Timelines

by Bob Blink

  “Naiya?” I asked the first man I saw as I reached the upper level.

  He looked at his men and shook his head, “Haven’t see her,” he replied.

  The complex was a small area, and it didn’t take long to search. It was as I expected. The last possibility was down the hallway towards the airlock, which now stood open. As I headed down the hallway, I saw Mike come from the other side and start in my direction.

  “You aren’t going to believe this,” he said, pointing behind him. Then he saw my face. “What’s wrong?” he queried. “I thought Carol was going to be okay.”

  “Naiya’s gone,” I told him.

  ‘Gone?” he asked confused. “What do you mean gone?”

  “She came in during the fight. She was downstairs when the aliens came down or shortly afterwards. She found Carol and sent Ted for Doc and to get your men. No one has seen her since. I’ve searched all the likely places.”

  “Maybe she went to tell the other offices what has happened?” he said, trying to extend some hope.

  “I don’t think so. We have the communications people doing that. Besides, she wouldn’t have left Carol. There’s something else,” I told him. I explained about the closed tunnel. We need the video of the tunnel room. I want to see what happened down there, I insisted.

  Mike nodded. “Let’s go get them. Things are secure up here. Just so you know. There were two more aliens in the ship behind the door. They weren’t shielded, and were caught totally by surprise by the bombs we sent into the area. They were killed, and minor damage was sustained by the equipment inside. They build rugged. It is a ship though. We are in orbit! You can see the planet below.”

  So, a number of questions answered. I would need to get up to speed later. For now I could only think about one thing.

  The tapes told the story. We watched as the aliens came down the ramp, and the short battle that followed. The aliens were surprised to find their transport missing, and when one was taken down by Carol’s shot, the two remaining exited quickly by the closest tunnels. As it exited, one of the aliens activated a display adjacent to the entrance. He did something and then slipped into the tunnel. Naiya had entered the cave just as he slipped out of sight. Rage was clear on her face as she knelt over the fallen Carol, as she directed Ted back into the tunnel from which the three of them had just emerged. Then she started towards the tunnel where the alien that had shot Carol had disappeared. Dix followed behind her. As they approached the ramp they looked upstairs briefly. The battle was still going on. Then carrying their rifles and backpacks they slipped into the tunnel. A few minutes later the tunnel suddenly closed behind them. Everyone was silent. We all knew what it meant. Naiya was gone.

  Chapter 39

  Time Complex

  Effective Time: Friday, 29 September 2006

  Mike carried the day. He was on top of everything, making the necessary decisions and getting everyone organized again. We couldn’t have gotten up and running anywhere near as efficiently without his direction. Doc was holding Carol in the infirmary, at least until tonight I had been told. I was still numb. I wouldn’t have trusted my decisions on anything important just then. I kept seeing the tunnel closing behind Naiya over and over in my mind. I wanted to believe there was a way to reopen the path, but we still knew nothing about the operation of the tunnels. We had seen it even took the aliens weeks to open one. There was some evidence that reopening into the same time frame might not work at all. In the meantime, she was out there with one of those things, and only her rifle for defense. I had seen how ineffective rifles were against the creatures. I think that bothered me more than anything. She was in mortal danger, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to help.

  Over the years, I had become used to traveling between the various eras accessed by the tunnels in the system. Traveling to a different time was not unlike a trip to another city. New York, the Roman Empire, pretty much the same. Nothing to get excited about. But now, suddenly the difference was painfully clear. I could find alternate means to get to New York. It might take a while, but I could do it. But where Naiya currently existed was out of reach. Totally, impossibly, inaccessible. The stretch across the thousands of years that separated us tore at me. I wanted to believe we would find a way, but deep down I knew I was kidding myself.

  I left Mike upstairs seeing to the bodies as I made my way slowly down the ramp. I had to tell Carol. Naiya was her closest friend. As I made my way across the floor of the tunnel room, I glanced briefly at the location of the closed tunnel that had taken so much from me. Those who passed me said nothing. The word was getting out, and there was nothing they could say just now. The laser from upstairs was being re-mounted with a clear field of fire into the tunnel that led to the post Civil War era. That path was still open, and one of the aliens was loose. It was anyone’s guess whether he would try and return. Just in case, a pair of guards armed with the short alien rifles as well as the laser were on permanent watch. I knew we were going to have to go after it. Thomas was already pushing to lead a team. The damage it might do was frightening. At least the other one was far uptime where it couldn’t affect much.

  We still controlled the complex. I suppose that was a victory of sorts. It was difficult to think of it as such. It had been so close. Maybe we had been foolish to try and defend it on our own. Another decision that needed to be re-thought. The aliens had lost seven counting the two in the ship, with two more having escaped down the tunnels. We had lost five. But we had another three badly wounded. The wounded had all been moved to the downtime base that we were rapidly re-activating. At least with the reduced population that had been in the complex or camped just outside the home tunnel. No one was being brought back from the remote sites just yet. I wouldn’t know until I talked with Doc what the chances were the three men would recover. Finally, there were four people that were stranded uptime. The two men that had decided to camp out uptime were trapped along with Naiya and Dix. At least they had supplies, and the four of them could support each other. At least she wasn’t alone.

