by Isaac Hooke
“Earth’s topography would be different after sixty five million years,” Harlequin said. “How would the Phant know where to place the target Acceptor?”
“The Purple would have had to do much research,” Surus said. “The site would likely be underwater in today’s Earth, though in ancient times it would have likely been the basin of a lush valley.”
“Can this time device also bring us into the future?” Lui said. “From this point forward?”
“No,” Surus said. “It can only be used to travel to the past, and to return to the present moment. To an outside observer, it will appear that the time travelers never left. Assuming that they all make it back to the destination site in time for the recall.”
“And if they don’t?” TJ said.
“Then in the present, they will appear to vanish from thin air while standing on the Acceptor,” Surus said. “Their bodies forever snipped from the timeline.”
“One thing I don’t get,” Bender said. “Is why we still exist in this timeline, when the rest of humanity is gone.”
“A small bubble of the previous timeline is preserved around the Acceptor, encompassing a spherical region of space somewhat bigger than this vessel, allowing the users of the device to gauge the effects of the previous journey on the timeline. Ordinarily, a battery of tests would be performed, from sensors placed throughout the galaxy. But in this case, it’s fairly obvious that the past has been horribly changed.”
Outside that bubble, Shaw didn’t exist anymore. Rade had made the biggest mistake in his life by leaving her behind. He remembered the strange finality to her farewell. She must have had a premonition about this moment.
“As I said, we have to go back in time,” Rade told the team. “Stop the Phant. Prevent it from doing whatever it is that it did.”
“Is that even possible?” Tahoe said, glancing at Surus.
“It is,” Surus said. “That’s the whole point of the time bubble. So that corrections can be made to any errors introduced into the timeline. The Purple has obviously interfered with a key waypoint. It is time for us to go back and correct that interference.”
“How long will the bubble last?” Rade asked.
“Ten minutes,” Surus said. “More than enough time for our needs, given that our trip to the past will seem instantaneous from the perspective of the present.”
“What happens when the bubble fades?” Rade said.
“Since humanity was no longer born, you’ll cease to exist,” Surus said. “Ms. Bounty will vanish. I, however, will remain, floating in deep space with all knowledge of what has transpired. As will the Phant. Presumably he intends to board one of the vessels the dinosaur descendants have dispatched to investigate. I will pursue him, of course, and do my best to stop him. But humanity will be permanently lost by that point.”
“Why would the Phant destroy humanity?” Lui said. “Why replace us with dinosaurs?”
“So that the Phants still have lifeforms to convert into geronium,” Surus said. “By eliminating humanity, and changing the course of history, the Purple has made it easy for his brethren to conquer Earth. That fateful encounter with Tau Ceti that sparked the First Alien War will have never taken place. The Phants can concentrate on taking the unready Earth. The hives will not know of Earth in this updated timeline, of course, but I am sure the Purple is informing them as we speak. Worse, the eight-thousand lightyear Slipstream jump from Phant to human space is still intact, as the Greens have not sealed it in this timeline. So the all-consuming Phant motherships will be able to arrive much sooner: in seven weeks instead of seven hundred years.”
“Now I see why these time travel devices are so rare,” Manic said. “They’re far too dangerous.”
“Yes,” Surus said. “The Greens, the original creators, were supposed to have destroyed every last one of them, along with the blueprints. But apparently they missed one.”
“Probably on purpose,” Fret muttered. “Given what we know of the Greens.”
“It is likely, yes,” Surus said.
Rade stepped toward the red Acceptor.
“Prep the device,” Rade told Surus. “And update the destination time slightly. I want us to arrive ten minutes before Jackal. Argonauts, we’re traveling back sixty five million years to stage an ambush. It’s time to make history.”
six
Set the device to bring us back here in six hours,” Rade continued.
“Are you certain that’s not too much time?” Surus asked.
“Let’s just say, even though we’ll be arriving ten minutes before Jackal, I want to leave a margin for anything bad happening,” Rade said. “Like if Jackal somehow escapes our noose. And if he doesn’t, well, then we have five hours and fifty minutes to kill.”
