by Steve Hertig
Chapter 50
RefPlane: Stardate 211562.85
"Disengage Warp field, all stop," Rori said from the captain's chair.
"All stop," Carl repeated as the main viewscreen morphed back into a star field.
"Temporal drive status?" Rori asked.
"Chief Engineer reports the temporal drive is at capacity," Grayson replied.
"Tac-1, prepare for translation to objective temporal reference," Rori requested.
"Ship's computer confirms temporal delta. Translation on your command," Prophet replied.
"Translate," Rori ordered.
RefPlane: 6,050 BC
John looked over his shoulder at Jen, who had activated her tactical display coupled with the Monitor's long-range sensors.
"Science?" Rori asked.
John glanced at the anomaly oscillating through its repeating message on his console. "No change. Sensors are clear."
"So what's generating the signal?" Rori asked.
Prophet came and stood over John while scrutinizing the science stations displays. "Transfer the science display to main viewscreen," he said looking back at Wigwag as an artificial spatial grid surrounded the anomaly on the main viewscreen. He made a quick adjustment to the science console, and the display zoomed out to show both the Monitor and anomaly as only small dots.
"If we boost power to the main sensor array," Prophet said, "and filter for just dark energy, we might see hints of the propagation vectors causing the anomaly within the Higgs field."
The main viewscreen filled with eye-straining moiré patterns.
"I'll zoom out some more," John said quickly and then inputting more commands.
The result was still incomprehensible.
"How about the big picture?" John asked rhetorically while changing the display to synthesize a complete view of the clockwise spirals of the Milky Way.
"Damn," Carl said from conn.
The captain stood up and stepped down beside Carl putting her hand on his shoulder.
The display showed ten streaming waveforms spaced evenly in a broad arc back towards the center of the galaxy and focused on the anomaly. The last one was just inside the Orion Arm.
John saw Prophet, back at Tac-1, subtly shake his head.
"What is it Number One?" the captain asked.
"The origins of the individual waveforms fit a curvilinear track that extends directly to Sagittarius A-star," Prophet explained. "Assuming a fairly constant temporal delta is producing arc, the Library ship would fall on that path."
John looked over to Jen. She shrugged her shoulders as a warning alarm sounded in John's earpiece.
"Temporal blips, Captain," John said nervously.
As he activated the main temporal sensors, the main viewscreen changed back to a regional view of their space with the Monitor and anomaly again as small dots. However, now other symbols, weakly pulsating and representing the estimated location of the incoming temporal anomalies, surrounded the Monitor.
"Six incoming in forty-five seconds, roughly spherical distribution and we're in the center," John said. "And they haven't come far," he added, indicating the anomalies' temporal signatures appeared weak.
"Yellow alert," Rori said while formally entering the command into her chair's console and sitting down.
"Tac-2?" she asked.
"Weapons ready, Captain," Jen replied.
"Warp field status," she asked.
"Warp drive ready on your order, Captain," Grayson replied.
The captain turned and looked at Wigwag. "Update Space Fleet on our present situation by way of a tachyon probe, copy all sensor readings and then engage forward view."
"Aye Aye, Captain," he replied quickly as he entered the necessary commands on his console.
John felt the Monitor tremble slightly as the probe launched.
"Helm, full impulse to the nearest blip, we'll try to get outside them," Rori she said calmly. "Tac-1, ETA on the other Confederation ships pre-translation?"
"At least an hour, Captain," Prophet said.
"Let's hope they're friendly," Rori said staring into space. "But I don’t like the odds," she added with a glance back at her first officer.
"Ten seconds," John reported.
"Helm?" the captain asked.
"We won't make it outside their perimeter in time," Carl reported; his eyes fixed on the ship's navigation console.
"Make a run for it Ensign," Rori said sternly.
"Six ships now in temporal sync," Jen said.
"Approximately 600,000 kilotons each," John said adding a subtle whistle. "Sensors indicate they have energy weapons and shields active!"