  I paused and let two men with a stretcher pass into the tunnel downtime ahead of me. They were carrying one of the dead aliens. That meant all of our people had been moved already. I had heard someone mention that Doc had set up a morgue adjacent to the expanded infirmary. We would see about getting the bodies back home for burial in a couple of days. The alien bodies were being put under cold storage. I supposed we would do autopsies on them to see what we could learn. The bodies were also evidence of the true existence of the alien invaders. I suspected we were going to need that.

  I approached the infirmary with some reluctance. I was anxious to see how Carol was doing, but was apprehensive about telling her of Naiya’s fate. Approaching where she sat on her bed, I realized she already knew. Her eyes were red from crying. When she saw me the tears started to flow again and she reached out to be held. We embraced and I felt her shaking.

  “Oh, Jim!” she moaned. “I’m so sorry.”

  I just held her for a while, trying to hold onto my own composure. I knew I was going to suffer my own breakdown, but wanted it to be private. Once I started, it was going to take a while to settle down. After a while Carol quieted, and I slowly pulled away.

  “It’s my fault,” she said, her eyes still shiny.

  I was confused. How could it be her fault?

  “John came by and told me what you saw on the tape. If I hadn’t stayed; if I had left with John and Cindy, she wouldn’t have come inside.”

  I was having trouble with my voice, but managed finally to respond. “That’s silly. You know Naiya. She would have come charging in knowing I was still in there.”

  “She thought I was dead,” insisted Carol. “I know it. She probably thought you were too. She must have thought the aliens broke through. She decided that she would go after the one that killed me. Going upstairs must have seemed suicidal.”

  I had seen the video. Carol was basing her conclusions on what had been
relayed to her. But I had come to the same conclusion. Naiya had looked torn between going upstairs and going after the alien. She had finally looked resigned, and taken the one path where she thought she might do some good. There was no way she could have known that she would become trapped uptime. But Carol was wrong to feel at fault. I told her as much. In fact, I explained, from what I had seen on the video, she was responsible for our winning. Her shot that killed the one alien had generated enough fear in the others that it caused them to leave the complex rather than continuing the fight. Had they stayed, they would have wiped out everyone who came inside to help. They might have followed back out the tunnel through which the reinforcements had come and wiped out everyone there as well. Had that happened both she and Naiya would have been killed. Then the aliens probably would have returned upstairs. At the time we had only the laser that worked for defense. We would have been outgunned and would have lost the complex. No, she had done the right thing in staying.

  I could tell she hadn’t thought about it this way. There was no doubt she still felt responsible for Naiya. So did I. I should have gotten out of there. If I had, I could have restrained Naiya and prevented her from going after the alien. But she didn’t try and offer false hopes. We both knew that re-opening a time tunnel to where Naiya was trapped wasn’t going to happen. In the end we just talked, two long time friends sharing a tragic loss.

  “I want her to stay put until this evening,” Doc insisted as he broke into our conversation. I knew he had overheard us talking about the status of things, and what needed to be done. Carol wanted to get involved, but Doc wasn’t having it. I realized I needed to put my feelings aside, at least for a little while and help get things under control.

  Carol had insisted she was all right, but I wanted to hear it from Doc. “How does it look?” I asked.

  “She caught a bad shock from the blast, but it was far less intense than the others. It caused her system to freeze up momentarily, but I can find no signs of permanent damage. I have some of the diagnostic bugs in her system, and until they complete their survey, she stays put. I expect she will be up and about in a couple of hours.”

  She had been lucky. I was grateful she was going to be okay. I couldn’t deal with losing both Naiya and Carol. “What about our wounded?”

  Doc frowned. “Charley’s in a very bad way. I don’t know if he had much of a chance. The other two experienced partial shutdown of their nervous systems, but fortunately nothing critical. We have them on special life support while the rebuilding medicines do their work. It’s going to take them a few days, but they should be okay.”

  Carol spoke up. “Their weapon seems to work on principles similar to my rifle, but at significantly higher power levels. Their weapon also seems to affect a broader spectrum of the neural system functions.”

  “Nothing seems to provide much protection against it,” I noted. “Not even their shields seem to protect them.” I told her about the one Mike had shot. Carol wasn’t surprised. Their shields had not provided protection against her rifle, which was far less powerful.

  “We are going to need something,” Doc noted, “if we expect any more encounters with them. Next time they won’t be surprised.”

  “Is there anything you know of that provides protection against your rifles?” I asked her.

  “The concept existed in the time I get most of our equipment. There is a cloth that has a special fiber woven into it. It provided protection against the primitive versions of the weapon they had at that time. But it wouldn’t do much against my rifle, let alone the one the aliens use. It might reduce the beam power by a factor of two, perhaps four. But that weapon is a hundred times more potent than needed to kill. It won’t help against that.”

  I filed away the information. We might want to get some of the material just in case. It was better than anything we had. The only protection we had found was provided by the alien metal. The barricades we had set up had provided enough protection that we had survived multiple shots. We had a limited supply of the material, and it allowed for fixed installations only.

