A Gulf in Time Page 7

  “Especially if they said they were going to kill 98% of your people,” the emperor said.

  “Especially then,” the CO said with a nod. “Although happily, that isn’t the case with them.” He looked at the overhead. “Solomon, do you have an analysis?”

  “Yes, Captain Sheppard. I believe your position is correct. Based on what little I know about Sila body language, I believe the caliph would have been harder to bring to an agreement if you had tried to push him into it.”

  The CO nodded. “My goal was to make first contact with them so they could get accustomed to our existence. That way, when we go back, they’ll be ready to deal with us.”

  “And if they’re not ready to deal with us?” Calvin asked. “What then?”

  “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

  * * *

  Bridge, TSS Vella Gulf, HD 69830, Approaching Golirion

  The ship stabilized in HD 69830, the home system of the Aesir. After dropping the Mrowry emperor back on his planet, they’d made the four stargate jumps to reach the Aesir planet. With 2–3 days of transit in each system to get from stargate to stargate, they’d lost over a week of time in transit, and the entire crew was starting to feel the same nervous twitch that things weren’t happening quickly enough. Along with the nearly three weeks of transit from Earth to the Mrowry home world, they’d used up almost half their time. It was one thing to be doing something…it was another thing entirely to have to watch the countdown clock ticking while doing nothing more important than driving from one system to another.

  The comms officer looked up from her screen. “I have an incoming transmission from the Thor?”

  “That’s their king,” Captain Sheppard said. “Put it on screen, please.”

  A male and a female Aesir replaced the picture of the planet on the front. Both were elfin in appearance, although with dark hair and pale blue skin. Sheppard knew they were members of the Drow—the subrace of Aesir that lived below ground. The Valir—the Aesir who lived aboveground—tended to have blond hair and green skin. As was typical of the Aesir, both had thin circlets that marked them as royalty, and nothing else.

  “Greetings, people of Terra,” the Thor said. Previously known as Silvermoon, the Terrans had recovered him on a prior mission after he was captured by the Jotunn/Shaitan alliance.

  “Welcome back to Aesir space,” added the queen, whom the CO didn’t recognize.

  Captain Sheppard stood and bowed. “Thank you for the welcome. I wish we came under better circumstances.”

  “But I thought the war with the Shaitans was over,” the Thor said. “We are rebuilding, and life is good. What circumstances are you talking about?”

  “You may remember Lieutenant Commander Hobbs,” the CO said, nodding to where Calvin stood. Calvin bowed and then nodded to the royals.

  “Yes, we remember the hero,” the Thor said. He smiled. “Now what trouble has he gotten himself into?”

  “Unfortunately, he completed his quest.”

  “Unfortunately?” the queen asked. “I thought completing a quest was normally a good thing.”

  “It is,” Calvin said, “except when quest completion summons the galaxy’s ancient Enemy, who tells you they’re now going to kill about 98% of all the life in the galaxy.”

  “That wouldn’t be my idea of successful quest completion,” the Thor noted. “I would have hoped for a magic item or a big pile of loot.” His smile faded when he realized none of the humans were smiling along with him. He cleared his throat and added, “I take it you are here to enlist our aid in the defense of the galaxy against the Enemy. Although most of our forces have been destroyed, what assistance we can give you, you will have, of course.”

  “Thank you,” Calvin said, “but that isn’t why we’re here. Certainly the humans and the Mrowry are going to fight them, but the Enemy is far more advanced than we are, and we don’t expect to be victorious in our fight. Because of this, we’ve been sent on a mission. It’s our intention to go back in time to when the Progenitors ruled, acquire some of their technology, and bring it back so we can use it to defeat the Enemy. Of course, if we can defeat the Enemy then, that would be preferable, but our scientists and big thinkers don’t believe we’ll be able to do anything that changes history that much.”

  “Interesting…” the Thor said, as if people showed up at Golirion on far-out quests every day. “I assume you have a plan to accomplish all this, Hero?”

