Solfleet: Above and Beyond Page 4

  At first the store looked like any one of a hundred other department stores that he’d ever been in—racks and racks of seasonal clothing divided into separate areas for men, women, boys, and girls, each of those areas further subdivided into various sections, all of them displaying a variety of disturbingly realistic-looking manikins modeling a select few choice outfits. No doubt the two floors above offered everything from furniture and bedding to home electronics to tools and lawn tractors. But then he looked to his left, toward the side of the building that faced the street and the university, where he found something a little different and more than a little welcome. There, filling what probably amounted to close to a tenth of that level’s total floor space, stood a no doubt overpriced coffee shop, its entire outer wall lined with large windows that looked out over the street...and across to the campus. Perfect.

  He headed into the coffee shop and ordered an apple-cinnamon muffin and medium black coffee from the moderately attractive and equally friendly young barista. He was right about the place being overpriced and the barista flashed him an odd look when he paid for his order with cash notes, which she accepted after only the briefest pause, but at least she managed to maintain her friendly-service smile. He thanked her, then picked up his muffin and coffee and found a small two-person table sitting against one of the windows and as far away from the few other patrons who were there as he could get. Why he felt that it was important for him to keep his distance from the other patrons, he didn’t really know. He just knew that he did, so he did.

  He’d learned to trust his gut a long time ago.

  He gazed out through the window and found that he’d chosen the perfect vantage point. From where he was sitting, he could see almost the entire Medical Sciences building, including the front doors, the bus stop where he’d waited for the bus to the aerospaceport, most of the campus grounds between the two, and the men working on the sidewalk. All that he had to do was to sit there, eat his muffin, drink his coffee, and wait.

  He sipped his coffee and found it to his liking—a little bit too hot, but it was good. Then he stabbed his fork down through the top of the muffin near its edge, tore a piece off—it made few crumbs, which told him that it was very moist—and stuffed it into his mouth. It, too, was good—fresh, still warm, and very moist, as he had guessed, and he decided right away that it was not only the largest muffin of any kind that he had ever eaten, but also the best tasting apple-cinnamon muffin that he had ever tasted. It was almost worth the inflated price.

  Price. That reminded him. He was going to have to watch his spending. He had enough in cash notes to last him for a while if he was careful, but if he was going to make it last until mid-May, he was going to have to save as much as he could wherever he could. Hopefully, he’d find himself a ship for hire soon and not have to worry about day-to-day living expenses for very long, but while he could hope for the best, he had to plan for the worst. If it came down to it, he supposed that he could figure out a way to link his ‘Eric Richards’ identicard to the other Dylan’s military pay account, as soon as the other Dylan created that account later today—he’d have to wait until the other Dylan booked his flight to Mandela Station for that to happen—but linking his card to that account would be a lot riskier than waiting for the second one. That account was going to serve as the other Dylan’s sole account for most of the next two months. Chances were that he would notice if funds started disappearing and would investigate—that was what he would do, and it was he himself whose behavior he was predicting, after all—maybe even report it to the authorities, if he thought that doing so was worth risking his cover. No, his safest bet would be to wait as long as possible.

  The Medical Sciences building’s doors swung open suddenly and the other Dylan walked out. As he strolled across the campus grounds, following the doctor’s directions to the shuttle bus stop, he passed a number of casually dressed students sitting under the trees that lined the fine gravel pathways or among the few decorative boulders that were scattered across the soft green grass. Studying, eating and drinking, or just socializing...whatever they happened to be doing, Dylan recalled how most if not all of them had stopped and stared at him as he walked by them. Though he’d felt a little self-conscious at the time, he’d certainly understood their curiosity. They were students attending a prestigious university in the middle of Philadelphia. It wasn’t like they had Solfleet Security Police sergeants marching through their campus every day.

  He watched while some of them pointed his other-self out to their fellow students and appeared to exchange comments after he passed. A few of them even took a moment to flash a few rude gestures his way...behind his back, of course. He hadn’t realized that they were doing that before, and it made him wonder why his apparently unwanted presence there was such a big deal. Did the memories of life under martial law still linger so prevalently, even in the minds of those so young? Had those relatively few years under Solfleet military rule really been as harsh as all that?

  The other Dylan reached the bus stop, looked over the schedule, and then sat down on the bench to wait. So far, everything was still happening as it had before. As Dylan recalled, the other Dylan would spend the next several minutes thinking about the situation back home, and as that situation continued to be the driving force that motivated him to continue now, he did the same.

  Almost twenty-three years in the future, Earth and all of the other surviving allied Coalition worlds were losing the long war against the merciless forces of the Veshtonn Empire. Before he’d traveled through the Portal in December 2190, whole planets had been burned to cinders or blasted into rubble. Billions had been massacred. Entire races of sentient beings had been wiped out. Several nonaligned protectorate worlds had fallen as well, their governing bodies exterminated, their populations likewise slaughtered or enslaved. And, probably most devastating of all in the long run, the Tor’Kana themselves, the founders and most advanced members of the Coalition technologically, had been all but wiped out as a species. They had been the only means by which the other Coalition member worlds could gain access to the ancient Tor’Roshan technology that had enabled what was left of the Coalition to stand and fight as long as it had. Without them, what remained of that once great body of allied worlds, including Earth herself, had been facing imminent and total defeat.

