Solfleet: The Call of Duty (75 page)

He dropped
the report he was still holding onto his desk then put his feet down, turned
his chair forward, and asked, “Have you run a trace on what he’s looking into
yet?”

“Oh, I’ve
gone far beyond that,” she answered, her eyes still closed. “I tapped directly
into the circuit so I could live-monitor his research as he conducted it.”

“How’d you
manage to do that without him knowing about it?”

“I have my
ways,” she answered first. Then, thinking that might have sounded a little too
much like she was hiding something
else
from him—that was the
last
impression
she wanted to give him at this point—she amended, “I uh...I have a few friends
in the comm-center.”

“Of course
you do.” He should have figured that. There were very few places, especially
here on Mandela Station, where she
didn’t
have a few friends. “So you’ve
been up all weekend?” he asked, already certain that she had been. “You didn’t
get any sleep at all?”

“Is it that
obvious?”

“Even to a
blind man.”

She sighed. “Yeah,
I don’t doubt it. But it was the only way to try to figure out what he’s up to.”

“Remind me
never to try anything behind your back.”

“Won’t have
to. You already know better.”

Hansen
snickered. “You know me too well, Commander.”

“We’ve known
each other a long time, Admiral.”

“That we
have.” Time to get to it. “So, what’s the professor up to?”

She finally
opened her eyes again and looked at him, but continued leaning on his desk as
she answered, “He spent most of the weekend reading through various historical
records. Military and corporate conflicts of the last half century or so,
medical and scientific advances beginning twice that far back, legal decisions
concerning racial equality spanning damn near the past two and a half centuries...”

“That seems
like an unnecessarily broad scope of research, don’t you think?”

“Probably by
design, Admiral,” she answered through a yawn. Then she explained, “If we’re
right—if the professor did a mind probe on Graves and discovered evidence of
the edit, and if he agreed to help him figure out what happened to him, then it
makes perfect sense that he’d keep his research as broad as possible...in appearance.”

“Yeah, I see
where you’re going with this. You think he’s onto us?”

“Maybe not
us specifically, sir, but I’d be willing to bet he suspects
someone
is
watching him right now. He’s a very intelligent man. Given the plethora of laws
that regulate the use of mind-editing, he’d know that whoever’s responsible for
altering the lieutenant’s memories would have to be someone very high up in the
chain of command. Someone with the means not only to keep it quiet, but also to
keep a close eye on the lieutenant afterwards. He’d also realize that whoever
those high-ups are would know that he and the lieutenant met last night and
would therefore be watching him, too. It’s my guess that by not narrowing the
scope of his research too far the professor is trying to keep those high-ups...to
keep
us
in the dark. Keep us guessing.”

She might
have been exhausted physically, but her mind was still as sharp as nails. “That
makes sense,” Hansen agreed. “So my question right now is, would his attempt to
keep us in the dark and keep us guessing be successful?”

Royer grinned.
“I’m glad you asked.” But her grin faded quickly. The whole situation was too
serious and too dangerous to their careers to make light of. “In each case, and
in each area of research, he read through several articles or reports on a very
diverse selection of subjects. But every so often he’d go back over two or
three of them, then go on to something new for a while, and then go back to
those same few again. He did that over and over and over.”

“And?” the
admiral asked, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair and folding his
hands in front of him.

“And...everything
that he’s gone back over more than once—everything that he’s truly been
concentrating on—has had something to do either directly or indirectly with
cyberclones.”

Like before,
when Lieutenant Graves turned down the Timeshift mission, Hansen seemed almost
to deflate as he let go a long sigh, closed his eyes, and hid his face behind
his still folded hands, massaging his temples with his thumbs. “Damn it,” he
mumbled.

“Admiral,”
she continued tentatively. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but I have to. Should the
professor get too close...”

“No,” Hansen
interrupted, glaring up at her. “Absolutely not.”

“But, sir...”

