Solfleet: The Call of Duty (9 page)

He rolled
his head toward the voice to find Heather standing beside his bed, looking down
at him. He exhaled sharply—he hadn’t realized he was holding his breath—then
drew another deep breath and relaxed as his eyes finally focused on her. “I’m
fine,” he answered. Then he asked her, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. At
least not with me anyway,” she answered, her voice full of concern as she sat
back down at his side again. “But it looked like you were having a pretty bad
nightmare. Are you sure you’re all right?”

He nodded,
then answered, “Yeah, I’m sure. Sorry if I woke you up.”

“No,” she
said, shaking her head, “you didn’t. I was already up. It’s almost nine o’clock
in the morning.” She hesitated a moment, then continued, “Dad...” but stopped
right there and looked away.

Hansen gazed
at his daughter as the fog of sleep cleared and he gathered his wits about him.
She obviously wanted to tell him something, or more likely wanted to
ask
something of him, but was seemingly afraid to do so. He gave her a few more
moments to gather her courage, but when it became apparent that she didn’t know
how to say whatever she wanted to say, he prompted her by asking, “What is it,
Heather?”

She glanced
at him again, hesitated for another moment, then finally looked him in the eye,
took a deep breath, and spoke up. “Okay. Now, I know I’m grounded for two
weeks, and I know it’s for a good reason, but Candice and Corrine just called
me a few minutes ago. They’re getting together with Debra in a little while and
going out to brunch, then going to see that new Kent Rowland movie at the
Rotunda theater, and they invited me to go with them. I was just wondering if
it would be all right for me to go with them, just this once?”

“You’re
right, Heather,” he assured her. “You
are
grounded for two weeks, and it
is for a good reason.”

“I know, but
it’s only for a few hours,” she calmly explained.

“No.”

“Please,
Daddy?” she whined, raising the center of her brow and flashing her baby greens
in her best imitation of innocence yet. “There’s no shopping involved, and I’ll
come right back after. I promise.”

“You were
caught stealing, Heather,” he coldly reminded her, unmoved. Years of near constant
training had made him immune to her distraught pleas for leniency. “Again. And
this is the last time I’m going to repeat this without additional consequences.
You are grounded for
at least
two weeks, and are not going
anywhere
.”

“C’mon, Dad!”
she practically begged. “Please! It’s Kent Rowland!”

“I don’t
care who it is, Heather,” he calmly conveyed. “You’re not going out for at
least the next two weeks, and that’s final.”

“But all my
other friends are going to see it this weekend, too!” she complained, near
tears. “I’ll be the only one who
hasn’t
seen it, and I won’t be able to
talk about it with them!”

“Two weeks,”
he said firmly, bringing the discussion to a close, at least in his mind.

But Heather
wasn’t finished. “That’s not fair!” she shouted, switching from desperation to
anger in the blink of an eye, as if someone had thrown a switch inside her
head. “You never let me do anything I want to do!”

“Want to try
for three weeks?” he asked sternly, staring her down—no easy feat for most
other people when lying on their backs and looking up at the person they’re
arguing with, but easy enough for him—confident that she’d finally realize he
was dead serious, and that that was that. End of discussion.

She recoiled
slightly, stared back at him for a few silent seconds, then slapped her hands
down on the bed with an angry grunt and shot to her feet and shouted, “You can
be so fucking unreasonable sometimes, you know that! I fucking hate you!” Then
she whirled around and stormed out of his bedroom, no doubt wishing there were
some way to slam the door as it quietly slid closed behind her.

Hansen
sighed, then said to the lingering hostility, “I love you, too, Princess.” Then
he yawned.

She was his
daughter, his only child, and as difficult as she could be to deal with
sometimes, he loved her very much, unconditionally, no matter what. Someday, he
knew, that love would pay off and she’d thank him for staying strong and
putting up with all the grief she’d caused him over the years. At least, that
was what his parenting counselor had always said, back when he still had time
to attend their sessions.

Would be
nice if today turned out to be that day.

