Three Days Later
Earth Standard Date: Tuesday, 20 July 2190
Apparently having reached her wits end, Doctor Forrest had called up to the bridge a few minutes ago and urgently requested Commander Rawlins’ presence. As marched purposefully through the wide central corridor on his way to Medbay, his pounding heart, which he was starting to feel in his head as well as in his chest, served to remind him of just how much he was not looking forward to confronting the captain, regardless of the fact that he’d had those few minutes to prepare himself for the inevitable showdown. Not when he was going to have to take the doctor’s side against her.
Captain Suja Bhatnagar might have been a little on the petite side physically, but like most of her peers, at least those whom Rawlins had had the opportunity to meet over the years, she exuded an almost larger than life presence wherever she went. There was just something about being a starship captain that filled a person with a kind of impenetrable self-confidence. Or, perhaps it was that abundance of self-confidence that enabled a person to achieve that lofty position in the first place. Either way, it had the effect of encouraging others to tuck tail and run whenever they found themselves in opposition, and unfortunately for Rawlins that was exactly where he was about to find himself.
Her injuries had turned out to be much more serious than the medical technicians who’d carted her off the bridge had realized. According to Doctor Forrest, who’d been kind enough to put it into layman’s terms for him so he could actually understand what she was talking about, not only had the captain broken her right pelvic bone, she’d also cracked the back of her skull and severely bruised her brain. That being said, the doctor had considered her to be lucky, further explaining that if she had hit her head much harder, she might well have broken her skull clean through and suffered much more severe or perhaps even immediately fatal trauma to her brain.
As it was, she’d suffered internal bleeding and had required immediate emergency surgery to relieve the slowly but steadily increasing pressure on her brain. She’d remained unconscious for the next two days and Rawlins had been worried sick, despite the fact that Forrest had assured him that the prolonged bed rest was the absolute best thing for her. But earlier this morning, when she finally did wake up, Bhatnagar had wanted no part of any prolonged rest, bed or otherwise. Doctor Forrest had always accused starship captains of being the worst kind of patients, and now Rawlins had heard the proof of that assertion. Not yet able to stand up on her own or even to focus clearly on her surroundings, the captain had nonetheless demanded that she be released from Medbay and returned to duty status immediately. Her ship was still in a combat zone, badly damaged and at great risk, and that was all she cared about.
Naturally, Doctor Forrest had refused to comply with that demand, after which the captain had threatened to have her arrested for disobeying a direct order. While that order hadn’t carried any real weight, given the fact that the doctor’s professional medical judgment rightfully overruled it, it had set the stage for an ugly confrontation that had only ended when Forrest and two of her staff held the struggling captain down on her bed—not too difficult a task in itself, considering her weakened state—and sedated her. Strictly in order to prevent her from further injuring herself, Forrest had later explained to the Executive Officer.
What a circus that had been, Rawlins reflected as he paused just short of the Medbay doors’ sensor range. And with the captain already fuming over that, this confrontation promised to be even worse.
He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly to calm his pounding heart, never more thankful than he was at that very moment that the responsibility for all medical decisions lay squarely on Doctor Forrest’s shoulders rather than on his own. Then, deciding that he was as ready as he was ever going to be, he stepped forward.
“...right now, Doctor!” he heard the captain shouting vehemently as the doors parted and he stepped inside. “That is a direct order!”
“Not unless you give me your word that you’ll stay put, Captain!” he then heard Doctor Forrest reply just as firmly, but much less audibly by comparison as he made his way through the outer offices and into the Intensive Care ward. The light blue-green privacy curtain had been pulled around the captain’s bed, shielding it from view, despite the fact that the rest of the ward was empty.
“Doctor Forrest?” he called to announce his presence as he approached.
“Thank God!” she exclaimed. “Come in, Commander, please!”
Rawlins swept the curtain aside to find the doctor standing over and glaring down at the captain, her lips pursed with stubborn determination and her arms folded defiantly across her chest. Upon seeing him, Bhatnagar quickly pulled her blankets to her chin and held them there as he stepped in.
“Captain,” he greeted his commanding officer with a nod, glancing briefly at the freshly changed bandages wrapped around her head and wondering again if the doctor had been forced to shave off all that beautiful black hair.
With her jaw clenched, her nostrils flared, and her lips pursed even tighter than the doctor’s, Bhatnagar appeared as though she might explode at any moment, and when she looked away and didn’t answer, Rawlins looked at the doctor and calmly asked, “What’s going on here, Doctor?”
Forrest looked his way and drew a breath to answer, but the enraged captain beat her to the punch. “Commander Rawlins, it’s about time you got here!” she barked, glaring at him through angry, dark eyes like lethal lasers. “Doctor Forrest is under arrest for disobeying a direct order! You will call the Security Forces and have her taken to the brig immediately!”
Rawlins gazed at her, taken aback. He’d seen her upset before, but never so furious at one of her officers as she seemed to be now. “Exactly what order has she disobeyed, Captain?” he asked, acting as though he might be prepared to comply if the doctor’s alleged disobedience warranted it. No point in making her mad at him, too.
“The order to give me something to wear!”
For the first time since he walked in, Rawlins noticed that the captain’s shoulders were as bare as her arms. “You mean...”
“Yes! I mean I’m completely naked! She knocked me out again and stripped me bare!”
Rawlins looked at the doctor, but he didn’t have to ask.
“It’s not like I slugged her across the jaw, Commander,” Forrest explained. “I gave her another sedative. It was either that or strap her down like some kind of violent mental case.”
When Rawlins kept staring at her without saying anything, she became defensive and added, “She tried to sneak out of here twice today, which, by the way...” she pointed out as she looked down at the captain again, “is a willful violation of the order I gave her to stay here and not try to get up!” She turned her eyes back to Rawlins again and continued, “My authority as the chief medical officer aboard this ship...”
“I’m aware of your authority, Lieutenant Commander,” Rawlins assured her, reminding her at the same time that her rank was subordinate to his own—sort of an unspoken message meant to caution her against overstepping her bounds. “And you, I trust, are just as aware of the captain’s religious beliefs?”
“Thank you, Commander,” Bhatnagar interjected.
“Of course I am, sir,” Forrest responded more calmly, “and I’ve already briefed my staff. Only my women are providing the captain’s care. I’m not even allowing the men to step inside the curtain to see if she needs anything.”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here, both of you,” Bhatnagar insisted. “Commander Rawlins, I gave you an order. You will call the Security Forces and you will have Doctor Forrest taken into custody and confined to the brig immediately!”
Rawlins gazed down at his commanding officer. This was it—the moment when he had to back the doctor’s actions against the captain’s orders. The moment he’d been dreading for the last several hours. “Unfortunately, Captain, Doctor Forrest’s authority takes precedence over yours in this matter, and you know it,” he said. “If she says you’re not ready to be released, then there’s nothing I or anyone else can do about it.”
“Traitor,” she responded more calmly than he’d expected her to, her tone of voice more conceding than accusatory. Her glare, however, could have burned right through his head.
“But, at the same time,” he continued, looking at Forrest again, “you need to respect the captain’s beliefs and give her something to wear, Doctor. And I mean right now, even if you have banned the men from looking in on her.”
“She’ll just try to sneak out again, Commander,” Forrest warned, shaking her head. “I will not allow her to further aggravate her injuries,” She looked at the captain, “or her doctor.”
“Why, you insubordinate...”
Rawlins sighed, then looked down at the captain once more. “Captain Bhatnagar,” he began. Then, when she looked up at him, he looked her right in the eye and said, “Under her authority as the ship’s C-M-O, Doctor Forrest has ordered you to stay in Medbay and remain in bed until such time as she determines you are healthy enough to be released. That is a lawful medical order, Captain, and if you violate it I will have no choice but to relieve you of your command, place you under arrest, and return you to Medbay under a twenty-four hour guard...for the good of the ship, as well as for your own. Do I make myself clear, Captain?”
For a moment Bhatnagar only stared back at him, expressionless. Then her eyes narrowed as an angry, almost evil smirk slowly appeared on her lips. “I’ll get you for this, you mutinous son-of-a-bitch,” she warned.
