by David Weber
Icons lit up around the crash. Most of the crew had survived.
“Secondary priority to the ground teams,” Shigeki said. “Secure Pathfinder-7’s crash site.”
Missiles homed in on the TTV as it shot upward, and weapon blisters snapped open on its flanks. Massive Gatling guns trained out, streams of fire wrecked several missiles, and the TTV reversed course toward his forces.
It darted through the gap it had blasted in the missile swarm and surged toward the Cutlasses, weapons thundering, and three transports burst into flames. The damaged craft plunged, trailing black smoke, gouging ragged lines through the forest, and the other Cutlasses quickly went to ground. Troops and drones rushed out and dispersed, frantically seeking cover as the TTV’s weapons blazed.
“Again!” Durantt ordered, and more missiles spat from chronoport launchers.
The TTV arced up and away, Gatling guns laying down continuous fire. The missiles had almost reached it when it vanished.
“TTV phase-out confirmed! Now moving downstream!”
“After it!” Shigeki ordered.
*
The chronoport’s impeller burst apart, and the laws of physics lost their grip on reality. Scattered pieces of the farmhouse phased through each other to join in unnatural amalgamations. Its foundation sank into the earth. An SS trooper melted into a door and stuck there. Another fell onto his back, then merged into the ground until blades of grass stuck out of his chest. Two more troopers ran into each other and became a hideous, writhing ball of flesh in a bulky SS uniform with eight limbs and two heads.
The chronoport hit with a mighty thud and the ground shock rippled through the earth with enough force to hurl Benjamin flat on his ass. The massive craft slid across the wheat field, chewing a path through the earth.
Screams erupted from the ruined farmhouse. The SS trooper merged with the ground let out a shriek that puffed dirt into the air. Blood trickled out around each blade of grass piercing his body. The one fused with the door flailed his hands and feet and opened his mouth in soundless terror. The creature formed from two SS troopers vomited blood and chunks of organs out of both mouths, then collapsed in a wet heap.
“Mein Gott,” Klaus-Wilhelm muttered and made the sign of the cross.
“Raibert?” Benjamin asked softly, horrified by what he was seeing.
“Yeah?”
“Are we the ones who caused the Knot? Are we creating it right now?”
“Don’t even think about it.” He scuttled over to Klaus-Wilhelm in a crouching run. “Sir, Admin troops are landing north of us on the far side of the woods!”
“Movement on the other side of the tracks!” Anton reported. “There are at least half a dozen vehicles driving across the field, headed for the bridge.”
“The assassins see the confusion and are making their move,” Klaus-Wilhelm said. “Anton, take your squad south over the tracks and engage them. Do not let them reach the bridge!”
“Sir!”
“The rest of you with me!” Klaus-Wilhelm moved out, and Benjamin, Raibert, and twelve of his men followed him north, back through the forest.
“Do you have any idea what you’re charging into?” Raibert asked.
“That train has to get through,” Klaus-Wilhelm answered. “Nothing else matters, and I’m not about to fight those things with it in sight.”
They advanced through the woods in a skirmish line, fifteen against an unknown horde, then came to a rise with old growth trees and climbed to its crest.
“Here,” Klaus-Wilhelm said quietly, and his men took up positions just behind the crestline, using it for cover.
“Drones coming in,” Raibert whispered, his back against a moss-covered trunk. “Both aerial and on the surface. Be ready.”
“We’ll take them out from here,” Klaus-Wilhelm said.
Benjamin cocked his MP40 and waited. Gunfire sounded off in the distance, and he wondered if Anton’s squad had made contact with the assassins.
“Looks like they’re moving aggressively through the forest,” Raibert commented. Icons lit up in Benjamin’s lenses to denote Raptor and Wolverine attack drones. “They either don’t see us, which is doubtful, or they see us and take us for indigenes.”
Benjamin allowed himself a thin smile and took aim.
A formation of eight aerial drones buzzed over the treetops, a gun slung under each main body. Variskin made them blend into the blue sky, but his mask highlighted each drone with a bright red outline. They swept forward, maintaining speed and formation, and their guns took aim at the soldiers on the hill.
