Solfleet: The Call of Duty

by Smith, Glenn

  Royer stepped right up into her face, almost close enough to kiss her, stared her in the eye and answered, “You’re right. I don’t have a gun. But I’ve been running track since grammar school, so if you try to escape I’ll have no choice but to chase you down and kick your ass all the way to the office. Now, if you think you can outrun me or come out on top in a fight, go for it. If not, I suggest you come along quietly.”

  O’Donnell stared back at the commander for a few seconds, then dropped her gaze to the ground and said, “I promise, I won’t make any trouble.”

  “Wise decision,” Royer told her with conviction. Then she pointed her thumb behind her and said, “This way. Now.”

  O’Donnell fell in beside her and they headed up the street.

  Two beautiful, sexy blonds from Earth, walking side-by-side up the street, Royer mused as they walked in silence. One in form-fitting, skin-tight jeans, the other in one incredibly sexy mini-skirt. No one who happened to see them would ever guess who they really were, unless O’Donnell went back on her word and tried to escape, of course.

  “I meant what I said, Stefani,” she pointed out with that thought in mind, just to make sure the girl clearly understood her and didn’t have any doubts. “If you try to run I will make you regret it.”

  Chapter 38

  Having completed the solemn tour of his ship nearly half an hour ago—touring the ship before going into battle was a centuries-old tradition that he’d eagerly carried on ever since his first command—Captain Erickson stood alone on the forward observation deck and gazed out through the wall-sized transluminum window at the enormous task force that had assembled over the last nine days. Over the last twenty minutes or so he’d counted two hundred and nineteen ships floating out there, and those were just the ones he could see. All totaled, over a thousand Solfleet and Coalition heavies had come together for Operation Mass Eviction. How could the Coalition not emerge victorious employing such an overwhelming force? Even a few of the more space-worthy Tor’Kana vessels they’d rescued were involved in one way or another. A political necessity, he surmised. One with which he couldn’t disagree, too. After all, it seemed only right that as many Tor’Kana vessels as possible should be directly involved in the liberation of their own home system, no matter what role their condition might relegate them to play.

  He gazed at the only one of them he could see, which also happened to be the only one of them intended to see direct combat during the campaign. The others weren’t nearly battle-ready enough to be sent into the fight, so they were going to fill supporting roles such as floating hospitals or resupply ships. He couldn’t remember its name, but looking at it, the first word that popped into his head was ‘conglomerate’. All four of its original jump nacelles, one of its fusion engine cowlings, and a large section of its forward hull had been lost in battle during the first Rosha’Kana campaign. The nacelles and cowling had since been replaced with the newest Solfleet models—their light blue-gray skin looked almost white against the vessel’s shimmering black coating—and the hull section had been replaced by a bright yellow-white emergency armor patch of Trindeah design. At a glance, the replacement parts looked more like a cluster of drifting debris than components of a larger vessel, which when he thought about it might actually have been an advantage.

  Speaking of the Trindeah, theirs was by far the largest contribution to the task force—four hundred ninety-five ships, eighty-five of which were fighter carriers that also served well as battleships. Their design, in fact, was what Solfleet had based its battlecarrier project on. When the Trindeah agreed to support an operation, they really supported it. Hell, in a pinch they might have been able to pull this campaign off all by themselves.

  As Sol’s closest neighbors, the three simian-like races of the Centaurian Alliance had also committed a large contingency of forces to the fight. Whether that was because they genuinely cared about their human allies or only because they knew that if Sol fell they’d likely be next, who could know for sure? Then again, who cared, as long as they were there? The Centaurian infantry fought in roughly platoon-sized units like large packs of angry wild animals and were real berserkers when it came to hand-to-hand combat. Erickson almost pitied the crew of any Veshtonn ship the Centaurians might happen to board during the upcoming battle.

  “Bridge to Captain Erickson,” O’Connor’s voice called from the ceiling.

  Erickson tapped his link. “Go ahead, Ensign.”

  “We just received word from the task force commander, sir. It’s time.”

  Time. Time to get underway. Time to go to war. “All right. I’m on my way.” He closed the channel and gazed out at the black sea of ships one more time. “And so it begins.”

  Chapter 39

  Ten Days Later

  Earth Standard Date: Saturday, 18 September 2190

  Still hot and winded from her more strenuous than usual late evening workout—she usually limited herself to a few stretching exercises at night and saved the more vigorous stuff for the early morning—Commander Royer kicked off her sneakers as she double-locked her stateroom door behind her. She pulled off her socks as well and dropped them to the floor, then started to undress as she crossed to the room’s lone window, a small circular one that reminded her a lot of an old sea ship’s portal.

  She was aware of course, as she dropped her sweat-soaked tee shirt to the floor and pulled off her shorts, that there wasn’t much to see from amidships in a civilian passenger liner in jumpspace. The stars had long since gathered into their distant rings of colorful light directly ahead of and behind the ship, and the only way she was going to see either one of them was by going up to one of the observation decks where she would no doubt also find a few dozen of her fellow passengers, no matter what time of day or night she went. And the pair of Solfleet escort cruisers that had accompanied them out of the Caldanra star system had split off and taken up their own positions ahead of and behind them just prior to the jump two days ago, so she wouldn’t see them, either.

