by Isaac Hooke
“What’s the matter, don’t trust your own holographic emitter?” Bender taunted.
“I do trust it,” Surus said. “But I also trust in the marvelous cleansing power of frags.”
“Are you still detecting the Phant aboard?” Rade asked Surus.
She nodded. “The Purple is still aboard. We’ll go hunting when I get back.”
A Sino-Korean Centurion arrived shortly thereafter, carrying a small cylinder whose ends could be unfolded to form a tripod. It was a holographic display and keyboard generator, identical to the device Bright One had used.
“The gloriously paradoxical nature of time...” Manic commented.
The Centurion approached.
“Wait,” Rade said. He examined the chest section of the Centurion, searching for signs of Phant possession.
“See anything?” Tahoe asked.
“No,” Rade said. He stepped back and lowered the arcing stun rifle from his shoulder.
“Wait—” the Centurion began.
Rade fired, and the stunned robot collapsed. The Phant would have bubbled to the surface of the unit if present, but nothing of the sort transpired.
Surus retrieved the generator from the stunned Centurion, and then removed Sprint’s AI core from her harness and presented it to Harlequin. “Take care of this for me, would you?”
“It would be an honor.” Harlequin accepted the precious core.
Surus grabbed several grenades from the Centurion’s harness and secured them to her jumpsuit. Then she approached the pedestal. Her glove touched the pyramidal artifact, and green liquid emerged seconds later, seeping inside, only to return to the surface and reabsorb into the glove.
“I’ve set the date three years before our previous arrival,” Surus said. “I’ll do my best to warn Bright One of the threat posed by the Phant, and insist that everything he does will likely fail, but it probably won’t change the outcome of events. In fact, we already know it won’t.”
She stepped onto the Acceptor.
“Are you sure you don’t want any of us to go with you?” Rade asked.
She shook her head. “For a mission of this nature, it’s better if I go alone. I’ll be gone for two years, remember.”
Rade nodded. “How long until you teleport?”
“Another thirty-five seconds,” she replied.
The required time passed.
Surus momentarily blinked out of existence. Her jumpsuit had changed positions, and her arms and legs had moved slightly. That jumpsuit appeared faded and aged. She had used up all her grenades. The holographic generator she had held was gone, of course.
“My Argonauts,” she said. “It is good to be back. While interesting, those are two years I wouldn’t want to repeat again. But now I’m ready to hunt the Phant.”
“No rest for the weary, huh?” Rade said.
“No,” Surus agreed.
RADE RETRIEVED THE Time Selector from the pedestal and gave it to Surus for safe keeping. He had the captain corral all the Centurions and Artificials aboard the mercenary ship into one of the cargo bays, and then he fired at them one by one with the stun rifle, but found no Phants. He placed Lui there to stand guard with one of the non-arcing stun rifles, just in case the Phant decided to possess one of the robots thereafter.
Next they tried the main AI core of the ship, but once again found nothing. After that Rade and the remaining Argonauts performed a deck-by-deck sweep. They would almost continually fire their stun rifles into the bulkhead, overhead, and deck of the passageways and compartments they searched, pausing occasionally to let the weapons cool down.
Rade tapped in Shaw during the sweeping operation and updated her on everything that had happened. When he got to the part about the Elder ship, she interrupted.
“The Elder,” Shaw said. “What the hell were they doing on ancient Earth?”
“Trying to preserve the dinosaurs, apparently,” Rade said.
“Given what almost happened to the timeline, I’m starting to think it was a bad idea for them to ever come,” Shaw said.
“Can’t disagree with you there,” Rade said.
He continued his tale without any further interruptions.
When he finished, Shaw said: “You certainly had quite the adventure. I’m almost jealous.”
“Don’t be,” Rade said. “I nearly lost you forever.”
THE SWEEP TOOK five hours, but Rade and the Argonauts didn’t find anything.
“You know, we spent almost as long clearing this ship as we did frolicking in the past,” Manic complained.
“I’d take ship clearing over time travel any day,” Fret said.