  In fact, they had very likely been defeated by now, back in his own time, in the future...unless the Dylan who had come before him had succeeded.

  Vice-Admiral Icarus Hansen, Chief of the Solfleet Intelligence Agency, and his executive officer, Commander Elizabeth Royer—especially Royer—had gone to great lengths to recruit him into the agency after he was wounded in action, with one single purpose in mind—to send him back in time through the ancient and top-secret alien device known as the Portal to the year 2168. His mission, to prevent the destruction of his father’s vessel, the starcruiser Excalibur, in late June of that year—of this year—thus saving his father’s life, the lives of his crew, and, if those who’d come up with the admiral’s plan in the first place were correct, potentially the entire Coalition. They’d laid the responsibility of saving more than a dozen allied worlds squarely on his shoulders—tens of billions of lives, if not more than a hundred billion—whole civilizations of sentient beings.

  He’d failed, but now he had a second chance. So, what was he going to do different this time, so that he wouldn’t fail again? How was he going to prevent the Excalibur’s destruction? The original plan hadn’t worked. Infiltrating the Security Police and getting himself assigned to the Mars Orbital Shipyards to babysit the Albion, the ship that had allegedly destroyed his father’s vessel, had proven to be a complete waste of time. That ship had stayed put in dry-dock, just as Hansen’s records had indicated, but the Excalibur had been destroyed anyway. At least, he assumed that it had been destroyed. The estimated range of dates of its destruction had come and gone and he hadn’t done a thing to prevent it, so it must have been. As far as he’d been ab
le to tell, nothing had changed.

  He drew a deep breath, held it for a moment as he sat back in his chair, and then exhaled slowly. How his preventing the Excalibur’s destruction in the past was supposed to save the Coalition in the future, in his own time, he still had no idea. Hansen hadn’t given him any specifics when he asked for them. All that he’d said was, “The details aren’t important to your mission.” The documentation with which Royer had provided him had included a rather vague outline of a ‘predicted sequence of subsequent events,’ but from what he had determined at the time, that outline had been based on nothing more than educated conjecture at best, wishful thinking at worst. Two trips through the Portal later, here he was, still essentially in the dark.

  Realizing that he’d allowed his mind to wander and let his thoughts distract him from keeping an eye on the other Dylan, he quickly looked out at the shuttle bus stop again, then sighed with relief. He was still there, still waiting for the bus.

  He picked up his coffee, only to discover that he’d already finished it. He’d only eaten half of his muffin, though, so he glanced out at the other Dylan one more time to make sure that he wasn’t moving yet, then got up, picked up his cup, and went to the counter to get a refill, which turned out to be free. He thanked the barista—she smiled at him once more, but he could tell that it only came from her obligation to provide ‘service with a smile’ to her customers—and then carried his refill back to his table and sat back down. Then he attacked what remained of his muffin, washing each bite down individually.

  The other Dylan started looking around. His eyes fell on the men in orange coveralls, just as Dylan’s own eyes had a little more than three months ago...his time. The men had finished their work and were cleaning up after themselves. The other Dylan watched while they collected their tools, rinsed them off in whatever they had in their bucket, and then loaded them into the back of their truck. He waited for several more minutes while the workmen strung yellow ‘caution’ tape up around their work area, finished packing up the rest of their equipment, and then finally climbed into the truck and drove away. As Dylan recalled, he’d waited for only a few moments until they pulled out of sight and then hurried up the sidewalk toward the freshly laid surface, and as he continued watching, that was exactly what the other Dylan did.

  He also recalled that by the time he’d reached it, that surface’s corners and edges had already dried enough to lose their temporary luster, but a roughly two foot in diameter section in the center had still been shining. Naturally, the other Dylan would find the same thing. He glanced around the area a couple of times, then got down on his hands and knees and started scratching his message into the sidewalk with his finger.

  It hadn’t been easy, to say the least. The mixture had been thick and setting quickly. He hadn’t been able to scratch very deeply into the surface, but he had managed to finish before the mixture set completely. It apparently went the same way for other-Dylan, as if it could have gone any other. He finished his message, stood up and brushed off his trousers, took a quick look at his handiwork, and then headed back to the bus stop.

  Other-Dylan. He was him, but at the same time he wasn’t him. At any rate, that would be his other-self’s name from now on, as far as he was concerned. Other-Dylan, rather than the other-Dylan—more a name than just a description. It made him sound more like a real person and less like a thing.

  And then there was the Dylan who had come before—the one whose shadow he had seen on the ground after he traveled through the Portal for the first time. He needed a name, too. Then again, Dylan reconsidered, perhaps it was best that he just forget about that one. He was, after all, ahead of him in the timeline of events. That one had already done what he had yet to do. Best to avoid him rather than risk interfering with him.

  Best to avoid them both.

