Solfleet: The Call of Duty (20 page)

“Oh, we can
do it, ma’am, theoretically at least. Based on all the cultural and historical
records the Tor’Kana have shared with us and the rest of the Coalition
governments over the years, we’ve known for a long time now that the ancient
Tor’Roshans used their Portals to visit their targeted planets and return home
while always maintaining what we refer to as ‘time-flow synchronization’. In
other words, if Tor’Roshan travelers stepped through a Portal on planet-A and
visited planet-Z for three and a half days, then upon their return to planet-A
that same three and a half days would have passed there as well. For that to
have worked, the actual duration of the travel itself would had to have been
extremely short if not instantaneous, despite the incredibly vast distances
between the two worlds.

“Back when
our scientists first learned this, they realized immediately that some sort of
precise time targeting and adjustment technology must have been built into the
Portals. We’ve had research teams studying
our
particular little wonder
ever since we discovered it. I’m sure the professor here can explain the
quantum physics involved, if you’re interested. Assuming they’ve learned to
manipulate that technology sufficiently enough...”

“Very well,
Mister MacLeod,” she interrupted. “For the sake of this discussion we will
assume that we can send someone back in time as you propose. I would like to
know why you believe the
Excalibur
to be the key to solving our problem.”

“Of course,
Madam President. If you’ll allow me summarize for you some of the more
significant events that have occurred over the last twenty-two years of our
history, I believe you’ll agree that our conclusions make perfect sense.”

“Mister
MacLeod,” she said, somewhat put off by his suggestion, “grasping the concepts
of quantum physics may not be one of my strengths, but I’m sure you’re as aware
as the rest of the Federation Congress that I was a history major in university,
and that as a career civil servant I have always kept up with current events.”

“Yes, ma’am,
I am well aware of that.”

“Then please
spare me the history lesson and just get to the point.”

“Forgive me,
Madam President, but I ask that you please indulge the members of the council.
They feel,” he pointed out, temporarily separating himself from his subordinate
council members, hoping to redirect toward them the impatience that the president
was obviously still feeling toward him, “that in order for you to make the most
informed decision possible, it’s vitally important that I go over all of the
significant events with you in great detail.”

The president
sighed, then said, “Very well, Mister MacLeod. Proceed.”

“Thank you,
ma’am. As I’m sure you will recall, in late June of twenty-one sixty-eight the
Excalibur
’s
battle group was ambushed by a fleet of Veshtonn warships in direct violation
of the cease-fire agreement that was in place at that time. Although the escort
ships were destroyed, the
Excalibur
itself, though heavily damaged,
survived the initial attack only to be destroyed a few days later after Captain
Graves ordered her into the Caldanra star system in an attempt to rescue a
Cirran shuttle that had been attacked by the Sulaini. Of course, we didn’t know
any of that until many months later when the
Excalibur
’s wreckage was
found.”

“You are
correct, Mister MacLeod. I do recall the
Excalibur
incident. I recall it
quite clearly in fact, and I would appreciate it if you would...”

“Yes, ma’am.
I understand. But take a good look, if you will, at the chain of events that
followed. Sometime between that battle and our recovery of the wreckage, the
Veshtonn launched a full-scale invasion of both Cirra and Sulain and quickly
secured the entire Caldanra star system for themselves. They set up several bases
and began a massive strip-mining program that eventually led to their discovery
of bolamide. Before long they learned to use that new and very unusual element
to build those phantom torpedoes of theirs that our sensors and scanners
still
can’t detect.

“Then they
sent agents into
our
system, presumably in a small craft with a bolamide
hull because no one ever detected it. Those agents attacked then Vice-President
Harkam’s transport when they happened to cross paths with it in interstellar
space and the vice-president, his family, and all but one member of the
security team were killed as a result.” He glanced very briefly at Hansen and
added, “Whether directly or otherwise.” When the admiral showed no outward reaction
to the slight, he also added, “That tragic incident nearly cost the admiral
here his military career.”

