by Smith, Glenn
“Sorry to hear that,” she said with all the emotion of a machine.
“Yeah, I can see you’re all broken up about it.” When she didn’t respond to that, he finished by saying, “It’s better this way...for the both of us.”
“In that case I have a proposition for you.”
Dylan eyeballed the woman, more confident than ever that he knew who she was, or at least who she represented. “What kind of proposition?” he asked anyway.
“A change in your career path.”
He scoffed. “This again?”
“Yes, this again. It really would be for the better.”
Dylan scoffed at that, too. If he’d learned only one thing in all his years of service about the military bureaucracy’s attitude toward the individual soldier, it was that a soldier’s apparent inability to settle into one career specialty and stay there was not highly regarded or appreciated. And he’d already changed paths twice. “Better for who?” he asked.
“For you,” she answered, but then she added, “and ultimately for the service.”
“I figured that would work its way in there sooner or later,” he commented. “Okay, I’m listening, though I don’t know why.” That despite the cynicism he still felt over the whole idea.
“You’d have to be retrained again, of course. But if you’re willing, I can get you out of your combat unit and land you a commission in the agency.”
“The agency?”
“That’s right.”
“And what agency would that be?” he asked, hoping against the obvious that he was wrong—that her visit wasn’t just another attempt by the S.I.A. to recruit him, even though he knew it was.
That same telltale expression returned to her face, but she otherwise ignored his question and simply went on with what she had to say. “I’m offering you a chance, once again, to become an S-I-A Special Agent.”
Dylan groaned with disgust, his own expression no doubt making it very clear that his thoughts on that subject hadn’t changed.
“Don’t worry,” the woman continued off his reaction. “As our recruiting officer should have told you the first time he met with you, the S-I-A isn’t like the C-I-D. It’s smaller, more unified, and has a lot more away from your desk time. In fact...you won’t even have a desk. And being one of our agents is certainly a lot better than leaving parts of yourself behind on some alien battlefield somewhere.”
“I’ve seen a lot of combat in my time, major battles and small firefights combined. This is only the second time I’ve ever been seriously wounded. That’s not a bad record, considering the kinds of missions my current unit draws.”
“Well, congratulations, Sergeant,” she responded sarcastically. “With a track record like that you’ll probably survive four or five more battles. Maybe even six if you’re lucky, before you finally get yourself killed.”
“And I suppose being an Intelligence agent is safe?” Dylan asked just as sarcastically.
“At least your enemies don’t shoot you as soon as they see you. And if you’re good they never even know you are the enemy.” After a pause she asked, “What if Command decides you’ve had enough and doesn’t let you return to your unit? Have you thought about that?”
No, he hadn’t, and she had a point. He’d seen that exact thing happen to Marines before. But he couldn’t surrender to her that easily. “There’s always Colonial Security. Or I could go back to Earth, home to the States...join the National Police Force or a local department.”
“I thought military service was all you know.”
Another point for blondie, but he still wasn’t ready to give up. “I could try to go back to the Military Police.” Somehow, she didn’t look convinced. “The point is,” he continued, “I have options. I’ll have to think about it. Where can I contact you if I want to talk to you again?”
The woman grinned as she stood up. “Nice try, Sergeant. Take your time. Give it some serious thought for a change. I’ll contact you.” She started to turn, but stopped and added, “Oh and, by the way. I’ve been on planet waiting to talk to you for three days already and it was a long trip, so don’t expect me to give up.” With that, she turned to leave.
“Wait a minute,” Dylan said, suddenly grasping the connotation of something the woman had said. “What did you mean exactly when you said ‘leaving parts of yourself behind on some alien battlefield somewhere?’ In case you didn’t notice, I’m all here and everything’s in the right place...” He glanced at his right arm. “...such as it is.”
The woman returned to his side, but didn’t sit back down. “You think so?” she asked, slipping her hands into the pockets of her ‘borrowed’ lab coat.
Something about the way she asked, or perhaps it was the look on her face, filled Dylan with apprehension, even fear. She knew something he didn’t know. But what? He could see both of his hands even now, and the twin peaks at the foot of his bed were proof enough there were still two feet under the blankets. He’d been awake when the nurse came in and gave him his early morning sponge bath, so he knew that everything else was right where it belonged as well. Everything on the outside, at least. Could he have lost an internal organ or something? Was that possible? He stared at the stranger.
“The first round that hit you,” she began, not waiting for him to ask—very perceptive on her part—“was an old style inert hard metal projectile. A bullet. It passed clean through your left thigh and just missed a major artery. That wound’s healing normally but will require some therapy. The second round came from a pulse rifle and blew the hell out of your right shoulder.” Dylan stared at the metal straps and the plastisteel braces that covered his shoulder and half his arm. “The doctors had to replace all the bones and tissue in your upper arm and shoulder and then graft them back together like some kind of puzzle. The third round...”
“Wait a second,” Dylan interrupted. “What the hell are you talking about? I know I was shot in the shoulder. I remember when it happened. I got right back up after I was hit. I picked up my weapon and rejoined...or tried to rejoin...”
