A Gulf in Time

by Chris Kennedy

  “We haven’t gotten in contact with them yet, and it’s unlikely we’ll have it in time. You may have to come up with an alternate plan, quick.”

  “I don’t—”

  “No time for complaints, Bradford; get it done.”

  “Aye, aye, sir! We’ll come up with something.”

  “Good; that’s what I wanted to hear,” Sheppard out.

  “How are you coming, Solomon?”

  “I am almost back to…100% functionality,” Solomon replied. “The caliph is in the same…conference room as he was…the last time we were here.”

  “Can you jack into their system again?”

  “Yes, sir. Stand by…and you’re on.” The front view screen flickered and then showed the caliph’s conference room. The people in attendance appeared to be the same. “Greetings, Caliph,” the CO said. “As you can see, we’re back, and we’d like to use the power beam of yours if we could. And unfortunately, we’re in some bit of a hurry.”

  “I see,” the caliph replied, “but we haven’t discussed a price for using it.”

  “What do you charge your own people for the use of the power coming through the beam?”

  “Considerably less than I will have to charge you, I’m afraid.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, there are a number of things that have to be considered. Interruption of service to my people, the actual charge for the power, less any subsidies my people get that you wouldn’t be entitled to—”

  “There won’t be any interruption of service,” Solomon said, breaking in. “Not for the short length of time we will need it. Their system is built to store energy in case it is needed for interruptions. They actually have reserve power for 2.7 standard Earth days in the event of a loss of beam.”

  Captain Sheppard raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like interruption of service isn’t an issue, especially since we only need a few seconds of the stream.” He switched to his comms. “Bradford? How long do we need their power stream?”

  “Two point seven oh three seconds, sir.”

  “Thanks. How’s it coming?”

  “We’ve figured out how to do it, sir, and we ought to be able to complete everything we need to in time. One of the engineers—”

  “No time to talk,” the CO said. “Just get it done.” He looked up at the view screen. “We only need the beam for 2.703 seconds. I would hope you could just give us that in the interests of strengthening our relations.”

  “And I think it would strengthen our relations to have you pay what is right, rather than just take our power from us. It is obvious you have better technology than we do, so you could probably coerce us. By paying, you show that you value our relationship.”

  “And how much is the going rate for 2.703 seconds of your power beam?”

  “50,000 carats of diamonds.”

  “Wow, that’s pretty steep,” the CO said. “Still, you have us over a barrel; we need the power, and we need it now. We also need some cabling for some of our power runs. Would it be possible for you to throw in a couple hundred feet of hi-gauge wire into that price?”

  The caliph looked at one of his advisors, who nodded. “I believe that would be possible,” he said.

  “Excellent. So if you could let us use the power now, we’ll return with your diamonds as quickly as we can.”

  “That is not how it works, though,” the caliph noted. “We require payment in full prior to allowing you to use the power stream.”

  “I’m sorry, but that isn’t possible,” the CO said. “If we don’t get access to the power stream within the next 22 minutes, our galaxy will be destroyed. I’m asking you—no, I’m begging you—to please let us use the stream. I promise we’ll return to you with the diamonds if it’s at all within our power to do so. I can guarantee our government, should we be successful because of your help, will double the price you quoted me.”

  “You will pay us 100,000 carats of diamonds?”

  “Yes, we will. But we need it in the next…21 minutes. With the cabling, too, if possible.”

  One of the caliph’s advisors said something to him that the microphone didn’t pick up. The caliph nodded and said, “We can have cabling here within 10 minutes, but we don’t know how you are going to get it and get back in time.”

  “I know how!” Calvin said as he raced off the bridge. “Tell them I’ll be right there! And to meet me outside the building!” he yelled over his shoulder.

  “We are sending someone down to you,” the CO said. “If you could meet him in front of the building with the wire, we’ll be on our way.”

  “We have a request,” the caliph said. “It is a simple thing I think you should easily be able to do for us, now that we are such good friends.”

  “And what’s that?” the CO asked, not liking where the conversation was going.

  “We would like to send my son, Arsalan al-Bibr, along with you to oversee our investment.”

  “That won’t be possible,” the CO said. “Our mission is dangerous, and I don’t want to be responsible for his loss, should we not return.”

  “Is it his loss you fear, or the fact that he may steal some of your secrets, or maybe even find out you have not been honest with us?”

  The CO looked at the timer—19 minutes.

  “Fine,” he said. “Our ship isn’t healthy for him, as our universe is slightly different than yours, but if you—and he—don’t care, we’ll take him. We have one other rider from your universe, and we’ll have to accommodate her somehow; we can do the same for your son.”

  The caliph smiled broadly. “See? It is easy to develop relations when we have such a give and take kind of discussion. He will be outside with the wire in 10 minutes.”

  “We only have seven now,” the CO warned.

  “He is on his way.”

  * * *

  Palace Grounds, Sulwaffi, Anti-61 Virginis System

  “Do you believe they are magic?” one of the caliph’s advisors asked.

  “It is possible,” the caliph said. “After all, I don’t see any other way they will be here to collect Arsalan and the wire.”

