by Dylan Jones
“They promised not to hurt you Ben. They just need you out of the way until they find Jack. He's putting us all at risk. He's changing things.”
“Dammit Jim, did that synthetic look like she was coming here to cuff me? Think, soldier! We're both dead men here. Get in that fucking pod and get us both the hell out of here.”
“I'm sorry Ben. It's too late. They're here.”
Ben heard boots on the other side of the door. Ten men, maybe more.
Ben let his mind drift away to a calmer place. Let the solution come to him instead of chasing after it. He was in a quiet white space. The stars winked at him far above. The soothing voice repeated that he was an unauthorized personnel. The voice knew he was there because he was on camera. He was being analysed by A.I. Security cameras. He was unauthorized because he was the highest class threat level. He was the President of the New United States. Too high a risk of kidnap. He needed double clearance just to take a leak in this place. The pistol in his belt made it difficult to lean back comfortably and the President's focus switched to the new irritation. He snapped instantly back to attention, grabbed the gun and aimed it through the service tray at the General.
The General stopped moving. His hand moments from unlocking the blocked exit.
“You won't kill me Ben.”
“I don't have to kill you Jim. Just shoot you.” The President fired. The bark of the old revolver was deafening in the enclosed space. The General sat down hard on the floor. He looked disbelievingly at the red flower blooming on his white shirt. Gut shot. Ben grimaced at the sight. It would hurt like hell until the medics got a hold of him, but he'd live to bitch about it. Besides, it would protect him from implications of collusion.
The electronic voice boomed again. “Suspension of Presidential status, effective immediately, pending internal inquiry into attempted murder charge of General Jim Daniels. Virtual Witness iD: AI_324x300. The Vice President to assume President's role pending manual verification.”
So far so good. Ben hoped the security loophole still existed. He shut the service tray hatch and strapped himself in. Checked his blood levels, flicked two oxygen switches to manual and adjusted the pressure of the pod. Ben squatted down and held onto the release handle. Outside, the sound of a laser cutter fired up and a thin smoking line cut horizontally across the top of the laboratory entrance. It was now or never. Closing his eyes, Ben heaved on the lever. A hissing sound filled the Pod and the undercarriage rumbled beneath him. The voice spoke clearly over the machinery.
“Elite Number 1003, Ben Freeman, cleared for launch. Initiating thrusters.” Ben blew out a sigh of relief and tightened his straps. Now that he was no longer President his clearance level had automatically revoked back down to its previous lower level. President Ben Freeman may be under investigation, but Elite Soldier Ben Freeman wasn't. And Elite Soldier Ben Freeman had a Code Green clearance. Awarded for outstanding acts of bravery in the line of duty. Outside the glass pod, the General crawled away from the double doors, seeking the shelter of an upturned desk. The pod sunk down into the floor compartment. Before being entombed in the darkness of the torpedo tube, Ben saw the weakened lab door implode and black smoke pour in. Then the pod's top section became flush with the lab floor, there was a loud clank, a sudden rush of air and a sharp drop into free-fall. Then nothing but silence.
The pod's boosters kicked in and spun the pod around to it's horizontal flight position. Through the front panel of glass, Ben watched as the monstrosity of the space station already shrank away. Everywhere else he looked, he saw only stars.
7
The man closest to the Ox woke up with a broken shoulder and a broken face. He shook the red stars from his vision and grabbed a blade with his good arm. He took in the scene quickly. He saw that the large white man had been robbed of his clothes and was rolling in pain. Good. He would die a swift death. The white buffalo had beaten two of his men, and frightened away another, but not him. Never him. Big Hawk was the strongest of all men. He had killed stronger buffalo than this by himself.
The Ox clawed at his own face, his mind tearing itself apart as the neurons struggled to re-balance. Big Hawk positioned himself behind the Ox and grabbed him by the hair. The Ox screamed in rage, but Big Hawk held on, using only the forearm muscles of his damaged arm. He brought the knife down under the white buffalo's throat and screeched at the heavens. The Ox's eyes rolled in his head. He fought to clear his mind. He felt the blade's edge cut into his neck. He focused everything he had into one planned motion. A single, solid jerk upwards. He put his whole body and mind into the move, ready to smash his head into the Indian's face. He'd likely get cut in the process but it was the best chance he had. He tensed a fraction of a second before the manoeuvre, and Big Hawk sensed it. He pushed the Ox's face deep into the wet sand. The Ox's mind shattered into a thousand pieces and he could only watch numbly as the waves crash onto the shore in the distance. His internal pain filled his mind with darkness.
The Ox used his last reserves to twist around clumsily. He would at least look his killer in the eye. Blood from his neck wound smeared across his face as he did so.
Big Hawk raised his knife high in the air. The Ox licked his lips in fear and watched the Indian plunge the blade down for the kill. Then there was nothing.
8
Ben wrestled with the pod's controls as it bucked and weaved through the asteroid field. He was already soaked through with sweat and his heart thumped inside his chest like a jackrabbit. He knew it was nothing to do with the capsule's thermostat or the exertion of manual control. Ben Freeman was terrified of flying. Always had been, always would be.