“I am aware
of that, Mister MacLeod,” the president impatiently pointed out, “and I am quite
sure Admiral Hansen is also very well aware of it. I for one doubt very much
that your insensitive holier than thou attitude...”

Her voice
faded into oblivion as Hansen’s thoughts turned inward and drifted back more
than twenty years into the past, to that place where his nightmares had been forcing
him to return each night.

Jonathan
Harkam, the Earth Federation’s vice-president at the time, had been invited to
say a few words at the opening ceremonies of the new terraforming facility on
Tau Ceti-IV. He’d chosen to have his entire family accompany him on the trip, which
was certainly nothing new for him, but due to the ongoing war, those responsible
for his safety had decided that instead of traveling aboard
Solfleet-Two
,
his official vessel, he and his family would travel in one of the fleet’s
heavily armed interstellar transport shuttles. In addition, a team of Solfleet Security
Police troops had been hand selected to augment the regular civilian executive
security team, and Hansen, then a major with those same Security Police—their
unit’s commanding officer in fact—had been appointed to command that team.

The trip to
Tau Ceti-IV was supposed to take roughly twelve days, depending on how often
the pilots were forced to make course corrections or take evasive action in
order to avoid being struck by arrant bits of jumpspace flotsam. Sure, the
transport was heavily armored, but even at relatively slow orbital velocities
something as seemingly insignificant as a coin-sized meteor fragment could inflict
catastrophic damage if it struck a vessel in exactly the wrong place. At
hyper-light velocities through jumpspace a vessel could be destroyed before its
crew even had time to scream.

As he was a
man who did not at all enjoy taking long trips, Harkam had chosen to travel in
suspended animation and had directed that his family do the same. So,
immediately after the transport achieved escape velocity and departed Earth
orbit enroute to the nearest jumpstation, the entire Harkam family had been pit
on ice...so to speak.

But they
would never make it to their destination.

About five
and a half days into the journey, somewhere deep in interstellar jumpspace, a small
Veshtonn vessel that the flight crew hadn’t even seen approaching had attacked
and quickly immobilized them. With both jump nacelles and the sub-light fusion
engines destroyed and their weapons disabled, they could only arm themselves
and wait while that, that
thing
and its blood-warrior guards cut through
the hull and boarded the vessel. The ensuing carnage had been so much worse
than mere horror, and the unspeakable savagery that the vice-president’s wife
and teenage daughter had endured while the rest of them were forced to watch...

With a blink
of the eyes, Hansen suddenly found himself back in the president’s office, but
he still couldn’t purge the grisly images from his mind. Although he’d been
right there in the middle of it all—and although he continued to return there
in his nightmares each night—he still couldn’t begin to imagine, twenty-two
years later, what it must have been like for poor Jonathan Harkam to be forced
to watch but helpless to intervene while his family was so brutally and so
gruesomely ravaged and slaughtered. But at least the poor man hadn’t lived and
been forced to endure the aftermath. With the press always eager to bend the
facts and sensationalize a story, that incident had quickly become the most
heavily covered news event of its time, and the investigation and congressional
hearings that had followed his rescue had been almost enough at the time to
make him wish that he’d died in that vessel, in the icy cold of deep space,
along with everyone else.

“Now if you
and the other members of your council feel it is so vitally important that I
sit here and listen to your historical recitation,” the president was saying, “I
will do so. But I will thank you not to color it with your own personal or
political comments and opinions. Do I make myself perfectly crystal clear, Mister
MacLeod?”

MacLeod
cleared his throat. “Yes, ma’am, you do. And I apologize. I didn’t mean to...”

“I think you
certainly
did
mean to, Mister MacLeod, and I think it most inappropriate
and unprofessional of you.”

“Excuse me,
Madam President,” he said defensively, “but I assure you...”

“So far,
Mister MacLeod, you haven’t assured me of anything. Please, just get on with it
while I still have the patience to listen.”

