By the time Royer finished briefing Admiral Hansen on the results of her trip, her tee shirt had begun sticking to her back and shoulders and she couldn’t be sure if that was due to her damp hair or to nervous perspiration. The admiral had asked her a lot of questions and she’d had to sidestep, skirt around, or just plain lie in response to several of them. She hadn’t liked lying to him any more than he’d liked lying to the president, but she knew that if she’d told him the truth about Sergeant Graves’ nightmares and the steps she’d taken to combat them he would have become one very displeased admiral. And the mere mention of having found Stefani O’Donnell there when she hadn’t brought her back to Earth in handcuffs would probably have enraged him more than she’d ever seen him enraged before. He was bound to find out everything sooner or later, of course, and when he did she’d have hell to pay, but she wasn’t ready to deal with any of that just yet.
She was most especially relieved that he hadn’t asked her about the kidnapping or about Graves being wounded again. Apparently the Tarko City station commander hadn’t betrayed her confidence, because if he had—if the admiral had known about those events—she might very well have found herself running for the nearest airlock without a spacesuit.
Hansen sat up in his chair. “So to summarize what you’ve told me, Commander, you do think there’s still an outside chance he might join us?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, I do,” she answered positively.
“Despite the fact that the last time you talked to him he told you there was no way in hell he’d sign up?”
“Call it a feeling, Admiral. Gut instinct. I think he’s seen more than enough combat and he just doesn’t realize it yet.”
Hansen gazed at her in silence for a moment while he considered whether or not to tell her what he knew and lay into her for what she’d done. On the one hand he was angry at her for not at least consulting him before she acted. But on the other, he had to admire her initiative and her willingness to act alone, regardless of what he might think about the chances of her plan actually succeeding. Besides, as slim as those chances might be, a slim chance was always better than no chance at all.
“Okay,” he finally told her with a single nod of his head. “Good enough, Commander. I hope you’re right.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
“I guess that’ll do for now. Enjoy your week off. Just make sure I know where to find you in case of emergency. I promise I’ll try to leave you alone.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And again, my apologies to you and Karen for...”
“Forget it, sir,” she said, brushing his earlier faux pas aside as she stood up. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Commander.”
As Royer headed for the door, the buzzer on Hansen’s comm-panel sounded. He froze for an instant, hoping, praying that it wasn’t Combat Operations calling him with another casualty report from Mass Eviction. He’d already received four of them just since noon and the figures had been a lot higher than expected.
The buzzer sounded again. He opened the channel. “Yes?”
“This is Crewman Wilkerson in the comm-center,” the too-young-for-the-service-looking man on the screen said. “Is this Admiral Hansen?”
“Yes. What is it?” he asked less than patiently.
“Sir, there’s a Squad Sergeant Dylan Graves calling from Cirra, asking for the Chief of Intelligence.”
“Stand by, Crewman.” He switched off the audio. “Commander Royer!” he called as the door closed behind her. A second later the door slid open again and she stepped back inside.
“Yes, sir?”
Hansen raised a hand to silence her. “Put the sergeant through, Crewman,” he instructed while watching Royer to gauge her reaction. It was positive, but guarded. A lift of her eyebrows, a slight tilt of her head, and a not quite grinning purse of her lips. “Secure and encrypted.”
“Yes, sir.”
The face on the monitor changed from that of the young man, who was barely more than a boy, to that of the seasoned Marine whom Hansen had come to recognize all too easily from their time together in his nightmares.
“Admiral Hansen?” the sergeant asked.
“Yes, Sergeant Graves. I’m Admiral Hansen. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“You’re Chief of the S-I-A, sir?”
“That’s right.”
“Then you owe it to that pain-in-the-ass deputy of yours. I’m in.” And with that the screen went dark.
“I guess he got to know you pretty well, Commander,” Hansen quipped.
Royer let out a sigh of relief that could have started a hurricane. “Yes, sir. I guess he did,” she agreed without even realizing what the admiral had said. She’d been so afraid that Graves might say something about what she’d held back from the admiral that she hadn’t actually been listening.
Studying his underling’s expression and speaking in a more serious tone, the admiral said, “I wonder what made him change his mind.”
“Who cares, as long as he’s coming aboard?” Royer asked rhetorically.
“I care,” Hansen replied. He waited for her to look back at him, then added, “He didn’t seem all that enthusiastic about it.”
“Special Operations, Admiral,” she reminded him as though that explained everything. “You know how hard it is for them to break from their teams.”
Was she beginning to suspect that he knew more than he’d let on? Was she intentionally trying to allay his suspicions, rather than come clean? “True enough,” he said. And he’d intended to leave it at that...at first. But then he figured, what the hell? Why not put her on the spot. If he let what she’d done go this time, what would prevent her from doing something similar again the next time she thought it was warranted? Better to nip it in the bud right now.
He asked, “But that’s not all it is this time, is it, Commander?”
She gazed at him curiously—if she hadn’t suspected anything before, she surely must have now—then started, “I’m not sure I know...”
“I know what you did, Commander,” he interrupted, silencing her. Better that than give her the opportunity to lie right to his face. If she did that he’d never be able to trust her again. “I know you arrested Stefani O’Donnell, and I know what you did with her. You’re damn lucky it worked this time, but don’t you ever do anything like that again without consulting with me first. Understood?”
“Understood, sir,” she answered meekly.
“Good.” He stared at her for a moment, then softened his tone and said, “Enjoy your time off, Commander. You earned it. Dismissed.”
She smiled a little, but it was obviously forced. She wasn’t used to being put in her place like that and she likely resented it quite a bit. “Thank you, sir,” she said. Then she turned on her heel and left his office, perhaps just a little faster than usual.
The second the door closed behind her Hansen shut down his computer terminal, leaned back in his chair again, and stared at the door as if he could see right through it to watch her go. From the moment she’d told him that she was planning to go to Cirra herself, he’d known that it wouldn’t do them any good. He’d been absolutely sure of it, and she’d been well aware of that from the beginning. Still, she was a proud and dedicated officer, and having to report failure, even though that failure had been expected all along, clearly hadn’t been an easy thing for her to do. He’d known exactly how embarrassed and ashamed she felt, too, and he’d empathized with her completely. But in the end she’d been vindicated. An amazing stroke of luck maybe, but vindication all the same, and he felt happy for her. Well, relieved at least. After what he’d so thoughtlessly done to her and Karen about an hour and a half ago, he owed her that much.
Even if she had tried to keep secrets from him.
So ended another day. Another very long day. And despite having just received the good news from Sergeant Graves, his spirit quickly sank to its usual disheartened state as he looked back on the day’s events.
It had been another terrible, costly day for Coalition forces in the Rosha’Kana system, and still Mirriazu hadn’t called with her decision. He’d known her well for years and was used to having to wait for her to make her most difficult decisions, and this one certainly qualified as one of her most difficult. But considering what was at stake, even he couldn’t understand why she was taking so long. So how much longer would it be? More importantly, and more tragically, how many more soldiers, airmen, and Marines would pay for her prolonged indecisiveness with their lives before she finally, inevitably, authorized the Timeshift mission? The numbers grew more devastating with every passing hour, and his patience with his old friend was quickly wearing thin.
Then again, how much of his loss of patience was genuinely her fault, he wondered as he stood with a heavy sigh and pulled his jacket down from its hanger on the narrow brass rack behind him, and how much was really just misguided frustration over Royer’s deceitfulness? He’d never known Liz to hide anything from him before and the fact that she’d done so this time and then tried to lie about it when he gave her an opportunity to come clean really annoyed him.
He barely had one arm through its sleeve before his comm-panel buzzed again. He froze for a second or two, once more fearing another casualty report, then pulled his coat on the rest of the way as the panel buzzed a second time. It probably was another casualty report. What else could it be at this time of night?
He fastened his jacket, then reached down as the buzzer sounded for the third time and opened the channel. “Yes.”
“This is Crewman Wilkerson at the comm-center again, Admiral,” the young man on the screen said.
“What is it, Crewman?”
“Sir, President Shakhar is calling for you on your red channel. It sounds pretty urgent.”
“My red channel? Why didn’t it come directly to my office?”
“I don’t know, sir. That doesn’t happen very often, does it, sir?”
“It’s not supposed to happen at all, Crewman,” he replied. “Re-encrypt the signal and send it through to me, then get somebody to work on that comm system right away. I want to know why this transmission went through your center and I want to know sooner rather than later. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll take care of that right away and get back to you as soon as possible.”
“Negative. Report to your supervisor. Use your normal chain of command.”
“Aye, sir. Stand by for the president.”
Speak of the devil. Hansen sat down again. Could this finally be the call?
The president’s image replaced the young man’s. She looked even more stone-faced and much more tired than usual. “Good evening, Admiral Hansen,” she said, a little too formally for his liking. “I am glad I caught you before you retired for the evening.”
“As am I, Madam President,” he reciprocated, anxiously anticipating the order that would finally transform the Timeshift Resolution into an operational mission. “Although, I’m beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t just stay here the rest of the night. Might give me a little head start on tomorrow morning.”
“It’s tomorrow morning right now where I am, Nick, and this isn’t the first time I’ve made that same mistake. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
He grinned. “No, I suppose not. So what can I do for you?”
“I have already spoken to Chairman MacLeod and Professor Verne. I wanted to speak to you first, but for some reason I could not get through to you on any of the usual channels earlier, including this one. I suggest you have your comm systems looked at.”
“Yeah, I just found out there’s a problem with it. I’m having it checked out as we speak, so for right now I suggest we guard what we say.”
“A wise precaution. As you might have guessed, I’m calling you because I have made my decision regarding the subject we discussed in August. The answer is no.”
Hansen was careful not to react in any way, one way or the other, for the moment. Better to wait until she explained her decision first.
“Chairman MacLeod is at this very minute making plans to reintroduce the resolution to the Earth Security Council for another vote, but I doubt the outcome will be different. Especially since he woke them all up in the middle of the night. My decision will stand.”
Was that it? Was that all he was going to get—her final decision without any explanation at all? “Madam President, have you been following the events in the Rosha’Kana system since Operation Mass Eviction began?” he asked.
Her demeanor softened as she leaned closer to the camera and rested her forearms on her desk. “I have indeed, Nick. I know things are not going very well out there right now, but some among my circles predicted that circumstances would be a lot worse by now than they are. That says a lot, and I firmly believe that we can survive this crisis without taking such a drastic step.”
“I wish I felt as sure as you do.”
The president straightened again. “I must say I find your reaction somewhat puzzling, Nick. I thought you believed all this...subject matter...to be a waste of time.”
“I did, ma’am. Perhaps I still do to some extent, but as I reminded you that day in August, I am first and foremost a soldier and a patriot. I’ve dedicated my life to the protection and defense of the Earth and her colonies, and what I’m watching unfold in the Rosha’Kana system on a daily basis is not encouraging.”
“You make a valid point, Admiral. But I still believe in us.”
“As do I, Madam President. But even we have our limits.”
“True enough, unfortunately,” she reluctantly agreed.
“You should know, Madam President, just in case you do consider changing your mind down the road, that as of tonight the individual we discussed that day in August has agreed to join the agency.”
“That’s good to know, Nick, but I doubt anything will change. Good evening to you, and may God bless us all.” The screen went dark.
Hansen leaned back in his chair and sighed. “I am, first and foremost, a soldier and a patriot, Madam President,” he reflected.
Mandela Station, Ten Weeks Later
Thursday, 2 December 2190
Dylan had had Beth trim his hair back to regulation length last night before they went to bed, and had finally bowed to her wishes during his morning ritual and shaved off the thick, dark brown moustache he’d started growing as soon as he’d left Cirra. The shorter hair didn’t bother him at all—he’d been in the service his entire adult life, so he was used to it—but after wearing the moustache for more than two months he’d gotten used to it and its sudden absence felt as odd to him now as wearing it had felt when he’d first grown it.
He’d missed Beth a lot while he was away at the S.I.A. Academy. Much more than he would ever have anticipated, considering how little time they’d had together before he left. But even while sitting in the terminal last night, awaiting her arrival, a part of him had been afraid to face her—afraid that she might be angry with him for leaving her in the hospital the way he had. For leaving her to face recovery on her own.
And then she’d arrived and quickly dispelled his fears. Still a little sore from her wounds, she’d run into his arms and embraced him as though she intended to never let him go again. She’d explained then that she’d missed him, too, more than he could know, but that she’d understood why he had to leave. All that mattered to her was that they were finally back together again, and that had been all he’d needed to hear. The second she’d released him he’d taken hold of her hand and slipped the engagement ring over her finger and asked her to marry him, earning himself another long embrace.
He cared for her a great deal, but as he’d already learned the hard way, marriage was a huge life-altering step. He sincerely hoped that he hadn’t made another mistake.
He slipped the wide black pleather belt through the loops around the waistline of his dark olive-burgundy and black Marine Corps class-A jacket—that unique color just had to be a trick of how the individual fibers were woven together to form the fabric—then fastened the shiny gold buckle as he sidled over to the full-length mirror to check himself out. One look and the absence of his short-lived moustache was of no consequence.
It felt like years since he’d worn that uniform, but in fact it had only been about nine months—the Second Infantry Division’s change-of-command ceremony late last February. To the men and women who wore it, it was a very special uniform indeed. Like those of the fleet’s other branches, it sported the standard Solfleet badge, rank insignia, and multi-colored ribbons to signify the wearer’s individual achievements. But in lieu of specialty-specific collar regalia, all Marines wore a pair of gold-plated Solfleet Marine Corps crests known as the ‘Falcon, Sun, and Planets.’ An obvious offshoot of the United States Marine Corps’ Eagle, Globe, and Anchor, the Falcon, Sun, and Planets were no less coveted and respected. With its wings spread wide in flight, the falcon clutched the blazing sun in its talons as two planets and a cluster of moons representing Earth, Mars, and all of the solar colonies, orbited their mother star in safety. They were an insignia and a uniform with a relatively short but highly honored history, and Dylan was proud to wear them both one more time.
And to think he’d elected to give them up of his own free will.
“You’re going to miss it, aren’t you,” Beth observed, stepping up from behind him and wrapping her arms around his waist. Her long raven hair was still mussed from sleep and the old faded blue cotton pajama shirt with the top two buttons missing that she’d slept in was the only thing she was wearing.
“Yes,” he answered honestly. He turned to his fiancée, took her by the waist, and kissed her. “Then again, I missed the Military Police Security Forces for a while, too, but I got over it.”
“At least this job will be a lot less dangerous,” she said, mostly to reassure herself.
“Of that I’m sure,” he agreed, at least outwardly. No need to add to her anxiety. Better to allow her the luxury of believing that he wouldn’t be going into any more dangerous situations.
“At least you won’t have to worry about ending up in another combat unit the next time you transfer,” she continued.
“That’s true.”
She sighed and her gaze fell to the floor, her forehead to his chest. “I know it can still be dangerous work,” she conceded, “but I’m trying not to think about that.” She looked up at him again. “I love you, you know.”
“I know. I love you, too.” He pulled her close and kissed her again. Then he gave her bare bottom a couple of gentle taps and said, “I have to go or I’ll be late for my meeting.”
She held him tight. “Is it that time already?” she asked.
“I’m afraid so,” he answered.
She hugged him even tighter, once again as though she intended to never let go.
“Of course, if you want me to,” he added, “I could call the admiral and tell him he’s going to have to wait until I’m ready to see him.”
“Yeah, right,” she said with a snicker as she released him. “Go on. Get out of here before you get yourself court-martialed.”
“There isn’t a judge or jury in the galaxy that would convict me, once they meet you.”
She smiled. “Flattery will get you anything you want, after you’ve seen the admiral.”
He smiled back and said, “See you then.” He gave her one last kiss, then left their guest quarters. He never said ‘good-bye’. Those particular words always sounded too permanent, even when they weren’t intended to be.
He made his way as quickly as he could through the enormous station’s labyrinth of curving, crisscrossing corridors and arrived less than two minutes early for his appointment with the Chief of Solfleet Intelligence. “Squad Sergeant Dylan Graves,” he introduced himself to the pretty civilian secretary. “I have an eight o’clock appointment with Admiral Hansen.”
The woman looked up at him as if he were little more than an irritating piece of peasant trash and said, “You can go right in.” and then seemingly dismissed the fact that he existed at all as she returned to whatever it was she was doing.
Dylan glanced at the engraved wood grain nameplate on her desk. ‘Victoria Kennedy-Sands,’ it read. Kennedy-Sands. Well, that explained the attitude, assuming that she was in fact related to that infamous American political clan. Over the past two hundred years or so, the more prominent and/or notorious among them had seemed to grow more and more conceited with each successive generation. Apparently, no one had thought to remind this one that she was nothing more than a government-employed secretary.
“Thank you,” he said.
He approached the admiral’s office door. When it didn’t open for him automatically, he reached for the buzzer, disregarding the secretary’s instructions to just ‘go right in.’ An enlisted man didn’t just walk right into an admiral’s office without announcing himself, NCO or not, no matter who told him to do so. He touched the pad.
“Come in,” came a voice from the other side of the door.
He straightened his jacket as the door slid open, then marched into the spacious office, came to attention two steps in front of the standard Solfleet-issue desk, and rendered a sharp salute. He found himself looking at an older yet strikingly handsome man with short, thick, graying blond hair and a neatly trimmed beard and moustache. The facial hair was new. The admiral had been clean shaven when he saw him on the comm monitor two months ago.
“Squad Sergeant Dylan Graves reporting as ordered, sir.”
The admiral returned his salute, then said,” Relax, Sergeant.” His deep voice was gentle yet commanding. Dylan stood at ease. “Your uniform looks regulation-perfect. I’m impressed.”
It was regulation-perfect. Dylan had made sure of that. “Thank you, sir.”
“Please. Have a seat.”
“Thank you, sir,” Dylan repeated as he sat somewhat stiffly in one of the two chairs that faced his desk and waited for him to begin the briefing.
“I trust you remember Commander Royer,” he said, nodding toward the door.
Dylan peered back over his shoulder as that not very tall, near middle-aged blond woman with the touch of gray in her hair stepped forward. The woman he’d first seen in the base hospital on Cirra, wearing a doctor’s lab coat that didn’t belong to her. The woman who’d failed to understand the meaning of the word ‘no.’ The woman who’d come to his home the day he was released from the hospital and had tried for over half an hour to get him to come to the door before she finally gave up and went away.
“Good morning, Sergeant,” she said as she took a seat in the chair beside him. “You’re certainly looking a lot better than you were the last time I saw you. How are you feeling?”
“Fully recovered, Commander,” he answered without emotion. “Thank you.”
“That was one hell of an encore you pulled off.”
“I left the first show a little early.”
She grinned. “So you did.”
“I don’t believe the sergeant needs to be reminded of all that, Commander,” Hansen said.
Royer glanced at her superior officer and agreed, “No, sir, of course not,” then looked back at Dylan. “My apologies, Sergeant. I didn’t mean to stir up any bad memories.”
“Apology accepted, ma’am.”
“I’ll get right to the point,” she continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “How much do you know about the starcruiser Excalibur?”
