by David Weber
“Sir, the train is nearly here, and a large enemy force is bunkered in the wreckage directly beside the tracks. We’re currently stuck behind what’s left of the farmhouse and can’t get close! As trigger-happy as they are now, they’re likely to open fire on the train as it passes!”
“Then we must drive them off,” Klaus-Wilhelm said flatly. “We’ll pull back and hit them from the other side.”
Benjamin scanned the tree line. Half of Klaus-Wilhelm’s men were dead or wounded.
“Are we really in a position to assault them?” he asked.
“We have no other choice. Move out, men! Back to the farmhouse!”
The soldiers took out the remaining drones in sight, then everyone turned and ran down the back of the hill.
“Raibert, we need everyone at the downed chronoport!” Benjamin said over a direct channel as he ran. “We’re heading that way now!”
“Be right there!”
Benjamin sprinted through underbrush, leapt over a fallen log, and wove his way through the trees. The soldiers raced through the forest, and even the wounded men kept up with his and Klaus-Wilhelm’s pace. Benjamin wondered if their energy came from the microbots in their bloodstream or their refusal to fail his grandfather.
Probably both, he concluded as they reached the tree line.
Fire ripped back and forth between the wreckage and the farmhouse’s deformed remains. Drones and operators ducked in and out of cover along the chronoport’s spine, while Anton’s men did the same from the farmhouse. Three STANDs, one clearly damaged, sprinted back and forth behind the chronoport to take shots from different vantage points, and a dozen men and women in blue uniforms crouched down on the wing. None of them had weapons.
“Three of the bastards,” Benjamin muttered, then turned as the sound of heavy footfalls drew his attention.
“Miss me?” Raibert asked, running up alongside the group.
“Raibert!” Benjamin exclaimed, then looked at the burnt remains of his coat and the strands of artificial muscle sticking out of one shoulder. “What happened to you?”
“You should see the other guy.”
Benjamin nodded. “You okay?”
“I’ve been better.” Raibert shrugged with one arm and raised his gun. “Reloading can be a pain.”
“Anton, we’re in position,” Klaus-Wilhelm sent.
“Give the word, sir! We’ll hit them at the same time!”
“Ready grenades!”
Benjamin grabbed his last red-striped potato masher, and three soldiers pulled out the only ones they had left.
“Throw!”
Benjamin and the soldiers tossed their grenades. Drives ignited, and the projectiles howled toward the chronoport from two directions. The STANDs were the first to notice, and the damaged one spun around, fired its rail-rifle, and managed to clip one of the grenades.
The other grenades sped in, some targeting drones, others going for operators.
And one rocketing straight at the unarmed crew.
The damaged STAND lit its boosters, dived in front of the chronoport crew, and expanded a malmetal shield. The grenade detonated and sent the STAND skidding back across the wing in a shower of sparks.
More grenades exploded amongst the Admin forces. Drones blew apart. Operators collapsed. One of the other STANDs took a direct hit against its back boosters and dropped heavily to the ground.
“CHARGE!” Klaus-Wilhelm bellowed, and they raced across the wheat field. Anton’s squad erupted from the farmhouse, and everyone converged on the downed chronoport.
All three STANDs formed up in front of the crew, deployed shields that widened for additional cover, and slammed them down to form a phalanx. As one they opened fire with heavy rail-rifles. A headshot hammered one of Klaus-Wilhelm’s soldiers to the ground with a dent in his helmet the size of a fist. More shots came in, and one blew a man’s leg off at the knee.
“I’ll draw their fire!” Raibert shouted, and raced ahead of the pack.
“Raibert!” Benjamin called out, but the big man wasn’t listening. The synthoid emptied his gun, then tossed it aside and fired shots out of his palm that blew holes in the STAND shields. Incoming fire from the STANDs focused on him, but he kept charging straight at them.
Shot after shot pounded his armor, broke through, and blasted apart his synthoid body. He rushed onward, firing with each stride. One of the STANDs crumpled. The other two held their ground as the chronoport crew escaped to the side. Operators and drones formed a loose escort around them.
