The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set

by D J Edwardson

  “We both have to do what we have to do,” Aaron said.

  “I’m sorry about this,” Gavin responded with a look of genuine regret. “I told myself I wouldn’t ever beat you over the head again.”

  Aaron would have to knock the tray out of Gavin’s hands before he could hit him with the canister. Gavin did not appear all that strong, so it would come down to a matter of timing and reflexes.

  Aaron charged forward, swinging the canister like a club. While he connected with the tray, the canister ricocheted off like he’d hit a solid wall. He was so shocked, he nearly lost hold of it. He barely had the presence of mind to duck beneath Gavin’s counter swing. Before Aaron could bring the canister back a round a line of soldiers in black and gray uniforms burst through the hole in the door.

  At first Aaron expected them to join Gavin’s attack, but the first one charged Gavin and the second came after him.

  White neutralizer blasts leapt from their hands, striking Gavin in the back and Aaron in the chest. The blasts dissipated off Gavin’s body in a shimmer of light, but Aaron felt a tingling weakness pulling him to the ground. He pitched forward onto a table. Everything went black momentarily.

  When he opened his eyes, Gavin was wrestling with one of the Delegation soldiers. Gavin took several blows to the head and torso, but kept going, completely unfazed. Which is more, he was giving back better than he got. When it came to physical ability, Aaron had definitely misjudged him.

  Gavin wailed on the soldier, sending him reeling. The helmet he wore was probably the only reason the soldier remained conscious and even that had a large crack in the visor. Still, he wouldn’t back down. He kept struggling against the inexplicably powerful blows of the scientist as two of his companions rushed in to help. Both of them leapt on top of Gavin and he finally went down.

  Aaron would have gladly left Gavin to his fate if another three soldiers hadn’t poured through the door. He realized that, for the moment, he and Gavin were on the same side, though it did not look promising for either of them. He scrambled back to his feet and dove at the incoming soldiers.

  They blasted him with more neutralizing beams, but this time they affected Aaron even less. He staggered briefly, vertigo filling his brain, but the temporary blackout did not happen this time and a moment later he was fine. Still, his stumbling killed the momentum of his charge and when he didn’t go down, the soldiers who had just come through the door barreled into him and brought him to the ground.

  They pinned Aaron face first to the floor. One of the soldiers clamped his hands behind his back with a pair of metal casings. Something slammed against the wall, shaking the room. Trays and instruments went flying.

  Gavin roared and the sound of more blows could be heard, followed by neutralizer blasts. Finally, Gavin’s voice rose above the fracas. “I’m sorry. There are too many of them. I’ll come back for you!” he cried out. This was followed by the sound of soft-soled feet fleeing the room.

  “After him,” shouted one of the soldiers and three of them rushed into the hall.

  The two who remained pulled Aaron to his feet.

  “What’s your name?” asked one of them as he adjusted the fit of his helmet. His voice sounded artificial behind the tinted silver mask.

  Aaron didn’t answer. He was not about to cooperate with the enemy.

  “How did you shake off our neutralizers?” he asked. “You don’t have any visible equipment and you don’t scan for any augmentations. Are you an escalon?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Aaron stared confidently into the soldier’s visor.

  “There’s no history of any escalons defecting, especially not to Deliverance,” replied the other soldier.

  “We can run a check on him when we get him back to the bridge,” said his partner.

  Then, shoving Aaron towards the ruined door, the two Delegation soldiers marched their prisoner to the center of the ship.

  Thirty-Four

  Change in Command

  The bridge looked markedly different. Several dozen Delegation soldiers now occupied the area. Cyrith and the other Developers were nowhere to be seen. Traces of blood on the floor told him that at least some of those who had stayed to defend the bridge were most likely now dead. Hopefully all of them had been somatarchs.

