by David Weber
One of the synthoids knocked the other on shoulder with a fist. Floating text marked them as ZHENG and ROSSI.
“Hey, man!” Rossi shouted at his comrade. “Watch where you’re shooting. You’re going to piss off the geeks with all the blood splats.”
“So?” Zheng dismissed.
“So? It means more work for us. You know they’re going to make us microjump back here and collect anything we damage.”
“And why’s that a bad thing?” Zheng pointed his gun down the hall. “Means we get to play through this shooting gallery all over again.” He chuckled, and soon Rossi joined in.
“Oh yeah. Didn’t think of that.”
“And that isn’t the half of it. This your first mission?”
“First one this size, yeah.”
“Then just watch and learn.” Zheng clapped Rossi on his armored shoulder. “You’ll see. We make a few choice mistakes, slow down the doctors, and then we get to have all sorts of fun on these missions.”
Three of the synthoids laughed heartily, and soon Rossi joined in. As a team, they raised their weapons and hurried into the next room.
“Turn off this fabrication!” Lucius shouted.
“Oh, this is no fabrication!” Raibert faced the crowd. “Honored guests, I have to wonder, should we as a society consider this a moral use of our time machines? Would anyone like to comment on this fascinating philosophical question?” He turned to Teodorà and the other archeologists on the stage. “Anyone? Anyone at all?”
The view changed again, this time showing one of the escort TTVs targeting a detachment of royal guards marching toward the Library as men, women, and children fled in the opposite direction. A 12mm Gatling gun spewed a continuous stream of fire—and erased the guard detachment from existence.
Night switched to day, and a tiny remote swept its scopes across the same street. Everyone in the audience felt the heat of summer, heard the buzzing of flies in the streets of Alexandria, and smelled the stench of decomposing corpses. A guest near the dais vomited.
“Turn it off!” Lucius stormed. “Turn it off right now!”
Raibert flashed a grin. “No.”
“I told you to turn it off!” Lucius grabbed him by the collar. Raibert’s hat fell off, but the grin never left his face.
The crowd grew louder, both from the onslaught of graphic violence filling their shared sight and also from the security synthoids shoving their way toward the stage.
Lucius clutched two fistfuls of Raibert’s scarf and pulled him so close their noses almost touched.
“Tell that piece of trash AC of yours to turn it off,” he breathed, “or I swear I will choke you to death right here on this stage.”
“Do it if you think you have the guts,” Raibert said, then spat in his face.
Lucius recoiled, then decked Raibert with a hook that sent him sprawling. The chairman turned in a circle, took stock of the horrified eyes, the shocked stares, the words of shame not only whispered but spoken and even shouted, and then he faced the hell he and his organization had turned Alexandria into.
“This isn’t over,” he growled at Raibert’s prone form before he fled the stage and shoved aside anyone who got in his way.
The vignettes of violence from Alexandria continued to play, and Raibert picked himself off the floor and rubbed his aching jaw.
“Gather around, everyone!” he shouted, laughing and holding out his arms in a parody of Lucius’ earlier gesture. “Gather around and see what you are sponsoring!”
Security synthoids vaulted onto the stage and swarmed over him.
“Can you believe we call ourselves ART?” he laughed as they hauled him away.
*
“So what became of Lucius and the rest of ART?” Benjamin asked.
“He resigned,” Raibert said.
“That’s it?”
“Well, officially. Unofficially, most of the major ART sponsors were so disgusted by the truth that they forced him out along with his strongest supporters. There was a huge SysPol investigation into time-travel uses and abuses. SysPol being the police in my time. A bunch more people lost their jobs, new management got put in place, and so on. Some new laws were written too. For one, ART teams were restricted to nonlethal technology except in the case of self-defense, and any time one of their teams did use lethal means, they had to justify that use to SysPol or lose their time-travel privileges. SysPol also put a few undercover ACs to work in ART, and that lead to several arrests after the new laws were on the books.”
“I bet a lot of people didn’t like that,” Benjamin said.
