by Smith, Glenn
“What are you wearing that for?” Beth’s reflection asked, appearing behind his own as she came back into the bedroom wrapped in a towel, her hair still damp from the shower.
Dylan turned around and took her into his arms. Knowing that he wasn’t going to see her for a very long time made him sad and holding her only increased that sadness, but he couldn’t bring himself not to hold her close. He didn’t want to leave her. He didn’t want to let go. He wanted to hold her forever.
“My first assignment,” he finally answered. “Believe it or not, I’m posing as a Military Police sergeant. Ironic, huh?”
“No doubt you were the most logical choice for the job,” she pointed out lightheartedly.
If she only knew. “Yeah. Just lucky I guess.” He checked his watch and sighed. “I should probably get going. There’s a transport waiting for me.”
“Any idea how long you’ll be gone?” she asked.
Given the details of his mission, he obviously had no idea whatsoever, but he had to tell her something. He couldn’t just leave her hanging with no known end in sight. “If all goes well it shouldn’t be more than a few weeks,” he guessed. Or a few minutes. Or a few months. Or a few years. Who the hell knew? How could anyone know when time-travel was involved? Hell, he didn’t even know how he was supposed to travel back in time in the first place.
“A few weeks?” she whined. “What am I supposed to do for a few weeks?”
“I thought you were going down to Earth to visit relatives for the holidays.”
“I am, but that’s more than two weeks away. What am I supposed to do until then?”
“You could always do some traveling,” he suggested. “You could take all your Korean cousins to Italy, or take your Italian cousins to Korea. Or both. Or take them all somewhere none of you have ever been before.”
“They all have jobs, Dylan,” she reminded him. “They have to work.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a smart girl, Beth. You’ll think of something. The admiral has gotten authorization for you to stay in these quarters for as long as you like, so enjoy it. This station has an artificial beach, cliffs to climb, caves to explore, a zoo, museums, a library... There’s all kinds of stuff to do here. And hey, maybe this thing will go quicker than I anticipate and I’ll be back in a week or so.”
She sighed. “Maybe,” she said, stepping away from him.
“If I could take you with me...”
“But you can’t leave yet,” she added, letting his last comment go unanswered. Going with him was, after all, completely out of the question, of course.
“Why can’t I leave yet?”
“I’ve got something here for you from your last unit.”
She reached into the closet and brought out a neatly gift-wrapped package, which she held out to him. The paper was a metallic foil in Solfleet banner blue, the ribbon and bow an equally lustrous Solfleet Marine Corps olive-burgundy—how in the galaxy had the manufacturer ever managed to duplicate that color so closely?—and a small card hung by a short golden thread from the base of the bow. “A courier delivered it this morning while you were out,” she told him, “along with an apology for taking so long to find you. Seems no one in the unit knows where you’ve been for the last couple of months.”
“No one at all knows,” he reminded her as he accepted the gift, “except for you, me, and a few key people in the agency.”
“And the few hundred other people who saw us sitting with Hansen and Royer at the banquet Friday night.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just another face in the crowd to them. Most of them probably wouldn’t recognize me again if they bumped into me outside the agency’s offices.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the package in his hands. Whoever had wrapped it had done an excellent job. The folds looked perfectly symmetrical, the seams ran along the edges of the box, and whatever adhesive the person had used wasn’t visible anywhere.
He opened the card. It read:
To Squad Sergeant Dylan Edward Graves.
We’ll never forget you, Degger. Best Wishes for the Future.
The few surviving members of his squad had signed their names under a heading that read ‘Graves’ Grunts,’ just below the message.
Dylan half smiled. ‘Best Wishes for the Future,’ it said. How ironic.
He closed the card and set it aside, then unwrapped the box, being careful not to tear the paper so he could rewrap it later. Inside he found a holophoto displayer-frame laying on a thin layer of crisp green tissue paper. He tapped the frame to activate the screen and discovered that a large number of photos had already been programmed into its memory, so he started looking through them. Some were snapshots taken during various company recreational activities his platoon had participated in. Others were from the last minute going-away party they’d thrown for him just hours before he left, including one shot of the entire company standing in formation for the crack of dawn awards ceremony that had preceded it. Another was a shot of him standing with the other squad leaders, including Kenny, who’d since been promoted to Gunnery Sergeant and appointed to the platoon sergeant’s position. But the last holophoto was the most significant one of all, and he knew the moment he saw it that it was the one he’d set as the frame’s default display. It was a shot of him standing with his squad in full combat gear. A shot that had been taken during the last FTX, just days before that fateful mission.
Despite the fact that he was a grown man—despite his rugged training and his battle-hardened heart—tears welled up in his eyes. He stared at the picture for long, silent moments. At his friend Running Horse, who’d recovered from his wounds and returned to duty. At Frieburger, Baumgartner, and Doc Leskowski, who’d somehow made it through the ordeal without a scratch. All four of them were driving on under a new squad leader. Who that squad leader was, he didn’t know, but he hoped that one of them had been promoted to the position. He felt guilty for not having kept in touch with them better, even though he hadn’t had the option to do so.
