Solfleet: The Call of Duty

by Smith, Glenn

  “Sorry, sir,” she answered, shaking her head. “Not this close to the jump ring with our scanners in their present condition.”

  On the viewscreen, Commodore Van den Engel muted his audio and spoke to someone off camera. Then, a few seconds later, he reactivated his sound and relayed an anticipated but still very unwelcome bit of news to Rawlins. “They’re Veshtonn heavy destroyers, Commander,” he said evenly, “and they’re on a direct course to this station.”

  “Damn it!” Rawlins exclaimed, banging a fist down on the arm of the chair and glaring down at LaRocca briefly. He and the captain both had told that kid to make sure they didn’t lead the enemy to the jumpstation! No matter what! If they ended up losing this vital facility because he screwed up...

  He’d have to cross that bridge if and when he came to it. They had a much more pressing issue to deal with at the moment. “I don’t know how much help we’ll be in a fight at this point, Commodore,” Rawlins reiterated, “but we’ll do what we can. What are your orders?”

  “Get your ship to safety, Commander,” Van den Engel directed, his tone leaving no room for discussion. “We’re energizing the ring now.” He nodded to another someone off camera.

  “What about you and your personnel, Commodore?” Rawlins asked. “Granted, we’re in bad shape, but we still have the capacity to take on at least some of your person...”

  “Negative, Commander. The enemy’s closing too fast. There’s no time. Get your ship out of this system. We can take care of ourselves.”

  Take care of themselves? How the hell were they going to take care of themselves with more than half of their defense fleet already engaged in battle on the other side of the system? The station’s defense grid might have been effective as a supplement to that fleet, but it hadn’t been designed to stand alone as their only means of defense. Rawlins drew a breath to protest, but the commodore stopped him with a look.

  “That’s an order, Commander,” he said, settling the issue.

  “Order acknowledged, Commodore,” Rawlins acknowledged after a second, still hesitant to leave the commodore and his people behind. “Maintaining our present course and speed.” An order was an order, and it was very unwise for a starship command officer to disobey his sector commander’s orders if he wanted his career to continue unscathed, especially when that sector commander specifically pointed out that his instructions were in fact an order. And most especially when it was this particular sector commander. Still, they were talking about their very lives.

  “Good. And listen, Commander. Be sure to pass my best wishes and prayers for a speedy recovery on to Captain Bhatnagar when you have a chance.”

  “Will do, sir, and good luck. Victory out.”

  The ring reappeared in the center of the screen and began growing visibly larger by the second as they approached it, faster and faster. An immense, sixteen-segment double-rimmed halo of structurally reinforced metallic silver-gray plastisteel and titanium, large enough for even the most enormous of Coalition vessels to pass through cleanly, with an almost imperceptible glass-smooth sheet of unbroken, translucent crystal coating its entire inner circumference—the vortex generator lens.

  As they drew closer, that crystal appeared to ripple and then began to glow with a dim burgundy sheen. Burgundy instead of the normal blue-green, Rawlins noted. The emergency jump nacelles, being less efficiently shielded than their permanent ones had been, were already beginning to interact with the emerging vortex, despite not having been energized yet.

  The stars that had been visible through the ring suddenly faded to darkness as if someone had simply turned them off, and in the center of the depthless black emptiness that remained, a pulsating point of crimson sparked to life. That point quickly expanded in all directions until it reached the circumference and formed what looked like a pool of shimmering crimson oil that filled the entire ring.

  “Course plotted, Mister LaRocca?” Rawlins asked.

  “Yes, sir,” the helmsman answered. “Several hours ago.”

  “Very well. Energize jump nacelles,” he ordered. Then he quickly added, “Carefully, Ensign, and keep your eyes on those output levels,” hoping and praying that the less efficient emergency units wouldn’t blow themselves up in protest. “Then give me best safe speed into the vortex.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Picking up a second group of vessels now, sir,” Irons interjected.

