Crucible of Time

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  Bandicut hummed. “We’re still not sure on that one. Let’s move cautiously.”

  Li-Jared murmured acknowledgment, but continued as though he hadn’t heard. “And then there are the defensive forces . . .”

  “Good. We need to talk about that. We are right now in hot pursuit of three Mindaru on their way to Karellia. If we can’t stop them, it really could be up to the Karellian defenses. Do you think they’re up to it?”

  “Moon and stars, Bandie, I don’t know. Can they stop Mindaru? They’ll try. But did I tell you? They’ve got a big arsenal of long-range missiles already in orbit, armed with fusion warheads.”

  “Fusion warheads! Really? Your people really are full of surprises, Li-Jared.”

  “I was surprised, too.”

  Fusion-tipped missiles could definitely be helpful, if they could be targeted properly. Of course, the Mindaru were awfully hard to kill, and something as primitive as a fusion blast might not do it. If they saw missiles coming, they could probably evade them easily enough. But perhaps . . .

  As he pondered, Bandicut saw Sheeawn and Akura staring at him, eyes wide. Had they understood the conversation? Did they know what fusion warheads were, and what their original intent likely had been? Bandicut cleared his throat and explained carefully. “We’re going over the planetary defense options, for anything that might be useful if any Mindaru get past us.”

  Sheeawn nodded a wary acknowledgment. Bandicut thought he probably guessed exactly what the missiles had been intended for. But if they were to be put to a more fruitful purpose, he and Akura would support that.

  “Li-Jared,” Bandicut said, turning back to the console and dropping his voice. “Are those missiles at our disposal, if we need them?”

  “I think so,” said the scratchy voice of his friend. “I’ll be checking.”

  “Do that. And Li-Jared—”

  Bong. “Yah?”

  “If we—or you—need to use the missiles, can you work on a way to keep the Mindaru from seeing them coming? Our own missiles didn’t do too well.” He told Li-Jared what had happened earlier. “See if you can find some way to block the damned Mindaru from taking control.”

  “I understand. We’ll work on it right away.” Li-Jared hesitated. “Bandie, maybe we shouldn’t say more. How secure are these transmissions?”

  “Good point.” The Mindaru were excellent listeners. Copernicus had his best firewalls up against intrusion, but the Mindaru were bound to detect and listen in on their comm signals sooner or later. Bandicut hoped it would be later.

  “All right—those incoming will be our focus right now,” Li-Jared said. “We’ll need tracking data from Copernicus or Jeaves. But I think we should consider sending that blast down the timestream. Before it’s too late and a lot more arrive.”

  You might be right, Bandicut thought. You might very well be right.

  ***

  The Long View was now in close pursuit. The three Mindaru were approaching Karellia along the inner boundary of the Heart of Fire—using the clouds as cover for their approach, most likely. Dark had just informed Copernicus that three additional objects had been sighted farther out—not an immediate threat, but definitely a concern for later.

  The Long View was at a state of battle readiness, but they still had to endure waiting while they overtook the enemy. Bandicut had briefed the Uduon as well as he could, though there was little for them to do except take it all in. Copernicus estimated first possible engagement in a few hours, if the Mindaru kept their present course. They would catch up with the enemy not far outside the temporal shield, assuming the Mindaru followed the curvature of their path into a turn toward the planet. Right now the intruders were close enough to the clouds that Copernicus was concerned they might easily escape into the clouds if pursued. He therefore kept The Long View even closer to the boundary, in hopes of being able to cut off any escape attempt that way, while still setting The Long View up to dive and intercept.

  “Let’s call Li-Jared again,” Bandicut said, after wolfing a sandwich from the commons.

  While Copernicus was making the call, Bandicut checked with Jeaves. The robot didn’t want to talk yet. He felt he was on the verge of a full translation of the tachyon signal.

  Li-Jared came on the com to report, “All defenses are committed. And the pulse, if you want it, has been approved.”

  Bandicut felt his mouth grow dry.

  “They’re actually almost ready to release it,” Li-Jared said. “Some coils or other are nearly at full power. Are you safely out of the line of fire—just in case? Shall we go ahead?”