"Red Alert!" Rori announced. "Com, broadcast peace calls all frequencies."
"Shields full strength," Grayson reported.
"Four of the ships are locking weapons," Jen said.
John heard the captain curse as the Monitor shuddered at the first contact with the unknown attacker's weapons.
"All shields 30 percent," Grayson reported.
"Tac-2," Rori said quickly, "fire spread delta at the nearest ship, then continue to the next closest target. Helm, evasive maneuvers with respect to the third nearest ship."
John could hear and feel the Monitor's laser cannon fire repeatedly. He knew Jen's tactical simulations did not cover such an outnumbered engagement unless programmed to lose.
"Prepare for Warp 5, helm," Rori said, "On my mark."
John knew the captain would want to break out of the spherical crossfire, if at all possible, before engaging the Monitor's warp field.
The monitor shook violently as the main viewscreen failed and components in the overhead overloaded, spraying sparks down on the bridge crew.
Prophet initiated Tac-1's holo view and projected it to replace the main viewscreen.
"Warp drive inoperative," Grayson reported, "Core still stable. Aft shields down. Forward shields at 10 percent. Full Impulse power available."
"Tac-2, maximum negative temporal displacement now!" Rori shouted and then the bridge and crew blurred momentarily. "Helm, full impulse nearest opening," she ordered.
John saw the attacker's confusion by their transit back in time, but with the current power consumption, the displacement was only several seconds. He took a quick look at Jen catching her eyes briefly and knew instantly she was terrified, but the Monitor's cannon continued their salvos.
"One ship is dead in space," Prophet reported.
"We need warp now," Rori said into the com to her chief engineer.
"Impossible Captain," he replied, "we've got an inoperative plasma injector here, and that'll take a space dock to replace its crystal."
The Monitor shuddered.
"Forward shields down," Grayson reported as sparks still sporadically rained down on him from the overhead scorching his fur.
John watched the blips on the holoview converge on their position.
"Damage report Number One," Rori requested.
"Warp field and shields are inoperative, impulse drive at 10 percent capacity," Prophet reported. "No casualties, but Dr. Fanau is attending to the several engineering personnel with extensive second and third-degree burns. Laser cannon still operative but their power is below effective threshold of the enemy's shields.
"Cease fire," Rori ordered. "They obviously want us alive."
"Or the ship," Jen added ominously.
John checked his sat-chron; it had been over fifteen minutes since the ceasefire. He then gazed out the captain's ready room's viewport at the nearest, motionless attacker. It didn't have much of an overall geometric shape. Mainly metallic squares stuck together at odd angles.
"Any com from Space Fleet?" the captain asked.
"Negative," Prophet said, "All temporal communications appear blocked and there has been no response to repeated hails to the ships surrounding us."
"Any ideas," Rori asked the bridge crew surrounding her.
"We've pulled the port converter assembly, and the crystal is fried," Grayson said
extending and then retracting his fore paws' claws. "And the main viewscreen is back online."
"Why the Mobius had this technology is most confusing," Prophet added.
"Despite the fragility of the crystal lattice," Grayson explained, "the system is very robust and can be modified easily to suit different conduit requirements."
"I said ideas," Rori said as her com chirped.
"Yes," she said into the device on her uniform's left chest.
"Captain, we have a…situation deck two, cabin three," Wigwag replied.
"Intruders?" Rori asked, quickly standing up.
"Negative," Wigwag assured her.
"Isn't that your cabin," Jen whispered to John.
"Be more specific Wigwag," Prophet said.
Luca appeared in her persona next to the captain, "Apologies for the intrusion," she said addressing the captain. "The event evolving—"
"Event?" Jen repeated.
"Something," Luca continued, "in that cabin seems to be affecting the Higgs field."
"Damn," John said slowly looking at Jen.
"The twin's science project!" they both said together.
"You two," the captain said to John and Jen, "go with Prophet and check out this project and you two," she added looking to Grayson and Carl, "back to stations."
