Solfleet: Beyond the Call

by Glenn Smith

  Dylan didn’t answer him. He didn’t even move. He just stared menacingly into the other man’s eyes and watched as his concern grew to worry and then fear and he swallowed nervously and sweat began to glisten on his brow and upper lip. Then he enjoyed the pure, unadulterated satisfaction when Danny’s gaze fell once more to the tabletop.

  “Oh Jesus, Dylan,” Danny said, no doubt having concluded that no matter what he might try, he was going to lose. “Please don’t.”

  “You should’ve acted the second you felt threatened, Danny,” he told him, barely able to stop himself from grinning. “Now it’s too late.” Danny met his gaze once more as he continued, “Have you ever felt the burn from one of those disruptors that were outlawed years ago?” Danny swallowed hard. Small rivulets of perspiration were beginning to run down over his forehead into his eyes. “Or seen what they do to the human body at such close range?”

  “Goddamn it, Dylan.” He spoke with a hint of anger. He was preparing to act. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yeah, Danny... I do.” And with that, before Danny could respond or react, Dylan threw his hands out over the table as though her were holding a gun as fast as he could, pointing his right index finger straight at Danny, and yelled, “BANG!”

  Danny yelped and jumped up and almost fell back over his chair as it slid backwards into the wall, his eyes bulging with fright. Had that wall not been there he might have stumbled right to the floor. Then, when he finally realized what Dylan had just done to him, or rather what he hadn’t just done to him, the shock that had twisted his features turned quickly back to anger and he shouted, “Dylan, you mother...! You sorry son-of-a-...! I almost...!”

  “Gotcha, Danny,” Dylan told him, grinning.

  Several dozen obviously amused onlookers were laughing and applauding. Orwell looked around at them and only then seemed to realize that he was still leaning backward over his chair, his arms stretched out against the wall as though he were the only thing preventing it from falling down. His face reddened as he stood up and straightened his uniform, then grabbed his chair and sat back down with what little dignity he might have felt he had left. Then he glared across the table at Dylan, who just smiled innocently back at him, as though he were considering whether to dismember him right there in the dining facility or wait until he could find the appropriate tools to inflict significantly more pain during the process later. “You know, Dylan,” he began when he finally recovered enough to speak, “if I didn’t like you so much...”

  “Sorry, Danny,” Dylan said, still smiling, “but you were just so serious.”

  Danny exhaled loudly. “All right, forget it. Just... please, don’t ever do that again.”

  Dylan chuckled. “I won’t. I promise.”

  Danny shook his head and cursed under his breath.

  Mission accomplished. He’d gotten Danny off his back, at least for a little while. But no sooner had Dylan come to that conclusion than he spotted Günter Royer, sans lab coat, turning into the dining area from the front of the food line, carrying a full tray. As he watched, Royer paused and looked around the dining area. The older man eventually spotted him and then started walking toward him.

  “Doctor Royer,” Dylan greeted him when he approached their table, cutting himself off abruptly right afterwards. Too late. He’d already spoken the scientist’s real name. Had that been another mistake? Had Doctor Royer been operating under an assumed name for the past thirteen years? If so, had he mentioned to him what the name was? Dylan couldn’t remember him doing so, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he hadn’t.

  “Good morning, Sergeant,” Royer returned as though Dylan hadn’t said anything wrong, much to Dylan’s relief. He hoped that really was the case. “Mind if I join you?”

  “Not at all, sir,” Dylan answered politely. Then he gestured toward one of the table’s two remaining empty chairs and said, “Please, have a seat.”

  “Thank you.” Royer set his tray down on the table and then pulled the chair out and sat down. He nodded politely to Orwell, then looked at Dylan and explained, “I just wanted to thank you again for saving my life six weeks ago. Or has it been seven weeks now?”

  “Six and a half, Doctor,” Orwell supplied as he backed away from the table and stood up.

  “Six and a half weeks,” Royer acknowledged, looking up at him. “Thank you.”

