Solfleet: Above and Beyond Page 2

  He lifted an arm and then reached for the gash on his forehead, but Cosgrove grabbed hold of it and stopped him from touching the wound. “He’s awake, Josh,” the cadet told his friend.

  “I’m really alive?” the other Dylan asked weakly, his voice little more than a whisper.

  Great acoustics.

  “Yes, sir,” Cosgrove replied as though the answer should have been obvious, which, of course, it was. Then he asked, “Did you think you were dead?”

  “Not anymore,” the other Dylan replied after a moment. “I just needed to hear it from someone else.”

  “I promise, sir. You’re really alive.”

  “Who are you?” the other Dylan inquired after another moment.

  “My name is Cadet Vinson Cosgrove, sir,” the young man answered. “This is my friend, Cadet Joshua Targanian.”

  ‘Targanian.’ An unusual name. No wonder he’d had trouble remembering it.

  Grunting with the effort, the other Dylan lifted his head up off of the ground, but then he dropped it back after no more than a second or two, fortunately into Cosgrove’s waiting hand rather than onto the hard pavement. Dylan understood exactly why, recalling how the entire world had begun to spin around him when he’d done that.

  The other Dylan slid his hands back and forth over a small portion of the pavement, appearing to scratch at it with his fingertips for a moment, and then looked back and forth at the buildings on either side of the alley a couple of times.

  Trying to figure out where he was, if Dylan recalled correctly.

  “Do you know who you are, sir?” Cosgrove was asking him.

  “Of course I know who I am,” the other Dylan replied.

  “What’s your name?”

  “My name is...Sergeant Dylan Graves, Solfleet... Solfleet Security Police.”

  Despite the fact that he already knew the injured man was an earlier version of himself, and having already figured out and accepted what was going on right before his eyes, hearing the man identify himself as ‘Sergeant Dylan Graves’ still gave Dylan a sort of haunted feeling, almost as though someone had just walked over his grave, as the old analogy went. It felt...weird. Just...weird.

  “Well, at least that’s consistent with his uniform,” Targanian remarked.

  “Yeah, but he should know better than to wear it around this part of town,” Cosgrove replied. Then he asked the other Dylan, “Do you know where you are, Sergeant Graves?”

  The other Dylan remained quiet for a moment, then answered, “I believe I’m lying on the ground.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cosgrove confirmed over Targanian’s sniggering. “But do you know where? What neighborhood, or at least what city?”

  “You men are cadets, right?” the other Dylan asked.

  The younger men nodded, and Cosgrove replied, “That’s right.”

  “Then I guess I’m in...still in...Geneva.”

  Geneva. That had been the first thing to pop into his head, as Dylan recalled. Geneva—the longtime capital city of the United Earth Federation. For a Security Police sergeant to have been there was nothing unusual.

  “Geneva?” Targanian responded with surprise.

  “I’m not in Geneva?” the other Dylan inquired.

  “You’re not even in Switzerland,” Cosgrove advised him as though the idea that he might have been there were ridiculous, “or anywhere else in Europe for that matter. You’re in the United States, Sergeant Graves,” he then explained, adding, “Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to be exact. Josh and I are U-S Aerospace Force R-O-T-C cadets at Drexel University.”

  “Philadelphia?”

  “Yes, sir,” the cadet confirmed for him. Then he asked him, “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  The other Dylan closed his eyes and kept quiet for a time. Then he opened them again, whispered something that Dylan couldn’t hear or remember, and then followed that up, saying, “Philadelphia. Oh, that’s right. Now I remember. I left Switzerland yesterday. I arrived here late last night.”

  “You have a pretty nasty gash on your forehead,” Cosgrove told him, “and it looks like it’s starting to swell up. Any idea what happened to you?”

  “No, I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything after...after getting off the maglev.”

  He had remembered, of course. He had remembered everything by that time. And now Dylan remembered lying to the cadets about it.