As John approached his cabin, the corridor's lights flickered then stabilized as the door swooshed open.
"What was Rodney thinking?" Jen asked as they entered the cabin.
"Is that it?" Prophet asked looking at the small box next to John's bunk.
"That's it," Jen replied as John took a tricorder from his bunk side table and handed it to Prophet.
"I thought you were the science officer," Jen said as Prophet scanned the project.
"How much do you know about the Higgs field?" he asked.
"Good point," she replied.
"So, Mac and Zuni are collecting data on dark-energy entropic decay." Prophet said as he made an adjustment to the tricorder.
"It's supposed to be a passive experiment to get exposure to dark matter away from the galactic gravitational noise," John said.
"You sure it's dark matter, not energy?" Jen asked.
"Regardless," Prophet said, "the waveforms creating the signal are causing unusual feedback within the apparatus. This whole part of the ship is registering a slight change in mass."
"It is dangerous?" Jen asked.
"Not at present. It would take several thousand years even to disrupt the artificial gravity coils," Prophet said. "But maybe we should deactivate it," he added as the pillow from John's bunk slowly lifted off towards the overhead.
Prophet pulled a screwdriver from one of his numerous vest pockets, twisted it onto his main appendage and then proceeded to remove the cover of the science experiment.
Extracting the last fastener, he gently lifted off the top and four adjoining sides of the box to reveal closely packed wires and electronic components, all surrounding another box.
Prophet scanned the project again with the tricorder and shook his head.
"The cause of the amplification appears to be within this component," he said tapping the central box with his screwdriver and then proceeded carefully to pry off its top to reveal a glowing, blue crystal.
"Now I know why Rodney was on Trua when Tye was on duty elsewhere," John said staring at the crystal.
"What is it?" Jen asked.
"Dilithium," Prophet said and then tapped his uniform's com. "Captain," he said, "I think the odds may have shifted slightly in our favor. We have discovered a dilithium crystal."
He carefully removed the crystal from its cradle. "I request Engineer Grayson and you meet us in engineering."
"Grayson is on his way," Rori replied, "But I need you on the bridge; we've just been informed to expect a communication form the enemy commander."
RefPlane: 16,951 BC
Flint sighed as he succumbed to another checkmate and tipped his king over. Vejay had just awakened him a few days ago after only a hundred years, and he wondered if that was a new strategy of hers. At least, his cyborg opponent did not gloat about her long winning streak.
"I have knowledge that your tune was a success," Vejay said. "Maker should be very pleased even though the Relativity did not respond to the trap."
"I bet he will be," Flint quipped. "What kind of ship did we ensnare?"
"A small vessel with few crew, but it does have an advanced temporal drive."
Flint had already guessed it was the prize they were hoping to recover.
"You know my species will commonly destroy themselves if trapped," he said resetting the chess pieces. "It is kind of like your Synth requirements."
"I do not understand your reference, but self-harm is not tolerated," she said rising up on her mechanical appendages.
Flint shrugged his shoulders.
"But I require more genetic material from your species," she said affectionately reaching out gently to touch his hand.
"Then I’d be extremely cautious," he replied pulling away to hide different colored pawns behind his back. "Try communicating with them. That usually eases their anxiety."
"I have informed Maker. Thank you Flint," she said, blindly picking the white pawn and quickly replacing it in its place on the board.
"No problem," he replied turning the board so the black pieces were in front of him as she scuttled out of the compartment.
Fucking machines, Flint thought gazing out the dome at the activity surrounding him as Vejay appeared on the inter-ship transporter.
She had been unusually distant the last few days and even coaxing her into a game of chess proved difficult. She moved next to him and gazed out the dome.
"I fear there may be no more genetic material available as hoped," she said dejectedly.
"I am sure your fears are ungrounded," Flint replied watching the machines manic activity on the other side of the dome.
