by Tim C Taylor
There was a computer inside Grace’s head, a battle planner AI somehow encoded inside the messy organic mechanisms of the human brain. Arun was no longer unique in this universe.
He unbuckled himself and reached across to brush the hair at her temple with fingertips that trembled at this first physical contact. “Does it hurt?” he asked.
“Always. Does yours?”
“Not as much as the legs.”
She nodded her understanding. How had his daughter grown so old before he’d even met her? “You can rest soon, Dad. I promise.” She laughed. “I don’t mean I’ll wrap you up in a shroud and give you up to the void. I mean the liberation of Earth will free you from your responsibilities so that you can…” Her gaze flicked to Springer to whom she gave the peace offering of an attempted smile. “So you can find peace, Dad. Wherever you choose to seek it. It’s one of the reasons I made Mother come here.”
Her gaze drifted away to consider memories that felt impossibly alien to Arun, and then her expression hardened. “We’re wasting time. Come, let me brief you properly.”
She pressed her forehead to his and began to speak rapidly in staccato bursts of unpunctuated raw information. He’d never heard anyone talk that way before, but to him it made perfect sense.
— Chapter 06 —
Arun McEwan
Aboard Karypsic en route to Mars fleet
Time travel.
Time frakking travel!
Grace was still chattering away in human machine code, trying to brief him, but Arun’s mind had snagged at the possibilities of being able to move through time and wouldn’t release him.
Time traveling soldiers could land at an enemy position five years before it was built and bury a nuke deep underground with a multi-year timer.
Or make it personal. Track down Tawfiq’s parents and kill them before the vile creature was born. And murder her grandparents too for good measure.
If teleportation were perfected to penetrate ship hulls and ground installations, then munitions could be deposited at every enemy command and control center simultaneously. The enemy’s ability to fight back would be blasted into oblivion before they even knew they were under attack. Unsatisfying as revenge, but Arun would settle for its brutal efficiency.
Even with the teleportation he had seen, Marine boarding teams and special forces commandos could be placed just outside target objectives. And when combined with time travel, once these teams had carried out the mission, they could go back again and carry out more missions at another location and another, and all apparently simultaneously. It was like an infinite force enhancer. Of the 400 Marines Xin had with her, by combining time travel with teleportation, she may as well have 400 billion.
But how would repeating the same activity affect biological ageing? Arun had lived for over two hundred years, and although most of them had been in cryo suspension, he still felt every one of them in his bones. Could you make yourself younger with time travel? Did you age even faster?
As for those successful time travelling special forces… what present day would await their return? If the past had changed, surely so too would the present.
Every question he asked of time travel heaped paradox upon paradox.
Inside his head, he felt the battle computer that had been planted there by alien conspirators long ago, trying to absorb these paradoxes and beat them into a manageable shape. His mind interpreted this machine as titanic engines of brass and copper that were currently turning with such enormous angular momentum that they threatened to rip his brain to pieces. And the reason they were so out of control was because these colossal internal forces were freewheeling, unable to engage because they lacked the vital pieces of information to work. The technology Greyhart had given Xin – at least, according to his working assumption that what he was being told was true – had gotten Xin here, but without knowing any details, she may as well have been transported by magic. From a military point of view, it was like having ultra-high yield fusion bombs without primers: the potential was there to blow a planet into a trillion pieces, but without that missing component, they were just so much high-tech junk.
Dad!
Xin knew his mind would need more data to work on, and deliberately hadn’t supplied it. She also needed his help, or else she wouldn’t have let him go free. All of which meant that Greyhart was holding back from Xin’s people too. Interesting. But why?
Dad, snap out of it!
He had precious little info on Greyhart, and all of it was second hand. Nonetheless, everything he knew pointed to this person being a showman. Greyhart wanted to assemble his team of primitives; Xin, Grace, Arun and the others were the bombs that he was going to set off in a time that presumably was in Greyhart’s past. The time traveler would show up in person and prime his bombs by supplying the missing info. It was the one thing Arun’s battle computer brain was sure of.
Arun!
Then another realization grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him violently; so hard that the back of his head hurt as if it were slamming into something hard and unyielding – a sign, he assumed, that his battle computer was struggling but was nonetheless delivering something of value. Hummers versus time-travelling human. Rivals. If future humans were getting involved, why now? Why here? Why him? Hummers were deeply involved in the battle for Earth on Tawfiq’s side too. That was what was slipping into his head. The reason this Greyhart character needed them to fight his proxy time war here and now was because with the help of her Hummer allies, Tawfiq could time travel too!
The realization was so shocking, it felt like a punch to his face.
Then another punch, harder this time and straight to his solar plexus.
He gasped through a half-collapsed windpipe and opened his eyes on the looping colored whorls around Springer’s eyes.
His lover was out of her seat and fending off his daughter’s attacks with one hand while shaking him roughly with the other. Aelingir and her Jotuns had mysteriously appeared on the flight deck, looking on with interest, but unwilling to intervene in this bewildering all-human affair.
Arun couldn’t speak, but he phrased his question at Springer eloquently with his furrowed brow: what the frakk?