He drew a
deep breath, heard the shower water come on as he slowly exhaled, then reached
up and wiped a layer of perspiration from his forehead. What the hell was going
on, anyway? Had he eaten some bad food last night or something? He hadn’t had any
nightmares in a long time, let alone
those
nightmares. Not in nearly two
decades, in fact. So why now all of the sudden?

“Must be
stress,” he mumbled under his breath.

He lay there
for the next several minutes and allowed his mind to linger on the memories of
that horrific tragedy from so many years ago. Then, suddenly, it hit him.
Something wasn’t as it should be. Something in the here and now. Something wasn’t
right with...with what? What was it? What had caused the little hairs on the
back of his neck to stand on end?

He thought
about work—about the mystery that had come to light just yesterday. Was it
something about the man—the one who
claimed
to be O’Donnell? Unlikely.
The question of his identity was straight forward enough. The alleged
originator of the message either was or was not the former member of the
Excalibur
crew. Period. They’d figure that out one way or another soon enough.

Something
about the starcruiser
Albion
then? No. No, that didn’t feel right either.
The question of that vessel’s status at the time of the
Excalibur
’s destruction,
while certainly still an unknown at this early stage of the newly reopened
investigation, wasn’t what was bothering him at that moment either.

Was it the
fact that more than nine-hundred personnel, all of whom had been assigned to
the Mars Orbital Shipyards at that same time, were all long since dead?
Clearly, something was
very
wrong there, but no. That wasn’t it either.

There was
something else. Something unrelated to the whole
Excalibur
question, he somehow
knew. Something more...more tangible, and much more immediate. But what was it?

Something to
do with Heather? As usual, she was running around their quarters in her
underwear again—he hadn’t even realized that until just now—and she was
certainly behaving like the same mood-swinging problem child he’d always known
and loved, so everything was status quo where she was concerned. Still, if
there really was something wrong, there was a good chance she was connected to
it in some way.

He listened
for a moment to the shower. Then for another moment, and then another...and still
another. That was it. The shower water. No splashes, no pauses, no changes in
sound whatsoever. Just a constant unvarying flow.

He threw off
his blankets and climbed out of bed, adjusted his pajama pants and pulled on
his robe. Then he stepped out into the living room and caught Heather, fully
dressed—at least what
she
considered to be fully dressed—with her hands
wrist deep in the pried open door panel, apparently trying to bypass the lock
code. She looked across the room at him, met his eyes, and froze stiff,
unblinking, like the proverbial deer in headlights.

“Go to your
room, Heather,” he said calmly. “Right now.”

There must
have been something unyielding in the forced calm tone of his voice, because
with no reaction beyond a simple sigh of resignation, not even the usual
disgusted roll of her eyes, Heather immediately and quite silently complied
with her father’s order.

In order to
maintain required manning levels throughout their involvement in the ongoing
battle to defend the Rosha’Kana star system while still providing her crew sufficient
time off to rest and rejuvenate, Captain Bhatnagar had instructed her executive
officer to extend the regular eight hour duty shifts to twelve hours, and to
shorten the rotation cycle by one day. While it was true that the modified
schedule actually added four hours to everyone’s regular duty week, it also
provided them an extra day on standby—an extra day they didn’t have to work,
provided the call to battle stations wasn’t sounded. That old but innovative
solution to the emergency manning problem—there were a handful of grumblers, of
course, who wouldn’t have described it in quite that way—had allowed everyone
to enjoy some sense of normalcy, despite having to operate under extended alert
conditions.

Everyone,
that is, except for Captain Bhatnagar herself. She’d been pulling sixteen to
eighteen hour shifts every day, seven days per week, for the past three weeks,
and except for an occasional bathroom break she hadn’t left the bridge at all over
the last twenty-seven hours. Not even to have her injured hip taken care of,
despite the fact that her ambitious executive officer—too ambitious for his own
good, she sometimes thought—had shown up for his own shift a couple of hours
early and had threatened to have the chief medical officer relieve her of duty
for at least a week if she didn’t go to Medbay on her own, and then go straight
to her cabin for some much needed sleep.

