Solfleet: The Call of Duty (21 page)

The president
could scarcely believe her ears. Was he serious? Was that it? Was that the best
he could do? Had she asked Regina to rearrange her entire week’s schedule for
this? “If, Mister MacLeod?” she asked. “Perhaps? Might have? Your theory seems
to be filled with uncertainties. Are you really asking me to base a decision of
this magnitude on little more than conjecture and a few remote possibilities?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. “You are not doing a very good job of convincing
me, and I am quite frankly disappointed in your attempt.”

“But, Madam
President...”

“Wait just a
moment,” she said, a barely raised hand effectively stifling anything more he
might have wanted to say.

She turned
her gaze to Professor Verne, who had been nodding his head in time with her
somewhat animated response to the chairman’s no doubt politically motivated
song and dance as though she had been singing a song. “Professor Verne, even
before you spoke out I was well aware, as I already indicated, that you are
quite adamantly opposed this course of action,” she said. “What are your specific
arguments against it?”

Verne
straightened slightly in his chair and gave his right cheek and his chin
another nervous scratch. It sounded like sandpaper sliding across coarse wood against
the grain. If he were a gambling man, he’d have bet the chairman had something
to gain, whether personally, politically, or both, by taking the stand that he
was taking. He was, after all, a politician who hadn’t yet ascended to the
highest possible peak of his career, and he was known to have some very lofty
goals. That made for a formidable and possibly even dangerous opponent. He’d
have to be clear, but careful.

He cleared
his throat, then began to deliver the speech that he’d rehearsed over and over
again, hoping that it wouldn’t sound nearly as rehearsed as it was. “Ah, Madam
President, I admit that it is possible, however unlikely, that traveling into
the past and changing the course of history by preventing the
Excalibur
’s
destruction could indeed result in the chain of events that the honorable chairman
has outlined. However, such an action on our part could just as likely result
in horrific consequences for Earth, and for the entire Coalition as well.”

“Explain.”

“Well,
simply put, ma’am, it is virtually impossible for anyone to predict with any
known degree of accuracy how this theoretical time-traveler’s interference with
the course of history might affect our world. Each and every little action that
he or she takes...”

“Each and
every little action?” MacLeod blurted out, interrupting. “For God sake, Professor,
we’re no’ just conducting a harmless physics experiment here! We’re tryin’ to
prevent the extinction of every member race o’ the Coalition! We canno’ afford
to be concerned with every little detail!”

“I beg your
pardon, Mister Chairman, but it goes far beyond little details,” the professor
countered. “Let’s say for the sake of argument that your time-traveler does
manage to prevent the
Excalibur
’s destruction. Let’s even say that galactic
history decides to cooperate with you and actually follows the path that you
and your colleagues have so ingeniously come up with. No one can possibly
predict the subsequent actions of all those people aboard the
Excalibur
who
were meant to die, but whose lives your time-traveler will have saved. Not to
mention those of all the others who might be born to them afterwards. Or even
those of the millions who were meant to die in the war that followed. What’s to
prevent one or more of them from taking some action that will adversely affect
our history and put it on an even more catastrophic course than it’s on now,
such as leading a violent coup against the Federation government, for example,
or assassinating the president?”

Judging from
the president’s reaction, that last statement had made exactly the impact on
her that Verne had been hoping it would. If MacLeod didn’t know it before, he
certainly must have realized by now that he, too, was dealing with a much more
politically insightful opponent than he had originally anticipated.

“I believe
the professor makes a valid point, Mister MacLeod,” the president said. “How do
you propose to protect the world against drastic changes for the worse?”

“Yes, Mister
MacLeod. How do you?” Verne parroted, despite his perceived need for caution.

“With all
due respect, Madam President, could anything that might happen as a result of
this mission possibly be any worse than what we’re already facing?” MacLeod
asked. “If we
don’t
do this, then how do you propose we save the Coalition
from Veshtonn domination here and now, given what’s happened? The way I see it,
and the way the council sees it, it’s simply a matter o’ choosing the lesser of
two evils. If we don’t do this, then we lose everything. Earth and the
Coalition will fall to the Veshtonn and all our people will be at best
enslaved. At worst... Well, I think we’re all aware o’ what the Veshtonn did to
the Boshtahri when they retook
that
system.”

He paused momentarily
to allow those images that Solfleet’s Intelligence operatives had been able to
smuggle out of that system—those few horrible images of what had been left of
the Boshtahri population after the Veshtonn invasion—to replay themselves in
the minds of each person in the room. Professor Verne might have shown himself
to be a bit more politically savvy than he’d originally given him credit for,
but he was still an amateur when it came to playing politics with the big boys.
“If, on the other hand, we do go through with this mission, then we at least
have a chance,” he concluded.

“That’s
twice you’ve referred to ‘this mission’, Mister MacLeod,” the president pointed
out. “The Earth Security Council passed the resolution only yesterday, yet you talk
as if you’ve already laid down a plan and are prepared to move forward with it
immediately.”

“To be
honest with you, ma’am, we have and we are, to an extent. I believe it’s our
only hope of survival at this point.”

The president
hesitated a moment, then stood and smoothed her deep burgundy and black African
serape as she turned away from her guests to once again gaze out through the
large window behind her desk at the city streets below. She saw none of the
grandeur before her as she considered both sides of the argument in silence for
what seemed to her guests like several long minutes, during which time none of
them dared speak for fear of drawing her rarely brandished but nonetheless
infamous wrath down upon themselves.

Finally, she
faced them again. “Gentlemen, our Coalition is...or rather
was
...comprised
of over a dozen member worlds and many more protectorates. Too many of those
worlds have already fallen to the Veshtonn and I have no desire to stand by and
watch while the rest of them meet that same fate.”

