Solfleet: The Call of Duty (104 page)

The largest explosion yet hit—a
deafening blast that seemed to rock the entire planet. Ancient stone columns
that had stood the passing of thousands of millennia crumbled and fell.
Boulders tumbled from the tops of ancient rubble piles. Akagi’s comm-link went
dead and the air raid sirens fell silent.

“Mister Petrakos!” Akagi shouted. “Crewman
Petrakos, come in!” He slapped his link. “Petrakos, come in!” He slapped it
again. “Petrakos!”

The ground rumbled yet again, but it
felt different somehow—not like the explosions of incoming ordnance. Then it
rumbled again. And again.

“Oh shit,” Benny said quietly.

“What?” Akagi asked urgently,
glaring at him. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“They’ve induced an Earthquake. We’ve
got to send Dylan back now, Commander!” Benny advised him.

“What?”

“We’ve got to send Dylan through the
Portal!” he shouted. “Right now!”

“But there’s a
war
going on
out there, Captain! We’ll get killed!”

“That doesn’t matter anymore!” Benny
shouted, suddenly angry. “Don’t you see what’s happening here?”

“What are you talking about?”

“This is all part of a full-scale
interstellar invasion! Jupiter’s moons, the colonies, Earth, here! The goddamn
Veshtonn are hitting us everywhere at once! We’ve got to send Dylan back before
it’s too late! Before they blow this whole damn
planet
to bits!”

“Before they... But they have troops
down here! They wouldn’t blast the whole planet with their own troops on the
surface!”

Benny looked him in the eye and
said, “Don’t bet on it.”

Suddenly a cry like the voices of
hundreds of crazed, screaming killers filled the air as the quick reaction force
of SpecOps marines armed with heavy weapons poured out of the tunnel and
charged the perimeter to join the fight. An entire platoon armed with heavy
pulse rifles, crew-served machineguns, grenade launchers... The clamor of war
grew deafening, forcing the officers to hunker down even lower and cover their
ears. Akagi, Benny, and before long even Dylan found themselves screaming just
to compensate.

And then, less than a minute that
seemed like an eternity after the QRF had arrived, the battle ended and peace
returned. Only the cries of the wounded calling for medics remained.

Dylan broke cover first and stood
up, potentially exposing himself to certain death, but nothing happened. “Looks
like it’s all over,” he said as he watched some of the marines fill the gaps in
the perimeter while others tended to their wounded comrades.

Benny and Akagi stood with him just
as the QRF’s platoon leader jogged up to make his report. “They bugged out,
Commander,” he said. “We probably took out close to a hundred of them before
they could escaper, though.”

“It was a ruse, Commander,” Benny
interjected.

“What are you talking about?” Akagi
asked him as the platoon leader looked on.

“The Veshtonn
never
turn tail
and run from a fight they intend to win,” Benny explained. “They were nothing
more than a distraction.”

“Why would they want to...”

“So we’d stand and fight instead of
evacuating?” the platoon leader asked.

Dylan didn’t need to hear any more.
He knew exactly what they needed to do. “I’ll meet you by the Portal,” he said,
heading in that direction even before he finished speaking.

“Right now, Commander,” Benny said
to Akagi. He grabbed the commander by the arm before he had a chance to follow on
his own and pulled him along beside him.

And then the enemy resumed their
aerial bombardment. Benny and Akagi charged ahead as one pile of ancient ruins
after another exploded all around them. Clumps of dirt and shards of shrapnel
and rubble pelted them as they ran. With no more enemy ground troops left to fight,
the surviving marines and Security Forces troops pulled back and scrambled for
whatever cover they could find.

Benny cried out when a large chunk
of stone struck the side of his head and knocked him to the ground. Dylan heard
his cry and started back to help him, but Benny shouted, “No, Dylan! Go! Before
it’s too late!”

Dylan hesitated for one more brief
moment—blood was pouring down the side of his new friend’s cheek—but he knew that
even minor head wounds tended to bleed a lot. Benny would be all right. His
mission remained his highest priority. His
only
priority.