“Fire!” Klaus-Wilhelm shouted.
His entire force opened up at once and thirtieth-century bullets fired from twentieth-century submachine guns devastated the enemy formation. Two of the drones simply fireballed out of existence. Others staggered, then spiraled out of the air, shedding bits and pieces before they smashed into the ground. Three of their fellows spun in place, concentrating their fire on one of Klaus-Wilhelm’s men, and he fell back onto a bed of dead leaves. Benjamin and Raibert swung their submachine guns and a fire hose of bullets blotted them from the heavens.
The downed man shook his head, thumped the side of his helmet, and came back to his knees.
Another Raptor dipped beneath the crown of a massive beech tree, firing in savage bursts, blasting splinters off the trunk Benjamin crouched behind. He squeezed the trigger, and the drone shattered into a shower of scorched malmetal.
More bullets whizzed by his head, and one clipped his shoulder with enough force to knock his aim aside. He winced from the sting, clenched his teeth, recovered and fired, blasting the drone to bits. Another swooped down to take its place, and Benjamin swung his weapon toward it and squeezed the trigger. Two shots blasted from his muzzle…and then the bolt locked back on an empty magazine.
“Reloading!” he shouted, ducking behind the tree with his limbs squeezed in tight.
Splinters exploded off the tree like sawdust, and Raibert fired a burst through the cloud. The drone swerved drunkenly and clacked against a tree trunk hard enough to jam its propeller blades deep into the wood. Its gun spun in circles underneath as Benjamin shoved another magazine into his weapon and released the bolt. It slammed forward, chambered a round as the drone’s spinning gun slowed. The immobilized Raptor brought its own weapon back under control, swinging it up to take aim.
He finished it off with a single shot.
“Wolverines!” Raibert shouted. “Watch the ground, too!”
Quadpedal drones galloped up the hill, the guns in their faces firing as more splinters flew from the trees. Benjamin fired down the slope and blew the legs out from under the leader. Its body rolled back down the hill, but two more leapt over it and bounded up the incline.
A Wolverine reached the top and lunged, tackling one of Klaus-Wilhelm’s men. The two fell back, and the weight of the drone slammed the air from the man’s lungs when they hit the ground. Klaus-Wilhelm fired a burst into the drone’s flank, then kicked the robot aside. He offered a hand, yanked, and the soldier came unsteadily back upright.
Another Wolverine raced over the hill and jumped Raibert. He grabbed it by the head, smashed it against a trunk—then again and again, until it stopped squirming. He fired two shots into its belly and hurled it back down the hill. It landed at the bottom and didn’t get up.
A loud bang pierced the chaos, and one of Klaus-Wilhelm’s men went down.
“Sniper!” the man shouted, clutching his side. When he pulled his hand away, the glove was covered in blood.
“Got it!” Raibert grabbed a red-striped potato masher off his belt and flung it overhand. The guided grenade lit its solid propellant booster and rocketed into the air. It flew upward at a steep diagonal and collided with a Condor sniper drone. The drone vanished in a flare of light, and pieces of it rained down through the lush canopy.
“Is it time to use that big gun of yours?” Benjamin shouted.
“Not nearly!” Raibert shouted back
, raising his MP40 again.
More drones poured in, and bullets sparked against their malmetal carapaces. Benjamin raked his fire across a trio of Wolverines, and his shots gouged gaping holes through their backs.
“At least we’ve got their attention!” Raibert shouted.
“You think?” Benjamin replied, reloading, then stiffened.
“There’s a STAND moving our—!”
Raibert’s warning was cut off as a half-visible skeleton boosted into the woods at high speed. A red outline locked onto it in Benjamin’s mask, and he swung his weapon toward it.
“STAND!” Raibert opened fire, but the machine dodged with quick burps of thrust. More gunfire blew the bark off trees and blasted divots in the dirt, but the STAND avoided every shot. It darted up the side of the hill and then skated at them from the side.