MacLeod
straightened triumphantly in his chair.

“However,”
she continued, looking directly at him with something of an angry glare, “I do
not share your apparent taste for playing God with the galaxy, Mister MacLeod.”
A glimmer of hope now shone in the professor’s eyes, while the chairman’s shoulders
began to slouch ever so slightly under the burden of impending defeat.

But the
always resourceful chairman still held one more card to play. “I understand
your misgivings, ma’am,” he said, “but there is something more you should
consider before you make your final decision.”

Caught off
guard, Professor Verne leered at his opponent and scratched his chin with
suspicion. Any and all information and/or secret arguments that existed between
the two sides of the issue were supposed to have been brought out into the open
between the two of them prior to this meeting. The fact that the chairman had
held something back smelled to the professor like evidence of some kind of
conspiracy.

“What more
should I consider?” the president asked as she returned to her chair.

“Over the years,”
MacLeod began, all traces of his accent gone, “it has become common knowledge
that the
Excalibur
was attacked and destroyed by the Veshtonn while
attempting to rescue a Cirran shuttle in the Caldanran star system. But in all
that time, some of the more so-called minor details that appear in the official
reports seem to have been forgotten. One of them is the precise wording of the
final report itself. Specifically, it states that the
Excalibur
was
destroyed by ‘unidentified superior hostile alien forces, presumed to be the
Veshtonn.’ That’s ‘
presumed
’ to be the Veshtonn, Madam President. That
presumption now appears to be wrong.”

“Really?”
the president asked skeptically. “And why is that?”

“Because
about a month and a half ago, while the Battle of Rosha’Kana was still raging,
the admiral here received information that indicates the
Excalibur
was
destroyed by one of our own starcruisers, the
Albion
, with the help of
two former military vessels that were in service with Newstar Corporation at
the time. The initial Veshtonn attack on the
Excalibur
battle group is
and always has been a known, confirmed fact. But according to this information
they had nothing to do with the follow up attack.”

The president
glanced at Hansen as she leaned forward and rested her elbows on her desktop,
confident that he would read the ‘Why-didn’t-you-ever-tell-me-about-that?’ very
clearly as it flashed across her face. But the words she gave voice to were
still directed at the chairman. “The
Albion
?” she asked. “Are you telling
me that one Solfleet vessel attacked and destroyed another Solfleet vessel?”

“That is
what the information indicates, ma’am,” the chairman answered, choosing his
words very carefully. If he was going to win this debate, it was important he
maintain at least the appearance of possessing some measure of objectivity. “Unfortunately,
we cannot be absolutely sure this information is a hundred percent accurate
because there’s no way for us to positively confirm the source’s
identification.”

“And why is
that?”

“Well, Madam
President, as you know, once we found the
Excalibur
’s wreckage, it wasn’t
long before most of the life pods were also located. And while it’s true that
no survivors were ever found, there were about twenty crewmembers whose remains
were never recovered. In the absence of any direct evidence of their deaths,
they were all listed as ‘Missing-in-Action’, and their names remain on the M-I-A
roles to this day.

“This information
came to Admiral Hansen indirectly, in the form of a Veshtonn computer record of
a high-power burst transmission that originated deep within their space. It was
intercepted sometime last year as best we can tell, and was transmitted by
someone alleging himself to be one of those missing crewmembers.”

“Really?” the
president asked. Although their names still appeared on the M.I.A. roles, Solfleet
Central Command had all but written off the missing members of the
Excalibur
’s
crew years ago. The possibility that one of them might suddenly have been heard
from after all this time was nothing short of astonishing. Especially
considering where he’d alleged himself to be. “Did this alleged crewmember
identify himself?”

“Yes, ma’am.
He claimed to be a Lieutenant Robert O’Donnell. Our records indicate he was a tactical
officer aboard the
Excalibur
for the three years leading up to its loss.”

“O’Donnell?”
She looked at Hansen. “Any relation to that Crewman O’Donnell of yours whose
arrest you mentioned the other day, Admiral?”

“Yes, ma’am,”
Hansen answered. “Robert O’Donnell is, or was her father.”

“Hmm.
Interesting. You’ll have to fill me in on some of the details when we have more
time.” Addressing MacLeod again, she asked, “And what about the
Albion
itself?
What do we know or
think
we know of its whereabouts during the time of
the
Excalibur
’s destruction?”

“We know the
Albion
was decommissioned in early February of twenty-one sixty-two, and
that it was dry-docked at the Mars Orbital Shipyards—MOS-balled, as it were.
According to shipyard records, that’s exactly where it stayed until a little
over two years after the battle of Epsilon Eridani, at which time several major
upgrades were completed and it was relaunched under a temporary recommission.”

“Two years
after the battle of Epsilon Eridani, you say?” the president asked. “But the
Excalibur
was destroyed only a year and a half after that battle,” she then reminded him.

“A little
less than seventeen months, actually,” MacLeod corrected her.

“A little
less or a little more, what difference does it make?” she asked. “If the
Excalibur
was destroyed several months before the
Albion
was ever relaunched,
then how can this new information of yours possibly be correct?”

“As I’ve
already said, Madam President, we can’t be absolutely sure that it is. But we’ve
also discovered something that makes me wonder if the shipyard records might be
erroneous.”

Even as
Professor Verne threw his hands up with a disgusted grunt and dropped them
noisily to his lap, the president drew a deep breath and sighed, trying to hold
on to the last shred of her sorely-tested patience. “And what is that, Mister
MacLeod?”

“At least as
early as three years after the
Excalibur
’s destruction, perhaps even
earlier than that, everyone who was stationed at the Martian shipyards at that
time and who could reasonably be expected to have possessed some knowledge as
to whether or not the
Albion
was ever relaunched prior to its upgrade
and recommissioning, was dead.”