Solfleet: The Call of Duty (55 page)

“Off,” Royer
said, more annoyed than she should have been. The screen went dark and silence
filled the room. While she honored the service of all retirees, she’d grown
tired of hearing them guess about what might be going on in this or that theater
of battle based solely on their own previous war experiences. While a very few
of them no doubt still had high level connections to various field commanders
and could report on events with at least
some
basis of fact to back them
up, the vast majority of them didn’t, and their analyses and predictions almost
always ended up being way off the mark in the end. And as far as the various
all-news networks went, I-P-N was easily the most untrustworthy of them all in
the first place.

She hadn’t
really wanted to watch anything anyway.

So the fight
to save the Tor’Kana was finally underway, she reflected as she yawned and
stretched. Wow. Not even twenty-one hundred hours yet and she was tired
already. “I must be getting old,” she told herself. God willing, this campaign
would be a quick one and would end in victory with minimum loss of Coalition
lives. Then, with all need for the ‘Timeshift Resolution’ eliminated, perhaps
she and the admiral could instead send their agent, whoever that agent might
be, back in time with orders to concentrate his or her efforts only on finding
Günter and bringing him home.

She yawned
again, so decided she might as well go to sleep. After all, it wasn’t like she
had anything better to do. All she needed to do was to get up, turn down the
sheets, and then climb into bed. She lay there for a moment or two longer,
intending to do just that, but instead drifted off to sleep on top of the
blankets.

* * *

Her long
platinum hair fluttered freely in the fresh evening breeze blowing in off the
open sea and cooled her bare, suntanned skin. As she strolled along the unspoiled
beach’s hard wet sands, holding Karen’s soft, warm hand in hers, small waves—just
minor swells that rose above the smooth surface of the tranquil sea—succumbed
to the shallow depths and rolled up onto the beach with a sound like the
tinkling of crystalline wind chimes, lapping at her feet and chilling her toes
with salty foam. The swollen orange-red sun painted a glowing rainbow across
the distant clouds as it slowly sank into the sea beyond the indistinct
horizon, bathing Karen in a soft golden glow that enhanced her radiant beauty.
Somewhere off in the distance seagulls screeched for reasons known only to the
gulls themselves.

“Our
world is so beautiful,” Karen said, her melodic tone like a tender song in Liz’s
ear.

Liz
stopped walking, and Karen with her, and turned to her. “Not so beautiful as
you.”

Karen
gazed at her through those gentle eyes and smiled her warm, loving smile. “I so
love you, Liz,” she said.

Liz stepped
closer, touching her breasts to Karen’s, and kissed her softly.

She felt suddenly
as though she were falling and she opened her eyes.

The bed had
just dropped right out from under her, but was fortunately still there to catch
her after she bounced off the ceiling.

“What the
hell?” she shouted, instantly awake. She rolled off the bed but had barely
taken a step toward the bureau—if she was going to be tossed around the room
like a rag doll, she wanted to put some clothes on first—before the vessel
rumbled and she found herself falling sideways toward the far wall. She slammed
into it with a solid thud and a sharp pain shot through her right shoulder, and
she finally realized as she collapsed to the floor what was happening.

The ship had
come under attack.

She tried to
stand up, but the deck suddenly shot upward with another clap of rumbling
thunder and swatted her like an insect, sending her tumbling backward through
the air. She crashed feet first into the wall several feet above the bed, then
fell to the bed and quickly grabbed hold of the mattress and held on for dear
life while the thunderous barrage continued incessantly and the ship pitched
and rolled like an ocean liner on an angry sea.

She wasn’t
necessarily afraid to die, but the thought of leaving Karen behind crushed her.

Then again,
the chances of that happening as a result of this attack, realistically, were
slim to none. Despite the attack’s apparent ferocity, she knew the assailing
vessel or vessels had to be relatively small and lightly armed—probably nothing
more than an enemy deep recon patrol gone astray. Otherwise the liner and
everyone aboard it would have been reduced to space flotsam already. All she
had to do was hold on tight for a few more minutes. Their escorts would put an
end to the attack, and to the attackers, soon enough.

