Solfleet: The Call of Duty (41 page)

“Those
things were designed to compensate for high-gravity planet surfaces, sir,” she
pointed out. “We’re talking about centrifugal forces here—negative G’s forcing
our man
off
the surface. Forces that will constantly be shifting, I
might add, their exact directions of pull depending on where our man is
working.”

“She’s
right, sir,” Donmoyer confirmed.

“Why
constantly shifting, Lieutenant?” Erickson asked, looking back at the
astrophysicist again.

“Because we’re
dealing with both pitch and yaw rotations,” the scientist explained. “If the
bow of that vessel were the head of a stylus, it would draw a constantly
curving line along its danger sphere. And that doesn’t even account for the
slow roll, which I didn’t factor in yet. That could add up to nearly another
half-G, depending on how far from the center point of the roll our man is, in yet
another constantly changing direction. A pretty tight arc, in this case. Even
if our man is strong enough to work against all those forces, which I doubt, he’ll
also have to deal with a constant lack of balance.”

“It’s going
to be a very dangerous undertaking, sir,” the engineer added, summarizing what
had by now become pretty obvious.

Erickson
thought the situation over in the span of about two seconds, then stepped back
to his station and thumbed a pad on his command console. “Captain Erickson to
Engineering.”

“
Engineering.
Commander Doohan here, sir.
”

“I’ve got an
interesting challenge for you, Jim. Mister Bellinger and Mister Donmoyer from
Astrophysics are sending you some data.” He nodded to the men, who uploaded
their scanner readings and calculations to the chief engineer. “Look it over,
then meet me in the main conference room as soon as possible.”

“
Aye,
sir. I’ll be on my way in a few minutes.
”

Erickson
closed the channel, then began to put a plan together in his mind as he started
toward the doors. “Mister Donmoyer, you’re with me.” The scientist shut down
his console and joined the captain. “Mister O’Connor,” Erickson continued,
pausing by the Communications station, “encrypt and encode to Solfleet Central
Command our situation. Then have Lieutenant Colonel Zucker and Doctor Zapala
join us the conference room.”

“Aye, sir.”

Erickson
left the bridge, with Donmoyer right at his heel.

* * *

“So what do
you think, Jim?” Captain Erickson asked after he’d explained the situation to
his chief engineer. “Can your people stop that thing?”

The older,
gray-haired, chief engineer turned his chair to face the wall screen and
stroked his square jaw with his long gnarled fingers as he stared at the image
of the tumbling Tor’Kana vessel. “Oh, we’ll stop it, sir, one way or another,” he
answered with conviction. He gazed at the dizzying image a few moments longer,
then turned back to the table. “But you said it yourself, Captain. It’ll be one
hell of an interesting challenge. That thing is spinning like a giant baseball
bat that got away in mid swing out there. If it hits something...” he warned, shaking
his head, “or someone...”

He drew a
deep breath and let it out slowly as he pondered what they were facing, then
finally offered up the first detail of the plan he’d been struggling to develop
in his head for the last several minutes. “It would be best if we started with
one person, alone.”

“I agree,”
Erickson said. Better to lose just one individual rather than a team of two or
more. That was the obvious if cold-hearted reason for that decision. They all
knew it, but no one wanted to say it. “So what’s your plan?”

Doohan
snickered. “I’ll let you know as soon as I have one.” Then, with the press of a
button in the small panel imbedded in the table in front of him, he replaced
the vessel’s image with all the data that had been sent to him earlier.

“As you can
see, the vessel is rolling at only about fifteen feet per second—much slower
than its pitch and yaw. Our man would still be pretty unsteady there amidships,
but he’d only have to put up with about a negative half-G. At least until he
was ready to deploy the thrusters. That’s going to be tricky, regardless.”

“Excuse me,”
Doctor Zapala interrupted. “Roll, pitch, yaw—I can never remember. Which one’s
which?”

