Solfleet: The Call of Duty

by Smith, Glenn

  The panel went dark.

  She poured whatever was left of her coffee down the drain and set her mug in the sink, then turned and was startled to find Karen standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb with her arms folded beneath her breasts.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, gazing at her through barely opened eyes.

  “Nothing,” Liz answered as she went to her. “Just business as usual.”

  “Does that mean you’re finally coming to bed?”

  “Yes, it does.” Liz took Karen into her arms and kissed her.

  “About time.”

  Liz smiled. “Miss me?”

  “Always.” They kissed again, and then walked back into the bedroom.

  Chapter 59

  Professor Min’para settled into a chair against the back wall in the passenger terminal’s gate-3 waiting area, in the corner farthest from the corridor and directly opposite the ticketing and check-in counter, hoping that would put him far enough out of the way to avoid being noticed by anyone. He would have preferred to delay his departure until late morning when the terminal would no doubt be filled nearly to capacity by a bustling crowd of commuters with whom he could easily blend in, but he’d had to weigh that preference against his need to get off the station as soon as possible, before the conspirators figured out that he knew they were onto him and came after him. As it was, there were only a very few people scattered here and there.

  He’d known from the beginning that the program he’d left running in his stateroom wouldn’t continue to fool the conspirators if he left it running for too long, so he’d set it to shut down automatically at seven o’clock to make it appear as though after more than a hundred straight hours of intensive research, he’d finally had enough and gone to bed. He’d based his plan on the admittedly unlikely hope that they would stand by for the next several hours and wait for him to wake up and continue, but he didn’t dare bet his life on that. If he was lucky, he’d bought himself enough time to escape the station undetected.

  Activity at the ticket counter caught his attention. He looked up, anticipating the boarding call, but was disappointed to see that it was only another passenger—a distinguished looking gentleman dressed in a simple but impeccably tailored gray suit—buying a seat on the flight. He glanced up at the chronometer above the counter. There was still an hour to go before the flight would begin to board. He sighed. Another whole hour.

  Might as well have been another day.

  Having apparently completed his transaction, the gray-suited gentleman stepped away from the counter and walkerd over to the rows of blue hard-plastic chairs that filled most of the waiting area, but rather than taking a seat in one close to him, he bypassed nearly every row, finally entering the next to last one. The row directly in front of Min’para’s.

  Why that one? With over a dozen empty rows to choose from, why had he bypassed so many and chosen the one that would bring him so close?

  As he approached he flashed a friendly smile and nodded to the professor and greeted him with a simple, “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” Min’para returned as the man walked by.

  The man turned away and headed toward the front again, but then stepped to his left and took a seat at the near end of the single row of the chairs that faced the large windows looking out on the moored vessel.

  Who was he? Just another gentleman taking the early flight to Cirra? If so, then why had he taken such a roundabout route to that chair when it would have been much easier and more direct for him to walk across the front row and down the window row from there? It didn’t make sense. No. He wasn’t just a fellow passenger with a bad sense of direction. He was more than that. More likely the conspirators had already discovered what he was up to and had assigned that man to watch him. Or worse. Min’para knew that he was going to have to be very careful.

  How he coveted the security of his own home back at the university.

  As he turned his gaze from the suspicious man it fell on another suited gentleman—a blue suit this time—standing in the opposite corner of the terminal and he did a quick double-take. He could have sworn that man had been looking his way at first, but now he didn’t seem to be paying him any attention at all. Instead, he was struggling with the periodicals panel in the wall, stabbing his finger to it repeatedly, apparently having trouble with a download. The panel eventually surrendered, and once it completed the download—at least the man acted as if he’d finally gotten what he wanted—the man walked away without so much as a glance in the professor’s direction and disappeared down the corridor.

  Realizing that he was growing more nervous with every passing minute, Min’para drew a deep breath and let it out slowly and silently, trying to relax. If only he could speed up time.

  His stomach began to rumble, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten anything in almost an entire Earth day. So, despite knowing that he might draw attention to himself with even the most insignificant movement, he stood up, pressing his hand briefly against his suit coat to reassure himself that his handcomp was still safe and secure in the oversized inside pocket, and headed up the corridor toward the nearest restaurant for some breakfast. As he walked he made a point of carefully observing his surroundings, as though he were nothing more than a curious newcomer to the station taking in the sights. That way, he hoped, the occasional glance backward to see if he was being followed wouldn’t look so suspicious.

  He walked into the restaurant and made his way to a booth against the back wall that a tall, artificial, large-potted floor plant partially obscured from view. He sat facing the entrance and looked around the room.

  The place was warm and comfortable, furnished with finely crafted dark falsewood tables and chairs upholstered in fabrics of dark green and shades of maroon and earth tones. The table lights glowed low and intimate and even flickered a little to mimic candle flames, and the aromas that filled the air were nothing short of mouthwatering. It was also practically empty, with only a handful of customers sparsely scattered throughout the dining area, all of whom had already been served as far as he could tell, so service was going to be quick.