  “Noted, Lieutenant,” Rawlins responded dismissively without even looking at her. He had his orders, and difficult though they were to swallow, he intended to obey them. Sacrificing the Victory and her crew wouldn’t help the commodore and his people.

  The ring seemed to grow faster as the helmsman complied with Rawlins orders, until its structure passed beyond the viewscreen’s borders and only the vortex remained in view, its blood-crimson shimmer shifting to a deeper purple-violet as its energy field interacted with that the nacelles generated. Then, with a final shift from violet to black as the Victory passed through the ring and slipped into jumpspace, the stars suddenly reappeared, only to fall toward the center of the viewscreen, where they gathered into a hazy, gently pulsating circular band of color like some kind of dark rainbow—deep purple-violet around its inner rim, shifting through shades of purple to blue, to aqua-blue around its outer rim. Every few seconds one or two or a few of them managed to escape the band and raced past the ship, shifting from aqua-blue to green as they sailed by, but the size of the band remained constant.

  “Jump velocity achieved, Commander,” LaRocca reported, reading his board. “The field is stable and we are secure in jumpspace. Sensors and scanners, such as they are, show all clear ahead, sir.”

  Rawlins drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly as he sat back and relaxed, truly relaxed, for the first time in weeks. They’d made it. Two jump nacelles gone, their lower hull breached, portions stressed to near buckling, most of their systems crippled, and their weapons nearly exhausted...but they’d made it. They’d actually made it.

  But what about all those people they’d just left behind?

  Chapter 12

  The Next Morning

  Wednesday, 21 July 2190

  Sweating profusely and writhing in agony on the deck, while at the same time crying for his slaughtered family, Federation Vice-President Jonathan Harkam somehow still managed to reach out and grab the front of Hansen’s jacket in his quivering, blood-stained fist. He pulled him closer, bared his clenched teeth and spat streams of red saliva over his chin as he grunted against the pain, then stared up at him through red, swollen eyes.

  “Please!” he managed to force through the pain. “Oh God, it burns! Make it stop!”

  Hansen took hold of Harkam’s wrist with both hands and tried with all his strength to pull free of his desperate, vice-like grip, but the dying man only tightened his grasp to the point where Hansen thought he heard a finger snap and pulled him closer. “Mister Vice-President,” Hansen responded as calmly as he could. “I can’t just...”

  “Yes you CAN!” the dying vice-leader of the unified free world roared.

  “Do it, Major.”

  Hansen whirled around as far as the vice-president’s grasp would allow and glared wide-eyed at...at the squad sergeant—the only one of his men who’d managed to survive the attack with him.

  “He’s the vice-president for God sake!” he reminded him.

  “He’s suffering, sir,” the sergeant pointed out. “There’s nothing more we can do for him now.”

  “I can’t just kill him!” Hansen insisted.

  “Yes, you can.”

  Gasping for every breath, Harkam jerked Hansen hard, drawing his attention back to him. “Please, Major!” he pleaded, crying openly now, barely able to speak through the agony anymore. “Do it!” He coughed suddenly, spewing a foot-high fountain of dark, red-brown blood that barely missed Hansen’s face when he recoiled, then splattered back over his chin and his suit coat. “Do...it,” he begged once more.

  �
�You’ve got to do it, sir,” the sergeant told him. “There’s no other option.”

  Hansen knew in his heart that the sergeant was right. Harkam’s entire family had been brutally slaughtered and the vice-president himself had been pumped full of...of whatever it was that damn beast had pumped him full of. If the poor man’s cries were to be believed, then he was literally burning to death from the inside out.

  He drew his sidearm and slowly pressed the muzzle to the vice-president’s temple. He drew several short, deep breaths and licked his suddenly very dry lips. But he just couldn’t bring himself to squeeze the trigger.

  “It’s the humane thing to do, sir,” the sergeant pointed out.