  “Magic doesn’t exist,” another of his advisors said. “And there is no way they will be here when they said. It is a bluff.”

  “To what purpose?” the caliph asked.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps to get us to come outside so they can use a weapon to kill you while you are in the open.”

  “That sounds silly,” the caliph said. “If they can figure out how to talk through our conference network from orbit, I’m sure they have the ability to kill me whenever and however they wish. They certainly knew where the conference room was and could have dropped something from orbit on it.”

  Unable to counter the caliph’s logic, the advisor bowed slightly.

  The caliph started to say something else, but he was interrupted by the roar of jets above him. He looked up to see…something…above him. Several of his advisors tried to drag him away from the apparition, but he realized after a few seconds that the thing was one of the aliens, but encased in some sort of armor that could spew fire from its feet. The alien came down about 10 paces away, and he got his first look at the creature.

  The alien was humanoid, but the way he squatted to ride down on the jets of fire showed his legs were bent the wrong way. His arms were similarly jointed wrong—as well as being too short and fat to be normal—and he appeared to have hands that weren’t correctly configured into claws—instead of two talons on each side, he had four talons on a single side, with an opposing digit that wrapped around it when it turned into a fist.

  Although armor covered most of his clothing, what the caliph could see looked to be fairly form-fitting, not baggy the way his people liked it. The alien landed and flipped up the visor he was wearing, revealing eyes that had a too-small pupil surrounded by white. He smiled, revealing a mouthful of white teeth that all seemed to match up unnaturally. “Greetings, Caliph,” the man said. “I’m Lieutenan
t Commander Hobbs. I believe you have some wire for me?”

  “My son has it,” the caliph said, waving Arsalan forward, “but I do not see how you will be able to carry him and the wire safely on the fire that comes from your feet. If nothing else, he will be unable to breathe once you go out of the planet’s atmosphere; even we know that.”

  “You’re correct, Caliph, but that’s not how we’re getting back to the ship.” He stepped over to Arsalan. “I need to put my arms around you. Will that be okay?”

  “Yes,” Arsalan said with a nod. “Are you sure you are not going to drop me on the way up to your ship?”

  The alien gave his son a small smile—it was interesting how much their body language was the same. “It won’t be a problem; I promise you.” The alien stepped forward, put his arms around the caliph’s son, and the two of them—including the wire his son was holding—vanished.

  The caliph turned to look at the advisor who had spoken earlier. “Believe in magic now?” the caliph asked.

  The advisor was unable to say anything or look around, but he nodded once as he continued gawking in the direction the alien had been standing.

  The caliph was in full agreement.

  * * *

  Transporter Room, TSS Vella Gulf, Anti-61 Virginis

  Calvin released the Sila and stepped back. The man’s eyes were as large as saucers as he looked around the room. Calvin had no idea if he’d ever been on a spaceship, but it was obvious that a transporter was something he’d never seen before.

  “What…what just happened?”

  “We were just converted to energy and beamed up to the ship, then reconverted back into our normal forms.”

  “Is that…safe?”

  “Well, it’s pretty safe,” Calvin said, taking the wire from him. “It would be safer if we were scanned, but we didn’t have time. Speaking of which, we’re about out of time—there’s only five minutes left. Let’s get to the bridge.”

  Calvin was already racing out the doorway when Arsalan started after him, so Calvin slowed and allowed the alien to catch up. “Can you run?”

  “Faster than you,” the Sila said, so Calvin sped back up again. Arsalan stayed at his side as they raced through the passageways to the bridge.

  “Do we still…need the wire?” Calvin asked, winded, as they got to the bridge.

  “No, Bradford figured it out,” the CO said.

  Calvin looked at the wire over his shoulder—a non-trivial amount—and sighed.

  “Sorry,” the CO added. “I guess we should have told you we were all set.”

  “What’s going on?” Calvin asked.

  “They’re aligning the dishes and getting ready to send out the power stream. We should be ready to go in…?”

  “One minute,” Ensign Summers said, not looking up from her station. “Sir,” she added belatedly.

  Calvin looked at the timer on the bulkhead; it was just passing three minutes. “We’re cutting it close.”

  “Yes, we are,” the CO said. “Now be quiet. If you have something helpful to say, say it; otherwise, let the people do their jobs without interruption.”

  Calvin nodded. He could feel the tension in the air as the crew raced to get their tasks done in time, and he was glad he’d missed out on it by going to get the wire and the caliph’s son.

  “Dish is aligned,” Summers said. “Ready to receive.”

  “Capacitors online and ready,” the DSO said. “Ready to receive.”

  “Time machine ready to go,” Bradford said via the comm relay system. “Programmed and ready to initiate.”

  “Two minutes ‘til the end of our world,” the helmsman noted. “As we know it, anyway.”

  The Sila turned toward Calvin. If his eyes had been as big as saucers after the transporter ride, they were now the size of dinner plates. “Time machine?” he asked in a whisper. “End of the world?”

  Calvin shrugged. “Yeah, we weren’t lying to your father. We’re dealing with some pretty serious shit right now.”

