Solfleet: The Call of Duty (59 page)

Free the
girl. Help her up. He gave her his shirt.

“Let’s
go.”

“Fire in
the hole!”

“Ortiz is
out of it. She’ll be taking...”

—He
should have expected it by now.

A huge
explosion suddenly rocked the main hall. The shock wave knocked the three of
them to the ground.

He jumped
up. No pain. Marissa and the girl. Veshtonn!

—They
always came.

Combat.
Reinforcements. Shin collapsed motionless to the dirt.

—Poor
girl.

Something
burned his thigh.

He was
hit.

His right
shoulder exploded in a burst of searing agony so intense that he couldn’t even
scream as he stumbled backward to the ground.

He was
hit again. Badly.

“Sergeant
Graves is down!”

The pain
faded to numbness. He rolled onto his stomach, retrieved his rifle, and
staggered to his feet, determined to stay in the fight.

His head suddenly
snapped back and his knees buckled. He collapsed.

He sat
up.

Warm
blood flowed into his eye and down over his cheek and neck.

He was
hit again. Very badly.

Everything
slowed down and the world around him began to spin out of control.

Idiot!
Standing up and walking toward the enemy like that!

—Time to
die. Served him right for being so stupid.

The world
faded until all was darkness.

* * *

“No!” he
shrieked as he bolted awake, straining his ribs as he sat up, his eyes wide
open and his head throbbing violently.

After a
moment he realized he was safe at home, not lying face down on the battlefield,
dying in a pool of his own blood. He was sitting on the edge of his couch, clutching
a small cushion tightly to his chest. He drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly,
then set the cushion aside and wiped the sweat from his brow. Then he got up
and went into the kitchen for a drink of water and a Liferin tablet.

He’d fought
Sulaini before, but prior to that battle he’d never faced off against any of their
regular Army troops. But he’d known from having seen plenty of pictures what
their combat uniforms looked like, so he’d been somewhat prepared when the
C.U.F. compound suddenly filled with dozens of them. They were a known entity. They
were familiar. But the Kree-Veshtonn blood-warriors were another thing
entirely. What had they been doing there? The Veshtonn had been forced out of the
system four years ago. Except for the ones he’d fought against with the Marines
from the
Tripoli
he’d never even
seen
one of them up close before,
and those ones had been almost totally obscured by their helmets and suits of
armor. He’d only ever seen fuzzy pictures and heard sketchy descriptions of
what they really looked like—two meters tall and more, dark green and brown,
scaly-skinned, vaguely humanoid in structure but more reptilian in appearance,
with an insectoid carapace, long skinny tails, and fan-like membranes on the
sides of their necks. All accurate descriptions, but nothing he’d ever seen or
heard had done their true ugliness justice.

And what
about the creature whose appearance had already faded from his memory yet
again? He’d known without a doubt for more than a week now that it wasn’t real.
But still it came to him every time he went to sleep. Why wouldn’t it leave him
alone?

He glanced
up at the clock on the wall and was surprised to see that it was only 21:15
hours, according to how the Earth colonists and Solfleet forces measured local
time, but he decided to go to bed anyway. He needed all the rest he could get.

He gulped
down his water and set the empty glass on the counter, then started toward his
bedroom, but when he happened to glance outside as he passed the sliding glass
door, he noticed movement in the girl’s apartment.

He stopped
short. A split second of indecision. His mind, his morality, told him to fight
the temptation to spy on her again—to ignore it and just go to bed. But the
memory of what he’d seen earlier enticed every other fiber of his being and he
promptly chose to give in once more.

Chose to
give in? Yes. It was a choice—a choice that he felt ashamed of even as he acted
on it, sitting down on the couch and picking up his binocs.

She was
standing in front of her mirror again, brushing out her lustrous hair, wearing
a satiny pink bathrobe, short enough so that every time she raised her arms
Dylan caught a glimpse of her bright white panties. She brushed over and over and
over for several minutes before she finally put down her brush, gave her hair
one last flip, and then turned and opened her sliding door.

She stepped
out onto her deck and untied her robe as she approached the railing, allowing
it to blow open in the breeze to reveal her firm, bare breasts. She raised her
arms and ran her fingers through her hair, then stretched them out to her
sides, arched her back, and let her robe billow freely behind her in the breeze
as she gazed up at the stars.

It was as if
she knew he was watching her and was posing for him. He couldn’t begin to imagine
why she would do that, but he certainly approved. He gazed without blinking at her
beautiful, curvaceous body. Standing there, awash in the moonlight’s soft glow,
she reminded him of a portrait of the mythological Cirran goddess of beauty he’d
once seen.

She dropped
her arms to her sides and let her robe slip from her shoulders and fall to the
deck, then rested her hands on the railing. But only a few moments later,
obviously chilled by the cool evening air, she picked it up and went back
inside and closed and locked the door behind her. She draped it over the back
of her couch and disappeared into her kitchen. Then, moments later, she emerged
carrying a tall ice-filled drink, grabbed a book off the wall shelf, and
stretched out on her couch to read.

Dylan
watched her for a few more minutes, but when she’d read several pages and it
appeared as though she was going to read for a while longer, he lay back on the
couch to rest his weary eyes. He reran what he’d just seen in his mind’s eye,
hoping that his neighbor’s lovely image might chase those of the other women
away for good. The women who’d left him in body—one through tragedy, the other
by choice—but who, like the creature that haunted his dreams, continued to
dwell in his subconscious.

* * *

Combat.
Reinforcements. Shin collapsed motionless to the dirt.

—Poor
girl.

Something
burned his thigh.

He was
hit.