The Space Station was nothing more than a silent line of bright lights in the distance. His oxygen levels dipped dramatically as the craft was struck by one then another large fragment of rock. He saw a thin trail of white gas drift past his window. Great. It was the second time it had happened in as many minutes. He flicked the shut-offs for the remaining supply and diverted the air along the last remaining emergency channel. The gauges levelled out. His mind tried to race back through what had just unfolded on the ship and their implications but his combat training helped him block it out. Reminiscing could come later, soldier. Right now there was more than enough to do to get out of this in one piece. He tried to relax for the long journey toward Earth. He let his mind wander across the control panels.
His blood levels showed a lower concentration than he hoped of the catalyst nano-cells. A high percentage were dormant by way of design of course. These were for the return journey. Activated only when orally re-ingested, they would bring him closer to home and were the exact opposite of the ones that were initialized in his blood stream right now. The dormant ones, when activated through consumption, would act as blockers to the initial launch catalyst. Each dosage would bring him a step closer back to his own time. A large enough dose of blockers would bring him right back to the present. It was all theoretical of course. Earth was currently in no shape for a time traveller to leap back to. Only a small percentage of the Earth was now hospitable at all, thanks to huge thermo-sealed colonies. And the leaper's safety nets, the oceans, were all unpredictable no-go zones since the war. Their new temperature ranges fluctuated constantly. A man could boil or freeze to death as soon as he arrived. There was also the additional complication of consuming such a large dosage of blockers. The recovery period from such a dose would render the traveller incapacitated for a lengthy window of time, leaving him particularly vulnerable to external threats. This brought Ben's thoughts crashing back to his old friend. His mind wandered to their first meeting. How could a man with such vision become so blind?
Outside the pod, the thrusters flickered intermittently, constantly correcting the flight path at the macroscopic level. Another fist sized rock bounced lazily into their path, scraping against the underbelly. It took out two primary sensors before slicing open a protected section of hose further along the hull.
For the third and final ti
me during the flight, an air line ruptured, and the white exhaust quietly hissed out in a thin trail, undetected by the disabled CPU.
9
General Daniels had always been a great thinker. The young Jim Daniels that Ben had first met had been a brilliant young mind who had joined the battlefield simply to satisfy a brain that longed to excel. No longer satisfied with books and theory he had an all-consuming urge to take part in the real world. He had known he was the best he could be mentally, and wanted to match that achievement physically. His peers and superiors had tried to bring him down, to break him at every turn, and they had failed. Ben had seen this at first hand and had witnessed the man's mental strength. His sheer will power triumphed over his physical limitations.
It had been Daniels' brain child to build the pods that would deliver a time traveller safely to a position just above the poisonous Earth before he leaped. It was such a simple yet elegant solution. Typical of the General's lateral thinking.
The General, a newly qualified Elite back then, and barely a day after graduating, had three men from his old platoon killed in as many hours. Time-leaping was in its infancy and huge rudimentary installations allowed the test soldiers to leap back a week or so at a time. Missions were hashed together on the battlefield perimeters under heavy fire.
The three doomed volunteers had leaped back one after the other. The original mission had been trivial on paper. Leap back, recon the enemy position three days prior and go dark. Then simply wait out the ensuing battle before reporting back at the initial launch point. To the scientists at the launch site, the soldiers would disappear momentarily before returning on foot moments later with the information required. For the soldier it meant a headache and covert foot patrols for a week, before catching up naturally with their regular timeline, barely a week older for their efforts.
When the first volunteer failed to report back he was listed as MIA. Another was quickly sent with the additional secondary mission to recover information about the first. When a third had to be sent with a similar briefing, Daniels was the first to work out what had happened.
He had approached his superiors and explained his theory. They brought in a makeshift scanner-digger and eventually found the soldiers' pulped bodies intertwined barely 3 feet below ground some hundred yards away from the launch site. Their limbs crushed into a black soup by the immense pressure of rock and clay. Recognisable only by their DNA samples, the men had all been awarded posthumously for their bravery and the details of their demise quickly erased from all records.
Under the stresses of war the scientists had overlooked the fact that the landscape had shifted during the last onslaught. Terrain had been levelled by both sides, craters had formed, plates had shifted. The elevation of the launch site itself was down an average of ten feet per week. Following such an oversight, combined with the fact that they didn't have a clue as to why the soldiers had landed some distance away, the scientists had little choice but to agree to listen to the young Daniels' detailed proposals.
Daniels was awarded full temporary co-operation by the military. Word had gotten out and orders from above ensured his access to help improve the Leap Project. He was transferred to the Darka Medi-Labs, albeit under the watchful eyes of his superiors.