“Sorry,
Rhea,” Doohan said, smiling at the olive-skinned woman. All traces of black in
her hair had faded to silver long ago, but in his eyes she was still as lovely
as she’d been the first day he met her, all those years ago. He lifted his arm in
front of him to demonstrate as he explained, “Pitch is the ship’s up and down,”
he began, raising and lowering his forearm with his elbow as the pivot point. “Yaw
is its left and right, and roll is its rotation around its own lengthwise
centerline axis. That ship out there has what we call a negative pitch—that is,
it’s tumbling bow down and stern up—a negative yaw, or counter-clockwise spin,
and a positive roll, or a roll to the right. Basically, it’s rotating on all
three axis at the same time.”

“Which is
going to make approaching it extremely dangerous,” Erickson concluded, wanting
to get on with it.

“To say the
least, sir,” Doohan agreed wholeheartedly. “He’ll have to set the work pod’s
computer to match the ship’s pitch and yaw, then constantly adjust its arc for
the steadily decreasing distance as he crosses the perimeter of the danger
sphere and thrusts forward toward the center point.”

“Danger
sphere?” Zapala questioned.

“The
imaginary sphere formed by the perimeter of the vessel’s pitch and yaw,” Doohan
explained to the doctor. “The line where my guy becomes the baseball to the
vessel’s bat.”

Now there
was an analogy that she as a medical doctor could understand all too well. “Oh.
I see.”

“Who’ve you
got in mind for this, Jim?” Erickson asked, half expecting the chief engineer
to name himself rather than expose one of his beloved ‘junior knuckle-draggers’
as he called them to such risk.

“Probably
Lombardo. He’s the strongest guy I’ve got who has the right experience.”

“Good. I was
afraid you might try to volunteer yourself. You just got back on your feet. I
can’t afford to lose you again.”

“Don’t worry
about that, Captain,” Doohan said with a smirk. “I’m getting far too old for
that kind of fun. Sick or not, my reflexes aren’t what they used to be, and I seriously
doubt I have the strength for it. Besides, I’ve got a whole boatload of strong
young men and woman down there who still don’t know any better.”

“The best
you’ve got, Jim. I don’t want to lose anyone.”

“Nor do I,
sir. Lombardo’s the right man for the job.”

“All right.”
He turned his eyes to the securituy chief. “Colonel Zucker, I want as many
Security Forces teams as you can put together ready to board that ship as soon
as Jim’s people bring it under control. Hostile zone protocols again. We’re not
getting any bio readings from her one way or the other, so we don’t know what
you might end up facing over there.”

“Understood,
sir.”

“Same goes
for you, Doctor,” he pointed out to Zapala. “And I want at least two medical
teams outside in separate shuttles while Lombardo works to stop that thing. If
something goes wrong, I want help on the scene as fast as possible.”

“You’ve got
it, sir,” she assured him.

“If Colonel
Zucker’s people find any survivors, I’ll want your medical teams all over that
ship, but none without a security escort.”

“Understood.”

“Any
questions?” Erickson asked, looking around the table. No one spoke up, so there
apparently weren’t any. “Okay. Let’s get on this, people. I want your teams
inside that ship as soon as possible. Dismissed.”

As Admiral
Hansen sat back in his recliner with a cup of coffee and read over his notes
for tomorrow morning’s meeting with the Joint Chiefs—God, he was even working
on Sunday afternoons now—he started thinking back on what he’d told Mirriazu during
that impromptu one-on-one meeting they’d had right after the Timeshift briefing
on Friday, and before long he wasn’t seeing his handcomp at all. To quote one
of the president’s own phrases, what a song and dance he’d performed for her—telling
her that he’d never dealt with time travel before and that he didn’t know
anything about altering the past or creating a new reality, when the real truth
was that he
had
dealt with it and that he
did
know something
about it. He didn’t know anything definitive about the results of those
efforts, of course, and maybe he never would, but he sure knew something about
trying.

And, as he’d
explained to Liz after he got back from that meeting, the unfortunate results
of what they’d done six years ago—or to be more accurate, the unfortunate
lack
of results—would only make sending someone else through the Portal that
much more difficult. Günter had never returned from his mission and they’d seen
no signs of change. No results of any kind, in fact. Hansen had hoped that maybe,
at the very least, even if Günter failed completely, he might make contact with
either him or Liz once his timeline caught up to theirs—if such a thing were
even possible—but even that had not come to pass.