“I said no,
Commander!” he exclaimed, grasping the arms of his chair and leaning slightly
forward. “I will not cross that line...for
any
reason!” He folded his
hands again and then, forcing himself to speak in a calmer tone of voice, suggested
an alternative. “Manipulate the records. Delete some of them and replace them
with false ones if you have to. Whatever it takes to throw him off track, I don’t
care, but do
not
harm him in any way. I don’t even want him threatened.
Is that clear?”

“Perfectly
clear, sir.”

“Good.”
Hansen paused for a moment to calm down, then asked, “Anything else?”

“Yes, sir.
Lieutenant Graves.”

“What about
him?”

“Assuming we’re
successful in misleading the professor, do you really think Graves will just
drop the whole thing and get on with his life? I mean, we don’t know how much of
his true memories he might already have recalled, either on his own or with the
professor’s help. What if he’s remembered so much that he just can’t bring
himself to simply let it go?”

“Assuming we’re
right about the professor probing his mind in the first place,” Hansen
qualified.

“Can you
think of any other logical reason why Miss DeGaetano would have gotten the two
of them together, Admiral?”

No.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t, so he quietly considered her question for a few
moments. What if Graves had remembered so much that he couldn’t bring himself
to simply let it go? Unfortunately, only one possible answer came to mind and
he didn’t like it. Stefani O’Donnell had already shown them what one upset and
determined soldier with access to intelligence information could do on his or
her own these days, and Graves held a higher level of access than she did. Hansen
didn’t need to be taught that lesson twice.

“Commander,”
he said, “sometimes you’re too smart for my own good.”

“Sorry, sir.
I’ll try to be more stupider in the future.”

Hansen
grinned, then asked, “So what do you suggest?”

“I could
take up heavy drinking.”

The admiral
snickered. “I mean concerning the lieutenant.”

“Short of
what I alluded to before?” Hansen didn’t have to answer. His sudden, infamous
laser beam stare served quite sufficiently to let her know that to even think
about suggesting that again would be very unwise. “I wasn’t going to, sir,” she
assured him.

“Then what?”

She
straightened in the chair. “Send him back, sir. Send him on the Timeshift
mission.”

“He’s
already declined...”

“Make it an
order, Admiral. Don’t give him the choice to decline. And supplement that order
with some follow-up instructions, in case he fails.”

“What kind
of follow-up instructions do you have in mind?”

“I don’t
know,” she admitted. “Something like... If he fails to prevent the
Excalibur
’s
destruction, then he’s to remain in the past and try whatever else he can think
of that might change the course of the war and save the Tor’Kana. If he fails again,
then he fails, and he goes on to try something else.” She considered reminding
the admiral about having Graves look for Günter as well, but the time didn’t
seem right for that somehow so she decided to forgo it. At least for the moment.

“Those are
pretty vague instructions, Commander.”

“I haven’t
actually thought that part all the way through yet, Admiral,” she confessed. Then
she explained, “I realize those instructions might keep him in the past for a very
long time, but at least he’ll still be alive. He’ll have a clear-cut mission with
a specific goal and the freedom to pursue it as he sees fit, and we’ll still be
rid of him. We won’t have to worry that he might uncover certain events from
our
past. Events that I’m sure you’d prefer to keep buried as much as I would. On
the other hand, if he succeeds and returns to the present, then hopefully
things will have changed for the better and we’ll no longer
have
anything
to hide.”

Hansen swung
his chair around, turning his back to her, stood up and stepped over to the
window to look down on the Earth as the first golden rays of the morning sun
skipped across the peaks of the Appalachian Mountains. “When I sat in on that
meeting between the president, Chairman MacLeod, and Professor Verne a few months
ago the professor talked about a few of the more popular theories surrounding the
idea of time-travel, including the one that you, Günter, and I based our
actions on six years ago. Of the theories he discussed, he believed one in
particular to be the most plausible, and it
wasn’t
the one we counted on
back then. I’ve given a lot of thought to what he said and as much as I don’t
want to agree with him, I think I have to.”