“Now that’s an understatement!” Raibert exclaimed, smiling. “Most of my old colleagues were pissed. They felt the decision to outlaw lethal force was totally unjustified because, as far as we knew back then, no one was really dying, and the restrictions only served to put our Preservation teams at greater risk. The first time a team got pincushioned by Zulu spears, ART mounted a pushback campaign against the restrictions. Almost got them overturned.”
“So people died because of the new laws?” Elzbietá asked.
“Very rarely. You’ve seen what our medical science can do.”
“Right. How can I forget?” She smiled and blinked both eyes.
“Deaths were pretty rare,” Raibert added, “but there were a lot of injuries, especially early on as everyone got used to the new restrictions. Teodorà got hurt pretty bad. Some random Persian ran his sword through her stomach at Thermopylae. She ended up switching to a synthoid body after that and makes it a point to send me regular hate mail.”
“And you?” Elzbietá asked.
“They let me and Philo stay right where we were. Our status as whistleblowers helped shield us from the Gwon family and the other parties that weren’t happy about how the status quo had changed. In the end, we got to keep doing the Observation missions we love.”
“Sounds like you really shook things up,” Benjamin said.
“Eh.” Raibert shrugged as if it were nothing. “It was—”
“Everyone, get to the bridge now!” Philo screamed across their virtual hearing. “There’s a chronoport out there!”
“Shit!” Raibert dashed through the doorway with powerful synthoid strides. A Nazi helmet clattered to the ground, and Benjamin and Elzbietá hurried after him. They took a counter-grav tube up a level and raced onto the bridge.
“How far?” Raibert asked.
“Negative ten months and closing.”
“And there’s just the one?”
“Just the one. It’s in 2016, moving up the timestream.”
“Are you sure it’s alone?”
“As sure as I can be.”
“Have they detected us?” Elzbietá asked.
“Doubtful,” Philo said. “It’s moving at ninety-five kilofactors. The Admin’s chronoports seem to be half-blind when moving that fast. It’s heading somewhere, not looking for us. Now at negative nine months.”
“Then this is our chance.” Elzbietá turned to Raibert. “We have the drop on them and we have our new weapons. I say we phase-lock with that time machine and blow it straight to hell.”
“I appreciate your gusto,” Raibert cautioned, “but there are at least eleven of those things out there. Somewhere, somewhen. We don’t know where they are and we can’t take them all on. Fighting is still a last resort for us, even with our new weapons.”
“Chronoport at negative eight months,” Philo warned. “Make up your minds fast, people.”
“We can take them, Raibert,” Elzbietá urged. “You know we can.”
“Sorry, but no. Kleio, phase us in. We’ll hunker down and wait for the chronoport to pass.”
Elzbietá huffed out a frustrated breath and shook her head.
“Yes, Professor. Three…two…one…phase in.”
Benjamin’s eyes bugged out. He clutched his skull and collapsed to his knees.
“Doc, are you okay?”
“Ben?” Elzbietá asked.
&n
bsp; He let out a long, plaintive wail that escalated into an earsplitting scream that tapered off only when his lungs emptied. He sucked in a breath and cried out again as he crumpled to the floor.
“What’s wrong with him?” Raibert asked.
“How should I know?” Elzbietá snapped as she hurried to Benjamin’s side and crouched down next to him. “Ben, what’s wrong? What is it?”
“David!” Benjamin wailed as he raked harsh fingers down his cheeks.
“David?” Elzbietá uttered. “But that’s your…”
“He’s dead!” Benjamin wailed, fingers clawing at his face as if he could tear the invading memories from his mind.
“How is this happening?” Elzbietá grabbed his hands and pulled them away. Benjamin’s cheeks were already bleeding. “It’s exactly the same.”
“What’s the same?” Raibert asked urgently. “What are you talking about?
Benjamin yanked his arms back, curled up in a fetal ball, and wept bitterly.
“It’s just like the day he gained his other memories! He’s even saying the same things! I know! I was there!”
