Solfleet: Above and Beyond Read online

  SOLFLEET: ABOVE AND BEYOND

  by Glenn E. Smith

  Copyright © 2018, Glenn E. Smith

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without the express written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To all who refused to stop believing in this work, I thank you.

  And thank you, Andrew “Sarge” Grieb, for once more offering me your proofreading services. Life tossed you more than one curve ball while you held this work in your hands, but you stayed strong and remained true to “the mission.” I appreciate that, my friend, and shall always be grateful.

  And one more very special, “Thank you!” to my good friend Jeffrey Hayes of Plasmafire Graphics for creating another beautiful cover! I am in awe of your talent, Jeff. Check out his website at www.plasmafiregraphics.com, dear readers. You will not be disappointed!

  Table of Contents

  SOLFLEET: ABOVE AND BEYOND

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Epilogue

  CHAPTER 1

  Monday, 21 March 2168

  Awareness. Thought. Consciousness.

  Awareness of...what? Nothing. Awareness of nothing. There was nothing at all. Blindness. Were his eyes even open? No way to know. Deafness. No sound at all. Not even the quiet whispering ring that he almost always heard whenever total silence surrounded him. Nothing.

  No cold. No heat. No sensation at all.

  He drew a breath. Or did he? No odor. No taste. Was he breathing? Could he breathe? Did he even need to breathe?

  No ground. Where was the ground? Weightlessness? No nausea.

  Nothing. No sensation at all.

  Not even his own heartbeat.

  Was this death?

  Awareness. Thought. Consciousness. Familiarity.

  PAIN!

  * * *

  Pain?

  Sensation!

  Awareness. Thought. Consciousness.

  And pain!

  He felt pain. The back of his head hurt. His arms as well—his left forearm near the elbow, his right near the wrist. He remembered. He’d seen something coming right at him a moment ago—an instant ago. He must have thrown his arms up in front of him, but he didn’t remember doing that. Apparently, he’d taken the blow across the arms and then fallen to the ground with a bone-jarring thud, hitting the back of his head and knocking the wind out of him.

  Sucking in air like a vacuum, he rose up onto his elbows, slowly, but he couldn’t see much of anything beyond the dark fog that was swirling before his eyes. He lay there like that for a few more moments and drew several more deep breaths, quickly, one right after the other, until he started feeling as though he might hyperventilate. Then he slowed down and took a few more moments to relax. After another minute or so, his breathing finally became more regular and that dark fog began to clear.

  He sat up. Pavement. He was sitting on pavement—hard, slightly bumpy and a little rough in spots, but generally smooth overall. Warm to the touch, too. Warmed by the sun, no doubt, as he was awash in daylight. He looked up. Bright and sunny. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, at least not in that small area of sky that he could see, and the air felt still and warm. So, where was he? Where had the Portal dumped him this time?

  He looked around. Two or three meters overhead and slightly behind him, a thick metal beam hovered at a roughly forty-five-degree angle to the ground. That must have been the object that he’d hit with his arms. It wasn’t actually hovering, of course. One end was bolted to a rough red brick wall—the wall of the building to his left—the other end to the bottom of the edge of a landing farthest from that wall—the lowest of three such landings that, together with the retracted ladder that led up to it, and the two flights of stairs that led up to the second and third landings above it, formed an old-fashioned fire escape. It was a support beam...but for a fire escape? Builders hadn’t used combustible materials in over a century. Who on Earth...assuming that he was on Earth...constructed buildings with fire escapes anymore? This one had been painted black, but not very recently, that was for sure. Much of the paint on the underside of that landing and the few parts of the supporting framework that he could see clearly was peeling and looked like it had been for a very long time, revealing a little bit of bare silver-gray metal and a whole lot of rust. The entire structure was obviously very old.

  A feeling of icy dread suddenly washed over him. It felt almost as though some kind of evil spirit had just passed through his body, which was nonsense, of course. What if he had gone through the Portal too early this time? What if he’d been carried centuries back in time instead of just a few months? What if he’d arrived in a time before jump technology had been developed? Or worse, in a time before mankind had achieved spaceflight of any kind?

  Wherever he was, he could be stranded there for the rest of his life.

  He looked down at himself. He was wearing blue jeans, a green cotton shirt, his utility boots, and, most importantly, the jacket in which he’d pocketed his recall device. His handcomp lay on the ground near his feet. If he’d arrived no earlier than the mid- to late-twentieth century, his clothes would allow him to blend in with the local population, but even with his equipment, if he’d arrived in too early an era and couldn’t complete his mission, there would be no way for him to return home and no hope of ever finding one. That would mean that he’d failed in his mission with no hope of ever being able to try again! He’d be trapped forever in the past with no means of escape!

