by Isaac Hooke
Rade glanced at his overhead map and confirmed, to his relief, that Tahoe and Bender had entered their respective pods and jettisoned. He was worried that there might not have been enough lifepods for them or something.
Rade stared out through the portal: the lifepod slowly rotated to face away from the mothership, so that soon he saw only deep space. The spiraling stars made him feel slightly dizzy. He looked away, taking a moment to examine his immediate surroundings.
The pod interior was made of the same smooth, gray-green metal as the passageways of the Elder mothership, though it also contained a hint of gold, like the hull of that mothership. There was no place to sit, which didn’t matter anyway in the zero gravity of space. There were no obvious features, though he saw the outline of a panel to his right. It wasn’t obvious how to open the panel—not that he wanted to touch anything and risk throwing the lifepod off course.
“Yo yo yo,” Bender said. “Any of you beyotches read me?”
“We read you,” Lui said. “We’ve got good reception out here. It is space, after all.”
“So we’re almost done this thing,” Bender said. “We’ve saved humanity. Now all we got to do is save ourselves.”
“What if the mothership doesn’t hit the Earth?” Fret said. “Or what if the impact doesn’t change anything, and we return to find the timeline still messed up?”
“The timeline will revert,” Rade said. “Like Bender mentioned, we’ve saved humanity.”
“That’ll be one small consolation, if we don’t make it,” Fret said.
“How are we doing for time?” Manic said.
“Bro, haven’t you set up your own countdown?” Bender said.
“Yeah, but I want to make sure it matches everyone else,” Manic said.
“Ten minutes until recall,” Rade said.
“We’re going to be cutting it close,” Tahoe said.
“I’ll say,” Manic commented.
“Since there’s a chance we’re not going to make it, isn’t this one of those times where we’re all supposed to reveal our deepest, darkest secrets?” TJ said.
“Yeah I got one,” Bender said. “Manic, ever since I saw your naked butt in bootcamp, I’ve dreamed of being with you.”
“I think he meant serious secrets,” Manic said.
“That is serious,” Bender said. “Okay, fine, I’m not gay.”
“Yeah you are,” Manic said.
“Only for you,” Bender said.
“I have a secret,” Surus said.
The comm line went dead silent in anticipation.
“I’ve been helping humanity for selfish reasons,” Surus continued. “Because I don’t want to lose any of you. I can’t imagine living my life the way it was before. Alone. A living entity, shunned by its own race, belonging to no cause. But with you, I’ve found my purpose.”
“You’ll never be alone,” Harlequin said over the comm. “Not ever again. And neither will I. The Argonauts are the best thing that ever happened to us.”
“Wait a second, you’re saying, you’re only saving humanity because you don’t want to lose us?” Bender said. “I’m touched, Surus my girl. Does that mean you’re finally ready to have slipping and sliding, hot and passionate alien sex with me?”
“No,” Surus said.
twenty-three
Rade’s pod continued to revolve, so that soon it was facing the Earth, which ate up the stars underneath him. The curvature of the planet was obvious, though the roundness became less pronounced as the craft neared the point of atmospheric reentry. And then the window turned orange as the flames of reentry engulfed the pod.
The fire subsided and the craft pierced the cloud coverage below. The land came up fast.
“Now this is my kind of ride, baby!” Bender said.
“Uh!” Fret said. “Please tell me these things have some kind of airbrakes!”
The pod zoomed over a forest canopy that extended for kilometers in all directions, eating up the horizon. It began to rapidly decelerate, then plunged through the canopy. The craft struck several trees on the way down, rebounding from half of them, but Rade felt nothing. The thing obviously had strong inertial dampeners, otherwise he would have probably been liquefied by now, considering the earlier extreme deceleration.
And then the lifepod was on the ground, nestled amid fronds that reminded him of bracken. He lay prostrate, staring up through the window at the ferns waving in the breeze.
We’ve survived.
While he waited for the hatch to open, Rade glanced at his overhead map, which showed his location in relation to the recall site. There were no positional satellites in orbit to give him his precise coordinates, of course; the map had calculated his location via the built-in accelerometers and gyroscopes in his suit, which kept track of the spatial displacement since his arrival. The internal sensors would compare topography features captured from his surroundings to corroborate his position, but that would only happen once he returned to terrain he had passed over before. Thankfully, most of the surroundings were mapped already, since the team had made a thorough search of the immediate area surrounding the recall site shortly after their arrival in the past. Most of the men had landed in mapped areas, and their Implants shared any updated positional information, therefore Rade was confident his location was accurate. Based on that information, he was reportedly seven hundred meters from his destination.
The blue dots of the others showed that they too had mostly fallen within a five hundred meter radius of the recall site, which resided roughly at the center of the scattered team.
Rade returned his attention to the hatch above him. It still hadn’t opened.
“Anyone else stuck in their pods?” Lui said.
“Mine opened,” Surus said.
“As did mine,” TJ said.
“Mine didn’t either, Lui,” Rade said. “I’ll be remedying that shortly.”