  Reluctantly, I decided I needed to get back. “Mike is carrying the whole load,” I reminded her. That wasn’t strictly true. Most people knew what had to be done and were taking care of their own areas. Mike surely could use some help. She nodded, and I let go of her hand. “I’ll be back later when Doc says you can leave,” I promised.

  On the way back to the tunnel, I stopped and chatted with the head of the communications team. They had already made sure the word had gotten out to all of the remote ‘offices’, telling them of the sudden appearance, and the battle that had resulted. They had also warned of the two aliens that had escaped, although only one could be considered an immediate threat. The office in that period was not thought to be in any real danger. The aliens hadn’t expected us, so they couldn’t know about our office in that period. Still, it was better they knew what was loose. Dave was considering coming, but I had them send a message asking him to stay put. We still didn’t know the true situation, and it was better to maintain the remote activities for now. If we were able to retrieve material from the alien ship, he would be the first to know.

  A little later I was back up in the control room. All the bodies had been removed now, human and alien. There was still some of the alien blood splashed along the wall and floor. It was more pinkish than human blood, perhaps a bit thinner. But still red. The structure had survived without significant damage. Bombs had been exploded, charges detonated, countless rounds fired, yet other than some dents, scratches, and smeared metal, everything remained intact. Very fortunate for us that the walls had contained the fighting, knowing that we were floating in a vacuum. There was no doubt now that we were inside a space station, in orbit around a planet; probably earth, but no one had confirmed that to me as yet. A station that somehow produced its own gravity in addition to the other marvels it contained.

  Other signs of the fighting were being removed as well. The spent cases from the rifles were gone, as were the rifles. They hadn’t been effective, and there was no reason to keep them around. The plasma device remained in place. It hadn’t been used, so remained an unknown. It was time consuming to move it, and it would remain for now. The barriers were being repaired, to be available if needed again, and a couple of men stood ready with the alien rifles. As I walked down the hallway, I noted that Mike had stationed two men at the top of the ramp, and another two just inside the opened air-lock door. We had a total of eight of the alien rifles. I had seen six men carrying them on my walk from the tunnel room. Two more were floating around somewhere.

  I met Mike just as I started into the alien ship. He was coming back out, having given directions to a couple of his men deeper in the structure. He saw me about the same time. Making a motion to one of his people, he turned in my direction. I could tell he was trying to think of something to say about Naiya, but fortunately he decided against it, and just gave me a status.

  “We have completed a more thorough check of the ship,” he said. “I’m now more comfortable that there’s no one left on board.”

  I could see several of his people making their way up and out of the ramped spiral he had told me about earlier. Two more carried the alien rifles. I would have liked to look around inside, but that could wait. I wanted to know what else had been done. We talked for almost fifteen minutes while he brought me up to speed. Things were under control for now.

  He showed me the splashes of lead and copper that coated the walls where the aliens had been gathered. The shields had somehow stopped the slugs, essentially melting the metal and deflecting it away where it splashed against the bulkheads and cooled. The explosives we had installed through the station were still intact, although the detonators had been disabled for now. Mike was convinced based on what we had seen that as powerful as the explosive was, it wouldn’t do permanent damage to the facility. Maybe shut it down a while, but nothing the aliens couldn’t repair. If we wanted to destroy th
e effectiveness of the complex, we needed to do something stronger.

  “What about the ship itself,” I asked. “Has anyone taken a look at the computer systems to see if we can access their files?”

  “John wanted to start digging in a little while ago. I put him off until we were certain that everything was secure. I thought maybe we should get together and decide a course of action rather than just having people charge ahead. Maybe in a couple of hours? If you’re up to it?” He added the last as an after thought, trying to be tactful. I could tell he wanted me to step in.

  “That would be good,” I agreed. I gave him some good news. “Carol should be released by then as well. Tell me where I can find John, and I’ll let him know. Also we should get Al here.”

  He nodded, glad to see me functioning again. “There are a couple that want to go after the alien. I think we need to set up a hunting party, but maybe that should wait until tonight’s meeting as well.”

  I told him I had seen the precautions he had taken downstairs. I also agreed we should consider carefully how we wanted to approach hunting down the alien. I knew Doc wouldn’t have any information from his planned autopsies this early, but maybe we would learn something from a review of the video taken during the encounter. “Could you also plan a walk through of the ship after the meeting?” I asked. You have the most familiarity with it. The rest of us are going to want to see what we have here.”

  Later, I found John directing the disassembly of the tent city that had been set up in the cave a few days earlier. Everyone had moved back to the base, and there was no point of leaving the equipment there. Besides, it would cause too much unwanted attention should it be discovered. We had been lucky. The tent city had gone unnoticed and our secret remained undiscovered for now. We couldn’t allow this kind of breach to happen again, although I had the feeling that sooner than I expected it wouldn’t really matter. I told him about the meeting time and place that Mike had set up and then went in search of Al. He was back at the base. Having something to do pushed other thoughts to the back of my mind.