Solfleet: Beyond the Call

by Glenn Smith

  Having said her piece, Doctor Zapala resumed the scan. She hesitated for a moment over his right shoulder, but after Dylan confirmed for her that it, too, was a biotronic replacement, she proceeded without another word until she was finished.

  Shaking her head with obvious disapproval, she turned off her handcomp, returned the hand-held scanner to its compartment and set the handcomp aside, and then looked him dead in the eye—his real eye. “Bruised cheekbone,” she began as though she were a mother scolding her disobedient child, “torn ligaments and strained muscles in and around your left shoulder, which was dislocated no more than seventy-two hours ago, although it isn’t now, four cracked ribs, and two severely bruised knees. What the hell did you do to yourself?”

  Dylan’s mind raced, even as he drew the breath to give her the answer he hadn’t thought of yet. He needed to tell her something and he needed to tell her now. “I play hockey,” came out, and no sooner had he said the words than he regretted saying them. Strictly speaking, it was the truth. He really did play hockey, or at least he had whenever he’d had the time. But if there had been a game, there would have been spectators. If she checked his story...

  “There was a pick-up game a few days ago,” he added quickly. “Nothing organized. No announcement of the game to yard personnel or anything like that. Just a little something those of us who were there at the time threw together. It got a little rough. It does that sometimes.”

  “You got into a fight?” she asked.

  “No, no fight,” he assured her. “I just got checked hard into the boards and flipped over onto the bench. A few times.”

  “And no one thought to bring you down here to get checked out?”

  “I thought I was okay. I even finished the game. Afterwards, I went straight back to my quarters and went to bed.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Sergeant,” she warned him, obviously not buying word one of his tale. “You got into a fight. You know it and I know it.”

  Dylan dropped his gaze to the floor and sighed, feigning capitulation.

  “Don’t worry, Sergeant. There’s this little something called doctor-patient confidentiality that I can hide behind whenever I choose to. I suppose I could stretch the concept out and twist it around enough to cover for your poor judgment... this time. After all, you’ve been in the service long enough to realize that security policemen do not get into fights outside the line of duty, and I think this conversation will serve as a sufficient reminder of that fact. Do you agree?”

  Dylan looked up at her and assured her, “Yes I do, ma’am, and thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. God knows Major Ross can’t afford to lose anyone else, especially for being stupid. I do have one more question for you, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How do you explain the gunshot wound to your right thigh?”

  “Accidental discharge,” he answered quickly. He’d already been thinking about that one. “I caught one of our rookies playing quick draw at his post, but his weapon went off before I had a chance to say anything.” He could tell from her expression that she didn’t believe a word of that, either. Nor had he expected her to, but he’d had a feeling she would accept whatever he told her, as long as it was at least feasible.

  “And he’s a good kid and he only grazed you and you don’t want to ruin his career over one stupid mistake, right?” she asked. She’d obviously heard it all before.

  “That’s exactly right, Doctor, yes,” he answered. He wasn’t fooling her for a second and he knew it, but if she was willing to let it go at that...

  She drew a deep breath and continued staring him in the eye as she exhaled, as though she were trying to decide right then and there if she could trust him, or if she should report him. Then she told him, “Two of my sons are security policemen. One of them is a sergeant, like you. I know something about what you do for the rest of us and I appreciate it, but don’t expect the rules of doctor-patient confidentiality to be quite so malleable if something like this ever happens again. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Sergeant?”

  “I understand clearly, ma’am,” he assured her.

  “Good.” She drew another deep breath and sighed, then suddenly grew more agitated for no apparent reason. “You S-Ps are all too tough for your own good, you know that?” she asked him with tears welling up in her eyes. “You push yourselves much too hard, all of you.”

  “I know,” Dylan agreed, wondering what had brought that on all of the sudden. Perhaps something had happened to one of her sons. “I’m afraid it’s in the job description.”

  “And did whoever wrote that job description forget to mention the importance of self-preservation?” she asked him.

  For one fleeting moment Dylan thought that she might have been referring to him and his current condition. But then, as he watched her wipe her eyes and saw how roughly she was handling her instruments as she prepared to treat his injuries, he realized that she was genuinely upset, even angry, and he decided that he’d presumed correctly. Something must have happened to one of her sons.

  Oh no. Oh God, no. Zack and Jerry. They weren’t... She wasn’t...

  “Every time one of you gets hurt or killed in the line of duty I think of my boys facing the same things out there that you all face here,” she said.

  Relief. Thank God. Her sons were stationed somewhere else. Hurt or killed in the line of duty, she’d said. She was referring to the two he was responsible for.

  “I just lost two of you to the job two days ago,” she continued. “I sure as hell don’t want to lose a third over something as stupid as a hockey game or playing quick draw!”

  “No, ma’am,” was all he could think of to say.

  She sighed. “I’m sorry, Sergeant. I don’t mean to dump all this on you, but...”

