Solfleet: The Call of Duty (96 page)

So why not
cooperate fully, as long as he didn’t compromise any classified information? He’d
done the crime, so he deserved whatever punishment he might get, regardless of what
his motives might have been. Besides, if the Timeshift mission was successful there
was a chance, however slim, that none of this would matter anyway. He drew a
deep breath, exhaled loudly, and said, “Make yourself comfortable, Mister Krieger.
I have a story to tell you.”

“I’m all
ears, Admiral, as long as it’s a
true
story.”

“It is.” At
least most of it would be. “As you know, we’ve been at war with the Veshtonn
for a very long time. About seven years ago, when things were looking
particularly grim for our side—pretty much like they’ve been looking here lately—Commander
Royer and I developed a plan to mass produce an army of cyberclone soldiers. We
knew what we were doing was illegal, but a couple decades earlier, before the B-C-C-A
banned breeding and enhancement programs, cyberclone soldiers had proven
themselves superior to what we then called ‘true-human’ soldiers over and over
again, and we desperately needed the advantage they could give us. Over a
period of about three months we bred tens of thousands of them.”

“You must
have had a lot of help,” Krieger commented.

“Not as much
as you might think, but yes, we had some help.”

“Then how in
God’s name were you able to keep your plan quiet for so long? It’s been my
experience that most people who are privy to secret information can’t keep their
mouths shut for very long.”

“Keeping
secrets is part of our business, Mister Krieger.”

“I
understand that, sir, but I would think the sheer enormity of such a program
would make it especially difficult to hide.”

“And you’d
be right. It has been especially difficult. But there are ways to do it.”

“Apparently.”
Krieger seemed to drift off for a few moments, appearing lost in thought. Then
he asked, “So where are these tens of thousands of would-be cyberclone soldiers
now?”

Hansen
hesitated to answer that particular question, wondering if the clones might be
better off if he didn’t say. But he also realized that those clones who hadn’t
been sent back with Günter as embryos would be sought out anyway, now that
their existence had been made known, and that sooner or later they’d be found. So
perhaps it would be better for them that he reveal their whereabouts now—only
their
whereabouts, of course—and make an argument for their right to remain there
if they should choose to do so.

“They’re
settled on a small out of the way world of their own, code-named Charlie
Colony. You’ll find everything you need to know about it in a secure file in my
office. But before I provide the access code to that file I want to officially request
that they be allowed to stay where they are in accordance with the Zephyrian
Colonization Act, if that’s their wish. They’ve been there for several years
now and have built lives for themselves.”

“Built lives
for themselves?” Krieger asked. “They’re only children, Admiral. How could they...”

“They’re not
children, Mister Krieger,” Hansen interrupted. “They’re full grown adults. Some
of them even have children of their own.”

“I thought
you said they were just bred seven years ago.”

“Closer to
six and a half, actually.”

“Then how...”

“Artificial
age acceleration.”

“Artificial
age acceleration?” Krieger parroted, his voice filled with skepticism. “You
know what, Admiral? This tall tale of yours is beginning to sound more and more
like a science fiction novel. I thought you’d decided to do the right thing
here.”

“That’s
exactly what I am doing, Mister Krieger,” Hansen assured him. “This tall tale
of mine, as you call it, happens to be the truth.”

“It seems
pretty far-fetched to me, sir.”

Hansen
shrugged his shoulders. “It is what it is.”

Krieger
thought about it for another moment, then said, “All right, Admiral. Because
you are who you are, I’ll accept that for now. Your request on behalf of your
cyberclone colonists is noted. I’ll be sure to send it up the chain of command.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re
welcome, sir. Now, let’s talk about Dylan Graves for a little while.”

“All right,”
Hansen said, not at all caught off guard by the sudden change of subject. The
best criminal investigators did that regularly when they interrogated suspects
in order to keep them off balance and, hopefully, get them to admit something
they might not have intended to admit. “What do you want to know about him?”

“First of
all, as one of your newest agents, how exactly does he fit into all this?”