  He stood up, slowly—he felt a little unsteady at first, but that started to pass almost immediately—then reached back and gently pressed his hand to the back of his head a
nd found it to be a little tender. He looked at his hand—no blood, thank God—and then brushed himself off. His arms hurt even more than his head did, but he felt fairly sure that he hadn’t broken any bones.

  He certainly hoped that he hadn’t.

  As he continued brushing off his clothes, he thought about everything that had happened in the last few minutes—in his last few minutes—everything that he had done. He’d taken a young security policewoman hostage, hijacked a patrol skiff, and forced the pilot to take him down to the surface of Window World. Then he’d held Major Hansen hostage as he made his way to the Portal. He’d made it up to the controls and had gotten the SP lieutenant to activate them. He’d made his way out onto the Portal, played his recording of Commander Akagi telling the Portal where and when to send him, and then stood there and waited for the right moment, holding Hansen between him and the weapons that the troops had pointed at him.

  He had little doubt that the major was expendable—that the security of the Portal was the lieutenant’s primary responsibility. He hadn’t even thought of that at the time, but now that it was over, he realized just how fortunate he was that the lieutenant hadn’t had the stomach to order his troops to fire before he fell through.

  But had he truly waited for the right moment? He felt pretty sure that he had, but... He had watched the countdown on his handcomp...hadn’t he? Or, was he thinking now of his first time through, when he hadn’t been in such a hurry? He was still having a little trouble thinking straight. Now that he thought about it, he had been in a hurry. The first time he’d gone through the Portal, he’d done so in the middle of a Veshtonn attack, but this time... Had he only counted off the seconds in his head this time and not watched the counter at all? If he had, might he also have sped up the pace of that count in his anxiousness to escape? Chances were good that he had, he feared, and if he had, then chances were also good that he had blown his entire mission.

  So where exactly was he? More importantly, when exactly was he? If he had blown his mission, there was certainly nothing that he could do about it now. So, what exactly was his current situation? He wanted to know...had to know for sure, and he had to know now!

  Another building stood opposite the old-fashioned red brick one—a typical office building from the look of it. It was a dozen stories tall or more, made of a light tan stone with lots of windows. He was standing in an alley between the two, he realized, and he could see a street just beyond its mouth.

  He grabbed his handcomp up off of the ground, shut it off, and then slipped it into his belt pouch as he started walking toward the street, eyes and ears wide open. It was day, obviously—early to mid-morning, judging from the position of the sun behind him, hanging just a few degrees above the rooftops. What little he could see of the sidewalk ahead of him and of the buildings across the street as he approached the alley’s mouth looked normal enough, and the pedestrians’ clothing looked relatively modern, so he started feeling a little better, like maybe he hadn’t been carried too far back in time after all. But in the back of his mind, the mere presence of that fire escape still bothered him. Why, in an age when buildings were constructed of only non-combustible synthetic materials, would anyone build a fire escape onto one?

  He stepped out of the alley onto the sidewalk and stopped, then looked to his left just in time to take one more step forward, out of the path of a well-dressed middle-aged man who was paying more attention to whatever was on the screen of the tablet that he was carrying than he was to where he was walking. Dylan started to say something to him, but then fell silent when he glimpsed a sign mounted above the red brick building’s large front door—an old sign, cast-iron or perhaps bronze, green with age, with heavily faded lettering that gave him the answer to why the building had a fire escape. The building was an old one from the colonial days of the mid- to late-1700s with some historical significance. He couldn’t make out much of the smaller writing—his vision still seemed to be a little cloudy—but according to what he could make out, the building had been completely restored back in the early twenty-first century. That must have been why it had a fire escape. All of its interior walls would have been framed out and studded with real wood and finished with latex-painted drywall, and all of its furniture would be made of real wood and flammable fabrics. Not to mention the fact that it was probably filled with historic books and papers.

  A sickening crack and a hollow thud like the sound of a man being struck and then falling hard to the ground came from the alley behind him, accompanied briefly by a hum like the sound of a large tuning fork after it had been struck against a hard surface. Dylan looked back over his shoulder toward the sound and saw someone lying on the ground near the fire escape where he had landed—someone who appeared to be dressed all in blue. He or she wasn’t moving, at least not that he could see, as though he or she were unconscious...or worse.

  He ran back into the alley, hoping that he might be able to do something to help the person, but then, when he drew close enough to see that the person’s clothes were actually a uniform and then realized exactly what uniform it was, he stopped running abruptly and skidded to a halt. He stared down at the man in wide-eyed disbelief. “Oh my God,” he tried to say, but the words caught in his throat and his lips only moved in silence.