  The view screens no longer depicted the Delegation ships. Instead they showed various rooms inside the Nebula. Locations flashed by, snapshots from all parts of the ship. The various humming and machine noises from the places depicted added a low, chaotic white noise to the chatter of the soldiers analyzing the screens. The Delegation was using the ship’s surveillance systems to search for something, but at first it was not apparent what that was. Corridors, rooms, vents, and even external shots of the ship appeared briefly before passing away. Most of the scenes were empty, though a few showed the remains of the Delegation’s skirmishes with somatarchs. Others showed Delegation forces spreading out throughout the ship, perhaps engaged in the same search as those on the bridge. One screen, however, did not change. That was the screen following Gavin’s progress through the ship’s corridors.

  The renegade raced through the hallways and corridors, unimpeded by the patrols of Delegation soldiers harrying his every step. Their red pulser fire sent low hissing noises over the audio. It should have scorched Gavin’s body, but he ran through it like it was nothing more than a light show. The beams pelted him and disappeared. Little shimmers of white light spread across his clothing indicating where the beams had hit, but they otherwise had no effect. Since the Delegation soldiers’ weapons appeared to be ineffective, they eventually gave up firing, but they did not give up the chase.

  Besides the panels, the view from the windows had changed as well. The windows were now filled with stars. The Nebula had at last freed itself from the confines of the planet’s turbulent atmosphere. The myriad stars wove an illuminated tapestry across the infinite dark more beautiful than anything ever crafted by the hand of men. One star in particular outshone the rest by far. It dominated the scene, ten times the size of any of the others and with a white hot center and a yellowish outer edge. This must have been this planetary system’s central star, the one responsible for creating day and night on the planet below. Gazing upon the celestial mote woven into the stardust fabric, he felt a great longing to hold it in his hands, though he knew that was impossible. At that moment he forgot all about being captured and the boarding of the ship, swept up into the grandeur of the heavens before him.

  The soldiers escorting him did not even give the windows so much as a look, but prodded him forward. He stumbled ahead, enwrapped in sidereal wonder.

  I came from somewhere out there…he thought to himself. He could not say why that mattered and yet something pulled at him inside to know what that place was.

  “Sentinel Orin, we’ve captured one of the members of Deliverance,” said the soldier on Aaron’s left.

  A few of the troopers present were not wearing helmets. Those same men had solid black uniforms with silver trim at the collars and cuffs, and the outline of a nine-pointed star displayed on the chest.

  The man the soldier addressed was short, but powerfully built. His hair grew full and thick on the top of his head, packed even more tightly than his muscled frame. This wooly profusion marched down the lower half of his face in the form of a dense beard, neatly trimmed.

  Sentinel Orin gave Aaron a cursory look, more focused on watching Gavin’s exploits on the screen in front of him.

  Orin addressed the soldier. “Excellent. Maybe he can help us figure out how to gain control of this ship.” He pointed towards the screen depicting Gavin who had just entered into the section of the Nebula containing the deep freeze storage vaults. Those vaults were hardly ever visited by the rest of the ship’s population. They housed the members of the Collective who had yet to be awakened from cryo-sleep. “First, though, who is this friend of yours and what sort of shield is he wearing that our pulsers have no effect
on him?”

  “His name is Gavin, and he’s not my friend,” Aaron stated flatly. “He’s a Collective defector.”

  “A defector? Well if so, it hardly looks like he’s ready to join the Delegation.”

  “He may be a traitor, but he’s no fool,” Aaron said.

  The sentinel took a step towards him and Aaron could tell by the flash in his eyes that he had his full attention. He thrust a thick finger in Aaron’s face, opening his snarling mouth to speak, but a voice over the bridge’s audio system cut him short.

  “Sentinel Orin, this is commander Nestor. Is everything under control? Why are you still ascending?”

  Orin kept his gaze fixed on Aaron, but the fire in his eyes cooled. “Not to worry, commander. We have taken possession of the bridge and are working to remedy the situation. The Nebula’s safety measures sealed off the sections of the ship where the venators breached the Hull. We sustained some casualties in the effort, but nothing we can’t handle. As we expected, these Deliverance dregs were no match for our escalons.”

