Solfleet: The Call of Duty (51 page)

“Are you
sure that’s what you want?” he asked her.

She looked him
in the eye for the first time since she’d arrived. “I do love you, even though
I haven’t been acting like it. But I just can’t live like this anymore.” She
hurried out of the room before Dylan could respond, but just before the door
closed between them, a dark-haired gentleman whom Dylan had seen once before stepped
into view and welcomed her into his outstretched arms.

Suddenly it
all made sense—the stranger’s unfamiliarity, his curt greeting and seemingly
conscious avoidance of eye-contact, the disheveled state of his clothes, his
leather jacket too warm to wear during the day, the locked front door and the
closed living room curtains, both rarities on her part. Carolyn sleeping nude—rarer
still—their bed coverings rumpled as if two opposing armies had joined in
battle upon them, the damp towel in the bathroom and the stranger’s damp hair.
Drugged though he was, the realization washed over him like golden beams of
sunlight breaking through a dense, gray fog.

Carolyn had
been having an affair the whole time.

“Son of a
bitch,” he mumbled. How could he have missed it? How could he have been so
blind that morning, with a clear head no less, to miss what he could see so
clearly now?

He rolled
his head back across the pillow and stared into the distance through the blank
white wall. For the first time in his life he was alone—
really
alone. He
and Carolyn had been together almost nine years, since early on in his
assignment to Mandela Station, and had been married for close to eight. They’d
had good times and bad, but as those years passed the bad had slowly added up
to outweigh the good. Now, finally, it was over. Actually, it had been over for
the last couple of years, ever since he transferred to the Marines. He just
hadn’t had the guts to take that final step and make it official. Now she’d
done that for him.

“Sergeant
Graves?”

That wasn’t
Kenny, either. Dylan rolled his head back to face the door again. A woman he’d
never seen before had just walked into his room. At least, he couldn’t
remember
ever seeing her before. With all the drugs they’d pumped into his system
could he really be sure of anything? She wasn’t a very imposing woman—pretty,
though—scarcely over five and a half feet tall if he judged correctly, slender,
maybe approaching middle-age, with a touch of gray streaking through her pinned
up blonde hair. She had a doctor’s lab coat on, but somehow it looked out of
place on her. He sensed a different air about this woman, even through his
drug-induced stupor—an air that suggested to him that she was much more than
just another doctor.

“May I come
in, Sergeant?” she asked.

“Sure,”
Dylan answered, unenthusiastically. “Why not?”

The stranger
closed and locked the door behind her, then grabbed the chair away from the
small physician’s desk in the corner and rolled it up next to the head of the
bed, turning it so that when she sat down the door was more to her right than
behind her. So she was a woman who watched her back. One of those paranoid
types, not unlike a lot of the agents he’d met after joining the C.I.D. A trait
he could relate to.

“I
understand from reviewing your records that you’re a damn good Marine and a
good Security Forces troop as well,” the woman said.

“That’s
pretty unusual information to find in a patient’s medical record, isn’t it,
Doc?” Dylan asked, knowing full well that his medical record wasn’t the record she
was referring to. His head must have been clearer than he’d thought.

The stranger
snickered. “Come now, Sergeant. You knew the second I walked in here that I’m
not a doctor. You should learn to hide your initial impressions better.”

“That
obvious, huh?”

“Yeah, that
obvious...to me anyway.”

“Must be the
drugs.”

“The drugs
kill pain. They don’t affect the clarity of your thinking.” She considered
asking him who he thought she was if not a doctor, to see if he might show any
signs of recognizing her, but quickly decided against it. After all, if he
believed this to be their first meeting, why say anything that might make him
suspect otherwise? “Anyway, what I meant was that I recently reviewed your
personnel record at Command, and I like what I saw.”

“Glad to
hear it. I’ll sleep much better tonight knowing that.”

“Your
infamous sarcasm on the other hand doesn’t impress me at all, Sergeant. But
your record does. Quite a lot, actually. Especially all the classified stuff.”

