“So you won’t have to destroy the station after all?” he asked hopefully. Every alien eye on the bridge turned his way, large bodies rotating in place to bring him in view.
“We cannot allow this to happen again,” said Klorasoft, his tentacles waving in excitement. “The station must be destroyed, to remove the temptation from your people.”
“And we lose our war, and get wiped out.”
“Better that we lose your species than the timeline of the galaxy cracks open,” said another of the aliens.
Not to my way of thinking, thought Jackson, not saying a word, though he wanted to scream at the Ancients.
“We could still use you to talk to your people,” said Klorasoft. “The station must be destroyed, but there is no reason that all of the people aboard have to die with it. Talk to them. Convince them that they must leave.”
Jackson again remained silent. There was no way he was going to talk his people into surrendering. The Ancients might think they had the upper hand here, but this human was not about to bet against his people.
“We have time,” said Klorasoft. “We will destroy the launch facility when we are within range. In, thirty-three minutes we will be within range and will fire on the facility. Minutes later we will be within range of the station, and we will destroy it at that time.”
“We are picking up gravitational waves,” called out another watch stander. “Still weak, but they are growing with each repetition.”
“And soon they will sweep out from this point as the gravitational constant changes with the temporal disruptions,” said Klorasoft, looking at Jackson. “When they increase to a certain point stars will start to collapse under their own gravity, and then the rebound supernovas will occur, just as happened to us.”
“And when will they reach that point?” asked Jackson, not liking the sound of rebound supernovas.
“That is unknown, but will occur when the timeline is sufficiently disrupted. Which is why we can’t allow that to happen.”
Jackson continued to stare at the alien, not sure what he was going to do. He had thought about sabotaging the spacecraft before it destroyed the station. He wasn’t sure how he was going to do that, only that he would have to make the effort. But if a score of close stars were going to go supernova, killing possibly a hundred billion people and a good portion of the industrial capacity of the empire? It might be worth letting them take out the station. But without the station could they win the war against the Cacas?
* * *
“Twenty-eight minutes until the conjunction occurs,” said Nick Stumpfield, the person Lucille thought of as the tall man. He was a count of the realm as well, and had used his rank to gain the first audience with the Emperor, who had listened with hope to his speech on changing the past.
Sean stared at the screen with total concentration. The wormhole was still in the other dimension, and would be for another twenty-six minutes, at which time it would transit back into their reality. Two minutes after in forward time, though almost four months in the past, the Caca freighter, their wormhole equipped q-ship, would enter the system. Intelligence had pinpointed where and when that would be. Accurate information, developed too late to be of use. Only now it would be of use, and that ship would be blasted from space before it could drive into the system and reach the double world of Jewel/New Terra. Moments after that destruction a message would be sent into the system warning of the other Caca freighter that was already deep within the central black hole system. It would be targeted, and it would either surrender or be destroyed. Hundreds of millions would be saved, hundreds of ships would still be in existence, and history would be changed.
Sean still had problems wrapping his head around it. Would he even remember what had happened? And if he didn’t remember, who would set this entire chain of events in motion? It was enough to drive one crazy. Guatarrez had stated that the closed loop wouldn’t develop, that theoretically the people who had set the event in motion would still remember, and the loop would be closed. But no one knew for sure, and a closed loop would be a disaster of the first magnitude. Sean could be trapped in that loop, forever replaying the same actions. And it will be worth it if we can stop this attack. And if everything works, and there is no loop, maybe we can go back and save the Cimmerian system and all the billions who lived there.
The floor of the station shook, the third time it had done that in as many minutes.
“What is that?” asked Sean, looking over at Guatarrez.
“Theoretically there is some turbulence involved in changing time,” said Stumpfield. “Nothing to be concerned about.”
Sean continued to look at Guatarrez, and noted from the expression on the man’s face that he didn’t agree with his partner. The Emperor tapped into the station databanks through his implant, bypassing all restrictions with his code. He thought the term temporal turbulence, and was not surprised when nothing came back. No one had done any research on this aspect of time change, so Stumpfield didn’t know what he was talking about. In fact, it appeared he was lying out his ass, making it up as he went along.
Maybe Yu was right, he thought.
“Twenty-five minutes till conjunction. Missile is up to firing velocity.”
And if we don’t fire at the right moment, all of those people are doomed. But they had already been doomed, they were dead at this moment, and had been for months.
I need to talk with Doctor Yu about this, thought the Emperor.
“I must step out for a moment,” he told the other people in the room, looking over at his chief of detail. “I’ll be right back.”
Stumpfield looked a little confused at first. There was nothing he could do about the movements of the Emperor, but Sean knew he had to wonder why the monarch would leave before the show.
* * *
“We’re receiving a com from the Search and Rescue Net, ma’am. Something is going on with the star.”