“You would,” Bender said.
“You’re still detecting the Phant?” Rade asked Surus.
“I am,” she replied.
“Then we’ll have to print up a Phant shield for the AI core of their ship,” Rade said. “Because if we can’t find the thing, we’re going to have to launch this entire ship into a star. And I don’t want the Phant interfering with ship systems when we do so.”
“We probably should leave someone behind to guard the AI core while the shield prints,” Tahoe said. “Or lend the mercenaries a stun rifle and jumpsuit combo.”
“We’ll lend them a stun rifle,” Rade said. “We put a dissolver on it, though. And the jumpsuit, too. Set the timer to, say, a day.”
A dissolver was a device that, when activated, would destroy the item it was attached to. It was essentially a tiny explosive tied to a corrosive material. It would prevent the mercenaries from keeping or selling the stun weapon and jumpsuit, both of which contained proprietary technology developed by Surus.
“Sounds good,” Tahoe said.
“All right, then,” Rade said. “Fret, ask the captain what kind of raw printing materials he has aboard.”
A moment later Fret said: “Apparently there isn’t much. We’ll probably have to return to the Argonaut and use our own 3D printers.”
“If we do that, we’ll have to print the core shield in smaller pieces,” TJ said, “And assemble them aboard.”
“That’s fine,” Rade said.
“It’s going to take some time,” TJ said. “Maybe four or five days.”
“Again, fine,” Rade said. “We’ve traveled sixty-five million years to destroy this Zhidao. We can wait a few days longer.”
Rade had Bax dispatch a shuttle from the Argonaut to retrieve them. It arrived with two Phant-blocking jumpsuits and a pair of stun rifles. He brought the gear to the nearby cargo bay and equipped two of the Sino-Korean Centurions. He instructed the first to watch over the remaining robots, and the second to proceed to the bridge to guard the mercenary ship’s AI core.
Rade and the others carefully attached the wide Acceptor to the top of the shuttle, securing it with the craft’s magnetic mounts; Surus kept the Time Selector attached to her harness.
The team then performed one last sweep of the hangar bay and shuttle, firing their stun rifles into the different materials. They removed the AI core of the shuttle before firing the stun rifles into it, to speed the core’s recovery time. When there was no sign of the Phant, they replaced the core, quickly loaded into the shuttle, and launched.
“Another mission in the bag, for the most part,” Tahoe said when they had flown into deep space, and were on their way back to the Argonaut.
“You keep saying that,” Rade said. “Like you just want it to end.”
“Maybe I do,” Tahoe said.
The craft docked a few minutes later, landing next to the second shuttle the Argonaut carried.
“This is odd,” Surus said immediately after touching down. “I’m still detecting the Phant with the same intensity as aboard the mercenary vessel.”
Rade exchanged a wide-eyed look with Tahoe. Rade opened the ramp and raced out while the hangar bay was still pressurizing.
He spotted the Purple Phant misting into the deck. It had obviously hitched a ride on the shuttle, sneaking aboard after they ha
d swept it clean with their stun rifles. The alien would have had to have moved extremely fast, given the short time frame between sweep and launch.
Rade fired at it with the stun rifle, but the alien entity was too quick and vanished into the metal. He fired again and again, trying to guess its course through the deck, but the glowing liquid didn’t bubble forth.
Now we have a Phant aboard the Argonaut once again.
twenty-five
Rade tapped in Shaw. “The Phant journeyed back with us. Where are you?” He glanced at his overhead map as he spoke, and saw that she was in sickbay. He was slightly relieved at that, because the Phant was more likely to attempt to head to engineering, where it could more readily seize control of the ship.
“I’m still in sickbay,” Shaw replied. “I wanted to come down there to greet you, but I’ve been having problems with Alex.”
“Problems, what do you mean?” Rade asked in alarm.
“Nothing to worry about,” Shaw said. “He’s having a temper tantrum. He insists on coming with me to greet you. But I’ve been trying to explain to him that it’s not safe. Given what just happened in the bay, it looks like I was right.”
