by Tim C Taylor
As for McEwan, Kreippil had always suspected him of hubris, scarcely less offensive than Tawfiq’s. The Goddess had finally tired of this human too and cast him adrift into deep time as he deserved.
The time of the humans was over.
Kreippil led now.
Didn’t he?
He rumbled a threatening tone that echoed off the bulkheads.
McEwan had an obscene habit of returning from the dead.
— Chapter 14 —
Arun McEwan
Ancient Britannia, 319BC
The drop pod steamed in the morning mist of a prehistoric dawn.
Arun was hardly a connoisseur of art or beauty, but even he had to admit that it was kind of peaceful dropping down to a region of rolling hills and deep woods cut through with gentle streams, and devoid of roads, cities and fortifications.
The only things flying up to meet them had been the fat wood pigeons who were now singing in the woods that started a few hundred yards away and didn’t stop until the sea. No one had tried to shoot them down, and instead of rockets and artillery fire, they had been met by this grassy hollow glistening with dew, which the heat from the drop pod’s hull was steaming into the air.
He sniffed. The smell of scorched grass was getting stronger.
“Hey, Springer? You smell that too?”
She dropped the equipment canisters she had been unloading from the cargo compartment and came over to Arun. “Relax,” she told him, and crouched down so their faces were touching almost nose to nose. “That’s an order. We’re here. We’re safe. On the way down we saw that the nearest settlement is miles away, and if the ground was going to burst into flame, it would have already done so. None of us have any experience with vacations, but I’m determined you won’t ruin it for us with your constant fretting. So I’m in charge here. Got it?”
“This isn’t a vacation.”
Springer called over her shoulder to the other member of the team who had not yet left the drop pod. “Pedro! Explain to Arun how this is gonna work.”
The massive Trog rumbled anxiously in his thorax before replying. “After centuries of passionate study of your species, I concur with Springer. This will be a more satisfying expedition if we obey her commands.”
“You see?” said Springer, tousling Arun’s hair, “I’m in charge by two votes to one, and I say” – she moved the two canisters so their handles were just below Arun’s hands – “being in that chair doesn’t mean you sit on your lazy ass while I do all the work. I want this pod unloaded and the burrow started by lunchtime.”
Arun shook his head. “You don’t get to vote on your commander of the day. We’re here for one reason alone. To stop Tawfiq and the New Order.”
Springer sighed and walked through the pod’s open gullwing doors to Pedro, whose bulk filled one half of the troop compartment. The Trog Great Parent had explained that he had hardened his carapace for the duration of the transit to protect the unborn offspring budding inside his abdomen, and now he was loosening it prior to slithering out the drop pod under his own steam.
Arun wasn’t convinced. The big guy looked stuck, plain and simple.
Springer clambered on top of her own empty seat, so she could reach up and stroke the Trog’s antennae, which made him tremble with pleasure, a sight that Arun found frankly unsettling.
“I think you’re a saint for sticking by him for so long,” she told the alien. “We are so far back in history, Arun, that we’re in a different calendar system. It’s 391 BC. B frakking C. Before Christ. Before the Cull. Bring your own Cooler, and Bananas and Cream. Hell, I don’t know about Earth history, but I do know that we’ve left fleets and armies behind. It’s just us. Three friends in a drop pod. The future doesn’t care whether we hurry or dally. It will be waiting for us just the same. So I tell you again, stop worrying, help unload the pod, and you will relax even if it kills you.”
She pulled a face and Arun burst out laughing. It was her impersonation of Chief Instructor Nhlappo that she used to pull as a cadet. But Springer’s face was covered in scales now, and they lacked the elasticity of human skin. She looked as if she were suffering from piles, not a fearsome veteran instructor, the scourge of any cadet who stepped out of line.
“Yes, ma’am,” he snapped off with a crisp salute. Still laughing, Arun grabbed the two equipment canisters and set his chair humming over the grass to bushes by the grass bank where they were setting up shop.
“I have always tried to be his friend,” said Pedro loudly. “I do not always succeed, but that was always my intent.”
Arun stopped laughing. Even for Pedro, that statement was a little weird, but then, that was the sad part of this expedition. It was finally time to say goodbye to Pedro for good.
But it wasn’t time for goodbyes just yet, and Springer was right: they deserved a break. 391 BC! He stopped, realizing suddenly how much he relished the prospect of returning to the fleet in 2739 AD and telling his daughter of his adventures in Celtic Britain.
His daughter…
Yeah, that was gonna take a whole lot of getting used to.
Arun found his good mood dissipating, and returned to his unloading, shifting the smaller canisters while Springer lifted the heavier gear with the hoist and hover trolley. There wasn’t much to unload, most of the equipment bay being taken up with the return intercalator, a featureless black box 18-feet long, and half that in width and depth.
When had he forgotten how to have fun?
He couldn’t help himself. He smiled at his lover, and engaged in meaningless words of small talk, but as he did, he rolled the plan around in his mind, hunting out the dangers.
It should have been easy to relax into Springer’s embrace and yield to the simple pleasure of enjoying the company of the one he loved – had always loved most, if he was honest.
