by David Weber
“1905 to 1995,” Jonas said.
“Exactly. So what we do is set up a picket that covers that entire timespan plus a little extra on either side just to be safe. Pathfinder-Prime will be centrally staged at 1945, and the rest of the squadron will spread out from there at ten year increments. The endpoint chronoports will be placed”—another two points glowed—“here at 1895, and here, at 2005.”
“An excellent idea, sir,” Nox said. “With this configuration, our scopes will cover the entire timespan we expect Kaminski to show up in, and our telegraphs will still have enough range for messages to be passed up and down the picket. Furthermore, any one of our chronoports should be more than sufficient to take on and destroy the TTV.”
“On that topic, I want to make one thing very clear,” Shigeki stated. “Our primary target is the TTV. Once it’s gone, taking care of the professor becomes trivial. Therefore, your main objective is the destruction of his ship. If you spot him but not the TTV, do whatever you can to force it out into the open, but also be ready for anything. The TTV may have abilities we haven’t seen yet, and it may modify itself in ways we don’t expect.”
“What if we see Kaminski but fail to draw the TTV out?” Nox asked.
“Then kill him.”
“Understood, sir.”
“If, for whatever reason, the TTV or the professor gets away, immediately feed your observations back to Pathfinder-Prime for analysis. That’s what Vassal is for. I’ve had Pathfinder-Prime’s infosystem stuffed to the brim with historical records of the target period, so we’ll have everything we need to piece together what that man is up to. Any other questions?”
A quiet confidence settled upon the room, and some of his staff and captains shook their heads.
“Kloss, meet me on the bridge before you board Pathfinder-2. We need to get Vassal installed.”
“Not a problem, boss.”
“Nox, I need to talk to you about one last crew assignment change with the STANDs before we depart.”
“Yes, sir.”
He looked across their faces one more time. They were ready.
“To your chronoports, people!” Shigeki ordered.
The captains and his staff filed out of the conference room, and he waited for the door to seal.
“You’re stationed on Pathfinder-Prime with me?” he asked Nox once they were alone.
“Of course, sir.”
“Hmm,” he sighed. “That’s what I thought.”
“You don’t approve?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s more a request than an order. I want you to switch places with the STAND on Pathfinder-6.”
Nox paused for a moment, then realization came over him and he nodded.
“Ah. The one your son is on.”
“I need my best people on this, but I also want them all to come back. That goes double for Jonas.”
“Perfectly understandable, sir.”
“And there’s no one I trust more to look after him than you.” He clapped the synthoid on the side of his arm.
“Thank you, sir. That’s high praise indeed. I’ll make the changes immediately.”
“Watch out for him, will you? Make sure he gets through this.”
“You have my word.” Nox smiled. “And sir?”
“Yeah, Nox.”
“You really do take after your father.”
“Come on,” Shigeki chuckled, feeling a little embarrassed. “Let’s get these ships moving.”
“Yes, sir.”
Shigeki gave the synthoid’s arm another pat, and the two left the conference room. Nox turned right toward the rear of the craft while Shigeki took the narrow corridor left to the bridge. He ducked through the opening, but the top of his head still brushed the bulkhead.
When the chronoport phased out, the mass of the Earth would no longer impart acceleration upon its atoms, and the crew would experience gravitational free fall. The interior had to accommodate prolonged periods of both standard gravity and zero gravity, but it also had to account for the chronoport’s twin fusion thrusters, which could generate a sustained three gees of acceleration. Normal functions needed to be possible in that transit mode as well, and the chronoport’s interiors had been designed with these requirements in mind.
Fortunately, situations that required the thrusters to be run flat out were exceedingly rare since chronoports typically avoided direct combat and instead relied upon the standoff power of their missiles, drones, and special operators.
