GODS OF TIME

by DG SIDNA

  "Yes. We're running a skeleton crew, but I still have sixty combat-ready marines. Once we're back in orbit, we'll send them down in dropboxes. They'll set up a perimeter around Parliament Hill. Patmos and his Red Man won't get through, I promise you that."

  "How long until we're back?"

  "Unfortunately, while in the system, due to the stellar bodies, we're limited to conventional speeds, which brings along some minor issues of time dilation," he tells me. "So that puts us roughly two hours out from Tegana. I'll contact the planet on secure channels and let them know we're on our way back. But we don't want to give away our hand just yet. If our enemy sees us coming, they'll initiate the attack. So I'll deploy a false transponder and send it toward the Valeyard. For anyone watching, it will appear our course hasn't changed. In the meantime, why don't the three of you wait in the forward observation deck. There are couches down there. You can rest until we arrive. I'll have food brought to you. Your work in all this is finished. The Navy will handle it from here."

  I'm so very relieved that the end to all this is so close at hand. I know I've thought that before, several times in fact, but Captain Bashir and his staff are some of the most competent people I've ever encountered. And they know the threat. I have no reluctance handing the reins of this task over to him, his women, his men, and his ship.

  So with that finished, Careena, Rhoda, and I do as he suggests and make our way to the observation deck. It's a beautiful room, slightly more esoteric in design than the mess hall. This is where soldiers and staff come to read or watch the stars or meditate. In this time of crisis, however, there's no one here but us.

  I take a seat on a couch and stroke the edges of my red shawl. Both Careena and Rhoda have discarded theirs, but I decide to keep mine. It represents something to me. But what? That like it, I'm a backwards bumpkin a thousand years behind the times? No, something deeper. I've stolen this shawl from antiquity. Someone else was meant to wear it. It was meant to play some other role in history. But now it will play its part here, like me.

  I turn to Careena. "What happens to us when this is all over?"

  "I really don't know, freckles. Maybe Soolin will pardon us, you know, for saving all of forking time. But given how she's taken to dressing in those ridiculous robes and treating everything like a damn religious procession, I can't even venture a guess. Whether she forgives us or not, you can't go home."

  I suppose this I should have understood. I can't go back to my old life because there's no life to return to. There never was. The girl I was before, little Izzy Mendelssohn, the overly ambitious, occasionally anxious, but otherwise generally ordinary teenager, died; she fell off a ledge.

  I'm someone else.

  I could try to slip back into the 21st Century and live out my days quietly in Jersey. I won't deny that some part of me has considered it—but with wisdom and maturity comes a sense of responsibility. And I know now that if I went back, I'd end up accidentally pulling too many levers, altering too many of the life paths of those around me. I'd leave too many marks on the flow of time, like scratches of graffiti on the sandstone pillars holding up the cosmos; until the grooves become so deep that the stones crumble.

  No, the best I can do is live a worthy and meaningful life here, to make that my small way of honoring that lovely and innocent girl I used to be. It is for her I push on.

  Careena seems to read my mind. She has her own regrets. "I'm sorry I took you out of Brooklyn, luv."

  "Could you have gotten this far without me?" I ask.

  "Probably not."

  "Then don't be sorry."

  More than an hour passes. Food is brought in. I nap. Conversation comes to us in only small pieces. The waiting brings with it an anxiety that eats away at us. A storm is brewing, a confrontation is coming, a battle between the forces of good and evil. And yet, regardless of which side wins, the three of us will have no place in either of the worlds to come.

  At some point I open my eyes and look out the windows. Coming into focus is the blue-green marble I know to be Tegana. From here, perched so high above in the heavens, like gods gazing down from the top of Olympus, the planet looks peaceful, like a sleeping child cradled in the loving embrace of his solar mother. Perhaps we're not too late. Perhaps we've succeeded and the world will be saved.

  My hopes are dashed, however, when the lights in the lounge turn red, when thick blast shielding falls over the windows, and alarm klaxons blare.

