by David Weber
“Right.” Raibert stood up. “Where to?”
“I’ll plot a path on your virtual sight. Follow it. Now move!”
A golden dashed line traced across the floor and disappeared out the door. Raibert stepped up to it, the malmetal parted, and he peeked his head out and checked in both directions.
All clear.
He followed the line to the left and ran down the hall far faster than his old body could ever have managed. His synthoid legs cleared the corridor in rapid strides, and he skidded to a halt at the T-junction. He slapped his hands against the wall, bounced off, and took the path to the right.
A door split open and two men stepped out in blue clean suits with white stripes running up the sides.
“Sir?” asked the first. “Can I help you?”
Raibert didn’t give them time to ponder why a synthoid was suddenly up and about. His connectome had been ripped from his flesh without his permission, and whatever body remained had likely been reclaimed into snacks for the cafeteria or fertilizer for someone’s garden or who knew what. He’d just narrowly escaped being sent to the abstract version of hell, and he wasn’t about to let anyone or anything stand between him and freedom.
Every ART operative received the download on hand-to-hand combat as part of his or her basic training and was required to keep it current. Without it, no one could be cleared for interaction in primitive eras of history. Raibert had never much cared for it—he’d dutifully passed his certifications, but that sort of sweaty nonsense wasn’t for him—but now, for the first time, he realized how…misguided that attitude had been.
He charged forward and hooked a fist against the first man’s face. Bone crumbled under the impact, flesh collapsed inward, and the man’s eyes bulged out of his skull. Raibert spun around with more dexterity than he ever remembered, and his heel cracked against the second man’s neck and broke it.
The two bodies dropped to the floor. Peacekeeper icons appeared over both corpses, and an alarm sounded in his virtual hearing.
“Not good!” He shook the blood from his hand, found the gold line again, and raced down the corridor. The building shook from an impact somewhere above him, and Raibert steadied himself against the wall as a second alarm activated. Information scrolled through his virtual sight too fast for him to absorb.
“What’s going on out there?” he asked.
“We’re making sure they stay focused on us.”
The floor shifted again, and Raibert sidestepped into the wall and kept moving.
“I think it’s working!”
“It has to. The airspace is getting thick with drones, and we need you on board or none of us are getting out of this.”
“Right!”
Raibert followed the line as it zigzagged through the complex, then led to double doors that opened into a wide office area filled with Peacekeepers at their cubicles, some of them rising out of their seats. He sprinted through and ignored the stares.
“There he is!” a woman shouted from the door through which he’d entered. “Dispatch Wolverines to floor two zero zero, east quadrant!”
“I don’t think the distraction’s working anymore!” Raibert ducked out the other side and dashed onward. “What’s a Wolverine?”
“One of the more common Admin drone types. About the size of a big dog. Quad-legged and usually armed.”
“Well, they’re sending some after me!”
“Sorry, but there’s not much I can do until you’re closer to the building exterior.”
“That’s just fantastic! Can’t you slow them down?”
“I’ll do what I can, but I’m back on the Kleio. Peacekeepers flooded the tower’s infostructure with just about every abstract weapon in their arsenal. It got too hot for me and I had to bail.”
“Terrific!”
“Keep moving, Raibert. You’re nearly there.”
“Good thing this body doesn’t get tired!”
He rounded a corner and entered a long straightaway that led to a windowed lounge along the building exterior. He pumped his legs and arms and dashed past closed doors on either side. A Wolverine skidded on all fours around the corner, regained its balance, and galloped after him. It raised the gun in its head and fired.
The first hypervelocity dart stabbed through the synthoid muscle between his neck and shoulder and blew it apart in an eruption of dark gray sinews. His body registered the damage and dutifully reported it to his mind without any sensation of pain. He knew he’d been shot and he knew he’d lost some muscle functionality, but his mind remained unclouded by the primal impulses of real nerve endings.
A malmetal wall slapped shut between them, and rapid-fire munitions pelted the barrier.
