Solfleet: Above and Beyond Page 3

  “Damn it!” Dylan exclaimed aloud. “Just what I don’t need, to become a fugitive from the law before my time!” He huffed angrily, then sniggered despite himself. Before his time? Considering the circumstances, that phrase might have been humorous, were his situation not so serious.

  He glanced toward the street to make sure that no one was watching. That no one had noticed them fighting was both a relief and a little disturbing at the same time, but he was thankful for it nonetheless. He retrieved his handcomp, checked to make sure that it still worked, and then slipped it back into its pouch on his belt. He glanced out at the street again, then dragged the officer deeper into the alley and sat him up against the wall behind an old dumpster, where no one would be able to see him from the street. Then he checked his pulse on the side of his neck. It felt good and strong. He was still unconscious, but he’d be all right.

  His eyes fell to the officer’s sidearm and he hesitated. He knew that taking it would likely be a bad idea. That would raise this incident to a whole new level of seriousness. But if he didn’t take it and the officer remained unconscious for a while, then someone else might take it, and if that happened, he’d end up being accused anyway. Truth be told, it wouldn’t hurt to have some protection, just in case. Philadelphia wasn’t exactly the safest city in the world.

  He picked up the weapon, checked to make sure that the safety was engaged, and then stuffed it into the back of his waistband. He checked to make sure that his recall device was still in his jacket pocket—it was—then hurried out of the alley. By now, the personnel vital signs monitor at whatever precinct house the officer worked out of would have alerted all of his fellow officers that he’d been rendered unconscious and advised them of exactly where he was. Help was likely already on its way. He turned right—the cadets had taken him to the left the first time and he did not want to risk overtaking them—and headed down the street.

  How should he proceed? Well, his mission was simple enough—get to the Excalibur and warn her captain, his father, of the attack that was to come. How exactly he was going to do that, however, was going to be a little more difficult to figure out. He was going to have to hire a ship, just as he had done on Mars, but how was he going to pay for it this time? The only money that he had access to was the extra cash notes that he’d withdrawn for himself. That wasn’t going to be nearly enough. Where was he going to get the money?

  An idea suddenly came to mind. It wasn’t the greatest idea, and it certainly wouldn’t be his first choice of possible ways to proceed, but it might work as a backup plan if it became necessary. He’d have to wait until mid-May, when his other self, in Red Gulch on Mars by that time, was going to create his second finance account. Once he did that, there would be plenty of funds available to him. All that he was going to have to do...

  Damn it. He fished through his pockets. He already knew that he had the cash notes and his recall device, but the only identicard that he had was the one that identified him as ‘Eric Richards.’ The rest of his cards were in his crew bag, and he’d left his crew bag behind, aboard the Star Eagle. Now he was going to have to figure out a way, if there even was a way, to enable his ‘Eric Richards’ identicard to access his ‘Dylan Graves’ financial accounts.

  First things first, though. Before he could do anything, he had to wait for the other Dylan to leave the city, so that he could move about freely without running into him. He considered finding a hotel room in which to hide out until tomorrow, but then decided that he wanted to make absolutely sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that everything was happening exactly as it had happened the last time—the first time—his first time. He needed to see the other Dylan leave.

  He stopped, turned around, and started walking toward Drexel University. He’d find a place from where he could observe the other Dylan and make sure that he headed for the aerospaceport when he was supposed to. Then he would worry about what to do after that.

  CHAPTER 2

  Pain. What had happened to him? What was happening to him? Where was he? Officer McCray could hear birds chirping all around him. He could also hear vehicles passing by not too far away, though he couldn’t determine for sure in what direction. He could hear voices, some of them loud, almost shouting, while others were barely audible, their words unintelligible.

  Pain. His neck hurt. It was no wonder. His head was hanging forward, his chin resting on his chest. That hurt, too...his chin. Actually, his jaw more than his chin. A lot more.

  He lifted his head...slowly, as doing so made the back of his neck really hurt, enough to elicit a grunt. He opened his mouth just as slowly, as wide as he could, and then flexed his jaw from one side to the other and back again. Yeah, his jaw was really sore. His left arm hurt, too, and he realized suddenly that it was pinned between his side and whatever hard surface he was leaning against, so he reached up with his right hand and massaged the back of his neck, grunting and moaning with the additional pain as he rolled his head around in circles, stretching his neck muscles, trying to work out the kinks. The sleeve of his leather duty jacket seemed to creak extra loudly in his ear.

  He was hot. His back hurt, almost as much as his left arm did. So did his rear end. It seemed as though every few seconds he was discovering more pain. He was sitting on the ground, leaning back and to his left against something hard.

  What the hell had happened to him?

  He opened his eyes—that seemed to take more effort than it should have—and looked around. He was in an alley. No, he was in the alley, sitting on the rough, cracked pavement, his back to a building’s red brick wall, leaning to his left against a dumpster. The alley in which a suspect had handed his ass to him on a silver platter. It was all coming back to him. He remembered everything now.

