by David Weber
Raibert palmed his face with a loud smack.
*
The two chronoports hovered over the Dnieper River to the north of Kiev and the Provisional Residence, their hulls obscured by variskin illusions. Jonas and the rest of Pathfinder-6’s bridge crew sat strapped to their seats, ready for combat, and the entire craft was tensely quiet as a single icon slid southward across the map of Ukraine, then came to rest.
“We’ve touched down,” Nox reported from Pathfinder-6’s Cutlass transport. “No indication we’ve been spotted. Proceeding to target.”
Icons representing eleven special operators, eight Wolverine light ground-support drones, eight Raptor light air-support drones, two Condor sniper drones, and one STAND combat frame disembarked from the Cutlass and advanced south through the forest.
“Director, we have a possible scope echo from near the residence. Could be the TTV.”
“Let’s see it.”
A window opened in Jonas’s virtual vision, and he zoomed in on the cloudbanks over Kiev. The replay began and, for a brief moment, a section beneath the billowing clouds flashed with higher than normal thermal activity. It could have been that their analytic programs were trying too hard to find abnormalities in something as naturally irregular as the weather.
Or it might be from a large vessel with advanced stealth systems hiding in the clouds.
“Move us in closer,” Jonas ordered, “but keep it quiet. Weapons, program a missile barrage for maximum area of effect. We’re going to flush them out of that cloud.”
Fusion thrusters powered up, and two chronoports slid forward over the rippling water.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Ukraine
1958 CE
“Ouch!” Elzbietá winced as she watched the meeting through Raibert’s eyes. “Was that really such a good idea?”
“It was certainly direct,” Philo observed with a worried grimace. “As far as it being direct in a good way?” He shrugged.
“I take it you and Raibert never tried this approach.”
“Uh-uh.” The avatar shook his head.
“Well, good luck, Ben. You’re going to need it.”
She peered through Raibert’s senses again to find Klaus-Wilhelm having none of this nonsense. At first she thought he’d dismiss the two out of hand, but he didn’t, and instead he and Benjamin began a long, drawn out duel of claims and questions, arguments and stories.
Klaus-Wilhelm’s made it abundantly clear that everything Benjamin said was ludicrous, but the two were still talking, still probing at each other. Benjamin knew far too much about his grandfather and the von Schröder family for Klaus-Wilhelm to not at least suspect something was going on, even if he didn’t know what. He was listening, paying rapt attention to everything Benjamin said. He clearly didn’t believe it. Not yet at least, and certainly not in total, but perhaps he already saw a glimmer of truth hidden in Benjamin’s fantastical story.
Was Ben’s brutally blunt approach actually working? Had he read his grandfather correctly after all? If Klaus-Wilhelm was a man as steeped in honor and duty as Benjamin said he was, then perhaps giving him the complete and unrestrained truth was the best way to earn his trust.
No matter how difficult delivering that truth might prove initially.
“You’ve got this, Ben,” she whispered.
“Hmm?” Philo murmured.
“What’s up?”
“Not sure.” He opened a map of the Dnieper River before it narrowed and flowed through Kiev. “Take a look at this.”
Elzbietá closed the virtual feed from the residence and put her hands on the command table railing. A string of intermittent signals traced a ragged path south down the middle of the Dnieper.
“Chronoport?” she asked in a hushed tone.
“Could be.”
“Do we have a remote nearby?”
“I’ve got one stationed in Kiev moving that way now.” He highlighted a pip on the map. “It should cross the path of whatever’s out there in two minutes.”
“I should get ready.”
“Good idea.”
Elzbietá hurried over to the open compensation bunk and stepped in. The glass front closed and the interior flooded with milky fluid. She interfaced her wetware with the fluidized microbot swarm, closed her eyes, and opened the cockpit abstraction. Her wetware took over her real body’s functions before she had to deal with the unpleasantness of breathing down that goop, and the abstraction unfolded around her.