  “If you’ve taken the bridge, what is keeping you from taking control of the ship?” Nestor asked.

  Sentinel Orin turned from Aaron and began pacing in front of his men. He spoke into the air, as if rehearsing some grand speech. “It looks like they’ve installed some sort of fallback navigation controls which are overriding the ones on the bridge. So far we have been unable to locate secondary Command Center.”

  “Understood. We’ll hold off on boarding the Nebula in case they make a sortie or try to escape, but I’m worried about the omniclast. Now that you’ve cleared the atmosphere, they may attempt to charge it. If they decide to fire on us, we’d be husked in a microslice. If we get close enough to your position they’d have to hold off firing or risk getting consumed in the paroxysm.”

  “You’re certain there are no reinforcements back in the planet’s airspace or on the surface?” Orin asked.

  “Nothing we can spot on our scanners.”

  “Good, proceed towards our position, but maintain a distance of a thousand clicks,” Orin instructed.

  “Affirmative. Nestor, out.”

  Orin’s attention snapped back to the screen following Gavin’s progress through the vaults. He waved in Aaron’s direction without taking his eyes off the screen. “Scan this prisoner. Find out if he’s an auger or a natural before we decide whether he’s of any use to us or not.”

  One of the soldiers passed his gloved hand over the back of Aaron’s own. A green light flashed from the glove, illuminating Aaron’s skin before fading. Then the soldier studied the back of his glove. Glowing letters appeared in the air just above it. They scrolled by in a blur. Aaron couldn’t read them, but the soldier cocked his head to the side, as if the information, whatever it was, was unexpected.

  “Sir, you’re not going to believe this,” he said. “He’s one of us.”

  “What?” the sentinel pulled himself away from the screen and came over to see the information projecting out of the soldier’s glove. Orin’s whiskers trembled, creating dissension among the ranks of his neatly kept beard.

  “He’s a sidereal scout. Sent to this sector of the galaxy seven years ago,” the soldier said, reading the text aloud. “If everything went according to his flight plan, he would have arrived 185 days ago.”

  Orin gave Aaron a long, searching look. “You don’t remember, do you, soldier? They blanked you.”

  Aaron glared back at the commander, wondering what sort of mind games the Delegation was playing with him. This was likely some type of interrogation tactic to get him to cooperate.

  “I’m not part of the Delegation, if that’s what you’re getting at,” he said.

  “Standard, pull up his mnemonic,” Orin said, addressing the soldier.

  The standard pulled a metal square off his belt and flung it in front of him. The four corners split apart and hovered in the air, forming a rectangular shape. A semi-transparent, three dimensional image appeared inside the rectangle. It was a mirror image of Aaron. The figure blinked when he blinked and its head moved when he moved. It took Aaron a moment to realize that this was little more than a high tech mirror. At the same time, he realized two more things. The first was that he had never seen what he looked like before. Except for the figure’s mimicking of his movements it was like looking at a total stranger. The figure in the projection had shiny black hair and thick eyebrows. His cheeks were broad and flat and his mouth rather thin. His eyes were dark brown and slightly tapered at the edges. For a moment he suspected that the image might be a ruse, part of the Delegation’s attempts at manipulating him. But after considering it further, he couldn’t think what purpose Orin would have for showing his reflection.

  The second thing he realized was that he looked nothing like any of the other members of the Collective. Not that he had ever really given much thought to their appearance before, but somehow seeing his reflection brought to mind the incredible homogeneity in the way they looked.

  At a wave from the standard’s hand, the image began to change. Aaron’s likeness remained, but the clothes changed and the figure no longer mimicked his movements. He appeared dressed in a Delegation uniform and his hair was noticeably shorter.