“What the hell,” said Sondra McCullom, looking up from the paperwork she was signing on her flatcomp. The stuff never seemed to end. She didn’t remember there being this much paperwork, still called that even though paper was seldom involved, when she had been Home Fleet commander. She didn’t even read half the stuff, just putting her electronic initials by those of a subordinate who had read it, or so she hoped. “What the hell can be going on with the star?”
A holo formed over her desk, showing a real-time image of the G class star that was Jewel’s primary. Several large prominences rose from the surface, larger than normal, and she thought there was something else strange about them, though she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“The Solar Observatory is stating that activity on the surface is much more energetic that normal. And observations of the globe make it appear that it is shrinking.”
“Do they know why?”
“No, ma’am. They expect that it will be a short-lived phenomenon. But they also can’t explain why the gravity of the body is increasing.”
“What?” Sondra closed out her flatcomp and leaned forward, staring at the image of the star. That made no sense to her. Steller objects didn’t increase their gravitational pull.
“Any effects outside of solar flare activity?”
“Some of the antimatter production sats are getting pulled toward lower orbits, but so far they have been able to counterbalance the pull.”
The sats had their own small fusion units that used the plasma from the star for fuel. They could move each sat to safety if something happened. But if the gravitation gradient increased beyond a certain point, trillions of imperials of hardware would go spiraling into the star. Which would be the least of their worries.
“What happens if the gravity continues to increase?” she asked, already thinking of planets falling out of orbit, climates changing. What if this was some kind of weapon? She couldn’t imagine that kind of power, which was well beyond what her high-energy civilization could achieve.
“Contact Admiral Chan,” she
finally ordered. “Get her and her people looking into this. And keep me apprised.”
The holo died, leaving the CNO alone with her thoughts for a moment. There was nothing she could do about whatever was happening. That would have to come from the science brains. But she could contact the Empress and get her and her children moving. There might be a need to organize fleets to move people. And the Emperor needed to know.
“I have Admiral Chan on the com, ma’am. She says that it’s vital that she talk to you.”
Chan’s face appeared on the holo, and Sondra could tell by the expression that the news was not going to be good.
“I can’t say with certainty, Admiral, but according to my hurried calculations, we could be facing a disaster.”
“Give it to me in the clear, Admiral.”
“Supernova, Admiral. The gravitational constant is changing around the star. It will probably start changing on the planets as well, and it could reach uncomfortable levels. But the star is the most dangerous manifestation of this phenomenon. It could explode.”
“When?”
“I have no idea, Admiral. I suspect we will know when it happens. And I believe that when it does go, we won’t have time to act.”
* * *
Lucille heard the noise beyond her door as a confusing babble and some sharp cracks. Every chamber in the station was made of the best materials, all but vibration proof. To hear anything through those walls and doors took heavy vibration.
Her door opened and Jimmy stood in the opening. There was blood on his face and a scorch mark on his jacket. Bodies lay on the floor behind him, while battle suited Marines stood over them.
“Are they dead?” asked a stunned Lucille, staring at the unmoving forms.
“I couldn’t kill brother and sister agents,” said Jimmy, a lopsided grin on his face. “Unfortunately, they didn’t feel the same, so I got a beam grazing my skull.”
Lucille was on him in a second, her hands probing at his scalp, feeling for the wound. “Did you stun them?”
“Tranq rounds,” said the agent. “Sonics don’t always work on augmented. And neither did my glib tongue.”
“We need to get to the Emperor,” said Lucille, her eyes widening as the deck shook.
“What is that?” asked the agent, looking around. “I thought it might be a malfunction of the grabber system.”
“Gravity waves, from the black hole,” said Lucille. “Whatever they are doing is affecting the big bitch.”
“That much power?”
“More than we can imagine,” replied Lucille, thinking of what kind of energies had to be released to affect a sixty solar mass point gravity source. “It will grow worse as we approach the event.”
“And when we hit the event?”
“It will spike, and we will be in a world of hurt. Now, there’s no time to lose. We need to get to the Emperor and stop this madness.”
Chapter Eighteen
The time is always right to do what is right. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr. Kenji Guatarrez was worried. He had searched for the way to send probes back in time, not to change the timeline, but to observe, to see what had really happened to the Ancients. Like everyone in the Empire he had heard of the legends of the Ancients, how they had ended after tampering with the timeline. The legend hadn’t said how they had ended, but the evidence of stars that were too small to go into supernova doing just that, and within a short period of time, was a good probability. From the spread of the nebulae it was thought that they all went off within decades of each other, if not years, if not sooner.
There were many theories about why over a score of stars went supernova. A conscious Universe, one that struck back at those who tried to get a do over. The hand of God reaching down to punish those who would mess with fate. Fate, rejecting the changes. He had done the math, and everything seemed to point to there being horrific consequences to trying to change time.