Temper tantrum? Rade thought. So much for all your strict disciplining.
But he wasn’t going to say anything, at least not at the moment. He also already knew the real reason why Shaw didn’t want to bring Alex down there, and it wasn’t because the hangar bay wasn’t “safe.” Well, it was unsafe now of course, with the Phant on the loose, but the main reason was that Shaw didn’t want Alex to see the Argonauts and his father in full gear, armed to the teeth. She was afraid of letting the twins see anything that was too military, lest they get ideas she didn’t approve of. He was surprised she had armed herself with a rifle in front of the kids, earlier.
“I assume the three of you are still suited up?” Rade asked.
“Actually, we’re not,” Shaw said. “Life support came online two hours ago, and Bax advised us to remove our suits to conserve oxygen. He also told the Centurions to do the same.”
“He what?” Rade said. “Bax, I never authorized this.”
The Argonaut’s AI didn’t answer.
“He assured us it was impossible that any Phants were aboard,” Shaw said. “And truthfully, the kids were getting a bit antsy in those suits. Besides, their oxygen tanks are fairly small compared to the bigger jumpsuits, and they only had a few hours remaining, so I thought it prudent to listen to the AI.”
“Damn it,” Rade said. “You could have opened the faceplates, then, instead of taking off the entire suits.”
“I’m sorry, I made a mistake,” Shaw said.
“You’re damn right you did,” Rade said. “I want you to head to the armory outside sickbay and get yourself and the kids suited up again as soon as possible. You guys can’t go around unprotected while the Phant is aboard.”
“Oh no,” Shaw said.
Her connection cut out.
“Shaw?” Rade said. “Shaw?”
He tried to reconnect, but wasn’t able. According to the map, Cora and Dora were in sickbay as well. He tried contacting the two babysitting Centurions in turn, but neither responded.
It might have been nothing. Maybe Alex had done something to the sickbay comm node. But then again...
Rade was seized by a sudden worry.
“Bax, pipe me a camera feed from sickbay,” Rade ordered as he hurried to the airlock.
“I am sorry, but all sickbay cameras appear to be offline at the moment,” the Argonaut’s AI replied.
“All of them?” Rade said. “Unbelievable.” He accessed the airlock interface; the hangar bay had pressurized, so he was able to readily retract the inner and outer doors. “What the hell is going on? Is Shaw all right?”
“Unfortunately I cannot confirm at the moment,” Bax said.
“Why did you order Shaw, the twins, and the Centurions to remove their suits?” Rade asked.
“It seemed like the most prudent course of action at the time,” Bax said. “I apologize if I overstepped my bounds.”
“You did. We’ll talk about this later.” Rade glanced over his shoulder at the Argonauts, who had all exited the shuttle by then. “Surus, Bender, stay here and guard the Acceptor. The rest of you, with me.” He burst into the passageway outside the airlock. “Bax, I want you to send six Centurions to sickbay on the double. Have them suit up and meet me there. Send the remainder to engineering, also suited up. Do we have an update on the intruder’s position yet?”
“The Phant was spotted on D deck, near storage compartment 7C,” Bax replied. “Two minutes ago.”
Rade checked his overhead map. That was halfway between the hangar bay and engineering. It was also close to sickbay.
He glanced at Shaw’s blue dot on that same map. It told him she was still in sickbay, along with Cora, Dora and the twins.
The Argonauts raced to sickbay and arrived ahead of the Centurions Bax was supposed to have already dispatched.
The hatch opened and Rade rushed inside ahead of his men.
His stomach dropped. Sheer dread filled him.
Sil sat on the edge of her bed, blubbering loudly. The little girl wasn’t wearing a jumpsuit. Dora was on the floor, broken. There was no sign of Shaw, Alex, or Cora anywhere, despite the indicators on the overhead map.
Sil looked up. The anguish he saw written on his daughter’s face was heartbreaking. She had seen him wearing a jumpsuit before, without the grenade harness and rifle, but just in case she didn’t recognize him, he retracted his faceplate.