  “Well, chances are, around this part of town, that whatever happened to you wasn’t an accident,” Cosgrove told the other Dylan. “I thought everyone in the fleet knew better than to come around here in uniform unarmed.” He paused briefly, then asked, “Were you armed?”

  “No, I wasn’t armed,” the other Dylan replied, “but I’m new in town. It’s my first time here, so I didn’t know...”

  “Oh,” Targanian said, interrupting. “In that case, welcome to Philadelphia.”

  “Josh!” Cosgrove scolded.

  “Yeah, thanks a lot,” the other Dylan added sarcastically.

  Dylan grinned. Truth be told, he thought that welcome was kind of funny himself...now.

  “Sorry,” Josh offered sheepishly.

  “Forget it,” the other Dylan told him. “Just do me a favor and help me up, will you?”

  Cosgrove adjusted his grasp on the arm that he was holding while Targanian took hold of his other one. Then the cadets slowly and carefully sat him up.

  “You look like you could use some medical attention, Sergeant,” Cosgrove told him, sounding as though he were pointing out the obvious. “Why don’t you let Josh and me take you to the University Hospital?”

  “I think that might be a good idea,” the other Dylan replied after a moment. “Thank you.”

  “Are you ready to try standing up?”

  “I think so.”

  The cadets helped the other Dylan to his feet and brushed him off, but then had to catch him and hold him steady when his knees buckled beneath him. Then, a few moments later, the other Dylan said, “All right, gentlemen. What do you say you get me to that hospital of yours?”

  “Yes, sir,” one of the cadets replied. Dylan couldn’t recall which one. Not that it really mattered.

  The cadets posted themselves on either side of the other Dylan and lifted his arms up around their shoulders, grabbed hold of the back of his belt, and then guided him up the alley toward the street, slowly at first, then a little bit faster when he started to walk a little more steadily on his own.

  The back of Dylan’s right upper leg suddenly cramped up. He didn’t want to move because he and the fire escape were casting a shadow on the ground directly ahead of the trio, but after a few seconds he had no choice. The cramp was a painful one and was quickly growing worse. Moving as little as possible, he straightened the offending leg out in front of him and then leaned slightly forward to stretch it out, and when he noticed his shadow moving with him, he suddenly recalled having noticed it while the cadets helped him out of the alley as well.

  He gasped as the realization hit him like a brick to the head. He wasn’t the first Dylan to have gone through the Portal a second time! On the contrary, he was just one Dylan among...God knew how many! He was caught in some kind of a repeating loop! All of this had happened before, and it was all happening all over again, just as it had the last time.

  “I wouldn’t touch that if I were you, sir,” Cosgrove said, his voice fading slightly as the trio walked farther away. “Your hands are pretty dirty. It might get infected.”

  “You sound like my mother,” the other Dylan remarked.

  “Obviously a very wise woman,” Targanian commented.

  The other Dylan responded to that remark, as well, but Dylan couldn’t make out what he said. Nor could he remember what he’d said at that moment.

  Even after they’d walked out of sight, Dylan waited for what seemed like several minutes more before he finally dared to move again, not wanting to risk the possibility that he might run into them out on the street. During those min
utes, he thought about what he had just witnessed. Everything had happened exactly as he remembered it happening before—at least, those parts that he could remember. He recalled reading various theories about time-travel during his original mission prep. One of the more descriptive theories among them had been a centuries-old belief that the passage of time was fluid, like a river, with currents and eddies, and even backwash. Now, finally, it was all beginning to make some sort of sense to him. Well, some of it was beginning to make some sort of sense. By coming back in time through the Portal and affecting the past, he had created new currents and eddies in time that would change the future. Perhaps only a little. Perhaps a lot. He would probably never know for sure. But, if he understood the theory at all, then this other Dylan was destined to return through the Portal and witness his own arrival, just as he had just done—just as he had no doubt repeated everything that the Dylan who had come before him had done. The same current that had brought him here both times would continue to do so, flowing along that same backwash, time and time again until something else happened to change the direction of its flow. At least...that was his theory.