  No, no sea of stars in jumpspace. The resultant narrow streak of bright green light when a lone stray star or two occasionally whipped by was all the show she had to look forward to out there. Nevertheless, despite the field grade rank she wore and the position of leadership she held, she hadn’t been assigned to a ship’s cabin with a window of any kind in several years—traveling as a lowly nobody simply came with the job—so she intended to make the most of it while she had the chance, no matter how insignificant that ‘most’ might be.

  As if on cue, a single bright green point of light whipped by, and another followed a few seconds after. Two at almost the same time—what a treat.

  “So much for that,” she said aloud. She peeled off her sweat-soaked sports bra and panties, then picked up the rest of her clothes and stuffed everything into her laundry bag. Then she went into the bathroom—the lights flickered on automatically and came up to full brightness, their only setting—and stopped in front of the mirror.

  “Oh my God,” she mumbled, startled by the sight of woman she found looking back at her. Several random locks of her pinned-up hair had fallen loose and were clinging to her exertion-reddened face. Her skin glistened under the mirror lights as if coated with baby oil, and rivulets of perspiration were running down between her breasts, over her abdomen, and into her damp pubic hair.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worked out so furiously. Thirty minutes of stretching, then an hour on the weight machine, followed by an hour of aerobics and a five mile run on the treadmill. Judging from her appearance she’d damn near killed herself, but it had sure as hell felt good at the time. Amazing how much energy a person could build up over a few weeks of forced celibacy, especially when that person was forced to spend part of her time with a beauty like Stefani. That sexy young thing had sorely tempted her on more than a few occasions during the week they’d spent working things out together. Intentionally, too, once or twice, but more often simply by happenstance, and sh
e’d come real close to giving in a couple of times. But now that she was finally on her way home to Karen, she felt relieved—she was very relieved—that she hadn’t betrayed her trust.

  She couldn’t wait to get back home.

  She let down the rest of her hair and shook it out, then stepped into the bathtub, drew the curtain, and set the shower water for medium temperature and heavy flow. She would have loved to take a long, hot, soothing bubble bath, but she’d realized as soon as she saw the tub that it simply wasn’t big enough for her to stretch out and bathe in comfortably, even by herself, so that, too, was going to have to wait until she got home. Instead, she closed her eyes and stood motionless under the warm stream for a while before she started to soap up, and she spent that time thinking back over her previous week’s work.

  She’d visited Sergeant Graves in the hospital two more times—first on Friday, two days after he mentioned his nightmares to her, and again on Sunday, two days after that—to try again to talk him into joining the agency, but he still hadn’t given in. She had thought she was wearing him down at one point when he asked her a question about the typical daily life of an Intelligence agent, but he’d suddenly regrouped and reinforced his resistance right after that. He’d even told her not to bother answering his question just seconds after he’d asked it, before she’d even had a chance to try. And then on Monday the doctors had released him from the hospital unexpectedly and sent him home on convalescent leave. She’d tried to talk to him there as well, but he’d refused to even answer his door.

  Except for having taken Stefani O’Donnell into custody, it had appeared at that moment that her trip had been a complete waste of time. But then she’d experienced her epiphany. It had been at that very moment, while standing in vain at the sergeant’s front door and looking around at the apartment complex he lived in, that the initial idea for her admittedly underhanded scheme had first sparked to life in her devious mind.

  Convinced as soon as it came to her that she could make it work, she’d sped back to the office and had gotten the ball rolling immediately. She’d called in every favor and had pulled every string she could in order to rush things through as fast as possible—she’d wanted to leave for home as soon as she could, after all—and when she’d contacted the admiral to update him on her progress, or rather the lack thereof, she’d conveniently ‘forgotten’ to mention anything about having found and apprehended Stefani O’Donnell, having already decided that it was better to provide him with legitimate grounds for deniability, just in case.

  She only hoped that she could count on the Tarko City station chief, whom she’d left in charge of the whole operation, to comply with her explicate instructions—to report only to her and to keep his mouth shut otherwise.

  She washed her hair and rinsed herself off, then turned off the water and stood under the dryer, combing her fingers through her hair until it was barely still damp. Then she stepped out of the tub and went back into the room.

  She opened her underwear drawer and reached in, but then changed her mind. The room was warm and she was alone, so why bother wearing anything? She’d already had her dinner and her workout. She was in for the night and it wasn’t like anyone was going to come by to visit. She closed the drawer, then turned on the flatscreen monitor—the stateroom was little more than a passenger cabin, too small for a virtuavid unit—propped up the pillows, and sat back on the bed to find something to watch.

  “Play.”