Apparently,
Professor Verne’s flowing river theory was the right one after all. Either that
or Günter’s actions had simply failed to affect on the timeline. Or he’d died
before he ever had the chance to try. Whatever had happened, Sergeant Graves,
or whoever else they might end up sending back, if anyone at all, would
probably never return.

He hadn’t
been able to share any of that with Mirriazu, of course. Not without getting
both himself and Commander Royer thrown into prison for the rest of their
natural lives. Not to mention half a dozen other officers, at least twice that
many enlisted technicians, and even a few government-contracted high-profile
civilian scientists who’d been stationed on Window World at that time. He hated
that he’d had to withhold the truth from her like that—that he’d had to lie.
She was a dear friend in the truest sense of the word. The fact that he’d had
no choice didn’t matter to him at all. The bottom line was that he’d lied to
someone who trusted his word implicitly.

At least he’d
been honest with her about his nightmares. He really didn’t have any idea how
or why they had changed. At least, not beyond the theories he’d brought up at
the time. Hell, who knew? Maybe their reality really
was
connected to
some kind of parallel timeline somehow. Maybe two—or three or four or how many
more?—timelines
were
intertwined with each other in some way. Illogical?
Ridiculous? Perhaps. But he couldn’t dismiss the possibility of it outright just
because it sounded like science-fiction, no matter how hard it might be to accept.
To do so would be nothing short of irresponsible. After all, who in their right
mind would ever have believed fifty years ago that the Portals could exist?

And besides,
how else could he explain the change?

Actually, he
recalled as he willed his eyes to focus on his handcomp again, he’d been honest
with the president about one more thing. The upcoming counterattack in the
Rosha’Kana system. He’d told her that he thought
that
was where they
needed to concentrate their efforts. And that was the truth. It might have been
for very different, or at least much more specific reasons, but he essentially
agreed with her assessment of the Timeshift Resolution. That mission had to be
their absolute last resort.

The
comm-panel chimed. Hansen set his handcomp aside and got up with a grunt, went over
to the panel, and opened the channel. His heart sank the second he saw the
Civil Security sergeant’s face, and he sighed. Heather. It had to be. “What did
she do this time?” he asked.

“
Admiral
Icarus Hansen?
” the sergeant inquired before he answered. He obviously had
to verify who he was talking to before he could say anything.

“Yes,
Sergeant, I’m Heather Hansen’s father. So what is it this time?”

“
It’s
actually nothing major this time, Admiral,
” the sergeant told him. “
Just
a minor trespassing charge.
”

“Trespassing?
Where?”

“
She and
some of her friends were caught at the adults-only section of the beach.
”

“The nude
beach!” Hansen shouted. “Are you kidding me?”

Despite the level
of authority inherent in his own position, the sergeant seemed to recoil, just
a little. “
I assure you, Admiral, I’m not kidding,
” he said.

“I’m sorry,”
Hansen said, raising a hand to stop any further explanation. “You just caught
me a little off guard with that, that’s all.”

“
I
understand completely, Admiral. I have a teenage daughter of my own. With that
in mind, you should know that I’ve looked into Heather’s record. I’m aware that
she’s on juvenile probation, but I’m also aware of...
” He glanced around,
then lowered his voice. “...
of the service she provided last month.
”

“And?”

“
And I
talked to my lieutenant. We’re not going to record a formal charge against your
daughter this time. You can come get her and take her home.
”

Hansen let
out a breath he hadn’t even known he was holding. “Thank you, Sergeant. Tell
your lieutenant I appreciate that.”

“
Everyone
here appreciates what you and your people do for us, Admiral...every day. I’ll
see you when you get here, sir.
” The sergeant reached out of frame, and the
screen went dark.

“Aw,
Heather,” Hansen said, shaking his head and sighing yet again. “You were doing
so well, too.”

He
snickered. “Adults-only beach,” he scoffed as he got up and headed into his
bedroom to get properly dressed. “There shouldn’t be such a thing up here in
the first place. Damn Peoples’ Liberal Party majority. Talk about a subculture.
Some of them don’t get voted out of office soon, I’m going to end up talking to
myself.”