“The Excalibur?” he asked. What was this about? Why would she want to know how much he knew about his father’s ship? What did that have to do with anything? Maybe he’d find out after he answered her question. “Well, for starters, its last captain was...”
“...was your father,” Royer finished for him. “Yes, we know about that. What I mean is, specifically, how much do you know about its loss?”
Dylan shrugged his shoulders slightly. “Not much, really. The basic facts. Pretty much what’s in all the publicized reports, I guess. I was only six when it happened. Why do you ask?”
She looked across the desk at her superior. “Admiral?”
Hansen hesitated for a moment, then said, “Before we say anything more, Sergeant, I want you to understand that this entire conversation is strictly top secret. You will repeat nothing of what is said in this room. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“All right, then here it is. It has recently come to our attention that Tor’Kana females have some kind of biological connection to their home planet that makes it impossible for them to travel away from there for more than a few days. If they’re forced to breathe anything other than their natural, native atmosphere for any longer than that, they die.”
“I guess that would explain why we never see Tor’Kana females, sir,” Dylan commented, “but what does that have to do with my father’s ship?”
“I want you to understand the gravity of our situation.”
“What situation is that, sir?”
“I’m sure you’re well aware of the fact that last July an armada of over a thousand Veshtonn ships invaded the Rosha’Kana star system and decimated the bulk of the Tor’Kana defense forces.”
“Yes, sir. Of course. It was all over the news. The Tor’Kana interstellar fleet was forced to withdraw from other sectors and go home to bolster their defenses, and whenever possible the other members of the Coalition, including us, sent ships to help them.”
“That’s exactly right,” Hansen confirmed. Good. The sergeant kept up on current events. “That campaign was a hard-fought one that lasted for weeks,” he added, “but in the end the Veshtonn won a decisive victory and drove the Tor’Kana from their world.” He stopped the history lesson to let the gravity of what his words implied sink in.
“Yeah, and...” Dylan paused as the significance of the admiral’s statement hit him, then concluded, “and...if their females can’t breathe anything but their native atmosphere, then...”
“Then they’ll die out,” Hansen finished for him.
“What about survivors on Kana, sir?” Dylan asked. “I mean, we’re talking about an entire planet here. There must be millions of places where survivors could still be hiding out from the Veshtonn. There could even be a resistance movement fighting back.”
Hansen drew a deep breath and slowly exhaled, shaking his head, then answered, “The Veshtonn dispersed a biological weapon as soon as they achieved planetary orbit. Enough to poison the entire atmosphere for weeks and contaminate the oceans and fresh water bodies for months, if not years.”
“My God,” Dylan exclaimed. How could any intelligent being do such a thing to an entire world? “What about escapees?”
Excellent. Hansen liked an NCO who asked intelligent, logical questions. He considered that a sign of a tactical thinker, which was exactly what his agency needed more of. “Less than an hour before dispersal, a number of Tor’Kana crews did manage to dip their vessels into the planet’s atmosphere and flood their cargo holds with indigenous air, then escape with thousands of their females onboard. According to their government in exile they were hoping to find a new world to settle. One with an atmosphere they could quickly and effectively alter to sustain them. Unfortunately, most of those ships were tracked and destroyed before they got very far.”
“Most?”
Hansen grinned slightly. Excellent.
“Some escaped, for a while, but they never found a planet that met their needs. Not that they had much time to search. Most of them were hunted down and destroyed. We did manage to save a few, however. The Rapier located and recovered the last of them about three months ago, with all hands alive and well, including several hundred females. But all totaled, Sergeant, fewer than two-thousand Tor’Kana females survived, and they’ve already started dying out.”
He paused once more to let the full significance of what he’d just said take root in the sergeant’s mind. Then he spelled it out for him anyway. “Barring some kind of miracle, the Tor’Kana are doomed as a race, Sergeant. And without them—without their access to the ancient Tor’Roshan technology that has helped our cause so many times before—the entire Coalition, including Earth, will fall to the Veshtonn within a very short period of time.”
“What about Operation Mass Eviction, sir?” Dylan asked. “If we’re successful in retaking the Rosha’Kana system...”
“That’s a very large ‘if’, Sergeant,” the admiral told him. “Things aren’t going nearly as well as we hoped for out there. And there’s still the matter of the contamination.”
Dylan could hardly believe what he was hearing. The impending extinction of an entire race of sentient, intelligent beings was a catastrophe of such great magnitude that he could scarcely conceive of it. But to think that all the races of the Coalition would soon fall and likely face a similar fate was nothing short of mind numbing. “But...Coalition forces have kept them away from the core worlds for so long,” he pointed out.
“Yes they have, Sergeant,” Royer said. “But only with the Tor’Kana and their long lost cousins’ technology at their center,” she then reminded him.
“Granted, ma’am. But even without them we’re still a major force. I can’t believe that after so many years we’d fall so easily all of the sudden.”
“Believe it, Sergeant,” the admiral said sharply. “That data your squad from the Tripoli obtained six months ago included the enemies’ strategic layout and detailed plans for their entire Terran campaign, as well as for a number of other attacks on Coalition systems. Some of those attacks have since been carried out successfully, despite the fact we knew they were coming. We got enough intel to conclude that we can’t win this war without the Tor’Kana.”
“What about cloning?” Dylan asked.
Hansen exchanged an uneasy glance with his executive officer, then answered, “Breeding cyberclones is expressly forbidden by Federation law, Sergeant.”
“I’m well aware of that, sir. I didn’t mean...”
“Of course you didn’t,” Hansen said, raising a hand to silence him. “You were referring to the Tor’Kana.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We thought of that as well. Unfortunately, no one has ever been able to successfully clone a Tor’Kana before, including the Tor’Kana themselves. At least, not that they’re admitting. But even if it could be done, we’d have to set up the facilities directly on the surface of Kana for it to do any good. I doubt very much the Veshtonn would allow us to do that.”
That was it. Dylan was fresh out of ideas. “Then everything we’ve fought for—all that we are...”
“Will be lost,” Royer finished for him. And when Dylan looked at her, she added for effect, “Gone...forever.”
With a slight, disbelieving shake of his head, Dylan said in a near whisper, “My God.”
“I’ve already spoken to him, Sergeant,” Hansen said sarcastically. And as Dylan’s eyes met his, he added, “I haven’t as yet received any response.”
“This is...I don’t know,” Dylan said, unable to find the words. “There must... There must be something we can do, sir.”
Hansen traded another glance with the commander, then seemed to perk up, if only just a little bit. “There is one possibility,” he said. “You see, Sergeant, in addition to the enemy’s strategic plans, we also received information that indicates the Excalibur was destroyed by the starcruiser Albion.”
Dylan’s eyebrows nearly met. “The Albion? But that was one of our own ships.”
“Yes, it was.”
“You’re telling me that my father and his crew were murdered by our own people?”
“That’s what the information suggests.”
“Well...excuse me for asking, sir, but are you sure your information is dependable?”
The look on the admiral’s face made it very clear that he did not at all appreciate being questioned that way by a subordinate. “Don’t try to tell me my business, Sergeant,” he said. “The information is as dependable as the circumstances surrounding its acquisition allow it to be.”
“May I ask, sir, where that information came from?”
Hansen leaned forward, placed his elbows on the desk and rested his chin on his folded hands, and looked at Dylan with amusement. “You certainly aren’t at all intimidated by my rank, are you, Sergeant?”
“To be honest, sir? No. Not really. You’re a superior officer and I respect that, but I’m not intimidated by it.”
Hansen grinned, ever so slightly. “I think I like that.” He paused for a few moments and studied the younger man, then dropped his hands to the desk. “Well. Ordinarily you wouldn’t be told where the information comes from. That kind of information is provided strictly on a need-to-know basis, and you really don’t need to know. But in this case,” He glanced briefly at Royer, “considering the circumstances, I think we owe you an answer to that question.”
“Sir?” Royer questioned. Hansen may have found out about how she’d used O’Donnell, but she didn’t understand why Graves had to be told.
“I said we owe it to him, Commander,” he reemphasized, his tone leaving no room for misinterpretation. “The whole story. Tell him everything.”
Dylan had watched the brief exchange very closely. The admiral clearly wasn’t happy with his executive officer at the moment. He couldn’t help but wonder why.
Royer sighed. “Yes, sir.” To Dylan she said, “That abduction you witnessed.”
“My neighbor on Cirra,” he said hopefully. “You found her?”
“Unfortunately, no, we haven’t,” she answered. “No, the information came to us long before she was abducted.”
“But that was over two months ago,” Dylan reminded her.
“And the information came to us long before that, in the same data stream as those enemy plans,” Royer reminded him in return. “What’s your point, Sergeant?”
“I, uh...I’m not sure I have one, ma’am,” Dylan admitted. “I guess I just thought that particular information was more recent for some reason.”
“Sometimes in our line of work, several months is recent, Sergeant,” Royer explained. “At least until additional relative information is received. Then it’s ancient.”
“Let’s just get on with it, shall we, Commander,” Hansen said impatiently.
“Yes, sir. At any rate, Sergeant, that young lady’s father was a member of your father’s crew twenty-two years ago. Sometime before the Veshtonn invasion of the Rosha’Kana star system, he somehow managed to transmit a message out of Veshtonn space to the Tor’Kana. He told them he was alive, did his best to describe where he was at that time, and detailed what was probably as much about the attack on Excalibur as he could remember. The data you Marines took back to the Tripoli included a very poor quality recording of that message, but the Tripoli communications specialist who analyzed it just happened to have been one of your former neighbor’s comm-school classmates. Since the message appeared to have come from her father, who’d been missing for over twenty years, he forwarded the entire file to her instead of notifying his commanding officer like he should have, so he could in turn notify us. We’ve assumed that since she was a communications and linguistics specialist for our agency, he probably figured she’d notify us herself if she wanted us to know about it.”
“Needless to say,” Hansen interjected, “that communications specialist had some serious explaining to do once we caught up with him.”
Royer waited a moment to be sure the admiral was finished, then continued, “To her credit, our girl notified her commanding officer right away.” Then she snickered. “But when the decision was finally made not to mount a rescue mission, she decided to assemble a covert team and mount one of her own.”
“On her own?” Dylan asked. “Unsanctioned?”
“No, not at first,” Royer specified. “She fought like hell for days trying to push SpecOps into doing something. But in the end, Central Command had made its decision. After that, she worked on her plan for weeks before we finally found out she was up to something. By the time we had enough to arrest her she’d obtained false Solfleet identicards, forged official transfer orders, and raised a hell of a lot of funding from God only knows where. She was just about ready to start recruiting people. Your name was on her list, by the way.”
“My name?”
“That’s right.”
“How did she get my name? We never knew each other.”
“She worked for our agency, remember? She had access to a lot of information. My guess is she simply did her homework.”
“Commander,” Hansen said.
Royer glanced at Hansen. ‘Get on with it’, his eyes were saying. So she got on with it. “Anyway, she escaped from custody and disappeared before she could be brought back for trial. We figured she’d be recaptured in a matter of hours, maybe a day at the most. Unfortunately, we underestimated her resourcefulness and completely lost track of her.
“Then I went to Cirra to talk to you about joining the agency. After I visited you in the hospital that first day, I spotted her and immediately arrested her. I interrogated her myself and learned that she’d obtained a whole new supply of false documents and had gotten herself transferred there posing as someone else. I also discovered two very interesting facts. Number one, your name was at the top of her list of people to recruit. And number two, she’d already taken steps to join your unit in order to get close to you.
“Now understand, Sergeant, I could have just locked her up and had her sent back to Earth on a prison transport, but in this line of work it helps to be the kind of person who can take advantage of an opportunity when it presents itself. That’s exactly what I did. I arranged for her to move into the apartment directly across from yours, then told her I wanted her to attract your attention for me when you returned home from the hospital. Given what had just happened in your personal life, I suggested that if she were to bare a little skin from time to time you’d eventually start paying her that attention. Seems I was right.”
Dylan felt both embarrassed and infuriated at the same time. It was bad enough that these officers knew he’d been spying on the girl. Had counted on it, in fact. But the fact that Royer happened to be a woman herself made it even worse. “And she agreed, just like that?” he asked.
“Well, she agreed, but not exactly just like that. It did take a little persuasion on my part. She agreed in exchange for a promise of relative leniency. Desertion, impersonation, possession of false military identification, forgery of orders, conspiracy to commit an unsanctioned assault and espionage against a foreign power... They’re all very serious offenses, Sergeant. She was facing a guaranteed general court-martial and probably a sentence of life in prison, and she damn well knew it.”
Dylan was slowly approaching his boiling point, and it was beginning to show. “So you set her up, just to get another crack at me?”
“We’d spent a lot of time trying to recruit you, Dylan. But you’d turned us down, time and time again. And, not surprisingly, your C-O wasn’t any help to us at all. However, I thought that if I had another opportunity to talk to you myself, once I’d created a little leverage, I might be able to change your mind.”
He may have been subordinate to the commander, but Dylan knew from experience that his silent, angry glare could make almost anyone nervous, so he put it to use.
“She knew exactly what we were doing all along,” Royer continued, apparently feeling the need to further explain herself. The glare was working. “We didn’t set her up, and we certainly never wanted her to get hurt. When word of what she’d been planning to do leaked out, the agent I’d left in charge decided that the danger to her had grown to an unacceptable level. He sent someone in to bring her out.”
“So I was right. Her visitor was an S-I-A agent.”
Royer nodded. “Yes, he was.”
“So why didn’t your agent just pick her up and get her the hell out of there?” Dylan asked. “Why’d he stay in her apartment that night?”
Royer turned a questioning eye toward Hansen, who only nodded to her. Apparently, the admiral had decided that he should be told everything.
She rested her elbows on the arms of her chair and folded her hands together in front of her chest. “The station commander in Tarko City didn’t want to use anyone who might be recognized by the local residents, so he brought an agent in from a different duty station, posing as an ordinary Terran immigrant who had to use regularly scheduled commercial transportation. He couldn’t just whisk her out of there and bring her back here to Earth on a government flight. That would’ve raised too many eyebrows. He had to wait for a commercial flight, which, as I’m sure you know, isn’t exactly a daily event between star systems.”
“With all due respect, Commander, that doesn’t answer my question. He could’ve taken her somewhere else to wait for that flight.”
Royer looked to the admiral again, obviously wanting him to put an end to the sergeant’s questions. But he just sat there, stone-faced and silent, and left her to her own devices. “All right, Sergeant,” she said with a hint of frustration evident in her voice. “The truth is we don’t have any idea why he stayed there that night. He sure as hell wasn’t supposed to. He was given explicit orders to pick her up and get her out of the area without delay.”
“Sounds to me like your man might have been a double agent, Commander,” Dylan suggested. The very idea clearly struck a nerve with the commander, as evidenced by the way she recoiled, her lips tightly pursed, and Dylan felt an odd sense of satisfaction at having done that to her. But he was still growing angrier by the second.
“That’s possible, yes,” Royer admitted with a hint of defensiveness in her voice. “And that’s one reason we’ve had to move so slowly since then, Sergeant. Where there’s the likelihood of one double agent, there’s always the possibility of more than one. At any rate...”
“My fiancée was shot twice and almost died, Commander!” Dylan reminded her sharply. “Several others, most of them innocent civilians and some of them my neighbors did die! The guy who lived below me gave his life willingly in my defense!”
“Watch your tone, Sergeant,” Hansen warned. “Don’t forget who you’re talking to.”
“He was also one of our agents,” Royer told him. “A retired agent, actually, but one of us nonetheless. I guess he felt the need to relive some of the good old days.”
“And thanks to somebody’s fuck up, he still had a Solfleet-issue pistol to help him fulfill that need!” Dylan pointed out spitefully.
“Sergeant Graves,” the admiral warned a second time.
“Granted, he shouldn’t have had the pistol,” Royer agreed. “I guess too much inactivity dulled his sense of judgment.”
“Dulled his sense of judgment!” Dylan exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “Is that what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night? He’s dead, Commander! And so are a lot of other people! Their lives were wasted! And for what?”
“All right, Sergeant, you’ve just stepped across the line,” the admiral said, surprisingly calm, considering Dylan’s sudden behavior. Perhaps the fact that he agreed with the sergeant’s sentiment had something to do with it. “I suggest you sit down and shut up.”
Dylan glanced at the admiral briefly and hesitated, but finally did comply—the guy was an admiral, after all—still glaring at the commander.
Royer grinned. “See what I mean, Admiral?” she said, studying Dylan’s glare. “There’s one hell of a fire burning in there.”
“I see it, Commander,” Hansen replied. Then, to reinforce his previous warnings, he added, “And it had better stay in there where it won’t get him in trouble.”
Dylan took the obvious hint to heart and reined in his temper, but his words still came forth with a razor’s edge. “Why the big charade, Commander?” he asked. “Why did you go through all that trouble to get me to watch her in the first place? You could’ve come to my home again, armed with your recruiting speech. Why didn’t you just do that?”
“As I recall, my recruiting speech wasn’t any more effective than Ensign Pillinger’s was, and the one time I did go to your home you refused to answer the door. But your service record, on the other hand, speaks for itself. You were decorated and promoted for your actions on Tamour while technically still just a recruit. You earned your Security Forces skill designator and graduated from the Military Police Academy at the top of your class. You’re a qualified expert with every weapon you’ve ever tested with. You’ve earned something more than half a dozen different medals, not to mention an assortment of service and professional development ribbons. And, in addition to all that, you’ve joined the Marine Corps, made it through Ranger training, and served with distinction in Special Operations. Is that enough, or shall I go on?”
“Please don’t,” Dylan practically pleaded. “I’m well aware of my own record. Though what it has to do with your choice of recruiting methods, I have no idea.”
“I was also well aware of your record,” she explained. “O’Donnell had been dealing with some seriously bad individuals for a while to get what she’d gotten, so we knew she might be in some danger even before the station commander got word of the leak. He planted agents in the area just for that reason.”
“The other dead and wounded with government-issued weapons,” Dylan concluded.
“Uh...yeah, that’s right,” Royer confirmed hesitantly. “At any rate, based on your record I gambled that you’d try to help her if anything happened before we decided to pull her out. Obviously, I was right again. But even if nothing had ever happened, I was still going to...get another crack at you, as you so eloquently put it, one way or the other.”
One way or the other? “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Face it, Sergeant. Peeping through open windows at naked women isn’t exactly the kind of conduct we approve of.”
The frank directness of her answer totally blind-sided him. As obvious as it should have been, he hadn’t seen it coming. “You intended to blackmail me into the agency?” he asked.
“If necessary, yes. But I’m just as glad we didn’t have to.”
“Oh, well, that makes all the difference.”
“Spare us the sarcasm, Sergeant,” Hansen said.
Dylan glanced at the admiral, but continued to address Royer. “Why me, Commander?” he asked. Then he looked at her again and continued, “A lot of Marines have records that are a lot more impressive than mine. Why were you so intent on recruiting me?”