“Which
theory was that, Admiral?”

“One that
equates time to a river. The river’s course can be diverted at a given point,
forcing it to flow along a different path, but the water that’s already passed
that point remains unaffected. It continues to follow the old course,
unchanged, until it eventually dries up.”

“Right,”
Royer said, nodding her head. “I’ve heard that theory. “Even so, I’m not really
sure I understand exactly what you’re trying to say.”

Hansen faced
around, but stayed by the window. “I think you understand perfectly well what I’m
trying to say, Commander,” he said. “But I’ll spell it out for you anyway.
According to this theory, if we send the lieutenant on this mission and he’s
successful, it still won’t change anything for us. He might create an alternate
timeline for himself from that point forward, but in our timeline we’ll still
lose this war.”

Royer was
surprised to hear those words coming from the admiral, given his previously
apparent commitment to the mission. Despite the spirited discussions they’d
often had in the past over the whole Günter situation, she’d thought that he
believed in the Timeshift mission totally, from the very beginning. So she
asked him, “Admiral, if you never believed this mission could succeed, then why...”

“It’s not
that I never believed it, Commander. I did, for the most part. But the more I
think about it the more doubts I have. Especially when I think about your
brother. Has anything changed for us in the last six years?”

Royer didn’t
answer, but that was okay. He’d only meant it to be a rhetorical question
anyway. He turned back to the window again as he added, “Besides, the potential
cost of this mission seems to keep going up.”

“What do you
mean?”

“Professor
Verne came to see me in my quarters late last night. He suggested that if we do
send someone back in time there’s a real chance that person might be stuck
there, unable to return home, regardless of whether he completes the mission or
not.”

“Why would
he be stuck there?”

“Because for
him our time won’t have arrived yet. For him our timeline won’t exist and a
person can’t travel to a place that doesn’t exist.” After a moment he added, “I
suspect that’s why Günter hasn’t returned. Not only have he and the clone
embryos he took with him failed to put an end to the war for us, they’ve also
been stranded in the past for more than six years.”

“
If
Professor
Verne is correct,” Royer pointed out.

“Right.”

She’d
avoided bringing Günter into the conversation, afraid that if she did they’d
end up arguing about him again. But now that the admiral had mentioned him a
few times already she felt free to pursue it further. If they argued again it
would be his fault.

“Those
clones were nothing more than a batch of fertilized eggs and a briefcase full
of our most advanced cybernetic technical schematics, Admiral,” she reminded
him, “and he took them back to a time period well before artificial age
acceleration had been perfected. He might still be waiting for them to grow up.”

“We’ve already
been over this, Commander,” Hansen sternly reminded her.

“And we
still don’t know anything for sure, sir, which is why I continue to bring it up
from time to time,” Royer fired right back. “We may have sent them thirty years
into the past, Admiral, but we did it less than seven years ago. Who’s to say
the clones aren’t just a couple divisions of six year old children right now?”

“I am!”
Hansen barked, whirling around and glaring at her.

Royer sprang
to her feet so fast that she almost banged her legs on the front of Hansen’s
desk and shouted vehemently, “Don’t you
dare
yell at me like I’m your
delinquent teenage daughter, Admiral!
You’re
the one who brought it up
this time, not me!”

His laser
beam stare could have burned holes through her eyes, but he held his tongue for
a moment to give himself time to calm down and avoid saying something he might
later regret, and to consider whether or not he felt like taking the time to
explain his position on the subject to her all over again. After all, she did
have a point. He
had
brought Günter up first this time.

In the end,
patience won out. “I guess we’re both a little stressed, Commander,” he said. “I
apologize. I didn’t mean to bite your head off.”

“Gladly
accepted, sir, and I apologize as well. Your daughter...”