  As though out of deference to his thoughts, a young waitress arrived and took his order in less than a minute, and when she brought his food out to him not long after that he ate slowly and deliberately, and paid careful attention to what was going on around him at all times.

  Those other customers finished their meals and left the restaurant sporadically, some by themselves, others in pairs. Only one new one arrived—a young mother who also sought out a relatively secluded part of the dining area, sat down, and then promptly opened her blouse to nurse her fussing baby, who quickly fell silent and eagerly began suckling. Min’para watched her for a few moments, but as tricky as an agency like the S.I.A. could be, he doubted very much that she was an agent conducting surveillance on him. After all, what mother in her right mind would expose her infant child to that kind of potential danger?

  He followed up his breakfast with two more cups of the hot beverage known as coffee, which he’d acquired an avid taste for a number of years earlier during his contiguous foreign studies at Harvard, Yale, and Drexel Universities. He’d nearly finished his second cup when the young mother, who’d employed both of her swollen breasts to satisfy her infant’s voracious appetite, finally got up and left, leaving him alone in the dining area. So, when he finished he just sat there and waited until the call to board his flight finally came.

  Looking ahead as he strolled past gate-4 on the way to board his flight, he saw that at least seventy or eighty more passengers had arrived and had already formed a roughly single-file line that stretched from the entrance to the aerobridge, across the front row of chairs, and into the causeway where it turned ninety degrees so as not to block pedestrian traffic. He fell into the back of the line just as the boarding official at the keyed the aerobridge’s pressure door open and started scanning the passengers’ identicards and as they passed. He kne
w that boarding wouldn’t mean he was out of danger, but as he slowly shuffled forward, watching each of the passengers intently as the agent scanned their identicards, he nonetheless felt himself growing more and more anxious to do so.

  Where was his emotional control when he needed it most? He was allowing the potential danger of inherent in his circumstances get to him.

  Another step forward, and the back corner of the waiting area where he’d originally sat down came into view. The man in the gray suit still sat facing the windows, clearly watching the passengers as they filed past the boarding official. That didn’t necessarily mean anything, though. He had bought a ticket. He might simply have decided to wait until the line got shorter. Nevertheless, Min’para decided that it might be wise to turn away and not let the man see his face, so he did just that...

  And he found himself looking right at the blue-suited man who, once again, appeared to be having trouble with a periodicals download. Coincidence? Possibly. But in the professor’s mind, not very likely. No, the conspirators had eyes on him. He could feel it. They knew right where he was and where he was going, and chances were they were sending someone with him. They were just waiting for him to board. Once he did, he’d be trapped.

  He no longer had a choice. He had to take what he’d discovered to the Terran authorities. Then he could bow out gracefully and be done with it. They’d provide him with protection for the flight home, and once there he’d be safe. Then he could forget about the whole thing and get on with his life.

  But to which agency could he go and still maintain a reasonable expectation of safety? Solfleet Intelligence was out of the question, for obvious reasons. Their Criminal Investigations Division? A separate command perhaps, but still a part of Solfleet, so that option wasn’t much better. Hansen and Royer likely would have friends among the agents there and he might end up talking to one of them without even knowing it.

  No. He had to go to someone outside the fleet, but whoever that someone was would still have to be a part of Earth’s central Federation government. Any lesser agency might not have the authority necessary to take action. Given the nature of the cover-up, that left him with just two or perhaps three agencies to choose from. The civilian-run Federation Bureau of Investigations, the Central Intelligence Agency, or the Federation Bureau of Cyberclone Affairs. Which of those three could he trust more than the others?

  As he continued shuffling slowly but steadily forward and drew closer to the turn in the line, another idea suddenly occurred to him, and the more he thought about it, the more he felt like it would be the best way to go. He didn’t necessarily have to go to a law enforcement or intelligence agency at all. He could go directly to the central Federation government itself—to the Earth Security Council, or possibly even to its parent body, the International Council on Solar Affairs. Yes. Chairman Brian MacLeod, the United States’ representative to the Federation Congress. He had quite the reputation for getting things done. He was the one who could, to use one of his Terran expressions, get the ball rolling. He was the one. But to meet with him quietly, Min’para was going to have to go to Earth.

  He stepped out of line and strolled back down the causeway at a leisurely pace as though he didn’t have a care in the world. First thing first. He needed to buy a few things. A small knife or scissor. A portable sewing kit. And something to wrap his handcomp in so a security scanner couldn’t pick it up. Perhaps a null-reflective static-wrap of the type manufacturers of intricate electronic equipment used as packaging would do the trick. Yes. That should work. Afterwards he’d buy a seat on the first flight to Earth he could get. Well, the first flight to New York City at least. MacLeod’s office was in Manhattan. Then, at the last possible moment, he’d exchange the ticket he’d already purchased and hurry aboard.