  And, as his mission orders outlined, he was that something, or rather that someone, who had to change it. He had to restore the universe.

  He couldn’t help but to wonder, though, what the Dylan who’d come before him had done. Had he finally succeeded? Was he destined to succeed this time?

  Deciding that he’d waited plenty long enough, he descended the fire escape and jumped to the ground from its lowest landing—his leg was still a little sore from the cramp, but at least the cramping itself had finally stopped—then began formulating a plan of action as he started walking toward the street once again. Two questions had already been answered, of course. First, his earlier self, the other Dylan, had just arrived, so he knew that today was the twenty-first of March, 2168. Second, because he knew the date, he also knew almost exactly how much time that he had before the Excalibur would be attacked and destroyed. The hard part was going to be figuring out how to prevent that destruction.

  “Stop right there!” someone barked from ahead of him.

  Dylan stopped a few steps short of the sidewalk and turned his gaze to his left, toward the source of that bark. Peering around the corner of the historical building with his sidearm trained right on him was a Philadelphia police officer clad all in black—several medals, leather jacket, jack boots—the same police officer who, as Dylan only now remembered, would have just taken statements from Cadets Cosgrove and Targanian about how they had found Solfleet Sergeant Dylan Graves in the alley and were taking him to the university hospital for medical attention...assuming, of course, that everything truly was continuing to play out exactly as it had the first time.

  Shit. He’d forgotten all about the police officer.

  “Put your hands on top of your head,” the officer ordered.

  Dylan hesitated, then asked the officer, “May I ask what you think I did?”

  “Do it now, or you’ll wish you had!” the officer shouted at him.

  Dylan complied with the order, moving slowly, so that he wouldn’t startle the officer with any sudden movements. He’d been in that man’s shoes plenty of times before, on the other side of the sidearm. He knew that the officer had good reason for what he was doing and for the way he was doing it—in fact, he knew exactly what that reason was—and he knew exactly what it felt like to have to face down a suspect without knowing from one moment to the next what that suspect might try to do.

  “Interlace your fingers and turn your hands palms-up.”

  Again, Dylan complied with the officer’s orders.

  “Now turn around and face into the alley, away from me.”

  Dylan turned around, and while he waited for the officer to walk up behind him and grab hold of him, he wondered how the hell he was going to explain his presence in two places at the same time to the man. Then again, he hadn’t had a haircut or shaved the moustache and goatee that he’d been growing since he left Mars in weeks. Maybe the officer wouldn’t recognize him as being the same man whom he’d just encountered as a Solfleet Security Police sergeant a few moments ago. If he did, Dylan quickly decided, then he would do whatever he might have to do to get away from him. He didn’t have any other choice. He couldn’t afford to get tied up in the city’s justice system. Not while the weight of the future of the entire world was resting on his shoulders.

  The officer grasped the ring and pinky fingers of both hands, along with a handful of hair, and leaned Dylan backwards, off balance. “What are you doing back here in this alley?” he then asked as he started patting him down.

  “I’m lost,” Dylan replied, saying the first thing that popped into his head, then wishing immediately that he’d come up with something better.

  The officer stopped patting him down. “Lost?”

  “Yes, sir,” Dylan replied firmly. “I’m new in town. Never been here. I got lost.” It was a lame explanation, he realized, but it was the one that he’d offered. He was committed to it now. “What’s this all about, anyway?” he then asked, hoping to move their conversation along before the officer decided that his explanation was as weak as he already knew it was himself.