When Royer didn’t answer, Dylan looked back at Hansen and sighed, shaking his head. “Granted, I’m an outsider, sir, and maybe there’s more to all this than I can see right now. But I can’t believe you approve of her methods.”
“First of all, Sergeant, you’re not an outsider. Not anymore. You’re one of us now. You’re an agent.”
“But I’ve only just finished the academy, sir.”
“And secondly,” Hansen continued, ignoring that apparently insignificant detail, “what I don’t approve of is a peeping tom.”
“She set me up, sir.”
“Yes she did, Sergeant,” the admiral freely admitted with a single nod of his head. “But you did it, nonetheless.” A slight grin found its way to his face as he added, “But, just so you’re aware, while it’s true that I don’t always approve of the commander’s methods, I’ve always found her personnel choices to be sound.”
“With at least one notable exception, sir,” Dylan pointed out. “Of course, he’s nothing more than a sofa stain now.”
“That’s enough of that, Sergeant!” Hansen barked, pointing a stern finger at him. “Any more comments like that out of you and I’ll drop a general reprimand into your record so fast you won’t have time to read it before your stripes hit the deck! Do I make myself perfectly crystal clear, Sergeant?”
“Yes you do, sir,” Dylan answered with a heavy swallow, thoroughly intimidated now by the half dozen golden starbursts that were glaring at him from both sides of the admiral’s burning stare. No one had ever been able to do that to him before, and he didn’t like how it felt.
With an instantly calmer voice and without the emphasis of his pointing finger, Hansen explained, “Commander Royer didn’t choose that agent to bring the girl out. The local station commander did. Commander Royer’s choices of personnel have always been sound, just as I said. And that’s never been truer than it is in your case.”
“Which leads me right back to my original question, sir,” Dylan pointed out calmly, all evidence of that ‘burning fire,’ as Royer had put it, now thoroughly internalized. “Why do you want me? I mean, I just graduated from the academy for God sake. Why am I the right choice for this mission, whatever it is?”
Hansen sighed as he adjusted his position and looked at Royer. “Whatever happened to the good old days when we handed an assignment to an agent and he just took it and ran?” he asked rhetorically.
She grinned and answered, “I thought that was still how we did it, sir.”
He looked at Dylan again. “Why are you the right choice for this mission? Partially for one of the same reasons the commander wanted you watching over your neighbor. Your service record. But mostly because of the specifics of the mission itself.”
“And they are, sir?”
Once again, the admiral leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk. Then he said, in a very matter-of-fact manner, “Very simple, Sergeant. We want you to travel back in time to the year twenty-one sixty-eight and prevent the destruction of the Excalibur at Caldanra.”
Dylan drew a breath to respond, but he didn’t have any words. Then, certain that he couldn’t possibly have heard the admiral correctly, he simply said, “Excuse me?”
“More specifically,” Hansen clarified, “we want you to pose as a Security Policeman, infiltrate the staff of the Martian Orbital Fleet Yards, and take whatever actions you determine necessary in order to ensure that the starcruiser Albion remains dry-docked there at least until the time that our records indicate the Excalibur was destroyed.”
Time-travel? But that was just science-fiction. How was he supposed to respond to such a suggestion, especially when it came from a flag officer? And even if it were possible, which he believe for a second, what about the unpredictable consequences that all of the most popular theories on the subject warned about? Which ones were right and which were wrong? According to everything he’d ever read on the subject, even the most knowledgeable scientists couldn’t agree on the answers.
“Sergeant Graves?”
Dylan raised his eyes to the admiral. He was waiting for a response.
“Do you understand what it is we’re asking you to do?” he asked.
“I uh...I think so, sir.”
“But?”
“But...uh...forgetting for a moment that I don’t happen to own a time machine, sir, if the Albion was taken out and used in the attack on Excalibur, and if I somehow go back and keep the Albion in dry-dock so that can’t happen, won’t I be changing history?”
“Obviously. That’s the whole idea.”
“No, sir, I mean...wouldn’t I be changing more than just that one detail? Wouldn’t I be changing everything?”
Hansen sighed. “I’ve sat through this discussion several times already, Sergeant, and I really don’t want to sit through it again. What you say is a possibility, yes, but changing history is the whole point of the mission.”
“But isn’t that supposed to be dangerous, sir? If I understand the theories correctly, those changes would include our present reality.”
Hansen drew a deep breath and bowed his head as he slowly exhaled, then looked up at Dylan again and said, “Sergeant Graves, our present reality is that the Tor’Kana will become extinct when the current generation dies out, and the rest of us probably won’t last much beyond that. Altering that reality is precisely what we’re trying to do. It’s the whole point of the mission, as I said. And we think that by saving the Excalibur we might just accomplish that.”
“How so, sir?”
“Those details aren’t important to your mission.”
Dylan gazed at Hansen, at Royer, and back at Hansen again, but got only stern blank stares in return. “You’re really serious about all this?” he finally asked.
“We are absolutely serious about all this,” Hansen assured him. “If we weren’t serious you wouldn’t be sitting here.”
Dylan thought it over, but he still wasn’t completely convinced. “Okay. All right. Let’s just say for argument sake that I can do this—that I can somehow go back in time and save my father’s ship. Do we really want to alter the course of our history, sir, based on one remote possibility? I mean, what if preventing the destruction of my father’s ship still doesn’t save the Tor’Kana and I end up making things even worse for the Coalition? What if we all end up dead? How do we know for sure what’s going to happen?”
Hansen looked at Royer and asked, “Remember the same good old days when you could give an N-C-O an order and he’d run with it without having to analyze it with you first?” Then, without waiting for Royer to answer, he looked back at Dylan and explained, “We don’t know for sure. We can’t. All we do know is that we have a chance to make things better. If you succeed you’ll undoubtedly save a lot of lives, including your own father’s.”
“That’s why you chose me, isn’t it?”
“That’s exactly right, Sergeant,” the admiral confirmed. “That is the one specific detail that pointed us right at you for this mission.” That wasn’t the entire truth, of course. There were also his nightmares, but his nightmares were none of the sergeant’s business. “The fact that the captain of the vessel we’re trying to save is your father.”
“Was my father, sir,” Dylan amended.
“Twenty-two years in the past, he still is your father,” Hansen reiterated.
“Twenty-two years in the past, Admiral, I’m still a six year old boy,” Dylan parried. But beyond that he conceded the point without further debate.
Long moments crept silently by while he thought over all that he’d just been told. They were offering him a chance to save his father’s life...in theory. It made some sort of sense...in theory...though the whole idea of time-travel and multiple histories was so extraordinary that he could hardly conceive of actually participating in such a feat. But now that the possibility that he might be able to save his father’s life had been specifically pointed out, he was, for the first time, actually considering accepting the assignment.
Assuming, of course, that it really was possible.
There was, however, still one more very important point they hadn’t yet addressed. “How would I go back, sir?” he asked, still not really believing that he could. “And more importantly, how would I come back home?”
“Sorry, Sergeant,” Royer said, answering in Hansen’s place. “We can’t tell you that until you agree to do it.”
“Oh really?” Dylan asked sarcastically.
“Yeah, really,” Royer answered in kind.
“And what if I agree, only to have you tell me that it’s a one way trip?”
“It’s not a one way trip,” Hansen assured him. “The plan includes a way home.”
“And if I refuse anyway, sir?”
“Due to the unusual nature of this mission, that option does remain open to you,” the admiral told him. “If you refuse then you’ll be taken from here directly to Medbay, where all memory of this entire briefing will be erased from your mind.” He glanced at Royer briefly—if she’d done something to attract his attention, Dylan had missed it—then looked back to Dylan. “Then you’ll be given another assignment.”
“Such as?”
“Such as, we’re continuing our search for your former neighbor. Assuming she’s still alive, perhaps there’s something more she can tell us that might turn things to our advantage, although that seems pretty unlikely. We already have a dozen agents searching for her, but I guess one more wouldn’t hurt. If and when we find her we’ll send a SpecOps team in to get her.”
A rescue. Now there was a mission he could go for. A mission right up his alley. But a memory-edit? He didn’t like the sound of that at all. The thought of someone walking around in his brain playing with his memories was even scarier than the thought of traveling back in time.
Perhaps there was a way to avoid both. “I’ve already given you my word not to repeat any of this, Admiral,” he pointed out. “A memory-edit...”
“Under the circumstances, Sergeant Graves, your word isn’t good enough. Don’t take it personally, though. In this particular case, no one’s word would be good enough. If you refuse this mission you will undergo a memory-edit.”
Royer cleared her throat, seemingly a little louder than should have been necessary. “Tell me, Sergeant Graves, do you still see those creatures in your nightmares?”
“There was only one creature, Commander,” Dylan reminded her without looking away from Hansen, “and no, not for the past several weeks now.”
Hansen, whose eyes had narrowed at the commander’s question with what looked to Dylan very much like suspicion, straightened slightly in his chair and asked, “What creature is that, Sergeant? What’s the commander talking about?”
“As you may recall, Admiral,” Royer began before Dylan could answer, “the sergeant was involved in that mission to rescue the Cirran Crown Prince and his consort from the C-U-F a few months ago. In addition to the terrorists, they ran into a couple platoons of Sulaini Army regulars and a detachment of Kree-Veshtonn blood-warriors. He lost most of his squad on that mission and had nightmares about it for some time afterward in which he reported seeing what, as I understand it, he was only recently able to describe as some kind of horrible, acid-spitting serpent-like creature. For a while he thought it had really been there, even though his conscious memories told him otherwise. His doctors described it to me as a classic case of post-traumatic stress, but if he’s not having the nightmares anymore I guess they were finally able to help him sort it all out.” She looked to Dylan to give some sort of confirmation.
“Yes, ma’am, they were,” he said.
“I see,” Hansen said, glaring at Royer.
Something was wrong. There was something Hansen wasn’t saying—something between him and Royer—and whatever it was, it was troubling him. A lot.
Hansen looked at Dylan and said, “Well, Sergeant Graves, it seems you won’t be facing a memory-edit after all, no matter what decision you make. An episode of post-traumatic stress in your medical history precludes that possibility. So I want your word that you will not repeat anything that’s been said in this briefing.”
No memory-edit due to post-traumatic stress? That didn’t make sense. On the contrary, it seemed to him that a memory-edit would be a good way to cure post-traumatic stress. Was that really all that was bothering the admiral? Possibly, but somehow he didn’t think so. He strongly suspected there was something more, though he couldn’t venture a guess as to what that something might be.
“I’ve already given you my word, sir,” he pointed out.
“And I’ll damn well hold you to it, Sergeant.” His eyes drifted back to Royer again, but his words were still directed at Dylan. “So it seems you still have a choice,” he said. Then his gaze shifted back to Dylan. “Help a dozen other agents to locate your former neighbor, then step out of the Special Ops team’s way when you find her so they can go in and rescue her, or accept the mission we’re offering you. Go back in time and save your father’s life, the lives of his crew, and hopefully the entire Coalition at the same time.”
The admiral fell silent, finally, giving Dylan time to think. On the one hand he could help try to find his neighbor, although the admiral had just made it abundantly clear that he wouldn’t be allowed to take part in the rescue if they actually found her. And, if they were successful, there was no guarantee that she’d be any help in the overall scheme of things anyway. The Tor’Kana and the Coalition might still be doomed. On the other hand, he could accept the time-travel mission and potentially save them all. That was clearly the more important of the two missions. His actions would have a much larger impact on the galaxy. Compared to that, finding his neighbor two months after her abduction was little more than busy-work—the kind of cold-trail mission usually reserved for below-average agents who couldn’t be trusted with the truly important assignments. But according to all the theories, history would be drastically altered, and not necessarily for the better. Did he really want the weight of all that responsibility resting on his shoulders?
And there was one more thing to consider. Rather, one more person. Beth. As of last night they were engaged to be married. What if he accepted the mission and succeeded, then returned home afterward to discover that in the new reality he and Beth weren’t a couple? What if she didn’t even know him? Or worse yet, what if she ended up married to someone else? He might lose her forever. Was he prepared to face that?
But again, what about his father? It was equally possible that the changes would spare his life, perhaps for good. Not to mention all the lives of his crew and the Coalition as a whole, as the admiral had just pointed out. Imagine...a chance to actually tell his father that he forgave him. Even better, a chance to convince him to return to his family. How different might his own life have been, if only...
And there it was. That was the key to his decision. Life without his father had been. Had been. Life with Beth was now, and although they hadn’t been together very long yet, he loved her very much.
He finally looked Hansen in the eye and said, with his head held high, “I’ll help to find my former neighbor, sir.”
The Admiral looked like a deflating parade balloon as he let go a long, quiet breath.
Hansen was disappointed, and he knew that it was his own damn fault. He’d given the sergeant two choices instead of just one order. “Very well, Sergeant,” he said. “Your assignment orders will be delivered to you in your guest quarters. Until you receive them, you’re free to enjoy your stay aboard the station. Dismissed.”
Dylan stood at attention, saluted, then turned on his heel and marched toward the door.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Hansen called after him.
Dylan stopped and turned back. “Sir?”
“You’re not a sergeant anymore, Mister Graves. All S-I-A field agents are commissioned officers, as I believe Commander Royer once mentioned to you.”
“Yes, sir, she did.”
“Therefore, as of this date, by order of the president of the United Earth Federation, as recommended by the commanding admiral of Solfleet and the chairman of the International Council on Solar Affairs, you, Dylan Edward Graves, serial number...you know your serial number...are hereby commissioned an officer of Solfleet and appointed to the rank of lieutenant junior grade. Congratulations. Now you’re dismissed.”
“Thank you, sir. That was some ceremony.”
“On your way, Lieutenant.” Dylan turned toward the door. “And, Lieutenant.”
He turned back once more. “Yes, sir?”
“There’s a formal banquet and ball being held in the Presidential Ballroom tomorrow night at nineteen-thirty hours to commemorate the anniversary of Earth’s joining the Coalition. As our newest commissioned field agent, I’d like you and your fiancée to join with Commander Royer and me in representing our office. Tor’Kana Ambassador ZielKorj is the guest speaker.”
“The Tor’Kana ambassador, sir?” Dylan asked. “After everything his people have gone through he’s speaking at a social function?” He shook his head in disbelief. “I swear I’ll never understand them as long as I live.”
“Nineteen-thirty hours, Lieutenant. Formal dress.”
“Understood, sir.” He turned to leave once more, and this time actually made it through the door.
As soon as the door closed behind his newest agent, Hansen sprang to his feet so fast that his chair shot out from under him and crashed into the wall behind his desk. “Why the hell wasn’t I told about those nightmares of his, Commander?” he asked angrily, glaring at her.
Royer stood quickly and answered, “I didn’t think it was necessary to bother you with it, sir. They were dealt with and totally discredited.”
“You didn’t think it was necessary? Do you have any idea what’ll happen to this agency, not to mention the two of us, if his memory ever returns completely and he figures out what he really went up against on that mission?”
“Admiral, in all the years the fleet has employed memory-edits there hasn’t been a single case in which the edit failed and the suppressed memories returned. His memory can’t...”
“His memory obviously did!” Hansen interrupted. “Subconsciously at least! Who’s to say that’s where it will end?”
“Like I said, sir, his nightmares were completely discredited.”
Hansen drew a deep breath to calm himself down. “Maybe so, Commander, but that still doesn’t solve our current problem, does it? Do you believe for one second that I would have discussed the Timeshift mission with that man had I known we weren’t going to have the option of employing another memory-edit on him?”
“He just gave his word not to...”
“I don’t care what the hell he just gave, Commander!” Hansen shouted. Then he paused again—he wasn’t generally the kind of commanding officer who yelled at his staff like they were disobedient children—and took another deep breath, then resumed in a more civilized tone of voice. “Listen, Liz. You and I are acting in direct violation of orders from the president of the United Earth Federation. If Graves ever talks, either about this briefing or about the creature he faced on Cirra, it’s all over for us. Even if, by some miracle, we do manage to fight off the Veshtonn, our careers are finished.”
“But he declined the mission, sir,” she pointed out. “We’re not going through with the operation, so we’re not violating...”
“Don’t argue semantics with me, Commander,” he told her sternly, though he did manage not to shout at her again. “In this particular case, just mentioning the proposition is a violation, and you damn well know it.”
“Yes, sir,” Royer acknowledged, dropping her gaze to the desktop. Just because he wasn’t shouting at her anymore didn’t mean his words carried any less weight. But after a moment’s pause she raised her eyes back to his and asked, “Am I to assume then, sir, that Lieutenant Dylan Edward Graves now represents a clear and present threat to Earth security?”
If Hansen’s eyes had been laser emitters their glaring beams would have burned a hole through the center of Royer’s head. “Get the hell out of my office, Commander,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Yes, sir,” Royer said, turning quickly toward the door. “I’ll take that as a ‘no,’ sir.”
“Damn right you will,” the admiral confirmed. Royer stopped and faced him again as he continued. “I will not have one of my brand new agents, formerly one of our most outstanding Special Operations non-comms, eliminated simply to save my own ass. Or yours. Do I make myself perfectly crystal clear, Commander?”
“You do, sir.”
He pointed a firm finger at her and added, “And, in case I didn’t make myself just as clear to you earlier, don’t you ever set up another service member for blackmail again or I will burn your ass to a crisp myself! Do you understand that?”
“I understand, sir.”
“Good. Dismissed.”
Royer turned and left, in a hurry, wondering what the hell had gotten into the admiral. She’d never seen him so angry.
Hansen recovered his chair and sat down, and couldn’t help but wonder what else Royer might be hiding from him. There was one thing she had been honest about though. In all of the Earth’s medical archives there wasn’t a single record of a memory-edit ever having failed. He knew that much for a fact, because he’d researched it thoroughly himself before he gave her his permission to have one performed on Graves.
So what had gone wrong with it? Why had Graves’ edit faltered? Why were the events as they really occurred manifesting themselves in his nightmares?
He gasped as the obvious similarity suddenly hit him like a Hellfire cluster rocket square to the head. Sergeant Graves—Lieutenant Graves—had been subjected to a memory-edit aimed at a particularly traumatic experience and had then suffered from persistent nightmares of that experience that jibed with reality rather than with the artificial sequence of events that had been implanted in his mind...
Just like the nightmares he’d been having himself.
Well, not exactly like his. Where Graves had been dreaming of the events as they had actually occurred, he himself had been dreaming about his own experience in a way that couldn’t possibly have been—seeing Graves as an adult at a time when he was in reality only a small boy. But the similarities were uncanny.
So what did it mean? Had someone at some point in time performed a memory-edit on him as well? If so, why?
A huge, thick membrane like a cobra’s cowl fanned out from the sides of its long triangular head and neck, stretching beyond the width of its massive shoulders as the creature grew to nearly three meters in height, lifting its feet from the floor and holding its legs tightly against the long, muscular tail on which it balanced.
It was back.
A distant, barely audible voice reverberated in the darkness. “Dylan.” No. It wasn’t a voice at all. Was it?
It slithered slowly toward him. He backed away.
He drew his sidearm, only to have it whipped from his grasp by the creature’s lightning-quick tail.