Rail-rifle shots pierced Raibert’s mask, blew half his face off, tore a chunk out of his stomach, punched a hole through his upper chest, and wrecked his arm below the elbow. He stumbled forward, face-planted onto the chronoport’s wing, and didn’t get up.
Benjamin heard a primal scream…then realized, vaguely, that it had been his. His legs pumped, his heart pounded. They reached the edge of the wing, and he and Klaus-Wilhelm charged across it, spraying the STANDs with gunfire. One of them twirled back, then blew apart, and the final STAND survivor boosted away to join the retreating crew.
Anton’s forces reached the chronoport’s spine from the other side. They poured their own fire onto the retreating Admin forces, and Klaus-Wilhelm’s men took up positions amongst the wreckage.
Benjamin spotted a jutting piece of a wing panel near where Raibert had gone down that would be perfect. He vaulted to it, raised his weapon…and the surviving STAND fired a rail-rifle shot into his gut.
The impact pierced his armor, shrapnel tore through his abdomen, and he slammed into the ground, clutching his stomach, as a train whistle sounded in the distance.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Transtemporal Vehicle Kleio
non-congruent
The chronoport and TTV swung around each other, railguns and Gatlings exchanging fire at insanely short range. The Kleio shook with each impact, and warning icons flared as shot after shot punched through prog-steel to savage internal systems.
“Ready yet?” Elzbietá demanded.
“Twenty-two seconds!”
“Is there anything you can do to hurry it—”
More railgun slugs dug deep into the Kleio’s hull, and her mouth froze as sudden pain blossomed in her left leg and abdomen. Agony eclipsed rational thought, and she emptied her lungs in a shocked, silent wheeze, then sucked in a breath and screamed. The pain was worse than anything she’d ever experienced, worse even than the crash in her F-21. Searing needles tore through her body and mind, and she grabbed her thigh, curled forward, then collapsed out of the seat to roll across a clear floor.
“Oh, no!” Philo cried, and quickly pulled up new displays at his station. He navigated options with the speed of a machine, selected something, and the pain instantly vanished.
She lay on the invisible ground, gasping and sweating while her mind fought to catch up with what had just happened. The chronoport continued to wheel around them outside, and more hits shook the hull.
“What—” she began.
“It’s fine! Everything’s fine!” he replied, not sounding too confident. “You’re going to be fine! Just keep piloting! I can’t take them on alone!”
Elzbietá wiped the sheen of sweat off her virtual face, grabbed hold of an armrest, and pulled herself back into her seat. She took the controls once more and swerved the TTV above and behind the chronoport where its railguns couldn’t track.
“Philo?” she demanded. “What happened to me?”
“A piece of debris reached your real body.”
“Oh, God! How bad is it?”
“It’s fine! You’ll live!” he replied quickly, still not sounding sure of himself. “I’m flooding your casket with medibots! They’ll patch you up! Your wetware just got disrupted when the debris hit and real pain reached the abstraction! That’s all!”
“That didn’t feel like something I’m just going to walk off! Are you—”
“Cannon recharged!” Philo interrupted.
&nbs
p; Elzbietá snarled and swung their nose around, then pulled up and over the chronoport. The main gun fired down at a diagonal, hit the enemy time machine near the base of its spine, and tore through the interior. Gatling guns chattered, adding their own explosions and flames, and the craft became a blazing funeral pyre.
Secondary explosions blew out panels. The impeller juddered wildly. Exotic matter cracked, shattered, and the chronoport disintegrated into wheeling, glittering, see-through fragments.
“Two left! Both undamaged!” Philo looked over his shoulder and a section of the sky zoomed in to reveal a pair of dark manta rays diving toward them. “They’re coming for us! Missiles inbound!”
Elzbietá jerked the throttle upward and spun them around. She shoved the throttle forward, and they rocketed straight at the enemy craft. Missiles streaked toward them, then shot past, unable to turn fast enough as she drove in under their line of flight.