Rawlins drew a deep breath and recoiled, then exhaled slowly, this time to hold his own temper in check. Then he pointed out to her, “The fact that you would even say such a thing, Captain, especially to me, tells me that Doctor Forrest is absolutely right to keep you here.” Then, to the doctor, he said, “At least give her back her underclothes, Doctor. Then come see me in your office.”
“Her underclothes won’t fit over the hip brace I put her in, and that cannot come off for some weeks yet,” Forrest informed him.
“Then come up with something else, and give her a medical smock to go over it.”
“Yes, sir,” Forrest acquiesced, clearly still not in agreement.
Rawlins concluded with, “Get some rest, Captain.” Then he turned to leave.
“Commander Rawlins,” Bhatnagar beckoned, suddenly much more calm than she had been. Once he turned back to her, she asked, “What’s our status?”
Suddenly all business? So be it. If it kept her in Medbay and out of trouble, Rawlins had no problem at all filling her in. After all, despite her hostile attitude, the Victory was still her ship, whether she was presently sitting in command or not.
“Still no further enemy contact since that lone battlecruiser the other day,” he began. “We made brief contact with the jumpstation afterwards. They’ll have a pair of emergency jump nacelles rigged and standing by for on-the-go installation when we get there, which should be any minute now.” He started to turn away again, but then hesitated and, hoping to set her mind at ease once and for all, added, “We’re well on our way home, Captain. There really is no reason for you to worry about anything at this point. Please, just stay here and rest. Give yourself time to heal.”
She gazed silently at him for a moment, then said, “Only if you promise to keep me informed of any changes.”
“You have my word on it, Captain.” And with that, he left her side and went to Doctor Forrest’s office to wait.
When the doctor arrived a few minutes later, she resumed their conversation by pointing out what to Rawlins couldn’t have been more obvious. “The captain isn’t herself.”
Rawlins snickered. “She called me a mutinous son-of-a-bitch, Doctor,” he reminded her. “I’d say ‘isn’t herself’ qualifies as the understatement of the century.” But then he qualified his agreement by adding, “Although, you and your staff did...strip her...of her dignity, Doctor. As the ship’s captain, that kind of personal vulnerability isn’t something she wants anyone to see in her, under any circumstances.”
“Captain or not, she’s still a human being, Commander. It was necessary.”
“Be that as it may, I wish you’d called me first. If I’d had the opportunity to present that action to her as one possible way of enforcing your order, maybe she would’ve complied before you actually had to do it.”
When it became clear to him that Doctor Forrest had nothing more to say on the subject, he shifted gears and asked, “Any idea why she’s acting the way she is?”
“The brain is a funny thing, Commander,” she pointed out. “Ask me why her vision was so out of whack when she first woke up and I’ll tell you it was because she took a severe blow to the back of her head that affected her vision centers. But ask me why her core personality seems to have changed? Why she’s suddenly become so much more aggressive?” She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. “I can isolate the specific area of the brain and identify any physical damage, but to explain why she’s acting the way she is? That’s not so easy.”
“I thought medical science had mapped the human brain a long time ago.”
“It did, but there’s still a lot we just don’t understand.”
“Bridge to Commander Rawlins,” the ceiling speaker called.
“Of course,” Forrest continued, ignoring the page, “she might just be aggravated as all hell over being stuck down here while her wounded ship limps helplessly toward home under someone else’s command.”
“That much seems pretty certain to me,” Rawlins said. Then he tapped the comm-link at his neck. “Rawlins here,” he answered. “Go ahead.”
“We’re within magnified visual range of the jumpstation, sir,” Lieutenant Irons advised him. “Still maintaining complete communications silence, per your orders.”
“Are the emergency nacelle teams in position?”
“Affirmative, sir. Standing by for instructions.”
“All right. Set course directly for the jump ring and adjust our velocity to allow them time to complete the installation on the run. Smallest possible safety margin, Lieutenant. Then have Sergeant Noonian send them a flash message on a tight beam and advise them. Be sure he gives them our exact course, speed, and E-T-A to the ring. Clear?”
“Clear, sir.”
“Rawlins, out.” He tapped the channel closed, then gave Forrest one final bit of advice. “Remember, Doctor, your patient is still the captain of this vessel. Do whatever you have to do to take care of her, but show a little more restraint in enforcing your instructions, will you, please?”
“I will if she will, Commander.”
Not exactly the complete capitulation he wanted, but it would have to do. “Fair enough,” he said. “Let me know if there’s any change in her condition. I’ll be on the bridge.” He stepped out of the doctor’s office nonchalantly, but once out of her sight he left the Medbay as fast as he possibly could and headed back to the bridge, relieved that the confrontation was finally over.
* * *
What he had intended to be a quick detour to Engineering had turned into a long and very detailed technical briefing courtesy of the very stressed out chief engineer, so by the time Rawlins finally made it back to the bridge, Commodore Van den Engel, commanding officer of the Rosha’Kana jumpstation and of all Solfleet personnel permanently assigned to the sector, had long since deployed one of his station’s two mobile repair isolation gantries—‘RIG’ for short. The engineers who’d been assigned to retrofit the emergency jump nacelles to the Victory had begun to accelerate it back toward the jump ring, paralleling the Victory’s course per Rawlins’ request, and Ensign LaRocca had split the viewscreen’s image to show both the RIG on the left and the jumpstation on the right.
Even magnified ten times, Rawlins observed as he approached the command station, both the jumpstation itself and its enormous ring were still far too distant to readily identify, or even to differentiate between without the ship’s scanners. Especially without the telltale point of flickering bright blue-green light that normally served to make a jump ring in standby mode so easily identifiable, even from such distances. There was good reason for that, of course. Because of its relatively close proximity to the all too porous border of enemy space, the Rosha’Kana station’s ring, unlike those of all of Solfleet’s other jumpstations, always remained de-energized and dark until it was actually needed. Otherwise it would have been too easy for the Veshtonn to locate and destroy.
But the RIG was another matter entirely. Basically nothing more than a self-propelled, semi-cylindrical construct of crisscrossed heavy-duty latticework that served as both a portable dry-dock and a secure mounting platform and external power source for numerous construction and repair modules, it was nonetheless gargantuan—larger even than the jump ring. In all his years in the space service, Rawlins had never actually seen one of them before. Pictures and computer generated images, yes, but never the real thing. Despite its relative simplicity, he found it to be quite impressive.
“Status report, Mister LaRocca,” he requested as he sat down.
“The RIG has matched our velocity and is closing on our port side at five point five meters per second, sir. Contact in approximately one minute.”
“Ensign...uh...Engineer?” Rawlins prompted, forgetting the young man’s name again.
“Ensign Zurilkowski, sir,” the engineer dutifully reminded him for the umpteenth time since they’d met. “Commander Marshall reports ‘ready’. Two teams per nacelle are in place and standing by.”
“Thank you. And...I’m sorry I keep forgetting your name.”
“You’re not the first, sir,” the young man commented without any resentment evident in his tone.
Rawlins didn’t doubt that one bit. Still, he felt a little ashamed of himself, regardless of whether the ensign resented it or not. As the ship’s executive officer, not to mention its acting commanding officer, he knew he should make whatever effort was necessary to remember the names of all those he worked with, especially those who served with him on the bridge. Not to do so set a poor example for the department heads, and probably wasn’t very good for the morale of those whose names were forgotten, either.
“Tactical?” he called for next, putting his deficiency behind him for the time being. He could review the crew roster later, when the ship was safe.
“All operational sensors show clear, sir,” Lieutenant Irons reported from the comfort of her brand new, enhanced comfort chair.
“Sensors?” he asked, peeling his eyes away from the screen and looking over at her. “Haven’t you been running active scanners, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir. Twenty-four hours a day as ordered, but I had to shut them down a few minutes ago or we would have risked overloading some of the RIG’s more sensitive equipment.”
“Right,” Rawlins conceded. “Sorry, Lieutenant.” He faced front again, disappointed in himself. How could he have forgotten something so basic so easily? The long hours must have been getting to him. But as quick as he was to question himself, he was just as quick to put his doubts behind him and move on.