“Daddy, Daddy!” Sil rushed toward him and wrapped her arms around his leg assembly.
“Hey honey,” Rade said. “What happened?”
“Cora was bad to mommy!” Sil said between sobs. “She killed Dora, and took mommy. She took Aly, too.” That was Sil’s nickname for Alex.
“Bax, where are they?” Rade asked.
“Who?” the Argonaut’s AI replied.
Rade gritted his teeth. “Shaw, Alex, and Cora.”
“They are in sickbay,” Bax replied. “As indicated on the overhead map.”
“The map is wrong,” Rade said.
Bax paused. “There has been a Trojan introduced into my tracking system. From an external source.”
Rade glanced at TJ, whose eyes were defocused behind his faceplate.
“It looks like the Phant managed to hack into the system remotely from the mercenary vessel while we were busy searching deck to deck,” TJ said.
“Wonderful,” Rade said. “I want you to patch our systems. I don’t want this ever happening again.”
“Will do,” TJ said. “I’ll head to engineering... I’ll be able to rollback to an earlier system state far easier from there.”
“Do it,” Rade said.
TJ hurried from the compartment.
“Boss, you might want to come back to the hangar bay,” Bender said over the comm from his guard position in the hangar bay. “As fast as you can.”
“What happened?” Rade said.
“Just come,” Bender said.
Rade sealed his faceplate. The requested Centurions arrived a moment later, wearing jumpsuits. “Algorithm, take Sil and get her suited up. Then watch her with your life.”
“Yes, boss,” Algorithm said.
“Daddy please I want to stay with you!” Sil wailed.
It broke his heart to see Algorithm carry her away like that, but it had to be done.
“The rest of you, we head to the hangar bay, now!” Rade roared.
Rade shoved his way through the men and robots, and took the lead in the passageway beyond. He raced toward the hangar bay faster than he had ever navigated those narrow corridors in his life. He knew that the possessed Cora had taken Shaw and Alex to the hanger bay. Zhidao had likely used the pair as hostages to gain access to the Acceptor. The question was whether Shaw and Alex were still living, or dead.
If it was the latter, Rade doubted life would hold much meaning for
him, not anymore. The Argonauts would be done. As would he.
Rade reached the hangar bay. The airlock was still open. He hurried inside.
Bender stood near the shuttle’s open ramp. He had his stun rifle pointed inside. The Acceptor on top seemed clear.
Rade approached as quickly as he dared. As he rounded the side of the shuttle, the interior came into view. He saw Surus, standing next to the Acceptor’s pedestal, which the team had stowed in the cabin. She had placed the Time Selector into the square notch on top. She was slowly backing away.
Cora came into view. And Shaw. Cora was pressing a blaster to Shaw’s head. Shaw in turn held Alex, whose arms were wrapped tightly around her neck.
Though she was a hostage, Rade was relieved to see her alive.
“Hello again, Rade Galaal,” Cora said in her sweet, high-pitched voice. The glowing purple condensation on the Centurion’s chest piece told Rade everything he needed to know. That deadly liquid was far too close to Shaw for his comfort. “I suggest you and your mercenary friends lower your weapons. This one has refused to obey me, saying he would not do so until you arrived.” The robot nodded toward Bender.
“Lower your weapons!” Rade said, obeying the order himself. The other team members complied.
Bender glanced at Rade uncertainly, then the man let his weapon fall, too.
twenty-six
Zhidao?” Rade said.
“In the flesh, so to speak,” Cora replied.
“What do you want?” Rade asked.
In answer, the ramp began to seal.
Rade started to raise his weapon again.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Cora said. “I need to access the Time Selector without worrying about any interference from you or your men.”
The ramp closed with a resounding thud, sealing Shaw and Alex inside the shuttle with Cora.
The moments seemed to pass very slowly. Too slowly.
Rade was ready to override the ramp and storm the shuttle when the ramp began to open once more.
“Thank you for your patience,” Cora said, dragging Shaw outside with her. “Now please, back away.”