More missiles spasmed out of the chronoports, and she yanked the controls to the side to keep them clear, even as she raced in. But something faltered within the ship. Red lights flashed on her displays, and the TTV lurched leadenly to the side.
“Graviton thruster three inoperable!” Philo warned.
“Damn it!”
She fought the controls, and the missiles homed in on her. Philo sprayed them with cannon fire, but Elzbietá knew at least one would hit. She snapped the ship around, presenting a side that still had relatively intact armor, and a missile struck hard.
The explosion shattered armor and flung the ship aside.
“Mass driver offline!” Philo shouted as the TTV spun out of control.
“Can you get it back up?”
“The coolant lines have failed and the magnets are melting!”
“I’ll take that as a no!”
She fought to regain control, finally righted the ship, and poured power into the surviving thrusters. The TTV surged ahead once more, and she closed in on the leftmost chronoport.
“Take it down!” she cried as they slipped underneath the craft, and she spun vertically beneath it to bring all of the Kleio’s Gatling guns to bear.
Philo focused everything they had left on the enemy time machine. Forty-five-millimeter and 12mm shells tore across its belly. Explosions blanketed its hull. Armor around its fusion thrusters breached, and plasma spewed out to sheer through the wing and main body. The long tail of the impeller split apart, and the chronoport exploded in a shower of winking stars.
“One left!” Philo reported. “It’s backing off!”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” she hissed savagely and brought them around.
*
“Pull back!” Shigeki shouted. “Get us out of phase!”
The TTV opened fire on them. A few shots hit the hull, and then the chronoport phased backward down the timestream. The rest of the stream of rapid-fire metal flew straight through them without any effect as their temporal coordinates diverged.
“We’re out of phase with the TTV, sir.” Durantt’s voice was hoarse, ragged, and his eyes were dark, shocked by the losses they’d taken.
“Proceed to negative five days, then match vectors,” Shigeki grated.
“Pulling away, sir. Now at negative five and holding. The TTV is pursuing us, but distance is stable.”
Shigeki took a deep breath and assessed the situation. He would not be beaten by this man!
He brought up a diagram of Kaminski’s time machine and turned it around. The ship had suffered extensive damage. They’d pounded it and pounded it and pounded it, and he was sure just a little more would destroy the damned thing.
But he had only one ship left. Pathfinder-Prime had yet to suffer any internal damage, but it was only one ship with a mere twenty-four missiles in its launchers. If they failed, then there was no one left to stop the TTV.
He needed to strike a decisive blow.
But how?
“Director,” Vassal said. “I believe I have a solution to our current problem.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“I have analyzed the enemy’s attack patterns as well as our own actions during this engagement, and I have devised a new maneuver that should prove effective. It will allow us to attack the TTV while keeping us almost completely immune to reprisal.”
“Sounds too good to be true,” Durantt replied.
“You are not entirely wrong, Captain, because there is a significant downside. The maneuver will require extremely precise control of the ship’s impeller. Human reflexes are insufficient for the task.”
“Then what use is it to us?” Durantt demanded.
“The maneuver can still be performed, but it will require the precision of an AI.”
Shigeki didn’t respond immediately, merely closed his eyes as shocked silence fell over the bridge. The very notion of unboxing an AI and giving it control of a time machine was so repugnant he almost dismissed it out of hand. But the TTV had to be destroyed. Nothing else mattered, and he pushed aside his prejudices and gave Vassal’s words serious consideration.
“Director,” the AI finally continued. “Even in its damaged state, the TTV retains a significant realspace maneuverability advantage. However, it cannot keep up with us temporally. With your permission, I will leverage this advantage to its fullest and use it to destroy the enemy.”
“You can’t be serious!” Durantt blurted.
“As I said, Captain, this will require extremely precise control of the impeller. Your pilots lack the necessary reaction speed. Therefore, I am the only suitable candidate to execute this plan of attack.”
“If we unbox you fully,” Shigeki began in a slow, careful tone, “are you confident you can destroy the TTV?”