“If you picked up your weapon, Sergeant Graves, then you did it with your left hand because your right arm was laying in the dirt half a dozen meters away from you when you were picked up.”
She finally sat down again, then leaned forward, rested her elbows on the bed, and looked him square in the eye. “Dylan, your right shoulder was blown apart, the bones splintered into a million pieces. When they brought you in your arm didn’t come with you. Someone retrieved it later, during the cleanup. As I understand it, most of the upper portion was completely useless and the surgeons had to use synthetics to reattach the rest of it.”
“Synthetics?”
“Synthetics.”
Dylan stared down at his right hand and flexed his fingers, slowly, several times. “I really lost my arm?” he asked.
“Yes, you did. But don’t worry. The doctors tell me that it’ll be as good as new after it heals. You’ll be back on the ice or punching and kicking the heavy bag and throwing your sparring partners to the mat in no time.”
He flexed his fingers a few more times, then gazed back up at the woman who seemed to know an awful lot about him, and said, “You mentioned there was a third shot.”
“The third shot was another solid metal projectile, fortunately a much smaller caliber. It destroyed your left eye and shattered the surrounding bone, but deflected away from your brain.”
Dylan glanced around the room as if for the first time, testing his vision, particularly his depth perception. “But I can see fine.”
“It’s biotronic, like the rest of the synthetic replacements.”
“Biotronic,” Dylan repeated, looking back at her. “So I’m like some kind of cyborg? Like the cyberclones?”
The woman drew a sharp breath at that and withdrew, sitting straight-backed in the chair as if his question had somehow slapped her right across her face. She took a moment to compose herself and then answered as though his quest
ion hadn’t affected her at all. “You’re not a clone, obviously, but in a manner of speaking, yes. In that regard you’re like a cyberclone, if you define the term loosely enough.” Once again, she stood up. “Think about that, Sergeant, while you’re pondering your various options.” She turned and started toward the door.
“One more thing,” Dylan said, ignoring the woman’s sarcastic reply.
She stopped and looked back over her shoulder. “Name it.”
“My squad. My wife mentioned they didn’t all come back and the damn doctors won’t give me any straight answers about anything. All they do is tell me not to worry and feed me a bunch of medical jargon about my own condition.”
The woman faced him once again. “Frieburger, Baumgartner, and Leskowski all came through it all right. Running Horse and Ortiz were wounded but also made it back alive. As for the others...” Dylan’s gaze fell in sadness as he sighed. He knew what was coming next. “Well, suffice to say that things didn’t go as well as planned. You and Running Horse will recover completely, though how in God’s name he managed to survive the explosion that killed Private Walters is beyond me. Marissa Ortiz, on the other hand, is still questionable at this point. They gave her a new heart, but she’s still listed in grave condition.”
“A new heart?”
The woman nodded. “My understanding is that hers had a small tear in the wall. It didn’t go all the way through or she would’ve died almost immediately, but it weakened the wall’s integrity enough that even a small amount of exertion might have been sufficient to cause her heart to burst. I’m sure they had no other choice but to replace it.”
“My God,” he said, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. “How critical is she? Can I go see her?”
“You’ll have to ask the doctors about that, but I doubt you can get up and move around on your own with all that hardware on you.”
Of course he’d have to ask the doctors. How would she know if it was all right for him to visit Marissa? “She had some pretty nasty burns on her face and around that gash across her chest,” Dylan sadly recalled. “When she’s out of danger will she be all right? I mean, she’s so pretty. She won’t be permanently disfigured, will she?”
“Again, you’ll have to ask the doctors,” she answered neutrally. “Though these days they can do things you wouldn’t believe.”
“So I’ve noticed,” Dylan commented, glancing at his hand again. Then he asked, “What about the rest of my squad? The ones who didn’t make it back?”
“Some of their remains have been recovered. A few of them still haven’t officially been accounted for yet, but...”
“Haven’t been accounted for?” he asked with a spark of hope. “Then there’s still a chance that some of them...”
“I said they haven’t officially been accounted for,” she pointed out. “And while there’s still a small chance that some of them might actually be alive somewhere, it wouldn’t be a good idea for you to get your hopes up. I promise you we’re looking into all possibilities, but you have to realize that neither the C-U-F nor the Sulaini Army is known for keeping prisoners of war alive for very long.”
“But a small chance is still a chance,” Dylan optimistically pointed out. “We have to go after them.”
“As I said, we’re looking into all possibilities.”
Dylan settled for that...for the time being. “And the mission?”
“Sorry, Sergeant,” she said, shaking her head. “Any and all actions that we may consider or act upon during this process are classified.”
“No, I mean our mission. The mission that put me here.”
“Oh. Well, your mission was successful, for the most part. The royal couple is safe, the royal consort is recovering from her injuries, a healthy amount of intelligence was collected, and the Sulaini presence on the island is no more. I only wish the Sulaini commander had been there at the time.”
“Yeah, the commander. I’m glad you mentioned that.”
“Why?”
“Because, number one, I want to put Ortiz in for a decoration. She saved my ass in the commander’s office, after she was wounded. Or in the same building anyway.”
“I’ll pass that on to your L-T. And number two?”