He grabbed everything he could find within reach—medical instruments, tools, chairs, equipment—and threw it at the creature’s head as hard as he could, but the agile monster moved too fast and ducked out of the way every time.
It spat. Dylan threw his arms across his face barely in time to protect it from the venom.
He was wide open.
“Dylan!” the voice called out. Yes, it was a voice, louder, more pronounced than before.
The creature whirled completely around and grabbed him up with its long tail, which it swiftly coiled around his mid-section. It lifted him up off of the floor, and then slowly began squeezing the life out of him.
“Dylan!” the voice cried.
The air gushed from his lungs.
He couldn’t draw a breath.
One by one his ribs began to crack. Tiny sparks of light began dancing like fireflies in the darkness before his tearing eyes.
He felt warm blood trickling down over his cheek.
He was going to die.
“Dylan!” Beth shouted, shaking him. “Wake up!”
His eyes snapped open as he gasped for air, filling his lungs to capacity. As the real world began to form around him he focused on Beth’s worried face, hovering just inches above his own. “Beth?”
“My god, Dylan, you were barely breathing!” she cried. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he answered calmly, and then he took her into his arms.
“You scared the hell out of me,” she said as she rested her head on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry.”
“It was those same nightmares again, wasn’t it? They’ve come back.”
Of course it was the nightmares. He hesitated to admit it though, given how she worried for him. But on the very day that she’d contacted him to tell him she was resigning from Solfleet so she could be with him, he’d sworn to himself that he would never lie to her or keep any secrets from her. So, “Yes,” he admitted.
She sighed. “I thought all that was finally behind you.”
“So did I.”
Several long seconds passed between them in silence. Then she asked him, “Why do you think they came back?”
“I don’t know,” he snapped. Then he touched his hand gently to her cheek and kissed her on the forehead, and said, “I’m sorry, Beth. I didn’t mean to bite your head off. It’s just that...I really thought they were gone for good. I can’t imagine why...” But then, as his head started to clear, he remembered something and it occurred to him that maybe he could imagine why after all. “Unless...”
She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him. “Unless?” she coaxed when he didn’t say anything more. “Unless what?”
He sat up and propped his pillow against the headboard, then scooted back and leaned against it. Beth sat up as well and turned to face him, ready to listen. “Maybe it was the mission briefing this morning,” he theorized. “Commander Royer told Admiral Hansen about my having those nightmares when we were back on Cirra. Maybe her mentioning them somehow triggered their return.”
“You think that’s possible?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders. “I suppose it could be.”
“What made her bring them up?”
He looked at her and reminded himself again of his promise. But this was different. This, according to the admiral, was classified information, and that left him with no other choice. As much as he hated the idea of having to do it, he lied to her for the very first time ever, knowing full well that it wouldn’t be the last. “I guess Admiral Hansen wanted to make sure I was okay before giving me an assignment.”
“Oh.” Beth hesitated a moment, then asked, “So...are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he answered. He leaned forward and kissed her, then tossed the covers aside and got out of bed. He’d told Carolyn a million little white lies while they were married, just to avoid arguments or long drawn out and usually heavily one-sided discussions, and he hadn’t felt an ounce of guilt for doing it. But lying to Beth had left a bad taste in his mouth. “I’ll be right back. I’m going to get some water.”
He picked his shorts up off the floor and pulled them on, then strolled into the kitchen and poured himself a tall glass of ice-cold water. He took a sip, then walked over to the large rectangular window which, because their guest quarters were located on the lower deck of the station’s main habitat ring, resembled a short, wide, crystal clear sliding board, sloping upward and out from the floor at a roughly forty-five degree angle.
He was glad the station’s rotation schedule had finally turned their quarters away from the Earth. The view of Earth from high orbit was an awesome sight to be sure, but he’d grown tired of looking down on the lights of Europe’s west coast night after night. Although the recent thunderstorms had made for quite an impressive spectacle. He gazed ‘down’ at the millions of stars that hung far beyond the outer reaches of the solar system in whatever astronomical direction they happened to be facing at the moment, and he wondered if one of them might be Caldanra.
As he took another sip of water he noticed Beth’s reflection growing in the transluminum window as she approached him from behind, buttoning her blue pajama shirt’s third button—the only button still remaining on the ragged old thing.
“You know, Dylan, a very interesting thought just occurred to me,” she said when she reached his side.
Dylan passed his drink from his right hand to his left, then wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. He kissed her, then peered down the front of her gaping shirt and said, “Let me guess. A new pajama shirt would cover you more effectively?”
She slipped between him and the window, wrapped her arms around his waist, and smiled up at him. “Nope. Don’t need one and don’t want one.”
“Good,” he said, smiling back. “I like this one.”
“I know you do.”
They kissed again. Then Dylan asked, “So what thought just occurred to you?”
Beth turned to the window and cradled his arm to her chest. “Your nightmares might have returned for a specific reason. They might really mean something.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?” he asked, gazing at her reflection.
“Well...” She hesitated, then admitted with a shrug, “I don’t know. It just seems strange that the mere mention that you used to have nightmares would be enough to bring them back. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Oh.” He looked back out at the stars. “Well, the way the doctors explained it to me, they weren’t just ordinary nightmares. They were, and I quote, ‘episodes of subconsciously enhanced mental imagery, loosely based in reality, brought on by post traumatic stress.’ End quote. Or some such clinical mumbo-jumbo like that.”
“Whatever that means.”
“Apparently it means something like ‘extra special’ nightmares.”
Beth snickered. “Right. But seriously, think about it for a second. Realistically, could the commander’s mentioning them to the admiral really be all it took to bring them back?”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” Dylan said. “Who knows?”
“I was hoping you might ask me that.”
“Uh oh,” he said, looking down at her. “I think I’m in trouble now.”
“What does that mean?” she asked defensively, but with a smile.
“That depends on why you were hoping I’d ask you that.”
She turned back to him and wrapped her arms around his waist again, and her eyes met his as she explained. “I was hoping you’d ask me that because I know someone who might be able to figure it out for you.”
“I was right. I am in trouble.”
“Come on, Dylan. I’m serious.”
He drew a deep breath and exhaled audibly, then asked, “All right. Who do you know that might be able to figure it out for me?”
“Loson Min’para.”
“And who is Loson Min’para?”
“He’s a man I knew on Cirra. He...”
“Oh really?” Dylan asked playfully.
“Yeah, he...”
“A man you knew on Cirra, huh. Hmm. I don’t seem to remember you ever mentioning him before. Just how well did you know this man you knew on Cirra?”
“Oh, stop it,” she said, slapping his arm and smiling up at him. “It’s not like that at all and you know it.”
“Okay,” he said, laughing. “I’m sorry. So, who is he? When did you meet him?”
“I met him about eight months ago when I was doing research for my thesis. Then I ran into him again just after I resigned from Solfleet. Remember I told you about that trip I took to Corietta City?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s where he lives. He’s a professor in the sciences department at Corietta Provincial University. I’m sure I must have mentioned him to you before.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well anyway, if anyone can help, I’m sure he can.”
“How can he... Whoa, wait a minute.” He gently freed himself from her embrace and gulped down another mouthful of water as he walked across the room, then turned back and faced her from in front of the refrigerator. “What subject in the university’s sciences department is he a professor of, exactly?” he asked, suspicious of what the answer might be.
She sighed as her gaze fell to the floor between them. “He’s head of the Mentalist Studies department,” she reluctantly revealed.
“Beth,” Dylan responded patiently, briefly rolling his eyes. “You know how I feel about people messing around in my head.”
“I know, but...”
“That especially includes telepaths.”
“He’s not just a telepath. He’s a mentalist priest of the highest level. He won’t...”
“I don’t care if he’s one of the Cirran gods themselves, Beth,” he proclaimed. He finished his water with one last gulp, then set the glass in the sink as he went on to explain, “I’m not letting any arguably psychotic religious fanatic wander through my mind looking for monsters.”
“He’s not a psychotic religious fanatic!” she insisted. “He’s an accomplished mentalist! Why can’t you at least let him try? If he can help you to...”
“No, Beth! I’m sorry, but I’m not comfortable with the idea.” He leaned back against the sink and crossed his arms in front of him. “Besides, I couldn’t go back to Cirra now even if I wanted to. I’ve got orders coming any day now.”
“You don’t have to go back to Cirra,” she told him. “Professor Min’para is here on the station. He’ll be attending the banquet tomorrow night.”
Dylan wavered for a moment, but quickly caught himself. His mind was made up. “No way, Beth,” he told her with finality, shaking his head and looking her in the eye. “I’m sorry.”
She went to him and laid her hands gently on his shoulders. He uncrossed his arms and took her by the waist and pulled her close as she gazed up at him through sad, doe-like eyes and pouted like a child. “Promise me you’ll at least think about it before the banquet?” she pleaded.
Dylan sighed. How could he say ‘no’ to that face? “All right. I promise I’ll think about it. But don’t count on me changing my mind.”
She smiled. “Fair enough.”
She kissed him, then retreated toward the window, pulling him along with her. She kissed him again. And again. He responded, and as their ever-fervent passion began to smolder once more, he stepped between her legs and gently laid her back on the window. He opened her shirt and slid his hands up over her breasts, stroking her nipples with his thumbs as they kissed. But just as he felt her tugging down on his shorts, the darkness behind his eyelids lightened. He opened his eyes and looked outside.
“We should go back to bed,” he whispered.
“Why?” she asked between heavy breaths. “What’s wrong with right here?”
“Nothing, if you don’t mind an audience.”
Beth looked up at him, then cocked her head to get a look at what he was staring at. “Oh my god!” she yelped, pushing him off her as she scurried away from the window, out of view of anyone who might have been peering out through the windows of the old astrobus that was drifting slowly by not more than a hundred meters off the station.
Dylan laughed and pulled up his shorts, then put his arm around her and walked her back into the bedroom.
The Next Night
Friday, 3 December 2190
Dylan’s mind had been wandering for most of the evening—he couldn’t stop thinking about that time-travel mission he’d turned down—but the sudden applause roused him from his reverie. Still standing behind the wedge-shaped transluminum podium at center stage, the pudgy Tor’Kana ambassador—Dylan couldn’t even begin to remember his name—had just finished delivering his long-winded speech and was rapidly clicking his scythe-like mandibles together in front of his mouth in the Tor’Kana equivalent of a gracious smile and waving all four of his four-fingered hands in thanks to the appreciative crowd. Though there were a number of physical differences, not the least of which was the obvious disparity in size, the Tor’Kana had always reminded Dylan of big red-brown ants.
He didn’t have a clue what the ambassador’s speech had consisted of, but considering the grim future that the few Tor’Kana...people, for lack of a more accurate word...who remained were facing, he couldn’t understand how their long-time representative on Earth had found it within himself to say anything positive enough to evoke such an enthusiastic response from his audience. Then again, he was Tor’Kana, and the Tor’Kana as a people were well known not only for their military strength, but also for their unwavering optimism. Maybe he’d laid out some unrealistic plan assuring the crowd that continued cooperation between Earth and the rest of the Coalition would somehow lead to the salvation of his species.
On second thought, he couldn’t have done that even if he’d wanted to. The true extent of the Tor’Kana situation—the fact that they were on the verge of extinction—was still classified, most likely to prevent wild speculation and panic from spreading through the general populous, so the ambassador wouldn’t have said anything about it.
But he’d obviously said something that pleased the crowd.
Truth was, Dylan didn’t really care what the ambassador had spoken about. It wouldn’t have had anything to do with him and he had much more important things on his mind, like figuring out how to talk his way out of having to let Beth’s Cirran telepath friend take a casual stroll through his mind.
“All right, Lieutenant,” Admiral Hansen said from across the blue, green, and tan cloth-covered table as the ambassador returned to his seat and the classical portion of the music program began. “That ends the formalities. You’re free to steal your lovely fiancée away from us and enjoy the rest of your evening in peace if you’d like.”
“Thank you, sir.” Eager to escape the brass-heavy gathering, he turned to Beth—God, she was even more beautiful with her hair up than she was with it down—and asked, “Ready to go?”
“Go?” she asked, gazing at him as though the very idea of leaving such an event before it was over were a completely foreign concept to her. “No, I’m not ready to go. It’s still early and I paid good money for this gown. I’m ready to dance.”
“You want to dance?” he asked with trepidation. He wasn’t a dancer. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
“Yes, I want to dance.”
“Why don’t you ask your young lady to dance, Lieutenant,” the admiral suggested, not grinning just enough to make it obvious that he was thoroughly enjoying Dylan’s sudden discomfort.
Dylan threw Hansen his best ‘thanks for nothing’ look, to which the admiral responded with just the slightest of mischievous grins. At least the admiral wasn’t still upset with him—not that he was showing, at least. Then he stood up, tugged downward on his formal gray uniform jacket, and offered Beth his hand. Like a true gentleman—if he was going to do it, he was going to do it right—he bowed formally and asked her, “May I have this dance?”
“You may indeed, sir,” Beth answered, smiling beautifully as she slipped her black-gloved hand into his. She stood up—Admiral Hansen stood as well—and bowed slightly to her fiancé’s superiors. “Admiral, Commander, it was nice meeting both of you.”
“Miss DeGaetano,” the officers responded together, the admiral bowing in return. And though he couldn’t be sure, Dylan thought he glimpsed Commander Royer checking Beth out in something less than a professional manner.
Beth turned to the commander’s wife. “Karen, it was a pleasure to meet you as well and I look forward to seeing you again at the spouses’ group. Thank you for inviting me.”
“You’re very welcome, Beth,” Karen answered. “I’ll see you there.”
Dylan and Beth pushed in their chairs and took their leave, and as they started toward the dance floor Beth quietly whispered into Dylan’s ear, “Not only may you have this dance, but you may have anything else you like as well.”
Dylan smiled at her appreciatively and asked, “Do you always make that offer when a gentleman asks you to dance?”
“That depends on the gentleman.”
“Oh, really? And what is it about a gentleman exactly that makes you decide to tease him like that?”
“Tease him?” she gasped, pretending to be shocked by the accusation. Then, emplying an artificial but very convincing southern bell accent she said, “My deuh suh! I find the vera idea that you could possibly think me capable of indulgin’ in such unladylike behaviuh to be quite insultin’.”
Dylan smiled. “Of course you do,” he said, playing along. “Please forgive me.”
“I assure you,” she continued, “I would nevuh tease a gentleman in such a way! I only offuh myself to a gentleman when I am genuinely prepahyed to give mahself to him.”
“But you’ve already given yourself to me,” he happily reminded her. “Numerous times, I might add.”
They reached a spot near the center of the crowded dance floor, well out of sight and earshot of the admiral and the commander. Beth wrapped her arms around the back of Dylan’s neck and gazed into his eyes. “And I intend to give myself to you again,” she assured him, dropping the accent. “And again, and again, and again, for the rest of our lives.”
Dylan took her by the waist and drew her close and kissed her, then said, “I’m going to hold you to that.”
“As long as you’re holding me.”
He kissed her again, then took her hand into his and wrapped his other arm around her bare waist. Then, in perfect time to the ancient music, he started leading her in what was, if he did say so himself, a fairly reasonable facsimile of a waltz. Once he was sure he’d managed to match their rhythm to that of the music, he said, “I don’t know about all this.”
“About all what?”
“All this. Ceremonies, formal balls, social events. I’ve never really been much of a social animal, but now that I’ve been commissioned I’ll be expected to attend functions like this all the time. The high price of being in the officer corps.”
“Now you know why officers get paid the big money,” she quipped.
He grinned. Then, peering down inside her very fashionable and equally expensive new gown’s plunging neckline, he said, “Speaking of big money, that really is a beautiful gown you’re almost wearing.”
“Hey, boy,” she playfully scolded, “you’d better watch yourself. This gown just happens to be an original Francis Black two-piece.”
“I can see that it’s a black two-piece, but...”
“No, no, no,” she smiled, shaking her head. “I didn’t say it’s a black two-piece,” she informed him. “I said it’s an original Francis Black Two-Piece.”
“Oh!” he said, pretending to be overly impressed. “So who’s Francis Black?”
“Are you kidding me?” she asked. “Francis Black just happens to be the top women’s formal fashion designer in the world right now. Two-Piece is the name of his line. These designs are very popular right now. Knockoffs are popping up all over the place.”
“Oh, well, in that case, please forgive me once again, I beg you.”
She smiled. “I’ll think about it.”
For the next few minutes they just danced cheek-to-cheek and enjoyed the orchestra’s flawless performance almost as much as they were enjoying each other. But then, as they turned for the umpteenth time and Dylan faced the back of the ballroom, he caught sight of something that he simply had to share with her.
He stopped dancing and let go of her hand. “Look there,” he said, pointing it out to her.
“What am I looking for?” she asked as she looked back over her shoulder.
“The Tor’Kana ambassador. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a Tor’Kana trying to waltz.”
When Beth finally spotted the barely five foot tall alien ambassador through the crowd, she immediately saw what Dylan was referring to. There weren’t any Tor’Kana females in attendance—come to think of it, she’d never seen one of their females anywhere before—but that wasn’t stopping the ambassador from at least trying to have a good time. He’d found a no doubt reluctant but willing partner in the person of some politician’s or officer’s wife and was cutting a rug with the best of them. His upper thorax tended to bounce a little bit with each step, making him nearly as tall as his partner on the up-beats, and his timing wasn’t quite right. But other than that, he wasn’t doing too badly.
His turns were what made his dancing so funny to watch. With each one his upper thorax not only bounced but also rotated ahead of the rest of his body as though being unscrewed. Then, when he stepped back to realign himself, his leg over-shot and his pelvis twisted underneath him, briefly protruding beyond his lower thorax. Fortunately, the Tor’Kana wore loose robe-like clothing instead of something more formfitting. Otherwise, his performance would likely have been more disturbing than comical.
Beth smiled and turned back to him. “You’re so bad,” she said as she took hold of his hand again.
“Am I wrong?” he asked as they resumed their dance.
“Behave yourself.”
Okay. So she was too kind a person to enjoy a laugh at someone else’s expense. That was one of the many things he loved most about her. ‘Behave yourself,’ she’d said. He stepped back and glanced at her cleavage, then down at her flat, bare midriff and her smooth, shapely legs. “Behave myself?” he asked. “That’s not going to be easy.”
“And why is that?” she asked with a knowing smile.
“Why do you think?”
“My charming personality?” she quipped.
“Well, yeah, that too. But that gown. I must say, if this Francis Black guy is at the top of the women’s fashion industry, I’ll bet it’s the men of the world who put him there.”
“You think so?”
“Absolutely.” He drew her close again and spoke more quietly, so that only she would hear. “With all that cleavage showing, and if the bottom half sat any lower on your hips, or if those leg slits were any higher, everyone here would know what color underwear you have on.”
“That is a gross exaggeration, Dylan, and you know it,” she responded. “Besides,” she continued, grinning mischievously as she brought her lips close to his ear. “what makes you think I’m wearing any?”
He backed slightly away and looked her in the eye again, but before he could decide whether or not he thought she was serious, she said, “Stop trying to avoid the inevitable.”
