by Scott Baron
Sarah stared at her sister, a grim look on her face. Grim, and determined.
“Is the orb hooked up?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And can it take out their planet if we manage to get it to the edge of their atmosphere?”
“I don’t know, Sis,” Daisy replied. “It’s supposed to be in full atmosphere to have that effect. I don’t know if its reaction would be powerful enough that high up.”
Sarah looked crestfallen.
“What if you tied it to a second orb?” George said. “Could that help?”
“I don’t know if that would––”
“Yeah, I’m almost sure that’d give it a much higher volatility level,” Freya interrupted. “The fresh one would power up once it passed the satellites, and if it were in a feedback loop with the drained unit, the combination would almost certainly increase the detonation’s power by several orders of magnitude.”
“Which would be enough to take the Ra’az down, even from the very edge of their atmosphere,” George said, giving Sarah a knowing nod. “Excellent.”
“So we’re in agreement?” Freya asked.
“I am,” George replied. “Sarah?”
“Count me in.”
“What are you talking about?” Daisy asked, more than a little confused.
“Our entire fleet is about to lose, Daisy. Everyone we love. Everyone we care about. Gone. And then there will be no one left to check the Ra’az aggression,” Sarah said, a flash of angry steel in her voice. “So we were talking while you were down below, and we’ve made a decision.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. We’re making a run for the atmosphere. And if we’re successful, once we clear reentry, we’ll detonate the orbs.”
“I can’t let you do that. This is my burden to bear.”
“Sorry, Daze. You’ve been outvoted, three to one. Now let’s get working on this, there’s no time to waste. The fleet’s on the brink, and we simply don’t have the luxury of sitting around here arguing about this.”
“So, there it is,” Daisy said, reluctantly.
“Yep. There it is.”
“All right, then,” Daisy said. “Love you guys.”
“Back atcha, Daisy,” George said with a grin.
“You know it,” Freya chimed in.
“Okay, Sis. Let’s get to it.”
Daisy and Sarah rushed through the ship’s corridors to where the drained orb was locked away in Freya’s high-security storage locker.
“Pry the lower casing open on the trigger mechanism,” Daisy instructed as she punched in the combination to the locker. “That’ll expose the wiring we’ll need to––” She fell silent.
“Sonofabitch,” Sarah said, looking over her shoulder into the locker.
The empty locker.
“But it was here,” she blurted in disbelief. “I put it there myself. Locked the damn thing away and didn’t tell a soul.”
“There’s no way anyone could have snuck on board,” Freya added.
“And you’re sure it was this locker, Sarah?”
“Positive.”
Daisy didn’t know what to do. Just like that, their last-ditch only-hope effort was wiped from the table. They had no more options.
She was about to close the locker when she noticed something. A small sticky note stuck to the inside of the door.
Daisy recognized her own writing.
“What is it, Daisy?” Sarah asked.
“It’s another goddamn sticky note, just like Colorado,” she said, trying to decipher the little drawings she had apparently left herself.
“Why the doodles?” she lamented. “Why couldn’t I just write myself a goddamn instruction manual or something?”
“Because, apparently, you never did,” Sarah pointed out. “Paradoxes, and shit.”
“Yeah, paradoxes and shit,” Daisy said. “Sounds like a band name.”
“Well, you drew a musical note,” Sarah said. “And the other one looks like a clock face, but you made the hands all messed up.”
Daisy squinted her eyes, studying the image. It hit her seconds later.
“Of course. They’re not just blurry, Sis. They’re spinning backwards.”
“Do you know what it means?”
“Actually, I think I do,” Daisy said. “Freya, get Mal on the line.”
“Hang on a sec. She’s in the middle of something.”
“Yeah, an intergalactic battle for her life. I know. Tell her this is important.”
A moment later Mal’s voice crackled through their comms.
“Daisy, what is it? You’re far from the fleet. I can barely pick you up through the interference.”
