by Smith, Glenn
“No, sir,” Dylan admitted hesitantly.
When he didn’t elaborate further, Akagi didn’t hesitate to ask, “So who are you really?” and the expression on his face evidenced his suspicious expectation.
Dylan looked at Benny, silently asking his advice.
“I think you can tell him the truth,” Benny told him. “I’m sure he knows well enough to keep it to himself.”
“Of course I do,” Akagi confirmed. “And so do the guards. We all had to swear a special oath of secrecy before being assigned here.”
“Besides,” Benny continued, having gotten the impression that Akagi was a man who would most likely not just let them do what they were there to do without knowing exactly what was going on, “you’ll have to tell him soon enough, I think.”
“You’ve got that right, sir,” Akagi firmly verified.
Dylan looked back at the commander and said simply, “S-I-A.”
Akagi noisily blew out his breath and threw his arms out to his sides as he turned his back and stepped away from the door. “I’ll be a... Son-of-a-... I should have known!” he exclaimed. He slapped his thighs in disgust, then faced Dylan again and comaplained, “It’s bad enough your Admiral Hansen has taken to wasting my valuable time by grilling me over the comm-channels every three days! Now he’s sending his agents here to give me the third degree in person? What the hell does he think I’m holding back?”
“Whoa! Take it easy, Commander,” Dylan said, raising his arms in surrender. “Admiral Hansen doesn’t think you’re holding anything back. At least, not as far as I know. I’m not here to interrogate you.”
“Oh no?” the commander asked doubtfully. “Then why the hell are you here?”
“Well...” Dylan hesitated, then folded his hands behind his back, taking on a calmer and more professional posture. “I’m sorry, Commander, but I can’t tell you that. It’s classified.”
“Oh really? What a surprise.”
“Nothing against you, sir,” Dylan assured him, “but like Admiral Hansen says, it’s just the nature of our business.”
“Oh, I see. It’s just the nature of your business,” Akagi mocked, clearly dissatisfied with that particular response. “I swear, if I had ten federals for every time I’ve heard that line... It may be the nature of your business, Lieutenant, but it’s not the nature of mine.”
“But it is, Commander,” Benny pointed out. “You and your staff keep this very outpost shrouded in secrecy at all times.”
“Yes we do, Captain, but that’s entirely different. I’m a scientist, not a spy.” To Dylan he said, “Next you’ll be telling me that ‘Dylan Graves’ isn’t even your real name.”
The commander’s sarcasm was growing heavier by the second, but sarcasm was a game at which Dylan was an age-old expert. “No, ‘Dylan Graves’ is my real name, Commander,” he told him. “At least as far as you know.”
“Oh, you’re very funny, Lieutenant,” Akagi responded. “If I laugh any harder I’ll need to have my ribs sewn back into place.”
“Why does Admiral Hansen call you so often, Commander?” Benny asked, hoping to deflect the younger officer’s misplaced wrath away from Dylan.
“Hell if I know,” Akagi answered in disgust, though in a much calmer tone of voice, as he stepped back up to the door, shaking his head. Then he reentered the access sequence and placed his hand back on the panel as he added, “Judging from his seemingly pointless and painfully long line of questioning, which remains exactly the same every time he calls me, my guess is that he’s looking to confirm his suspicions about something. But his questions are never simple or straight forward. There are always questions within questions or questions that don’t seem related to each other. I swear...I just don’t understand why all you Intelligence types insist on playing the same old cloak-and-dagger games, generation after generation after generation.” The locks finally disengaged and the door slid open. “It’s like you all still live in the paranoid culture of decades past or something.”
Dylan and Benny exchanged grins as the commander finally led them inside.
There wasn’t much to it. Just a security scan, an identicheck, and beyond the retractable barrier a narrow flight of stairs that led down into the underground bowels of the outpost. The newcomers eased through the formalities of identifying themselves and ‘signed’ in to the facility. As a test, Dylan used one of the half dozen false identicards Royer had provided him with. It worked flawlessly. Then he and Benny followed Akagi down into a long, dimly lit man-made tunnel. The SF guards peeled off and stayed behind.