Her biggest
concern, aside from the fact that members of the ship’s crew would likely find
her unconscious and buck naked before she ever woke up on her own if she
happened to lose her grip, was that if the attack forced the liner to drop out of
jumpspace, then it would take them a god-awful long time to reach another jump
ring. They’d likely spend the next several weeks cruising through interstellar
space at sublight. Perhaps
months
if current events prevented the fleet from
committing sufficient resources to a search, which with Operation Mass Eviction
having just begun they very likely would.

Admiral
Hansen was still finding it difficult to concentrate on his book. He had hoped,
though he’d had his doubts, that once Heather finally turned off her videogame
and went to bed, which she’d done more than an hour ago, it would get at least
a little bit easier. But it hadn’t. Thoughts of the events unfolding in the
Rosha’Kana star system were persistently preoccupying his mind, distracting him
from everything else, and he was repeatedly finding himself having to reread
the pages at least once and sometimes twice in order to follow the story.

He’d
arranged with the Joint Chiefs to receive at least one campaign update per day,
two if possible, throughout the duration of Operation Mass Eviction, which had
finally commenced two days ago. The first of those updates had come at 0839
hours on Thursday, barely an hour after the first shots were fired, and he hadn’t
been able to concentrate on anything else since.

The task
force had taken eight days to reach the besieged system. Eight long,
anxiety-filled days to complete a voyage that normally took just a little over
two. Even a massive flotilla the size of that task force could have done it in
less than three, had they simply jumped directly to the system’s inner planets,
but that of course would have been much too risky.
Unnecessarily
risky.
All of the contingent commanders, human an non-human alike, had agreed on that
point without debate. None of the advance recon scouts they’d sent in had been
heard from—they were all missing and currently presumed lost—so they’d had no
way of knowing what awaited them around the twin Tor worlds. Consequently, the
task force had jumped back into normal space while still several days’ travel outside
the system and had cruised in on inertia alone under blackout conditions and
strict communications silence until they made contact with the enemy.

That first
enemy contact had reportedly been a two-ship scouting party. As soon as the
enemy had reacted overtly to their presence, the entire task force had powered
up and swarmed into the inner system to engage. But as it had turned out, those
scouts had only been the tip of a very large and deadly spear. Several dozen
previously undetected Veshtonn capital ships had appeared almost instantly and
seemingly out of nowhere and had come to their defense, and in the ensuing
confusion the scouts had escaped. According to the latest update, no one on the
Coalition side had yet determined in what direction they’d fled, and given that
the entire task force was now fully involved in combat operations, they likely
never would.

Hansen
sighed. “Damn it,” he muttered. He’d just reached the bottom of the same page
for the third time and he still had no idea what he’d just read.

“
Excuse
me, Nick?
” Hal’s voice called from the terminal.

Hansen
closed the book and dropped his hands to his lap. So much for reading. Whenever
Hal called him at home... “What is it, Hal?” he asked.

“
I’m
sorry to bother you at home at this hour, especially on a Saturday evening, but
you have a priority message coming in from the S-I-A station commander in Tarko
City on Cirra.
”

Hansen set
his book aside and got up, then went over and sat down at his terminal. “Put it
through, Hal,” he said.

“
Admiral
Hansen,
” the nondescript commander began the instant his image appeared on
the screen. “
I apologize for sending you a recording instead of reporting to
you live, but I wanted to get Search and Rescue operations spun up immediately.
”

Search and
rescue! What the hell...

“
As I’m
sure you’re aware, someone you know well came to see us recently. That person
departed this location two days ago to return to her point of origin.
Approximately thirty-five minutes before I recorded this message, all contact
with that person’s vessel and both of its escorts was abruptly lost. Now, for
all we know, the problem might be nothing more than a simple communications
malfunction. There’s been no indication of enemy contact, but we’re not taking
any chances. I’ll notify you immediately with any news. Out.
”

The screen
went dark.

