Solfleet: The Call of Duty (90 page)

“But it is,
Commander,” Benny pointed out. “You and your staff keep this very outpost
shrouded in secrecy at all times.”

“Yes we do,
Captain, but that’s entirely different. I’m a scientist, not a spy.” To Dylan
he said, “Next you’ll be telling me that ‘Dylan Graves’ isn’t even your real name.”

The
commander’s sarcasm was growing heavier by the second, but sarcasm was a game
at which Dylan was an age-old expert. “No, ‘Dylan Graves’ is my real name, Commander,”
he told him. “At least as far as you know.”

“Oh, you’re
very funny, Lieutenant,” Akagi responded. “If I laugh any harder I’ll need to
have my ribs sewn back into place.”

“Why does
Admiral Hansen call you so often, Commander?” Benny asked, hoping to deflect
the younger officer’s misplaced wrath away from Dylan.

“Hell if I
know,” Akagi answered in disgust, though in a much calmer tone of voice, as he
stepped back up to the door, shaking his head. Then he reentered the access
sequence and placed his hand back on the panel as he added, “Judging from his
seemingly pointless and painfully long line of questioning, which remains
exactly the same every time he calls me, my guess is that he’s looking to
confirm his suspicions about something. But his questions are never simple or
straight forward. There are always questions within questions or questions that
don’t seem related to each other. I swear...I just don’t understand why all you
Intelligence types insist on playing the same old cloak-and-dagger games,
generation after generation after generation.” The locks finally disengaged and
the door slid open. “It’s like you all still live in the paranoid culture of
decades past or something.”

Dylan and Benny
exchanged grins as the commander finally led them inside.

There wasn’t
much to it. Just a security scan, an identicheck, and beyond the retractable
barrier a narrow flight of stairs that led down into the underground bowels of
the outpost. The newcomers eased through the formalities of identifying
themselves and ‘signed’ in to the facility. As a test, Dylan used one of the
half dozen false identicards Royer had provided him with. It worked flawlessly.
Then he and Benny followed Akagi down into a long, dimly lit man-made tunnel.
The SF guards peeled off and stayed behind.

“So, what
can
you gentlemen tell me about why you’re here?” the commander asked,
continuing to lead the way as they headed deeper into the tunnel.

“I’m on
special assignment from Solfleet Central Command,” Dylan told him.

Akagi
snickered. “You say that like you’re on some kind of holy mission from almighty
God, Lieutenant. I assumed that much. What I want to know is exactly what your
assignment here entails. What are your orders?”

“I have a
question for
you
, Commander,” Benny said before Dylan could even draw a
breath to respond.

“What’s
that, Benny?”

“Don’t you
know better than to ask an S-I-A agent his business?”

The innuendo
in the semi-retired captain’s voice came through loud and clear. His word still
carried a lot of weight, and Akagi didn’t need the inherent warning to be
spelled out for him to hear it. “I guess I do at that, sir,” he answered. “My
apologies, Lieutenant.”

“Accepted,
Commander,” Dylan responded.

“And I have
another question for you,” Benny continued.

“What’s
that?”

“You knew who
I was even before I introduced myself. How did you recognize me?”

Akagi’s
entire demeanor seemed suddenly to change. Gone was the sarcastic officer who
was angry at being constantly harassed by a far away superior with nothing better
to do with his time, replaced by a pure scientist—by a man obviously filled
with child-like fascination over the many strange wonders that filled the
galaxy. “I’ve familiarized myself with the circumstances surrounding your first
visit here, Benny,” he answered enthusiastically, “and I’ve reviewed all the
footage your reconnaissance teams recorded back then...several times. I’ve also
seen a lot of holophotos of you over the years from later in your career. You’ve
changed some since the last one I saw was taken, but not so much as to make you
unrecognizable.”

“Is that
right?”

“Yes, sir.
After all, you were a major player in one of the most important discoveries in
Earth’s history.” He waved a hand in the air, indicating the unseen world
around them. “Anyone who knows anything about all this would recognize you.”

“Is there a
way to watch that discovery as it happened in the Portal?” Dylan asked.