  “No!” Jeaves barked suddenly. “Do not release the pulse!” He shot out to the center of the bridge, metal arms out wide, as though prepared to stop an oncoming bus.

  “Why?” Bandicut asked. “What is it?”

  “Don’t fire the pulse! Li-Jared, shut it down!”

  Bandicut was too startled to speak, and so it seemed was Li-Jared. Jeaves continued rapidly, “I’ve got the translation of the tachyon message—ninety-five percent probability of accuracy. Do not—repeat, do not!—send any kind of pulse down the timestream!”

  Bandicut raised his own hands in bewilderment. “Why not?”

  “Here’s the message, in expanded form: ‘Amaduse/Antares to Long View. Danger! Ik and JulieS in timestream. Do not disrupt timestream until you receive All Safe from us. Risk of harm to the translator.’ That’s it—and then the message repeats.”

  “But that’s—what do you mean you expanded it? Are you sure you—”

  “The expansion seemed pretty clear. Look.” Jeaves displayed the text against the viewspace, in its original form:

  to LV. Danger!

  Ik/JulieS n timstrm.

  No disrpt ntl AllSafe frm us.

  Rsk harm trnsltr.

  [repeats]

  Bandicut stared at the message in disbelief, Jeaves' expansion echoing in his ears. “Ik and . . . Julie S? In the timestream? What does that—who is—? Is that Julie Stone? In the timestream?” Bandicut staggered, mind reeling, groping for something to hold onto. “Julie Stone?” he repeated. /Julie Stone?/ he cried in his thoughts, to the Charli who was no longer there.

  “The message says JulieS,” Jeaves said. “I cannot be sure of anything further. But I know of no other JulieS. And I do not know what to make of ‘risk to translator.’ Do you?”

  Bandicut shook his head. He was suddenly aware of Li-Jared’s voice, calling, “What are you saying? Talk to me, Bandie! You got a message from Antares?”

  “Yes! Yes, from Antares and Amaduse.”

  “Moon, stars, wind, and hail,” Li-Jared breathed. “And she’s telling us not to do anything to the timestream?”

  “That’s right! Don’t!”

  “Then what are we going to do instead?”

  Bandicut rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know. Fight the Mindaru until we get an All Clear.”

  “And what was that about the translator?”

  “Risk to the translator.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I don’t know. There’s more. The message says Ik is in the timestream now. And . . . Julie S. My, I mean . . . I think it means, Julie Stone from my world.”

  “Moon, stars, hail, and thunder!”

  Bandicut shut his eyes and massaged his temples. Starbursts flashed behind his closed eyelids.

  Copernicus broke in. “I know one thing. We’re about to intercept three Mindaru. What is our plan?”

  “Hold that thought, Coppy.” Bandicut blinked back to the Karellian. “Li-Jared, you’ve got to stop the pulse. Stop it cold. And we’ve got to stop these Mindaru. Can you get your people to target those—” Don’t use the word; they might be listening! “—flying things, if we ask for it?”

  “I will do my best,” Li-Jared said.

  ***

  They brought The Long View in an extended arc to intercept the lead Mindaru about fifty thousand kilometers outside the Karellian temporal shield. Bandicut’s pla
n was to come down on it out of the background noise of the energy clouds, and hit it as hard as they could. He wished he had something better, considering their experience so far. “Coppy, any word from Ruall?”

  “Can’t reach her, Cap’n. I think we’re on our own for this one.”

  “Power up the weapons, then. Your recommendation?”

  “Cap’n, the first Mindaru was tough because it hadn’t fully materialized. These have. I am hopeful we can land some shots on them. I recommend the n-space disrupter beams, a fast barrage, and then immediately quantum pulses.”

  “All right. Give us a count when we’re in range. Jeaves, any other suggestions?”

  The robot glided around to hover beside Copernicus. “Don’t miss.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Mainly.”

  “How is it we never thought of that?” Bandicut murmured. Still, it was always good to get back to fundamentals. “Coppy, let’s shoot to kill.”

  The robot ticked.

  “How soon?” Bandicut asked.

  “Half hour. Less, if you want me to accelerate the run. But if I do that, targeting will be more difficult. Do you want me to?”