Should have been. But it wasn’t. Something was wrong. He’d missed something. His gut told him the plan was already unravelling but he couldn’t say why.
Was it simply Greyhart’s involvement? Anything to do with the veck was dangerous, and Arun couldn’t figure out his game. The man from the future had insisted it was too dangerous for him to suggest ways in which the Legion could use time travel to defeat Tawfiq. Anything they might do in the past was fraught with danger – and that did make sense to Arun – but that hadn’t stopped Greyhart dropping unsubtle hints to steer the two Legion parties in directions that suited his own agenda.
He’d practically told them to send the party back to 2717, to kill Tawfiq when she was shut up tight in her Victory City bunker while her forces were off quelling the revolt at Cairo.
But how could a small team punch through that bunker’s defenses to get to Tawfiq? He had touched heads with Grace, and together they had accessed their organic battle planners, talking through their options in their rapid-fire human machine language speech – which made sense at the time, but was gibberish even to Arun when he listened back to a recording.
Indiya was with them all the way, deeper inside his mind than she’d ever gone before. The old Spacer hated the enforced intimacy of being inside his private thoughts, but without her, he would never have escaped the fugue state he was always trapped inside after accessing his planner.
When he was done and rested a little, he thought about how Greyhart had initially been helpful when Arun had asked for his help. If Tawfiq with her Night Hummer allies could maybe see through time and communicate a warning to her earlier self in 2717, where could a Legion team go that was least likely to be seen by the Hummers?
Greyhart hadn’t even paused to consider. “Elstow. It’s a village in England, Europe. It’s a… highly eventful location. Still unstable, to be honest, but nowhere in the galaxy will be better cloaked from observation than Elstow.” He’d flashed that cheesy grin – the one Arun would dearly love to wipe off his face – and added, “Plus, the Swan pub does a lovely roast dinner if you pick the right era. You want a Sunday. Definitely better on a Sunday, the slow
-cooked meat will be more tender.”
Then Arun had explained the plan he’d concocted with his daughter, and Greyhart had stopped spouting nonsense and started begging them to reconsider. What they proposed was too big, he told them. The consequences too dangerous.
Had Greyhart been right? Was that the worry itching at the back of his mind?
No, that couldn’t be it, because he’d run through all this with Grace. And with Xin, Springer, Pedro, Indiya, and all the others. The change they were about to write in Earth’s past was colossal, and the moral implications alone were immense. But it was one half of the pincer movement that the Hardits would never see coming and would give his daughter’s team a better chance of coming back alive.
Pedro would finally get his chance to raise and lead his own nest. And here, by this grassy bank in a place that would be named Elstow many years in the future, was where he would start. Before industrialization and advanced technology, at a time when civilization in this part of the world meant humble collections of huts and the occasional hillfort, Pedro would forge his own alien civilization deep underground. And if he were spotted in the early years – well, it was all dragons, magic donkeys, and women with snakes in their head in this era. They would easily work Pedro into their mythical stories. And by the time people had developed radar ground mapping, seismographs and advanced targeting sensors, Pedro’s nest would have hidden itself deep beneath their knowledge and spread throughout the world.
The only nagging doubt was Greyhart’s heavy hint that something significant had happened here. Or would happen. But Greyhart refused to speak of what or when that might be.
The date that did matter was 2717, because when Grace’s team made their attack on Tawfiq, Pedro’s descendants would be ready and waiting. Nothing terrified Hardits more than psychotic Trog soldiers bursting through the walls in a killing frenzy. It was a shame Arun wouldn’t be there to see Tawfiq’s final moments, but it would be a fitting end for the vile creature.
How Pedro’s descendants would then coexist on an Earth they shared with the humans was a major detail to work out. But Arun had assured the big guy that the Legion would insist on a settlement that was fair to the Trogs. He would do nothing less for the insectoids who had already done so much to free the Earther humans from the New Order. Maybe if the Earthers hadn’t given up Arun’s ancestors as slave tribute, he might have been more concerned about forcing them to share the planet, but as it was, the Earthers were getting more than they deserved.
The big black box.
He froze, and asked Barney to bring up recordings of what he’d seen in the back of the pod.
Half the pod, grandly named the Saravanan, was given over to the time travelling machinery. A small shielded unit, only a foot long, had brought them back all this way, and the big black box like a giant’s coffin would return him and Springer to the fleet in orbit about Mars in 2739. They were sealed, both physically and by the dire warnings from Greyhart about what would happen if they were interfered with. But there was something about the larger intercalator…
What am I missing? he thought at Barney.
His AI showed a recording of what Arun had seen when he’d glanced at Springer winching out one of the heavier equipment crates. The panels on the black box had wobbled.
“What’s the matter?” Springer asked in the here and now as Arun sped his chair back to the rear of the drop pod. By now, Pedro had managed to wriggle out of the pod to beach himself on the charred grass. The kink he formed with his antennae asked the same question.
Before Arun could answer, Springer drew her pistol, and pointed it in a double-handed grip at the bank behind him.