The acceleration-compensation seats and arresting harnesses were arranged in rows of three with little regard to field of vision, since any crewmember could “see” any virtual display at any time, even through the chair backs in front of him. The pilot, copilot, realspace navigator, temporal navigator, impeller operator, telegraph operator, and weapons operator were already strapped in for phase-out, while Florian Durantt, Pathfinder-Prime’s captain, waited next to his seat at the back.
Kloss stood by the front alcove with the boxed AI cradled in an arm.
“Ready, boss.”
“Is that…thing really necessary?” Durantt asked.
“The AI assisting Kaminski managed to slip through both the DTI and DOI like it owned the place,” Kloss said, and Shigeki hid a dour smile as he heard his own words echoed. “So yes. It’s necessary.”
Durantt’s walrus mustache twitched.
“Is there an issue, Captain?” Shigeki asked.
“No, Director. Just uncomfortable around AIs.”
“Aren’t we all. Kloss, let’s get this over with. Shove it in.”
“Right.” He slotted the AI inside a square opening in the alcove and locked it in place. Shigeki put his hand against the closed-circuit PIN interface on the left, and Kloss did the same on the right.
“Boxed AI detected,” Pathfinder-Prime’s nonsentient attendant stated. “Yanluo Restriction compliance confirmed. Do you authorize AI unboxing?”
“Authorization: Under-Director Dahvid Kloss, Department of Temporal Investigation. Unboxing requested, sound interface only.”
“Authorization: Director Csaba Shigeki, Department of Temporal Investigation. Unboxing requested, sound interface only.”
“Credentials accepted. PIN integrity and noncoercion biometrics confirmed. AI partial unboxing will commence after a ten-second countdown. You may pause or cancel the unboxing at any time. Ten…nine…eight…”
Shigeki and Kloss waited with their hands pressed against the interfaces.
“Two…one…AI unboxed.”
Bright-red virtual letters that spelled UNBOXED lit up in front of the alcove.
“Admin-sanctioned artificial intelligence, codename Vassal, standing by for orders.”
“Vassal, your primary task on this mission will be data analysis. Additional interface restrictions will be lifted and more detailed information will be provided to you at the appropriate time. For now, you will remain in stasis until needed.”
“Understood, Director Shigeki.”
Both men removed their hands. Shigeki suspended the AI’s connectome, and a bright green STASIS appeared beneath UNBOXED.
“I need to get to my chronoport, boss.”
Shigeki nodded to him, and Kloss hurried out of the bridge.
“Director, all chronoports have declared readiness for departure,” Durantt announced less than ten minutes later.
“Then take us out,” Shigeki said, and strapped into his seat next to the captain.
“Pathfinder-Prime to all chronoports: exit your hangars, spin up your impellers, and synchronize on us. Squadron, stand by for phase-out.”
A column of twelve hangar bays opened along the side of the DTI tower, and the chronoports eased out like a shoal of giant, metal manta rays.
“Impeller spin rising. Ten cycles per second…twenty-five…fifty…seventy-five…one hundred…impeller spin now at one hundred twenty cycles per second. Spin stable. Chronometric environment stable. Captain, we are clear for phase-out.”
&n
bsp; “Captain, all chronoports synchronized and ready.”
“Pathfinder Squadron: phase out!”
Power from the fusion thrusters pulsed into the impeller spike, turning it impermeable at precise points in its spin so that chronotons struck it along a specific axis. Chronometric pressure reached the critical threshold, and twelve chronoports, 720 surveillance drones, 192 light combat drones, 132 special operators, and twelve STANDs with combat frames—a grand total of over thirty-seven thousand tons of state-of-the-art hardware and highly trained and motivated personnel—phased out of the True Present in search of one man in a shot-up time machine.
Shigeki crossed his arms as the Earth’s gravity vanished.
Kaminski didn’t stand a chance.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Denton, North Carolina
2018 CE
Benjamin Schröder drove his BMW 332i up the sloped driveway and around the back of the white two-story house, then parked it between both of his sisters’ minivans. He turned the car off and stepped out. A warm sun filtered through breaks in the clouds, and a cool breeze sighed past the trees that dotted the hill his parents had selected for their home long before he’d been born.