Hansen had
no idea what might have happened between the president and the chairman prior
to this meeting, but he hadn’t seen her so annoyed with anyone in a very long
time. The poor chairman had to have been feeling uneasy as hell.

“Yes, ma’am,”
the chairman yielded, self-consciously adjusting his position in the suddenly
uncomfortable chair while wisely biting back several rather off-color retorts
that had quickly come to mind. “As I was saying, those same Veshtonn agents—at
least we’ve always assumed they were the same agents—then destroyed the Hawking
Institute’s lunar orbital platform, effectively blinding Earth to what was
going on in roughly half the solar system at any given time. And they escaped
undetected. Then, as you know, came the invasion. All our outer system
observation platforms, destroyed. The Europan ice-mining and asteroid belt ore
mining facilities, likewise all destroyed. All of the Martian and Lunar
colonies, either badly damaged or destroyed. Even the Earth itself was nearly
overrun.”

“Mister
MacLeod,” the president sighed.

“And then,
Madam President, by the time that first delegation of Coalition representatives
surprised us with their unannounced visit, barely a month after we discovered
the
Excalibur
’s wreckage, we as a people were so xenophobic that our
government threatened to blow their entire fleet out of space if they didn’t
leave our system immediately and never return. In my...” He stopped himself.
She wasn’t interested in hearing his opinion. Instead he said, “It’s a miracle
we even met with them face to face first, considering the paranoia that our
people were suffering from.” That was still just his opinion, of course, but at
least he’d been able to disguise it as a fact. He hoped. She had to listen to
facts.

“Mister
MacLeod,” the President repeated more sternly.

Her patience
was wearing as thin as rice paper, and the fact that making her angry had proven
on more than one occasion to be among the worst career moves a politician could
make was common knowledge. MacLeod knew he was treading on dangerous ground, but
still he pressed on. He was working himself into quite a state, and his accent
was beginning to thicken.

“Then t’was
our turn to go on the offensive. And we showed the bloody Veshtonn just how
tough we were, didn’t we! By losin’ to ‘em in the Caldanra system! And four
months after that we lost even bigger when they turned ‘round and took Boshtahr
away from us!”

“Mister
MacLeod!” the president protested.

“Those outer
Boshtahri worlds were rich in bolamide back then, Madam President. So rich, in
fact, that the Veshtonn were eventually able to build themselves a whole bloody
fleet o’ their phantom ships and
re
-invade the solar system without even
bein’ detected!”

“Mister
MacLeod, that is enough!” the president finally shouted, slapping an open hand
down on her desk. “I am
not
an elementary school girl! I know my history!
Including the fact that we eventually
won
the Caldanran campaign, and
the fact that we still maintain a strong military presence there to this very day!
Nothing of what you have said answers my question!”

She paused to
take a deep, calming breath, and then continued. “Now, I want you to give me a straight
answer. How might preventing the
Excalibur
’s destruction twenty-two years
ago in turn change what has happened in the here and now?”

MacLeod took
a moment to calm down and collect his thoughts as well, before he got himself
thrown out of her office, then answered, “Madam President, those of us who
voted for this resolution...” he glanced briefly at Verne again, “...believe
that if the
Excalibur
had not been destroyed, then perhaps the positive
diplomatic relationship that we now enjoy with the Cirran government might have
begun that much sooner. If it had, then we, rather than the Veshtonn, would
have established a dominant presence in the Caldanra system. Under those
circumstances
we
might have been the ones to discover the bolamide and
use it to build phantom missiles and torpedoes. The Veshtonn might never have
gotten their claws on any of it, and without it they wouldn’t have stood a
chance against us. History might then have played itself out in a much more
favorable manner. At the very least the
Excalibur
’s captain would have
been able to report the Veshtonn fleet’s violation of the cease-fire agreement
to Solfleet Central Command, and that warning might have made a huge difference
for us in both the Caldanran and Boshtahri campaigns. It might possibly have
even enabled us to prevent the subsequent invasion of our own system.”