“Number two, I’ve been wondering what the hell a force of Veshtonn blood-warriors was doing at a Sulaini terrorist compound on Cirra. For one thing, how did they get there in the first place without our knowing about it? And for another, what the hell was that...that thing that almost killed me?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed as she sat back down again. Whether they did so out of curiosity or suspicion, Dylan didn’t know. “What thing that almost killed you?” she asked. “You mean the Sulaini soldier who tried to beat you to death with his rifle?”
“What? What Sulaini soldier? What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?”
This woman seemed to know just about everything about him and his entire career. Was it really feasible then that she didn’t know how he was wounded? Not likely. “I’m talking about that thing that was hiding out in the Sulaini commander’s office building. That...alien...creature that would’ve snapped me in two if Marissa...that is, if Corporal Ortiz hadn’t turned it into Swiss cheese when she did.”
“Alien creature?” the woman asked, wearing a puzzled look on her face. “I’m...I’m sorry, Sergeant. I must have missed something. What alien creature are you talking about? What did it look like?”
“What alien creature am I talking about?” Dylan asked, exasperated. “The alien creature that burned Marissa! The one that damn near crushed my ribs into powder!” The bewildered expression on the woman’s face told Dylan that despite her intimate knowledge of him and his career, she really didn’t know anything at all about any alien creature being on that Cirran island. Why she didn’t know he couldn’t venture to guess, but she was going to find out right now. “It looked like...like...awe hell! I don’t know what the hell it looked like! I can’t remember! I see the damn thing in my nightmares all the time, but when I wake up I can’t remember what the hell it looks like! What about its remains? We killed it so somebody must have found it! You must know something about it!”
“Sergeant Graves,” she said soothingly, “Corporal Ortiz was cut by shrapnel and burned by chemicals in one of the explosions. Your ribs were broken by a rifle butt in hand-to-hand combat with the Sulaini regulars. Aside from a couple dozen Veshtonn blood-warriors, whose presence we are certainly investigating, there were no alien creatures there.”
“You’re wrong, lady,” he responded more calmly, his head hurting again. “Or whoever told you that was wrong. That’s not how it happened at all. There was a creature. I keep seeing it over and over.”
“Seeing it where?”
“I told you, in my nightmares! I have nightmares about the battle every night now and it’s there every time. It was there!”
The woman sighed. “All right, look. You’re seeing something in your dreams.”
“It’s not just in my dreams!” Dylan insisted.
“Yes, it is!” the woman insisted right back. And then she continued, “Dylan, listen to me. You’re seeing something in your dreams—some kind of alien creature. Okay. But it’s not real, whatever it is. It wasn’t there.”
“Yes it was!”
“No it wasn’t! Think back, Dylan. Think about the battle. Replay it in your mind. Do you really remember this alien creature being there?”
“Yes, I really remember it being there! I see it every damn night!”
“I’m not talking about in your nightmares! Ignore them for the moment. Think about the actual battle ten days ago. Go through it, step by step, as you actually remember it.”
He closed his eyes and thought back as she suggested, and he thought hard. Sure enough, as his memories played themselves out, he couldn’t place the creature anywhere among them. As a matter of fact, the more he thought about it the more clearly he remembered events occurr
ing exactly as she had just described them. He remembered Marissa being wounded in a chemical explosion. He remembered being beaten repeatedly with a rifle in brutal hand-to-hand combat. And he remembered being shot...three times. He drew a deep breath and sighed.
“That’s it,” the woman said. “Now tell me, do you remember this alien creature of yours being there?”
“No,” he admitted, hesitantly, as he opened his eyes again.
“Of course you don’t, because it wasn’t there. Seeing it in your nightmares is probably the result of some kind of post-traumatic stress or something. I’ll let the...”
“So now you’re a doctor?” Dylan asked sarcastically.
“I’ll let the doctors know what you told me,” she responded sternly, clearly growing weary of his attitude. “They’ll help you work it out. Now why don’t you get some rest?”
“I would, but people keep coming in and waking me up.”
She stood up. “I’ll be in touch.” With that, the visitor turned away one final time and left the room.
“But...it was so real,” Dylan mumbled.
Chapter 37
Hoping to be mistaken for someone who belonged there by any members of the hospital staff who might happen to pass by her, Commander Royer let her hair down and combed her bangs forward with her fingers to hide her eyes, then grabbed the medical chart off of a nearby patient’s room door and gazed down at it as she strolled back up the hallway toward the large supply closet she’d borrowed the lab coat from. The ruse worked perfectly. Several personnel did pass, both from ahead of her and from behind, but none of them challenged her, and as far as she heard—she was, of course, listening very carefully—none of those who weren’t alone said anything to whomever they were walking with about not knowing who she was.
She paused in front of the closet door and pretended to study the chart while she waited for the last of them to walk out of sight. Then, when she couldn’t hear any more footsteps, she looked around to make doubly sure that no one was watching her, then ducked inside and closed and locked the door behind her, relieved that no one had locked it while she was visiting Graves. Finally, she pulled off the lab coat and hung it back up on its hook, then drew a deep breath and stood there to enjoy a moment’s relief.