He gazed at Marissa, who’d miraculously survived her wounds as well, but whose service to the Corps had ended. She’d cut off all contact and started a new life for herself. He’d heard through the grapevine that after a series of cosmetic surgeries her beauty had been completely restored. He could only hope that her internal scars had healed as well. He said a quick, silent prayer for her and asked God to take care of that if he hadn’t already. And then he stared at the others, each one in turn. The Rangers who’d stood their ground against impossible odds—who’d made the ultimate sacrifice under his leadership.
Finally, Dylan wiped away his tears and blinked his eyes a number of times, hoping to erase all evidence of his rare emotional release. Once his eyes had cleared, he took the frame out of the box and set it on the bed beside him, then carefully opened the tissue paper to find a beautifully arranged commemorative plaque underneath it. Full-sized duplicates of his various medals were mounted on a velvety matte-black backing in the shape of a diamond with the gold, silver, and blue Solfleet insignia badge in the center. Duplicates of all his ribbons were mounted beneath them, just as he wore them on his uniform, flanked on both sides by a pair of glistening, gold and silver-plated Marine Corps crests.
“The courier had a message for you, too,” Beth told him, speaking quietly so as not to spoil her fiancé’s moment of somber reflection.
“What did he say?”
“He said they said that everyone gets a party when they leave, but they wanted to do something different for you—something special for proving them wrong. Whatever that means.” Dylan grinned, but when he didn’t immediately offer an explanation, she asked, “So what does it mean?”
“When I was assigned to the unit the squad resented my appointment as their sergeant because it kept one of them from being promoted to the position,” he explained. “They also found out I was a brand new Ranger, not to mention a new marine, which certainly didn’t help.” He snickered. “I thou
ght they were going to mutiny before the end of my first day. They told me I’d never cut it and backed up their prediction with a pile of federals. Three months later I had my sports car.”
Beth frowned. “You kept the money?”
“Of course not. I put it into the company recreation fund. They took it out again, with the commander’s permission, and bought the car for me before I knew anything about it.” Sadness washed away his grin. “Marissa had seen me eyeballing one just like it in Tarko City. Using some rather underhanded means I found out that buying it was her idea.”
Beth watched as that blank expression return to his face. The expression she’d first seen that night in the garden and had come to recognize as the face of a man whose thoughts were drifting away, into the past. She let him have a few moments, then cleared her throat to get his attention and asked a question that had been on her mind since the first time she heard the woman’s name. “Should I be jealous of Marissa?”
“What?” he asked, focusing on her. “Oh, no. Not at all. Marissa was a good marine and a good friend and colleague.” He’d promised never to lie to her, he reminded himself. “I mean, to be honest, there was some strong chemistry between us, but we never really started anything. She was one of my immediate subordinates, after all. Besides, I was a married man at the time. That made two strikes against any romantic relationship we might have wanted.”
“But if things had been different?”
“If things had been different then we might have gotten together,” he told her matter-of-factly. “I won’t lie to you about it. But you should know that I’m over that. I’m over her. I was never in love with her in the first place. But I do love you, with all my heart.”
She smiled. “Okay.” Then she glanced at the wall clock and groaned. “I hate to say this, but you’d better get going.”
He looked at his watch again, set down his gift, and stood up. “You’re right,” he said, taking her by the waist. “I love you, Beth.”
Beth raised her arms and folded her hands behind his neck. “Try not to be gone too long.”
“I’ll be back as soon as possible. I promise.”
He pulled her close and kissed her, then reluctantly let her go. Then he grabbed up his crew bag, slung it over his shoulder, and led the way out through the living room. He keyed open the front door and stepped into the corridor, but he couldn’t resist the urge to turn back and gaze on her again—to look at her just one more time. She just stood there and stared back at him until the door slid closed between them.
Dylan sighed. He missed her already.
He hated good-byes. They always seemed so...permanent.
Chapter 55
Hanger deck four. Finally. While it was true that Dylan had been stationed on Mandela for a year earlier in his career, that assignment had ended almost eight years ago and he’d only been back a few times for relatively short stays since then, so his memory of the station’s layout was a little rusty. Even with the computer’s aid, finding the hanger bays hadn’t been easy.
The environmental status panel next to the heavy airlock hatch indicated that the bay on the other side was fully pressurized with an Earth-normal atmosphere, so Dylan walked right in. Dressed as he was as a Military Police sergeant, his arrival drew a few curious but brief glances from some of the flight deck crew, aircraft mechanics in particular, but for the most part they conspicuously ignored him. There was just something about Military Police troops and aircraft mechanics that didn’t seem to mix. A sort of rivalry so old that it had become almost traditional.
Three massive vessels in various states of disrepair were berthed on the other side of the half-meter thick transluminum bay wall to his immediate right. He stopped to take a closer look. He’d always known that the ships of the fleet were massively huge, of course, but having never seen the outside of one from so close up before, he hadn’t realized just how enormous they really were, and the sight of three of the mammoth vessels docked side-by-side was overwhelming to say the least.