Four hours to go. Four long hours from initial linkup with the RIG to their jump, and then they would be home free, assuming of course that they didn’t run into any problems with the installation of the nacelles. And assuming the Veshtonn didn’t show up out of nowhere all of the sudden to spoil the whole party.
“RIG pilot is requesting final authorization for docking, sir,” Noonian reported as that approximate minute to contact came to an end.
“Authorization for docking is granted, Sergeant,” Rawlins responded, “by authority of the executive officer, U.E.F.S. Victory.”
Noonian started to transmit his message, but then hesitated and looked over at the commander to request verification. “Shouldn’t that be by authority of the acting commanding officer, sir?” he asked innocently.
Rawlins turned his chair—the captain’s chair—toward the communications NCO and asked, “Has Solfleet issued change-of-command orders that I’m unaware of, Sergeant?”
“No, sir.”
“Then I have to assume Captain Bhatnagar is still the commanding officer of this ship. Wouldn’t you agree, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir,” Noonian answered sheepishly. “Transmitting now.” Seconds later the RIG deployed its tethers and linked up with the Victory, and the combined teams of the station’s and the ship’s engineers got to work.
Rawlins sighed. Four hours. An eternity, with nothing to do but sit patiently and wait. As patiently as possible anyway.
Before long it dawned on him that it would probably be a good idea to retire to the captain’s ready room for a while and get some rest. But as he sat there and surveyed the bridge, he suddenly realized just how comfortable he felt right where he was. After three days of essentially being the ship’s captain—never mind the admonishment he’d just given Sergeant Noonian—he was indeed beginning to feel quite at home in the command chair, and that made him wonder. Should the captain’s injuries turn out to be severe enough to prevent her from ever returning to her duties as the Victory’s commanding officer, might the job then fall to him by default? On a temporary basis almost certainly, but what about in the long run? Between this and his previous assignment, he’d served more than enough time as an executive officer, and he was, after all, eligible for promotion. If he...
He shook his head, banishing the thought from his mind. Suja was still the captain, and he was her executive officer. For him to contemplate replacing her in the immediate future, especially when she was so seriously injured and out of action, was not only disloyal, but in his eyes was despicable as well. The starcarrier Victory was Suja Bhatnagar’s ship until Solfleet Central Command said otherwise.
He sighed. Four long hours.
Not knowing what else to do with them, Admiral Hansen shoved his hands in his trouser pockets as he paced back and forth from one end of the Narcotics Investigations office to the other, pausing every few seconds to glance at the row of six surveillance monitors that Detective Sergeant Franco had reluctantly set up for him there. Each member of the squad had his or her own specific part to play in the operation, so none of them had been available to stay behind and watch with him. He’d changed into the most nondescript civilian clothes he owned before coming so as not to attract too much attention, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched himself—that the eyes of every cop who happened to walk down the hall outside turned to him at every opportunity. In or out of uniform, they knew who he was, and he knew it. They probably knew why he was there, too.
He took a seat on the distinctly uncomfortable chair that sat facing the monitors and slid forward to its edge, rested his elbows on his knees, and started wringing his sweaty hands as he stared anxiously at the far left monitor—the one tuned to the camera that focused on the public area just outside the main entrance to the Rotunda’s maintenance offices. According to the timer in the lower right corner, twenty-seven minutes had passed since they started recording. Almost half an hour and so far, nothing—no Heather, no narcotics dealer, and strangely enough not very many passersby. Then again, maybe that wasn’t so strange. Maybe the Rotunda never got that busy on a Tuesday night.
Half an hour of pacing back and forth across the office, of sitting down and fidgeting, of standing up and pacing back and forth again. Half an hour of watching and waiting. It felt more like half the night, but at least he could watch. Not that that hadn’t taken some doing.
The narcotics team, or the ‘Narco squad’ as he’d overheard some of their fellow police officers affectionately referring to them, had an apparently well-earned reputation for being an exceptionally effective team. It also tended to be quite secretive about its methods, so Hansen initially hadn’t had much luck convincing Sergeant Franco to allow him to observe the operation. But once he found out how long the squad had been after this particular dealer and just how badly they wanted to get their hands on him—the sergeant himself had let that useful little gem slip out somewhere along the way—all he’d had to do was threaten to withdraw his hard-earned permission for Heather to help them out. Faced with the loss of his only inside resource, Franco had finally given in.
But monitors or not, what still occupied his mind most prevalently at the moment was the question of why he’d ever let Franco talk him into allowing Heather to get involved in the first place. Just what the hell had he been thinking, anyway? Narcotics enforcement was a dangerous business, perhaps more dangerous than any other area of law enforcement, and she was just a fourteen year old girl. Still a child. His child. Not even a high school sophomore yet. Far too young to be playing undercover cop. And yet there he was, sitting idly by, watching and waiting while she prepared to walk straight into what was probably the most dangerous situation she’d ever gotten herself into.
He rolled his head around to stretch the kinks out of his neck. Why had he let Franco talk him into it? Why? Because Heather had sided with the detective, and even after all these years, Daddy’s little girl still had Daddy wrapped around her little finger. That was why. That was exactly why. One thing he was sure of, though. Had they been in an open city down on Earth instead of in the closed and relatively safer environment of Mandela Station, he never would have given in. He’d have doled out her punishment, and that would have been the end of it.
But they weren’t on Earth. He had doled out her punishment, but as usual that had not been the end of it. First, in lieu of sending her back to Westcott—as with most everything else, he’d let her plead her way out of that, though he hadn’t really intended to send her back there in the first place—he’d grounded her for an additional five weeks, bringing her total sentence to seven. Then he’d revoked her social communications privileges for the duration, effectively isolating her from all of her friends for almost a month and a half. Grounded for seven weeks with no comm privileges of any kind—confined to her home like an inmate to her prison cell. In the opinion of several other parents he knew, whom he’d happened to run into after church the next day, that was the worst punishment that any almost fifteen year old girl could possibly ever be subjected to.
Not surprisingly, Heather had agreed with their assessment wholeheartedly, claiming that such a long separation from her circles would prove devastating to her social life. She’d offered to do anything it might take to avoid ‘ruining her entire life by having to serve that much time,’ especially since her birthday fell in the middle of it. All the cooking and cleaning, getting a part-time job for the rest of the summer, attending drug abuse counseling—all very good ideas as far as her father was concerned.
And then, yesterday, when Franco had put the idea of her going undercover and setting her supplier up to be arrested on the table, she’d jumped onboard without any hesitation. She’d been that determined to avoid the additional punishment. And, admittedly, Hansen himself had liked the idea of pulling that scumbag drug dealer out of circulation for good very much. As a former Security Police officer, he couldn’t help but feel that way.
And so, once again, he’d let her have her way. No return to Westcott, and no additional five weeks of being grounded. In return for that promise, Heather would participate in what, after meeting with the entire team of detectives, had become the ‘buy-bust’ operation she was now involved in. Then, as soon as it was over, she’d enroll in drug abuse counseling—a very good idea indeed, in her parole officer’s opinion as well as in her father’s—with the understanding that she not miss a single session without prior permission.
But now that it was actually happening—now that Heather was about to literally risk her life to regain her freedom—Hansen was really starting to wish he’d stuck to his guns for a change and enforced the extra five weeks instead. She’d doubtlessly be whining and complaining endlessly by now about not having a life of any kind, but at least she’d be safe at home instead of out there on her own, getting ready to double-cross a dangerous narcotics trafficker.
No. She wasn’t on her own at all, he reminded himself for the sake of his own sanity. The narcotics detectives were all close by her, and they were all professionals. They knew their jobs. If something went wrong they’d be there. They’d protect her. They wouldn’t let any harm come to her. Besides, she’d obviously bought from the same dirt bag before. He knew her, and he had no reason not to trust her.
So why was he so damn nervous?
He glanced at the time for what had to be at least the tenth time since he’d stopped pacing back and forth across the room and sat back down again, which he noted had only been about five minutes ago. He just wanted the whole thing to be over, so he could take his daughter home.