Akagi
stopped short and spun around so quickly that Dylan almost dropped back into a
defensive stance. “How the hell do you know about the Portal, Lieutenant?” he
demanded.

Dylan
relaxed, then answered, “I’m an Intelligence agent, remember?”

“That doesn’t
matter! Admiral Hansen is the only one of you who’s supposed to know anything
about it!”

“Is that
right?” Dylan asked, echoing Benny.

“Yes, that’s
right! He told me he’d keep its existence classified top secret for as long as
my team and I needed to study it! He promised!”

“I assure
you, Commander, it still is top secret,” Dylan told him. “But it’s also the
reason we’re here.”

Akagi backed
off, wearing a puzzled look on his face as his gaze bounced back and forth
between the two of them. “You two came all the way out here just to study Earth
history?” he asked, much calmer. “
That’s
your special assignment from
Command?”

“Not
exactly,” Dylan answered.

“What the
hell do you mean, ‘not exactly?’” Akagi snapped.

“Why don’t
we save the details for later, Commander,” Benny suggested. “Let’s show the
lieutenant what all the fuss out here is about.”

Akagi drew a
deep, calming breath, then answered, “All right.” Then he turned his back on
them and walked off, continuing down the tunnel.

“Commander?”

Akagi
stopped and faced back toward them. “We didn’t want to disturb any of the
ruins, Captain, so the engineers built most of our facilities and an entire
network of tunnels underneath them.” He pointed back over his shoulder with his
thumb, as if hitching a ride. “The Portal is this way.”

“Oh. Well
then, wait up a moment. I’m not as young as I used to be, you know.”

Dylan
smiled. Benny wasn’t as young as
anyone
used to be.

As they
strolled through the tunnel Dylan reminded their reluctant host, “You didn’t
answer my question, Commander. Is there a way we can set the Portal to show us
Benny’s recon team as they discover it?”

“I’m afraid
not, Lieutenant,” Akagi answered, shaking his head. “The Portal can only show
us events that took place on Earth.”

Dylan felt
disappointed. He would have enjoyed seeing the look on Benny’s face as he
watched his younger self and relived one of his adventures.

They walked
in silence for several hundred meters, then came to a fork in the tunnel and veered
to the left. Then, after another two hundred meters or so, they stopped at a
security barrier. Akagi tapped a code into the control panel and placed his
hand over the scanner plate, then identified himself verbally and stood through
a retinal scan before the barrier finally opened and allowed them to pass.

“Commander,”
Dylan continued as they resumed their walk. “During the trip out here Benny
told me about his last visit, but he didn’t tell me a lot about the Portal
itself. You asked me if we were here to study Earth history. Does the Portal
actually teach?”

“Not
exactly,” Akagi answered, sounding as though he were opening a university class
lecture. Maybe the Portal didn’t teach, but now that he could talk freely about
the object of his life’s passion without having to worry about compromising
classified information, it quickly became apparent that Akagi had at one time
or another been some sort of instructor himself. “All you have to do is enter
the right commands into the panel and the Portal will show you any period in
Earth’s history that you might desire to see, right up to the present day. Of course,
it shows
all
events that occurred at each moment everywhere on the
entire planet simultaneously. At least, we think that’s what it does. So you
have to have a handcomp ready to make a high-speed recording, and even then you’ll
miss a good ninety-eight percent of whatever you’re watching. Probably more
than that. A handcomp does have a limited capacity, after all.”

“Benny said
it could be set for a specific time and place.”

“I thought
you said he didn’t tell you much about it.”

“He didn’t
tell me much more than that,” Dylan clarified.

“I see.
Well, that’s true in theory, but actually doing it has proven rather difficult.
We’ve tried many times and have usually missed our target by several weeks, if
not months. On those rare occasions when we do manage to come close, specific
events still flash by too quickly to record in any detail. Pinpointing and
recording any one brief, specific event on a particular day, for example, has
been virtually impossible for us. So far, at least.” The tunnel finally ended
at the base of another flight of stairs. “Here we are, gentlemen.”