  “Yes, Thor, we do. We’ve come to collect pieces of the Shaitan ships we fought here. We need to find some of their missiles and disassemble them so we can figure out how they work and replicate it.”

  The Aesir pursed his lips. “So…you do not actually know if you’ll be able to do this.”

  “No, we don’t,” Calvin said, “but a slim hope is better than none at all. We tried to fight the Enemy when we first encountered them, but we were outclassed on every level. They got into our computer system before we could do anything to prevent it, and they dropped our shields and deactivated our weapons. We would’ve been completely at their mercy, but we were able to escape to the Jinn Universe. If we hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here now.”

  “So the Enemy doesn’t know about the Jinn Universe?”

  “Not that we’re aware,” Calvin said. “However, we don’t know that for sure.”

  “I see,” Silvermoon said. “I was just thinking, if worse came to worst, we could try to move our people to the Jinn Universe to escape the Enemy. It isn’t a perfect solution, but we could live there a little while and hopefully avoid them.”

  “It’s something we’ve discussed, too,” the CO said, jumping back in, “but it isn’t the solution we need. The Enemy may be able to harvest everything living if they want—you may come back to this universe to find your planet completely devoid of life. It’s unlikely you’d be able to survive long enough to restock the planet. The amount of stores you’d need would be phenomenal.”

  The queen shook her head. “It might be something we could build up to, but we would need years to prepare. How long do we have?”

  “About one month,” the CO said.

  “There’s no way that is possible,” the Thor said.

  “Nor for our society, nor for the Mrowry.” The CO shrugged. “That’s why our fleets will join to fight the Enemy, although they have little hope of success.”

  “If you are aware of the battle plans and can share them with me, we will send our ships to wherever the fleets are rendezvousing,” the Thor said.

  “I am, and I’ll share them with your chain of command,” the CO replied.

  “There’s one other thing we could use,” Calvin said. “You were going to take the dragon known as Bordraab back to her home planet. We need the location of that planet so we can talk to her and her people.”

  The Thor smiled. “I’d love to tell you, but we don’t have any idea.”

  “Oh? Why not? Shouldn’t you have taken her back to her home planet by now?”

  “Yes, we should have, and we tried, but she wouldn’t leave.”

  “Why not?”

  “She said our planet smelled like where she needed to be. Or where she’d be needed. Something like that. As it turns out, it is most difficult to move a dragon who doesn’t want to be moved. Especially one who can cross over to the Jinn Universe when she wants to and spends most of her time there. She contacted us yesterday and said it smelled like you were finally coming. If we didn’t seem surprised to see you, that’s why.”

  Calvin chuckled as he looked at Captain Sheppard. “See what I mean?”

  The CO shrugged. “Maybe there is something to this whole clairalient thing.”

  “In any event, she said she’d be ready for pickup tomorrow, once you were finished.”

  “We need to go then, Thor,” the CO said. “If it’s going to take us until tomorrow to find what we need, we’d better get started.”

  * * *

  Unknown Shaitan Ship, Anti-HD 69830
>
  “Yeah, that’s one of them right there,” Lieutenant Bradford commed. “I think.” Although he was the Vella Gulf’s expert on xeno-technology, that didn’t make him an expert on Shaitan technology, which wasn’t in any of the databases, nor was it anything like what humans had come to expect from their allies. Still, form followed function, and the large black shape in front of the launch tube had to be one of the Shaitans’ missiles.

  “You think?” asked Calvin. “Or you know?”

  “That’s definitely one of the missiles,” Bradford said after another couple of seconds inspecting the weapon. It had only taken three tries before they found a piece of a Shaitan ship that included the bow, along with enough of the rest of the ship to include its missile launchers. Then it was only a matter of cutting their way through the skin of the ship to get to the storage spaces—the other entrances were full of mangled metal—and the weapons they were looking for.

  Bradford smiled as he looked around the nearby racks. The ship still had four of its missiles remaining. “We’ll want those other four over there, too.”