  “Kessen, our eternity, soldier,” the image addressed him. It was definitely Aaron’s voice. “If you’re seeing this it means you’ve fallen into enemy hands. I’m here to remind you that you’ve got a mission to fulfill: bring the Deliverance renegades to justice. They may have wiped your mind, tampered with your system, done all sorts of things. That’s what they do. But whatever you think now, you’re not one of them. Your name is Matthew Yin. You’re an escalon, serving as a sidereal scout in the Delegation forces. Every soldier that goes out on hyper-space missions is given a mnemonic. It’s woven into the core of your generational map so that if its tampered with it’ll kill you, kind of like the poison pills soldiers and spies once used. Only this code can also verify your identity if you get recovered by Delegation forces. As soon as you hear it from me—and only me, the corresponding code will trigger in your mind and you will be forced to respond with the counter code. That’s how you—and the Delegation—will know it’s been authenticated. Got that? Here it goes. 1-1-2-3-5-8-1-3-2-1-3-4-5-5.”

  The moment the image finished pronouncing the last “five,” Aaron, completely apart from his own volition found himself speaking out loud in unison with the voice of his reflection, “8-9-1-4-4-2-3-3-3-7-7-6-1-0.”

  “Welcome home, soldier,” said the reflection. Then the four corners of the mirror collapsed in on themselves and flew back onto the standard’s belt. The image vanished and with it everything Aaron thought he knew about himself as well.

  Thirty-Five

  On All Sides and None

  A wave of weakness washed over Aaron.

  He wanted to believe that all of this was just some form of manipulation by the Delegation. The holographic mirror, the mnemonic, it had to be a clever contrivance on the part of his enemies, expert in the kind of psychological manipulation it took to bend the will of anyone they deemed useful. But the problem was, this theory did not explain his response. Where had those numbers he rattled off come from? And it wasn’t just the numbers themselves, the recitation of the counter sign had unlocked a chain of realizations about his life in the Collective.

  The first thing that hit him was just how vague and indistinct his memories were from the time before he had come out of cryo-sleep. This wasn’t the first time he had experienced fuzziness regarding his past, but it was the first time he had really stopped to consider it. Before, whenever such impressions came over him, they vanished a moment later, replaced by the next task, the next activity, the next item on his constantly filled schedule.

  He also realized that it was possible his scientific skills were not native to him. Through technologies such as the esolace and his bioseine, knowledge could be imparted in a very short time.

  The last realization came in the form of his a
ppearance. He could not get over how different he looked compared to the rest of the members of the Collective. And now that he thought about it, so did Donovan, the man he had been working with over the last few days and whom he considered his life long friend. He wondered if Donovan was part of the Delegation too.

  A hollow cavity opened up inside him, threatening to swallow him whole. He had been robbed of his identity and swept up into the enemy’s ranks in one fell swoop. How could he go on now? What was he supposed to do next?

  “So…I’m one of you,” Aaron admitted at length. Though it seemed all but certain the mnemonic was authentic and not some form of manipulation, he still didn’t want to be part of the Delegation. His biases from the Collective were not something he could easily shake. It was hard enough just thinking of himself by his new, or rather, his old name—Matthew.

  “That’s right, soldier,” Orin said. “You served under Commander Nestor’s division so I’m sorry to say that we’ve never met before, but I’m glad we found you. You’re a real diamond in the rough. You know this ship and that’s what we need. We have to find out where the scum who are running this vessel are holed up.”

  Aaron—now Matthew—had a powerful desire to see the leaders of the Collective as well, to confront them with a thousand questions which had arisen in his mind. He made an attempt to connect to the Nebula’s esolace again, but it remained down. “What are you going to do with this ship once you take control of it?” he asked.

  Orin folded his arms. “Look, escalon, I don’t have time to get you up to speed on a battle plan that’s been years in the making. Can you help us track down these traitors? If so, tell us what you know.”

  Matthew looked around the room. The screens continued to flip, roaming all over the Nebula, trying to find where Cyrith and Xander had fled to, but he knew they would never find them. The Developers were smart enough to have disabled surveillance wherever the override controls would have been located.