“What
classified stuff?” Dylan asked, trying to look genuinely curious while at the
same time wondering who this woman was that she’d have access to his complete
record. She stared at him through her big blue eyes with a kind of ‘Please-don’t-insult-my-intelligence’
expression on her face, and he quickly realized that lying to her was pointless.
She was obviously not only someone with special authority, but also someone who
wouldn’t be easily fooled. But who exactly was she? He decided to ask her,
straight out.

“All right.
But just who are you that you’d have access to my record?”

“That was
your wife I just saw leaving here, wasn’t it?” the woman asked, evading his question
and pointing back at the door with her thumb.

“Not for
much longer. She’s divorcing me.”

“That’s too
bad. She’s very pretty.”

“Yeah, well,
turns out beauty really is only skin deep in her case. It’s been coming for a
long time now.”

“Ah. Tired
of staying home alone and waiting nervously while you go off and try not to get
yourself killed.” It wasn’t a question.

“Apparently
she hasn’t been doing very much of either lately. Not that it’s any of your
damn business.”

“So I saw.
Her friend in the hallway.”

Dylan didn’t
want to talk about it. “So who are you?” he asked again, though he already had
a pretty good idea what the answer was.

“What will
you do now?” the woman asked as if she hadn’t even heard his question.

Dylan
sighed. Fine. Let her steer the conversation. See where it leads. “I’ll recover,”
he answered. “Then I’ll return to my unit.”

“If you
resigned, maybe she wouldn’t go through with the divorce.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, if
you...”

“I heard
what you said. If I resigned she’d know I only did it to try to save our
marriage. She’d never forgive herself for forcing me to do that, or me for sacrificing
my career and making her feel even guiltier than she already does.”

He paused a
moment and thought twice about what he’d just said. Truth be told, the bitch
would have loved it if he resigned, and she probably didn’t feel one damn bit
of guilt over having an affair, either. But there was no reason to bad-mouth
her to this woman. Besides, he wanted the divorce every bit as much as she did.
And even if he were to resign, what would he do with his life? “No,” he said,
shaking his head. “I have no intention of resigning. Military service is all I
know. I lost her for good a long time ago.”

“Are you
sure?”

“If I weren’t
sure, I wouldn’t have said it.” He gazed past her at the door, but he knew he
was right. “I know her as well as I know myself,” he pointed out. “Maybe even
better. I’m sure.”

“Sorry to
hear that,” she said with all the emotion of a machine.

“Yeah, I can
see you’re all broken up about it.” When she didn’t respond to that, he
finished by saying, “It’s better this way...for the both of us.”

“In that
case I have a proposition for you.”

Dylan
eyeballed the woman, more confident than ever that he knew who she was, or at
least who she represented. “What kind of proposition?” he asked anyway.

“A change in
your career path.”

He scoffed. “This
again?”

“Yes, this
again. It really would be for the better.”

Dylan
scoffed at that, too. If he’d learned only one thing in all his years of service
about the military bureaucracy’s attitude toward the individual soldier, it was
that a soldier’s apparent inability to settle into one career specialty and
stay there was not highly regarded or appreciated. And he’d already changed
paths twice. “Better for who?” he asked.

“For you,”
she answered, but then she added, “and ultimately for the service.”

“I figured
that would work its way in there sooner or later,” he commented. “Okay, I’m
listening, though I don’t know why.” That despite the cynicism he still felt
over the whole idea.

“You’d have
to be retrained again, of course. But if you’re willing, I can get you out of
your combat unit and land you a commission in the agency.”

“The agency?”

“That’s
right.”

“And what
agency would that be?” he asked, hoping against the obvious that he was wrong—that
her visit wasn’t just another attempt by the S.I.A. to recruit him, even though
he knew it was.

That same
telltale expression returned to her face, but she otherwise ignored his
question and simply went on with what she had to say. “I’m offering you a
chance, once again, to become an S-I-A Special Agent.”

Dylan groaned
with disgust, his own expression no doubt making it very clear that his
thoughts on that subject hadn’t changed.