“I told you to wait until Indiya was here before activating that wretched thing in your mind.” Man, was she angry at him! “Only she can safely bring you out of your stupid frakking fugue state.”
Grace stopped fighting. Springer relaxed. For a moment, there was calm. It lasted about a second.
“There’s a problem,” said Springer. “You need to talk to Caccamo. Now.”
Arun shrugged. Why?
“Because his X-Boat squadron is about to blow us all into atoms,” she replied. “Something about not transmitting friendly force identifiers and using code phrases known to the enemy.” Springer passed over a transceiver and clicked it on. “Just tell them who you are.”
“I’m in a good mood,” said Arun’s old friend, Caccamo. “Which means you have another thirty seconds to identify yourself before I open fire. Or you could power up your weapons and I’ll end you sooner.”
Arun flicked off the transceiver. “If we broadcast my voice, Tawfiq will soon know I’m here and alive.” He hesitated, and then remembered that he was at least one step ahead of everyone else here. “Which is even worse than we thought because Tawfiq has time travel too,” he explained, and switched the device back on.
Grace went white with horror. Interesting – she hadn’t figured that out.
“Twenty seconds,” said Caccamo. “Unless I get bored sooner.”
Grace took the transceiver and replied to Caccamo. “We don’t trust the security of this channel,” she told him. “Nor of the security of your squadron. It is of the utmost importance that my passengers do not trigger the voice identification of any spies or AIs listening in, so they are speaking through me, a neutral third party.”
She grinned at Arun. “If you have any dirty secrets on Caccamo, Dad, now�
�s the time…”
“You’re as unconvincing as a Tallerman in a Tutu,” Caccamo told them. “Out of time.”
But by then, Arun had already whispered the words Grace should say.
— Chapter 07 —
Grace Lee-McEwan
Aboard Karypsic en route to Mars fleet
“Do you remember playing Scendence back in Novice School?” Grace asked, voicing Arun’s words.
“Of course,” Caccamo replied, sounding unimpressed. “Everyone had to play Scendence.”
He was biting, though. Grace’s stomach lurched with excitement, before remembering to continue. “I’m thinking specifically of the games to choose who would represent the battalion in the regimental Scendence championships.”
“What of them?”
“Do you remember one endurance competition in particular? Competitors were strung upside down in a freezer room. Last one to stay conscious would win.”
“I’m impressed. But not convinced. What you describe was a common format for endurance competitions.”
Grace had no reply. Not yet. Her dad was still whispering it to her, and he was practically buzzing with the same excitement she felt. Mother always told her that her life had never been dull around Dad. They must have been wild together.
“Out of ideas?” said Caccamo. “What a shame. You’re out of time.”
“Lullabies!” shouted Grace.
“I was only playing with you,” said Caccamo. “I want you alive until you’ve talked. Then you can die. Boarding teams are on their way. Resist or power up your weapons and I will… lullabies? Wait a minute…”
“You used lullabies to lure me into sleep. I said you were a chumpwit idiot for always believing the drent Menes Hecht told you, but his idea worked. I shouted and cursed until I was hoarse. And then I dozed off. Your greatest secret, Laban Caccamo, is that you are blessed with the most beautiful singing voice in the Legion.”
“Holy sweet crap! Don’t say another word about the old days. Just answer my questions. Is your pilot competent?”
“I could outfly you, Caccamo.”
“Hmm. We’ll see about that. Form up behind and follow my lead. I’ll guide you in and wrangle you some privacy. Cut all comms. Pull down the blinds. Go as dark as you can. When all this is over, you can buy me a drink.”
“Roger that, flyboy, but my choice of venue. Going dark.”
One of the X-Boats left formation and flew just in front of the dropship. Grace took Karypsic off autopilot and fell in behind.
“Did you just flirt with my childhood friend?” Arun asked her.
“No, Dad. I was only relaying your words, remember?”
— Chapter 08 —
Fleet Admiral Indiya
Admiral’s Quarters.
Legion flagship Holy Retribution
It was a desperate gamble.
But Indiya hadn’t felt she had a choice.
So why was she watching the launch of the two time missions from the cocoon of her flooded quarters instead of from her flagship’s CIC, or her own flag command deck?
She was hiding from her own decisions, and everyone in the fleet must realize that by now.
Let them! The two little boats would be entirely on their own once they jumped back in time – or activated their upstream time intercalators as Greyhart described it, quite possibly a term he’d invented for his own amusement. There was nothing useful she could do in CIC other than perform the spectacle that was the purple-haired human with gills.
“Karypsic and Saravanan are away,” said Admiral Kreippil, jiggling his bulk in the warm water that flooded her compartment in order to nudge her from her stupor.
The commander of the First Fleet was only performing what he saw as his duty in keeping such a close eye on her. That didn’t stop her resenting him for being right.
Indiya didn’t answer but took the hint. She’d been staring at the aft bulkhead. Now she activated the view screen that covered much of it, and set up a selection of feeds that showed the two strange craft leaving Mars orbit to put a little distance from the fleet before jumping.