“But that’s…” Raibert and Philo exchanged looks, and Philo shook his head in bafflement.
“Oh, no,” Elzbietá muttered as sudden realization hit her. “Maybe it’s all the same. Quick, what’s the date?”
“September 1, 2017,” Philo reported.
“It is the day! We’re back at the exact same point in time when he gained those memories!”
“He’s dead…” Benjamin whimpered. “Dead…”
“Philo?” Raibert asked. “Could that be it?”
“Maybe, uhh,” Philo began. “Maybe his resonance with the old timeline is getting amplified because there are two of him here now.”
“But that doesn’t make sense! That’s an asynchronous temporal effect!”
“Then explain this.” Philo pointed at their twenty-first-century historian curled up in a gibbering ball.
“We need to leave!” Elzbietá demanded.
“We can’t leave!” Raibert replied. “There’s a chronoport out there, and we need to wait for it to pass!”
“Chronoport at negative five months,” Philo reported.
“Oh, hang in there, Ben.” Elzbietá cradled his head against her chest as tears streamed down his cheeks, and he moaned the same name over and over again. Minutes dragged by, and she was once again the rock he clung to in a private sea of chaos.
“Negative three months.”
He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her painfully tight as his entire body shuddered around a string of loud, coughing sobs. She stroked his hair and bent down to kiss his forehead.
“Negative one month.”
He shuddered and whimpered wordlessly. She rocked him back and forth and waited as the minutes ticked by.
“Chronoport has passed,” Philo reported. “We’re in its wake.”
“Kleio, phase us out!” Raibert ordered. “Take us to non-congruence. No destination.”
“Yes, Professor. Three…two…one…phase out.”
The tension in Benjamin’s body melted away almost immediately. He rubbed a shaky hand over his face and looked up at her.
“Hey,” she whispered and smiled down at him.
He returned the smile, weakly, and brushed trembling fingers across her cheek.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
She brushed his hair aside and kissed his forehead again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
DTI Chronoport Pathfinder-6
non-congruent
Jonas Shigeki watched the TTV’s impeller signature close in on 1960, where Pathfinder-8 and his own Pathfinder-6 held non-congruent positions to form the downstream end of the picket. The two chronoports hovered side by side, laser linked to allow communication without the use of chronometric telegraphs.
“Any thoughts on how they slipped past Pathfinder-10?” he asked as the red blip moved backward through 1961 at seventy kilofactors.
“Impossible to tell,” James Noxon said. His face was the same blank mask it had been for days and his flat voice was devoid of all emotions. “Pathfinder-10 is out of telegraph range, so we couldn’t contact them if we tried.”
“And even if they were close enough, sending out the telegraph would alert Kaminski to our presence.”
“That’s very likely, sir.”
Jonas hugged his shoulders and watched the distance drop. Even though the TTV would pass right by his two chronoports in a temporal sense, they were still separated by a physical distance of over five thousand kilometers, so he wasn’t concerned about Kaminski suddenly phase-locking on his position and attacking.
“Either the TTV slipped past them or they were destroyed.” The gray-skinned synthoid faced him, and Jonas shivered, both at the possibility of losing another chronoport and at how robotic Nox had become after Katja’s death.
“Either way, we should proceed with caution,” Jonas replied.
“Agreed, sir.”
Jonas waited for something more in the way of a response, but none came. He found it difficult to meet the synthoid’s blank gaze, and he turned away to expand the TTV’s physical position until a map of the Earth filled the bridge.
“Look here.” He tapped the nation on the map, and a white border highlighted it. “The TTV is already physically in the Ukraine. Vassal was right. Kaminski’s going to make contact with Schröder’s grandfather.”
“So it would seem, Director.”
“What years was he the Ukrainian governor again?”
Nox pulled up Vassal’s report. “1952 to 1958, and he was fighting in the country as early as 1948.”
“Perfect.” Jonas swung the view over to Pathfinder-2 and Pathfinder-4 waiting non-congruent in 1950. “With a little luck, Kaminski will phase in near the next part of our picket, and we’ll be able to hit the TTV with four chronoports at once.”