Rade dialed up his strength settings and began punching at the translucent window above him. The material spidered, and after several blows he managed to break it. Glass shards landed on his chest piece. He cleared the jagged edges along the frame with a few follow-up punches and hand motions, taking care not to puncture his gloves, and then he pulled himself through the opening.
“We only got seven minutes,” Tahoe said.
“We used to run three-minute klicks in training,” Lui said.
“That was on a clear beach,” Tahoe said. “Not a jungle crowded with thick foliage.”
“But you forget we have strength-enhancing jumpsuits,” Rade said. “Let’s go! Oh and, if your holographic emitters are working, it’s probably a good idea to activate them.”
“The noise maskers from those emitters won’t cancel out the racket of our passage,” Lui said.
“And at the speeds we’ll be running,” Tahoe said. “We’ll fade in and out of view anyway.”
“Even so, if you need stealth, all you have to do is stop,” Rade said.
Though it was too bad the team didn’t have time to stop.
The cylinder of Electron’s AI core, hanging from his harness, bounced against Rade’s jumpsuit as he ran. He pressed an arm against his chest to steady the motion.
The Argonauts began to converge as they approached the recall site from all sides. Bender and Lui joined Rade momentarily. Lui appeared as a blue outline, since his holographic emitter was active, but as Tahoe had predicted the emitter failed intermittently because of the high speed Lui was running at, causing his jumpsuit to flicker into and out of existence. Bender, like Rade, didn’t have a working emitter, so he remained visible at all times.
On the overhead map, Rade saw that similar small fire teams had formed as the Argonauts continued on multiple approach vectors toward the target.
“I thought the pods were supposed to drop us off directly at the recall site!” Fret complained over the comm.
“We are fairly close, you have to admit,” Lui said.
“There are cumulative
margins of errors to account for,” Harlequin said. “The margin of error in Surus’ calculated displacement from the recall site. The margin of error in the pod navigation system. The margin of error introduced by the trees we hit during our landing.”
“You and your margins of error,” Bender said. “When we get back, I’ll show you a margin of error. My fist is going to hit you in the nose. Plus or minus five centimeters.”
The going was slower than Rade would have liked, given the terrain. Occasionally the ground became so spongy that it swallowed his boots to the ankles. And the undergrowth was extremely thick in places, especially close to the tree trunks, where he had to brush aside cable-sized lianas that drooped from the branches above in addition to the fronds and other foliage below. His Hoplite would have plowed through all that easily, of course; it was too bad the Argonauts had to leave their mechs behind. As it was, they would be lucky to reach the recall site with time to spare.
He had to give his jumpsuit some credit, though—it did protect him from the welts and cuts he would have otherwise acquired from all the branches and shrubs that whipped at his faceplate.
Unfortunately, the racket the team made while crashing through the jungle attracted some unwanted visitors.
When Rade was two hundred meters from the recall site, he spotted a blur of color through the undergrowth to his right.
“Tangos!” Rade dropped just in time: a brightly plumaged Utahraptor hurtled through the air where he had been standing, its claws tearing through the foliage.
Rade swung his rifle toward the raptor and squeezed the trigger, downing the creature. He started scrambling to his feet, but noticed more of the man-sized predators racing toward his position. Bender and Lui opened fire, taking down the forerunners. Rade joined in, and between them they downed all six.
Rade heard squawks in the distance, along with a clicking sound, as of vocal cords clapping together. Or perhaps talons.
“Move!” Rade said. “We don’t have time to dig in and fight!”
He raced through the jungle as fast as he was able, almost tripping on the undergrowth a few times. He kept the rear and side camera views active in the upper right of his vision, and constantly glanced at his overhead map for signs of detected tangos.
Eight red dots appeared on the map, closing in about fifty meters behind them. They were following the path that Rade and his companions trampled through the jungle.
“Pick it up!” Rade said. Over the general comm, he announced: “We got Utahraptors on our tail.”
“We’ll be ready for them,” TJ said. His group had already reached the target. “It’s clear over here.”
The remaining fire teams arrived almost simultaneously to Rade’s, and the Argonauts all hurried onto the recall site, which Rade had painted as a digital blue disk on the ground six hours earlier. They didn’t have to crowd as close together to cover the digitally marked area as when they had first arrived, since they were no longer inside mechs.
The other team members beside him winked out of view entirely, now that they were motionless, and were only visible to Rade as blue outlines. To the incoming carnosaurs, it would appear as if only Bender and Rade faced them.
Rade glanced at his countdown. The team had arrived with only moments to spare.
“Twenty seconds, people,” Rade said.
He aimed at the incoming Utahraptors, careful to keep his rifle within the volumetric confines of the digital disk. He wasn’t sure it mattered if the weapon was outside the area when the timer hit zero, but he didn’t want to take any chances.
He shot down one of the carnivores, while the other Argonauts got the remainder. But then more emerged from the foliage, coming in from all sides.
“Bitches think they’ve outflanked us,” Bender said. “They think there’s only us two.”
“Guess we’ll have to surprise them,” Rade said.
The team members opened fire, taking down the next wave, but then another group rushed them.