  “DO IT!” Harkam shrieked through the pain, his tears tinted red with blood. Then he suddenly started shaking Hansen violently back and forth as he lost whatever control he’d been clinging to and convulsed, screaming and crying even louder than before. “OH GOD!” he screamed, spitting and coughing up blood. “DO IT!”

  “Do it, sir,” the sergeant repeated.

  Hansen closed his eyes and turned away. “Forgive me,” he whispered. Then he drew a long, deep breath, and squeezed the trigger.

  He gasped and opened his eyes wide and clutched the sides of his bed. Then, after a brief but strangely frightening moment of profound confusion, he realized he was safe in bed and he relaxed. At least, he relaxed his body. His mind, on the other hand, was another matter entirely.

  The nightmares again, of course. After an absence of more than twenty years, they’d haunted his sleep for the last five nights in a row.

  He sighed and wiped the sweat from his brow. And then, as if a light had just been turned on in his mind, he suddenly realized why he felt so confused. Something very strange had just happened—something that he didn’t understand at all. After forcing him to relive that terrifying experience from his distant past for the last four nights, exactly as it had occurred, his nightmares had inexplicably changed.

  Someone else had been onboard the shuttle this time—someone who had not been there in reality twenty years ago. Not in any capacity. That much he could be sure of, because the head of the vice-president’s own security detail had introduced him to everyone onboard prior to their departure. Security personnel, the vice-president’s aids, the hand-selected members of the press, the flight crew, even the vice-president’s own family had been identified to him. Even now he could see each of their faces in his mind as if he’d just seen them all two days ago, rather than two decades. No. This was someone he definitely didn’t know, had never known, and therefore couldn’t possibly have been at all familiar with. And yet in the nightmare he’d accepted the man’s presence there without question, as if he had belonged there all along.

  That was the way of dreams, he reminded himself. The dreaming mind often accepted as perfectly logical that which might be wrong, or even totally ridiculous, in real life.

  Something else suddenly dawned on him. The stranger had been one of his own...in the nightmare at least—one of the Security Police troops. He’d been their squad sergeant, in fact, but not the one who had really been there. And something else. He’d survived the battle. That wasn’t right either, because none of his troops had survived. They’d all been killed on that terrible day, including the sergeant. Everyone had been killed, except for himself. He had been the only survivor—the only one who’d come home alive.

  So what the hell was going on? Who was this new character in his nightmares?

  He glanced up at the clock and was disheartened to discover that it was only 0428 hours. He knew he should go back to sleep. Cutting himself ninety minutes short could make a pretty big difference in his day. But he also knew that he probably wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again, even if he tried. So instead he got up and pulled on his robe, then strolled quietly into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee.

  When it was ready, he filled a large mug, took it into the living room, and crossed to the bookshelf to find a good book to read for a little while. Preferably one that had absolutely nothing at all to do with military intelligence, politics—well, maybe a little about politics—or, most especially, interstellar war and the slaughter of innocents. He grabbed his old, fuzzy-edged and dog-eared paperback copy of Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s original ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ off the bottom shelf—he’d always preferred the tactile feel of a real book in his hands over digital readers—then crossed to his overstuffed recliner, set his coffee on the end table beside it, and kicked back and put his feet up. Sure, he’d read it about dozen times since his old friend Benny gave it to him, but not in the last ten years or so, so it was time.

  He adjusted the small lumbar cushion behind his back, then opened to ‘Primeval Night, Chapter 1: The Road to Extinction’.

  “Excuse me, Nick,” Hal’s voice called from the ceiling speaker.

  Hansen dropped his hands, and the book, to his lap and sighed. All he wanted was one hour’s escape. Was that too much to ask? “It’s four-thirty in the morning, Hal,” he reminded his computer’s A.I., which had apparently forgotten the concept of ‘down time’. He’d connected his home and office terminals the other day to facilitate his need to work at home, and after careful consideration had decided to leave them connected permanently. Now he realized that might not have been such a good idea after all.