“That’ll hold it for a little while,” Philo said. “Now, hurry, Raibert! You’re almost there!”
The tempo of shots against the barrier doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled, and darts punched through and ricocheted down the hall.
“It’s not going to hold!” Raibert shouted.
“When I say duck, you drop to the floor and get as far to the side as you can. Got it?”
“Low and to the side! Whatever you say!”
Two Wolverines stuck their metal claws through the ragged bullet holes and tore them wider. They jammed their heads through the openings and aimed.
“Duck!”
Raibert dove and pressed his body against where the wall met the floor, then covered his head as the windows at the end of the straightaway blew inward and Gatling fire roared past. Explosive rounds tore the barrier and all four Wolverines apart and splattered the hallway with the tattered remains of two Peacekeepers who’d been standing behind them.
“Get up!” Philo shouted.
Raibert bolted off the ground like a runner coming off the blocks and sprinted toward the clear, beautiful daylight ahead. The TTV slid close, blocking the sun with a heavily dented hull, and the cargo bay hatch split open. Railgun fire cracked the air outside, and the TTV’s prog-steel rang with each strike.
Raibert ran to the broken edge of the lounge and leapt through the air. His legs continued to pump as he soared over the kilometer-long drop, and finally he hit the cargo bay floor and rolled across it.
The hatch sealed, and the graviton thrusters powered up.
“Kleio, get us out of here now!” Philo ordered.
“Would the professor please come to the bridge?”
“Damn it!” Raibert exclaimed, rising off the ground. “I’m coming! I’m coming!” He took the counter-grav tube up to the bridge and hurried up to the command table. Philo’s avatar manifested in his virtual sight, and Raibert said, “Now engage the impeller already!”
“Would the professor please come to the bridge?”
“Uhh…” Raibert glanced at Philo, then down at his new body. “Uh-oh.”
“Kleio, initiate pilot reconfiguration on my authority,” Philo stated. “Link synthoid on the bridge with valid pilot profile Raibert Kaminski.”
“Configuration change acknowledged and accepted. Hello, Professor. Welcome back.”
“Yes, yes. Now get us the hell out of here!”
“Of course, Professor. Engaging impeller in three…two…”
Raibert waited for the “one” but it never came. An impact shook the ship, and he held on to the railing around the command table.
“I am sorry, but the impeller will not engage.”
“WHAT THE HELL?” Raibert blurted.
Philo opened a map of the Admin city.
“There!” He indicated a tower on the outskirts of the Yanluo Blight. “We must still be in range of a suppression tower. Kleio, head for Portcullis-3 as fast as you can.”
“Changing course. ETA, three minutes thirty-seven seconds.”
The ship lurched from a trio of rapid strikes.
“Armor compromised,” Kleio reported. “Graviton thruster three has sustained moderate damage. Reactor superconductor lines seven and eight severed. Bypassing damage and increasing
load to remaining lines.”
“Come on, Kleio. Hold it together.”
“I will do my best, Professor. Please be aware that normal propulsion safeties remain disengaged. Brace yourself for hazardous acceleration.”
Raibert wrapped his arms around the command table railing.
Admin drones buzzed around the TTV and pumped shot after shot into it. The reactor dumped raw fury into the graviton thrusters, and the TTV exploded past them at a velocity they couldn’t possibly match as Raibert dangled almost horizontally from the command table.
“Really glad I’ve got this new body right about now!” he cried.
The suppression tower loomed ahead as a blue and white spire tipped with a spike of exotic matter. More drones launched from the tower’s landing pads, but the TTV kept accelerating, the front of its hull glowing dull red from air friction.
“Now, Kleio,” Philo said. “Fire!”
Blisters snapped open and the Gatling guns poured high-explosive rounds into the top of the tower. Exotic matter shattered under the torrential storm of metal and explosives, and its suppression field faltered and died. The TTV zipped past the tower and through the Switchblade drones’ engagement envelope so quickly that only a few shots rang off its hull.