She’d set the buy up for the usual time at the usual place—8:00 P.M., inside the Rotunda maintenance department’s poorly lit and rarely trafficked storeroom. The detectives had set up the hidden cameras late last night, arranging them to monitor the approach to the department, the main hallway, both sides of the storeroom door, and the entire room itself. Heather would be wired for sound, and as soon as she made the buy and passed the codeword, the detectives would burst in and arrest both her, in order to protect her status as an informant, and the dealer.
At least, that was the plan.
He drummed his fingers on the front of the chair for a few seconds, then stood up and started pacing back and forth in front of the monitors...again. He eyeballed the tall stack of disposable cups and the half-empty coffee pot sitting on the warmer in the far corner—they’d been calling to him ever since the detectives left him alone—but the last thing he needed at that moment was more caffeine. He was fidgety enough as it was. Still, he stared at it for a few more seconds, then went over and poured himself a cup anyway.
At least it gave him something to do.
The smooth aroma did nothing to calm his nerves as he lifted the cup to his lips and took a tentative sip. Not bad, he concluded as he sloshed it around in his mouth to make the most of the taste. Better than his own, in fact, though not nearly as good as Vicky’s.
“C-I approaching,” a voice from over by the monitors quietly announced. Hansen turned to it, but there was no one there. Then he remembered the comm-link. Sergeant Franco had left one behind, rigged to a small portable speaker so that he could monitor their communications during the operation—another of the specific conditions he’d demanded they meet in exchange for allowing them to use Heather—but it had remained silent until that moment, and in all his anxiousness he’d forgotten all about it.
‘C-I approaching’, he reflected. C.I. stood for Confidential Informant. It was a standard term that all such agencies used, including his own. It usually referred to someone he didn’t really care much about on a personal level, such as a spy who’d gotten caught, a criminal facing serious charges and trying to make a deal for leniency, or simply someone who was down on their luck and trying to make a little extra cash. Usually, but not this time. This time the C.I. was his own daughter.
“All right, stand by, everyone,” someone else responded, apparently in charge. That had to be Franco, though it didn’t sound very much like him.
Hansen returned to his chair, sat down, and waited nervously...and waited...and waited some more.
Finally, after a few more long nervous minutes, Heather stepped into frame on the far left monitor, and the first thing Hansen noticed was that her hair and face were made up well beyond her years, and that she was wearing a much too provocative combination of skintight, low-rise blue jeans and a short-sleeved half-length blouse that left her midriff bare—far too much of it for a girl her age. Far too much of it for a girl of any age for that matter, whether she was his own daughter or not. When all this was over, he decided right then and there, he was going to have to pay a lot closer attention to her wardrobe.
She glanced around for a few seconds, presumably to make sure the coast was clear, then reached into her back pocket—how she managed to get her fingers down in there was a mystery to him, her jeans were so damn tight—and pulled out what looked like a keycard of some kind. She glanced around once more, then slipped the card into the maintenance department door’s control panel and punched in the access code.
Where the hell had she gotten the card and the code for that door?
She slipped inside, stepping into view on monitors 2 and 3 from opposite sides, and quickly closed the door behind her.
Slowly, cautiously, she made her way down the narrow, poorly lit hallway, shrinking in the distance on monitor-2 while growing closer on monitor-3 as she slowly approached the storeroom door, which nearly filled monitor-4. Was she normally so tentative and cautious when she went in there, or was she afraid because of what she was about to do? If the former, then okay, good for her for at least trying to be careful, but if the latter, he could only hope the dealer wouldn’t see it in her eyes and get spooked. God only knew what he might do to her if that happened.
Why the hell was he letting her do this?
She stepped into view on monitor-4 as she reached the door, turned and glanced back up the hallway, then turned her back to the camera and faced the door. She pressed the top two buttons on the panel to its right. The door opened inward to reveal only darkness beyond, but monitors 5 and 6 did brighten a little bit as the light from the hall spilled into the storeroom. Then, with one last glance up and down the hall, she went inside.
To his relief, at least a little, she turned on the lights and looked around before she closed the door. Then, when she started wandering around the room and looking at things more closely, apparently to better familiarize herself with her surroundings—perhaps she had a lot more street smarts than he’d given her credit for—he leaned closer to the monitors and checked things out with her as carefully and completely as he possibly could.
He saw a variety of brooms, mops, buckets, and cleaning supplies, one of those vacuum cleaner-looking things that maintenance technicians were always running back and forth a few inches above the deck—just what the hell were those things, anyway?—numerous shelves full of thick maintenance manuals, spare lighting fixtures, assorted electronics parts, dozens of spools of various gauges and colors of wires, rolls and strips and sheets of assorted materials, small tool kits and larger tool boxes. Everything he would expect such a room to contain was there, with nothing to indicate that he was looking at anything more.
Just a well-stocked storeroom with no one hiding in the shadows. No one there but his daughter.
Oh, how he wished that she wasn’t there, either.
“Suspect is approaching the area. Looks like he’s not alone.”
Hansen’s heart sank. There was more than one! Was the team prepared for that?
“Copy. That was expected. All units, be ready to go on my say so.”
That answered that question. But expected? He didn’t remember Franco saying anything about there being more than one suspect during the briefing. Perhaps the sergeant had only said that for his benefit, to prevent him from worrying even more than he already was. What if...
There they were. He caught a brief glimpse of their backs on monitor-1 as they ducked through the entrance, then got his first good look at them in the hallway on monitors 2 and 3. Both were young men, perhaps in their early twenties, white, with long dark hair. But that was where the similarities ended. Where the slightly shorter and more slender of the two was clean shaven and wore his hair pulled back into a ponytail, the taller and much stockier one had a moustache and a goatee and wore his hair loosely and unkempt. And where the slender one was well dressed in black slacks and boots, a gray button-down shirt, and a brown pleather sport coat, the stocky one wore old jeans and a tight, short-sleeved pullover shirt that left his very muscular and heavily tattooed arms to be seen and feared.
The dealer had brought his muscle. Hansen squirmed in his chair and drew a deep breath, fearing for his daughter that much more.
The dealer led the way confidently down the hall and into the storeroom as if he owned the place.
“Hey there, Heather girl,” the dealer said in what sounded like a fake accent, either Italian or Latino, while he eyed her suspiciously. “You looking pretty good tonight, Chica. How you doing?”
Latino, Hansen decided, but not a very good one. He didn’t even swap his ‘y’s and ‘j’s.
“I’m good, Paolo,” she answered coolly, looking him right in the eye. “How are you?”
Good girl, Hansen told her in his mind, wringing his hands harder than ever. Just stay calm and play it cool. Be cordial, but don’t overact.
“Oh, I’m good, Heather girl. But I’m a little mystified.”
“Mystified? Why is that?”
“Well, you see...” He started wandering around the room, moved around behind her, “I been supplying you for over six months now, and in all that time, you never asked me for anything more than a couple weeks’ worth for personal use,” then stopped beside her and leaned very close to her ear. “Now, all of the sudden, you wanna buy a whole kilo?”
Hansen’s sunken heart suddenly leapt into his mouth. What the hell had she done? Why had she broken her routine like that?
“God damn it!” Franco exclaimed. “All units, stay on your toes. Be ready to move in hard at a moment’s notice.”
Heather looked right at him again. “Call it an entrepreneurial endeavor,” she responded calmly, with confidence. “I need to make some money in a hurry.”
He had to hand it to her. She was good. He only hoped her larger than usual order hadn’t blown the whole thing.
“And you think you can resell my shit, on my base, without my blessing?”
She dropped her gaze to the floor and appeared to think it over for a moment, then looked back up at him and said, “I’m sorry, Paolo. I guess I didn’t think about it that way.”
“No. I guess you didn’t.” He backed off a little and resumed wandering silently in circles around her.
After several moments of that, Heather asked him, “So then, would it be all right with you if I did this, just this one time?”
He stopped suddenly and got right in her face and shouted, “Fuck no it wouldn’t be all right, you stupid little bitch!”
To her credit, Heather barely flinched. The poor girl must have been scared to death.
“This is my base!” Paolo went on. “These are my customers!” He grabbed her by the chin—Hansen flinched and clenched his fists—and pulled her face closer to his. Almost close enough to kiss her. “What the fuck are they gonna think if I let some half-pint little cunt move in on my operation without doing something about it, huh?”