“Well,”
Hansen began, thinking as he spoke, “in one sense he’s at the center of it all,
but he’s more a victim than he is anything else. Back when he was a marine
squad sergeant his unit was assigned a particular mission. I can’t go into the
details because it’s still classified, but I can tell you that it got real
ugly, real fast. There was a firefight, and during the battle Sergeant Graves
encountered a...a Veshtonn blood-warrior that had been surgically altered. My
agency later retrieved the remains of that Veshtonn and determined that the alterations
were based on our own cyberclone technology. This was the first hard evidence
we’d ever obtained that the Veshtonn had, in fact, gotten their claws on our
technology and were using it against us. What was worse, some of what we
recovered was based on advancements my agency had made in the technology just a
few years earlier.”

“So there
was little doubt that you and your people had somehow enabled the Veshtonn to
get hold of our latest, most advanced cyberclone technology,” Krieger
concluded. “Either through lax security procedures, or failure to identify a
spy, or...”

“There was
no
doubt at all, Mister Krieger.”

“And because
Sergeant Graves saw this altered Veshtonn...”

“We had a memory-edit
done on him. Actually, on him and one other marine who also saw it.”

“Who was
that?”

“A young
woman by the name of Marissa Ortiz. A corporal in Sergeant Graves’ squad at the
time. We altered her memories to match the ones we gave him and then implanted
a strong desire to put the whole thing behind her and start a new life, which
she has since done.”

“Then what?”

“Then we
thought we were good. We thought we’d covered our tracks...until Sergeant
Graves’ true memories started coming back to him in the form of nightmares. I personally
didn’t know about that until much later than Royer did, and to this day I don’t
know how or why that happened. I’ve never heard of a memory-edit failing before.
But, for whatever reason, this one did fail. Sergeant Graves started experiencing
two conflicting sets of memories of the same incident. Naturally, he wanted an
explanation.”

Krieger
snickered. “Can you blame him, Admiral?”

“Hell no. Of
course not. If it were me I’d have wanted one, too. Anyone would have.” It
was
him, of course. His nightmares had played out the impossible time and time
again. And yes, he did want an explanation. More than Krieger could possibly
know.

“So he was
given one,” he continued. “Post-traumatic stress. He’d been badly wounded. Damn
near killed, in fact. Commander Royer arranged for him to get some counseling
with psychiatrists, psychologists, post-trauma specialists... Eventually, he
bought into the idea that his nightmares weren’t real, and apparently they
stopped soon after that, at least for a while.”

“You say you
didn’t know about any of that until much later, sir?”

“I had been
informed of the battle and I authorized the memory-edits at Commander Royer’s
request, but I didn’t know about Sergeant Graves’ nightmares until...until she
filled me in much later.”

“I see.
Besides the fact that Sergeant Graves is now Special Agent Graves of the S-I-A,
what’s your current interest in him? If what you’ve told me is true, why did
Commander Royer find it necessary to fill you in on all this so long after it
happened?”

Hansen
hesitated. That was one question he couldn’t answer truthfully, no matter how
much he’d agreed to cooperate. For one thing, Dylan Graves’ identity as an
S.I.A. Special Agent was classified. Despite the fact that Krieger had Min’para’s
files, his references to him by that title might still have been a fishing
expedition. Hansen hadn’t had the benefit of seeing those files for himself, so
he had no idea what details they might or might not include. And he certainly
couldn’t say anything about the mission he’d sent Graves on without revealing
the existence of the Portal.

“Isn’t it
obvious, Mister Krieger?” he asked, hoping to redirect the investigator’s line
of questioning. “For some reason his true memories have once again started
reasserting themselves. That’s why his fiancée introduced him to Min’para in
the first place. The professor is a...was...a telepath. After they met we kept
a close eye on the watched the professor. I put Royer in charge of the
surveillance operation, and based on her team’s observations we knew that he’d
not only figured out what we did to Graves, but had also put together the facts
of what we’d done in regards to the cloning.”

“And in an
attempt to keep all of that from coming out, Commander Royer took it upon herself
to order the professor’s death,” Krieger concluded. “Yes, Admiral, we covered
that. That doesn’t answer my question.”