  Her voice faded into oblivion as Dylan slowly dropped his gaze to the floor in sorrow. He was right. She’d been thinking about the two SPs who’s deaths he was directly responsible for, as well as of her own sons. His chest felt tight. He’d known they were dead as soon as they fell, but a part of him had still held onto a small glimmer of hope that perhaps, by some miracle, they might have survived their falls. He’d realized, of course, that the chances of even one of them surviving were slim at best, let alone the both of them. But a slim chance was still a chance. Now he knew for sure. Both of them had died. He’d killed them.

  Oh God. Oh God! He’d never intended for anyone to get hurt, let alone killed. For him to have killed two of his own... His chest... He concentrated. He drew a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and then released it slowly to calm himself down. Then he looked up, met Doctor Zapala’s eyes, and quietly asked, “Did they suffer?”

  Zapala calmed down as well and allowed her bedside manner show through. “This is off the record, Sergeant. I’m only telling you because you’re one of them, and if you tell anyone I told you, I’ll call you a liar.”

  “I understand, ma’am,” he said. “I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

  Apparently satisfied with that, she began. “I found extremely high levels of adrenaline in their systems, which was to be expected. That, together with the types of injuries they sustained, leads me to believe they were most likely unconscious before they... landed. Neither one of them were ever revived, so I have to believe they never felt anything.” Dylan didn’t say anything—didn’t look up. “I’m sorry,” she added, placing a hand gently on his shoulder. “I know how hard this kind of thing is on all of you. If you’d like to talk to a counselor, I can make an appointment for you.”

  Dylan shook his head. It still hurt to do so.

  “Are you sure?”

  “All I want to do right now, Doctor, is go back to work,” he told her.

  “It wouldn’t you hurt to talk to someone,” she pressed. “At least, not as much as playing hockey can.”

  He looked her in the eye again. He appreciated the attempt, but he was unable—perhaps he was unwilling—to be so easily
cheered up, and it became immediately obvious from her dour expression that she regretted trying to be funny, though she didn’t bother to apologize. Perhaps she expected that he’d only ignore that as well. Instead, she just told him to take off his shirt and undershirt, then started treating his injuries.

  “I’m restricting you to light duty for the next ten days,” she told him as she began a series of brief procedures. “You can work your shift, provided you park yourself at a desk somewhere and lay back every once in a while. No strenuous activity.”

  “Understood.”

  She finished up, then set her instruments aside and stepped over to her neatly organized medicine cabinet. She took out a bottle of pills without even having to check the label first and held it out to him. “Take one of these for pain when you need it, but no more than three in a day. Officially, this stuff is still experimental, but I happen to know it works.”

  “What is it?” he asked for appearance sake as he accepted the bottle, recognizing the pills inside right away.

  “It’s called Liferin.”

  Under less serious circumstances it would have been funny—first the doctor at Drexel and now Doctor Zapala. As it was, it was all he could do just to say, “Thank you for your time, Doctor,” without cracking a grin.

  “You’re welcome,” she answered. “Now get out of here, will you? I want to go home.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He stood up slowly, carefully pulled on his undershirt and then his shirt, and then started toward the door. But halfway there he turned back. “Doctor?”

  “Yes?”

  “The S-Ps who were killed. Did they have families?”

  “Parents. One had a younger brother. Neither of them were married.”

  “Thanks.” Having nothing more to say, he turned and walked out.

  This was bad, he told himself as he filled his mouth with saliva, then tossed in a Liferin and swallowed it. Doctor-patient confidentiality be damned. Doctor Zapala was not stupid. If she happened to talk to Major Ross, or to anyone else in the SP hierarchy for that matter, or anyone else in the yards who played much hockey, it would take her all of about two minutes to realize that she’d just had the most obvious suspect in the deaths of those SPs in her medbay. To put it into technical terms, Doctor Zapala had just become a liability to him and his mission.

  God forbid he should ever have to do anything about it.

  As he passed one of the many corridor clocks, it suddenly dawned on him that he might have another problem. Rather, that the entire world might have another problem. His actions in this time period had directly led to the deaths of two security policemen. That was potentially much worse than just an unfortunate circumstance. What if those men weren’t meant to die? What if their untimely deaths had altered the future in some unpredictable way? In his zeal to complete his mission successfully, had he inadvertently introduced an unwanted variable into the timeline and sabotaged that very same mission? What if...

  No, he told himself, pushing those thoughts aside. No more hypotheticals. No more what-ifs. He had a specific mission to carry out. He couldn’t operate based on conjecture, regardless of the fact that conjecture was the only thing his mission was based on in the first place. He had to proceed strictly according to his orders. He could only hope that any unintended consequences that might result from his actions wouldn’t make any significant differences in the future.

  Besides, he still had one much more immediate and very real concern to address. His lost handcomp. He had to get it back. He had to find it before someone else did, because if someone else found it first and turned it in, his mission was as good as over.

  He tapped his comm-link. “Sergeant Graves to Security Control.”

  “Security Control. Lieutenant Tran here.”

  “I’m on my way in, sir. Request permission to join the search teams aboard the Albion.”

  “Negative, Sergeant. Doctor Zapala has already briefed me on your situation.”