“The impeller appears to be free of disruptions,” Kleio reported.
“Then get us the hell out of here!” Raibert cried. “Forget the countdown!”
“Yes, Professor. Engaging impeller…now.”
The TTV’s hot singularity reactor pumped colossal amounts of energy into the impeller spike, morphing the exotic matter so that it blocked chronotons flowing up the timestream. Temporal pressure built up along the spike, pushing the vessel into a new phase state, and the TTV slipped from its current time axis and vanished from the Admin.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Department of Temporal Investigation
2979 CE
“This is an absolute disaster!” Shigeki stormed. “How did we miss the AI on his ship, and how did we let that thing parade through our systems like it owned the place?”
The staff assembled around the table didn’t immediately respond, and only Nox dared meet his gaze. Hinnerkopf hunched forward on her elbows, eyes lowered, studying a blank spot on the table, while Kloss watched and waited for someone else to speak up first. Jonas stared blankly forward, his uniform blackened by smoke and smeared across one sleeve with someone else’s bloody handprint. Shigeki could tell he’d been shaken by the carnage wrought upon Portcullis-Prime, but he’d deal with that once they were alone.
“I am waiting for an answer, people.”
“Director.” Hinnerkopf straightened her spine and looked up. “I believe that as the Under-Director of Technology, the responsibility for this blunder falls upon me. I take full responsibility for my lapses in judgment and will accept any reprimand you feel is appropriate.”
“Katja, I don’t need people falling on their swords over this. What I do need are answers.”
“I think the explanation is fairly simple,” Kloss offered. “SysGov’s technological advantages proved far more formidable than we’d anticipated, especially considering we were dealing with a lightly armed civilian version of our own chronoports.”
“We did predict the performance of its weapon systems accurately,” Hinnerkopf added. “And Hangar Four was secure by those standards. But we grossly miscalculated the self-repair characteristics of its armor and the performance of its drive system. Both of which together allowed it to breach containment. As for the AI…” She threw up her arms. “I’m still not sure how it got a foothold into our system. It’ll take some time to diagnose the breach of the tower’s infostructure and identify the points of entry.”
“Even taking all of that into account, how in Yanluo’s blazing realms did they slip past Blockade?” Shigeki demanded.
Kloss looked first to Jonas, then to Hinnerkopf when no response came. She cleared her throat.
“The destruction of the suppression towers, particularly when they were in a fully energized state, sent a considerable amount of exotic debris phasing backward through time. We believe they used the interference as cover to make their escape.”
“You believe,” Shigeki shot back, even his formidable discipline unable to keep the anger out of his tone.
“I’m truly sorry, Director, but that’s the best we have. By the time the noise cleared, there was no trace of them anywhere within negative six years.”
Shigeki took a slow, seething breath and waited for someone else to speak up.
“Is that it?” he finally asked. “Is that all you’ve got for me? We had this man and his ship completely at our mercy and he managed to slip away. Not only that, but do I need to remind you what he intends to do?”
“He doesn’t know how to alter the timeline,” Hinnerkopf said.
“Not yet. But all of you know that’s exactly what he and his infernal AI are setting out do to. If he had any doubts before about wiping out the Admin, I can assure you they’re gone now! People, our entire existence is at risk because we let this man slip out of our grasp.”
“Then what do you want us to do, boss?” Kloss asked.
“The only thing we can do.” Shigeki placed the tips of his fingers on the table. “We’re going after him. Jonas.”
His son flinched at the sound of his name.
“Yes?” he asked, and his eyes truly focused on his father for the first time in the meeting.
“I want all of Pathfinder Squadron prepped for immediate departure. Make sure they’re equipped for an extended mission.”
“Right. Got it. What about Blockade?”
“We’re leaving them here. We can’t afford to leave the True Present unguarded with all the holes Kaminski just blew in our suppression grid. Nox.”
“Sir?”