Hansen drew
a deep breath and exhaled long and loud as he sat back. Then he rested his
elbow on the arm of his chair and his head in his hand. Commander Royer. Liz. A
pair of Veshtonn scouts had escaped the task force’s assault, and now Liz’s
ship had gone missing in the same general vicinity. S&R operations were most
likely already underway, but until they found something no one would even know
if she and all those hundreds of others onboard were alive or dead. And worst
of all, there was absolutely nothing
he
could do to make a difference.

But there
was one thing he
had
to do, and soon, before the story broke on the
news. He had to go tell Karen that her wife’s vessel was missing. Liz wouldn’t
want her to hear it on the news first, either. No, she’d want Karen to be told
in person, right away, and would want him to be the one to tell her.

Five Days Later

Earth Standard Date: Thursday, 23
September 2190

All Dylan
could do was stand and watch while the compound around him twisted and bent at
impossible angles, growing strangely more warped and distorted and surreal as
the seconds ticked by impossibly slow. Shrinking and stretching, blurring and
fading from view, like an underwater world seen from above the rippling surface
of a crystal clear sea. It suddenly dawned on him then that the inescapable
hell in which he found himself was nothing more than a horrible dream. He clung
fervently to that small spark of consciousness and fought his way back. Fought
to escape the terror of the chaotic hell that is war, and to escape from that
hideous, blood-thirsty demon that had again invaded his nightmares. Finally,
the din of combat began to fade, drowned out by the peace and quiet of the real
world.

He relaxed
his white-knuckled grip on the sweat-dampened blankets, and as he slowly and
repeatedly flexed his fingers to work the cramps out, he tried to visualize the
creature in his mind. But with each passing moment the fleeting memory of its
alien form faded further and further into oblivion, just as it always did.

He drew a
breath and sighed. What was it? What the hell was it? Why couldn’t he ever
remember? In his nightmares the creature was as real as the bed he lay in, but
when he awoke, nothing. It was just gone, as if it had never existed at all.

But it had
existed, and he knew that it was still there, still lurking somewhere within
the realm of his subconscious. And he knew that it would return once again to
destroy him the next time he slept. It always returned.

So what the
hell was it? Where had it come from? It wasn’t there, in the real battle. After
two weeks of almost daily counseling, at least he could be sure of that much.
Where then? What dark and haunted chamber of the mind could have spawned such a
demon, this monster of the disturbed subconscious that could erase all memory
of its appearance from its own creator’s consciousness? And why? Why was it
after him? Even the new doctors who had come in and taken over his
psychological care after he told that S.I.A. woman about his nightmares hadn’t
figured that one out yet.

Doctors.
What a joke. Psychologists and psychiatrists. Quacks, every damn one of them.
Professional doubletalkers. What right did they have to call themselves
doctors? They didn’t hold peoples’ lives in the palms of their hands. They
couldn’t replace a blind man’s eyes or reattach a severed limb, or cut people
open, fix whatever was wrong, and then sew them up again. What did they know?
Absolutely nothing. Given a choice he’d stop going to his bi-daily sessions in
a heartbeat. Hell, he hadn’t wanted to start them in the first place. He’d
never liked the idea of someone poking around in his head as though he were
some kind of lab animal to be experimented on. He didn’t like it at all.

But of
course, he hadn’t been given a choice. He’d been ordered to go. Regulations.
Any service member who experienced some sort of traumatic event was required to
undergo a series of psychological evaluations and be certified fit for duty
before being allowed to return, assuming he or she was physically able to
return. Any service member who experienced a traumatic event. Obviously, that
included anyone wounded in combat, and right now he was that anyone. But why
did that certification process have to take so damn long?