Benjamin tracked it with his weapon and squeezed the trigger. A quick string of detonations sent the STAND tumbling back, but it righted itself and dashed away before he could line up another shot. An enemy grenade zipped and curved through the woods, hit Benjamin’s chest like a shotput, and exploded. The blast flung him through the air, his side slammed against a tree, and he collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath as stars danced across his vision.
He shook his head and struggled back upright. Gunfire chattered all around him, and more explosions wracked the line of men, stunning them as the STAND rushed them once more. But Raibert stood his ground, motionless as a statue, despite the flickers of flames at his feet and on the hem of his coat, and emptied a full magazine into the charging STAND.
The STAND’s right arm blew off and an ugly gash yawned in its armor. The skeletal machine expanded part of its malmetal into a rectangular shield and covered the wound as it boosted around their position.
Benjamin grabbed a red-striped grenade and hurled it at the machine. It rocketed in, and the STAND swerved away, but the grenade arced after it and exploded against its remaining arm in a bright flash. The STAND tumbled end over end and smashed into a tree with enough force to uproot it. The machine crashed into the ground and struggled to its feet.
Klaus-Wilhelm hit it with another grenade that sent pieces of it flying through the canopy.
“Operators and drones coming after us!” Raibert reported. “And they’ve got at least two STANDs with them!”
“Oh, wonderful!” Benjamin replied.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Transtemporal Vehicle Kleio
non-congruent
“Seven chronoports at negative six days and closing,” Philo reported. “Main gun recharged, and I’m rearming the self-replicators. No need to worry about our shots polluting the 1940s anymore.”
“Ready.” Elzbietá spun the TTV around so that it was flying backward. Whole days flashed by at roughly one second intervals. The sun swooped by overhead, stars wheeled past, and then the sun returned once more. She dimmed the visuals around her so she could focus on both the temporal and physical positions of the chronoports trying to catch up. Seven murky nebulas wavered in the panoramic view, representing each chronoport’s estimated physical location as it approached the TTV’s temporal location.
“Chronoports at negative one day. Phase-lock imminent.”
The temporal distance dropped to zero, and the chronoports materialized before her. Elzbietá aimed the bow at the nearest target, and Philo fired the main gun. The chronoports all banked in different directions, perhaps anticipating the attack, and the shot clipped the wing of their intended target.
“Minor damage to one chronoport,” Philo reported. “Some microbot splash. They’ll eat through its hull, but it’s hard to tell how long they’ll take.”
“Too long,” Elzbietá grunted.
Railgun slugs gonged at the Kleio’s armor, and yellow indicators flashed in one of her displays. She pulled the ship to the side, then up, then back down as the main gun recharged. The chronoports continued a relentless fusillade, and each small, individual hit began to add up. Friendly microbot swarms flowed underneath and over the TTV’s hull to repair the damage, but even some of those were blasted off with each hit, weakening the Kleio’s ability to self-repair in the short term.
Missiles sprinkled out of the chronoports in a rain of death. Sharpened cones ignited their drives and dashed forward. Elzbietá pulled the TTV back, and Philo split open the gun pods. Streams of high-velocity rounds blazed out of them, and a few of the missiles disappeared.
The survivors swarmed in, powering forward at twenty gees, four times the TTV’s maximum acceleration.
“The main gun?” she asked urgently.
“Twenty more seconds.”
“Not enough!” She rolled her thumb over a knob on her omnidirectional throttle. The TTV’s temporal direction flipped, and the cycle of day and night reversed. The missiles kept coming in, but they slipped out of phase and flew through the TTV without damaging it.
They fled backward through time, and the chronoports overshot them.
“Enemy at plus five days,” Philo stated. “Plus ten. Plus twelve…distance stabilizing. Chronoports now reversing course. Temporal distance dropping. Plus eleven. Plus ten. Contact in thirty seconds, absolute.”
“They’re not letting up this time.”
“From what Raibert and I saw earlier, that’s almost their entire remaining force. Shigeki means to finish this.”
“Well, right back at him.”
“Main gun ready. They’re coming in more aggressively this time.”