  A voice over the speaker orders all crews to battle stations.

  New Harmony has fallen under attack.

  THIRTY-THREE

  We make our way to the bridge. In the halls marines are strapping themselves into rectangular dropboxes, sized for about a dozen soldiers each. These men and women are ready to shoot down to the surface at breakneck speeds the moment we reach the upper atmosphere. I envy their commitment. In a world where I've never known what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be, not before and especially not now, it's encouraging to see individuals of such singular conviction. They could have been anything, and they chose to be the guardians of their homeworld.

  On the bridge is Captain Bashir, stoic as ever, barking orders.

  "How bad is it?" Careena asks.

  "It's just as you predicted, Smith. A seismic blast in the mantel took out the primary shield generator. But they couldn't jump directly into the city center, so they've appeared around the perimeter. It's a war zone now. The constables are spread thin, forced to defend streets coming in from every direction. They're being overrun, pushed back block by block. Causalities are already in the hundreds, including a fair number of civilians caught in the crossfire."

  There's worry on Careena's face. "How long till we can deploy?"

  "Six minutes forty-eight seconds to drop range," an officer at a command station answers.

  "There's something else, Smith," the captain says while pointing to a map of the city on a display. "Take a look at this. The attackers appeared in ten teams of twelve. All strategically chosen points." Displayed on the map are little red dots that must indicate the movement of the Red Man's forces. They're converging from different directions on Parliament Hill. And they're not far away now.

  But what Bashir is pointing to next are blue dots behind the red ones. He goes on, "Then there's these. Fifty-four pairs of jumpers, each comprised of a man and a woman. They arrived with the fighters, yet none of them have penitentiary identifier tags. Which means this second group didn't originate from Iskender Bay. And one more thing. They're unarmed. It's damned curious."

  "It's Patmos," I venture. "It has to be."

  "Aye, my guess as well," Careena agrees. "So it's true then, he has a group of followers. The Red Man's job is simply to get them into the ministry."

  I ask, "Even if they succeed, Careena. Couldn't you still stop them? Story told us a jumper has to commit an action before it will have an effect. Couldn't you track them down with those fancy computers before they do any harm?"

  She shakes her head. "Me? Alone? there are more than a hundred of them, deary. I don't know how I could. And are they all even going to the same place? Or a hundred different places?" she asks in frustration. "We still don't know what they're bloody planning. And I didn't want to mention this, but there's a bigger problem if they jump. If they do something radical, and they do it quick enough, then it's possible they'll alter time to such a degree that Tegana never gets colonized. If that happens, the planet will transform right before our eyes, back into the lifeless rock it was before humanity ever showed up."

  The implications are not lost upon me. "Which also means the Ark Royal will have never been built. But since you and I have been time-stayed, the changes won't affect us. We'll continue flying through space... only without a ship."

  The old woman turns her attention back to the captain. "Hamid, I should jump down there and have a look."

  "You won't be able to," he tells her.

  "Why the hell not?"

  "The EMP blast they u
sed knocked out the shield only temporarily. It's respun and back online now."

  She stomps her foot. "Then tell those idiots to shut it off, yeah? I can ferry your marines down there two at a time. We can get the city constables the reinforcements they need."

  Again the captain gives her a grave look. "Two of their teams went straight for the radio relays. They're using them to jam our communications. We can't get through to the surface."

  "Forkballs!"

  On the main viewscreen, we all watch as Tegana grows in size. Continents take shape. Moons begin to stand out in contrast to the mighty world they orbit. The mood among the bridge staff is tense. The ship is rattling. We're approaching as fast as we can—any faster and I think we'd fly apart.

  A minute or two later we hit the upper atmosphere. The impact is brutal but everyone manages to keep their footing. I don't know what sort of technological magic manages the ship's gravity, but I'm thankful our sudden near stop didn't splatter our bodies across the walls of the ship.