“Where the hell are they coming from!” Manic said. “It’s like an endless stream of fodder. Don’t they get it?”
“For fodder, some of them are getting awfully close to striking us down!” Fret said.
Rade barely terminated his latest attacker, and the fallen carnivore partially slid onto the digital disk underneath him.
“Come on, come on, recall already,” TJ said.
Rade watched the timer tick down.
Three...
Two...
One...
The jungle remained intact around them.
“It didn’t work,” Fret said.
Momentarily distracted by the count, Rade was completely unprepared when a Utahraptor emerged from behind a nearby bole and leaped at him with its jaws gaping...
And then Rade was standing aboard the steel-walled cargo bay of the Sino-Korean mercenary ship.
He slumped slightly, relieved.
“We did it,” Bender said, laughing. “My bitches, my lovely goddamn bitches, we did it!”
Rade thought he heard a sob come from his friend.
Rade himself felt like crying in relief, but there was no time to celebrate, not yet.
“Fret, get in touch with the captain,” Rade said. “Tell me the timeline has reset.”
“He’s detecting human vessels out there, system-wide, in the same positions they were in before the time bubble formed,” Fret said. “The Argonaut is back. As are the Marauders. It looks like the timeline has been restored. We really have won!”
Rade slumped entirely then, and took three wobbly steps to the nearby bulkhead. He collapsed against the bulkhead, sitting back.
The others appeared on the visual band one by one as they deactivated their holographic emitters.
“Fret, ask the captain how much time has passed since we stepped onto the Acceptor?” Rade said.
“According to the captain, no time at all,” Fret replied. “He was watching us via the cargo bay cameras. He saw our Hoplites move onto the Acceptor after Surus finished with the pedestal, and a moment later only you and Bender remained, standing in your jumpsuits. Then the rest of us came into view, he says, also in our jumpsuits. He wants to know what happened to our Hoplites.”
“Tell him we got them right here.” Rade tapped the AI core hanging from his harness. “Ask him to tap in Shaw for me, please.”
A moment later Fret said: “I got Shaw here. I’m routing her to you.”
“So how did it go?” Shaw said. Her video image appeared in the upper right of his HUD. She was dressed in fatigues, and had her hair in a ponytail, exactly as before he left her.
Rade ignored the question. He felt an immense relief, but then he had a sudden fear that the timeline had been altered, despite her appearance, and despite Surus’ reassurances that the universe would absorb the profusion of minor changes the team had caused sixty-five million years ago.
“How are the twins?” he asked, his voice trembling.
“They’re fine, my love,” Shaw said. “It’s all right now.”
That meant they still had twins. So far so good. But what if he didn’t know them anymore? What if they were... different?
“Alex and Sil are okay?” Rade pressed. Would their names even be the same?
“Yes yes,” Shaw said. “Nothing happened the few minutes while you were gone.”
“Few minutes...” Rade said. He was completely out of it, just filled with joy. He still had two children named Alex and Sil. He couldn’t find the words to express his happiness. He didn’t even know where to begin with Shaw, in regards to telling her what had happened. Not that he even felt like telling her, right then. All he did was smile, his eyes glistening.
“Are you all right?” Shaw said.
“Never been better,” Rade said. “I’ll tell you what happened in a bit. I just need a moment. By the way, I love you. And I always will. I just wanted you to know that. You told me something similar before I left, and I didn’t answer properly.”
“Thank you,” Shaw said. “It’s good to hear those words. More than you know. And I’m glad you made it back with the team intact.”
“So am I,” Rade told her. “Gotta go.”
He disconnected and then removed his helmet, setting it down on the deck beside him. The relatively cold air of the compartment swept over his face, reviving him slightly. He shook his head, letting the sweat drizzle from his matted hair.
Tahoe sat down beside him, also taking off his helmet. “Whoa, talk about a mission, huh?”
“Probably not a good idea to remove your helmets,” Harlequin said. “Considering that there is still a Phant on the loose aboard.”
“Oh yeah.” Rade replaced his helmet, and then shut his eyes.
A Phant on the loose.
He couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment.
We’ve won. My family is safe.
twenty-four
Rade opened his eyes when he felt a pressure on his jumpsuit. It was Surus, standing above him. She was pressing her glove into his shoulder.
“We’re not done, yet,” she said.
“No, I suppose we still have some cleaning up to do,” Rade said.
“That we do,” Surus said. “First of all, I have a quick jump to the past to make, in order to teach a certain Elder written English. I’ll need a holographic display and keyboard generator.”
“Fret, get in touch with the captain, and see if he can arrange something,” Rade said. “Oh and, can you get him to call off the other Marauders? We don’t need them attempting to use their point defenses as weapons against the Argonaut.”
“The captain has already instructed the other Marauders to stand down,” Fret said. “Since he’s the one paying them, they’ve obeyed without question. Surus is probably going to have to cough up some extra funds later though, to ensure they remain friendly.”
“That’s not a problem,” Surus said. “But ask the captain if he can send a couple of extra grenades along with that generator. I may need them where I am going.” She caressed the rifles that hung from her shoulder.