“All right, that’s enough,” Hansen mumbled, fidgeting again. “Get in there, fellas. Put an end to this before it gets out of hand.”
“I’ll give you a cut of whatever I make, if that’s what you want,” Heather offered.
Hansen couldn’t believe how calm she still was. He was a nervous wreck!
“You try to play me for a fool and I’ll give you a cut! Scar that pretty face of yours!”
“All right, guys,” Hansen went on, knowing of course that the detectives couldn’t hear him. “He just threatened to hurt my daughter. Get your asses in there now.” Then he realized that he couldn’t hear them anymore, either.
Damn them! The sons-of-bitches had cut him off! All he could do now was watch and wait, but if they let that scumbag hurt his little girl...
“I’ve known you for almost a year, Paolo,” she was saying. “I think I know better than to play you for a fool.”
“Do you?” he asked. “You wanna know what I think, Heather girl? I think...” Quick as lightning, he pushed her backward into the shelves behind her—she shrieked briefly—with both hands and held her there.
Hansen leapt to his feet, fists raised as if to attack. “Son-of-a. . .!”
“I think you’re trying to set me up!”
He grabbed two fistfuls of her blouse, eliciting another short shriek, and tore it open. Then he grabbed hold of the mini-transmitter that was clipped to her bra and yanked it off. He made a show of looking at it for a few seconds, then threw it aside and glared at her. “You lying little bitch,” he said, all traces of his fake accent gone. Then he leaned in close and shouted, “You fucking cunt! You think you can fuck me, bitch! I’ll fuck you! I’ll fuck you like you ain’t never been fucked in your life!”
He grabbed her and practically threw her over to his sidekick, who grabbed her by the arms and held her tight.
“Tell them to move in now!” Hansen hollered to any cops who might be within earshot.
“Hold her!” the dealer commanded his muscle. Then he moved in on her and grabbed the front of her jeans. “Get ready to bleed, bitch!”
“NO!” she screamed...
...and for one brief flash of a moment, Hansen found himself back on Vice-President Harkam’s shuttle, beaten and bloodied and forced to watch while that sadistic, demonic alien beast raped and tortured and brutally murdered Misses Harkam and their teenage daughter.
Heather kicked and screamed and struggled and squirmed, but she couldn’t break free of the big man’s grasp.
“Get my daughter out of there!” Hansen shouted angrily, wide-eyed.
The dealer popped the fastener and broke open her zipper, then yanked her jeans down from her hips and lifted her feet up off the floor as he stepped back and stripped them off of her, pulling her shoes off with them. He threw them aside, then made a show of licking his lips in anticipation. “Ever been raped before, little girl?” he asked her, wearing an evil grin.
“I’ll fucking kill you, you son-of-a-bitch,” Hansen warned the image on the screen.
“No!” she pleaded as she began to cry. “Please, Paolo, don’t!”
“Scream all you want, bitch,” he told her. “Nobody’s gonna hear you in here.”
He stepped forward and grabbed hold of her panties, but before he could pull them down she launched her foot up between his legs like a catapult and nailed her obvious target so hard with what might very well have been testicle-crushing force that he actually came up off the floor before he collapsed to it.
“Oh!” Hansen exclaimed, surprised and impressed at the same time. “That’s my girl!”
She punched the big man as best she could in the same place, but he barely flinched.
“Dat was a big mistake, little girl,” he warned her. “Paolo was jus’ gonna rape you. I’m gonna split you in two.” He spun her around, lifted her up off the floor, looked her in the eye and added, “By de time I finish doin’ you, you’re gonna wish you let Paolo have you instead,” but before he could do anything the door burst open and the detectives swarmed into the room. “Let the girl go, now!” one of them hollered, pointing his sidearm directly at the big man’s head. He glared at the detective for a moment, but then did exactly as he was told and raised his hands in surrender.
The suspects offered no resistance as the detectives quickly and quite convincingly took them into custody. Not at all surprising where the dealer was concerned, considering the fact that he was still rolling back and forth on the deck, clutching his crotch in both hands and moaning in what must have been excruciating pain when they got to him.
Hansen took a deep, deep breath and exhaled loudly while he watched Franco pick up Heather’s jeans and shoes and hand them back to her. Thank God they’d gotten there when they did. He’d have to be sure to thank them. Either that or he was going to beat them all senseless for waiting so long.
He watched while they waited for Heather to get dressed—the male agents all turned their backs while one of the female agents watched her and then handcuffed her for her own safety, as they still had to make it look like she was also under arrest—then practically fell back into his chair and sighed with relief. After his promotion ceremony, he’d wondered if he might actually make it to retirement before what he and Liz had done six years ago came to light. Many more anxiety-filled evenings like this, he told himself, and he probably wouldn’t live long enough to have to worry about it.
“Commander Rawlins?” a voice called out, firmly but subdued. “Sir?”
Rawlins opened his weary eyes, blinked a few times to bring the world around him back into focus, then quickly lifted his head up off his fist when he realized that he’d fallen asleep sitting at the command station on the bridge. He stretched his stiff neck and opened and closed his mouth to flexed his sore jaw—apparently, he’d been resting it on his fist for quite some time—and wiped a small rivulet of saliva from the corner of his mouth.
“Sir?” the voice repeated.
Sergeant Noonian. Rawlins turned and faced him. “What is it, Sergeant?” he asked.
“The RIG’s team leaders are reporting all work complete and are requesting permission to detach,” the communications specialist told him. “Commander Marshall confirms.”
Finished already? “How long has it been?”
“Three hours and forty-seven minutes, sir,” the sergeant told him, without having check.
Three hours and forty-seven minutes? It certainly didn’t seem as if he’d been asleep that long, but a glance at his watch confirmed it. 2024 hours. When he’d looked at it last, it had read 1650-something, and he felt pretty sure he dozed off shortly after that.
“Permission granted, Sergeant,” he said, “and extend my thanks and my complements for a job well done to the team leaders. Then get me Commodore Van den Engel.”
“Yes, sir.”
Three hours and forty-seven minutes, he reflected as he faced front again, still flexing his sore jaw and trying to work the kinks out of his stiff neck. Three hours and forty-seven minutes, and he’d slept through at least three and a half hours of it, in front of the entire bridge crew no less, right through their shift change. How could he have let himself do such a thing? Not only was that kind of lapse extremely unprofessional and totally unacceptable, especially for a commanding officer, it was also embarrassing. How could he ever enforce discipline aboard ship again after...
That’s right, he suddenly realized. Shift change had come and gone almost half an hour ago. So what was Noonian still doing on duty? Twelve straight hours was long enough, even for a cyberclone. He might have been...enhanced, but in the end he was still a human being.
As he turned to ask Noonian why he was still on duty, he noticed that the sergeant wasn’t the only one who had stayed. The entire bridge crew had remained, and had apparently notified their relief not to show up, since no one from the night shift was present.
“I have the commodore for you, Commander,” Noonian reported.
“Put him up on the main screen.”
An image of Commodore Van den Engel sitting behind his large executive desk replaced that of the enormous jump ring ahead of them. One look at him betrayed the fact that he was clearly a man of substantially advanced years. As a matter of fact, Rawlins recalled upon seeing him that scuttlebutt among command rank officers throughout the fleet said he’d long since passed the age of mandatory retirement, but that he had some serious dirt on someone very high up in the pecking order that pretty much guaranteed he could stay on active duty for as long as he might want to.
All that aside, the commodore nonetheless commanded great respect and admiration. He’d been Solfleet’s Rosha’Kana Sector Commander for almost ten years, and in all that time he’d never had so much as a single personal complaint filed against him. In fact, it was well known both within the sector and without that his subordinates absolutely adored him. With his handsomely chiseled features and his full head of silver-gray hair, they tended to think of him as a sort of surrogate grandfather. He had a gentle disposition, but could be firm when he had to be, and he always, always, treated his people fairly.
And rumor had it that he was as physically fit as any man thirty years his junior.
“What can I do for you, Commander?” he asked.
“I just wanted to thank you for your help, Commodore. Your teams did an outstanding job, and in record time, I believe. I only hope...”