She stood on an invisible floor next to the side-by-side cockpit she and Philo had designed. A panoramic view surrounded her with low, gray clouds that parted to provide brief glimpses of snow-kissed evergreen forests and sparse buildings on the outskirts of Kiev.
She jumped into her seat, and Philo materialized to her left. Virtual displays activated, and she reached for the joystick and omnidirectional throttle.
“Positive sighting,” Philo reported. “Two chronoports moving south over the Dnieper, heading in our general direction.”
Two large icons appeared on her displays.
“Damn,” she breathed and opened an audio link. “Hey, Raibert. We’ve got a problem.”
“Why wouldn’t we?” he sent without vocalizing. “What is it now?”
“Two chronoports moving south along the river.”
“Well that’s just fantastic. Can you deal with them?”
“Leave it to us. We’ll take them out.”
Elzbietá closed the channel and eased the TTV around until its nose pointed north.
“They’re coming in low and slow,” Philo reported. “Looks like they’re trying to make a stealthy approach.”
“For all the good that’ll do them.” Elzbietá switched the throttle to its lowest sensitivity setting and inched it to the side. A trickle of power energized the graviton thrusters, and the TTV maneuvered sideways out of the clouds. She spawned a line on the map that passed through both the TTV and the chronoports, then checked to make sure the residence wasn’t anywhere near the line of fire.
“Mass driver charged and ready,” Philo reported.
“Boy, are they in for a surprise.” Elzbietá bit her lower lip and flexed her fingers over the controls. She checked her position relative to the governor’s office. “Hey, Raibert?”
“Yeah?”
“Tell Klaus-Wilhelm to look out the window. We’re about to put on quite a show.”
“Setting self-replicators to fourteen generations,” Philo said. “That should be just enough to liquefy an entire chronoport.”
“How’s your field of fire look?”
“Give me a little more altitude.”
Elzbietá raised the omni-throttle, and the TTV levitated underneath the cloud cover.
“There. That’s good.” Philo reached for his controls, then glanced at her. “You know, we never covered this.”
“Covered what?”
“Do you give the order to fire or do I just do it?”
“We’re partners, Philo. You’re in control of the weapons, which means the honor is all yours.”
“All right!” He grinned inhumanly. “Adjusting precision gimbals. Opening hole in the shroud. And…fire!”
The one-ton projectile blasted out of the mass driver with a boom that shook snow from trees and rattled every window pane within miles. It streaked through the air like a lambent line of fire and pierced a long, diagonal groove into the heart of the chronoport.
Variskin flickered and failed, and the payload detonated, releasing a deadly spray of weaponized microbots even as the head of the projectile punched out the other side, and water geysered up from the river.
The chronoport listed. A wing dipped down into the river, and water sprayed up behind it. One of the fusion thrusters sputtered, and the time machine spun on its vertical axis, slid across the water almost sideways, then crashed into the river bank in a fountain of soil, rocks, and twisted malmetal.
“Hell yeah!” Elzbietá cheered.
; “Second shot loaded. Capacitors charging.”
The unharmed chronoport banked hard, and its dual fusion thrusters lit under full power.
“Looks like someone doesn’t like the odds anymore,” Elzbietá noted.
“I’m detecting survivors making their way out of the crash.”
“Not for long.” She retracted the shroud, switched her throttle to the highest setting, and shoved it forward. Gravitons surged through the TTV’s thrusters and it rocketed forward. “Strafe the crash site. We don’t want anything getting close to the residence.”
“Got it.” Philo activated their trio of 45mm Gatling guns. The weapon pods moved dynamically across the prog-steel armor, clustered at the bottom of the craft, and snapped open.
*
Jonas Shigeki shoved a warped panel aside with a shout of pain and staggered out from under the wreckage. Blood drained from a wide gash across his forehead, and he limped through the gutted, roofless remains of the bridge and over mangled pieces of his crew.