  Damn. “Sir, I’m familiar with the layout of...”

  “Light duty means light duty, Sergeant. Report to this office immediately. Tran out.”

  Damn it. He had to think of something. He had to figure out a way to get back aboard the Albion and find that handcomp. He had to.

  * * *

  With his painfully thorough briefing having finally come to its conclusion, Major Hansen stood up from the large oval table and stepped over to the corner for another cup of coffee while everyone else filed out of the conference room and went about their business. Given the lateness of the hour, he would have felt perfectly justified had he chosen to go straight to his assigned guest quarters and get a good night’s sleep before he got to work, but that wasn’t how he liked to operate. Whenever he took on a new temporary assignment, he preferred to get a good handle on things immediately upon arrival, regardless of what time of day or night that arrival happened to be. That way he could dive right into the thick of it on his first full day.

  He topped off his cup and, seeing that he was the only person left in the room, decided to return to his seat and spend some time alone thinking over what he’d been told before he headed to Security Control.

  The facility-wide search for the at-large suspect known only as Doctor David Baxter had been going on around the clock since the incident occurred. All commercial traffic into and out of the shipyards had been halted and the entire facility had been locked down. Mission essential military traffic, on the other hand, had been allowed to continue, but no vessel had been allowed to depart without first being subjected to a thorough scan and, whenever manpower allowed for it, a manual eyes-on deck-by-deck search. No one besides assigned crew members and security police personnel assigned to the search had been permitted to board or disembark any ship, for any reason, for the past two days, and the official word had long since been put out that all of those measures would remain in effect until Baxter was apprehended.

  As far as Hansen was concerned, Major Ross had done everything right. Despite initially having to work around the same shortage of manpower that most other commands were suffering from, his quick action had reduced whatever chances the suspect might have had of escaping from the facility to near zero. It was only a matter of time before they found him. All they had to do was to continue tightening the noose, and the arrival of all those additional SPs from Mandela Station was making that a lot easier to accomplish.

  Aboard the Albion, several two-person teams, each consisting of one security policeman and one engineering troop, were still busy scouring the ship from top to bottom, bow to stern, port to starboard, still engaged in the search for any potential clue as to who the alleged Doctor David Baxter really was, or why he’d boarded the ship. That assumed, of course, that he was in fact really someone else. While Major Ross freely admitted that there was no way they could yet know for sure that was the case, he also believed that it was a pretty safe assumption, so that was the assumption that he and Lieutenant Commander Suarez had chosen to operate under, at least for the time being.

  They’d been at it steadily, working around the clock in shifts, concentrating the bulk of their efforts on the Engineering section where the SPs who’d been killed had first reported seeing the intruder. From there they had branched outward in all directions, but not to the extent that they ignored the other sensitive areas of the ship. So far no one had found anything, but neither had orders calling off the search come down from Operations, so they continued looking.

  What Ross and Suarez seemed to fear the most was the very likely possibility that some sort of sabotage had been the intruder’s goal. If, God forbid, he’d planted a bomb somewhere aboard that ship, its detonation would no doubt cause extensive damage and destruction to both the ship and its berth. And if that hypothetical bomb were powerful enough to breach the ship’s twin fusion reactors, the resulting chain reaction of exploding vessels would likely annihilate the entire facility. Millions of tons of radioactive debris would rain down on several of the Martian C
olonies, pulverizing their protective domes and instantly wiping out their populations.

  Hundreds of thousands of people would die.

  * * *

  By the time he walked into Security Control, Dylan had done his best to bury the guilt he felt over having killed two of his own as deeply as he could. Not that he’d been very successful. He knew that wasn’t the healthiest thing he could do—God knew, more than a few psychiatrists and psychologists had told him as much over those last several months—and that the pain would never completely go away no matter how deeply he tried to bury it, but he’d also realized that in order for him to continue pursuing his mission to the best of his ability, he had no choice but to try. He’d also started piecing together a preliminary plan to locate and recover his handcomp. He hadn’t had a lot of time to think it through, but as long as he could get rid of the lieutenant and take charge for a while, he knew of no reason why it shouldn’t work.

  “As I was saying, sir,” he began, setting his plan into motion as he walked up behind the lieutenant, “I’m familiar with the layout of the Albion, deck-by-deck. If you won’t let me join one of the search teams, then let me coordinate what’s left of the search from here.”

  Tran turned around and looked him in the eye for a few seconds, then said, “For someone who hasn’t left his quarters in the last couple of days, you’re awfully eager to be a part of this all of the sudden, Sergeant Graves. Why is that?”

  Tran looked and sounded suspicious, but in the short time Dylan had known the young Vietnamese lieutenant he had come to realize that he looked and sounded suspicious pretty much all the time, so he wasn’t too concerned about it. After all, the younger man had just recently been commissioned and was out to make a name for himself—to build a reputation as being an effective, professional officer. There was nothing unusual about that, of course, and there wasn’t really anything wrong with it, either. What new officer wouldn’t want build such a reputation? The problem was that it almost always made them too uptight and inclined to overreact.