“Commander!” Irons shouted, interrupting. “Sensors are picking up three large vessels approaching from directly astern!”
An all too familiar sinking feeling grew in the pit of Rawlins’ stomach as he stared at the tactical officer and waited silently, anxiously, for her to complete her report.
After some of the longest seconds in his life, she finally met his gaze and said, “I’m not reading any Solfleet or Coalition transponder signals, sir.”
Veshtonn! It had to be. “Can you identify them at all, Lieutenant?” he asked anyway.
“Sorry, sir,” she answered, shaking her head. “Not this close to the jump ring with our scanners in their present condition.”
On the viewscreen, Commodore Van den Engel muted his audio and spoke to someone off camera. Then, a few seconds later, he reactivated his sound and relayed an anticipated but still very unwelcome bit of news to Rawlins. “They’re Veshtonn heavy destroyers, Commander,” he said evenly, “and they’re on a direct course to this station.”
“Damn it!” Rawlins exclaimed, banging a fist down on the arm of the chair and glaring down at LaRocca briefly. He and the captain both had told that kid to make sure they didn’t lead the enemy to the jumpstation! No matter what! If they ended up losing this vital facility because he screwed up...
He’d have to cross that bridge if and when he came to it. They had a much more pressing issue to deal with at the moment. “I don’t know how much help we’ll be in a fight at this point, Commodore,” Rawlins reiterated, “but we’ll do what we can. What are your orders?”
“Get your ship to safety, Commander,” Van den Engel directed, his tone leaving no room for discussion. “We’re energizing the ring now.” He nodded to another someone off camera.
“What about you and your personnel, Commodore?” Rawlins asked. “Granted, we’re in bad shape, but we still have the capacity to take on at least some of your person...”
“Negative, Commander. The enemy’s closing too fast. There’s no time. Get your ship out of this system. We can take care of ourselves.”
Take care of themselves? How the hell were they going to take care of themselves with more than half of their defense fleet already engaged in battle on the other side of the system? The station’s defense grid might have been effective as a supplement to that fleet, but it hadn’t been designed to stand alone as their only means of defense. Rawlins drew a breath to protest, but the commodore stopped him with a look.
“That’s an order, Commander,” he said, settling the issue.
“Order acknowledged, Commodore,” Rawlins acknowledged after a second, still hesitant to leave the commodore and his people behind. “Maintaining our present course and speed.” An order was an order, and it was very unwise for a starship command officer to disobey his sector commander’s orders if he wanted his career to continue unscathed, especially when that sector commander specifically pointed out that his instructions were in fact an order. And most especially when it was this particular sector commander. Still, they were talking about their very lives.
“Good. And listen, Commander. Be sure to pass my best wishes and prayers for a speedy recovery on to Captain Bhatnagar when you have a chance.”
“Will do, sir, and good luck. Victory out.”
The ring reappeared in the center of the screen and began growing visibly larger by the second as they approached it, faster and faster. An immense, sixteen-segment double-rimmed halo of structurally reinforced metallic silver-gray plastisteel and titanium, large enough for even the most enormous of Coalition vessels to pass through cleanly, with an almost imperceptible glass-smooth sheet of unbroken, translucent crystal coating its entire inner circumference—the vortex generator lens.
As they drew closer, that crystal appeared to ripple and then began to glow with a dim burgundy sheen. Burgundy instead of the normal blue-green, Rawlins noted. The emergency jump nacelles, being less efficiently shielded than their permanent ones had been, were already beginning to interact with the emerging vortex, despite not having been energized yet.
The stars that had been visible through the ring suddenly faded to darkness as if someone had simply turned them off, and in the center of the depthless black emptiness that remained, a pulsating point of crimson sparked to life. That point quickly expanded in all directions until it reached the circumference and formed what looked like a pool of shimmering crimson oil that filled the entire ring.
“Course plotted, Mister LaRocca?” Rawlins asked.
“Yes, sir,” the helmsman answered. “Several hours ago.”
“Very well. Energize jump nacelles,” he ordered. Then he quickly added, “Carefully, Ensign, and keep your eyes on those output levels,” hoping and praying that the less efficient emergency units wouldn’t blow themselves up in protest. “Then give me best safe speed into the vortex.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Picking up a second group of vessels now, sir,” Irons interjected.
“Noted, Lieutenant,” Rawlins responded dismissively without even looking at her. He had his orders, and difficult though they were to swallow, he intended to obey them. Sacrificing the Victory and her crew wouldn’t help the commodore and his people.
The ring seemed to grow faster as the helmsman complied with Rawlins orders, until its structure passed beyond the viewscreen’s borders and only the vortex remained in view, its blood-crimson shimmer shifting to a deeper purple-violet as its energy field interacted with that the nacelles generated. Then, with a final shift from violet to black as the Victory passed through the ring and slipped into jumpspace, the stars suddenly reappeared, only to fall toward the center of the viewscreen, where they gathered into a hazy, gently pulsating circular band of color like some kind of dark rainbow—deep purple-violet around its inner rim, shifting through shades of purple to blue, to aqua-blue around its outer rim. Every few seconds one or two or a few of them managed to escape the band and raced past the ship, shifting from aqua-blue to green as they sailed by, but the size of the band remained constant.
“Jump velocity achieved, Commander,” LaRocca reported, reading his board. “The field is stable and we are secure in jumpspace. Sensors and scanners, such as they are, show all clear ahead, sir.”
Rawlins drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly as he sat back and relaxed, truly relaxed, for the first time in weeks. They’d made it. Two jump nacelles gone, their lower hull breached, portions stressed to near buckling, most of their systems crippled, and their weapons nearly exhausted...but they’d made it. They’d actually made it.
But what about all those people they’d just left behind?
The Next Morning
Wednesday, 21 July 2190
Sweating profusely and writhing in agony on the deck, while at the same time crying for his slaughtered family, Federation Vice-President Jonathan Harkam somehow still managed to reach out and grab the front of Hansen’s jacket in his quivering, blood-stained fist. He pulled him closer, bared his clenched teeth and spat streams of red saliva over his chin as he grunted against the pain, then stared up at him through red, swollen eyes.
“Please!” he managed to force through the pain. “Oh God, it burns! Make it stop!”
Hansen took hold of Harkam’s wrist with both hands and tried with all his strength to pull free of his desperate, vice-like grip, but the dying man only tightened his grasp to the point where Hansen thought he heard a finger snap and pulled him closer. “Mister Vice-President,” Hansen responded as calmly as he could. “I can’t just...”
“Yes you CAN!” the dying vice-leader of the unified free world roared.
“Do it, Major.”
Hansen whirled around as far as the vice-president’s grasp would allow and glared wide-eyed at...at the squad sergeant—the only one of his men who’d managed to survive the attack with him.
“He’s the vice-president for God sake!” he reminded him.
“He’s suffering, sir,” the sergeant pointed out. “There’s nothing more we can do for him now.”
“I can’t just kill him!” Hansen insisted.
“Yes, you can.”
Gasping for every breath, Harkam jerked Hansen hard, drawing his attention back to him. “Please, Major!” he pleaded, crying openly now, barely able to speak through the agony anymore. “Do it!” He coughed suddenly, spewing a foot-high fountain of dark, red-brown blood that barely missed Hansen’s face when he recoiled, then splattered back over his chin and his suit coat. “Do...it,” he begged once more.
“You’ve got to do it, sir,” the sergeant told him. “There’s no other option.”
Hansen knew in his heart that the sergeant was right. Harkam’s entire family had been brutally slaughtered and the vice-president himself had been pumped full of...of whatever it was that damn beast had pumped him full of. If the poor man’s cries were to be believed, then he was literally burning to death from the inside out.
He drew his sidearm and slowly pressed the muzzle to the vice-president’s temple. He drew several short, deep breaths and licked his suddenly very dry lips. But he just couldn’t bring himself to squeeze the trigger.
“It’s the humane thing to do, sir,” the sergeant pointed out.
“DO IT!” Harkam shrieked through the pain, his tears tinted red with blood. Then he suddenly started shaking Hansen violently back and forth as he lost whatever control he’d been clinging to and convulsed, screaming and crying even louder than before. “OH GOD!” he screamed, spitting and coughing up blood. “DO IT!”