She knew he
was right, of course. Over the few hours of relative calm that had passed since
they’d been forced to withdraw from battle, her hip had really started to ache
a lot, no matter how she sat, and exhaustion had finally begun to catch up to
her. She didn’t doubt that the best thing for her to do would indeed be to
leave the bridge in his more than capable hands, have the doctor take care of
her hip, and then retire to her cabin for a few hours. Even better, for a few
days
.
But she also knew that her ship and her crew weren’t out of danger yet, and her
ship and her crew always...
always
took priority over her personal needs.

“Captain!”
her X.O. sharply whispered.

Bhatnagar
jumped at the sudden intrusion and opened her eyes, and felt a sharp twinge
shoot through her hip and upper leg, which she then realized had gone numb from
the back of her knee to the small of her back. That couldn’t be good, she knew.

She peered
up at her second-in-command, towering over her with his massive forearms folded
across his broad chest, staring down at her through those narrow, penetrating
hazel eyes of his. He looked like an old-time comic book superhero or a frustrated
father standing over his disobedient child. An interesting talent, she mused,
the ability to shout and whisper at the same time without attracting anyone
else’s attention. A talent that he’d made good use of several times over the last
few hours.

“Yes, Mister
Rawlins, what is it?” she inquired, feigning impatience, even though she knew
it wouldn’t faze him in the least.

“What is it?”
he asked in return with a snicker, keeping his voice as low as possible. “Are
you kidding me, Captain?” Unfazed, as expected, he uncrossed his arms, leaned
on the arm of her chair, and lowered his voice to a near whisper. “You’re now
working on your third straight shift. Do I really have to spell it out for you?”

She drew a
deep breath and slowly exhaled to buy a few seconds, but she couldn’t think of
a single argument to support her staying on the bridge. “No, Commander,” she
answered, finally surrendering to the inevitable, “that won’t be necessary.”
With no small amount of difficulty, she stood up, “The bridge is yours,” and
hobbled toward the doors. But before they opened to allow her exit, the ship
vibrated and rolled slightly to port. Not enough to throw her off balance, and
only for a brief moment, but definitely enough to grab her and everyone else’s
attention. She stopped and turned on her good leg to face the viewscreen, which
showed nothing but the distant stars ahead of them.

“Report,”
Rawlins commanded as he moved behind the command console and sat down.

“Detonation
astern, Commander,” Lieutenant Irons responded, checking her instruments. “Approximately
eighty meters distance.”

“Detonation
of what, Miss Irons?” the captain inquired as she started limping toward the tactical
officer’s station.

Irons turned
and looked up at her commanding officer apologetically, swallowed hard, and reluctantly
reported, “Unknown, Captain.” She knew from her first days at the academy that
when the ship’s captain asked questions, the ship’s captain wanted answers, not
unknowns,
especially
when the ship’s captain was already frustrated over
having to deal with something that interfered with her ability to command.
Having to respond in that way was something no junior officer ever wanted to
do. Her least of all, as far as she was concerned.

As a
life-long overachiever, Irons expected to rise quickly through the ranks—having
made full lieutenant already, she’d gotten off to a good start—and to earn her
own command one day. Perhaps even to break Commodore Andrea Johansson’s record
and become the youngest ship’s captain in fleet history. True, Johansson had
still been a commander by rank when she got her first ship, and that ship had
been nothing more than a deep space troop transport that made the training run
back and forth between Earth and Lucifer’s Lair, but it had been
her
ship
just the same. At least until someone blew it out from under her ten years ago.
At any rate, not knowing the answers to the captain’s questions was
not
the
road to quick advancement.

But at least
she was prepared to explain
why
she didn’t know, and explain she did,
before the captain could even draw a breath to say anything else. “Whatever it
was didn’t register on the sensors or trip a proximity alarm, and it either
flew or drifted right into our fusion blast, so there isn’t anything left of it
to analyze.”