“I figured as much,” she said, pulling the small pendant around her neck from inside her shirt. “Tell me, Mal. Can you still read this?” she asked, then pressed a pair of the small gemstones embedded on the musical device.
“Music? At a time like this? That’s what was so important?”
“So, I take it that you heard that.”
“Loud and clear,” Mal replied. “Daisy, what’s this all about?”
“I’ll tell ya later. Gotta run. Thanks, Mal. Be safe!”
Daisy took off at a run back to the command pod, a smile growing larger and larger on her face.
“Freya, I want you to call up the Ra’az queen. Tell her I have an offer she can’t refuse.”
“But that’ll just piss her off more,” Freya said.
“Exactly. And that means she’ll answer my call.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Daisy,” Freya said, transmitting the request.
“Trust me, kiddo.”
Several seconds ticked by before the video screens filled with the image of the Ra’az queen and her loyalist lackey. She wore a look of delight as she observed her fleet slowly driving back the human invaders.
Lackadaisically, she turned her attention to the human on her screen.
“My queen asks if you truly expect her to show mercy on your people now that they face defeat,” the loyalist said. “She is amused by this folly.”
“Oh, that’s not why I called,” Daisy replied, utterly chipper and in the highest of spirits. Her unexpected attitude put the queen slightly off her game as a strange sense of unease struck her.
“Then why do you seek audience with Her Highness?”
“Because I grow weary of this war,” Daisy said. “I wish to offer her one last chance to surrender.”
The loyalist translated her words, and the queen burst into cruel laughter.
“My queen says she would never surrender. She says your people are on the run with no hope of escape. She says what is there that you can possibly do?”
“I can end you,” Daisy said, not a hint of humor in her voice. “I can end you and all the Ra’az on your planet. And I can do it without breaking a sweat.”
Something about the strange human’s overconfidence was unsettling, but the queen was not about to let a weaker species speak to her so disrespectfully.
“My queen wishes you to know she will destroy your fleet, and once they are no more than ash, she will build an even greater armada and send them forth, but not to harvest your world, but rather, to tear it to shreds. She wants you to know this as you breathe your last, and realize there is nothing you can do.”
“Well, actually, there is one thing I can do.”
“What could that possibly be?”
Daisy pulled her pendant from her shirt and dangled it in front of the screen.
“Let me play you a little tune.”
She pressed all three gemstones at once, transmitting a tone that cut through all blocks and scramblers, its sound blaring out of all speakers across the solar system.
“This? You threaten the great queen with––”
The loyalist went silent, and the queens eyes grew wide as a rumbling fireball engulfed her planet.
“But how did you––?”
Those were the last words t
he queen would ever ask as the entire globe shuddered in a massive detonation.
The shockwave vaporized the orbiting satellites and nearby battle stations, sending their debris shooting outward in a deadly cloud of shrapnel, soon to pierce everything within the asteroid field’s embrace.
“Freya, open comms on all channels!” Daisy shouted.
“They’re on!”
“Everyone, listen up! The satellites are down! Your warp cores should all be active now. Power up, and get the hell out of here.”
Zed’s voice burst over the air.
“We can’t, Daisy. The Ra’az pushed the fleet too far from the gap in the asteroid field. There’s no way we’ll make it there in time, and we can’t warp this close to it anyway.”
She spun in her seat, eyes darting to the scan array. Zed's assessment was accurate.
“Shit, you're right,” Daisy said. “There's just not enough time.”
“Actually, I have an idea,” Freya interrupted. “Arlo, Marty, do you copy?”
“We're here, Freya,” they replied in unison.
“You’ve only got about a minute before that wave of planetary shrapnel hits you. I want you to fire up the Big Gun and punch a hole through the asteroid field.”
“Fire up the what, now?” Daisy asked.
“The Big Gun?” Arlo said, his excitement clearly growing. “Really? You’re serious? I get to fire the Big Gun?”
“Not if you don’t hurry your ass up and do it,” Freya shot back.