The windows were cracked open along the back porch, and Benjamin could already smell the warm aroma of home cooking.
“Oh, there he is!” Joséphine opened the door and greeted him on the porch.
“Hey, Mom.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Smells good.”
“Thank you. Though, honestly”—she leaned forward and whispered—“I’m barely doing anything besides setting a few timers and taste testing. Your sisters and Martin have totally taken over the kitchen.”
“Need me to kick them out and help reinstate your rule?”
“Heavens, no!” she laughed. “Do you have any idea how long it’s taken me to train them? Besides, my old bones deserve the rest.”
“Old? What are you talking about, Mom? Aren’t you still, like, twenty-two or something?”
“Uh!” she scoffed. “You’re as poor a liar as your father. You talk to Elzbietá with that mouth?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well, take it from me, she sees right through you.”
“That she does.”
Benjamin opened the door and let Joséphine back inside before stepping through himself. The Schröder family had grown so large over the past decade that Sunday dinner now took up two rooms with his parents, three sisters, and their husbands in one room and most of his nieces and nephews making a lot of noise and mess at a table set up in the living room.
A timer went off, and Joséphine hustled back to the kitchen where his twin sisters Elizabeth and Gisèle, the “babies” of the family, and Elfriede’s husband Martin toiled in the kitchen.
“Hurry up and take it off the heat!” she urged.
“We’ve got it, Mom,” Elizabeth replied, clicking the oven burners off. “Don’t you worry.”
“Yeah, Mrs. Schröder,” Martin said, stirring a large metal pot. “Just take a load off and leave it to us.”
A ruckus rose from the living room, and Elfriede, the second oldest and his little sister by two years, turned in her seat to face it.
“If you kids don’t behave, I will change the wifi password when we get home, and it’ll stay changed for a week!”
The noise from the other room died down considerably.
“Wow, not even a ‘but he started it’ that time,” Benjamin said.
“The trick is to use a lot of unusual characters so they can’t guess it,” Elfriede said, then shouted to the kitchen, “unlike making it our last name backward!”
“Sorry, dear!” Martin called out with a chuckle.
“You’d be surprised how persistent they can get when their toys don’t work,” Elfriede said.
“I’ll bet.”
“I mean, it took them less than a day to figure out the backward names. But throw in some random pound signs and an ampersand, and they’re done.”
Klaus Schröder reclined in a venerable leather armchair while the game played out on the TV with the volume turned low. He looked up when Benjamin walked up, turned off the TV, and stood up with only a soft groan.
“Son.”
“Sir.”
“You sure about this?”
“Yes, sir. That I am.”
Klaus nodded thoughtfully, as if he hadn’t already fallen to Elzbietá’s charms.
“What? Is that it?” Elfriede asked.
“What do you mean?” the senior Schröder replied.
“Don’t you remember what you did to poor Martin? You sat him down and grilled him one-on-one for two whole hours before you allowed him to propose. He cried afterward, you know. He thought you hated him.”
“No, I didn’t!” Martin proclaimed cheerfully from the kitchen.
“Did Daddy really cry?” asked a little girl from the next room.
“Like a big, blubbering baby.”
“It’s good to see how people respond to adversity,” Klaus defended. “Besides, it’s different when it’s a son.”
“Uh!” Elfriede rolled her eyes. “Dad! Sexist!”
“Oh, I beg to differ. Do you really think a then nineteen-year-old daughter and a now thirty-eight-year-old son should be treated the same?”
“Well, no. But…”
“Be careful with that ‘but,’ because you might find yourself in the same situation one day.”
She muttered something under her breath.
“Dinner is served!” Joséphine announced.