  “No problem, Doc,” Orwell told him. Then he looked at Dylan and said, “I’ll leave you to bask in the warm light of the doctor’s undying gratitude to your heart’s content, Dylan. Enjoy the nights off. I’ll see you late Saturday.” And with that Orwell picked up his tray and walked off.

  “You, too, Danny,” Dylan replied to his receding back, probably too quietly for Danny to have heard.

  “What’s his problem?” Royer asked, also watching him walk away.

  “I don’t know,” Dylan answered truthfully. Then he picked up his coffee and took a sip as he watched Danny leave. His departure had seemed rather sudden. He hadn’t even finished his breakfast. The only possible reason for his hasty exit that Dylan could think of was that Danny was jealous over the way he’d been lauded as a hero within the unit for having saved Gillis’ and Royer’s lives, but that certainly didn’t seem very likely. True, he hadn’t known Danny very long, but the man didn’t seem at all to Dylan like the jealous type. At any rate, as soon as Danny had walked well out of sight, Dylan put it behind him. He had more important things to think about. He set his coffee down and turned his attention back to Doctor Royer, and quietly asked him, “What’s really on your mind, Doctor?”

  “Going home,” Royer answered quickly as he started to eat.

  Dylan snickered. “Yeah, that’s been on my mind, too. Pretty much every day.”

  “I’m serious,” the older man told him. “You and I should get together somewhere more private to plan our... withdrawal.

  “We can’t leave yet, Doctor,” he told him bluntly, shaking his head, explaining, “At least one of us still needs to complete his mission,” though he still wasn’t a hundred percent sure that was the case. At least, not where his mission was concerned. Truth was, he’d been wondering off and on since the day he took down the suspect whether or not saving the Excalibur really was still necessary. As he’d considered shortly after their last conversation, he had very likely saved PFC Gillis’ life, might have saved Royer’s life, and had just as likely saved the lives of everyone else in the facility. Those changes could mean that he no longer needed to pursue his mission, but in the absence of indisputable proof he’d decided to err on the side of caution and continue doing so to the best of his ability. “ ‘One of us’ meaning me, of course, since your mission would obviously take a hell of a lot longer.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean right now or later today,” Royer explained, “or even later this week or next for that matter.” He grinned. “I’ve waited thirteen years. I can wait a little bit longer.”

  Dylan smiled with the doctor. “Okay, so you’re just looking for some idea of when I expect to complete my mission and be ready for us to try,” he then concluded.

  “And of how we might go about it,” Royer clarified. “I’m not talking about how to signal the Portal to retrieve us. I know all about the recall device, obviously. I brought one back with me myself after all. I’m talking about what, if anything, we might need to do before we go, aside from your completing your mission, I mean. What arrangements we might need to make, where we should be when we do it, etcetera.” He paused for a moment and then added, seemingly as an afterthought, “And it pleases me that you said ‘us,’ by the way.”

  Dylan looked at him oddly. “Of course I said ‘us,’ Doctor,” he said. “I certainly wouldn’t expect you to stay behind. Once I complete my mission there won’t be any reason for you to.”

  “It pleases me to hear you say that as well.”

  “To be honest, I’m surprised you stayed this long.”

  An odd expression passed briefly over the doct
or’s features and Dylan almost asked him what was wrong when another question came to mind, and since he didn’t know when he might get another chance to sit down and talk with the doctor, he decided to pursue that question right then. “Since we’re sitting here together, let me ask you something.”

  “Of course.”

  “Last time we talked, you told me about what happened to the embryos you brought back with you and how that slowed down your work here. Then you asked me about my mission, and I mentioned the risk that accidental contamination might pose to the timeline. With that in mind I have to ask you, what happened to all your technical information—your notes and schematics and tables and whatever else you brought back with you?”

  “Confiscated,” Royer answered plainly, “but I’m not real concerned about contamination of the timeline in that case.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the agents who took everything wouldn’t know twenty-one eighties technology schematics from diagrams of the first internal combustion engine, and more than likely they just locked it all up in some top secret government vault somewhere where no one will ever see it.”