  Bandicut shook his head. “No, this is a good speed. Have you tried again to contact Ruall? Or Bria? Any luck?”

  “No luck. Captain, you and our guests should prepare for combat maneuvering.”

  Bandicut looked around. “Are Akura and Sheeawn in the commons?”

  “Yes,” Jeaves said. “I’ll let them know.”

  Bandicut nodded. He was tired. Tired of thinking about the Mindaru, tired of thinking of battle plans when he knew nothing of battle plans. He was practically in a fugue state—not silence-fugue, but a weariness that bordered on indifference. If Charli were here, she would have found a way to jog him out of it . . .

  His dazed state lasted for several more minutes—until Copernicus began his maneuvers, and the ship slewed violently as incoming fire from the Mindaru lanced past, just beyond the viewspace. “Cripes!” Bandicut shouted, grabbing for a handhold as the deck swayed. “That was fast! Have we even gotten a shot off yet? Coppy, can you get us into a better firing position, without being hit?”

  “It’s difficult, Cap’n,” said the robot. “I am doing my best.” With that, the deck tilted sharply to the right, and the view spun.

  Copernicus brought them through a steep horizontal turn and also a sharp vertical climb, out of easy firing range and up toward the glowing energy clouds. With a loop-over at the top, he brought them back down like a diving fighter plane. “Broad spread,” he murmured, and loosed a volley of n-space disrupter pulses. The points of light streaked out. They missed the lead Mindaru, which changed course with astonishing quickness. Without slowing, the Mindaru rotated, almost lazily, and sparkled.

  Another shot flashed toward The Long View.

  Copernicus rolled them sharply to the left, slamming Bandicut to the right against a column in the instant before the inertial damping caught up. “That was a neutron beam,” the robot reported. “Evaded successfully. Our layering probably would have stopped it—but if not, you’d all have been cooked. I’m trying to avoid that.”

  Bandicut gasped. “Yes, let’s. Avoid that. Are those other two moving to box us in?”

  “Looks like,” Copernicus said, accelerating them away from the area. “With your permission—”

  “Yah, get us out of here!” Bandicut’s heart thumped as he watched the ship gain distance from the Mindaru. The first continued accelerating toward Karellia. The other two turned to follow The Long View. Ruall, where are you? I’m out of my league here! He dragged a breath. “Jeaves, can you get Li-Jared back on the line?”

  A blast of static. “I’m here, Bandy! What do you need?”

  Missiles. Lot of missiles. Bandicut took a deep breath and focused. “We’re outnumbered, and you’ve got a Mindaru fast inbound. We missed our shot on it, and we’ve got two others on us. Can you send a wide spread of . . . what we talked about? Smartly?” Can you hit it before it knows it’s under attack?

  Li-Jared’s voice sounded distant but reassuring. “We’ve been working on an idea about that. I’m sure they’ll see it, so not to worry.”

  You’re sure they’ll . . . “Don’t tell me—”

  “I’m not. But trust us.”

  ***

  The light surrounding Ruall was softened by being broken into thousands of rays of ultra-green and sub-blue. Fortunately, the sensation of noise was subsiding at last. She was still reeling from the wrenching assault on her mind from the Mindaru, and her imprisonment in dimensional folds by the dying entity. Her own fear, and Bria’s pain, had brought her a kind of terror she’d never experienced before; and the peeling back of the dimensional prison by her friends, in saving her, had nearly taken her own physical integrity with it.

  Ruall had never expected such tenacity from a tri-space enemy. It had been remarkably reluctant to die, and had not done so until Ruall and Bria had sliced and shredded it and scattered its pieces through a hundred dimensions. It was a victory, but one that left her shaken to her Tintangle core.

  And what if the pieces came back to life in those places? In all of those places?

  She was nearly sure that such a thing was impossible, but the doubt kept ringing through her with all the reverberation of a gong.

  And Bria, poor Bria, pressed flat against her, shaking like a slip of paper pressed by wind onto steel . . .

  The others were going to have to do without them a little longer. She and Bria needed longer recovery time, here in petal-space where the gently shifting dimensions of space soothed, and brought healing.