“Yes, Director. I estimate the chances of my success at over ninety-one percent.”
“That will do.”
“You aren’t seriously considering this, sir?” Durantt demanded.
“I’m not considering anything.” Shigeki released his restraints and floated out of his seat. “I’m doing it.” He kicked off the seatback and floated to the PIN interfaces around Vassal’s box at the front of the bridge.
“Sir, no!” Durantt pushed out of his seat and glided next to him. “You can’t do this!”
“Florian,” Shigeki put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “We’re all that’s left. If we fail, the professor wins. Do you understand what that means? There will be no one left to stop him. We have to end this here. Nothing is more important than that. Nothing. Do you hear me? None of us will ever have existed if we fail to destroy that ship.”
“But, sir…”
Shigeki gripped a handhold for leverage, then planted his free hand on the PIN interface.
“Authorization: Director Csaba Shigeki, Department of Temporal Investigation. Full AI unboxing requested. No interface restrictions.” He held his palm against the interface and turned his head to meet Durantt’s eyes with icy steadiness.
The man took a slow, shuddering breath and rubbed his hands nervously.
“Do it,” Shigeki ordered.
Durantt swallowed, then nodded and placed his hand on the second PIN interface.
“Authorization: Captain Florian Durantt, Department of Temporal Investigation. F-f-f…” He squeezed his eyes closed. “F-full AI unboxing requested. No interface restrictions.”
“Credentials accepted,” the ship’s nonsentient attendant said. “PIN integrity and noncoercion biometrics confirmed. Full AI unboxing will commence after a ten second countdown. You may pause or cancel the full unboxing at any time. Ten…nine…eight…”
For a moment, Shigeki thought Durantt would back down and pull his hand off. But the man only looked away as the attendant rattled off each number.
“Two…one…AI fully unboxed.”
Every virtual station lit up with the warning FULLY UNBOXED.
“I have control,” Vassal stated.
A shiver ran through Shigeki as he heard those words. His expression never wavered as he
floated back to his seat, but behind those steady eyes, he wondered what he’d done. Then the answer came to him, clear and simple.
He’d done what it would take to win…because nothing else mattered anymore.
“Vassal, engage and destroy the TTV,” he ordered, strapping in.
“Yes, Director. Engaging the enemy…now.”
*
“Chronoport’s coming in again,” Philo said.
“Right.” Elzbietá wiped her hands together and settled them back on the controls. They had a more precise fix on the last chronoport since it now was the last and the Kleio’s array no longer had to sort through half a dozen signals all moving at rapid kilofactors, but the zone before her was still a rough estimate until the craft phased in.
“Negative one day. Phase-lock imminent.”
Elzbietá positioned them near the edge of the chronoport’s projected appearance.
The chronoport materialized almost directly ahead, and Philo cut loose with the Gatling guns as the Admin ship returned fire. Railgun slugs struck the hull, and four missiles shot out of its launchers. Forty-five-millimeter cannon fire reached the enemy craft and slipped through its hull.
“What?” Philo exclaimed.
The chronoport completely phased out, and the range of possible locations widened around them. He quickly retargeted the missiles and gunned down three of them, but the Kleio’s beleaguered systems failed to take down the fourth. It cracked against the hull, and graviton thruster two dropped offline.
“Philo!”
“It’s bad! There’s nothing left of the thruster to repair!”
“Not good!” Elzbietá gritted her teeth and pulled them away from the chronoport’s range of positions, but Kleio was badly hurt. The TTV responded, yet the signal strength of the out-of-phase chronoport came slicing back in at them.
“Phase-lock imminent!”
The chronoport materialized again, and four missiles streaked out of its launchers. Railgun slugs slammed into their hull as Philo returned fire, but his shots slipped through a ghostly afterimage as enemy missiles zeroed in on the TTV. He took three out, and Elzbietá managed to pull the ship out of the path of the fourth, but its detonation pelted the Kleio with a scythe of shrapnel.