He pulled her back to him again and asked, “What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean,” she told him confidently. “Have you given any thought to my suggestion?”
“The one about this Professor Min’para character of yours?”
“He’s not a character of mine, but yes.”
“Yes, I have.”
“And?”
Dylan sighed. “I don’t know, Beth.”
The orchestra brought the music to its bold, climactic end. Everyone on the floor stopped dancing, turned toward the musicians, and applauded.
“Come on, Dylan,” Beth continued as she applauded as well. “He’s right over there.” She pointed briefly toward the refreshment tables, then gently took hold of Dylan’s arm.
“What makes you think he’ll be willing to help me anyway?” he asked her. “We’ve never met, so he doesn’t have a clue who I am. Nor does he have any reason to care. He’ll probably take one look at me and...”
“I don’t know if he’ll be willing to help you,” she admitted. “But if we don’t ask him, then we’ll never know, will we?”
“I can live with that.”
“Well I can’t,” she countered. “Not while I know you’re suffering those nightmares.” She waited a moment, then added, “Please?”
There were those big, doe-like eyes again. Dylan sighed with resignation. “All right.”
She smiled. “Thank you.” She took his hands in hers and leaned in close and whispered, “I’ll make it worth your while later tonight.” Then she turned and started leading him toward the professor. “Come on.”
“He probably won’t do it,” Dylan said hopefully.
“We’ll see.” She towed him by the hand to within a few feet of the elderly Cirran’s side, then coaxed him along slightly ahead of her. “Excuse me,” she said to get the Cirran’s attention. “Professor Min’para?”
The very distinguished looking professor’s penetrating violet-eyed gaze shifted to her and brightened with recognition as he responded, “Miss DeGaetano,” annunciating her name without a trace of accent. “How are you this evening?”
“Fine, thank you, Professor. And you?”
“I am well. Thank you.”
She gestured to Dylan. “Professor, may I present my fiancé, Lieutenant Dylan Graves. He’s the one I was telling you about.”
Dylan looked at her and knew right away that he shouldn’t have been surprised. She’d already spoken to him. She’d planned the whole thing, even before he’d agreed to it. There were certain patterns of behavior that women everywhere seemed to have in common, and that was one of the big ones.
“Indeed. How do you do, Lieutenant Graves?” the professor asked, once again without a hint of Cirran accent, disguising it being a talent that Dylan had heard was common among the strongest of their telepaths.
“I’m well, thank you, sir,” Dylan answered. Then, looking at Beth again as he spoke, he added, “Except that I seem to be suffering from a sudden and very acute case of conspiring fiancée syndrome.” He watched as Beth almost succeeded in hiding her sheepish grin, then looked back at the professor as he explained, “I wasn’t aware she’d already spoken to you about me. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t even aware you existed until last night. Beth’s never mentioned you before.”
“Do not hold it against her, Lieutenant,” the elderly professor said. “ ‘Conspiring Fiancée Syndrome,’ as well as the much more serious ‘Conspiring Wife Syndrome,’ is an affliction shared universally among all humanoid races throughout the known galaxy. And I know from what Miss DeGaetano has told me that she loves you very much. I would submit to you that it was that love alone that motivated her to come to me.”
“I see. Well then, since you already know why I’m talking to you, all that remains is for you to explain to her why you will not do as she has requested. Then we’ll leave you in peace to enjoy the rest of the evening.”
The Cirran’s eyebrows rose halfway to the faint horizontal line at the top of his forehead that might once have been his hairline. “You have made an erroneous assumption, Lieutenant. I am most willing to do as she requested, provided that you also are willing. I certainly will not force it upon you. To do so would be akin to...well, it would not be acceptable behavior.”
Dylan had felt sure the professor wouldn’t give him the time of day, much less be willing to give of his own time and talent, so he hadn’t given any serious thought to the possibility that the Cirran telepath might actually be able to help him. But now he knew different, so he asked, “Do you really think you can help me, Professor?”
“Indeed I can, Lieutenant, in any one of several ways. The choice of how I help you is of course yours. If you wish, I can simply suppress the false images that the subconscious portion of your mind has created and stored in your memory center. Or, if you prefer, I can remove them from your mind altogether, which will bring your nightmares to a permanent end. Or, if that is too drastic a measure for you, I can simply analyze those images and implant within your mind the absolute knowledge that they are false. That, too, should eliminate your nightmares over a slightly longer period of time, although I cannot guarantee that it will.”
“I’m not looking for any guarantees, Professor,” Dylan assured him. “Actually, I’m not looking for anything at all, but for my darling fiancée here...” He looked at her, and she smiled at him, “If I do decide to go ahead with this, when would you want to do it?”
“I am prepared to do it immediately.”
“I see,” Dylan said, looking at Beth again. She hadn’t missed a trick. Put him on the spot and don’t give him time to reconsider after he gives in. Sound tactics.
She shrugged. “I figured you’d change your mind,” she told him.
Dylan drew a deep breath and sighed. “You know, for someone who hasn’t really known me very long, you know me far too well.” To the professor he said, “All right, Professor. I’ll do this thing. But let’s do it now, before I come to my senses and change my mind. I mean...”
“Are you sure?” the Cirran asked.
“No, but let’s do it anyway.”
The eyebrows again. “Very well. Please accompany me to my stateroom.”
“Your staterooom?”
“Come on, Dylan,” Beth said, grabbing hold of his hand again as if she didn’t trust him not to ‘accidentally’ take a wrong turn somewhere along the way. They followed the professor out of the ballroom, unaware of the eyes that had been silently observing their entire exchange.
Commander Royer returned to the table where Admiral Hansen sat waiting alone—Karen had probably gone to the restroom—resting his elbows on the arms of his chair and cradling his refilled champagne flute in his hands.
“I think we may have a problem, Admiral,” she told him as she took her seat.
“What kind of problem?”
“Lieutenant Graves and his fiancée just left with Professor Loson Min’para.”
“Who’s Professor Loson Min’para?” Hansen asked with seemingly little real interest as he raised his flute to his lips.
“He’s a Cirran Mentalist, sir. Supposedly one of the best.”
Hansen stopped in mid sip and looked at her—he didn’t like the sound of that at all—then set his flute down on the table. “Did Graves and Min’para know each other before tonight?” he asked warily.
“I doubt it, sir. I don’t see how they could have unless they met over the Cirran comm-web. The professor told me earlier tonight that this is the first time he’s traveled outside his own home town in almost two years. And we’ve determined exactly where Lieutenant Graves has been and who he has seen every day since we first took an interest in him. As best we can determine they’ve never even been in the same city at the same time before.”
“Hmm. Lieutenant Graves doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who spends a lot of time sitting at a terminal surfing the web without a specific purpose. As a matter of fact, I’ve noticed he has a tendency to stay away from computers whenever possible. He prefers to read real books, just as I do. No, Miss DeGaetano must be the one who knows the professor.” Hansen stared at his flute for a moment and thought things over, then concluded, “Their having left with him is a little curious, but I don’t see where there’s necessarily a problem.”
“Well I can help you there, sir,” Royer advised him. “I took the liberty of listening in on their conversation. At least I tried to.”
Hansen snickered and shook his head. Looking back at Royer with a grin as he picked up his flute again he said, “You never cease to amaze me, Commander.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re welcome.” He sipped his champagne. “So what did they talk about?”
“I couldn’t hear them very well over the music, but it sounded like they were discussing the possibility of the professor doing something to help Graves make some kind of sense out of his conflicting memories.”
The admiral’s grin quickly disappeared. “That again?”
Royer felt a little hesitant to go on, knowing that her next few words would only serve to emphasize and increase the severity of her earlier error in judgment, but at this point she had no real choice. “Apparently, his nightmares have returned. My guess is the professor is going to probe his mind. Maybe even do a little reconstruction.”
Hansen straightened in his chair and set his drink down on the table again. “Mind probe,” he concluded. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, sir. That’s my guess.”
Hansen mulled over what the mentalist’s probe of Graves’ mind might mean to them—to their situation—and he didn’t like the way the scenarios played themselves out in his head.
“You’re right, Liz,” he finally admitted. “This could very well be a serious problem. This professor might be able to differentiate between the lieutenant’s real memories and the ones that were created for him.” He pushed himself out from the table and stood up as Karen returned. “Enjoy the rest of the evening,” he told the both of them. “We’ll talk later, Commander.”
“Good night, sir,” Royer said.
“Admiral,” Karen added as she sat down.
Hansen nodded politely to Karen, then left them alone.
The heat and high humidity in the professor’s stateroom assaulted Dylan like the roaring flames in a blast furnace the moment he followed Beth inside. He felt like he’d stepped out of an air-conditioned home and into the middle of an insufferably hot Philadelphia summer afternoon, and he wondered if something might be wrong with the room’s environmental controls. Then again, like his mother, he’d always had a tendency to get uncomfortably warm pretty easily. The temperature and humidity both were probably perfectly comfortable for the professor.
As for Beth, her gown was made of a fairly lightweight material and its design obviously afforded her plenty of ventilation, so she probably found the room fairly comfortable as well. Especially if, as she’d alluded to earlier, she really wasn’t wearing any underwear. Regardless, Dylan found the room’s atmosphere oppressive, and beads of perspiration quickly formed on his forehead and upper lip.
Then again, maybe he was just nervous.
“Computer,” the professor called out, finally breaking the silence that had followed them all the way from the ballroom. “Lower lights to one-eighth intensity and decrease temperature and humidity to average Terran comfort levels.” He glanced at Dylan and said, “Feel free to remove your jacket, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you, sir,” Dylan responded. “I appreciate that.” He wasted no time in exercising that freedom.
“Make yourselves comfortable. We will begin in a few moments.”
Beth wandered over to a dark Victorian-style falsewood chair that was cushioned in burgundy and trimmed with dozens of gold studs. As she sat down she held the front of her gown in place in a manner that seemed to Dylan more like caution than simple ladylike comportment. Maybe she really wasn’t wearing any underwear, he reflected as he draped his jacket over the arm of the couch. He’d find out for sure later, and what fun that was going to be.
As he unfastened his cuffs and folded his sleeves up over his forearms, the professor pulled a small rectangular table out from its place against the wall and positioned it in the center of the living room. He covered it with a gold-trimmed dark red tablecloth, which he pulled out of a drawer hidden beneath the tabletop, then arranged three chairs around it—one at each of the opposing short sides, the third centered between them on one of the longer sides. Then he walked into the bedroom, leaving Dylan and Beth alone.
“I feel like we’re getting ready for a séance,” Dylan remarked.
“Please, Dylan, try to keep an open mind,” Beth entreated him.
“Interesting choice of words.”
She smiled. “No pun intended.”
The professor returned a minute later carrying a glistening polished-gold candelabra—an approximately foot and a half tall, intricately detailed, ornate statuette of an ancient Cirran high priestess—out in front of him, the wicks of its three gilded red candles already aflame. The semi-nude priestess held two of those candles at different heights in her outstretched hands. The third, by far the most intricately detailed of the three, sat firmly atop her head to form the crown of her elaborate headdress.
The professor placed the candelabra in the center of the table and then moved behind one of the two opposing chairs. “If you please, Lieutenant,” he said, gesturing toward the chair across the table from him. “Miss DeGaetano,” he added, indicating the chair at the longer side.
“So what do we do first?” Dylan asked as all three of them took their seats.
Min’para answered his question with one of his own. “Have you made a decision as to how you would like me to proceed, Lieutenant?”
“I think so, sir. I’d prefer if you didn’t completely remove any memories, whether they’re real or not. I’m not exactly comfortable with all this as it is, and the idea of having something permanently removed from my mind doesn’t help.”
“If you would like to not do this at all, Lieutenant, now is the time to tell me.”
Dylan glanced briefly at Beth, then shook his head. “No.”
“Very well. Then I will simply identify the images that your own mind has manufactured and differentiate them from those images that represent real memories. Once that is done, I will implant the absolute knowledge that those images are not real. And that is all that I will do. Your own mind will take care of the rest.” Without any further discussion Min’para rested his elbows on the table and reached out with his hands, palms up and fingers open.
Dylan looked at the professor’s hands and asked, “Aren’t you supposed to put your fingers on the sides of my head or something?”
“Dylan,” Beth said with disapproval.
Min’para gazed at him, expressionless, apparently not at all amused. “I think you have been watching too many of your world’s old science-fiction programs, Lieutenant,” he said.
“That’s what my x-wife used to tell me.”
“Perhaps you should have listened to her. Please, Lieutenant, place your hands in mine and refrain from commenting.” Dylan did as the professor asked, but not without some lingering misgivings. “Now, try to relax.”
The professor stared deeply into his eyes for several long seconds without blinking. At first Dylan didn’t feel anything at all, but then the telepath’s presence became so emotionally overwhelming that his eyes grew wide and he had to gasp for air, again and again, as if he’d just finished a five mile run at top speed.
“Hold your next deep breath,” Min’para instructed. Dylan did so. “Now, slowly, let it out.” Dylan exhaled. “Again. In and out, slowly.” Dylan did so again. “And once more, even more slowly.” He did so once more and his breathing finally returned to normal. He felt a little lightheaded, but that, too, passed quickly. “That’s it,” Min’para said. “Now we may continue.
“Picture your mind as a closed book that you hold in your hands,” he instructed as he finally closed those piercing violet eyes. Following suit, Dylan closed his as well. “Your mind is a closed book that can be opened and read. You are the author of the book. Place the book on the table. Take hold of the cover. Open the book and allow me to read its pages.”
Dylan suddenly felt very tired and it was all he could do to keep from nodding off. “I feel sleepy,” he muttered weakly.
“Your mind is a closed book that can be opened and read,” the professor repeated, ignoring Dylan’s comment. “You are the author of the book. Place the book on the table. Take hold of the cover. Open the book and allow me to read its pages.”
Dylan stared wide-eyed at the creature as he slowly backed away.
A huge, thick membrane like a cobra’s cowl fanned out from the sides of its long triangular head and neck, stretching beyond the width of its massive shoulders as the creature grew to nearly three meters in height, lifting its feet from the floor and holding its legs tightly against the long, muscular tail on which it balanced.
“I know what you know,” Min’para said as though he were reciting a mantra.
“What the hell are you?” Dylan asked. One possibility immediately came to mind. It was the serpent—the Prince of Darkness. It was the devil itself!
“I feel what you feel.”
It slithered slowly toward him. He backed away.
“We are of one mind.”
Once more... A huge, thick membrane like a cobra’s cowl fanned out from the sides of its long triangular head and neck, stretching beyond the width of its massive shoulders as the creature grew to nearly three meters in height, lifting its feet from the floor and holding its legs tightly against the long, muscular tail on which it balanced.
“What the hell are you?” he asked again. One possibility immediately came to mind. It was the serpent—the Prince of Darkness. It was the devil itself!
It slithered slowly toward him, hissing, taunting him as though it knew what effect its hideous appearance was having on him.
Intelligence.
He backed farther away. He finally gathered his wits and drew his sidearm, only to have it whipped from his grasp by the creature’s lightning quick tail before he could aim and fire, just as his rifle had been.
He grabbed everything he could find within his reach—medical instruments, tools, chairs, equipment—and threw it at the creature’s head as hard as he could, but the agile monster moved too fast and ducked out of the way every time. Then, suddenly, it spat. Dylan threw his arms across his face barely in time to protect it from the venom, but in so doing he left himself wide open to attack.
The creature whirled completely around and grabbed him up in its long tail, which it swiftly coiled around his mid-section. It lifted him off the floor, and then slowly began squeezing the life out of him.
The air gushed from his lungs. He opened his mouth as wide as he could, but he couldn’t even begin to draw a breath. One by one his ribs began to crack like dry twigs under a hiker’s boots. Tiny sparks of light began dancing like fireflies in the darkness before his tearing eyes. He choked and coughed up what little air he had left. He felt warm blood trickling down his cheek. This was it. This was finally the end. His incredible luck had finally run out. He was going to die in agony and there was nothing he could do to prevent it.
He was sitting in a chair, staring past three flickering candles’ golden glow at Professor Min’para as the Cirran slowly pulled his hands back and rested them on the table in front of him.
“What do you think, Professor?” Beth asked.
Min’para’s forehead creased and his eyes narrowed as he seemed to search for the most accurate response. “Interesting,” he finally said, still gazing deeply into Dylan’s eyes.
“What’s interesting?” Dylan asked.
The professor leaned forward, rested his elbows on the table, and steepled his fingers in front of him. “Earlier today, Miss DeGaetano related to me the story of that encounter as you once explained it to her. I find that your subconscious recollections of the experience differ from what you told her much more significantly than I expected they would. They also seem to have more substance to them than do your conscious memories of the experience.”
“What do you mean?”
“The imagery that accompanies your subconscious recollections is much more vivid and realistic—more distinct than that of your conscious recollections. That distinctiveness stands an indisputable indication of their authenticity.”
“Their...authenticity?” Dylan questioned.
“Yes.”
“Are you telling me the events in my nightmares are the real ones?”
“The events as you experience them in your nightmares do indeed appear to be based on the authentic memories of what actually occurred, yes.”
Dylan hadn’t known what to expect going in, but the possibility of what the professor had just told him certainly hadn’t been it. He hadn’t anticipated hearing anything like that at all, and he suddenly felt as if God Himself had pulled a prank of biblical proportions on him. His whole world had just been turned upside down.
“Then...what about my conscious memories?” he asked. “If they’re not real...then where the hell did they come from?”
Min’para seemed to consider that for a moment, then explained, “If you had no conscious memories of the incident in question, the most logical theory would be that the incident was so traumatizing that your mind simply suppressed it—blacked the whole incident out, so to speak. However, you do have conscious memories of the incident. Those memories differ significantly from what I believe to be your authentic memories of events as they occurred, but their presence cannot simply be ignored. They do mean something.”
Dylan leaned forward on his elbows, unconsciously mirroring the professor’s posture, and asked, “Did you not just answer my question, or did I miss something?”
“If he missed something, I missed it, too, Professor,” Beth chimed in.
“You are correct, Lieutenant. I did not answer your question. I merely stated that the presence of conscious memories that differ so significantly from your subconscious memories is of some importance. Those memories mean something. They are there for a reason.”
“Oh,” Dylan responded. A theory as to what that reason might be began forming in his mind. He didn’t like what that theory suggested and he hoped the professor could help him to determine the truth. “Professor, if it ever came out that I told you what I’m about to tell you, I’d probably get into a whole lot of trouble.”
“Then perhaps you should not tell me, Lieutenant.”
“I have to. I have a theory as to what might be going on and I’d like your thoughts on it.”
Beth looked at her fiancé and smiled, pleased that he’d decided to trust the professor and open up to him.
“Then I give you my word as a Cirran citizen that I will not repeat it.”
“Thank you, Professor. I appreciate that. Needless to say, I don’t know you very well, but Beth tells me you’re not only a professor and a mentalist but also a high priest, and I do know what the word of a Cirran high priest means to the one who gives it. So here it is.