  Just as I think we might be in the clear, just as I can see the clouds a few miles below us, the entire ship shakes violently at the sound of an explosion. Red warning lights start beeping at consoles all over the bridge.

  "Report," the captain demands.

  "Unclear, sir. Perhaps we struck a satellite," an officer guesses.

  Another bridge officer responds, "There's no satellite that large."

  A pilot is desperately trying to correct for our descent. We're dropping rapidly. I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think the Ark Royal, a battle cruiser nearly a kilometer long, is the type of ship designed to land on a planet, or even enter the lower atmosphere, for that matter.

  "Stabilizers offline," the pilot says. "We're losing altitude."

  The ship shakes again at another explosion.

  "Captain, direct hit. Decks four and five have been compromised."

  The first officer shouts, "It's Planetary Defense, sir. They've locked on to us. Anti-spacecraft batteries are firing from the ground."

  "Why the hell is your planet shooting at us?" I cry.

  Bashir seems to be wondering the same thing. "They must have taken over the Defense Ministry. We were so damned concerned about Temporal Affairs that we left our ass wide open. They're turning our own weapons against us."

  "The Defense Ministry is only a few blocks from Temporal Affairs," Careena points out. "He's almost there."

  None of that really matters if we get shot out of the sky.

  "Incoming," an officer warns.

  Bashir yells into his wrist. "All hands brace for—"

  This third strike is the most violent. The tail of the Ark Royal begins to spin around. We've lost all ability to hold a course or our altitude. I feel the g-forces as we spin, the invisible tug pulling me toward the walls of the ship as we go round and round like an amusement park ride. Through the view screen I see a trail of smoke forming like a coiled snake as we drop lower and lower toward the planet below.

  Captain Bashir takes only the briefest moment to make up his mind. He knows indecision and delay often cost lives. He knows this better than most. He barks at an officer. "Van Sessen, prepare the bridge for evacuation." He speaks back into his sleeve, "All quarters, abandon ship. Repeat, all hands, abandon ship."

  The officers begin leaving their stations.

  "Abi," the captain calls. The holographic woman from before appears. I realize she is the ship; she's the ship computer in interactive form. Her name is an acronym—Automated Bridge Interface.

  "Here, sir."

  "Abi, take over ship functions. Employ all countermeasures. They're going to be shooting us down in our dropboxes. Use the unoccupied boxes as decoys to draw their fire. Cover our drop into New Harmony as best you can."

  "Understood, sir."

  He takes a long, last, nostalgic look at his bridge. "And Abi..."

  "Yes, sir?"

  "Scuttle the ship somewhere meaningful. I want future generations to remember the name Ark Royal."

  "It was an honor serving with you, captain," the hologram says.

  In his otherwise taciturn eyes is the look of a long and storied relationship coming to an end. Bashir was smart enough to know that Abi was nothing more than a script, with programmed responses, and yet even he was not beyond a heartfelt connection to her. How many battles had they survived together during the Second Khelt War? How many years had she been his ship, his savior, his steadfast companion through the stars?

  And now it was all coming to an end.

  Much was said in his polite nod goodbye.

  We follow the captain and his bridge crew to an emergency dropbox, a small rectangular vessel with seats and harnesses. Once we're all seated, I feel like I'm going to vomit in anticipation. Or maybe it's just because we're still spinning so goddamn fast.

  Bashir speaks again into his wrist, to give one final message to his soldiers divided among the many dropboxes as they ready themselves to drop into combat. Though he is not far from me, I hear him over the speakers.

  "Crew of the Ark Royal. As you know by now, our homeland is in peril. It is without exaggeration that I tell you the very existence of our world is at stake. In a moment, we will be launched into battle. I cannot tell you what you will face when our ships land and those doors before you open. How could I ever describe to you, the men and women who must face it, the ugly guise of war? I can tell you only this—fortune has offered us and us alone the privilege to answer this call. And answer it we shall. Our enemy is guile, but our courage, our conviction, will win us this day. So, brave soldiers of Tegana, if it's a war they want, then by God, it's the fire-eyed maid of smoky war all hot and bleeding that we shall offer them. Let us now show these lily-livered cowards just who we are."