  “So how have you been able to continue your work without your data?”

  Royer grinned at him, and then answered, “I committed it all to memory.”

  Dylan was taken aback and started looking at the older gentleman in a whole new light. He knew Doctor Royer was smart, of course—the man was an accomplished scientist, after all—but to have the mental capacity to commit to memory everything he needed to create and develop cyberclones? He had to be some kind of genius on a level with people like Einstein and Hawking and Da Vinci.

  It hit him suddenly, out of nowhere, like a baseball bat to the face, and he looked away at nothing. His shock must have shown on his face because Royer asked him right away, “Are you all right, Mister Graves?”

  “Yeah, I... I’m fine,” Dylan replied tentatively.

  “Are you sure? You look troubled.”

  “No, I just...” Dylan finally looked back at the doctor and explained, “That day I met you. If I hadn’t stopped him, that suspect might have taken you with him to God knows where. If he was working for the Veshtonn, then you and all of that technical and medical knowledge and expertise in your head would have fallen into enemy hands.”

  “True, but fortunately that didn’t happen.”

  “Maybe not this time,” Dylan pointed out.

  “What do you mean?” Royer asked him, obviously intrigued.

  Dylan glanced around to reassure himself that no one was listening in, then leaned a little closer to Royer and lowered his voice even more. “Several months ago...” he began to explain, “...at least for me it was several months ago... my platoon carried out a classified operation on a pretty remote island on Cirra. We found ourselves in a firefight against a C-U-F terrorist cell and some Kree-Veshtonn blood-warriors, and two of us fought a creature that a Cirran professor later told me was a Vul-Veshtonn.”

  “Hmm, nasty critters, those Vul,” Royer commented. “Big ugly snakes with skinny arms and legs and lots of long, dagger-like teeth.”

  “More or less, yeah,” Dylan confirmed, nodding, “except that according to the professor this one was... different.”

  “Different how?” Royer inquired.

  “It had glowing red eyes that the professor said should have been pale yellow, and a dark exoskeleton as hard as bone, like an insect’s carapace. The professor told me that Vul skin was known to be tough, but not that tough.”

  “He was right,” Royer confirmed. “Their skin’s more like rhino or elephant hide. Tough, but not at all like a hard shell. And their eyes are not naturally red.” He turned inward to his own thoughts for several moments, then hypothesized aloud, “I suppose a pair of infrared cyberclone inserts might have made its eyes glow red like that, and the exoskeleton you describe could have been a heavier version of ablative combat skin.”

  “So you’re suggesting that...”

  “What I’m suggesting, Mister Graves,” Royer interrupted, “is that Veshtonn forces might have gotten their claws on some of Earth’s most advanced cyberclone technology... and that if they did, they would have needed years to adapt it to their needs.”

  “Which was exactly what I was getting at, Doctor,” Dylan told him, “and the only way they could have done that would have been to have captured you years before I ever fought that battle.” He sat back in his chair and looked off to the side at nothing as everything fell into place. “I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch,” he mumbled under his breath. “That’s why Admiral Hansen and your sister tried to have my memory edited! Not only did they...” He paused to rein in his emotions, having heard himself getting louder, and looked Royer in the eye again. “Not only did they send you back through the Portal illegally,” he then continued much more quietly. “Your whole mission backfired and blew up in their faces. The enemy captured you and gained access to our most advanced cyberclone technology as a result... years before we even developed it. And it was all their fault.” He paused for another moment to calm down again, then lowered his voice once more and told the doctor, “Ever since that day, I’ve wondered if by killing the suspect and saving P-F-C Gillis’ life and preventing your abduction, I might have changed history already in some small way. Now more than ever, Doctor, I believe that to be the case.”

  “More like changed it back, Mister Graves,” Royer amended, “at least where my part in it is concerned.” At Dylan’s questioning gaze, he continued, “Think about it. They couldn’t have captured me the first time around because I wasn’t here to be captured. I had to travel back in time through the Portal first. So if they did capture me, they changed the timeline.”