Early prototypes had been modified hover drones. Floating well above the margins of error the time-pods had been flown above the terrain, the subjects equipped with parachutes for a safe arrival. Of course it quickly became apparent that nothing could leap back with the soldier, including parachutes or safety nets. A couple of broken legs and some lateral thinking later, Daniels initiated testing above the swamplands. Success rates were higher but still not perfect. The injury rates were found to be directionally proportional to the timespan leaped. If the timeframe became too great, the soldiers were sometimes found to land several metres away from the water's edge along the Earth's axis, their legs shattered on the hard ground. This broke Daniels's heart and he re-doubled his efforts. Men were being hurt because of his shortcomings. He went into a dark mood of isolation. He cancelled all further testing for a period of 48 hours as he pored over the research data. His furious superior officers became agitated and frustrated. They demanded he continued testing, regardless of collateral damage. Their war couldn't wait a single second, let alone two days. They threatened him with dishonourable expulsion, arrest, and much worse. He stared them all out, stood his ground and eventually went above their heads. After being passed from one department to the next he finally got through to the head office. He explained to the company chairman's aide directly that he only needed two days and he would have their Leap Project ready for action. Promised them safe leaps of several years instead of weeks. All they had to do was give him two days, uninterrupted by political and physical threats or bureaucratic red tape. The company man thanked him for the refreshingly frank and brutally honest telephone call and said someone would be in touch.
The next day at 6 am a young recruit rapped on his door with an envelope for him. Inside was a new security clearance badge and a note. The badge promised him unlimited company resources under his direct command for seven full days. The note promised him a court marshall and a long military trial for insubordination and treason if he failed to deliver. He was under no illusions as to the severity of this threat. He was in well over his head and it was now all or nothing. His superior officers had been quietly transferred during the night and he was given a fresh team of dedicated scientists from across the globe.
Their first priority was to iron out the flaws in the spatial delivery. Daniels worked through the first night going through every scrap of information he could find on the subject. He went back to his early days and reverted to rubber-duck debugging of the puzzle. He forced himself to explain the situation out loud, step by step, as if explaining it to an inanimate object with no previous knowledge of the problem. The theory was that in comparing the expected result at each point with the actual result it would quickly become apparent at which stage the logic failed.
The soldiers were somehow being relocated not only in time but also in space. Daniels broke the problem down into parts and went back to the beginning. It had long been established that space and time were directly linked. Since its inception, time travel theory had gone under the assumption that a man's path in time would be rigidly attached to his path through space. Say a man planned to stand on a rock in the desert for two days. If you approached that man at the start of day one and sent him through time to near the end of day two, he would disappear from your perceived reality and appear again almost two days later on that very same rock. Daniels knew that what was actually happening indicated that the man would not appear on the rock but at a different location, seemingly linked to the rotation of the earth. The man would also most likely be buried under sand. Two problems, two deviations. X and Y axes.
The problem along the vertical Y axis was easily explained by changes in terrain height between now and the point of arrival. Launching above water was a quick and dirty but inexpensive fix for this. Even with miscalculations for terrain height, a leaper who arrived too low would only get wet and not become entombed in solid rock. And the company loved inexpensive fixes, no matter how quick or dirty. Daniels already planned to recommend that leaps only occur above ocean territories from then on.
The real problem he had was with the positional deviation across the land - the X axis. If there were to be any real improvements in Leap duration as he had promised, he had to be able to predict exactly how far along the Earth's surface the Soldiers would travel before landing. Otherwise even launching above the middle of the Ocean could not guarantee a wet landing. The question was why it was happening at all.
A young Ben Freeman had been unable to sleep that night. Newly graduated as an Elite operative, he'd been awarded 72 hours downtime to debrief and prepare for his first mission. He'd been outside his trailer, smoking his second cigar of the evening. Just looking at the stars and taking stock of his life.
Over the horizon he could see the green glow of battle raging on as it did every night. He was always amazed at how beautiful it looked from a distance. A chain link fence bordered his trailer's perimeter and the Darka-Labs. Sometimes the white coats came out for a smoke and they exchanged pleasantries through the wire. Ben hadn't seen anyone for a few days. Rumour had it that something big had gone down. A few of the boys had volunteered for some top secret recon shit and had shipped out to the battlefield with a truckload of white coats. The brainy kid Daniels had also gone into the facility after them. There had been some shouting and cursing, and the kid hadn't come back.
Ben was halfway through the second vintage cuban when a fire door opened on the other side of the chain-link and Daniels came out. He wore standard issue dark Elite combat trousers, and a two-tone black vest that was soaked through with perspiration. He wore a white lab coat tied clumsily around his waist. He ran his hands through his hair and sat heavily on the asphalt with his back to the red bricks. It took him a moment to notice Ben, and he nodded politely. Ben held up the cuban in return. Daniels wiped a hand over his face then pushed himself up off the floor.
“Busy night?” Ben handed him the cigar through the fence.
“Terrible.” Daniels' eyes were red rimmed. He closed his eyes and pulled hard on the tobacco. His usual boyish charms were nowhere to be seen.
Ben nodded at Daniels' Elite uniform. “You too then?”
Daniels exhaled a mouthful of clean white smoke. “An army of two.” He grinned.
“Three.” Ben watched the green flashes in the distance. “Silent Jack deployed early yesterday. Cancelled his allocated leave time and requested immediate transfer into the Green Zone. Seems he couldn't wait to get stuck in.”
Daniels raised an eyebrow and tapped his own temple. “Hate to see how that clock works.”