Surus approached the pedestal, and once more removed her glove to allow her Phant essence to seep into the artifact.
“That’s five hours and fifty minutes surrounded by T-Rexes,” Fret said.
“I’ve always wanted a T-Rex for a pet,” Bender said. “Boss, can I bring one back? Can I?”
“Dude, you can’t make a T-Rex your pet,” Lui said.
“Sure I can,” Bender said. “I’ll find a baby one. Then nurture it through the years. Feed it Manic and Fret along the way.”
“You can’t nurture squat,” Manic said. “I seem to recall you buying a very rare parakeet. How long did it live? Two weeks?”
“No,” Bender said. “Two months. And it died because you gave it a heart attack when you brought your stupid dog over.”
“The parakeet was so undernourished,” Manic said. “It’s no wonder it had a heart attack.”
“Yeah well, at least I had it trained proper,” Bender said.
“Having it greet me with the phrase ‘biggest pussy’ is hardly what I’d call proper training,” Manic said.
“Oh, it’s very proper,” Bender retorted. “And you remember what it called me, don’t you?” He moved his voice up an octave. “‘Big Dick! Big Dick!’”
“You’re a dick all right,” Manic said.
“It’s done,” Surus said. She replaced her glove and returned to the cockpit of her mech.
“All right, everyone squeeze inside this compartment,” Rade said. “Join me on the Acceptor. Stay inside your mechs. By my estimates, it should be able to fit every last one of us, Hoplites and all. And if not, I guess a few of you are staying behind.”
Rade steered Electron into the center of the Acceptor; Surus re-entered Sprint and stood beside him. The other Hoplites came into the compartment and squeezed onto the wide disk one by one. Rade retracted his shield and pressed his arms against his sides, doing his best to reduce his profile. It was a tight fit, and only after some repositioning was everyone able to stand on the device; even so, Rade was hemmed in by mechs on all sides. He began to regret choosing a position in the middle.
“How long until the time travel commences?” Rade asked.
“I’ve programmed it to automatically trigger after ninety seconds,” Surus said. “We have another forty-five to go.”
Rade set a countdown on his HUD.
“Eww,” Bender said. “We’re packed too close together. I can smell you, Manic. Talk about FAN.” Feet Ass Nuts. “It’s called a shower, bro.”
“Uh, that’s you you’re smelling,” Manic said. “I’m not in your cockpit. You are.”
“Oh,” Bender said.
Rade nervously watched the seconds tick down. He and his Argonauts were literally making history today. If they were successful, no one would know how close to annihilation humanity had come. And if they failed, humanity wouldn’t even be born.
Finally the countdown reached zero.
“Uh, it ain’t working,” Bender said.
The compartment winked out, replaced by dense jungle foliage.
The Hoplites stood at the center of a clearing of sorts, set amid some fairly gargantuan trees. The sky was blotted out by the large leaves, which cast the land in perpetual twil
ight, though Rade guessed it was daylight if the spears of light that occasionally pierced the canopy were any indication. The boles of the trees were at least twice the girth of the mechs. Lianas, some as thick as human waists and as long as anchor lines, hung down from the heights.
“Trippy,” TJ said.
“Why does it feel like we’ve shrunk?” Fret said.
“Nobody move,” Rade said.
He painted a digital circle around the Hoplites on the undergrowth, marking the area they would have to stand on in six hours time if they hoped to return. That circle was visible only to the team members, courtesy of their Implants.
“Now spread out,” Rade said. “Choose your hides carefully, keeping the digital circle in sight. It’s time to give Jackal and the Phant he contains a little surprise.”
The Hoplites began to move apart, crashing loudly through the underbrush.
“Quiet!” Rade sent. “We don’t need to bring all the carnivores in the forest bearing down on us!”
The chastened men moved much more slowly and carefully to their chosen hides.
As soon as the Hoplites pinning Rade’s mech broke away, allowing him to move, Rade crossed the spongy ground and took up a position behind a bole with Tahoe.