  He focused on the sidewalk once more. He’d kept the message short and to the point, he recalled, and completely innocuous. As far as any of the locals who might see it would know, it didn’t mean anything significant at all. To them, it would simply look like one more defacement of city property in a city filled with defacements of city property—likely just some kid’s initials and the date that he’d scratched them in.

  Lt D-G, 21 Mar 2168.

  CHAPTER 4

  Thursday, 12 May 2191

  Fifteen-year-old Heather Hansen sat quietly but nervously in what she’d heard her father refer to several times as the ‘peanut gallery’—the back half of the courtroom, where the crowd of spectators had to sit, her Uncle Jason and Aunt Sharon seated on either side of her. And what a crowd it had been. Dozens of command-grade and flag-grade officers, not one of whom she could remember ever having seen before, had sat in on her father’s court-martial every day since it began, all of them dressed up in their heavily decorated class-A uniforms of black and tan, black and green, black and blue, or black and whatever reddish-greenish color it was that the Marines wore. Some days the gallery had been standing room only. It seemed as though every branch of the fleet had had some interest in her father’s trial. Not that she really cared about their interest all that much, but she had wondered, particularly near the beginning of the trial, if her father actually knew any of those men or women, or if they were only showing their faces so that they could say, “I was there,” when it was all over with.

  Several media people had attended as well, including three or four evening news personalities who were fairly well known for some of their achievements in journalism over the years. These court-martial proceedings were obviously very big news. After all, it wasn’t every day that a Solfleet vice-admiral stood trial for treason and high crimes against humanity. Though, why they had dragged on for so long, she couldn’t understand. Even with all of the legal trickery that had gone on, and on, and on, all of that motion for this and motion for that mumbo-jumbo that the attorneys for both sides had pulled, four months seemed a little ridiculous. After all, her father had pled ‘guilty’ to every single charge that the government had brought against him.

  Wanting to do something for her father to make the whole ordeal a little bit easier for him to deal with, and not knowing what else she could do, if there even was anything else that she could have done, she’d been putting forth a concerted effort to straighten herself out, almost since the day the Military Police arrested him. After years of pushing the boundaries and trying to get away with whatever trouble she could get herself into—lying to her father about everything, cheating in school...when she actually went to school, stealing from most of the shops on the station—after making her father’s job as a parent a lot harder than it ever should have been, she’d finally decided to put her delinquent ways behind her and stand firmly and uprightly by her father’s side, the way a loving daughter should. She’d even changed the way that she dressed from day to day. Where once she might have worn scandalously short skirts and tight tops with revealing necklines to these proceedings, hoping to draw the attentions of any good-looking young men whom she might encounter, she’d chosen instead to dress conservatively. Even today, at the very end, when all that remained was for the panel of judges to pass sentence, she’d worn a nice short-sleeved blue dress that fastened up the front almost to her neck and hung halfway to her knees. She hated it.

  Not only had she been keeping herself out of trouble, she’d also been making the effort to truly apply herself in school, and now she stood poised to finish the current semester on the honor roll for the first time ever—an achievement that had surprised her as much as it had her father. Sadly, he’d been so tied up in all of his court-martial business that he’d barely had any time to celebrate with her, but at least she’d been able to get word of her amazing achievement to him. Now he was probably going to go to prison for the rest of his life. Except for video-letters and brief conversations through thick plastiglass or transluminum barriers whenever she could manage to make time to visit him, he’d be gone from her life forever. Her aunt and uncle would finish raisi
ng her over the next two and a half years or so, and then she’d be out on her own.

  She liked her Uncle Jason and Aunt Sharon well enough—actually did love them, she supposed, if she was being honest with herself—but living with them full-time wasn’t going to be the same as living with her father had been, or would be...or could be, if she only put forth the effort. No, they weren’t going to have the luxury of being just her aunt and uncle anymore. They were going to have to step into the role of being her surrogate parents. They were going to have to feed her, to clothe her, to provide her with a permanent home. They were going to have to be responsible for her, and that meant that they were going to have to discipline her if and when she crossed the line.

  “Yeah, good luck with that,” she mumbled under her breath.

  “Hmm?” her aunt asked, looking over at her.

  “Nothing.”

  “All rise,” the sharply uniformed Military Police bailiff called out suddenly. Heather had been so caught up in her own thoughts that she hadn’t even seen him stand up.

  She stood up with everyone else and then looked over at her father just as he looked up from the surface of the table at which he was seated and stood up as well, while the panel of three black-robed military judges, one woman and two men—all three of them were full four-starburst admirals, as they had to outrank the defendant—marched single file out of their chambers and returned to their places on the bench. Despite having been publicly shamed by officers and media alike, her father stood straight and tall, looking as sharp as ever in his dress grays with all of his medals and badges, facing his fate with that confidence and dignity with which she’d long ago grown familiar. Even now, despite all that he had done, she couldn’t help but to feel proud of him.

  “The defendant will remain standing,” the bailiff instructed as soon as the admiral-judges had taken their seats. “All others, be seated and come to order.”