  The screen lit up to reveal a familiar handsome young starship captain in spicy-mustard command gold sittinig at the equally familiar briefing room table aboard his ship, hands folded, his fingers interlaced. “They used to say if man could fly he’d have wings,” he calmly began. “But he did fly. He discovered he had to.” A somewhat older gentleman appeared on the screen for a moment, and then the captain returned and, briefly pointing his finger and waving his hand around for emphasis, continued, “Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn’t reached the moon, or that we hadn’t gone on to Mars and then to the nearest star? That’s like saying you wish that...you still operated with scalpels and sewed your patients up with cat gut like your great, great, great, great-grandfather used to. I’m in command,” he went on as the camera started slowly moving in closer. “I could order this,” he added as the music began, “but I’m not. Because...Doctor McCoy is right...in pointing out the enormous danger potential in any contact with life and intelligence as fantastically advanced as this, but I must point out that the possibilities, the potential...for knowledge and advancement is equally great!” The music grew louder and more dramatic. “Risk. Risk is our business. That’s what this starship is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her.”

  “Change,” Royer said, sighing and rolling her eyes. Was there any place in the entire galaxy where that centuries-old program wasn’t still shown? It wasn’t a bad show and had certainly been a hit in its time, but it could be a bit melodramatic for her taste.

  The picture flickered and changed to yet another famous chef on another studio kitchen set doing another cooking show. She rolled her eyes again. “Change,” she repeated.

  The picture flickered again. Big, colorful, overstuffed furry animals bounced through a bright green meadow of carpet and paper flowers. “Change.”

  “...back to the ten o’clock news,” the anchorman was saying. “I’m James F. Alexander.”

  Royer glanced up at the wall clock. 2040 hours. So it was a recorded rebroadcast, at least a day old.

  “If you’re just joining us and missed our top story, don’t worry, because tonight our top story is also our only story. The regular news will be broadcast one hour later than normal so that we might bring you this very special report.

  “To summarize for those of you who have just tuned in, several sources have reported to I-P-N that less than thirty-six hours ago a Coalition task force comprised of over one thousand Solfleet and allied warships invaded the Rosha’Kana star system in a massive counterattack aimed at pushing out the Veshtonn forces that invaded and subsequently occupied that system approximately two and a half months ago. No Central Command officials could be reached for comment as they are understandably quite busy, but while we don’t yet have any official reports pertaining to what we understand to have been dubbed ‘Operation Mass Eviction,’ we do have with us tonight, Retired Major General...”

  “Off,” Royer said, more annoyed than she should have been. The screen went dark and silence filled the room. While she honored the service of all retirees, she’d grown tired of hearing them guess about what might be going on in this or that theater of battle based solely on their own previous war experiences. While a very few of them no doubt still had high level connections to various field commanders and could report on events with at least some basis of fact to back them up, the vast majority of them didn’t, and their analyses and predictions almost always ended up being way off the mark in the end. And as far as the various all-news networks went, I-P-N was easily the most untrustworthy of them all in the first place.

  She hadn’t really wanted to watch anything anyway.

  So the fight to save the Tor’Kana was finally underway, she reflected as she yawned and stretched. Wow. Not even twenty-one hundred hours yet and she was tired already. “I must be getting old,” she told herself. God willing, this campaign would be a quick one and would end in victory with minimum loss of Coalition lives. Then, with all need for the ‘Timeshift Resolution’ eliminated, perhaps she and the admiral could instead send their agent, whoever that agent might be, back in time with orders to concentrate his or her efforts only on finding Günter and bringing him home.

  She yawned again, so decided she might as well go to sleep. After all, it wasn’t like she had anything better to do. All she needed to do was to get up, turn down the sheets, and then climb into bed. She lay there for a moment or two longer, intending to do just that, but instead drifted off to sleep on top of the blankets.

  * * *

  H
er long platinum hair fluttered freely in the fresh evening breeze blowing in off the open sea and cooled her bare, suntanned skin. As she strolled along the unspoiled beach’s hard wet sands, holding Karen’s soft, warm hand in hers, small waves—just minor swells that rose above the smooth surface of the tranquil sea—succumbed to the shallow depths and rolled up onto the beach with a sound like the tinkling of crystalline wind chimes, lapping at her feet and chilling her toes with salty foam. The swollen orange-red sun painted a glowing rainbow across the distant clouds as it slowly sank into the sea beyond the indistinct horizon, bathing Karen in a soft golden glow that enhanced her radiant beauty. Somewhere off in the distance seagulls screeched for reasons known only to the gulls themselves.

  “Our world is so beautiful,” Karen said, her melodic tone like a tender song in Liz’s ear.

  Liz stopped walking, and Karen with her, and turned to her. “Not so beautiful as you.”

  Karen gazed at her through those gentle eyes and smiled her warm, loving smile. “I so love you, Liz,” she said.

  Liz stepped closer, touching her breasts to Karen’s, and kissed her softly.

  She felt suddenly as though she were falling and she opened her eyes.

  The bed had just dropped right out from under her, but was fortunately still there to catch her after she bounced off the ceiling.

  “What the hell?” she shouted, instantly awake. She rolled off the bed but had barely taken a step toward the bureau—if she was going to be tossed around the room like a rag doll, she wanted to put some clothes on first—before the vessel rumbled and she found herself falling sideways toward the far wall. She slammed into it with a solid thud and a sharp pain shot through her right shoulder, and she finally realized as she collapsed to the floor what was happening.

  The ship had come under attack.