  “You really have a time machine?” the Sila asked. “That works?”

  “Yes, we have what we think is a time machine, but we’ve never tried it, so we don’t know whether it’ll work or not. Or if it’ll take us to when we want to go.”

  “Ten seconds to beam initiation!” Summers called. She began counting backward.

  “How far are you trying to go back?” the Sila asked.

  “Seven…six…”

  Calvin looked at the alien, trying to decide if he really wanted to know. Or if the Sila would even believe him if Calvin told him what their target was. “A long time,” he finally said.

  “Two…one…initiation.”

  Everything grew brighter for a split-second, then there was a flash, and Calvin felt like he was falling…for all eternity.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Seven

  Bridge, TSS Vella Gulf, Unknown System

  After a fall Calvin thought would never end—and he began to be afraid of the sudden stop when it did—everything lurched, and the lights went out. Before anyone could do anything, though, the lights came back on, and the ship appeared to stabilize.

  “Well, that felt about as unnatural as anything I’ve ever done,” the CO said. “Duty engineer, let’s get damage reports from around the ship, ASAP. Solomon, helmsman, if either of you can tell me where—or when—we are, I’d appreciate it.”

  “I don’t know where we are,” the sensor operator said, “but I can tell you we’re in a system with a very Sol-like sun. I only see one planet close by; it’s a gas giant.”

  “I’ve got nothing,” the helmsman said, “although I’m still trying, sir. This system doesn’t appear to be in our database.”

  “I am working on it also,” Solomon said. “It may be some time, though, as I have nothing to start with. We are obviously not in the same system we started in, so I have to determine ‘where’ we are before I can hope to determine ‘when.’”

  “Keep on it,” Sheppard said.

  “I did not like that,” the Sila said to Calvin. “If we will be doing that again any time soon, I would like it if you would drop me off on my planet before you do so.”

  “I’m sorry, but that isn’t going to be possible,” Calvin said. “Not only don’t we know where we are, we also don’t know when. We were trying to jump about fifty-seven thousand years into the past, but where we actually ended up…” He shrugged.

  “So…we are lost in both space…and time?” Arsalan asked.

  Calvin nodded. “That’s a pretty accurate assessment, but we’ve got a good crew and a really smart computer; I’m sure they’ll figure it out soon.”

  “And then we will go home?”

  “No. We have a mission to complete here first, and then we’ll go home.”

  “How long will this mission take?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know.”

  The Sila stared at Calvin for a long time. “So let me get this straight. We do not know where we are, or when, and we are here to do something, but you do not know what it is. When we are done with it, though, we can go home. Right? At least you know how to do that?”

  “Well, no, not really. We can go home, but we aren’t entirely sure how to make the time machine project us forward in time. Plus we’ll need the same amount of energy we used to get here in order to get back. Assuming there’s a one-for-one ratio, anyway. And then we can’t go quite to your home; we have to defeat our Enemy first.”

  “But at least you know who this enemy is, right? Please tell me you at least know that much?”

  “Well, sort of. We know they destroyed all the life in the galaxy. We also know what they look like. Who they are and how to defeat them, though…we don’t know that, but that’s what our mission here is—to find out who the Enemy is and to acquire and bring back the means to defeat them in our time.”

  “But you said they destroyed all the life in this galaxy, right?”

  Calvin looked at the de
ck as he knew what the next question was going to be. “Yeah, they did,” he finally admitted.

  “So why do you think the means to defeat them can be found here?”

  “Mostly because we have no other choice. To do nothing was to stay and die. We’re hoping by coming here—to a period of higher tech than we had—we’ll be able to find something we can use to defeat the Enemy in our time.”

  “You are all crazy. You know this, right? If you know nothing else, please tell me you know this is a ship of fools.”

  “It appears crazy,” the CO said, interjecting, “but it was the only possibility we had left. When there is no other option but the thing you know to be your last hope, you take the last hope and do the best you can with it. That’s what separates us from animals. Rather than give up and die, we’re doing this quest, because it’s what must be done to have any hope whatsoever.

  “Do we know where we are? No. Do we know when we are? No. Do we know what we’re looking for? Sort of. Better weapons and computer technology. If we can find out the Enemy’s vulnerabilities here, even better.”

  “Do you know anything for certain?”

  “I know we’re still in your—” The CO paused as a thought came to him. He held up a hand to stop Arsalan. “Solomon, would it be helpful if we were in our universe and not the Jinn one? We jumped from the Jinn Universe, so we’d still be in it, correct?”

  “That is correct, Captain Sheppard,” Solomon replied. “And yes, it might make determining ‘when’ we are easier if we were there. It has been determined that time flows differently in the Jinn Universe, so any estimates of elapsed time I give you while we are in the Jinn Universe may be inaccurate. That may also make figuring out approximate star positions difficult, as they may not have had as much time—or maybe they had more—to drift around.”

  “Noted. Duty Engineer? Do we have a damage check yet?”

  “Yes, sir. There’s some minor damage in a few spaces, mostly from things toppling or being thrown when we jerked around. All systems are operational, however.”