“Assemble our best operators. I want full drone complements and combat teams on every chronoport. Make sure you assign at least one STAND with a combat frame to each team. We’re not taking any chances, now that Kaminski’s walking around in a synthoid.”
“Consider it done, sir.”
“Kloss?”
“Yes, boss?”
“We need people we can trust without question on this mission. I will personally take command from Pathfinder-Prime, and you’re going to make sure we have trusted people captaining every chronoport. I don’t want any problems if word gets out about Kaminski’s true goals or the nature of the Knot.”
“Should I assume everyone here is joining you?”
“You should.”
“Understood, boss. I’ll see to it.”
“And Kloss? Go to the Yanluo Armory and get Vassal out of storage.”
“I…” The Martian’s lips parted.
“I’m not going up against a goddamned AI without backup. If he throws his own thinking machine at us, then we’re going to fight fire with fire. Get Vassal out of storage and put it on Pathfinder-Prime. I’ll make sure you have the necessary approvals for its release.”
“Understood.”
Shigeki pushed off the table and took a step back.
“Make no mistake, people. You screwed up,” he told them. “You know you screwed up, and I know you screwed up. But I also know you’re better than this, and I need you at your best. So set aside your wounded pride and refocus every iota you have on the task before us.
“Make no mistake about the gravity of this crisis, either. We’re faced with a man who threatens not just our lives or the lives of our friends and families. He has the power to end our entire universe, he’s got an advanced time machine and a rogue AI at his command, and he has every conceivable motive to do just that. If we don’t stop him, we will never have existed in the first place. Our very existence and the existence of everyone and everything we hold dear hangs in the balance. Failure is not an option. Hoping he doesn’t succeed is not an option. We are going after him. We will find him. And we will end him. Is that understood?”
“Yes, si
r,” Nox snapped.
“We’re with you, boss,” Kloss said.
“Every step of the way,” Hinnerkopf added.
“I know you are.” Shigeki watched spirits rise across the room with a sense of profound satisfaction. “All right, people. Let’s make it happen. Dismissed!”
Nox, Kloss, and Hinnerkopf left the room, leaving the senior Shigeki alone with Jonas. He rounded the table and sat next to his son.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” he finally said.
“What for?”
Jonas shook his head, lips quivering as he struggled to find the words.
“I don’t know if I can come with you.”
“But I need you, Son. More than ever.”
“No, you don’t.” He sucked in a shaky breath. “You know I’m the only one who doesn’t belong at this table.”
“Is that what you think?” Shigeki put an arm around his son. “That couldn’t be farther from the truth.”
“The only reason I’m here right now is because of luck. If I’d been in the operations room at the time, I’d be dead, too. Instead, I hid under my desk as my team was cut down. I was worse than useless.”
“There was nothing you could have done.”
“But I should’ve tried! Instead I hid like a coward, and even then I only survived because of dumb luck. Any one of those bullets could have ricocheted in just the right way, and then I wouldn’t be here anymore.”
Shigeki hugged his son’s shoulders.
“When I came down and saw what had become of my team, I…” He whimpered and tears leaked from his eyes. “Dad, there wasn’t anything left in that room that was recognizably human. Just scattered pieces of scorched meat and bone. I…I can’t go with you. I…someone should stay behind. I can do that.”
“I need my best people on this, Son, and that includes you.”
“But I’m fucking useless!”
“No, you’re not. Don’t say that. I know some people think you’re only here because you’re my son. Jonas, some idiots are always going to think that way! And when the ones who do see how you act in meetings, they think you’re not paying attention. Well, let them think that. Let them think less of you. Because what’s actually happening is you’re paying closer attention than anyone else at the table, and then they make the mistake of underestimating you. Let them think that, even say it behind your back, because it gives you an edge they’ll never see coming. But you and I know the truth, even if you don’t want to admit it right now, and I need my best people right now, Son. I need them focused and on top of their game, and that means I need you.”