“Do it, sir,” the sergeant repeated.
Hansen closed his eyes and turned away. “Forgive me,” he whispered. Then he drew a long, deep breath, and squeezed the trigger.
He gasped and opened his eyes wide and clutched the sides of his bed. Then, after a brief but strangely frightening moment of profound confusion, he realized he was safe in bed and he relaxed. At least, he relaxed his body. His mind, on the other hand, was another matter entirely.
The nightmares again, of course. After an absence of more than twenty years, they’d haunted his sleep for the last five nights in a row.
He sighed and wiped the sweat from his brow. And then, as if a light had just been turned on in his mind, he suddenly realized why he felt so confused. Something very strange had just happened—something that he didn’t understand at all. After forcing him to relive that terrifying experience from his distant past for the last four nights, exactly as it had occurred, his nightmares had inexplicably changed.
Someone else had been onboard the shuttle this time—someone who had not been there in reality twenty years ago. Not in any capacity. That much he could be sure of, because the head of the vice-president’s own security detail had introduced him to everyone onboard prior to their departure. Security personnel, the vice-president’s aids, the hand-selected members of the press, the flight crew, even the vice-president’s own family had been identified to him. Even now he could see each of their faces in his mind as if he’d just seen them all two days ago, rather than two decades. No. This was someone he definitely didn’t know, had never known, and therefore couldn’t possibly have been at all familiar with. And yet in the nightmare he’d accepted the man’s presence there without question, as if he had belonged there all along.
That was the way of dreams, he reminded himself. The dreaming mind often accepted as perfectly logical that which might be wrong, or even totally ridiculous, in real life.
Something else suddenly dawned on him. The stranger had been one of his own...in the nightmare at least—one of the Security Police troops. He’d been their squad sergeant, in fact, but not the one who had really been there. And something else. He’d survived the battle. That wasn’t right either, because none of his troops had survived. They’d all been killed on that terrible day, including the sergeant. Everyone had been killed, except for himself. He had been the only survivor—the only one who’d come home alive.
So what the hell was going on? Who was this new character in his nightmares?
He glanced up at the clock and was disheartened to discover that it was only 0428 hours. He knew he should go back to sleep. Cutting himself ninety minutes short could make a pretty big difference in his day. But he also knew that he probably wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again, even if he tried. So instead he got up and pulled on his robe, then strolled quietly into the kitchen and started a pot of coffee.
When it was ready, he filled a large mug, took it into the living room, and crossed to the bookshelf to find a good book to read for a little while. Preferably one that had absolutely nothing at all to do with military intelligence, politics—well, maybe a little about politics—or, most especially, interstellar war and the slaughter of innocents. He grabbed his old, fuzzy-edged and dog-eared paperback copy of Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s original ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ off the bottom shelf—he’d always preferred the tactile feel of a real book in his hands over digital readers—then crossed to his overstuffed recliner, set his coffee on the end table beside it, and kicked back and put his feet up. Sure, he’d read it about dozen times since his old friend Benny gave it to him, but not in the last ten years or so, so it was time.
He adjusted the small lumbar cushion behind his back, then opened to ‘Primeval Night, Chapter 1: The Road to Extinction’.
“Excuse me, Nick,” Hal’s voice called from the ceiling speaker.
Hansen dropped his hands, and the book, to his lap and sighed. All he wanted was one hour’s escape. Was that too much to ask? “It’s four-thirty in the morning, Hal,” he reminded his computer’s A.I., which had apparently forgotten the concept of ‘down time’. He’d connected his home and office terminals the other day to facilitate his need to work at home, and after careful consideration had decided to leave them connected permanently. Now he realized that might not have been such a good idea after all.
“I’m sorry to bother you at such an early hour, Nick, but your office terminal has just received a code-red message from the Caldanran Field Office that I think you should be made aware of immediately.”
“Code-red?” he asked as he set his book aside and sat up straight. Code-red was the most urgent of priorities, reserved for emergency or near emergency situations only. Something very bad had either already happened or was about to very soon.
“Yes. There is no error. The message is encoded as code-red.”
“Summarize it for me, Hal.”
“Certainly. The Caldanran Field Office reports that all contact has been lost with both the Rosha’Kana Field Office on Tor Two and that star system’s jumpstation. In addition, Solfleet forces within that star system report that the Veshtonn have them on the run. Coalition losses over the last seventy-two hours are described as having been extremely heavy, to the point of critical, and it appears the Tor’Kana people have been forced to evacuate their home world and flee the star system entirely. The message ends.”
Hansen felt the blood rush from his face and, for a brief moment, found it a little difficult to breathe.
“Would you like me to play the message for you verbatim?”
“No, Hal. That won’t be necessary. Thank you.”
“You are welcome, Nick.”
The Rosha’Kana star system. The planet Tor Two, home to the Coalition’s founders. That star system was the most vital system of all to the survival of the member worlds. It was there, dozens of kilometers deep within the caverns of that star’s long-abandoned fourth planet, where Tor’Kana explorers had discovered their long-lost brethren’s ancient yet incredibly advanced weapons and propulsion technologies—the technologies that had so far enabled the Coalition to survive the Veshtonn onslaught. The technologies without which they would have no chance of winning the war—no chance, even, of survival.
And now that system had been lost to the enemy.
The Road to Extinction.
Admiral Hansen watched silently, expressionless, as Chairman MacLeod stood up, threw him a brief glare of superiority, then left his office without uttering another word—his last few had made it perfectly clear that the matter wasn not open for debate—and he continued to stare blankly at the door for several seconds after it closed behind the arrogant bastard. If he hadn’t heard it from the man’s own mouth himself, he never would have believed it. More than that, he didn’t want to believe it.
Having just arrived from Earth without prior warning, the headstrong chairman of the Earth Security Council had been waiting none too patiently for him in the reception area when he returned from lunch, annoying the hell out of Vicky if her expression was any indication, which it no doubt was. Once inside Hansen’s office with the door locked, he’d advised the admiral that the Earth Security Council had held an emergency session first thing in the morning to discuss the ramifications of the loss of the Rosha’Kana system and the resulting mass exodus of the Tor’Kana people from their home world. The council members had almost immediately come to the same grim conclusion that Hansen himself had reached when he’d first heard the terrible news, and quite uncharacteristically for them had come up with the general framework for a possible solution very quickly. It was a very unorthodox solution to say the least—one that required not only the admiral’s keen insight, but also his active cooperation. Someone on that council had been doing some very serious out-of-the-box thinking.
Hansen had answered the chairman’s questions as best he could, had offered his opinions when asked for them, and had even made an official recommendation, despite not having been asked for one. But in the end the chairman had told him in no uncertain terms what he expected him to do, and had left him no room for further debate. So his task was clear, which was more than he could say for the council’s solution. But where the hell was he ever going to find the time to...
Wait a second. Liz. Of course. If anyone could tackle it, she could. She’d always been dependable, hardworking, and extremely well organized. As his executive officer and deputy chief of the agency, she always stayed on top of things. She kept their headquarters running like a well-oiled machine. She wouldn’t have any problem finding the time to do it, and she’d do it gladly, once he told her why it had to be done.
He leaned forward and tapped the ‘direct call’ button with her name on it. “Commander Royer, are you there?” he asked.
“Right here, sir,” she responded after only a few seconds.
“Are you busy?”
“Always, but not with anything that can’t wait a few minutes. What can I do for you, Admiral?”
“Would you come to my office, please?”
“Yes, sir, I’ll be right there.”
“Thank you.” He closed the channel and sat back to wait for her, and realized that he was actually looking forward to spending a few minutes with her. Her office was only a short walk up the hall, but with everything that had been going on lately—his medal and promotion ceremony, the mysterious message from the alleged Lieutenant O’Donnell, and especially his ongoing struggle with Heather over her bad behavior, not to mention whatever Royer herself had been busy with lately—he hadn’t seen her in almost a week.