He had no idea what just happened. A part of him knew he should have been horrified by the contorted bodies, parts of them still strapped into their seats, but there was no room for terror in his mind. Only stunned disbelief.
The attack had come with precious little warning. First a shout from the realspace navigator of a sudden scope echo near the clouds. And then the world became noise and light and a ship careening out of control.
A biting wind blew across his skin, and he rested a hand against the shattered front of the bridge. He leaned forward to catch his breath and lowered his head.
Someone called out from behind him, and he turned to see two distant silhouettes freeing themselves from the wreckage.
Survivors. There were other survivors.
Good.
And then he realized his hand felt unusually warm despite the chill.
He glanced down and gasped. A plague of rust-tinged droplets flowed over his skin. The warmth they provided became an itch that escalated into fierce burning as his skin melted off. The fluid spread rapidly.
He tried to smear the liquid across a jutting piece of debris, but then cried out. All he did was strip chunks off his own flesh that then expanded in spidery radial patterns. The fluid stripped flesh from bone and flowed up his arm, consuming more of his body by the second.
Jonas screamed and stumbled back until he splashed into a puddle, and his legs warmed uncomfortably. He looked down to find his boots submerged in rusty syrup up to the ankles. The outer layer of his boots dissolved, and then the meat around his bones floated off into the puddle.
His ankles gave out, and he collapsed, knees and hands sinking into the puddle. The all-encompassing burning climbed his arms and legs and then poured into his bloodstream. Ravenous microbots flowed through his body and proceeded to eat him alive from the inside out.
He wailed in terror and agony.
And then he fell silent, just a frozen man-shaped parody of oozing flesh that sank slowly into the deathly puddle. Life had completely left him before the first high-explosive rounds blew what was left of his body to pink mist.
*
An alarm whooped, and fifty-four German and Ukrainian veterans from Klaus-Wilhelm’s security detail raced to their positions without question and braced for attack.
Klaus-Wilhelm’s gun had leapt into his hand the instant that solid beam of lightning streaked across the sky. The windows rattled, pens rolled off his desk, and picture frames fell outside his office. The beam had appeared to come from nowhere, but then a massive ship materialized in the sky where the attack had originated.
At first Klaus-Wilhelm thought it might be a dirigible because of its elongated shape and how it hovered in the air. He didn’t know how he’d missed it initially, and he didn’t get much time to ponder the question, because the craft darted across his view with a startling burst of speed and then vanished from sight.
Too much speed far too quickly for something that size.
“No aircraft can do that,” he breathed.
“Not yet,” Raibert corrected.
Klaus-Wilhelm spun around sharply, the gun still in his hand.
“Please don’t.” Raibert raised his hands. “I’ve honestly had it with people pointing guns at me.”
“Ella, how are you doing?” Benjamin asked, holding a finger to one ear. He nodded, then said, “Understood, don’t let it get away. We’ll take care of things down here.”
Did he have a whole radio set in his ear? That seemed impossible. But then, it wouldn’t be the first impossible thing he’d witnessed today.
“Mind explaining what I just saw?” he demanded.
“Of course, sir.” Benjamin lowered his hand. “Our time machine, the Kleio, detected two enemy time machines approaching from the north. It shot one of them down. The second one fled, and the Kleio is now in pursuit.”
“That massive thing”—Klaus-Wilhelm pointed out the window—“is your time machine?”
“Yeah.” Raibert grinned. “Isn’t she a beauty?”
“Kill the noise but keep everyone on guard,” Klaus-Wilhelm ordered.
Anton nodded, picked up the phone, and dialed.
“Alarm off,” he said, and the whooping stopped shortly afterward. “Yes, that’s right. Don’t send the stand-down order yet. And get me a radio in here—now!” He set the phone back on its receiver.
Klaus-Wilhelm nodded his approval, then turned back to his visitors with a grimace.
“You realize that even with that…thing of yours out there, you have to be insane, don’t you? You truly expect me to believe any of this?”
“Yes, sir,” Benjamin said. “I do.”