His right
shoulder exploded in a burst of searing agony so intense that he couldn’t even
scream as he stumbled backward to the ground.

He was
hit again. Badly.

“Sergeant
Graves is down!”

“Marissa!”
he cried.

—Strange.
He hadn’t done that before.

The pain
faded to numbness. He rolled onto his stomach, retrieved his rifle, and
staggered to his feet, determined to stay in the fight.

His head suddenly
snapped back and his knees buckled. He collapsed.

“Marissa!”

Warm
blood flowed into his eye and down over his cheek and neck.

He was
hit again. Very badly.

Everything
slowed down and the world around him began to spin out of control.

Time to
die.

“I love
you.”

—Why had
he said that? He wished he could have meant it, but he couldn’t. He never
should have said it.

The world
faded untyil all was darkness.

“Dylan?
Are you awake?”

He rolled
his head across the pillow to see who it was who’d so thoughtlessly roused him
from his drug-induced slumber. Carolyn.

“I’ve
been doing a lot of thinking.”

“About
what?”

Her eyes
fell to the hand she cradled in hers. “About us.”

He didn’t
speak.

She
looked down, then faced the bed again. “I’m sorry,” she said as she pulled off
her wedding ring and tossed it onto the blanket. “It’s over, Dylan. I’m
divorcing you.”

She
hurried out of the room.

Right
into his arms. Suddenly it all made sense.

He was
alone.

“Sergeant
Graves?”

—Her
again. He knew her voice. What was she doing here? Why was she here?

“May I
come in, Sergeant?”

“Sure.”

—Why did
he say that? Why did he always let her in?

She closed
the door. Took a seat. Cautious. But of course.

Lots of
talk. Get to the point.

“What the
hell was that...that thing that almost killed me?”

“What
thing that almost killed you? You mean the Sulaini soldier who tried to beat
you to death with his rifle?”

“What?
What Sulaini soldier? What are you talking about?”

“What are
you
talking about?”

Was it
really feasible she didn’t know how he was wounded? Not likely. “I’m talking
about that thing that was hiding out in the Sulaini commander’s office building.
That...alien...creature that would’ve snapped me in two if Marissa hadn’t
turned it into Swiss cheese when she did.”

 “Alien
creature? I’m...I’m sorry, Sergeant. I must have missed something. What alien
creature are you talking about? What did it look like?”

“What
alien creature am I talking about? The alien creature that burned Marissa! The
one that damn near crushed my ribs into powder!”

Nothing.
A blank stare.

“It
looked like...like...awe hell! I don’t know what the hell it looked like!”

“You’re
seeing something in your dreams.”

“It’s not
just in my dreams!”

“Yes, it
is! Dylan, listen to me.”

—All
right.

“Think
back, Dylan. Think about the battle. Replay it in your mind. Do you really
remember this alien creature being there?”

“Yes, I
really remember it being there! I see it every damn night!”

“I’m not
talking about in your nightmares! Ignore them for the moment. Think about the actual
battle ten days ago. Go through it, step by step, as you actually remember it.”

He
thought back.

—Why was
he thinking back? He knew the truth. Why was he listening to her again?

It wasn’t
there.

—It
should have been there.

He
remembered Marissa being wounded in a chemical explosion. He remembered being
beaten repeatedly with a rifle in brutal hand-to-hand combat. And he remembered
being shot...three times.

—But that
wasn’t right. The creature was supposed to be there. It should have been there.

“Do you
remember this alien creature of yours being there?”

“No.”

—Why did
he say ‘no’ again when he knew it had been there? It should have been there.

“Of
course you don’t, because it wasn’t there.”

“But...it
was so real.”

* * *

It was real.

No, it wasn’t.
He’d known for some time now what really happened in the middle of that island
forest that night. His conscious memories of the battle had never agreed with
what he saw in his nightmares, but with the doctors’ help—as much as he hated
to admit it, those professional doubletalkers who didn’t deserve to call
themselves doctors had actually done some good—and after sitting through a complete
mission debriefing, he’d eventually worked that out. “Then why do you still see
the damn thing in your nightmares?” he asked himself.

Speaking of
his nightmares, this was the first time since he’d been wounded that he’d
dreamed of something other than the battle itself. And although he’d just woken
up he wasn’t feeling even a hint of a headache. So, for the first time in as
long, he allowed himself to hope for something that he hadn’t enjoyed in nearly
a month. A full night of restful sleep. Disregarding with little consideration
that ever-dimming spark of morality that told him to leave the girl alone, he
decided to take one last quick look across the courtyard. After that, he
promised himself, he’d go to bed for the night.

She still lay
half naked on her couch, reading her book. She reached up with her free hand and
turned the page, then laid it back on her stomach and continued reading.
Apparently, she intended to read well into night.

Dylan set
his binocs aside, got up, and started toward his bedroom, but as he passed by
the window, a small flash of light caught his eye and he looked out again. The
girl had set her book on the coffee table and was getting up.

He dashed
back to the couch and resumed his surveillance just as she snatched up her
robe. She pulled it on as she bounded up over the two steps to her front door,
then tapped the intercom button. She closed it and tied it off as she spoke.
Then, after a quick look at the small video screen above the intercom, she
keyed the door open.

Her visitor appeared
to be a human man in his early to mid forties—a human man of Terran stock as
opposed to Cirran, that conclusion based on the fact that he had brown eyes.
Assuming that he wasn’t wearing colored lenses, of course. He was tall and muscular,
with curly black hair and a thick moustache, was dressed in gray slacks and a
green shirt, and carried an overnight bag under his arm. He held some sort of
identification up for the girl to look at, but Dylan couldn’t make out what it
was. After a brief exchange the girl stepped aside and invited him inside.