“Destroying his time machine may not be enough anymore,” Nox stated.
“How so?”
“We can’t discount the possibility that the professor has isolated the Event precisely enough to correct it. I won’t consider this over until both the TTV is destroyed and the professor is dead.”
I assume Katja’s death has nothing to do with that assessment. Right, Nox? he thought, but he also could see the man’s logic. Kaminski had slipped out of their grasp too often, made too much progress as they sat and waited for him to make his move. It was time to end this with overwhelming force.
“TTV now passing into 1960.”
“Let them reach negative two months, then lay in a pursuit course,” Jonas ordered. “Maximum stealth.”
“Yes, Director.”
“Baffles fully extended. Plotting course now.”
“Pathfinder-6 to Pathfinder-8. Stand by to move out. Orders are to pursue the TTV once it reaches negative two months. Maximum stealth. Hold formation and maintain telegraph silence.”
“Confirmed, Pathfinder-6. We’ll follow your lead.”
“Six to Eight,” Jonas said. “We don’t know where Kaminski will phase in. We may get lucky and be able to call in Two and Four for assistance, but we may not have that luxury. Make sure you’re ready for anything.”
“Understood, Pathfinder-6. We’ll be ready.”
“With your permission, Director”—Nox grabbed a handhold on the ceiling and turned himself around—“I’ll make sure the operators are briefed and that my combat frame is ready for deployment.”
Jonas blinked at the slight change in Nox’s tone. Was that eagerness he heard? Or was he just imagining things?
“Go ahead, Nox. You don’t need my permission for that.”
“Yes, sir.” The big synthoid grabbed a second handhold and launched himself toward the exit. He floated to it and steadied himself with a hand on either side of the opening.
“Nox,” Jonas suddenly called out and faced him.
“Yes, Director?” He rotated around, and Jonas was once again unsettl
ed by what he saw. There was nothing in the synthoid’s yellow eyes. No hate. No grief. No rage. No pain. Just a deep, unsettling, inhuman void.
He licked his lips before speaking.
“He’s going to pay for what he did.”
Nox cracked his mouth open ever so slightly, almost as if he intended to say something, and for a moment Jonas saw a flicker of emotions behind those eyes. A flash of bottled-up sorrow and rage that threatened to finally be unleashed.
But then it vanished as quickly as it had appeared. The synthoid, once again fully a machine, turned away and left without saying a word.
*
“I am not going down there unarmed,” Raibert proclaimed, left hand on hip.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” Benjamin asked, eyeing the stump where Raibert’s right arm used to be attached.
“No, I’m being very serious here.”
Elzbietá grabbed a set of freshly printed period clothes, each with prog-steel weaves, and set them on the table for Raibert and Benjamin to change into.
“Just because I’m going in packing heat doesn’t mean I need to look the part,” Raibert continued. “Kleio’s putting my gun in the forearm.”
“I see.” Benjamin stripped down to his undershirt, underwear, and socks, and grabbed a pair of discretely armored pants.
“Yeah, I’m going to be firing mag darts out of my palm,” Raibert said as he struggled to don his own pants onehanded. “Should be awesome.”
“Wow,” Elzbietá smirked. “That could lead to some horrible mishaps. Are you a righty or a lefty when you…you know?”
Benjamin shuddered.
“Admit it,” Raibert proclaimed. “You’re just jealous because you don’t get an arm that can blow holes through tanks.”
“No, I’m not,” Elzbietá laughed.
“Don’t discharge that thing around my grandfather, please.”
“Just so long as I don’t have to.”
“You expecting an unfriendly welcome?” Benjamin asked as he grabbed a shirt off the table.
“You shouldn’t underestimate how hard this is going to be,” Raibert warned with one leg successfully in his trousers. “You may think you know your granddad, but people change over the years. Take it from the guy with the time machine who can hop forward a decade or two at will. The man you knew is not the man we’re going to see.”