“Don’t
worry,” the woman continued off his reaction. “As our recruiting officer should
have told you the first time he met with you, the S-I-A isn’t like the C-I-D.
It’s smaller, more unified, and has a lot more away from your desk time. In
fact...you won’t even have a desk. And being one of our agents is certainly a
lot better than leaving parts of yourself behind on some alien battlefield
somewhere.”

“I’ve seen a
lot of combat in my time, major battles and small firefights combined. This is
only the second time I’ve ever been seriously wounded. That’s not a bad record,
considering the kinds of missions my current unit draws.”

“Well,
congratulations, Sergeant,” she responded sarcastically. “With a track record
like that you’ll probably survive four or five more battles. Maybe even six if
you’re lucky, before you finally get yourself killed.”

“And I suppose
being an Intelligence agent is safe?” Dylan asked just as sarcastically.

“At least
your enemies don’t shoot you as soon as they see you. And if you’re good they
never even know you
are
the enemy.” After a pause she asked, “What if
Command decides you’ve had enough and doesn’t let you return to your unit? Have
you thought about that?”

No, he hadn’t,
and she had a point. He’d seen that exact thing happen to Marines before. But
he couldn’t surrender to her that easily. “There’s always Colonial Security. Or
I could go back to Earth, home to the States...join the National Police Force
or a local department.”

“I thought
military service was all you know.”

Another
point for blondie, but he still wasn’t ready to give up. “I could try to go
back to the Military Police.” Somehow, she didn’t look convinced. “The point
is,” he continued, “I have options. I’ll have to think about it. Where can I
contact you if I want to talk to you again?”

The woman
grinned as she stood up. “Nice try, Sergeant. Take your time. Give it some
serious
thought for a change. I’ll contact you.” She started to turn, but stopped and
added, “Oh and, by the way. I’ve been on planet waiting to talk to you for three
days already and it was a long trip, so don’t expect me to give up.” With that,
she turned to leave.

“Wait a
minute,” Dylan said, suddenly grasping the connotation of something the woman
had said. “What did you mean exactly when you said ‘leaving parts of yourself
behind on some alien battlefield somewhere?’ In case you didn’t notice, I’m all
here and everything’s in the right place...” He glanced at his right arm. “...such
as it is.”

The woman
returned to his side, but didn’t sit back down. “You think so?” she asked,
slipping her hands into the pockets of her ‘borrowed’ lab coat.

Something
about the way she asked, or perhaps it was the look on her face, filled Dylan
with apprehension, even fear. She knew something he didn’t know. But what? He
could see both of his hands even now, and the twin peaks at the foot of his bed
were proof enough there were still two feet under the blankets. He’d been awake
when the nurse came in and gave him his early morning sponge bath, so he knew
that everything else was right where it belonged as well. Everything on the
outside, at least. Could he have lost an internal organ or something? Was that
possible? He stared at the stranger.

“The first
round that hit you,” she began, not waiting for him to ask—very perceptive on
her part—“was an old style inert hard metal projectile. A bullet. It passed clean
through your left thigh and just missed a major artery. That wound’s healing
normally but will require some therapy. The second round came from a pulse
rifle and blew the hell out of your right shoulder.” Dylan stared at the metal
straps and the plastisteel braces that covered his shoulder and half his arm. “The
doctors had to replace all the bones and tissue in your upper arm and shoulder
and then graft them back together like some kind of puzzle. The third round...”

“Wait a
second,” Dylan interrupted. “What the hell are you talking about? I know I was
shot in the shoulder. I remember when it happened. I got right back up after I
was hit. I picked up my weapon and rejoined...or
tried
to rejoin...”

“If you
picked up your weapon, Sergeant Graves, then you did it with your left hand
because your right arm was laying in the dirt half a dozen meters away from you
when
you
were picked up.”

She finally
sat down again, then leaned forward, rested her elbows on the bed, and looked
him square in the eye. “Dylan, your right shoulder was blown apart, the bones
splintered into a million pieces. When they brought you in your arm didn’t come
with you. Someone retrieved it later, during the cleanup. As I understand it,
most of the upper portion was completely useless and the surgeons had to use
synthetics to reattach the rest of it.”