  “Someone was assaulted and beaten pretty badly back here a little while ago, and now, here you are.” The officer found Dylan’s handcomp pouch on his belt but left it alone for the moment. Then he squatted down, leaning Dylan even farther backwards until he had to hold him up to prevent him from falling, and resumed his pat-down search on Dylan’s right leg.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Dylan told him, knowing that he probably wouldn’t believe that, “and I certainly didn’t do anything to anyone. I did just see a couple of young men helping someone out of here, though. Just a few minutes ago. I think the guy was in uniform. Looked pretty banged up.”

  “Interesting how those two young men didn’t mention seeing you back here when I talked to them a couple minutes ago,” the officer replied. “My guess is you were hiding from them, so my question isn’t whether or not you did anything. My question is whether or not you did the crime itself.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Dylan quickly assured him, and as soon as he’d done so, he wished that he hadn’t. Quick denials always made people sound guilty, even when they weren’t...most likely because, more often than not, they were.

  The officer stood back up, switched hands to maintain positive control over Dylan—right out of the training manual—and then squatted down once more and started patting down Dylan’s left leg. “Is that right?” he asked, his tone making it obvious that he wasn’t buying any of it.

  “I was just...”

  “So what is this on your belt?” the officer asked, interrupting Dylan’s story when he stood back up again and grabbed hold of the handcomp pouch. Just as well, as Dylan had had no idea what he was going to say. The officer reached into the pouch, pulled out the handcomp, and looked it over briefly. “This is Solfleet-issue equipment,” he observed. Then he started examining Dylan more closely, voicing his observations as he did so. “Unkempt hair, facial hair not trimmed, a few days’ growth on the cheeks and neck, clothing dirty and disheveled... Mister, you don’t look a whole lot like a member of Solfleet to me. Matter of fact, you look a little like the guy who was just assaulted. Is that what happened here?” he inquired. “You two a couple of shithead brothers who can’t get along with each other? You beat up your brother and then steal his handcomp for some reason?” The officer’s tone seemed to be growing more sarcastic and demeaning with every question, much the same way those of some of Dylan’s less than professionally-minded fellow military policemen sometimes had over the years when they knew they had a suspect by the gonads.

  Dylan swallowed. “No, sir,” he then answered respectfully. The last thing that he needed was for this unfortunate encounter to turn ugly—uglier.

  “No, of course not,” the officer said sarcastically. “No, you’re just another low-life thug who be
at the hell out of an unsuspecting soldier and took whatever he happened to have on him. Well, mister, that particular soldier just happened to be a law enforcement officer, like me, and you are under arrest for suspicion of aggravated battery and robbery.”

  Dylan drew a deep breath and sighed. “I didn’t do anything, officer,” he repeated. “I swear it.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” the officer replied. “Neither did anyone else I’ve ever arrested in all my years enforcing the law. Everyone is always innocent.” The officer pulled Dylan’s hands apart and moved his left one to the small of his back. Then he let go of the right one, presumably to reach for his handcuffs.

  Dylan didn’t want to do it, but the way that he saw it, he had no choice. He couldn’t complete his mission locked up in a jail cell. He spun around to his left and twisted his arm free of the surprised officer’s grasp, then struck the officer in the jaw with a right cross, knocking him backwards to the ground. The officer pulled out his sidearm—he must have holstered it after Dylan faced away from him—but Dylan charged forward and kicked it out of his hand before he could aim and fire. The officer then drew both of his feet back and kicked out, striking the inside of Dylan’s right knee hard. It buckled painfully and Dylan turned and fell to the pavement.

  The officer jumped to his feet—he was bleeding from his mouth—grabbed Dylan by the front of his shirt and lifted him up off of the ground. Dylan checked his stance—he felt a sharp pain in his knee, but he gambled that it would hold—and then struck the officer’s forearms outward with the backs of his fists, breaking his grasp. Then he slammed his injured knee up hard into the man’s groin. The officer grunted and doubled over, grapping his crotch in both hands. Dylan struck downward, hitting the officer in the temple with the back of his fist, then stepped aside and slammed the blade of his hand down on the back of the officer’s neck. The officer collapsed, unconscious.