  Dylan rested an elbow on the table and buried his forehead in his hand. “I think I’m getting another one of those headaches,” he remarked.

  Getting back to the original reason for his seeking Dylan out in the first place, Royer said, “I really think we should meet somewhere in private to plan our withdrawal, and soon.”

  “I agree,” Dylan replied, looking up at him once more. “Give me time to get some sleep. Come by my quarters tonight at about eighteen-hundred. I’ll have pizza.”

  “All right. See you then.” Royer stood up and walked away, leaving his breakfast behind, his food untouched. Dylan looked down at what remained of his own and then, realizing that it had long since gone cold, got up and followed the doctor out.

  More than halfway across the dining area, lost in the sea of hundreds of eating, drinking, and otherwise relaxing or socializing personnel, Major Hansen stared quietly over the rim of his coffee mug and watched Sergeant Graves and the old man whose life he’d saved about a month and a half ago walk toward the exit, separately. He’d chosen a seat too far away from them to overhear anything they discussed—he hadn’t wanted to take a chance they might see him—but he found it curious that they’d sit and talk with each other and then go out of their way to leave separately, as though they weren’t even acquainted with one another. He was already suspicious of Graves, but now he wondered if the old man might not bear further scrutiny as well.

  But first things first. With all the surveillance he’d been conducting through the facility’s security cameras, he had yet to review the archived footage recorded on the day of the intrusion and murders by those cameras positioned around the Albion’s berth.

  The time had come to remedy that.

  Chapter 45

  Special Agent Jennifer Barrett checked the time... again... and then quickly logged off of her terminal and shut it down. Not that she’d gotten a whole lot of work done. Finally, after more than seven weeks in the medbay, Ashley was being released this morning and Jennifer intended not only to be there to walk home with her, but also to keep her company through the rest of the day. Agent Boucher had approved her request to take the rest of the day off—he wouldn’t have dared not approve it, knowing that she would have argued with him until she won had he done so—and sh
e intended to take full advantage of it.

  She stood up and smoothed her slacks, then took her navy-blue suit coat down from its hook on the wall behind her. Then, as she pulled it on over her bright yellow blouse, Commander Ansara walked into her office accompanied by a man dressed in casual civilian attire who looked a lot like that Security Police major whom she’d been seeing around the yards off and on for the last few weeks. “Good morning, Agent Barrett,” Ansara said.

  “Morning, sir,” she returned as she straightened her collar. “What can I do for you?”

  “Agent Boucher tells me you’re heading out for the rest of the day, is that right?”

  “Yes, sir, I am,” Jennifer replied. “Agent Urbana is being released from the medbay this morning. She’s my friend and I’m going to walk her home and spend some time with her.”

  “That’s excellent news,” the commander said. “I’m pleased to hear she’s well enough to go home.” He glanced at the man standing beside him, gestured briefly toward him, and went on, “This is Major Icarus Hansen of Security Police Special Assignments. He’s been working behind the scenes on the Baxter espionage-murder case and needs access to a secure-classified terminal for the day. I was hoping to let him use yours if that’s all right.”

  “Certainly, sir,” she answered. “No problem.” Then she shifted her gaze to the major as she walked out from behind her desk and added, “You’re welcome to use it for as long as you need to, Major. I won’t be back before tomorrow morning.”

  “Thank you, Agent Barrett,” Hansen responded.

  Jennifer nodded with a polite, “Sir,” and then left her office.

  “It’s all yours, Major,” Ansara told Hansen. “Give me a holler if you need anything.”

  “I will, sir. Thank you.”

  Hansen watched Ansara follow Barrett out and then closed the door behind him. Then he walked around behind her desk, sat down, and fired up her terminal. He had a lot of footage to review and not a lot of time to review it. He really did have to leave in two days, unless of course he found something substantial. He logged on when prompted and called up the first record, then suddenly realized that he’d forgotten to bring coffee with him. Hopefully, at least some of the agents in the office were coffee drinkers themselves and would have a bottomless pot going for most of the day.