  “You got it,” Calvin replied. He turned to Gunnery Sergeant Dantone, who was still waiting at the access hole they’d cut into the ship. “All right, there’s four of the missiles here. We need all of them to go back to the ship as quickly as possible, without doing something stupid and setting them off. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir, we got it. When you’ve got a big job, you bring the cyborgs.” He looked over his shoulder. “Hey, Weinert, give me a hand here, would ya? It’s time to earn our pay.”

  * * *

  Cargo Hold #2, TSS Vella Gulf, HD 69830

  Calvin walked into the cargo hold to find Lieutenant Bradford halfway inside the warhead compartment of one of the Shaitan anti-ship missiles. A large number of components lay in the vicinity, and the Ssselipsssiss Paxton stood looking over Lieutenant Bradford’s shoulder.

  “What do you think?” Calvin asked. “Can you make it work?”

  “Beats the hell out of me,” Lieutenant Bradford said. Engrossed in his work, he didn’t look up or stop what he was doing. After several seconds, he realized what he had said, and to whom. His head snapped up, and he jumped, banging his head on the edge of the opening as he tried to stand up quickly.

  “I mean, it beats the hell out of me, sir,” Lieutenant Bradford added. He tried to come to a position of attention while still rubbing his head. It didn’t work well. “I really don’t have any idea what I’m doing with this. I see how it works, but I don’t see why. It shouldn’t work…but it does.”

  “Maybe it’s some sort of field effect caused by those wires,” Paxton said. “What’s in them?”

  “I don’t know,” the lieutenant replied. “Copper? Could be gold, too, I guess.”

  “In a Shaitan weapon?” Calvin asked. “I don’t think so. They don’t have copper or gold in their universe.”

  “Huh,” Lieutenant Bradford replied. He peered back into the compartment. “You may be onto something. Let me check this out.”

  He detached one of the wires and slit the protective sheathing from it. It immediately began sparking ferociously, like a children’s sparkler on steroids, and flames burst out along the length of where the metal had been exposed.

  “Holy shit!” Bradford yelled as several sparks landed on his uniform sleeve. Although the uniform was fire retardant and didn’t catch fire, the sleeve charred as the sparks burned through. He dropped the wire to the deck, and Paxton grabbed a fire extinguisher as the cargo hold fire alarms began sounding. The fire extinguisher put the flames out, but as soon as the stream was turned off, the wire ignited again.

  “What do you want me to do?” Paxton yelled.

  “Nothing,” Calvin said, nodding to where the wire lay. It had already degraded down to almost nothing. A line on the deck showed where the wire had been, with a small flame coming from the portion that was still protected by the rubber sheathing.

  “What’s going on?” asked the head of the damage control team as they poured into the hold, looking for the source of the alarms.

  “Nothing…now,” Calvin said. “We had a piece of wire that reacted badly to our atmosphere.” He glanced over to Bradford. “I’m pretty sure it won’t happen again.”

  “No, sir!” Bradford exclaimed. “I won’t do that again.” He cocked his head as he looked back into the missile. “But that gives me an idea…”

  * * *

  CO’s Conference Room, TSS Vella Gulf, HD 69830

  “It’s got something to do with the field generated by the weird metal from the Jinn Universe,” Lieutenant Bradford said. “I’m sorry; I should have thought about that before.”

  “Is the effect repeatable?” Captain Sheppard replied. “I mean, can we upsize it enough to jump the whole ship? When we try this crazy plan, I don’t want to jump into the past only to find out the jump bubble wasn’t big enough, and the area of effect didn’t include the motors. Being stuck somewhere in the past without motors would be an awfully poor way to end this voyage.”

  “I’ve had the same thought,” Lieutenant Bradford said, “and I intend to engineer this with extra capacity, rather than skimp around the edges. I’d like to be able to come back home again, too, sir.”

  “So it’s going to be possible to try this?”