“So, what can you gentlemen tell me about why you’re here?” the commander asked, continuing to lead the way as they headed deeper into the tunnel.
“I’m on special assignment from Solfleet Central Command,” Dylan told him.
Akagi snickered. “You say that like you’re on some kind of holy mission from almighty God, Lieutenant. I assumed that much. What I want to know is exactly what your assignment here entails. What are your orders?”
“I have a question for you, Commander,” Benny said before Dylan could even draw a breath to respond.
“What’s that, Benny?”
“Don’t you know better than to ask an S-I-A agent his business?”
The innuendo in the semi-retired captain’s voice came through loud and clear. His word still carried a lot of weight, and Akagi didn’t need the inherent warning to be spelled out for him to hear it. “I guess I do at that, sir,” he answered. “My apologies, Lieutenant.”
“Accepted, Commander,” Dylan responded.
“And I have another question for you,” Benny continued.
“What’s that?”
“You knew who I was even before I introduced myself. How did you recognize me?”
Akagi’s entire demeanor seemed suddenly to change. Gone was the sarcastic officer who was angry at being constantly harassed by a far away superior with nothing better to do with his time, replaced by a pure scientist—by a man obviously filled with child-like fascination over the many strange wonders that filled the galaxy. “I’ve familiarized myself with the circumstances surrounding your first visit here, Benny,” he answered enthusiastically, “and I’ve reviewed all the footage your reconnaissance teams recorded back then...several times. I’ve also seen a lot of holophotos of you over the years from later in your career. You’ve changed some since the last one I saw was taken, but not so much as to make you unrecognizable.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes, sir. After all, you were a major player in one of the most important discoveries in Earth’s history.” He waved a hand in the air, indicating the unseen world around them. “Anyone who knows anything about all this would recognize you.”
“Is there a way to watch that discovery as it happened in the Portal?” Dylan asked.
Akagi stopped short and spun around so quickly that Dylan almost dropped back into a defensive stance. “How the hell do you know about the Portal, Lieutenant?” he demanded.
Dylan relaxed, then answered, “I’m an Intelligence agent, remember?”
“That doesn’t matter! Admiral Hansen is the only one of you who’s supposed to know anything about it!”
“Is that right?” Dylan asked, echoing Benny.
“Yes, that’s right! He told me he’d keep its existence classified top secret for as long as my team and I needed to study it! He promised!”
“I assure you, Commander, it still is top secret,” Dylan told him. “But it’s also the reason we’re here.”
Akagi backed off, wearing a puzzled look on his face as his gaze bounced back and forth between the two of them. “You two came all the way out here just to study Earth history?” he asked, much calmer. “That’s your special assignment from Command?”
“Not exactly,” Dylan answered.
“What the hell do you mean, ‘not exactly?’” Akagi snapped.
“Why don’t we save the details for later, Commander,” Benny suggested. �
�Let’s show the lieutenant what all the fuss out here is about.”
Akagi drew a deep, calming breath, then answered, “All right.” Then he turned his back on them and walked off, continuing down the tunnel.
“Commander?”
Akagi stopped and faced back toward them. “We didn’t want to disturb any of the ruins, Captain, so the engineers built most of our facilities and an entire network of tunnels underneath them.” He pointed back over his shoulder with his thumb, as if hitching a ride. “The Portal is this way.”
“Oh. Well then, wait up a moment. I’m not as young as I used to be, you know.”
Dylan smiled. Benny wasn’t as young as anyone used to be.
As they strolled through the tunnel Dylan reminded their reluctant host, “You didn’t answer my question, Commander. Is there a way we can set the Portal to show us Benny’s recon team as they discover it?”
“I’m afraid not, Lieutenant,” Akagi answered, shaking his head. “The Portal can only show us events that took place on Earth.”