  “I’m sorry to bother you at such an early hour, Nick, but your office terminal has just received a code-red message from the Caldanran Field Office that I think you should be made aware of immediately.”

  “Code-red?” he asked as he set his book aside and sat up straight. Code-red was the most urgent of priorities, reserved for emergency or near emergency situations only. Something very bad had either already happened or was about to very soon.

  “Yes. There is no error. The message is encoded as code-red.”

  “Summarize it for me, Hal.”

  “Certainly. The Caldanran Field Office reports that all contact has been lost with both the Rosha’Kana Field Office on Tor Two and that star system’s jumpstation. In addition, Solfleet forces within that star system report that the Veshtonn have them on the run. Coalition losses over the last seventy-two hours are described as having been extremely heavy, to the point of critical, and it appears the Tor’Kana people have been forced to evacuate their home world and flee the star system entirely. The message ends.”

  Hansen felt the blood rush from his face and, for a brief moment, found it a little difficult to breathe.

  “Would you like me to play the message for you verbatim?”

  “No, Hal. That won’t be necessary. Thank you.”

  “You are welcome, Nick.”

  The Rosha’Kana star system. The planet Tor Two, home to the Coalition’s founders. That star system was the most vital system of all to the survival of the member worlds. It was there, dozens of kilometers deep within the caverns of that star’s long-abandoned fourth planet, where Tor’Kana explorers had discovered their long-lost brethren’s ancient yet incredibly advanced weapons and propulsion technologies—the technologies that had so far enabled the Coalition to survive the Veshtonn onslaught. The technologies without which they would have no chance of winning the war—no chance, even, of survival.

  And now that system had been lost to the enemy.

  The Road to Extinction.

  Chapter 13

  Admiral Hansen watched silently, expressionless, as Chairman MacLeod stood up, threw him a brief glare of superiority, then left his office without uttering another word—his last few had made it perfectly clear that the matter wasn not open for debate—and he continued to stare blankly at the door for several seconds after it closed behind the arrogant bastard. If he hadn’t heard it from the man’s own mouth himself, he never would have believed it. More than that, he didn’t want to believe it.

  Having just arrived from Earth without prior warning, the headstrong chairman of the Earth Security Council had been waiting none too patiently for him in the reception ar
ea when he returned from lunch, annoying the hell out of Vicky if her expression was any indication, which it no doubt was. Once inside Hansen’s office with the door locked, he’d advised the admiral that the Earth Security Council had held an emergency session first thing in the morning to discuss the ramifications of the loss of the Rosha’Kana system and the resulting mass exodus of the Tor’Kana people from their home world. The council members had almost immediately come to the same grim conclusion that Hansen himself had reached when he’d first heard the terrible news, and quite uncharacteristically for them had come up with the general framework for a possible solution very quickly. It was a very unorthodox solution to say the least—one that required not only the admiral’s keen insight, but also his active cooperation. Someone on that council had been doing some very serious out-of-the-box thinking.

  Hansen had answered the chairman’s questions as best he could, had offered his opinions when asked for them, and had even made an official recommendation, despite not having been asked for one. But in the end the chairman had told him in no uncertain terms what he expected him to do, and had left him no room for further debate. So his task was clear, which was more than he could say for the council’s solution. But where the hell was he ever going to find the time to...

  Wait a second. Liz. Of course. If anyone could tackle it, she could. She’d always been dependable, hardworking, and extremely well organized. As his executive officer and deputy chief of the agency, she always stayed on top of things. She kept their headquarters running like a well-oiled machine. She wouldn’t have any problem finding the time to do it, and she’d do it gladly, once he told her why it had to be done.

  He leaned forward and tapped the ‘direct call’ button with her name on it. “Commander Royer, are you there?” he asked.

  “Right here, sir,” she responded after only a few seconds.

  “Are you busy?”

  “Always, but not with anything that can’t wait a few minutes. What can I do for you, Admiral?”