“My commanding officers recently sat me down and briefed me on a classified mission they wanted to assign to me. They told me that if I turned down the mission, which I was given the option of doing, I would be taken directly to the medical facility, where I would be subjected to a memory-edit so that my memory of the entire briefing could be erased.”
“Indeed? If I am not mistaken, such an act would not have been in keeping with Terran law concerning the use of the memory editing procedure.”
“Somehow, sir, I don’t think that would have mattered. At any rate, in the end I did in fact decline the mission. Then, right out of the blue, Commander Royer asked me if I was still having the nightmares. Judging by how Admiral Hansen reacted to that, I’m guessing he didn’t know anything about my nightmares until that moment. Anyway, he told me that an episode of post-traumatic stress disorder in my medical history precluded the possibility of subjecting me to the edit. Considering what you just told me, do you think it’s possible I’ve already been subjected to one—that my memories of the battle were intentionally altered in some way and that for whatever reason the edit might be failing?”
“My god, Dylan,” Beth said, “that’s awfully paranoid. What did they do to you at that academy?”
“Not necessarily, Miss DeGaetano,” Min’para opined before Dylan could respond to her. “If true, that could very well explain your fiancé’s condition. That said, I have studied your world’s use of such techniques quite extensively and I have never heard of a memory-edit failing before. I am also not aware of any instance when one was carried out for reasons other than protecting the mental health of the individual patient. And yet,” He turned to Dylan again, “your mind is quite healthy, Lieutenant. And extremely sharp, I might add.”
“Thank you,” Dylan said automatically, his thoughts light-years away.
“Your thanks is unnecessary,” Min’para said, brushing it aside. “I simply state facts based on observation. But to answer your question, I believe it is not only possible that you have already been subjected to a memory-edit, but also quite likely. There are certain aspects of that creature that appears in your nightmares that are not totally unfamiliar to me, and its presence compels me to contemplate some quite disturbing theories of my own.”
“What theories?” Dylan asked. “What do you think that thing is?”
“I believe it is a creature known as a Vul-Veshtonn, a very rare and extremely dangerous creature that researchers on my world believe the other Veshtonn worship as gods. There are a number of curious differences between what I know of them and what you are seeing in your nightmares, however.”
“What kinds of differences?” Dylan asked.
“The exoskeleton, for example. I have never heard of a Vul-Veshtonn with such resilient skin before. Tough, yes, but not so tough as to be skeletal. And the eyes. Red instead of the pale yellow that those who have seen them always comment on.”
“What do you think it all means?” Dylan asked, genuinely fascinated now. “Was mine a different race of Vul than the ones your people have encountered? Was it a whole different sub-species maybe? Or some kind of mutant?”
“Any answer I might give you now would be based solely on speculation. I would prefer to investigate further so I can be more certain. When I am ready I will contact you.”
Recognizing that he’d just been dismissed, Dylan stood up from the table and took Beth’s hand, helping her to stand up as well, then started to back away. “Please, try not to take too long, Professor,” he requested as he retrieved his jacket. “I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be on the station.”
The professor stood up but kept his place by the table. “I will have to conduct some quite extensive research, but I will start immediately and will complete it as quickly as I can.”
“Thank you, sir. And thank you for your time this evening.”
“Yes, thank you, Professor,” Beth added.
“Please understand that under normal circumstances I would not spend any more time on this issue. I am extremely busy and this has nothing directly to do with me or my usual pursuits. However, I will be here for a few more days and I do enjoy a good mystery.”
“Then we appreciate your help that much more, Professor,” Beth told him.
The Cirran nodded silently, and the couple left his quarters.
Three Days Later
Monday, 6 December 2190
The door buzzer sounded, but before Admiral Hansen could so much as draw a breath to ask who was there—as if anyone besides Liz would come by his office first thing on a Monday morning—the door slid open and the usually much less predictable commander walked in. “Good morning, Admiral,” she mumbled, apparently having left her usual enthusiasm at home. Her uniform looked something less than immaculate, which was unusual for her, and her hair had already fallen loose, assuming she had bothered to pin it up in the first place. In short she looked exhausted. Understandable considering the long hours she’d put in over the weekend. “Sorry to just walk in on you like this, sir,” she continued, “but Vicky isn’t in yet.” Her voice sounded a little scratchy.
“Don’t worry about it, Commander,” the admiral said. Then he looked back down at whichever hardcopy report happened to be in his hands at the moment. There were at least a dozen of them scattered across his desk. “Anything yet?” he asked.
She locked the door and then approached his desk. “The professor has been making real good use of the station’s library computer,” she answered as she turned one of his visitors’ chairs on an angle and unceremoniously collapsed into it. She crossed one leg over the other, rested an elbow on the edge of the admiral’s desk, and propped her throbbing head up in her hand. As far as she was concerned the time for military protocol between them had long since passed. The two of them were once again acting as co-conspirators, superior and subordinate by rank but equals in a necessary game of crime and cover-up. A position they’d had several years to get used to. “He’s been eye-deep in research day and night, all weekend. Beats the hell out of me how anyone can read so much without getting a migraine.”
Hansen noticed the deskward lean in her usually straight-backed posture and wondered if she might actually have fallen over if his desk weren’t holding her up. Then he looked more closely at her face and saw the dark circles under her glassy, blood-shot eyes as they slowly closed. She’d obviously put in a long and arduous night—a long and arduous weekend more likely—and was clearly exhausted, so he decided that as soon as she finished bringing him up to speed he’d give her the rest of the day off. And the sooner she started...
He dropped the report he was still holding onto his desk then put his feet down, turned his chair forward, and asked, “Have you run a trace on what he’s looking into yet?”
“Oh, I’ve gone far beyond that,” she answered, her eyes still closed. “I tapped directly into the circuit so I could live-monitor his research as he conducted it.”
“How’d you manage to do that without him knowing about it?”
“I have my ways,” she answered first. Then, thinking that might have sounded a little too much like she was hiding something else from him—that was the last impression she wanted to give him at this point—she amended, “I uh...I have a few friends in the comm-center.”
“Of course you do.” He should have figured that. There were very few places, especially here on Mandela Station, where she didn’t have a few friends. “So you’ve been up all weekend?” he asked, already certain that she had been. “You didn’t get any sleep at all?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Even to a blind man.”
She sighed. “Yeah, I don’t doubt it. But it was the only way to try to figure out what he’s up to.”
“Remind me never to try anything behind your back.”
“Won’t have to. You already know better.”
Hansen snickered. “You know me too well, Commander.”
“We’ve known each other a long time, Admiral.”
“That we have.” Time to get to it. “So, what’s the professor up to?”
She finally opened her eyes again and looked at him, but continued leaning on his desk as she answered, “He spent most of the weekend reading through various historical records. Military and corporate conflicts of the last half century or so, medical and scientific advances beginning twice that far back, legal decisions concerning racial equality spanning damn near the past two and a half centuries...”
“That seems like an unnecessarily broad scope of research, don’t you think?”
“Probably by design, Admiral,” she answered through a yawn. Then she explained, “If we’re right—if the professor did a mind probe on Graves and discovered evidence of the edit, and if he agreed to help him figure out what happened to him, then it makes perfect sense that he’d keep his research as broad as possible...in appearance.”
“Yeah, I see where you’re going with this. You think he’s onto us?”
“Maybe not us specifically, sir, but I’d be willing to bet he suspects someone is watching him right now. He’s a very intelligent man. Given the plethora of laws that regulate the use of mind-editing, he’d know that whoever’s responsible for altering the lieutenant’s memories would have to be someone very high up in the chain of command. Someone with the means not only to keep it quiet, but also to keep a close eye on the lieutenant afterwards. He’d also realize that whoever those high-ups are would know that he and the lieutenant met last night and would therefore be watching him, too. It’s my guess that by not narrowing the scope of his research too far the professor is trying to keep those high-ups...to keep us in the dark. Keep us guessing.”
She might have been exhausted physically, but her mind was still as sharp as nails. “That makes sense,” Hansen agreed. “So my question right now is, would his attempt to keep us in the dark and keep us guessing be successful?”
Royer grinned. “I’m glad you asked.” But her grin faded quickly. The whole situation was too serious and too dangerous to their careers to make light of. “In each case, and in each area of research, he read through several articles or reports on a very diverse selection of subjects. But every so often he’d go back over two or three of them, then go on to something new for a while, and then go back to those same few again. He did that over and over and over.”
“And?” the admiral asked, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair and folding his hands in front of him.
“And...everything that he’s gone back over more than once—everything that he’s truly been concentrating on—has had something to do either directly or indirectly with cyberclones.”
Like before, when Lieutenant Graves turned down the Timeshift mission, Hansen seemed almost to deflate as he let go a long sigh, closed his eyes, and hid his face behind his still folded hands, massaging his temples with his thumbs. “Damn it,” he mumbled.
“Admiral,” she continued tentatively. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but I have to. Should the professor get too close...”
“No,” Hansen interrupted, glaring up at her. “Absolutely not.”
“But, sir...”
“I said no, Commander!” he exclaimed, grasping the arms of his chair and leaning slightly forward. “I will not cross that line...for any reason!” He folded his hands again and then, forcing himself to speak in a calmer tone of voice, suggested an alternative. “Manipulate the records. Delete some of them and replace them with false ones if you have to. Whatever it takes to throw him off track, I don’t care, but do not harm him in any way. I don’t even want him threatened. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly clear, sir.”
“Good.” Hansen paused for a moment to calm down, then asked, “Anything else?”
“Yes, sir. Lieutenant Graves.”
“What about him?”
“Assuming we’re successful in misleading the professor, do you really think Graves will just drop the whole thing and get on with his life? I mean, we don’t know how much of his true memories he might already have recalled, either on his own or with the professor’s help. What if he’s remembered so much that he just can’t bring himself to simply let it go?”
“Assuming we’re right about the professor probing his mind in the first place,” Hansen qualified.
“Can you think of any other logical reason why Miss DeGaetano would have gotten the two of them together, Admiral?”
No. Unfortunately, he couldn’t, so he quietly considered her question for a few moments. What if Graves had remembered so much that he couldn’t bring himself to simply let it go? Unfortunately, only one possible answer came to mind and he didn’t like it. Stefani O’Donnell had already shown them what one upset and determined soldier with access to intelligence information could do on his or her own these days, and Graves held a higher level of access than she did. Hansen didn’t need to be taught that lesson twice.
“Commander,” he said, “sometimes you’re too smart for my own good.”
“Sorry, sir. I’ll try to be more stupider in the future.”
Hansen grinned, then asked, “So what do you suggest?”
“I could take up heavy drinking.”
The admiral snickered. “I mean concerning the lieutenant.”
“Short of what I alluded to before?” Hansen didn’t have to answer. His sudden, infamous laser beam stare served quite sufficiently to let her know that to even think about suggesting that again would be very unwise. “I wasn’t going to, sir,” she assured him.
“Then what?”
She straightened in the chair. “Send him back, sir. Send him on the Timeshift mission.”
“He’s already declined...”
“Make it an order, Admiral. Don’t give him the choice to decline. And supplement that order with some follow-up instructions, in case he fails.”
“What kind of follow-up instructions do you have in mind?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Something like... If he fails to prevent the Excalibur’s destruction, then he’s to remain in the past and try whatever else he can think of that might change the course of the war and save the Tor’Kana. If he fails again, then he fails, and he goes on to try something else.” She considered reminding the admiral about having Graves look for Günter as well, but the time didn’t seem right for that somehow so she decided to forgo it. At least for the moment.
“Those are pretty vague instructions, Commander.”
“I haven’t actually thought that part all the way through yet, Admiral,” she confessed. Then she explained, “I realize those instructions might keep him in the past for a very long time, but at least he’ll still be alive. He’ll have a clear-cut mission with a specific goal and the freedom to pursue it as he sees fit, and we’ll still be rid of him. We won’t have to worry that he might uncover certain events from our past. Events that I’m sure you’d prefer to keep buried as much as I would. On the other hand, if he succeeds and returns to the present, then hopefully things will have changed for the better and we’ll no longer have anything to hide.”
Hansen swung his chair around, turning his back to her, stood up and stepped over to the window to look down on the Earth as the first golden rays of the morning sun skipped across the peaks of the Appalachian Mountains. “When I sat in on that meeting between the president, Chairman MacLeod, and Professor Verne a few months ago the professor talked about a few of the more popular theories surrounding the idea of time-travel, including the one that you, Günter, and I based our actions on six years ago. Of the theories he discussed, he believed one in particular to be the most plausible, and it wasn’t the one we counted on back then. I’ve given a lot of thought to what he said and as much as I don’t want to agree with him, I think I have to.”
“Which theory was that, Admiral?”
“One that equates time to a river. The river’s course can be diverted at a given point, forcing it to flow along a different path, but the water that’s already passed that point remains unaffected. It continues to follow the old course, unchanged, until it eventually dries up.”
“Right,” Royer said, nodding her head. “I’ve heard that theory. “Even so, I’m not really sure I understand exactly what you’re trying to say.”
Hansen faced around, but stayed by the window. “I think you understand perfectly well what I’m trying to say, Commander,” he said. “But I’ll spell it out for you anyway. According to this theory, if we send the lieutenant on this mission and he’s successful, it still won’t change anything for us. He might create an alternate timeline for himself from that point forward, but in our timeline we’ll still lose this war.”
Royer was surprised to hear those words coming from the admiral, given his previously apparent commitment to the mission. Despite the spirited discussions they’d often had in the past over the whole Günter situation, she’d thought that he believed in the Timeshift mission totally, from the very beginning. So she asked him, “Admiral, if you never believed this mission could succeed, then why...”
“It’s not that I never believed it, Commander. I did, for the most part. But the more I think about it the more doubts I have. Especially when I think about your brother. Has anything changed for us in the last six years?”
Royer didn’t answer, but that was okay. He’d only meant it to be a rhetorical question anyway. He turned back to the window again as he added, “Besides, the potential cost of this mission seems to keep going up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Professor Verne came to see me in my quarters late last night. He suggested that if we do send someone back in time there’s a real chance that person might be stuck there, unable to return home, regardless of whether he completes the mission or not.”
“Why would he be stuck there?”
“Because for him our time won’t have arrived yet. For him our timeline won’t exist and a person can’t travel to a place that doesn’t exist.” After a moment he added, “I suspect that’s why Günter hasn’t returned. Not only have he and the clone embryos he took with him failed to put an end to the war for us, they’ve also been stranded in the past for more than six years.”
“If Professor Verne is correct,” Royer pointed out.
“Right.”
She’d avoided bringing Günter into the conversation, afraid that if she did they’d end up arguing about him again. But now that the admiral had mentioned him a few times already she felt free to pursue it further. If they argued again it would be his fault.
“Those clones were nothing more than a batch of fertilized eggs and a briefcase full of our most advanced cybernetic technical schematics, Admiral,” she reminded him, “and he took them back to a time period well before artificial age acceleration had been perfected. He might still be waiting for them to grow up.”
“We’ve already been over this, Commander,” Hansen sternly reminded her.
“And we still don’t know anything for sure, sir, which is why I continue to bring it up from time to time,” Royer fired right back. “We may have sent them thirty years into the past, Admiral, but we did it less than seven years ago. Who’s to say the clones aren’t just a couple divisions of six year old children right now?”
“I am!” Hansen barked, whirling around and glaring at her.
Royer sprang to her feet so fast that she almost banged her legs on the front of Hansen’s desk and shouted vehemently, “Don’t you dare yell at me like I’m your delinquent teenage daughter, Admiral! You’re the one who brought it up this time, not me!”
His laser beam stare could have burned holes through her eyes, but he held his tongue for a moment to give himself time to calm down and avoid saying something he might later regret, and to consider whether or not he felt like taking the time to explain his position on the subject to her all over again. After all, she did have a point. He had brought Günter up first this time.
In the end, patience won out. “I guess we’re both a little stressed, Commander,” he said. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to bite your head off.”
“Gladly accepted, sir, and I apologize as well. Your daughter...”
“Until recently, Commander, my daughter has been a delinquent. And God help me, she still is a teenager.”
“Through no fault of yours, sir. The delinquent part, I mean. Her mother’s death...”
“We were talking about Günter,” he reminded her, interrupting. His wife’s sudden death all those years ago still tore at his heart.
“Yes, sir.”
“Right. I was about to remind you yet again that we sent your brother back to twenty-one fifty-five,” he said, carefully controlling his tone. “We’re fast approaching twenty-one ninety-one now. Assuming for the moment that everything went as planned six years ago, that collection of fertilized eggs is now a large force of thirty-five year old cyberclones.”
“According to one theory, Admiral,” she pointed out just as she always did, holding her temper in check as well. “But according to another theory...”
“According to another theory they’re a large force of six year old children,” he recounted for her. “Yes, I know.”
“Can you honestly say that you know for a fact they’re not just a bunch of six year old children right now?”
Of course he couldn’t. “Of course I can’t.”
“That’s right, sir, you can’t. No one can. It’s just as likely as not they are just a bunch of kids right now. Add to that the indisputable fact that all of our research has shown the ancient Tor’Roshans routinely used the Portals for two-way travel...”
“Yes it has, Commander,” Hansen affirmed. “And I reminded Professor Verne of that very same indisputable fact last night. According to him that research includes a healthy amount of scientific speculation, and he would know better than anyone. So the bottom line becomes this. If the theory he subscribes to happens to be the correct one, then Lieutenant Graves will be trapped in the past forever, alone, never to see his family or his fiancée again. In a sense we will have sacrificed him. And for what? Absolutely nothing because no matter what he does back there, whether he’s successful or not, nothing will ever change for those of us he leaves behind.”
“So you’re definitely not going to send him back?” Royer asked, dreading what she was beginning to believe his final answer was going to be.
“I didn’t say that.”
Curve ball. “Wait a minute,” Royer said, adjusting her position. “I’m tired, remember? You’ve got me completely confused here. If you don’t...”
“My sworn duty, Commander, is to protect and defend the Earth and her colonies against our enemies. If there is even the slightest chance that Professor Verne’s favorite theory is wrong and one of the others is right—a chance that the Timeshift mission will enable me to carry out that duty—then I have an obligation to see to it that that mission is at the very least seriously considered.” True enough. His nightmares didn’t factor into it.
“Which is what we’ve been doing for months,” she pointed out, even though doing so might have worked against her efforts to convince the admiral to send Graves back.
“True enough. But not to the fullest possible extent.”
“So then...you might send him,” she preliminarily concluded.
“I have to at least consider it.”
“Even though you don’t think he’ll ever be able to return home again? Even if you have to sacrifice him, as you put it?”
“A couple days ago you wanted to kill him yourself, Commander,” Hansen reminded her.
“That’s not fair, Admiral!” she told him, upset by his choice of words. “I never wanted to kill him. I just thought...”
“You’re right, Commander,” Hansen interrupted, holding his hands up in front of him to stop her. “I misspoke and I apologize.” After a moment’s pause to be sure he chose his next words more carefully, he turned back toward the window, folded his hands behind him and said, “We’re at war, Liz, and war is a very risky business. Soldiers die. It’s unfortunate, but sometimes a few have to be sacrificed to save many more.”