Rade had Surus confirm the arrival time of their prey, and updated a countdown timer on his HUD.
“Dismount,” Rade ordered. “And deploy stun rifles.”
Rade exited his Hoplite and climbed down to the storage compartment in the leg region to retrieve the arcing stun rifle. Beside him Tahoe emerged and grabbed a stun rifle from his own mech. Other members of the team had similar rifles stowed aboard, purloined from armories throughout the Argonaut, though only Rade’s was capable of arcing, meaning that it could take down multiple Phants at once.
Rade also grabbed an ordinary laser rifle and slid the strap over his left shoulder, then he leaped onto the ground.
“Electron, guard position,” Rade ordered.
His mech turned about, protecting Rade’s rear from any dinosaurs or other hostiles that might attack from that vector. He noted that the Hoplite was careful to keep itself positioned behind the bole so as to not alert Jackal when the robot arrived. Tahoe’s mech did the same. The hull coloration of the Hoplites had altered to blend with the surrounding jungle, becoming a digital coloration of black and green. The jumpsuit fabrics did the same.
Confident that he was well hidden, Rade aimed his stun rifle past the right flank of the bole, while Tahoe took the left. Rade adjusted his zoom level so that the entirety of the digital circle he had painted onto the ground remained in view. He glanced at his overhead map and confirmed that the remaining team members had taken cover nearby: behind large ferns, a fallen log, and other large tree trunks. Invariably their mechs were deployed nearby, guarding their flanks and equally hidden from view.
“I feel even smaller than ever out here now,” Fret said. “Small and vulnerable.”
“You would,” Bender said.
As Rade waited, he began to notice the strange chirping sounds that began to fill the silence with increasing regularity. The noises echoed throughout the forest, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere. The forest occupants had apparently fallen silent because of the racket the Hoplites had produced while moving into position, but now that the denizens realized these large machines weren’t hunting them, the hidden creatures of the jungle had begun belting out their tunes with renewed vigor.
“The hell is that?” Manic said.
“Sounds like birds,” Fret said.
“I’d love to see the birds singing those songs,” Lui said. “Especially considering that birds haven’t evolved at this stage in Earth’s history.”
“Not true,” Harlequin said. “Birds evolved during the Jurassic period, which predates the current late Cretaceous by eighty-one million years. Though of course, these ‘birds’ have muscular legs, bony tails, and beaks containing teeth. They’re essentially small dinosaurs.”
“Oh,” Lui said. “My bad.”
“Mr. Know-It-All finally gets something wrong,” Bender commented.
“I do believe that the calls we are hearing do not belong solely to birds,” Harlequin said. “These chirps, squawks, and clatters... what you are hearing is a forest inhabited by thousands of small dinosaurs and birds.”
“Look look,” Bender said. “Check out what I got in my sight lines. Dinner.”
Rade switched to Bender’s viewpoint. He saw several small, winged dinosaurs—birds?—perched on a large upper branch. They were covered in multicolored feathers, and had long tails and toothy beaks. They were about as big as a jumpsuit helmet.
“Leave them,” Rade said, returning to his own point of view. “The last thing we need right now is to fend off an attack from prehistoric birds.”
“Might be fun...” Bender said. “But fine fine, I’m standing down.”
“You know, I’m not sure this is really Earth,” Manic said. “The oxygen content is a bit high, at twenty-eight percent.”
“That’s consistent with Earth in the late Cretaceous period,” Harlequin said. “And it also explains the larger size of our ancient life forms. More oxygen equals a greater level of cellular respiration, equals more cells to go around, equals bigger trees and animals.”
“Should we open up our faceplates to conserve oxygen or something?” Fret asked. “Or is that amount of oxygen even safe?”
“You want to expose yourself to ancient viruses and contagions?” Bender said. “Go right ahead.”
“Twenty-eight percent oxygen is completely safe for humans to breathe,” Harlequin said. “But while it won’t hurt us, like Bender mentioned, there is the contagion risk.”