  * * *

  “In the kitchen, Admiral,” Royer called without bothering to get up as Hansen stepped into her quarters and the door slid closed and auto-locked behind him. Normally she would have cleaned herself up, pulled on a fresh uniform, and asked the admiral for an early meeting in his office. But circumstances were anything but normal this morning. For one thing, the two of them were playing a dangerous game that necessitated their being even more secretive than usual. For another, she’d gotten fewer than three hours’ sleep. So instead she’d just taken a quick shower and thrown a robe on over fresh underclothes, then contacted him via secure comm-link a few minutes before seven, about the time he normally left home for the office, and asked him to come to her quarters without going to the office first. The privacy they would afford them was, in her mind at least, imperative. Then she’d sat down with a light breakfast to wait.

  “Good morning, Commander,” Hansen said as he approached her dining table. “You look surprisingly refreshed this morning, considering what you’ve been up to for the last several days. Did you finally get a good night’s sleep, or are you still taking stims?”

  “I’m done with the stims, sir,” she answered, “unless you count a cool shower and lots of caffeine. And although I wouldn’t exactly call it a good night’s sleep, I did manage to get a couple hours worth.” She raised her cup of coffee and gestured toward the pot on the counter. “Coffee’s fresh.”

  “Only a couple of hours?” he asked as he stepped over to the counter and took a mug out of the overhead cabinet.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, I guess that’s better than nothing.” He poured his coffee and replaced the decanter, then faced her and leaned back against the counter. “At least it explains what I’m doing here and why you’re still in your bathrobe instead of in uniform on your way to the office.”

  “Yes, sir. Well, that’s one reason.”

  He sipped his coffee, then asked, “There’s another?”

  “Yes, sir,” she answered as she turned her chair to face him more directly and crossed her legs, not even caring that her robe fell open and bared her thigh as she did so. In fact, she was glad it did because she intended to revisit what had clearly become a forbidden subject with the admiral, and although he was her commanding officer, he was also a man. And as far as she was concerned, when it came to some things, men were still just men, squad sergeants and admirals alike. What worked on one would likely work on another, at least to some degree.

  Besides, she’d disobeyed his orders. She’d authorized the use of lethal force, if necessary, against Min’para. For that reason alone she and the admiral weren’t completely on the same side anymore, so a little extra psychological advantage on her part certainly wouldn’t hurt.

  “I’m waiting, Commander.”

  Royer sipped her coffee, then explained, “I haven’t had a chance to sweep either of our offices for bugs yet, but I have swept my quarters.”

  “Bugs?” Hansen asked, seemingly at a loss as to what she was talking about.

  “Hidden transmitters, sir,” she clarified.

  “Yes, Commander, I know what bugs are,” he told her, a little perturbed.

  “Of course you do, sir. Sorry.”

  He took another sip, then asked, “So what’s going on? What prompted you to sweep your own quarters for hidden transmitters?”

  “Professor Min’para is...”

  “Wait a second,” he said, raising a hand to stop her as he peered out into her living room. “Where’s Karen?”

  “Still sound asleep, sir.”

  “All right,” he said, dropping his hand. “Quietly. What about the professor?”

  She knew Karen couldn’t hear her, but she lowered her voice a little more anyway, for the admiral’s sake. “He’s onto us, Admiral. He’s aware that I’ve been tracking his use of the library computer, and I have no way of knowing how long he’s known. He programmed the terminal in his stateroom to make it appear as though he were still conducting his research, and while I was being yanked around the online library like a puppy on a short leash, he snuck out and bought himself a one-way ticket to New York City. He’s already off the station.”

 
; “How the hell did he get past your surveillance?”

  “Oh, he didn’t get past it, sir. I assure you.”

  “You’ve got someone on him.”

  “Yes, sir. I’d already set up rolling surveillance as a contingency, just in case he tried something like this. He initially bought a ticket back to Cirra, but something spooked him and he exchanged it for the one to New York. We’ll know every move he makes as he makes it, both during the flight and after he arrives at J-F-K. The big problem is that there’s only one reason for him to want to go to New York in the first place. Only one that I can think of, at least.”

  “Humor me.”

  “I’d bet a year’s salary that he intends to report whatever he’s pieced together, Admiral. And we have no way of knowing how much that might be.”

  Hansen pulled out the chair across from her and sat down. He rested his elbows on the table’s edge and took a long, slow sip of coffee, then gently set his mug aside and asked, “What about his stateroom? Is there any way we can determine how much he knows from whatever he might have left behind?”

  “He didn’t leave anything behind, sir. At least, nothing of any consequence. Not even an electronic trail. If he made any written notes, he took them with him. If he contacted anyone before he left, he didn’t do it from there. He fed his search program directly into the room’s terminal. Whether he programmed it by hand there or pre-wrote it and then downloaded it from another computer, we haven’t been able to determine yet. I’d sure like to know what kind of equipment he might have at his disposal.”

  “What about Miss DeGaetano? Any indication he might try to meet up with her?”

  Royer shook her head. “She’s at her aunt and uncle’s house in Italy. We’re watching her every move and tracing every call that she and her relatives make or receive. We’ve even set up surveillance on everyone they’ve had more than casual contact with. We’re spread pretty thin down there, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that none of them have been in contact with the professor or anyone else aboard this station in the last day and a half since she left. I’m beginning to think the professor might actually be pursuing this matter alone.”