Royer snickered. “Try telling that to the ones being sacrificed.”
“I have, on more than one occasion.”
“You have?”
“The Battle of Europa, Ganymede, the Martian Colonies...” He drew a breath and his gaze fell to the floor in front of him as he noisily exhaled. “It’s the biggest curse of command, deciding who lives and who dies. It won’t be any easier this time.”
Royer didn’t know what to say to that. Hell, there was nothing she could say. She’d gotten to know the admiral fairly well over the years, but she hadn’t known he once commanded a combat unit. She’d always assumed he’d served in Security and Intelligence his whole career, and neither he nor anyone else had ever indicated otherwise. At least not to her. Until now. But what could she say? The fact that he’d never talked about it probably meant that he didn’t want to. Probably best to just leave it alone.
“Sounds to me, Admiral, like you’re trying to convince yourself I’m right—that we should go ahead and send the lieutenant on the mission.”
“Convince myself?” he asked. He shook his head. “No.” He lifted his eyes to the Earth once more. He’d made his decision. “No, Commander, I don’t need to convince myself. Not anymore. Despite the fact that your words have seemed to contradict your position once or twice, you are right. I know that as well as you do. I just don’t like it.”
Royer stood up. “Would you like me to tell him, sir?”
“Yes I would, Commander.” She started to turn. “Stand fast.”
She stopped and turned back. “Sir?”
“I’d like very much for you to tell him, but that responsibility is mine, not yours. Do me a favor though? Go get him and bring him back here?”
“Certainly, sir.” She started toward the door again, but stopped halfway there and turned back once more. “You know, sir, in war soldiers aren’t always the only ones sacrificed.” Hansen turned his head slightly, but didn’t face her as she continued. “In World War Two, for example, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once sacrificed an entire town to prevent the Germans from learning their code had been cracked.”
Hansen hesitated another moment, then turned his back on the window and asked, “What are you getting at, Commander?”
“You’ve made it very clear, sir, where the line is that you won’t cross, and it’s certainly not my intention to test your patience on that subject any further.”
“That’s wise,” he assured her.
“But I have to ask you, sir... What should we do about Miss DeGaetano? She is, after all, the lieutenant’s fiancée, and she was with him and Min’para the other night. Introduced them to each other, in fact. She obviously knows what’s going on.”
Hansen sighed. Just what he needed, yet another loose end to clean up. But that was the nature of the business he and the commander had gotten themselves into all those years ago. He’d known that from the beginning. They both had. Now they had to deal with it. “You are definitely too smart for my own good.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Don’t be. Your thoroughness is one of the reasons I’ve kept you around all these years.”
“Damn. I thought it was my sparkling charm.”
“Yeah, that too. Anyway, I don’t think the lieutenant would say anything to her about the mission itself. It’s classified top secret, and as far as he knows it’s sanctioned.”
“Agreed, sir. But the other matter...”
“...does present us with a problem,” Hansen finished for her.
“Yes, sir. It does.”
He turned to gaze out the window again. Somehow he found it easier to issue bad-tasting orders that way. “Put some eyes and ears on her, Commander. Have her followed...discreetly. Monitor all of her communications, activities, etcetera. You know the drill.”
“Yes, sir,” she responded quietly, pretty sure she knew what he must have thought of his own orders.
“Observation only, Commander. I don’t want her movements restricted or her personal life interfered with in any way without my authorization. It’s bad enough we’re about to steal her fiancé away from her, probably forever. I don’t want to hurt the poor girl any more than I absolutely have to.”
“Yes, sir.” With that, Royer left the office to fetch Lieutenant Graves.
He stood there, staring down into space, and then back up at the Earth. Was it his sense of duty to Earth and the Coalition that had led him to decide to send the lieutenant back, or was it really his nightmares that were motivating him? Could he possibly be that selfish?
* * *
Sometime later—Hansen had lost track of time and had no idea how long he’d been standing there staring out his window—the door opened again. “I’m here with Lieutenant Graves per your request, Admiral,” Royer said, announcing their arrival.
“I take it you wanted to see me, sir?” the lieutenant asked, obviously not pleased.
Hansen grinned. Apparently, Liz had been less than polite in delivering his invitation to the lieutenant. “Take a seat, Lieutenant,” he said. Dylan did so. “Did you and Miss DeGaetano enjoy the festivities the other night?”
“She enjoyed them, sir. I tried to, but I find the harsh reality of what’s happening to the Tor’Kana to be a little distracting.”
“You hid it well enough, just as we had to. You see, there still aren’t very many of us who know about the Tor’Kana situation. If word got out...”
“Yes, sir, I know,” Dylan said. “Panic. You made it very clear that it’s classified.”
“Yes, I did. Anyway, Commander Royer and I have discussed further the matter of your first assignment and made some decisions. As of this morning I’ve decided to reconsider your mission assignment choices.”
“There’s another choice, sir?”
Hansen finally turned his back on the window and started to answer, but then he noticed the lieutenant’s appearance and held back. Rather than report in uniform, which would have been the appropriate thing to do, he’d pulled on a pair of old jeans and a button-down shirt that he hadn’t even tucked in.
And Dylan knew exactly what the admiral was looking at. “She barely gave me enough time to throw this on, sir.”
The admiral looked at Royer and told her, “Another five minutes wouldn’t have made a difference, Commander.”
“Sorry, sir,” she responded. “I’ll keep that in mind next time.”
Setting the issue of the lieutenant’s appearance aside, Hansen looked him in the eye and said, “No, Lieutenant, there’s not another choice. There’s only one choice. You’re going back.”
“I’m... Wait a minute, Admiral. You gave me a choice. You said...”
“I know what I said, Lieutenant, but now I’m saying something else. The only constant in military service is change. You’ve been a soldier long enough to know that.”
“Yes, sir, but this is...”
“You’re going, Lieutenant. That’s a direct order, if it needs to be.”
Dylan stared deep into the admiral’s eyes. He’d given Professor Min’para’s words a lot of thought over the weekend and was convinced that he’d already been subjected to a mind-edit. Further, he felt sure that Commander Royer was the one directly responsible for it. And he could see clearly now, as he’d only suspected earlier, that something serious was bothering the admiral. But what? Aside from the memory-edit, what were the admiral and the commander trying to hide from him? What was it that they were so afraid to reveal?
Whatever it was, it was up to the professor to discover it now.
“You know, Lieutenant, there is one other possible benefit to this mission that we didn’t talk about before,” Royer said.
“What’s that?” Dylan asked doubtfully.
“In addition to saving your father’s life, not to mention the entire Coalition, you may also save the lives of your Ranger squad.”
Dylan thought about that for a moment. He had to admit she had a good point, and that might have been enough to make him change his mind if it had mattered anymore. It didn’t, of course. The admiral had just given him a direct order to, for all intents and purposes, disappear. He had no choice but to obey that order. At least for now. But later? Later might be another story entirely. What would they say, he wondered, if he told them that he knew they’d subjected him to a memory-edit? Might the admiral let him off the hook?
Or might Royer kill him where he stood?
Better to keep his mouth shut until he knew the answer. “Well,” he finally responded, throwing up his hands. “If you’re going to make it a direct order, I guess you’ve got your man.”
Commander Royer grinned. “Outstanding,” she said.
“That may be your opinion, ma’am,” Dylan told her flatly, “but I have a fiancée who I’d prefer not to leave behind, and who I’d very much like to still be engaged to when I return.” Addressing Hansen, he asked, “May I ask now how you propose to send me back, Admiral?”
Royer reached into her jacket and took out a small envelope, which she handed to Dylan. “These are your identicards and instructions. You may use the reader in my office down the hall to review them. You’ll find the equipment you’re going to need in a small bag next to my desk. The bag is yours to keep, but...”
“Well that’s mighty generous of you,” Dylan cracked.
“...but don’t take it back with you,” Royer finished, ignoring his remark. “The company that manufactured it didn’t exist until a few years ago. You won’t need it anyway.”
“Understood.”
“Any questions?” Hansen asked.
Dylan snickered. “Hundreds, sir, but I’ll start with, ‘What if,’ etcetera.”
“We obviously can’t plan for every contingency,” Royer answered for the admiral. “But I know you to be a man who thinks fast, Lieutenant. You’ll know what to do if you run into any difficulties back there.”
“Thank you, Commander. That’s very comforting.”
“Enough of the sarcasm, Lieutenant,” Hansen warned. “On your way.”
“Yes, sir.” And with that, Dylan stood up, glared briefly at Royer, and then turned and left the officers to their business. And as the door closed behind him and he headed down the hall, he reminded himself that he was one of ‘the officers’ himself now.
Dylan stood in front of the full-length mirror and gazed at his reflection. Dressed per his recorded instructions in his old charcoal-gray and black Military Police uniform, another uniform he’d held onto despite believing that he’d never wear it again, he couldn’t help but think back to that time not so long ago when he’d worn it every day. Those had been good years. He’d worked with a lot of good people, some of whom he still thought about from time to time. There had been some hard times, too, of course. The occasional loss in the line of duty of a fellow MP or other shipmate, an idiot supervisor who didn’t know squat about how to be a leader—of course, no one would ever be able to hold a candle to Sergeant Carlson—a marriage that had grown steadily more troublesome as time went on. But looking back he couldn’t help but wonder what might have been, had he never left the Military Police.
“What are you wearing that for?” Beth’s reflection asked, appearing behind his own as she came back into the bedroom wrapped in a towel, her hair still damp from the shower.
Dylan turned around and took her into his arms. Knowing that he wasn’t going to see her for a very long time made him sad and holding her only increased that sadness, but he couldn’t bring himself not to hold her close. He didn’t want to leave her. He didn’t want to let go. He wanted to hold her forever.
“My first assignment,” he finally answered. “Believe it or not, I’m posing as a Military Police sergeant. Ironic, huh?”
“No doubt you were the most logical choice for the job,” she pointed out lightheartedly.
If she only knew. “Yeah. Just lucky I guess.” He checked his watch and sighed. “I should probably get going. There’s a transport waiting for me.”
“Any idea how long you’ll be gone?” she asked.
Given the details of his mission, he obviously had no idea whatsoever, but he had to tell her something. He couldn’t just leave her hanging with no known end in sight. “If all goes well it shouldn’t be more than a few weeks,” he guessed. Or a few minutes. Or a few months. Or a few years. Who the hell knew? How could anyone know when time-travel was involved? Hell, he didn’t even know how he was supposed to travel back in time in the first place.
“A few weeks?” she whined. “What am I supposed to do for a few weeks?”
“I thought you were going down to Earth to visit relatives for the holidays.”
“I am, but that’s more than two weeks away. What am I supposed to do until then?”
“You could always do some traveling,” he suggested. “You could take all your Korean cousins to Italy, or take your Italian cousins to Korea. Or both. Or take them all somewhere none of you have ever been before.”
“They all have jobs, Dylan,” she reminded him. “They have to work.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a smart girl, Beth. You’ll think of something. The admiral has gotten authorization for you to stay in these quarters for as long as you like, so enjoy it. This station has an artificial beach, cliffs to climb, caves to explore, a zoo, museums, a library... There’s all kinds of stuff to do here. And hey, maybe this thing will go quicker than I anticipate and I’ll be back in a week or so.”
She sighed. “Maybe,” she said, stepping away from him.
“If I could take you with me...”
“But you can’t leave yet,” she added, letting his last comment go unanswered. Going with him was, after all, completely out of the question, of course.
“Why can’t I leave yet?”
“I’ve got something here for you from your last unit.”
She reached into the closet and brought out a neatly gift-wrapped package, which she held out to him. The paper was a metallic foil in Solfleet banner blue, the ribbon and bow an equally lustrous Solfleet Marine Corps olive-burgundy—how in the galaxy had the manufacturer ever managed to duplicate that color so closely?—and a small card hung by a short golden thread from the base of the bow. “A courier delivered it this morning while you were out,” she told him, “along with an apology for taking so long to find you. Seems no one in the unit knows where you’ve been for the last couple of months.”
“No one at all knows,” he reminded her as he accepted the gift, “except for you, me, and a few key people in the agency.”
“And the few hundred other people who saw us sitting with Hansen and Royer at the banquet Friday night.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just another face in the crowd to them. Most of them probably wouldn’t recognize me again if they bumped into me outside the agency’s offices.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the package in his hands. Whoever had wrapped it had done an excellent job. The folds looked perfectly symmetrical, the seams ran along the edges of the box, and whatever adhesive the person had used wasn’t visible anywhere.
He opened the card. It read:
To Squad Sergeant Dylan Edward Graves.
We’ll never forget you, Degger. Best Wishes for the Future.
The few surviving members of his squad had signed their names under a heading that read ‘Graves’ Grunts,’ just below the message.
Dylan half smiled. ‘Best Wishes for the Future,’ it said. How ironic.
He closed the card and set it aside, then unwrapped the box, being careful not to tear the paper so he could rewrap it later. Inside he found a holophoto displayer-frame laying on a thin layer of crisp green tissue paper. He tapped the frame to activate the screen and discovered that a large number of photos had already been programmed into its memory, so he started looking through them. Some were snapshots taken during various company recreational activities his platoon had participated in. Others were from the last minute going-away party they’d thrown for him just hours before he left, including one shot of the entire company standing in formation for the crack of dawn awards ceremony that had preceded it. Another was a shot of him standing with the other squad leaders, including Kenny, who’d since been promoted to Gunnery Sergeant and appointed to the platoon sergeant’s position. But the last holophoto was the most significant one of all, and he knew the moment he saw it that it was the one he’d set as the frame’s default display. It was a shot of him standing with his squad in full combat gear. A shot that had been taken during the last FTX, just days before that fateful mission.
Despite the fact that he was a grown man—despite his rugged training and his battle-hardened heart—tears welled up in his eyes. He stared at the picture for long, silent moments. At his friend Running Horse, who’d recovered from his wounds and returned to duty. At Frieburger, Baumgartner, and Doc Leskowski, who’d somehow made it through the ordeal without a scratch. All four of them were driving on under a new squad leader. Who that squad leader was, he didn’t know, but he hoped that one of them had been promoted to the position. He felt guilty for not having kept in touch with them better, even though he hadn’t had the option to do so.
He gazed at Marissa, who’d miraculously survived her wounds as well, but whose service to the Corps had ended. She’d cut off all contact and started a new life for herself. He’d heard through the grapevine that after a series of cosmetic surgeries her beauty had been completely restored. He could only hope that her internal scars had healed as well. He said a quick, silent prayer for her and asked God to take care of that if he hadn’t already. And then he stared at the others, each one in turn. The Rangers who’d stood their ground against impossible odds—who’d made the ultimate sacrifice under his leadership.
Finally, Dylan wiped away his tears and blinked his eyes a number of times, hoping to erase all evidence of his rare emotional release. Once his eyes had cleared, he took the frame out of the box and set it on the bed beside him, then carefully opened the tissue paper to find a beautifully arranged commemorative plaque underneath it. Full-sized duplicates of his various medals were mounted on a velvety matte-black backing in the shape of a diamond with the gold, silver, and blue Solfleet insignia badge in the center. Duplicates of all his ribbons were mounted beneath them, just as he wore them on his uniform, flanked on both sides by a pair of glistening, gold and silver-plated Marine Corps crests.
“The courier had a message for you, too,” Beth told him, speaking quietly so as not to spoil her fiancé’s moment of somber reflection.
“What did he say?”
“He said they said that everyone gets a party when they leave, but they wanted to do something different for you—something special for proving them wrong. Whatever that means.” Dylan grinned, but when he didn’t immediately offer an explanation, she asked, “So what does it mean?”
“When I was assigned to the unit the squad resented my appointment as their sergeant because it kept one of them from being promoted to the position,” he explained. “They also found out I was a brand new Ranger, not to mention a new marine, which certainly didn’t help.” He snickered. “I thought they were going to mutiny before the end of my first day. They told me I’d never cut it and backed up their prediction with a pile of federals. Three months later I had my sports car.”
Beth frowned. “You kept the money?”
“Of course not. I put it into the company recreation fund. They took it out again, with the commander’s permission, and bought the car for me before I knew anything about it.” Sadness washed away his grin. “Marissa had seen me eyeballing one just like it in Tarko City. Using some rather underhanded means I found out that buying it was her idea.”
Beth watched as that blank expression return to his face. The expression she’d first seen that night in the garden and had come to recognize as the face of a man whose thoughts were drifting away, into the past. She let him have a few moments, then cleared her throat to get his attention and asked a question that had been on her mind since the first time she heard the woman’s name. “Should I be jealous of Marissa?”
“What?” he asked, focusing on her. “Oh, no. Not at all. Marissa was a good marine and a good friend and colleague.” He’d promised never to lie to her, he reminded himself. “I mean, to be honest, there was some strong chemistry between us, but we never really started anything. She was one of my immediate subordinates, after all. Besides, I was a married man at the time. That made two strikes against any romantic relationship we might have wanted.”
“But if things had been different?”
“If things had been different then we might have gotten together,” he told her matter-of-factly. “I won’t lie to you about it. But you should know that I’m over that. I’m over her. I was never in love with her in the first place. But I do love you, with all my heart.”
She smiled. “Okay.” Then she glanced at the wall clock and groaned. “I hate to say this, but you’d better get going.”
He looked at his watch again, set down his gift, and stood up. “You’re right,” he said, taking her by the waist. “I love you, Beth.”
Beth raised her arms and folded her hands behind his neck. “Try not to be gone too long.”
“I’ll be back as soon as possible. I promise.”
He pulled her close and kissed her, then reluctantly let her go. Then he grabbed up his crew bag, slung it over his shoulder, and led the way out through the living room. He keyed open the front door and stepped into the corridor, but he couldn’t resist the urge to turn back and gaze on her again—to look at her just one more time. She just stood there and stared back at him until the door slid closed between them.
Dylan sighed. He missed her already.
He hated good-byes. They always seemed so...permanent.
Hanger deck four. Finally. While it was true that Dylan had been stationed on Mandela for a year earlier in his career, that assignment had ended almost eight years ago and he’d only been back a few times for relatively short stays since then, so his memory of the station’s layout was a little rusty. Even with the computer’s aid, finding the hanger bays hadn’t been easy.
The environmental status panel next to the heavy airlock hatch indicated that the bay on the other side was fully pressurized with an Earth-normal atmosphere, so Dylan walked right in. Dressed as he was as a Military Police sergeant, his arrival drew a few curious but brief glances from some of the flight deck crew, aircraft mechanics in particular, but for the most part they conspicuously ignored him. There was just something about Military Police troops and aircraft mechanics that didn’t seem to mix. A sort of rivalry so old that it had become almost traditional.
Three massive vessels in various states of disrepair were berthed on the other side of the half-meter thick transluminum bay wall to his immediate right. He stopped to take a closer look. He’d always known that the ships of the fleet were massively huge, of course, but having never seen the outside of one from so close up before, he hadn’t realized just how enormous they really were, and the sight of three of the mammoth vessels docked side-by-side was overwhelming to say the least.