  ***

  Nothing about this made Bandicut happy. The number one Mindaru was accelerating in shallow n-space toward Karellia, beyond their power to stop. Numbers two and three Mindaru were coming after them in n-space, and he had no real strategy, except to run like hell until they could regroup with Dark, or find some other tactical advantage. But run where? They needed safety, while staying close to striking range. There was a small moon not too far away, but that didn’t seem too promising.

  A raspy cough made him suddenly aware of Sheeawn standing beside him. Both of the Uduon had returned to the bridge, but had been quiet and staying out of his way. “Sorry,” Bandicut said. “I know I haven’t been keeping you up to date.”

  “The Watcher asked me to convey a suggestion,” Sheeawn said.

  Bandicut opened his hands. “I need all the help I can get. What’s the suggestion?”

  “Retreat into the Clouds of Fire,” Sheeawn said. “The most energetic part, where tracking is difficult. Perhaps the enemy won’t be able to follow us there.”

  “Good idea. But we wouldn’t be able to track them from in there, either.”

  Akura, listening, said something to Sheeawn. He added, “We can help with that.”

  Bandicut looked at him for a moment, but didn’t take time to question the assertion, because he had no better idea and he needed to give Coppy a course five minutes ago. “Into the Clouds, Coppy. Go dense. Go where tracking is hardest.”

  “Setting course now, Cap’n. Flank speed.”

  ***

  The emerald- and ruby-glowing clouds grew in the viewspace. Bandicut practiced his deep breathing—and then they were in, arrowing toward the region of greatest energy density. At first it was just a haze, like being surrounded by green auroras, and then suddenly they were being chased by sapphire heat lightning. The density of the plasma flux in the zone ahead was far greater than what they had traversed in their flight between the planets.

  Soon, bolts of fire were rippling around them, and hammering in thunderous patterns around the ship’s hull. He felt both audible and visceral booms, as the bolts of electricity and quantum flux pelted the n-space fields that enfolded the ship, and fed back through the systems generating those fields. And this was just the outskirts of the fiery region.

  Karellia: World of beautiful, perilous skies.


  Bandicut had thought he’d understood why they called it that. But he hadn’t, not really. In their previous passages through the clouds, they had steered clear of such intense activity. Now, Copernicus was deliberately plowing into them, to discourage the Mindaru from following. The space-time fabric rippled around them with waves of magnetic and quantum turbulence. Winds of charged particles sleeted against them, and the ship was shaking like a seagoing ship in a storm. There was a keening sound of cosmic wind, like a speaker verging on overload.

  “Coppy, is this safe?” he yelled, over the noise. “Seems like we’re taking a hell of a pounding. Don’t you think we’d better stay to the edge of it?”

  Copernicus was busy piloting them through the discharges, and Jeaves answered for him. “This is the edge. We can take it. But you’re right—it’s putting stress on the n-space systems. We shouldn’t go through this if we don’t have to.”

  Bandicut caught the eye of Sheeawn, who somehow managed to look terrified and happy at the same time. “You folks okay?” he called.

  Akura leaned into Sheeawn and said something, and Sheeawn called back, “We’re fine. But the Watcher can’t sense the Mindaru following. She thought she would be able to sense them, but there’s nothing.”

  Puzzled, Bandicut answered, “Why would she—? But no, I don’t know if they’ve followed us in. Jeaves?”

  “They are no longer in ordinary sensor range,” the robot answered, “but with all this interference, I can’t say they’re not in here with us. Let me see what we can pick up on acoustic.”

  “Acoustic! There’s no sound here.”

  “Actually, there are various acoustic indicators, Captain. Shock waves moving through the plasma. Or vibrations in the quantum foam.”

  “Quantum foam!”

  “You know, down at the level where virtual particles are fizzing in and out of existence. That’s finicky to measure—but if we had time maybe we could—”

  “Maybe we could get the hell clear of this.” Bandicut chafed with worry about them saving their own necks while the Mindaru descended on Karellia. “Coppy—seriously, keep us outside of the really bad stuff, all right? Maybe we’ve already shaken them. But I want to know where they are!”