“You claim to be my grandson from the future.”
“Because it’s true. I’m Klaus Schröder’s firstborn.”
“And you claim this is real.” Klaus-Wilhelm held up the ring.
“It’s the same one your wife is wearing right now, only a few decades older.”
“Then how did you come to have it?”
“My father gave it to me so that I could propose to the woman of my dreams.”
“She say no?”
“She’s piloting the time machine.”
“Of course she is.” Klaus-Wilhelm said ironically. Then he stopped and nodded, remembering the inner strength of another woman who wore a ring just like the one in his hand. He glanced at the big man next to his supposed grandson. “So what’s your story?”
“I’m a historian from the thirtieth century who specializes in ancient Greek and Roman civilizations and who currently inhabits a synthetic body from an alternative version of the thirtieth century because my real body was recycled. Oh, I’m also the one who recruited your grandson to help me save the universe from total annihilation by correcting a knot in time centered on an assassination in 1940.”
“I see it was my mistake for asking,” Klaus-Wilhelm grumbled.
“I’m surprised you actually told him all that,” Benjamin flashed a crooked smile at Raibert.
“Well, I figured what the hell. You’re going the super-honest route, so why not go all in?”
“Enough!” Klaus-Wilhelm barked, and the two men immediately shut up. He glanced out the window again at where the impossibly large and fast aircraft had appeared out of thin air to fire a weapon he’d never seen before. Then he looked down at the perfect “forgery” in his palm, and finally turned to and studied the man claiming to be his grandson.
There was more to Benjamin’s assertion than just words. The man did bear a striking resemblance to his seventeen-year-old son, and Benjamin knew stories Klaus-Wilhelm had never told anyone. How could those be explained away?
How could any of it be explained away?
Klaus-Wilhelm stepped forward, stood directly in front of Benjamin, and stared into his eyes. The same gray penetrating eyes his son Klaus had. He saw no doubt or deception in them, only a cool certainty from the man that he would eventually get his point across.
Satisfie
d, Klaus-Wilhelm nodded slowly, then held out the ring.
“I assume she’ll want this back.” He proffered the ring, and Benjamin took it and put it back in his pocket.
“Thank you, sir.”
“So you need my help to save the universe?” he asked, taking a step back.
“That’s right.”
“Well, I’ll give you one thing.” He holstered his weapon. “You have the balls to be a Schröder.”
“Thank you, sir.” Benjamin smiled. “That means a lot coming from you. More than you may realize.”
“All right, then.” Klaus-Wilhelm crossed his arms as one of the security force jogged into the room and handed Silchenko a hand-held radio. “Why don’t you start at the beginning? And this time, I think I’ll stay quiet and let you finish.”
*
Yulia von Schröder turned the basket on its side and spilled colored wooden blocks across the rag carpet.
“But why doesn’t Daddy want to see us?” Veronika pouted from the couch as she clutched her favorite doll.
“Daddy does want to see you,” Yulia answered with practiced patience, going down on one knee to start separating the blocks. “But he has to work late tonight.”
“Again?”
Yulia glanced over her shoulder at the fair-haired, broad-shouldered man standing in the doorway behind her. Mikhail Lukovich Hrytosenki—onetime Staršiná Hrytosenki of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and presently Uncle Misha to the von Schröder children—looked back at her and she smiled faintly. Then she turned back to her daughter.
“Yes, again, I’m afraid, doroga.”
“Want Daddy!” Xristina half gurgled from her crib, then stuck a thumb in her mouth.
Yulia finished separating the blocks for her middle daughter, Diana, and stood. None of her daughters had paid much attention to the sweater she’d put on before leading the way to the safe room in the residence’s basement. Despite the cheerful rag rugs, comfortable couches, and indirect lighting, the armored, windowless room had more in common with a bunker than a nursery, and for a very good reason. Now she reached behind her, touching the hard, angular shape at the small of her back, concealed by the loose sweater, and smiled at her daughters.