Hansen’s
gaze briefly fell to the tabletop, but then he looked Krieger in the eye again
and said, “Understand this, Mister Krieger. Despite everything she’s done, with
or without my knowledge, Commander Elizabeth Royer is a fine officer with whom
it’s been my privilege to serve with all these years. Handing her over to you
on a silver platter with my knife sticking out of her back is not an easy thing
for me to do.”

“Nor should
it be, Admiral. But it is the
right
thing to do, and right now you need
to do the right thing. If you understand that, sir, and you obviously do, then
all of this will go a lot easier for you.”

“I doubt
that very much.”

“I’m sure
you do, sir.” When Hansen didn’t say anything more, Krieger shifted in his
chair and said, “Tell you what, Admiral. We’ll leave the commander alone for
the moment. We were talking about Dylan Graves. My office has been trying to
find him since early this morning, but we haven’t had any luck. Would you
happen to know his current whereabouts?”

“No,” Hansen
lied, perhaps just a split second too quickly.

Krieger
hesitated for the briefest moment, then simply said, “I see,” but that moment’s
hesitation was enough to give him away. He did indeed see, Hansen knew. Gazing
intently into his eyes, the admiral saw that Krieger didn’t believe his answer
for a second. He obviously knew more than he was letting on, and that was
dangerous. Hansen was going to have to knock him off his current line of
questioning.

“If I did
know, Mister Krieger...”

“What did Commander
Royer do on the comm-panel in your office, right before the MPs subdued her, Admiral?”
Krieger asked, ignoring Hansen’s attempt to expound on his previous answer.

Krieger
definitely knew something. But what? “I thought you said we were going to leave
the commander alone for now.”

“I did, sir,
but if you’re going to start lying to me...”

“I’m not
lying to you, Mister Krieger,” Hansen claimed, doing his best to sound both
genuinely offended and a little perturbed by the accusation, hoping and
doubting at the same time that it might rattle him a little.

“I think you
are lying, Admiral,” Krieger contended, clearly not the least bit intimidated. “I
think you know exactly where Dylan Graves is.”

Hansen fell
silent. Of course he knew where Graves was. He just couldn’t say anything about
it, and fortunately he didn’t have to. “You know what, Mister Krieger. I think
I’d like to talk to my attorney before I answer any more of your questions.”

Krieger sat
back in his chair and sighed, probably wishing he could kick himself right in
the teeth. “All right, Admiral,” he said. “If that’s what you want.” Then he
stood up. “Wait here, sir. Someone will get back to you in a few minutes.”

Krieger
turned and left the room without another word, and the oversized MP sergeant
stepped back inside and closed the door.

“Wait here,
he says,” Hansen muttered under his breath. “Like I have a choice.”

Agent Krieger
paused outside the door, feeling very pleased with himself, and shook his fist
in triumph. Vice-Admiral Hansen had more years in law enforcement and Intelligence
than he had in life itself. He hadn’t expected to get anything useful out of
him at all, let alone get it so easily. But the methods he’d employed—the methods
his instructors at the C.I.D. Academy had taught him—had worked beautifully. The
admiral had waived his rights and had ended up doing exactly what he’d
described. He’d handed Royer over to him on a silver platter with his knife
sticking out of her back.

He had her.

He walked
the short distance down the hall to the first door on his left and stepped back
into interview room number one with newfound confidence.

The room was
identical to the one Admiral Hansen was occupying in every way but one. Instead
of having its back to the door, the chair with the prisoner restraints had been
installed at the far end of the table, facing it. Back in the C.I.D. Academy
Krieger had learned all about how an interview room’s design could affect on an
interviewee. About how the arrangement of the furniture, or even the lack
thereof, could make a difference in the failure or success of an interrogation.
He’d put Commander Royer in Interview-1 to make her feel surrounded and
cornered. To make her feel like there was no way out of her predicament except
through total cooperation. She could see the door, her only escape route, right
in front of her, but she couldn’t get past the guards to reach it.