  Our dropbox releases without warning. The sudden pressure of the fall causes me to black out momentarily. My body is pressed against my harness with such force I'm sure that it's crushing my bones. I'm nauseous. I'm scared.

  I'm falling to my destiny.

  Surely, I'm falling to my death.

  And was that not, despite the temporary reprieve granted over these previous few days, always what the fates had intended for me?

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Nearly half the dropboxes launched from the falling Ark Royal are shot down by Planetary Defense cannons before they ever reach the ground. Most were empty, thank goodness. They were decoys used to fool the enemy targeting systems. But I see in Captain Bashir's face that not all his men and women survived the landing. How many soldiers were lost, I don't know. It's only by the grace of the cosmos that we ourselves were not blown into oblivion.

  We hit the ground with bone-jarring force. The doors fall open. We've landed in the center of Prospect Park, that great green emerald at the heart of New Harmony. Ahead, on the northeastern edge, are the white and stately government ministries of Parliament Hill. I hope we're not too late.

  Marines in front of me charge out into the green, weapons at the ready, only to be cut down by sniper fire from rooftops far away. An officer next to me is killed instantly, even before she's unbuckled her harness. Her blood is sprayed across the pod walls. Across my face.

  Captain Bashir grabs my shoulder and half pulls, half throws me out of the pod and into the bright sunlight as his soldiers return fire. He presses me down, in shock as I am, against the rear of the dropbox for cover. As my eyes adjust, I see Rhoda and Careena are both with me.

  Our soldiers return fire, blowing the rooftop to pieces with powerful rifles, killing the enemy snipers. But already it's clear how precarious the situation is. Several buildings on Parliament Hill are on fire and there's the constant staccato of gunfire echoing from the streets. Black smoke is rolling into the sky. The last line of city constables has taken cover behind the great marble columns fronting the Temporal Affairs building. They're being overrun even as we watch.

  Bashir gives the order and his men and women charge up the gently sloping hillside of the park. To their credit they
never hesitate, even while they have the inferior ground and are taking heavy fire with heavy losses. I start to follow, but the captain holds me back with a hand.

  "You should remain here, Miss Mendelssohn. You'll be safe here until this is over."

  "With all due respect, captain," I say. "If this is how the universe ends, I have no desire to be remembered as a spectator."

  He understands.

  We follow behind the front line marines and enter the urban blocks and plazas of the ministry buildings. A brutal shootout ensues as the battle is fought block by block. We've easily already lost two-thirds of our soldiers, but the Red Man's forces have been heavily depleted as well.

  As we round a corner, I'm unprepared for the scene on the streets. Bodies are strewn everywhere, and not all are combatants. In such a busy district, it was inevitable that there would be collateral damage. Glass from windows litter the sidewalks. Children, who only an hour ago were bored on educational school trips, are now crouched in alleys, tears streaking their young faces.

  The anger boils inside me like a tempest. I can't explain it; I should be afraid. I should want to run away, to flee. But the only thought going through my mind right now is that Patmos will pay for this, that I'd march into the very forges of hell for the opportunity to strike him down, to pass judgment on his soul, whether or not such a right was mine to pass. A wiser version of myself may have been more careful what she wished for.

  We reach the foot of the ministry. No one is here. They must already be inside. Several of the facade columns have been blasted apart and the bodies of the defenders lie on the steps, some of whom I remember from my last visit. The lifeless form of Private Grimalkin sits only a few meters away from me, his blood spilling step over step over step down the ivory staircase.

  I know Bashir would prefer to regroup before storming the building, to lay out a plan, but there's no time; Patmos need only reach the Chronos Imperium and all our fighting, all our sacrifice, and the sacrifice of the city constables who laid down their lives to buy us the time we needed to get here, will have been for nothing.