The ship on the left was the starcarrier U.E.F.S. Victory, minus her lower portside jump nacelle, which had obviously been lost in what Dylan imagined must have been a fierce battle. What little remained of its twin support structures didn’t amount to much more than a mass of blackened, twisted frame struts and mangled hull plates. The upper nacelle hung partially torn away from its forward support structure, canted at an odd angle, and twisted laterally along its length—probably damaged when its lower twin was destroyed. Much of the hull was pitted and scarred, no doubt having faced a rain of enemy fire. Several of the gun emplacements around her perimeter had been damaged or destroyed as well, and her lower scanner array was all but gone. The battle had clearly been a devastating one, but despite the vessel’s condition—despite her wounds—the U.E.F.S. Victory had obviously lived up to her name. Otherwise she never would have made it home.
Dylan stopped and wondered for a moment how many of her officers and crew hadn’t been as fortunate.
To the Victory’s right and almost directly in front of Dylan, large quantities of cargo and equipment were being offloaded from the somewhat weathered yet surprisingly unscathed U.E.F.S. Bokken, an older vessel very much like his father’s Excalibur—a battleship of the same class, in fact—her service to Solfleet, Dylan had heard earlier on the station’s news network, having just come to its unremarkable, prescheduled conclusion. Once ‘sterilized’ the Bokken was to be turned into an orbiting museum, according to the news story. Considering the Coalition’s desperate situation, she must truly have been useless at every level for her to be retired from active service at such a critical time.
And to Dylan’s far right, farthest from him but somehow still dominating the bay, the vessel that would replace both of the other two floated in silent slumber, illuminated from all sides by several dozen high-intensity floodlights, awaiting its turn to serve the cause. The United Earth Federation’s newest battlecarrier—the U.E.F.B.C. Excalibur, Solfleet registration number SBC-1000.
The namesake of his father’s ship, she was the very first of the massive new battlecarriers to be built, and she was an imposing sight to say the least. Obviously larger and reportedly much more powerful than any other Solfleet vessel ever constructed, larger even than anything else in the entire Coalition, her incredible mass had necessitated the addition of a third pair of jump nacelles, split directly to port and starboard of her main hull, extending beyond and between her other two pairs. At least a dozen additional weapons batteries had been added along her length, presumably on both the port and starboard sides, and some kind of huge new mega-weapon had been mounted beneath her wedge-shaped bow. And for the first time in Solfleet history, an insignia flash unique to the individual ship had been painted on her hull. Just forward of her starboard-side registration, emblazoned directly over her standard green Coalition markings, an armored hand held aloft the sword ‘Excalibur’, its point tilted at 45 degrees toward the bow, with the Solfleet banner flying proudly from its silver blade.
According to news reports the new generation battlecarriers had been designed to replace the core vessels of a standard battle group. They were battleships, heavily armed and even more heavily armored. That much was obvious just looking at this one. They were strike cruisers, surprisingly agile for their size, at least in theory, and outfitted with the latest, fasted, and most powerful propulsion systems available. And they were carriers, housing four entire starfighter wings as well as a wide assortment of operational support craft. They were the three most important elements of any Solfleet battle group, all rolled into one behemoth package.
In addition to the Excalibur, eight more of the titanic vessels had been commissioned so far, and word had it that at least twenty-seven more were either under construction, undergoing static testing, or on final shakedown cruises at various secret locations throughout Coalition space. Despite the enormous cost of the project, which had necessitated a worldwide increase in nearly every type of tax that existe
d, news of the battlecarrier project had done a lot to lift the spirit of patriotism and increase morale among the war-weary public, and fleet enlistments had been on the rise ever since the new Excalibur had been publicly unveiled. Looking at it, Dylan understood why. What chance would the Veshtonn possibly have of making a stand against even one of those giants, let alone thirty-six of them? Moreover, how could anyone in Solfleet Central Command believe that the Coalition was doomed when vessels like that one were being prepared for service?
Yes. She was indeed an awesome vessel. But Dylan hadn’t come to the hanger deck to admire the mighty ships of the fleet. He’d come to meet the man who’d been assigned to pilot him to an as yet unknown destination—unknown to him at least—so he could begin his mission. A mission that, after seeing this new Excalibur, he was beginning to think shouldn’t even be necessary.
He turned his back to the transparent wall to gaze out across the stadium-sized hanger deck just as a middle-aged woman in naval tan and black approached him, limping along with the help of an antique looking gnarled wooden cane, one leg partially immobilized by a soft cast that ran from her hip to her ankle. She was a fairly attractive woman for her age, Northern Indian or Pakistani in appearance, with olive-tan skin and long jet-black hair streaked with gray, and was wearing the single starburst of a commodore on her collar.
“She’s a real beauty, isn’t she?” the woman asked, gazing out at the Excalibur as she stopped beside him.
“Yes, ma’am,” Dylan answered, turning back to gaze at the mighty vessel again. What choice did he have? He couldn’t just walk away, now that she’d spoken to him. That would be rude, commodore or not. “That she is.”