They even bore strange names, which Greyhart insisted had been carried by significant individuals, and might just make a material difference to their endeavors. If they were successful, the names would be celebrated for thousands of years. Would that embed them in reality? Strengthen them by binding to whoever had first carried those names?
Maybe. She had nothing to offer but guesswork. It was up to Arun and Grace now.
Arun’s vessel, the Saravanan, took point. It was a modified L-51 drop capsule. Indiya had dispatched many thousands of these from orbit around a score of planets. They resembled an artillery shell the size of a tree trunk and would carry a half-squad of Marines plus limited equipment. They could be recovered for reuse, but essentially they were just hollow shells fired down to a contested planet’s surface.
Following was Karypsic, captained by Arun’s daughter. Grace described it as an augmented attack dropship, but with its sleek lines, dart-like nose, and three nacelles like an aircraft’s tail fins, it looked far too delicate to be a dropship.
In about three minutes, they would have put enough distance from the fleet to jump.
Three minutes. It was just enough time for a conversation that had been years in the making.
“May I ask you a question?” she asked Kreippil.
“Of course.”
“When holy war was declared by your queen and her priests, the Littorane thirst for battle terrified me. But that was many years and countless campaigns ago. Do you feel your ardor has abated, Kreippil?”
“Never!” He thrashed his powerful tail in the water, but then abruptly calmed. “Though the ache in my tail never abates either. My muscles still function, but age has seeped the strength from my old bones.”
“I don’t know I can keep going,” said Indiya in such a tiny voice that maybe it wouldn’t carry through the water. Perhaps she wouldn’t need to follow through with this conversation.
“You must,” the Littorane insisted. “I know your secret that the Legions who follow your commands do not even suspect. You are a great war leader, Blessed One, but not a warrior. You are more of a thinker. An engineer perhaps. Yes, I believe you would much prefer to work alongside your compatriot, Finfth.”
“Engines are his specialty,” she replied. “They have always fascinated me too. Do you know that for relaxation I sometimes theorize designs for FTL travel? I never tell anyone. It would be one more impossible burden upon me.”
“Nor should you tell others. It is your escape. When this war is won, perhaps the Goddess will renew you as an engineer and thinker. I suspect she is planting those wondrous ideas in your mind as beacons of hope, but she will not release you from your burden as war leader until you have fulfilled the role she has ordained for you.”
Kreippil and his divine roles! Indiya suddenly thought of Xin. What role had the Goddess planned for the traitor?
With unconscious mental commands, Indiya brought up more views of nearby space in which the two frigates Xin had brought were parked under the guns of the Legion fleet. Far Reach ships, they called themselves: FRS New Frontier and FRS Expansion. From the outside, they appeared to follow the conventional cigar-shaped design, but they were anything but conventional. According to Greyhart, he had supplied each of these warships with two intercalators: one to jump back in time, and one to make the return jump to when and where the ship had started. Those devices were now on Karypsic and Saravanan, which meant in theory that the two parent ships were now at Indiya’s mercy.
But she didn’t trust Greyhart.
And she trusted Xin even less. She had sent out her daughter to command Karypsic but was herself still aboard FRS New Frontier. What was she doing there? What was she plotting?
She turned her attention back to the smaller craft, unwilling to confront the instinct that screamed at her to seize the Far Reach ships by force.
“Look at them,”
she said to Kreippil. “Those brave soldiers venturing into the unknown to do battle across time! It is extraordinary. The impossible. As is the reappearance of Xin and her traitors. Today, the universe is suddenly more complex, and it is my responsibility to understand it all. Whom to ally with? Whom to war upon? What are the implications once I have reassessed everything we have done and planned to do? My mind begs to be spared these responsibilities. Time travel, artificial gravity, and the other wonders I saw for myself long ago on the Bonaventure, are marvels to be explored and explained. I feel their pull keenly, but I cannot tell you of strategic implications and tactical advantages. My mind will no longer go there.”
“Admiral Indiya, you have teams around you to advise. You listen to their analysis and then you lead. We shall follow.”
Indiya shook her head. “I lack the courage to make decisions anymore.”
With efficient swings of his tail and paddle-like limbs, the old Littorane swam between Indiya and the screen. “You are no warrior, My Lady. The crushing weight of leadership places heavier burdens upon you than anyone in this holy army, and yet you endure without complaint. You are the bravest individual I know.”
“I don’t think anyone’s ever called me brave before, Kreippil.”
The old Littorane raised his head and tail in deep obeisance. “Then I am at fault. I did not mean my words idly. You are the best of us, Indiya.”
“Your words do me great honor, my friend. But if there is truth behind them, I do not feel it. The only reason I float here looking into these screens is because I lack the courage to tear myself away.”
“You can, and you must. According to Greyhart, it will at least be quick. Instantaneous, he says. They will disappear and then reappear in the flick of a tail. You must endure just a few moments longer.”
“I don’t think I can. Help me, Kreippil. Take command. Let me be a figurehead and nothing more, because I cannot do this any longer.”