Elizabeth Royer was a woman much like many others he’d met over the years. She’d grown up in the fresh, clean outdoor air of the United States’ Midwestern plains and looked no older than her thirty-eight years. In fact, a physically fit and genuinely attractive woman, she actually looked several years younger than that...except for that one narrow streak of premature silver that had slowly grown into her golden bangs over the last few years, which in his opinion only complemented her natural beauty.
Nearly a decade ago, long before she’d started working for him instead of just with him, he’d considered pursuing a relationship with her on a more personal level—something he hadn’t done with anyone since his wife’s tragic and untimely death a year or two before that. He soon came to realize, however, that Royer was all business, or so he concluded at the time, so he quickly gave up on the idea. It wasn’t until several weeks after she was assigned, when her wife finally arrived on station, that he learned she was married. After that he put the attraction out of his mind and eventually grew content with their strictly professional relationship.
At least that was what he’d been telling himself for the last several years.
His door buzzer sounded. “Come in.”
The door slid aside and Commander Royer strolled in. She was wearing duty fatigues, her platinum hair was pulled straight back and tied into a simple ponytail—both rarities for her—and she was drying her hands on two or three crumpled up paper towels. “Good afternoon, Admiral,” she greeted him cheerfully as she approached his desk. “Long time no see.”
“You’re in an exceptionally good mood, considering,” Hansen commented.
“Technicians finally showed up to replace my terminal,” she explained. She tossed the paper towels into the wastebasket beside his desk, then took a seat across from him and crossed her legs.
“Doing the heavy work yourself?” he asked.
“No, but I decided that since I had to move my desk anyway, I might as well take care of a few other jobs while I’m at it. I’ll be back in my class-B’s tomorrow.”
“That’s fine,” he said, waving the non-issue aside. Then, getting to the matter at hand, he continued, “Listen, Liz. I’m sure you’re aware by now of what’s happened in the Rosha’Kana system.”
“Yes, sir, I am,” she confirmed. “I read the message first thing this morning. Any word on the whereabouts of the Victory?”
“As best we can determine, she made it to the jumpstation. What happened to her after that we don’t know yet.”
“So she did jump out.”
“Apparently.”
“Well, I guess that makes her luckier than some.”
“Luckier than quite a few, I’m afraid. Total Coalition losses have yet to be determined, but we do know that Solfleet’s losses have been heavy.” He paused for a moment and reflected on the staggering numbers that had crossed his desk earlier in the day, then snapped out of it and got back to business. “Anyway, I called you in here because there’s something I need you to do. Top priority.”
“Name it, sir.”
He could have done just that. As her superior officer, he could have told her what he needed her to do and left it at that without giving her a reason or explaining anything. But that wasn’t how he operated, especially with his own executive officer. People were just naturally more willing to do things when they knew why they had to do them.
“The Earth Security Council held an emergency session this morning. MacLeod came up to see me right after.”
“He came up here himself?” she asked, amused. It wasn’t at all like the chairman not to delegate his various tasks to his underlings, especially those that involved off-world travel.
But Hansen was in no mood to joke about it. Instead, he looked her square in the eye and told her, “They’re talking about using the Portal, Liz.”
She stared at him, suddenly every bit as serious as he was. “Using the...” she began, choking on her words. She cleared her throat, then tried again. “Using the Portal how, sir?”
“To send an agent back. Try to alter the timeline in order to avoid the Coalition defeat in the Rosha’Kana system.”
“You uh...you didn’t tell him about...”
“No, of course not,” he assured her, shaking his head, “I’ve never told anyone outside the operation about that.”
“Good,” she said, exhaling with relief. “I’m not ready to go to prison just yet.”
“Don’t worry, neither am I.”
Six years earlier, during a particularly dark time in the war, Doctor Günter Royer, one of the world’s premier biotronics and human genetic engineering experts and a man who also just happened to be Commander Royer’s older brother, had conspired with them and gone through the Portal on a similar type of mission aimed at altering the past in order to change the present. Actually, his mission had been to add to the past, but essentially that meant the same thing. He’d taken enough stolen genetic material and advanced biotronics designs with him to fast-grow and augment several divisions of cyberclone soldiers, given enough time. Unfortunately, he’d never returned from the past, assuming that he ever made it there in the first place, and as far as Hansen and Royer could determine, nothing about their present had ever changed.
And now they didn’t even know if he was alive or dead.
While the three of them had proceeded according to what they’d felt at the time to be in the best interests of Earth and her colonies, their actions had nonetheless violated at least two of the Earth Federation’s highest laws. The first was the law banning travel through the Portal for any reason, which, like the Portal’s existence itself, was classified as ‘Top Secret,’ and whose violation carried a possible death sentence. The second was the Brix-Cyberclone Cessation Act of 2162, which had put an immediate stop to all human cloning and enhancement programs and permanently outlawed any subsequent resumption of them. In addition, they’d violated one or more standard laws against willfully endangering a private citizen. In fact, it might even have been possible to charge them with Manslaughter, although proving such a charge in court would likely have been difficult at best.
“So what’s the mission, Admiral?” Royer finally asked. “What exactly is our agent going to have to do once he or she arrives wherever or whenever they’re going?”
“They haven’t worked out all the details yet. MacLeod just wanted to give us a heads-up as quickly as possible so we could get started on selecting someone.”
“Selecting someone?” she asked. “That’s not going to be easy without having at least some idea of what skill sets the mission’s going to require. We have thousands of agents with widely varied experience. How do we know who’s best suited to go? What kind of experience is going to be the most valuable?”
“We don’t know. Not yet.”
Royer exhaled loudly again, but she found no relief in it this time. “What exactly do we know, sir?” she asked. “What do you want me to do?”
“We don’t know much,” he answered honestly. “Review our agents’ service records and compile a list of the ten most likely suited for the mission.”
“You want me to review all our agents’ records, sir?” she asked, a little disconcerted.
“No,” he answered, shaking his head. Obviously, that would be a monumental task. “No, not all of them. Disregard all those who are married and/or have children. In fact, I want you to exclude everyone who has dependants of any kind. Parents, siblings, I don’t care what. See how large a list that leaves you with, then narrow it down as you see fit.”
“Yes, sir, but that’s still going to take a while.”
“You have until one week from today, Commander. I need those ten names no later than next Wednesday morning the twenty-eighth. You can work from home if you want to. In fact, I’d prefer it if you’d work from home. The fewer distractions, the better.”
“Then I’ll do that, Admiral. Thank you.”
“That’s all, Commander.”
“Yes, sir.” She stood up, but before she turned her back on him she asked, “May I ask you what you think about all this, Admiral?” She knew Hansen to be a passionate man, especially where the wellbeing of the personnel under his command was concerned, and she’d always found it easier to know how to approach her assignments when she knew where he stood on a particular issue.
He considered her question for a moment, then answered, “Without knowing your brother is all right, I hesitate to send anyone else through unless it’s our absolute last resort. But when the time comes, if the order comes down, I will send someone through.”
She gazed down at her feet for a few seconds, then lifted her eyes back to his and asked, somewhat hesitantly, “Any chance that person might be assigned to search for Günter as well?”
Hansen gazed at her for several moments. Difficult though it might be, someday she was going to have to let him go. Then again, he knew what it felt like to lose someone. Where was the harm in trying, if the opportunity presented itself? “I don’t have a problem making that a secondary mission, Liz, assuming our agent doesn’t go back to a point in time beyond what Günter’s target was.”
Royer nodded, then turned and left Hansen’s office.
* * *
She went back to her office first, to delegate all of her routine daily and weekly tasks as well as her other current, more sensitive assignments to a few of her closest and most trusted subordinate officers. After all, there was a war on and the galaxy wasn’t going to stop spinning and wait for her to return to work. Then, as those officers repeatedly assured her that she had nothing to worry about, she reluctantly left for home.
As she made her way toward her quarters, all she could think about was the daunting task that lay ahead of her. The agency employed more than ten thousand sworn, credentialed covert agents—closer to eleven or twelve, if she counted those who served in administrative positions along with the active field operatives—the majority of whom did not have dependents of any kind. Theirs wasn’t exactly a career conducive to a happy and successful family life. Hansen had given her a week to complete an assignment that could easily take two or three if not more, and although she’d be working from home, she knew she was facing some very long and tedious days ahead.