“Don’t worry about Arlo,” Marty said. “He’s just been wanting to do this for a really long time. I’ve already got it primed and ready to go. The ball’s yours, Arlo, just hit the big red button in front of you.”
The teen did without hesitation, giddy with the exhilaration of draining a massively powerful warp core in an instant, converting all of its energy potential into a single blast.
It was even cooler than he thought it would be.
The Big Gun tore a massive hole through the asteroid field as if it were no more than tissue paper, then shut down, its power source fully-depleted.
“That. Was. Awesome!” he exclaimed.
“Glad you enjoyed it,” Freya said. “Now, all of you, emergency warp the hell out of here. You’ve got ten seconds before the shockwave and debris reach you.”
Most had already begun warping clear before Freya had even finished speaking. The remainder followed near instantly. She ran a quick scan of the remaining Ra’az ships, then warped out as they were engulfed in the shattered remnants of their home world.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“What did you do?” Celeste asked as Daisy stood among the gathered commanders of the newly expanded fleet.
With the addition of the Kathiri––whose mission commander had also come aboard to join the meeting––there were now three organic species, as well as the Earth’s AIs represented in the secure conference facilities nestled away within Zed’s mass.
The battle-worn warriors were beat up and tired, exhausted from centuries of conflict, months of preparation, and weeks of combat. Nevertheless, they were thrilled, one and all, to be in each other’s company, victorious at last.
The lingering question remaining was how.
“Daisy, Celeste asked you a question,” Captain Harkaway said to the exhausted woman who sat in their midst, staring off into space. “Unless you want to chime in, Joshua.”
“Nope. I’m sitting this one out. That was all Daisy,” he said with an amused chuckle.
“What?” she said. “Oh, sorry. I was daydreaming for a minute, there.” Daisy shook off the fog in her head, focusing her attentions back on the group. “What was it you wanted, Celeste?”
“I said, what exactly did you do out there? We’ve all seen the logs, and the scans showed clearly that the asteroid you intended to ride into the atmosphere like some kind of crazed cowgirl was destroyed long before it could reach its target. Nothing penetrated their defenses. We’ve checked.”
“And yet, you somehow triggered a catastrophic, world-ending detonation,” Zed added. “And with what? A song and a prayer?”
Daisy laughed. Of course they didn’t get it. And parts of it they never would. At least, not from her lips.
“It had to do with their scrambling system,” Daisy said. “They could block any remote signals to any device we managed to get past their defensive satellites and into the atmosphere.”
“And it was wreaking merry-hell with our comms and warp drives too,” Mal added. “But your musical signal cut through, clear as a bell.”
“Yeah. That was Arlo’s doing, actually,” she said, pulling her musical pendant from her shirt by its chain. “Thanks, kid. Your little gift saved all our asses.”
“My pleasure,” Arlo said.
“What is that?” Celeste asked. “Some sort of jewelry?”
Daisy pressed the leftmost gemstone, and a peppy song began playing through Zed’s onboard speakers. She smiled and winked at Celeste, then pressed it again, cutting the song short.
“That was rather disconcerting,” Zed grumbled. “Overrode my normal receivers and went where it wanted.”
“Exactly,” Daisy said. “It was a present from my young friend. Something old. Really old, in fact. Something that utilized tech the Ra’az wouldn’t have ever even thought to protect against. And why would they? Who would think a simple portable music player would bring about the total destruction of an entire planet?”
“But you still haven’t said how,” Celeste persisted. “We all heard a tone over our speakers as the Ra’az world burst into pieces, but what we don’t know is what happened.”
“Yes, I am with Celeste on this query,” Mal said. “We have obviously extrapolated that you utilized the music device’s unusual frequency and its ability to cut through Ra’az defensive scramblers to trigger a detonation. But what did you destroy? As I understand it, there are only three Ra’az warp orbs capable of that level of destruction, and all three are accounted for.”