He ran back up the ramp with a newly
determined Akagi hot on his heels. He stepped out into the center of the Portal
and Akagi went right to work. The mechanism’s bright flash and loud rumble came
and went but were for the most part lost amidst the explosions that surrounded
them and continued threatening them, and the steady hum that followed never had
the slightest chance of being heard.

Akagi’s fingers sped over the
controls like those of a concert pianist’s. He touched his hand to the
destination symbol and shouted at the top of his lungs, “
Pel’Ka! Tre’Qoom boshe’ta
vasim! Tusa! Kapek e Tor’Rosha vej Rosha, Pen’to rhim con win, vet wona’sa
torsh’kava vo dusin, vet zimta kajj wen subeg ga vol revi!
”

Dylan stared at his handcomp as the
ancient ruins continued disintegrating around him.

Double digits.

“Come on,” he quietly coaxed the
timer.

A massive explosion rocked the
entire area. Akagi fell against the console but somehow managed to hold his
hands in place. Dylan glanced over at him as dirt and pebbles rained down on
him and saw a rivulet of blood flowing down the right side of his face.

Eighties, seventies, sixties...

More explosions.

Fifties, forties, thirties...

A blinding flash far beyond the
horizon, and then a glow that dimmed ever so slowly. No mistaking what
that
was. The Veshtonn were using nuclear weapons!

Or something even worse.

Twenties...

The shock wave would be on them in
seconds.

Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen...

Dylan started doubting that he was
going to make it.

Ten, nine...

No chance. He was going to die right
there. They were all going to die.

Seven, six...

He was going to burn to a cinder and
vaporize in an instant.

Four...

He could hear the thunderous wave of
death approaching.

“Here it comes,” Akagi said with
calm resignation.

Dylan looked over at him, standing
there and staring at the approaching harbinger of his doom, having already
surrendered to the inevitable.

Three...

Dylan turned and looked that way as
well and just watched the swirling, billowing black wall of oncoming death.

Two...

At least it would be a quick death.

One...

“Here I come, Lord.”

Zero.

Several Months Later

Wearing his
medal-heavy dress grays for what he knew was most likely the last time,
Vice-Admiral Icarus Hansen—soon to be the
former
Vice-Admiral Icarus
Hansen, he strongly suspected—sat straight and tall in the filled-to-capacity
military courtroom’s defendant’s chair, lost in his own quiet thoughts as he
waited for the panel of judges to return to the bench and pass sentence against
him. His court-martial proceedings had dragged on for more than four months
thanks to all the motions, countermotions, and other legal maneuvers the
attorney’s for both sides had entered and pulled along the way. He found it all
pretty remarkable when he thought about it, considering that he’d pled guilty to
every single charge that had been brought against him and had pretty much
thrown himself on the mercy of the court.

But now,
finally, it was all coming to an end. His trial and everything that had led up
to it had dominated nearly every aspect of his life almost since the moment he
was rescued and he’d quickly grown tired of the whole thing. But at least he
still had his life. That in itself was nothing short of a miracle given the
enormous size and scope of the Veshtonn invasion—that Heather had survived as
well was truly a miracle indeed—and despite the fact that he was probably going
to spend the rest of it in prison, he supposed he should be grateful to be
alive.

No one,
not even those few individuals who’d already known that the end of the human
race was all but inevitable, had seen the attack coming. Not
that
soon.
Not the commanders in the field, not Earth Federation President Shakhar, not
Chairman Brian MacLeod or the members of his Earth Security Council. Not even
he himself. Especially not once the tide of battle in the Rosha’Kana system had
turned and the Veshtonn had been forced to retreat, thanks in no small part to
the creative tactical maneuvering carried out by the starcruiser
Rapier
under the command of now Fleet Captain Erickson. Who could have guessed, given
the losses the enemy had begun to suffer in that embattled system by that time,
that their gradual retreat had actually been a desperate redeployment of forces
in preparation for a massive assault against the Earth and her solar system?