“Yeah, I see that.” Seven chronometric signals closed in until the glowing clouds representing their estimated locations overlapped the TTV. Her own temporal speed reduced the effectiveness of the Kleio’s array. She could probably pinpoint the chronoports if she stopped, but if she stopped, she died.
“Enemy at plus one day. Phase-lock imminent.”
“Here they come again.” She gripped the controls, and Philo dropped his helmet’s visor with a loud click.
The chronoports formed a loose ring around them as they phased in, but the formation wasn’t perfect. Clearly they couldn’t pinpoint a target physically until they phased in, either, because the TTV was off center in the circle.
And dangerously close to one of the chronoports.
The entire formation cut loose with a swarm of missiles, and the collision warning warbled.
“Damn!” she pulled up on the throttle, and the TTV shot straight into the air.
One of the Admin missiles exploded against their hull almost instantly. Armor breached and the ship convulsed. Elzbietá fought the controls as microbot swarms rerouted from all nonessential tasks to close the tear in their armor. She brought the ship under control and swung the nose to face down, even as they accelerated upward.
“Philo!”
“I’ve got it!”
The main cannon discharged with a whump she heard in the abstraction, and the one-ton projectile punched clean through the top of the chronoport and broke it in half. A secondary explosion flared, and the two halves tumbled apart.
Another chronoport banked toward them, fusion thrusters blazing. Railguns fired, plinking away at their hull as it tried to maneuver around to their weakened flank.
The TTV’s gun pods snapped open and the nearest missiles shattered into flaming streamers.
“That chronoport!” Elzbietá shouted, highlighting the closest threat with a mental command. “Focus it down!”
“Got it!”
Elzbietá reversed thrust and sent the TTV screaming down. The chronoport swooped up at them, and Philo brought their Gatling guns to bear. The two ships crossed, and over six hundred high-explosive armor-piercing rounds smashed into the enemy ship in four short, brutal seconds.
Malmetal bent, then tore open, and cannon fire savaged the interior. The two craft whisked apart as smoke and flame poured from the chronoport’s hull.
“Take that!” Elzbietá declared viciously.
The collision warning sounded again as more missiles closed in a
round them, and she quickly switched the TTV’s temporal vector. One of the missiles exploded prematurely while they were still in phase, and its shock wave buffeted them. The rest glided through without any effect.
*
Kloss screamed and tried to clutch his bleeding face through his pressure suit’s bubble helmet. His seat broke off from the floor. It flew backward, and the chronoport’s acceleration slammed him brutally against the rear of the bridge. Air exploded from his lungs, but the heavily padded seatback absorbed most of the shock.
The ship was still non-congruent, still not affected by Earth’s gravity, and that meant the only acceleration came from the fusion thrusters.
He sucked in a breath and opened his eyes. Or tried to. Pain shot through every muscle in his face, but he saw nothing. He patted the helmet, searching frantically, and found a jagged piece of metal imbedded near his temple. He fumbled around with shaky fingers and found a tip jutting out on the other side. He tried to turn his head within the helmet, but the spike pinned him through the bridge of his nose.
And through both eyes.
He was blind.
“Help!” he cried.
No one responded.
“Help me! Anybody! I can’t see!”
Was he the only one left alive? The only sound he heard was the hiss of air leaking from his breached helmet. The TTV’s attack must have blown the compartment open, and with the ship still non-congruent, there was no air in phase with them beyond the hull. He was in a vacuum.
How much time did he have left before asphyxiation killed him?
Kloss gritted his teeth.
No, he thought savagely. No, I am not going to die here! I refuse!
He reached out through his PIN and accessed the ship’s infostructure. His PIN couldn’t contact anyone else, either because of damage to the ship or because everyone else really was dead. He had no way of knowing which, but he suspected he was, at the very least, the only person left alive on the bridge, and that meant no one was at the helm.
He tried to access the helm controls, but they required a closed-circuit connection at a physical terminal. He cycled through less frequently used options. The menu kicked him out a few times due to the spotty connection, but he eventually drilled down to a 3D map of the ship’s interior. He pulled up an abstraction of the ship and overlaid it based on his actual position.