Dylan felt disappointed. He would have enjoyed seeing the look on Benny’s face as he watched his younger self and relived one of his adventures.
They walked in silence for several hundred meters, then came to a fork in the tunnel and veered to the left. Then, after another two hundred meters or so, they stopped at a security barrier. Akagi tapped a code into the control panel and placed his hand over the scanner plate, then identified himself verbally and stood through a retinal scan before the barrier finally opened and allowed them to pass.
“Commander,” Dylan continued as they resumed their walk. “During the trip out here Benny told me about his last visit, but he didn’t tell me a lot about the Portal itself. You asked me if we were here to study Earth history. Does the Portal actually teach?”
“Not exactly,” Akagi answered, sounding as though he were opening a university class lecture. Maybe the Portal didn’t teach, but now that he could talk freely about the object of his life’s passion without having to worry about compromising classified information, it quickly became apparent that Akagi had at one time or another been some sort of instructor himself. “All you have to do is enter the right commands into the panel and the Portal will show you any period in Earth’s history that you might desire to see, right up to the present day. Of course, it shows all events that occurred at each moment everywhere on the entire planet simultaneously. At least, we think that’s what it does. So you have to have a handcomp ready to make a high-speed recording, and even then you’ll miss a good ninety-eight percent of whatever you’re watching. Probably more than that. A handcomp does have a limited capacity, after all.”
“Benny said it could be set for a specific time and place.”
“I thought you said he didn’t tell you much about it.”
“He didn’t tell me much more than that,” Dylan clarified.
“I see. Well, that’s true in theory, but actually doing it has proven rather difficult. We’ve tried many times and have usually missed our target by several weeks, if not months. On those rare occasions when we do manage to come close, specific events still flash by too quickly to record in any detail. Pinpointing and recording any one brief, specific event on a particular day, for example, has been virtually impossible for us. So far, at least.” The tunnel finally ended at the base of another flight of stairs. “Here we are, gentlemen.”
They emerged from the tunnels to find themselves standing amidst a random scattering of large, nondescript boulders. But not far ahead, the ruins of an ancient, long forgotten population lay scattered for as far as the eye could see. The three men walked forward, past another pair of heavily armed SFs, and made their way carefully among the crumbled, dust-covered and severely weathered remnants of what many centuries ago had been towering, intricately carved stone columns and polished marble-like walls.
“How old are these ruins?” Dylan asked.
“Old,” Akagi answered simply. “Eons older than the Portal itself.”
“Then the civilization...”
“Was long extinct before the Tor’Rosha ever set foot on this world. Had they still been alive, the Tor’Rosha wouldn’t have put a Portal here.”
They rounded one last, huge boulder, the canine-like head of an ancient stone statue, its finest details smoothed away by thousands if not millions of years of exposure to the wind-whipped sands. Then they turned to their right.
And there it was. The Portal—the thick floating ring whose semi-reflective metallic finish seemed completely out of place amidst the otherwise interesting but unremarkable ruins.
A chill crawled up Benny’s spine and passed through his entire body when he saw it. A manned security post had been erected a couple of meters to its right, but he took little notice of that. His companions thoughtfully held back whatever words might have come to them and allowed him a moment to himself, and he suddenly grew aware of his own heartbeat as it gave rhythm to the howling of distant winds. As he gazed at the familiar yet mysterious structure, he felt as though he were being drawn backward in time merely by standing in its presence.
“Benny?” Akagi said in a near-whisper. If Benny heard him at all he gave no outward indication of it. In fact, it appeared as though he wasn’t even aware that his own mouth was hanging open or that he was shaking his head ever so slightly in awe. “Captain Sedelnikov?”
“Benny!” Dylan shouted.
That snapped him out of it. “What... Oh.” He looked back at Dylan. “Sorry.”
“You were right,” Dylan said.
Akagi gave Dylan an odd look.
“Come closer, Dylan,” Benny suggested. “Take a good look.”