The
answer, unfortunately, had been ‘no one.’ Coalition commanders in-theater had
been convinced that the enemy was simply regrouping for a counterattack and had
redeployed their own remaining forces to defend against it. Solfleet Central
Command had even deployed additional ships to reinforce the line, leaving the solar
system inadequately defended. As a result of that gross miscalculation, Earth’s
colonies beyond the asteroid belt had been annihilated and the inhabited moons
of Jupiter and Saturn had been pulverized before anyone had even seen the enemy
coming. The colonies on Mars and Luna had likewise been bombed to rubble,
though a few hundred colonists had somehow managed to survive long enough to be
rescued. Mandela Station had been reduced to scrap, but again several hundred
personnel had survived and had later been rescued from those compartments that
hadn’t either fallen to the Earth, burned up in the atmosphere, or tumbled off
into space never to be found. The enemy had even landed on Earth herself and
had proceeded to destroy one city after another while every man, woman, and
child who could do so fought desperately to preserve of the human race.

All
totaled almost nine-hundred million people had lost their lives. And yet,
perhaps by some miraculous act of God, of the billions who’d survived the
initial bombardment, several millions had managed to fight back and had
eventually banded together with the remnants of Solfleet and each nation’s own
military forces in Earth’s defense, and had saved their mother world one more
time.

Yes,
mankind had survived...again...and his survival had come to be referred to in
the news media as ‘the first silver lining to the dark cloud of events’ that
had occurred. The second, of course, being the continued survival of the Tor’Kana
race. By withdrawing from Rosha’Kana, the enemy had handed that system back to
the Coalition, and those Tor’Kana who still survived had quickly returned to
their world. Only time would tell if there were enough of them left alive to
successfully repopulate that world, but at least they had a fighting chance.
Had they died out completely the Coalition they had founded would likely have
died with them, and not one of the member worlds would have stood a chance
against the Veshtonn alone.

None of
that made any difference to Liz, of course. She was still just as dead. ‘Armed
and dangerous,’ the news services had described her as after the fact. A
military tribunal had declared the shooting—had declared her death—justified.
She’d been buried in her hometown outside Kansas City. Karen had stayed there
after the funeral to spend time with their families.

Despite
the fact that she could be a real pain in the ass sometimes, Hansen was going
to miss Liz. She’d been one of the most motivated and dedicated officers he’d
ever worked with. She certainly hadn’t deserved what had happened to her.

For a
while after everything calmed down Hansen had held on to one small hope. The
hope that Lieutenant Graves might do something, anything, to change it all. But
then the official word had come down through channels that Station X-Ray One
had been vaporized in another Veshtonn attack with all hands lost. The ancient
Tor’Roshan Portal that he’d ordered Graves to travel back in time through had
been destroyed, and no sign or signal that he’d made it into the past had ever
been identified.

Lieutenant
J.G. Dylan Edward Graves had answered the call of duty—a call unlike any other
that had ever gone out before—and had paid for it with his life. Unable to
acknowledge that the Portal had ever existed, Solfleet Central Command had
listed him officially as Missing-In-Action, but all of the classified evidence
that Hansen had seen, thanks mostly to one of his loyal former subordinates,
indicated that Graves had been there on the surface of Window World when the
Veshtonn glassed it, so he knew the truth.

He only
wished that he could tell Miss DeGaetano that truth, to relieve her of the
burden of false hope that she was bound to carry with her for the foreseeable
future. The desperate hope that somehow, somewhere, her fiancé might still be
alive and might soon return to her.

Yes,
Window World was gone. The Timeshift Resolution would never again be a viable
option. If humankind was going to help win the war, then he was going to have
to do it the old-fashioned way. He was going to have to outthink, outmaneuver,
and outfight the enemy. Of course, considering how things had turned out this
time, not to mention what had happened with Günter, perhaps that was for the
best. Perhaps the Portal being destroyed was the best thing that could have
happened.