They emerged
from the tunnels to find themselves standing amidst a random scattering of
large, nondescript boulders. But not far ahead, the ruins of an ancient, long
forgotten population lay scattered for as far as the eye could see. The three
men walked forward, past another pair of heavily armed SFs, and made their way
carefully among the crumbled, dust-covered and severely weathered remnants of
what many centuries ago had been towering, intricately carved stone columns and
polished marble-like walls.

“How old are
these ruins?” Dylan asked.

“Old,” Akagi
answered simply. “Eons older than the Portal itself.”

“Then the
civilization...”

“Was long
extinct before the Tor’Rosha ever set foot on this world. Had they still been
alive, the Tor’Rosha wouldn’t have put a Portal here.”

They rounded
one last, huge boulder, the canine-like head of an ancient stone statue, its
finest details smoothed away by thousands if not millions of years of exposure
to the wind-whipped sands. Then they turned to their right.

And there it
was. The Portal—the thick floating ring whose semi-reflective metallic finish
seemed completely out of place amidst the otherwise interesting but
unremarkable ruins.

A chill
crawled up Benny’s spine and passed through his entire body when he saw it. A
manned security post had been erected a couple of meters to its right, but he
took little notice of that. His companions thoughtfully held back whatever
words might have come to them and allowed him a moment to himself, and he
suddenly grew aware of his own heartbeat as it gave rhythm to the howling of
distant winds. As he gazed at the familiar yet mysterious structure, he felt as
though he were being drawn backward in time merely by standing in its presence.

“Benny?”
Akagi said in a near-whisper. If Benny heard him at all he gave no outward
indication of it. In fact, it appeared as though he wasn’t even aware that his
own mouth was hanging open or that he was shaking his head ever so slightly in
awe. “Captain Sedelnikov?”

“Benny!”
Dylan shouted.

That snapped
him out of it. “What... Oh.” He looked back at Dylan. “Sorry.”

“You were
right,” Dylan said.

Akagi gave
Dylan an odd look.

“Come
closer, Dylan,” Benny suggested. “Take a good look.”

“Hey now,
wait just a minute there,” Akagi warned. “That security barrier is there for a
reason, gentlemen, and no way am I going to authorize shutting it off until you
tell me exactly what you’re here to do. I don’t care if you are S-I-A, Lieutenant.
I want to know what your orders are—what you’re looking into—and I want to know
right now.”

“Commander...”

“We’re not
looking into anything, Commander,” Benny advised him, apparently having decided
that the appropriate time to divulge their true mission was upon them and
knowing how reluctant Dylan would still feel to do so. “Lieutenant Graves is
going through.”

“What!”
Akagi exclaimed in shock, his magnified eyes bulging white and wide as saucers behind
his lenses. The guard at the security post stood to his feet but otherwise kept
his place.

“I said, the
lieutenant is going through the Portal,” Benny calmly repeated.

“What the
hell... I heard what you... Absolutely not! That’s...that’s just crazy! No, no,
no, Benny!” he exclaimed, shaking his head and waving his arms back and forth
in front of him as though he were calling a base runner safe at home plate. “That
is completely unacceptable! Out of the question! Do you have any idea how
dangerous that could be?”

“I know very
well...” Dylan started to answer.

“Calm
yourself, Commander,” Benny said evenly, interrupting.

Dylan fell
silent and just stood there and watched the exchange. The guard, still standing
fast at his post, did the same.

Akagi shut
his mouth long enough to bring his temper under control, then asked, “Has
Central Command completely lost its collective mind?”

Benny
snickered. “Now that’s another question entirely,” he said. “One that I’ve
asked myself many times over the years. But the fact remains, Commander Akagi,
that Lieutenant Graves has very specific orders, and those orders include his
stepping through that thing.”

“Oh no,” Akagi
said, shaking his head. “No way. I’m sorry, Benny, but I cannot allow him to do
that. In fact, I’m not allowing him anywhere
near
the Portal until I
receive official confirmation of those orders. And I’m talking about
direct
confirmation, too, straight from Command Admiral Chaffee if I can get it or from
Admiral Hansen if I can’t. I won’t accept some vague ‘go-ahead’ from an
anonymous junior level yes-man.” As an afterthought, he added, “I’m referring,
of course, to the lieutenant here when I say that.”