  He’d been making an arrest—a man who he’d suspected of having assaulted that Solfleet SP sergeant. The suspect had turned on him suddenly, before he’d had time to slap the handcuffs on him, and had proceeded to beat the stuffing out of him. He sighed. In all his years with the department, Senior Patrol Officer Sean McCray couldn’t recall one other time when one individual suspect had put him down so quickly or so easily without help. He’d earned his share of bumps and bruises over the years, but never anything like this. This was a genuine, old-fashioned ass-whooping. As soon as they knew for sure that he was going to be all right, his fellow officers were never going to let him live it down.

  He’d been a cop for a lot of years—a patrolman for every one of them. He still loved working the streets, but maybe it was time. He certainly wasn’t getting any younger. Maybe the time had come to start driving a desk.

  Speaking of his fellow officers... It suddenly dawned on him that he was hearing their sirens in the distance, coming steadily closer. More than one, from the sound of them. At least two and maybe more. He grunted and groaned as he struggled to his feet. He would have liked to give himself another minute or two, but there was no way that he going to let his brothers and sisters find him laid out on his ass in an alley. They were going to give him a hard enough time as it was.

  His balls were sore, too. That sorry son-of-a-bitch had kneed him right in the balls. What kind of man would do that to another man?

  He looked himself over. He was a little dirty, which he expected he would be, but at least he was still in one piece, more or less. He still had his badge, his comm-link, his handcomp, both pairs of handcuffs, and... His holster was empty! His sidearm had been stolen, his discovery of which prompted a quiet but firm, “Aw, shit.” The situation had just become a lot more serious.

  The sirens were drawing closer. Backup would be there any minute.

  Maybe it hadn’t been stolen after all. Maybe he’d just lost it in the fight. He started searching the ground around him, but his sidearm was nowhere to be seen. He knelt down on the pavement, both knees—a rather painful thing to do at the moment—leaned forward and peered in under the dumpster. It wasn’t there. He stood back up and widened his search, moving back and forth ac
ross the alley from one building’s wall to the other and back again, working his way slowly toward the street. He didn’t find it.

  The sirens grew suddenly much louder, then fell silent just as abruptly. Car doors closed. One, two...then three and four. Two backup units had arrived.

  “Sean!” someone shouted. That was Andy. He should have known that Andy would be the first one there for him. They’d been friends for a lot of years.

  He looked up. Yeah, his buddy, Andy, and Andy’s long-time partner, Shane. The other pair was following them—Officer Angela Calabrese and her new rookie partner, whose name McCray didn’t even know yet.

  “Sean, you okay?” Andy inquired as he and the other officers approached him and then came to a stop in front of him, one by one.

  “Yeah, I’m good, Andy,” McCray replied. “My pride hurts a lot worse than anything else.” That wasn’t entirely true, but why worry his friend?

  “You probably landed on it pretty hard,” Angela remarked.

  “You’re a funny lady, Angel,” McCray responded, though not bitterly. It was all in fun. She knew that.

  “How many of them were there?” Andy asked him.

  He sighed, then admitted with some hesitation, “Just one. Went all Bruce Lee on me and kicked my ass almost before I realized I was in a fight.”

  “One guy?” Andy asked him, apparently trying not to grin...and failing. “It was a guy, right? You didn’t let some little girl beat your ass, did you?”

  “Hey!” Angela protested. Andy glanced over at her and sniggered, and that was all there was to it.

  “Yeah, it was a guy,” McCray confirmed, “and he wasn’t just some punk off the street, I can tell you that. He was quick, and he hit hard...and he knew right where to hit, too.”

  “You gonna be able to have kids some day?” Angela inquired, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Is that an invitation?” McCray asked her in return.

  “You wish, old man.”

  “You think this guy might have been military?” Andy asked him, bringing that tangent to a quick end.

  “That’s my guess, although he didn’t really look the part,” McCray replied. “His hair was too long and he hadn’t shaved in several days at least. More likely, he’s former military.”

  Andy’s gaze fell to McCray’s equipment belt. “Sean, your sidearm.”

  “Yeah, I know. I spent the last few minutes looking for it,” McCray told him. “I remember I holstered it before I started taking the guy into custody, but now I can’t find it anywhere. I think the son-of-a-bitch must have stolen it.”

  Andy sighed. “Fuck.”

  “Yeah...fuck,” McCray agreed.

  “Did you search the whole alley?”

  “Not yet,” McCray replied, shaking his head...gently. “Just between here and the dumpster so far.”

  “All right.” Andy turned to Angela and her partner. “You two search the alley. I’m going to take him back to the house. Call the sergeant and let him know what you find.” Then, while the other two officers started their search, he laid a friendly hand on McCray’s shoulder and started guiding him out into the street. “Let’s get you back to the house and notify CAPO. They’ll want to jump on this right away.”