The ship on the left was the starcarrier U.E.F.S. Victory, minus her lower portside jump nacelle, which had obviously been lost in what Dylan imagined must have been a fierce battle. What little remained of its twin support structures didn’t amount to much more than a mass of blackened, twisted frame struts and mangled hull plates. The upper nacelle hung partially torn away from its forward support structure, canted at an odd angle, and twisted laterally along its length—probably damaged when its lower twin was destroyed. Much of the hull was pitted and scarred, no doubt having faced a rain of enemy fire. Several of the gun emplacements around her perimeter had been damaged or destroyed as well, and her lower scanner array was all but gone. The battle had clearly been a devastating one, but despite the vessel’s condition—despite her wounds—the U.E.F.S. Victory had obviously lived up to her name. Otherwise she never would have made it home.
Dylan stopped and wondered for a moment how many of her officers and crew hadn’t been as fortunate.
To the Victory’s right and almost directly in front of Dylan, large quantities of cargo and equipment were being offloaded from the somewhat weathered yet surprisingly unscathed U.E.F.S. Bokken, an older vessel very much like his father’s Excalibur—a battleship of the same class, in fact—her service to Solfleet, Dylan had heard earlier on the station’s news network, having just come to its unremarkable, prescheduled conclusion. Once ‘sterilized’ the Bokken was to be turned into an orbiting museum, according to the news story. Considering the Coalition’s desperate situation, she must truly have been useless at every level for her to be retired from active service at such a critical time.
And to Dylan’s far right, farthest from him but somehow still dominating the bay, the vessel that would replace both of the other two floated in silent slumber, illuminated from all sides by several dozen high-intensity floodlights, awaiting its turn to serve the cause. The United Earth Federation’s newest battlecarrier—the U.E.F.B.C. Excalibur, Solfleet registration number SBC-1000.
The namesake of his father’s ship, she was the very first of the massive new battlecarriers to be built, and she was an imposing sight to say the least. Obviously larger and reportedly much more powerful than any other Solfleet vessel ever constructed, larger even than anything else in the entire Coalition, her incredible mass had necessitated the addition of a third pair of jump nacelles, split directly to port and starboard of her main hull, extending beyond and between her other two pairs. At least a dozen additional weapons batteries had been added along her length, presumably on both the port and starboard sides, and some kind of huge new mega-weapon had been mounted beneath her wedge-shaped bow. And for the first time in Solfleet history, an insignia flash unique to the individual ship had been painted on her hull. Just forward of her starboard-side registration, emblazoned directly over her standard green Coalition markings, an armored hand held aloft the sword ‘Excalibur’, its point tilted at 45 degrees toward the bow, with the Solfleet banner flying proudly from its silver blade.
According to news reports the new generation battlecarriers had been designed to replace the core vessels of a standard battle group. They were battleships, heavily armed and even more heavily armored. That much was obvious just looking at this one. They were strike cruisers, surprisingly agile for their size, at least in theory, and outfitted with the latest, fasted, and most powerful propulsion systems available. And they were carriers, housing four entire starfighter wings as well as a wide assortment of operational support craft. They were the three most important elements of any Solfleet battle group, all rolled into one behemoth package.
In addition to the Excalibur, eight more of the titanic vessels had been commissioned so far, and word had it that at least twenty-seven more were either under construction, undergoing static testing, or on final shakedown cruises at various secret locations throughout Coalition space. Despite the enormous cost of the project, which had necessitated a worldwide increase in nearly every type of tax that existed, news of the battlecarrier project had done a lot to lift the spirit of patriotism and increase morale among the war-weary public, and fleet enlistments had been on the rise ever since the new Excalibur had been publicly unveiled. Looking at it, Dylan understood why. What chance would the Veshtonn possibly have of making a stand against even one of those giants, let alone thirty-six of them? Moreover, how could anyone in Solfleet Central Command believe that the Coalition was doomed when vessels like that one were being prepared for service?
Yes. She was indeed an awesome vessel. But Dylan hadn’t come to the hanger deck to admire the mighty ships of the fleet. He’d come to meet the man who’d been assigned to pilot him to an as yet unknown destination—unknown to him at least—so he could begin his mission. A mission that, after seeing this new Excalibur, he was beginning to think shouldn’t even be necessary.
He turned his back to the transparent wall to gaze out across the stadium-sized hanger deck just as a middle-aged woman in naval tan and black approached him, limping along with the help of an antique looking gnarled wooden cane, one leg partially immobilized by a soft cast that ran from her hip to her ankle. She was a fairly attractive woman for her age, Northern Indian or Pakistani in appearance, with olive-tan skin and long jet-black hair streaked with gray, and was wearing the single starburst of a commodore on her collar.
“She’s a real beauty, isn’t she?” the woman asked, gazing out at the Excalibur as she stopped beside him.
“Yes, ma’am,” Dylan answered, turning back to gaze at the mighty vessel again. What choice did he have? He couldn’t just walk away, now that she’d spoken to him. That would be rude, commodore or not. “That she is.”
“What I wouldn’t give to command a vessel like that.”
“Probably get lost trying to find the bridge.”
The woman laughed, then said, “No doubt, considering there isn’t one.”
Dylan looked at the woman. He’d never claimed to be an expert on the ships of the fleet, but he’d thought he knew enough to know that they had to have a bridge. “No bridge?”
“No,” she answered, shaking her head slightly. “At least not in the classic sense. It’s been replaced by a much larger facility called the Combat Information Center.” She looked at him and extended her hand. “Commodore Suja Bhatnagar.”
“Sergeant Dylan Graves, ma’am,” he replied, keeping in mind what he was wearing as he shook her hand. It came naturally enough. He wasn’t used to thinking of himself as a lieutenant yet. “Pleased to meet you.”
“And I you, Sergeant. I’m always honored to make the acquaintance of a non-comm. I’ve been fortunate enough to serve with a lot of good ones in my time.” She released his hand, stared at him a moment, then asked, “Graves, you say?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Any relation to Captain Richard Graves of the previous Excalibur?”
Was there anyone in the fleet who hadn’t heard of his father? “Yes, ma’am,” he answered after almost giving in to the temptation to lie. “He was my father.”
“Your father!” she exclaimed as if thrilled by the news.
“Yes, ma’am,” he confirmed, forcing himself to smile.
“Then I truly am honored to meet you, Sergeant. I have admired your father since my earliest days at the academy.”
“Thank you, Commodore. I appreciate that.” Why the hell had he said that, he wondered as he looked back out at the ships again.
“Yes indeed,” Bhatnagar said as she, too, looked back out at the ships. “She is a beauty.”
Dylan looked right back at her again—at the way she looked at the new battlecarrier with a sort of glint in her eye. Like a proud mother, almost as though the mighty vessel were her very own. Then again, maybe it was.
“Are you the Excalibur’s C-O, Commodore?” he asked.
“Who me?” Bhatnagar asked, looking at him as though it were a completely ridiculous idea. “No. No, I don’t have a ship of my own anymore. I used to.” She looked to their left and pointed. “That’s her, right there. The Victory.”
“Oh.” Open mouth. Insert foot. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, there’s no reason to be sorry, Sergeant. She was badly wounded and nearly crippled, sort of like I am now, but she still brought us all home. I expected her to be decommissioned and scrapped when we got here of course, given her condition, but I’ve just been told she’s to be refit and redeployed.”
“Oh. Well then...congratulations for that much at least, Commodore.”
“Thanks. I’ll pass that on to my former X-O. He’s her captain now. As for me?” She shook her head. “I’ve just been promoted to flying a desk.”
What could he say to that? He certainly knew what it was like to be ‘promoted’ out of a job. Probably better to say nothing at all and just take his leave of her.
“Well, if you’ll excuse me, Commodore, I’ve got work to do.” He offered his hand. “Nice meeting you.”
Bhatnagar took his hand and said, “It was nice to meet you, too, Sergeant. Take care of yourself.”
“And you, ma’am,” Dylan returned, glancing down at her leg. Then he let go of her hand and left her gazing quietly out at her old command.
He meandered along among the dozens of assorted shuttles and other small crafts of various shapes, sizes, and origins that were parked around him. The one he’d been instructed to look for was supposedly nestled somewhere among them. His instructions had included a general description of it, but damned if he could see anything that even remotely resembled what he’d read. He was almost two thirds of the way across the deck when he finally spotted a craft off to his right that he thought might be the one he was looking for. What he could see of it seemed to fit the general description, so he headed toward it.
Yeah, that was it, parked in a maintenance slot just beyond a heavily damaged Veshtonn atmosphere-capable fighter. The space yacht Selena, a relatively small but gracefully designed craft with an immaculately clean finish. As he approached it an elderly, slightly overweight gray-haired gentleman with leathery skin and a thick but neatly trimmed beard and moustache emerged from its open rear hatch, wiping his beefy hands on a threadbare blue rag that looked heavily stained with oils, greases, and God only knew what else.
As soon as the man saw Dylan he threw him a friendly wave and stepped down to the deck. “Sergeant Dylan Graves, I presume,” he bellowed with a toothy smile as he extended his right hand, his slightly accented voice so deep that it might have rattled the windows had he yelled out.
“Yes, sir,” Dylan answered, shaking the old man’s grungy hand without hesitation. His palm felt rough and dry like coarse sandpaper, his grip almost painfully firm. This was obviously a man who worked with his hands...a lot.
“Captain Benjamin Andreievich Sedelnikov, semi-retired, at your service,” he introduced himself while he pumped Dylan’s arm a bit more vigorously than was necessary.
Now there was a mouthful to say the least. But he had to try. “Nice to meet you, Captain Andrei...”
“It’s Captain Sedelnikov,” the man corrected him. “Andreievich is my middle name. But my friends have always called me Benny, so why don’t you do the same. If we’re going to be cooped up together on this little trip, we might as well be friendly.”
“All right. Benny it is,” Dylan said as the semi-retired captain finally released his hand. He stole a quick glance down at it and was pleasantly surprised to see that it still looked clean. “Please, call me Dylan.”
“All right, I will.” He turned and headed back to his ship. “Come on aboard, Dylan.”
Dylan looked the older man over as he followed him, paying particular attention to his clothing, noting the brown tee shirt, the light tan tunic minus its sleeves, which had been cut off to form a vest, and the matching trousers with the brown belt and double brown stripes down the outsides of the legs. All remnants of an older Solfleet naval uniform that had been out of use for several decades.
“Pardon my asking, Benny, but...you mentioned you were semi-retired. Just how long ago were you on active duty?”
“Ah. You recognize the uniform?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Yes, I do.”
“Da, I thought you might. Your Admiral Hansen mentioned you were a military history buff. Let’s just say for now that I’ve been off active duty for a very long time, but I’ve always been comfortable in the uniform. What’s left of it, that is. Besides, as you’ve probably already figured out, I haven’t completely left the service yet.”
“That was my next question,” Dylan said as they ascended the ramp. “I was wondering how even a semi-retired officer could be assigned a classified mission.”
As they stepped into the Selena’s aft compartment, Benny closed and secured the small access panel he’d apparently been working in, then said, “The service was very good to me in my day, Dylan, so I’m always happy to serve however I can one more time.”
Dylan looked around, realizing for the first time just how small the Selena really was. “So, is this the ship we’re going in?” he asked, hoping that it wasn’t.
“The Selena?” Benny asked, seemingly surprised by the question. “Nyet,” he said shaking his head. “Absolutely not. She’s far too delicate a lady for this one. Don’t get me wrong now. She’s a fine craft, but she’s not built for such a long voyage. No, we’ll be taking a starskiff. Your Admiral Hansen has promised to take good care of my Selena while we’re gone.” As he looked around at the ship’s interior with love in his eyes he added, “No, I wouldn’t subject this little lady to what we’re going into even if she could get us there.”
At that, Dylan threw Benny a puzzled look and asked, “Just what are we going into?”
Benny smiled once more. “There will be plenty of time for questions on our way, Dylan. Let’s go find our starskiff.”
Commander Royer’s office door slid open. Irritated, she looked up with the intention of educating whoever had walked in on her unannounced as to the error of their ways, but she found Admiral Hansen looking right back at her, so she held her tongue. She set her handcomp aside and started to stand up instead, but he quickly gestured for her to keep her seat so she relaxed, glad that she’d taken the time to clean herself up and change into a fresh uniform after their early morning meeting.
“Didn’t I give you the day off, Commander?” Hansen asked her as he walked past her desk and over to the window to gaze down at the Earth.
“I have too much work to do to take the day off, sir. Besides, even if I had gone home I’d have just spent the day tracking Professor Min’para’s use of the library...which, by the way, is exactly what I’ve been doing all day from right here.”
Hansen looked over at her with disbelief. “He’s still at it?”
“Yes, sir. Sixty-five straight hours now and still counting,” she specified as she leaned back in her chair. “He’s not showing any signs of slowing down, either.”
“Speaking of not slowing down, you look a lot more awake and alert than you were this morning,” he observed. “Been taking your coffee intravenously?”
“Went down to the medbay and got some stims,” she told him.
“You want to be careful with those things, Commander,” he warned as he gazed out the window again. “They’re pretty addictive.”
“I’ll be careful, sir. Don’t worry.”
“So... What’s the status of our traveling duo?” he asked. “Have they left the station yet?”
“Yes, sir,” she replied, turning her chair to face him. “About ten minutes ago, right after they had their dinner. The Wells does close to point five-C, so they should reach Trident station in about eight or nine hours.”
“Good,” he quietly commented, nodding slightly. “That’s good. The farther away from this station the lieutenant gets, the better I like it.”
“I thought you liked him, sir. Despite the fact that he’s a smartass.”
Hansen looked back over his shoulder at her and said, “I do like him, Commander,” and then turned right back to the window again, “that aspect of his personality aside. More than that, I admire him. I just finished reading through his service record again, cover to cover. I found it as impressive the second time as I did the first.” He paused, drew a deep breath and exhaled long and loud. “Which makes it all the more difficult to do this to him. And to his fiancée.”
“And the farther away he gets, the more difficult it becomes for you to recall him, should you have second thoughts,” she concluded.
“Something like that.”
“Sounds to me like you have a guilty conscience, Admiral,” she quipped. It was an old joke. An inside joke. A joke they’d passed between them on dozens of occasions over the years. But this time, rather than sharing a laugh with her, the admiral glared silently at her, clearly not at all amused.
“Sorry, sir,” she said, reading his expression. “That was a little out of line this time.”
Given the scope and seriousness of what they were involved in, ‘a little out of line’ was the understatement of the year, and Hansen decided not to let it go that easily this time. “That was more than just a little out of line, Commander,” he confirmed. He turned sharply and took a single step toward her. “So let me make one thing perfectly clear to you right here and now. I don’t enjoy violating orders any more now than I did then. Willful insubordination and criminal conspiracy still leave a very bad taste in my mouth.”
“I understand, sir, and I apologize.”
Ignoring her apology and pointing out the window, he added, “And I like what I might be doing to that man out there even less!”
Damn he’d had a short fuse lately. “Don’t you mean what we might be doing to that man out there, sir?” Royer asked, consciously addressing any doubts the admiral might have had that she was prepared to accept her share of the responsibility.
“I don’t remember consulting you before I decided to go forward with this mission.”
“No, sir, you didn’t. But if you recall, I did agree with that decision,” she reminded him. “And I still do agree with it. And it was I who recommended that you order Graves to go in the first place after he’d already declined.”
“The key word there, Commander, is ‘recommended.’ I gave the order, and to the best of my knowledge Chief of Solfleet Intelligence is still a one-officer billet.”
“Yes, sir,” she acquiesced. What else could she say to that? Changing the subject she pointed out, “You know, I still don’t understand why you won’t let them use the belt station. It would shave several hours off their trip.”
Hansen turned back to the window again and paused to regain his composure. Having come online only a few months ago, the asteroid belt station was the newest jumpstation in the solar system—so new that it hadn’t even been given a proper name yet. As a matter of fact, it was the newest jumpstation anywhere within Earth controlled space. It was also the first of the newest generation of jumpstations. Due to the strong flash-gravity force that jumpspace vortexes created when they reacted to a ship’s energized nacelles, jumpstations had always had to operate on the periphery of their respective star systems. But the new belt station employed a recently developed method of gravitic shielding—a sort of anti-gravity wave generation system that acted to cancel out the gravitic flash—which enabled the station to remain nestled between the orbits of Mars and the asteroid belt. So Royer was right. Using the belt station would have saved them hours. But it also would have increased the chances of the wrong people seeing them depart.
“Out of sight out of mind, Commander,” Hansen explained. “The asteroid belt station handles near constant traffic twenty-four hours a day. All that traffic means too many witnesses. That starskiff is officially registered to this office, so the fewer people who see it jump out of the system, the less likely that I’ll have to explain to Central Command where it went.”
“Good point.”
Hansen gazed down at the Earth for another moment, then finally stepped away from the window and turned his attention to Royer’s desktop monitor. “So how’s the no-sleep professor doing with his research?” he asked. “Or more to the point, how are you doing with it? Have you been able to throw him off track at all?”
“Ah yes, the professor,” she began as she, too, looked at the small screen. She drew a deep breath and exhaled sharply. “Well, I’ll say one thing for him. He’s thorough as hell. I mean, I’ve been able to throw him a few curve balls here and there, but he keeps cross-referencing all the reports and looking for verification on everything. Throwing him off track is one thing. Keeping him off track is not proving to be easy.”
“That’s all right, Commander,” Hansen told her as he stepped over to her visitors’ chairs and took a seat. “I have complete confidence in you. After all, misleading people has proven to be one of your most highly developed talents.”
“Thank you...sir,” she said with obvious hesitation, wondering if he’d really intended his comment to sound like the double-edged sword that it had. Was he still angry at her for not telling him about having found and apprehended O’Donnell right away?
“You’re welcome.” He let her stew for another moment—apparently, he’d known exactly what kind of sword his words were wielding—then asked, “What about Miss DeGaetano?”
Royer tapped a control and waited until the current visiting enlisted quarters registration ledger she’d called up finally appeared. She scanned down the page until Bethany DeGaetano’s name appeared and, at that very moment, started flashing back and forth between black and green. “She’s checking out of their quarters as we speak, Admiral. Looks like she’s decided not to stay after all.”
“Any indication yet that she’s going to cause us any problems?”
“No, sir, not so far. I’ll find out where she’s going and make arrangements for continuous surveillance anyway. If she tries anything we’ll know about it.”
Hansen looked Royer in the eye. “Remember what I said, Commander. No interference. I don’t want anything to make her any more suspicious than she probably already is.”
“Understood, sir. She’ll never know we’re there...wherever ‘there’ is. I promise.”
“Good enough.” He stood. “Well, I’d better head home. Heather’s already started dinner and I don’t want to be late.”
“Heather’s making your dinner?” Royer asked with a disbelieving grin.
Hansen returned her smile, “Yeah, who’d have thought?” Then told her, “Don’t you stay too late either, Liz, or Karen’s apt to come looking for you.”
“Just a couple more things to wrap up and I’m out of here. Good night, Admiral.”
“Good night, Commander.”
Hansen left her office, knowing full well that she’d probably stay right there and keep working until Karen really did come looking for her.