadn’t even heard Chris walk in.

  “My name is Special Agent Christopher Reese,” he introduced himself to the prisoner as he made his way around the table. “I’m an agent with the Solfleet Intelligence Agency. You are a spy and possibly a traitor.” He pulled out one of the chairs opposite the prisoner and sat down in his direct line of sight. If the prisoner showed any sign of having seen him, Jennifer missed it. “Before you leave this room,” Chris continued, “you’re going to tell me exactly who you are spying for and why you are spying for them. You’re also going to tell me what information you have already obtained, why you wanted the information we found in your possession, and what if any additional information you would have tried to obtain in the future if we hadn’t apprehended you. And you’re going to tell me all this of your own free will, because you don’t want to spend the rest of your life in prison.”

  Somehow, Jennifer didn’t think it was going to be that easy.

  “Before I can proceed, however,” Chris went on, “I have to know a few things. What is your name, where are you from, and are you a citizen of the Earth Federation?”

  As she expected, the prisoner didn’t answer, or even acknowledge that Chris had joined him in the room.

  “I know you can understand me,” Chris told him. “Whoever you’re working for wouldn’t have sent you here if you didn’t understand English. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to verify you actually got what you came here to get.”

  Still nothing. No reaction at all.

  “Look, giving me your name and citizenry status is not an admission of anything. It’s for identification purposes only. I’d like to know who I’m talking to, and I need that information in order to notify your people that we’re holding you in custody. We can also notify whoever else you might want notified. Now what’s your name?”

  The prisoner didn’t budge.

  Chris sat back after a moment and exhaled loudly. “All right... fine. Don’t answer me.” He pulled a small card out of his shirt pocket and said, “By law, in the absence of information to the contrary, I have to assume you’re an Earth Federation citizen... unless you tell me otherwise, which you obviously don’t intend to do. Fortunately, that means if you’re found guilty of spying, you’ll also be found guilty of treason, which carries a very stiff penalty. Unfortunately, that also means I have to advise you of your legal rights and make sure you understand them before I ask you any questions related to your alleged crimes.

  He looked down at the card, flipped it over, and then began, “You have the absolute right to remain silent. You do not have to answer my questions or say anything.”

  “He’s been exercising that right since you walked in there,” Jennifer remarked under her breath. “Since we arrested him, in fact.”

  “If you choose to w
aive that right, anything you say can and will be used as evidence in a Federation court of law. You have the right to consult with an attorney before questioning, and to have an attorney present with you during questioning. This can be a public defender assigned to you by the court, at no expense to you, or a civilian attorney that you arrange for at your own expense, or both. If you choose to waive any or all of your legal rights, then later wish to invoke those rights, you may do so at any time.” He pocketed the card, then asked, “Do you understand your legal rights as I have explained them to you?”

  No movement. No response at all. It was like the guy had gone completely catatonic.

  “Do you want to say anything at all before I have you thrown back into your cell?” Chris only waited for a second before he said, “Okay then,” and stood up. “Have it your way,” he added, sounding a little frustrated as he started toward the door. He headed out and locked the door behind him, and still the prisoner didn’t react.

  Poor Chris, Jennifer thought. He’d walked in there with so much confidence, as though he knew he was going to get everything he wanted from the guy, and had ended up walking out with nothing. Not even a completed rights advisement process. She’d found herself in that spot many times herself, though only as a uniformed cop, and knew exactly what it felt like. Failure. She felt for him. Failing to break through to a suspect could be quite aggravating.

  She took another drink of her coffee as the SP’s walked back into the room and started unfastening the prisoner’s restraints. She watched until they took him away, and then got up and went to go find Chris.

  Chapter 19

  The flight to Mars had been a long one. No longer than expected, but a long one just the same. For Dylan, however, who’d started the voyage out by catching up on a fair amount of sleep and had then spent quite a bit more time talking with Lieutenant Commander Suarez, those long hours had seemed to pass by relatively quickly compared to other such voyages he’d taken in the past. Rather, in the future... his past. Anyway, only relatively quickly because he really hated crowds. He hated being cramped up in small passenger vessels with so many people for so long. To him, such voyages usually seemed to take twice as long as they actually took. Relative though this flight’s quickness might have been, it was good enough.