“Too bad,” Lui said. “I was looking forward to trying some roast T-Rex.”
“You can eat Bender’s pet when he gets one!” Manic quipped.
“No one’s eating my pet, bitch!” Bender said.
“T-Rex might actually be compatible with your digestive systems,” Harlequin said. “Given that chickens are essentially the descendants of T-Rexes.”
“T-Rex tastes like chicken?” Bender said. “Forget having one as a pet, then, and sign me up to the buffet! One T-Rex will be able to make enough chicken chips to last me for years! Visiting prehistoric times isn’t so bad after all.”
The team fell silent thereafter, the individual members concentrating on the site where Jackal would appear.
“You really think this operation will go off without a hitch?” Tahoe said over a private line as Rade waited.
“Nothing is ever easy,” Rade said. “That’s why I gave us six hours of padding.”
“If we fail, Shaw will never exist,” Tahoe said. “Nor will my wife. My kids.”
“I know,” Rade said. “That’s why we can’t fail.”
Rade kept his eye on the timer in the lower right of his vision as the minutes ticked past. He listened to the birds and other dinosaurs. A sense of peace came over him, and he knew it would be all too easy to lower his guard and relax. He intensified his gaze, literally glaring as he peered at the target site through the scope.
Stay focused.
Rade’s faceplate began to steam up as he waited, but the autodefog mechanism activated.
Finally the moment of reckoning arrived.
seven
Look sharp people,” Rade said. “We have twenty seconds until HVT arrival.” High Value Target. “Disable comm nodes in jumpsuits, mechs and Implants. Let’s not alert our prey to our presence when it arrives. Fire as soon as Jackal arrives.”
“What if more than one tango appears?” Fret asked.
“Then take them all out,” Rade said. “Starting with Jackal.”
Rade disabled the three comm nodes installed in his Hoplite, jumpsuit, and Implant, and then waited, keeping his targeting reticle centered on the site.
He counted out twenty seconds in his head. When he reached zero, he waited for Jackal to appear. Nothing.
As the m
oments ticked past and still no tangos appeared, Rade began to grow anxious.
He was about to order the team to reactivate their comm nodes when, just like that, several targets appeared, all clad in unsullied jumpsuits. Behind the faceplates he saw Centurions. With his comm node disabled, he had no idea which one was Jackal. Not that it would have mattered even if he did know, since it was likely the Phant had hopped units pre-jump.
The combat robots were arranged in a circle, their weapons aimed outward.
Rade centered his targeting reticle over one of the tangos, but before he could squeeze the trigger, the robots reacted in a blur of motion. Smoke grenades detonated, clouding the area with thick gray fumes.
Rade immediately switched to echolocation. A squawker activated at the top of his helmet and the white outlines of fleeing tangos overlaid his vision.
Rade didn’t know which one contained the Phant, so he picked a target and fired. The tango fell. As far as he could tell, the beam didn’t arc—that only happened if the plasma channel struck an actual Phant, and at least one other Phant was in the vicinity to spawn an arcing beam. Since the beam hadn’t arced, either there were no other Phants present, or Rade hadn’t hit one. The beam wouldn’t arc toward Surus of course, since she had developed a plasma shield for her jumpsuit that was synced to the trigger, preventing an arcing plasma channel from ever forming between her and any other Phants.
Rade centered his crosshairs over another target, but it went down before he could squeeze the trigger. He aimed at a third tango, and it too dropped before he fired.
He searched the jungle for any remaining tangos, but spotted none in sight.
“Reactivate comm nodes!” Rade said over the external speaker system of his jumpsuit. He reactivated the three comm nodes, and the statuses of his team mates appeared on his HUD, their positions updating once more on his overhead map.
“Did we get them all?” Lui said.
“No,” Harlequin said. “Only five tangos are down. That leaves four out there.”
Rade glanced at his overhead map. “One of them is Jackal.” The Centurion’s dot was moving away from the team, heading west through the jungle.