Another wave of whatever energy it was went through the station. It was only a twinge at the moment, but Guatarrez was sure that it would build until it felt like it would tear them apart. He thought of them as temporal waves, for lack of a better term. They were ripping apart the fabric of spacetime, and altering the very laws of physics around their point of radiation. And from what they were seeing from the black hole, one of the basic laws that was changing was the gravitational constant. The law that set the effects of mass on gravity, and made everything in the Universe move like clockwork. Except with the changes would come disaster. Living worlds would go into new orbits that would not support their life. And stars which could not explode now would.
“We must not do this,” said Guatarrez, looking at Stumpfield. “Can’t you feel it. We are dooming the heart of the empire.”
“I would run all of us through the gates of hell to get back at those bastards,” yelled Stumpfield, clenching his fists and glaring at the scientist. “Especially that bastard on the throne, and all the people here who stood by while my home was destroyed.”
Guatarrez could tell that the man had lost it. He had lost it long ago, when his planet, Cimmeria, had been destroyed by the Cacas, taking everything he loved away from him. The count had maintained a semblance of sanity, one that had fooled everyone. But the man had been on the edge of a breakdown the moment he had gotten the news that his family was gone.
“You must stop this madness.”
Stumpfield ignored him, continuing to stare at the holo that showed the view of the other end of the wormhole, in a space filled with stars that looked much like their own. Except that time was going in reverse of their own. There it would seem normal, time advancing, as it was advancing for the wormhole in that dimension. But every second it remained there it was moving one second backward in their time.
“Nothing will happen to us, except the Cacas will not triumph, and all of those people will be alive. And then we can send the wormhole back several years and save my planet. Billions saved. And after that we will go back to the home world of the Cacas, before they even knew we were still here, and destroy that world.”
Guatarrez stared at the madman who had shouted out conflicting goals. Saving the empire, destroying the Emperor. And if he didn’t destroy the Supersystem with this madness, he would later when he saved those seven billion souls from his home system. Or when he took the billions of lives in the Ca’cadasan home system. It had to stop, and it had to stop now, lest this first strike bring disaster, and there not be time for any other actions to prevent it.
“I will tell Sean when he comes back,” threatened the scientist. “He will not stand for this.”
Stumpfield nodded to the woman who had accompanied him, and she moved like a striking snake. Achieng Okoye was a trained assassin, an ex-Imperial Intelligence Operative, and her left hand went unerringly into the throat of the scientist while her left jobbed out with the implement she held. Guatarrez felt a quick prick on his neck, then the world went black.
* * *
“Your Majesty,” said the voice of Sondra McCullom over the com, directly into his brain through his implant. “We are experiencing numerous anomalies across the Supersystem. Every star is increasing its gravity, though Jewel’s primary is evidencing the most changes. And we have no idea what’s causing it.”
Sean knew. At that moment he was sure that what they were trying to do to time was the cause. And if they went through with it, the entire Supersystem would go up in a blaze of exploding stars. Not the station, though. No, it would be pulled into the black hole. And that would be the end of the Empire. Sixty billion would die, and the Cacas would come through the weakened fleet to destroy the rest.
“Director Yu,” sent Sean over the com. If anyone knew what was going on, it would be her. And he needed to talk with her. He kept waiting for an answer, and stomped a foot when he didn’t receive one.
“Where is Director Yu?” he asked through his implant.
“She has escaped from her quarters, your Majesty. Some of
her people rendered ours unconscious and took her away.”
“I need to talk with her, now. You are not to do anything to harm her or those with her. Just let her know that I need to talk with her.”
Sean turned and signaled to his security detail, then headed back toward the control room. The Marines waiting outside stood aside at his approach, and he walked toward the door, then stopped when it didn’t open.
“What’s wrong with this door?” he asked after sending a command through his implant did nothing. Everything on the station should have responded to his signal, but this door did not, which meant something was going on.
“It won’t respond to any signals, your Majesty,” said one of the Marines, pushing the manual controls to the door.
“We need to get through this door, now,” yelled Sean, fear and anger rising to the front of his brain and battling for dominance.
“Don’t do that, Sean,” said a voice from the speaker over the door. It took a second to recognize the voice as that of Count Stumpfield. “Any attempt to breach the door will result in our dropping the wormhole back into our time stream and firing the missile.”
“And what the hell will that do if the target isn’t in the system yet?” asked Sean, his eyes narrowing.
“We will aim the missile at Jewel. It will come in undetected until too late, and kill the planet.”
“We could warn the planet,” said the chief of the security detail. “If they know it is coming they will be able to locate it and stop it.”
Sean shook his head. The agent was trying to help, but he didn’t really understand what was going on, not having been briefed on exactly what was happening here. No message they could send would reach the world months in the past. Only one sent through this wormhole would get there, and at the moment Stumpfield controlled it.
Time Strike Page 27