  “It started out as such a nice day, too,” McCray remarked.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  McCray let his old friend guide him over to his patrol car—one of the new skimmers. This wasn’t the first time that he’d been assaulted while trying to make an arrest, he ruminated once more. Not even close. He’d been punched, kicked, slapped, spat on, shoved backwards through a screen door, pushed out a window, stabbed, shot at, and even nearly run over by a car...more than once in most cases. But in all of that, he’d never lost his sidearm before. This incident wasn’t just going to be something about which his fellow officers could tease him for the rest of his career. This wasn’t just one more embarrassing case of an officer getting his ass kicked by a suspect. His sidearm was out there on the streets somewhere, in a criminal suspect’s hands. Chances were that sooner or later the guy was going to kill someone with it.

  This was serious.

  CHAPTER 3

  Dylan guessed that he’d been walking for close to an hour when his eyes fell on two workmen in orange coveralls who appeared to be working on the sidewalk a couple of blocks ahead of him, over on the other side of the street. Though the truck bearing the city’s logo on its doors that was parked on the street beside them was partially obstructing his view of the men, he felt sure that it was them—the same two workmen whom he’d spotted the last time, replacing that section of the sidewalk in which he’d scratched his message to Admiral Hansen—in which his other self would do the same as soon as the workmen packed up their equipment and drove off. And there was the bus stop, about half a block closer, and beyond where the men were working—beyond the four-foot tall stone retaining wall and decorative black wrought-iron fence that marked Drexel University’s campus perimeter—through a couple of rows of budding oak trees, he could just make out part of the university’s Medical Sciences building. That was where his other self, the other Dylan, would be now...again, assuming that everything was happening as it had before...being tended to by Doctor...Doctor whatever his name was—he couldn’t remember it now—the head of the university’s medical center.

  What would happen, he wondered, if he went over there and waited for the other Dylan to come out, then stopped him and talked with him? The Dylan who had come before him, whose shadow he had seen on the pavement, obviously hadn’t done that, and he’d failed to complete his mission. So, what would happen if he were to do that? If he were to tell his earlier self that posing as a Security Police sergeant assigned to the Mars Orbital Shipyards and keeping an eye on the Albion had turned out to be a waste of time, would it help his cause or hurt it? How would the other Dylan react? The answer was obvious...sort of. There was absolutely no way that he could possibly guess the answer. Probably better, then, just to leave well enough alone. The time that he’d spent at the shipyards might indeed have been wasted, but at least he had survived it and had given himself a second chance to succeed. If he were to confront his former self now—if her were to warn himself—who knew what might happen?

  Up ahead, on his side of the street, almost directly across from where those men were working, a tan building, ten to twelve stories tall—he didn’t bother to count the floors—towered over all of the other buildings in the immediate area. It might have been apartments or one of the university’s off-campus dorms, but the numerous large windows and lack of balconies suggested otherwise. More likely, it was a commercial office building of some kind. If so, access would likely be restricted, but if he could somehow gain entry and then find an out-of-sight spot high enough up and on the right side of the building, he could keep an eye out for the other Dylan and then watch him to make sure that he continued to do everything that he had done himself, exactly as he had done it. That would pretty much prove beyond any remaining doubt that history was indeed repeating itself.

  A few minutes later, as he drew closer to that building, he was surprised to find that people were passing freely by the dozens through the wide-open front doors without having to show anyone or anything any form of identification. Men, women, teenagers, children, well-dressed or in jeans or shorts and tee-shirts, it made no difference. Anyone and everyone who wanted to was passing through the doors. Some of them were even walking in with their dogs.

  He spotted the building’s directory, a multicolor map with a legend beneath it, standing upright off to the right of the doors near the edge of the beautifully landscaped courtyard, and as he approached it, he started to read, and the reason for the easy access became clear. The first three floors were filled with a variety of family-practice doctors’ and dentists’ offices, as well as several support facilities such as an urgent care clinic, a medical imaging center, and a lab. A high-end department store
filled the next four floors, featuring a pet care center and, Dylan noted, the latest summer clothing line from an up-and-coming women’s couture fashion designer by the name of Francis Black. “Francis Black just happens to be the top women’s formal fashion designer in the world right now,” Beth had told him at the banquet and ball celebrating the anniversary of Earth’s entry into the Tor-Kana Coalition. Beth. God, he missed her so much. What he wouldn’t give to be able to put this mission behind him, call it done, and then go home and be with her again, he had no idea.

  The remaining floors, he noted, served as office space for several businesses and were, as one would expect, closed to the public. No matter. If he could find a spot somewhere in the department store on either the fourth, fifth, or sixth floor, that would be good enough. He would most likely be able to watch the university campus grounds without having to worry that someone might bother him.

  He drew more than a few curious glances his way as he approached the doors—no doubt that after lying in the alley and then going one round with the police officer, he was looking a little less than presentable at the moment—but no one actually confronted him or tried to prevent him from walking inside, so he ignored them all. Maybe everyone just assumed that he was there seeking medical attention. He spotted two sets of four elevators on opposite sides of the lobby. A sign in front of those to the right indicated that they were for employees of the resident business offices only, but those to the left were for public use. He headed to the left and rode one of those elevators up to the fourth floor, then stepped out into the department store.