But she didn’t fire, and he saw the intruders were only deer. Beautiful but nervous creatures, they were hesitating at the top of the bank and sniffing at these strange sights and sounds. When the animals all glanced behind nervously, he expected them to flee back the way they’d come. Instead, they ran down the bank giving the drop pod and its inexplicable crew a wide berth as they hurried past.
Arun had bigger things to worry about than the local wildlife. Telling his hover chair to raise him a couple of feet above the ground, he reached inside the rear compartment and pulled at the side panel of the black box with his bare hands.
It came away.
To reveal its true contents.
Someone has sabotaged the mission.
Someone had removed the time intercalator and replaced it with other equipment, most prominently two human-compatible cryo pods. They had no ride home. They were stranded here. Cut off from the battle with Tawfiq and separated from his daughter by a gulf of 3,000 years.
Someone had interfered. Again.
And he knew who.
“Pedro! What the frakk have you done this time?”
— Chapter 15 —
Arun McEwan
Ancient Britannia, 319BC.
“I am sorry.”
Sorry? Pedro’s feeble apology didn’t deserve a response.
Springer joined Arun beside the giant insectoid who’d stranded them both there. He put a comforting hand on her hip, but she didn’t seem to notice. Although she was standing next to the Trog, her wide-open mouth and eyes were directed at the stowaway cryopods.
Stranded in time, with only an ugly alien and a disabled old man for company, thought Arun. Yeah, I can see how that might take you a moment or two to process.
And when she did. Then Pedro would learn the full meaning of ‘sorry’.
“You’ve really gone and done it this time, Trog,” accused Arun. “You brought the cryopods because you want us to sleep?”
“No, because I wanted you to enjoy yourselves. Removing the intercalator meant I could bring other vital equipment too that would otherwise have been abandoned. I thought you and Springer deserved time together, and I do not believe you would have seized the opportunity if you could merely flick a switch and find yourselves back in the conflict with Tawfiq. I am truly sorry I have done this to you.”
“Don’t tell lies. You have no regrets. I know you, Pedro.”
The Trog flipped his antenna back along his head. “This, I find awkward.”
Arun glanced at Springer – still in shock – and sighed. The pain in his hips was flaring up again, and he was too tired to stay annoyed with Pedro. The cryopods should be able to handle a few thousand years without a hitch… just so long as someone was around to thaw them out. It wasn’t even the worst thing the big insectoid had ever hit him with. He shrugged. “Just tell it how it appears to you, Big Guy.”
“I do regret upsetting you. That is not deceit. But I do not regret what I have done.”
Arun laughed until the tears rolled down his cheeks.
“What is happening?” Pedro was waving his antennae in consternation. “Have I broken you? Arun, my closest friend, I have worried about your mental state for years. This is what I was trying to cure. Alas, I am too late.”
“Alas? You’re priceless, Pedro. I’m… I don’t know what I am, but it is a ludicrous situation and all I can do is laugh. Look at us. I’m a broken old man in a hover chair. Springer’s been dyed, lengthened, had a leg regrown, and her skin covered in alien scales. And a bloated alien giant ant – no offence – who’s been heavily pregnant for centuries, is telling us young songbirds to go enjoy each other. It’s hilarious. What did you expect, that Springer and I would be so overcome by the soft grass and woodland air that we’d romp naked on the virgin hills of Earth?”
Arun… Barney warned in the corner of his mind.
“You did, didn’t you?” Arun accused. This just kept getting better. Pedro was embarrassed. It wasn’t just his drooping antennae and his comical attempt to sink his fat body into the grass, but the way his words would tread carefully around his human friends until he decided he’d been forgiven.
Arun loved the big ant, truly he did, but he was hilarious when he was embarrassed. That amusement was just enough to stop Arun from shooting the interfering alien for s
tranding him. For now, at least.
Arun!
What? he snapped at his AI.
Pardon me for getting involved in human affairs, but I’m just passing on a message from Saraswati here. She says to tell you that you’re a selfish rat who thinks of no one but himself, except when he’s having sexual fantasies about President Lee.
Arun’s laughter dried up. He swiveled his chair around and was immediately caught in the powerful glare beaming out of Springer.
“You told me that duty would never release us, that we would never find the time we deserve to enjoy each other,” she said. “You told me that when we’d finally rid this world of Tawfiq and her murdering regime, that we’d slip away together. Spend our final years making up for the centuries we have surrendered to duty. Did you mean those words?”
Arun nodded.
“Then I don’t know why you’re laughing at poor Pedro. He’s giving us an option we never really had before, because no matter how much you want to be with me, you would have spent every moment thinking about the journey home to 2739 in the drop pod. Without the downstream intercalator, we can spend as much time together as we like. We can sleep through the centuries and then awaken to duty.”
She stroked Pedro’s antennae, which made him sigh with pleasure. “Thank you, Pedro. I think you made a very sweet gesture.” She drew his bulbous head to her, hugging him while glaring at Arun.
But her expression quickly shifted into joyfulness, her lovely eyes flashing mischief and her cheeks dimpling.
“The words of your instructors may have been lost on you,” she challenged, “but I was taught to seize every opportunity with all my limbs, and it’s a lesson I’ve learned to follow the hard way.”
Her words hung there, a challenge. A challenge to both of them.