“Hey now, wait just a minute there,” Akagi warned. “That security barrier is there for a reason, gentlemen, and no way am I going to authorize shutting it off until you tell me exactly what you’re here to do. I don’t care if you are S-I-A, Lieutenant. I want to know what your orders are—what you’re looking into—and I want to know right now.”
“Commander...”
“We’re not looking into anything, Commander,” Benny advised him, apparently having decided that the appropriate time to divulge their true mission was upon them and knowing how reluctant Dylan would still feel to do so. “Lieutenant Graves is going through.”
“What!” Akagi exclaimed in shock, his magnified eyes bulging white and wide as saucers behind his lenses. The guard at the security post stood to his feet but otherwise kept his place.
“I said, the lieutenant is going through the Portal,” Benny calmly repeated.
“What the hell... I heard what you... Absolutely not! That’s...that’s just crazy! No, no, no, Benny!” he exclaimed, shaking his head and waving his arms back and forth in front of him as though he were calling a base runner safe at home plate. “That is completely unacceptable! Out of the question! Do you have any idea how dangerous that could be?”
“I know very well...” Dylan started to answer.
“Calm yourself, Commander,” Benny said evenly, interrupting.
Dylan fell silent and just stood there and watched the exchange. The guard, still standing fast at his post, did the same.
Akagi shut his mouth long enough to bring his temper under control, then asked, “Has Central Command completely lost its collective mind?”
Benny snickered. “Now that’s another question entirely,” he said. “One that I’ve asked myself many times over the years. But the fact remains, Commander Akagi, that Lieutenant Graves has very specific orders, and those orders include his stepping through that thing.”
“Oh no,” Akagi said, shaking his head. “No way. I’m sorry, Benny, but I cannot allow him to do that. In fact, I’m not allowing him anywhere near the Portal until I receive official confirmation of those orders. And I’m talking about direct confirmation, too, straight from Command Admiral Chaffee if I can get it or from Admiral Hansen if I can’t. I won’t accept some vague ‘go-ahead’ from an anonymous junior level yes-man.�
� As an afterthought, he added, “I’m referring, of course, to the lieutenant here when I say that.”
Benny sighed. “If you must have it, Commander.”
“Oh, believe me, Benny, I must,” Akagi assured him.
“Then stop wasting time and make your call.”
“I will.” Taking a deep breath and softening his tone, again, Akagi added, “But until I do receive that confirmation, please, make yourselves comfortable. We’ve got dinner and a couple soft beds for you. I’m sure you’re tired after your long voyage out here.”
“I’m not the tired old man you might think I am, Commander, but I sure could use a hot meal that doesn’t come out of a ration pack. Thank you.” To Dylan he said, “Come on, Dylan. Let’s go eat some real food.”
“You know, it’s funny,” Dylan commented as the three of them started back toward the tunnel entrance.
“What’s that, Lieutenant?” Akagi asked.
“The Portal. It really does look like the top of an old swimming pool.”
Benny smiled. “Wait ‘til later, Dylan. Just wait ‘til later.
- - - - - - - - - -
Somewhere deep in the blessed interlight, a light started flashing on a laborer’s console. The laborer reported the flashing light to his Vessel Priest. The Vessel Priest ordered a long-range scanner sweep of the surrounding light systems. The scanner sweep detected four small vessels orbiting the median world of the Zielepchtah light system.
Demon vessels.
Tseirran vessels.
Whatever was calling forth the temporal waves they had detected earlier, the Tseirran demons had found it first.
That, simply stated, was unacceptable.
Chapter 65
The Next Day
Wednesday, 22 December 2190
Crewman Anwaar al-Assari had been assigned to Mandela Station’s Central Solfleet Communications Center for a little over a year, ever since he graduated from technical school, but had always worked the day shift before—a shift filled with near constant activity that had a way of flying by so fast that it would often be over before he knew it. Sometimes even before he realized he was hungry enough for a lunch break. Not at all like the midnight shift, which he’d just been reassigned to thanks to the asshole ensign who ran it.