  The man was him! It was him, having just gone through the Portal for the first time! He...the other Dylan...lay on the ground unconscious and bleeding from a gash on his head, just as he had after he went through the first time, when the two cadets found him. He’d struck his head on that same fire escape support! It all came back to him—the alley, the buildings, the bright sunny day, unseasonably warm for the middle of March in Philadelphia. This was amazing!

  His concerns for his mission faded as a sense of relief washed over him. He wasn’t lost at all! He’d journeyed back to the same place, to almost exactly the same time! He was right where he needed to be—right where and when he needed to be—and now there were two of him!

  He looked over at the handcomp laying by his other self’s side. It appeared as though it was still functioning. Had it still been functioning before? He couldn’t remember. Should he switch it off? Had he picked it up himself, or had one of the cadets who’d helped him retrieved it? He tried to remember, but his memory of what had happened immediately after his first trip through the Portal was still pretty foggy at best. He’d only been semiconscious at the time—too groggy to observe very much—so all that he could remember now were bits and pieces.

  Perhaps that was his answer. If he had been so far out of it, then it was most likely one of the cadets who had picked up his handcomp. He probably hadn’t touched it himself, assuming that he’d even known where it was at the time, so it was likely best to leave it alone now.

  The cadets! They were probably going to show up sometime in the next few minutes! He couldn’t let them see him. He had to get away, fast. He was certainly no expert on all the effects of time-travel, even now, but who knew what kind of paradox or other such complication might be created if they saw him?

  He started walking back toward the street. As he approached the sidewalk once more, he decided that it would probably be best to avoid going anywhere that he’d gone before, at least for a day or two—the Drexel University Hospital, the campus grounds, the shuttle to the Philadelphia aerospaceport, the aerospaceport itself. They were all places where someone might notice him if he and the other Dylan both showed their faces there at around the same times, and the last thing that he wanted or needed was to be noticed. Which reminded him, there was no time to waste. He needed to get gone before the cadets showed up.

  But which way should he go? He was about to choose a direction at random when he heard what sounded like the voices of two young men pierce the city din. Those voices were boisterous, full of joy, and sounded hauntingly familiar...and seemed to be growing closer by the second. There was no mistaking them. They were the voices of the two cadets who had helped him out of the alley!

&nbs
p; He stepped back quickly, away from the sidewalk and back into the alley, out of sight, at least for the moment. He looked to his right. Nothing. Nowhere to go. He looked to his left. There was a black door—a side entrance into the old historical building. He hurried over to it, grasped its big brass knob and tried to turn it to the right and then the left, but it wouldn’t budge more than a fraction of an inch. He pulled on it and then pushed on the door, but to no avail. The door was locked tight and firmly secured.

  He ran back down the alley toward the fire escape, leapt up and grabbed hold of the edge of its first landing—that was quicker than running around to the base of the rear-facing stairs. He pulled himself up and climbed over the railing onto the landing, then dashed up the stairs toward the top landing as fast and as quietly as he could. The cadets appeared just as he stopped and looked, walking across the mouth of the alley from the left to the right, barely a second after he’d reached the top of the escape. He crouched low against the red brick wall beside a window and made himself as small and insignificant as he could, then watched the events of his recent past unfold before his eyes.

  The taller of the two cadets—the one named Cosgrove, if he remembered correctly—glanced down the alley as they walked past it and did a double-take. “Josh, look!” he exclaimed, stopping and pointing toward the unconscious other Dylan. One thing about city alleys, they usually had good acoustics. Dylan could hear him quite clearly. The other cadet, Josh, whose last name he couldn’t recall, stopped and looked where his friend was pointing, and then both of them ran into the alley and knelt down by the other Dylan’s side.

  “Are you all right?” Cosgrove asked him loudly. Then he put a hand on the other Dylan’s chest, shook him gently, and repeated the question. “Are you all right?”

  Dylan recalled hearing that question when he started to come to, like a faint, ghostly voice echoing in his mind. One time or two, he couldn’t remember.

  The other Dylan didn’t respond, so Cosgrove asked him one more time, “Sir? Are you all right?” Still, he did not respond. Cosgrove reached in and started probing the back of his neck with his fingers. Then he rolled him slightly over to one side and continued probing along his back, down the length of his spine. “Sir? Are you all right?” he asked him once more. This time Dylan thought he saw the other Dylan open his eyes and then quickly close them again, but it was difficult to be sure, given that he was peering down through metal slats from three stories above. Seconds later, the other Dylan opened his eyes again—this time Dylan was sure of it—and this time he kept them open and started looking around.