  “Well…maybe. We’ll need to get a bunch more of the metal in the wires in order to build a working model of the device. That’s not the problem.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve looked around recently, but we don’t have a big supply of Jinn Universe metal just lying around,” Captain Sheppard said. “If that’s not a big enough problem for you, what is?”

  “Well, sir, the real problem is going to be whether we can generate enough power to make it work. The missile I was looking at, which is relatively small, took nearly all the power the destroyer launching it could provide for about 10 seconds in order for its time-jump module to have enough energy to jump the missile just a few seconds in time. Apparently, time-jumping uses massive amounts of power, and now we’re looking at jumping a cruiser-sized object millennia into the past. Even if there are some economies of scale, we’re still going to need an enormous amount of power to make this happen.”

  “We’ll hopefully have the Sila power grid to energize it,” Captain Sheppard said. “Is 14,000 terawatts a second going to be enough to make it happen?”

  “With the right capacitors…maybe,” Bradford said. He cocked his head as he calculated. “It’s going to be close.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Five

  Shuttle, Planet Golirion, HD 69830

  The shuttle eased its way through the foliage. The massive trees bent away from the shuttle, then seemed to snap back toward it, barely missing its sides.

  “This is just as little fun the second time as it was the first,” Calvin said as he slowly flew the shuttle toward the landing pad several hundred feet below. “I’m all for keeping the jungle as green as possible, but you’d think they could carve out a decent landing pad. Maybe in the desert or something.”

  “You know how the Aesir are about nature,” the CO said.

  “I know,” Calvin replied. “Still…” He made a couple more minute adjustments. “There. We’re down.” He wiped the sweat from his brow. “Next time, it’s someone else’s turn to do that.”

  “Oh, come on—heroes are supposed to get us down safely,” the CO said with a smile. He patted Calvin on the shoulder and turned for the door.

  “You know—” Calvin started, but the CO was already gone. He sighed and quickly ran through the shutdown checklist, then he rushed outside to join the CO.

  As he came down the ramp, he could see the CO and Master Chief talking with the Thor and the queen, with a number of other Aesir standing around looking uncomfortable.

  “Greetings, Thor,” he said, bowing to Silvermoon. “Greetings, Your Highness,” he said as he bowed to the queen. He nodded toward one of the knots of Aesir facing away from them
as if on guard. “What’s up with them?”

  The Thor chuckled. “They know your dragon is about to appear, and it irritates them.”

  “Why’s that?” Calvin asked. “She’s never done anything to harm any of them, has she? Generally, I found her to be pretty…uh…nice, when I was around her.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a dragon called ‘nice’ before,” the CO said.

  Calvin shrugged. “Well, she is. Except when she’s eating her enemies, anyway.” He winked. “Just don’t become her enemy, and she’s really friendly.”

  The Thor smiled. “That’s not it. What they hate is not being able to contact her, yet she usually shows up when and where she’s needed. Even our best Eco Warriors haven’t been able to pull that off yet. They think if they could, they’d be able to do a lot more good—stop forest fires before they start, help injured animals, and all those kinds of things.”

  “I’m still not sold on the whole clairvoyant thing,” Master Chief said. “It seems so mumbo jumbo and hocus—” His voice cut off suddenly as the massive shape of Bordraab appeared next to him. “Damn it!” he exclaimed, jumping to the side. “Why does you always have to do that?!”

  “Were you going to say, ‘hocus pocus?’” Bordraab asked. Her head snaked down and turned so one of her giant, golden eyes was next to Master Chief’s face. “And it’s easy to appear next to you, because you have a certain—” she sniffed loudly, “—smell that attracts me.” Her lips pulled up in what would have been a smile…if it hadn’t revealed her pointy, eight-inch-long teeth.

  To Master Chief’s credit, he stood his ground, mostly, although he did lean back slightly. Calvin was impressed; it took everything he had to hold his bowels in check while standing next to the giant silver dragon, and he wasn’t the focus of its attention.