“I know,” Daisy said. “One on Joshua, one on Freya, and one in Chu’s lab, right?”
Remind me, Sis. We still need to warp and steal that one from Chu to give to ourselves when we get stranded.
“Note taken. We’ll do that the first chance we get once this whole shindig is finished.”
“Precisely,” Captain Harkaway said. “So how did you do it?”
“Here’s the thing, Captain. Sometimes, well, things just aren’t quite what they seem. And other times, they’re exactly what they seem, but even then they still might not be.”
“I’m not following you,” he said, confused.
By the expressions on everyone present’s faces, he wasn’t alone in that regard.
“Okay, I’ll break it down as basically as I can, but forgive me if I slip into a tangent here and there. It’s been a long day, and I’m wicked sleep-deprived.”
“Aren’t we all?” Celeste said with a little laugh. She shared a warm smile with her husband briefly before turning her attention back to Daisy. “But please, continue.”
“Well, the idea was to replicate an event that had happened only once before. It would probably take years, maybe even decades. Hell, for all I know it took centuries, and someone else was just following my instructions.”
“Is this one of those tangents you warned of?” Mal asked.
“What? Oh, no. This bit is actually kind of crucial,” Daisy said. “So, like I was saying, I had an idea.” She looked at the faces gathered around her. So far, they seemed to be with her.
“Okay. So, you all know how Freya accidentally threw herself back in time, right?”
“Your species has mastered time travel?” the Kathiri commander blurted out in utter shock via her translation device. “The risks are unfathomable!”
“We know, Nazira, but it only happened that once, and even then, it was by accident.”
Think they’re buying it?
“Seem to be, so far,” Sarah replied, carefully
monitoring the attendees while Daisy spoke.
“So you have only effected a single leap through time?” Nazira said, somewhat relieved. “Then hopefully we are safe from unexpected consequences.”
“Right. Paradoxes,” Daisy said. “We know all about ’em and are sure as hell not about to go and cause any if we can help it. But still, it got me thinking. We were stuck in the middle of a deadly crossfire, unable to warp away or use our tech to either escape or attack. The Ra’az satellites pretty much negated that straightaway. But what if those satellites weren’t there?” Daisy asked.
“But they have been there for what appear to be many centuries, if not millennia,” Mal pointed out.
“Well, yeah,” Daisy agreed. “But what if Freya and me––”
“Freya and I,” Arlo corrected her with an impish grin.
“Oh, snap!”
Why, that little bastard, Daisy thought with a silent laugh.
“Yes. If Freya and I were able to figure out how she had warped through time that one instance, then perhaps we could utilize that technology to prepare for the fight with the Ra’az. Do it in a way that guaranteed our victory before the battle ever started. So far, we’re pretty sure only the Ra’az orbs are powerful enough to even do that, of course.”
“Aside from being dangerous and impossible, even if you did somehow figure out how to do it again, what good would it do to warp back in time when you couldn’t stop the Ra’az without creating a paradox?” Harkaway said.
“The captain is right,” Zed agreed. “If you killed the Ra’az in the past, then none of us would ever be here in the present.”
The group murmured their agreement.
“No, you guys aren’t getting it.” Daisy sighed. “The plan wasn’t to warp back in time to kill the Ra’az in the past. That would have caused a paradox, you’re right. But what if we warped back to before the war. What if we went back before the satellites were deployed? What if we jumped so far back that the Ra’az hadn’t even destroyed their neighboring planet, resulting in their moving their hives to the surface?”
“I suppose what you’d find was what appeared to be a relatively wide-open planet,” Celeste said.
“Yes! See, Celeste gets it,” Daisy exclaimed. “And if the surface was unpopulated, we could take that warp orb and bury it unobserved. Bury it somewhere safe. Somewhere we already knew was going to remain undeveloped from scans taken in this timeline. Somewhere the ground was going to be undisturbed. Somewhere our payload would remain safe for thousands of years.”