Elizabeth, Gisèle, and Martin started bringing food out from the kitchen and setting it on the tables. Benjamin’s mouth watered at the sumptuous spread of leberkase, kielbasa, weisswurst, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes with melted marshmallows on top, gravy, green beans, honeyed ham, sweet and spicy mustards, fresh baked bread, butter, and—last but certainly not least—homemade horseradish sauce produced from a freshly grated root.
Benjamin had “fond” memories of grating the roots as a child and was glad the responsibility had shifted to the next generation. The duty, in service of Grandma Jo, functioned as a competition amongst his nieces and nephews to see who could last the longest before tearing up.
He sat down next to his father.
“Mom, aren’t you going to join us?” Benjamin asked.
“In a few minutes! Just need to finish up a few things in here!”
“She’ll probably sit down sometime after dessert,” Klaus grumbled, then whispered to his son. “She says she’s slowing down and taking it easy, but she just keeps at it like always.”
“What was that, Klaus?”
“Nothing! I love you!”
“Oh, sure that’s what you said!”
Benjamin served himself a thick slice of leberkase, plenty of sauerkraut, and a dollop of the horseradish sauce to start with. Elfriede finished loading her plate, then grabbed the ketchup bottle and squirted a big, red mound on the side.
“Isn’t Elzbietá joining us?” she asked.
“No,” Benjamin said. “She’s doing a little bit of last minute clean up on her dissertation, and we’re going out tonight to celebrate. She, ahh…doesn’t know.”
“Oh, really? Think she’ll say yes?”
Benjamin gave his sister a grouchy look.
“So, when are you going to propose?”
“This Wednesday.”
“Valentine’s Day? Oh, that’s so sweet! Keep that up and she might actually consider saying yes.”
Benjamin gave her an even grouchier look.
“There’s not a doubt in my mind what the answer will be,” Klaus said. “You’ve been through some dark times recently, but Schröders are tough, and God works in mysterious ways. Sometimes it feels like He never answers our prayers, but then He puts the right person in the right place at exactly the right time when we need them the most, and I firmly believe that’s why she was there with you that day.”
“Thanks, Dad. And who knows?
You might be right about that.”
“Of course, I am. And speaking of which…” Klaus glanced over his shoulder at the kitchen.
“Oh!” Joséphine exclaimed. “Right! Hold on a sec. Got distracted by food again.” She headed upstairs.
“Speaking of which,” Klaus continued, “your mother and I have something very special for you.”
The stairs creaked as Joséphine came back down. She passed through the kitchen and placed a small lacquered box between Klaus and Benjamin before finally sitting down across from him.
“Is that what I think it is?” Elfriede asked, sitting up higher in her seat.
Benjamin opened the box and peered inside to find a ring. Its two gold bands were crowned by five interlocking circles of gold, each encrusted with tiny diamonds.
“It is!” Elfriede sat back down.
“You don’t seem surprised, Son,” Klaus said.
“Well, there are only so many ways to interpret ‘don’t worry about the engagement ring.’”
“And don’t worry,” Joséphine assured. “It’s already been resized.”
“You know her ring size?” Benjamin asked. “How did you manage that from her?”
“Very subtly, which is why I did it and not your father.”
“You’re giving it to Ben?” Elfriede complained.
“That’s right,” Klaus said.
“But why him all of a sudden?” She put an elbow on the table and rested her face in her hand. “I got married first. I should have gotten it.”
“Elfriede, dear,” Klaus began patiently. “First, it’s unbecoming for a bride to select her own ring. Besides, I believe your husband did a fine job there.”
“Thanks, Mr. Schröder!” Martin said, still in the kitchen cleaning up.
“Second, this ring is an heirloom that’s been passed down through over three hundred years of firstborn von Schröders, and we must respect our traditions. Your grandfather, Graf Klaus-Wilhelm von Schröder, presented this ring to my mother, Gräfin Elfriede, in 1939, and she wore it until we lost her in 1944.”