"Maker has calculated that we must capture the ship intact, or we face certain defeat."
"There are always more temporal ships," Flint said trying to console her to buy more time.
"Maker as determined that without the temporal delta capacity of the small ship even our costly efforts here will be in vain. He has made these calculations long before our arrival."
So it was a timing thing, Flint thought. He knew setting up a replication base so close to Sol was a huge risk, but it also could mean a decisive machine victory. But without the tactical robustness of a true temporal translation drive, rather than his TR's components, they would not succeed. The outnumbered machines would never obtain the necessary initiative.
"Even my work will be worthless," she said touching Flint's arm.
He stepped away. "What have you been working on? You've not come to play recently." Even another mech brought the mystery bars and water for his last few meals.
"I'll show you," she said stepping back on the transporter.
Flint recognized the narrow space, only a few meters in diameter that extended for several hundred meters before them. It was the access passage to her lifeboat.
Rows of small cases, vaguely similar to his stasis chamber, lined both sides of the space. Mechs traveled between the cases occasionally stopping at one only to continue to the next moments later.
"Maker has begun a failsafe protocol," Vejay said angrily, looking down the rows of cases.
"Failsafe?" Flint asked as he stepped toward the nearest one.
"Yes, our signal, if allowed to continue much longer, will tip the balance of mass."
"What balance of mass?" Flint asked now standing next to a small case.
Vejay looked at him.
He knew her face expressed frustration in his limited organic brain.
"This universe hangs in a delicate balance near the 126 billion electron volts of its mass field," she explained. "Continuation of the signal will push the mass field into a quantum tunnel and to a point of supercritical and irreversible instability."
Flint grasped the case for support. The lunatic machines were going to tip the Higgs field into an unstoppable dissolution of the universe. Once started, it was certain death in time, as the collapsing Higgs field would travel as an ever-expanding bubble at light speed away from the signal's focused location.
"Our children will eventually die," she whimpered as she gently nudged Flint aside and lifted the case's lid to reveal a humanoid infant with mechanical legs and arms.
"I need to send another tune," Flint said, shaken at the sight of the tiny cyborg.
"I am afraid that is no longer possible," Vejay replied as a single tear ran down her left cheek.
"Then I need time alone in the viewing dome," he said stoically.
RefPlane: 6,050 BC
"Where did you get this?" the Monitor's chief engineer asked while carefully handing the crystal to Grayson.
"Our kid's science project," Jen said proudly.
"It's Vulcan and fits perfectly," Grayson said with a subtle purr while gently locking it into the converter assembly. "Only they have this variation," he added.
"Will it work?" John asked.
"Better than the last crystal," the chief said handing the remaining shards of the damaged crystal to Jen. "For the kid's next science project," he added with a wink.
"Captain," the chief said into his com, "the new crystal is installed, but we probably won't be able to power up the warp field without the surrounding ships noticing. But I could set up a relay to give the shields as well as the impulse drives full power in a few minutes. That could buy us the seconds needed to windup the temporal drive, but our laser cannon will be at less than half capacity."
"Make it so Chief. Chirp my com when completed." Rori said. "Commanders, you and the lieutenant commander are needed back on the bridge."
"Think we can pull this off," Jen said to John as the turbolift opened to the bridge.
But before he could answer, they stopped at the view of a mech on the main view screen. It was small and had multiple antennae sprouted from a boxy frame, which hovered stationary in the middle of the viewscreen.
"We got visual less than a minute ago," Wigwag said standing next to them. "But we are still waiting for audio. We have had some bursts of machine code, but Luca has not been able to decipher the bytes."
John slid into his chair at science to review the current sensor data; the ships' positions had not changed, but the anomaly's amplitude was noticeably larger and its wavelength tighter.
The captain stood up from her command chair and turning to Wigwag behind her gave him a hand signal to isolate any audio from the machine staring at them.
"Tac-1," she said still facing away from the main viewscreen, "lay in a temporal transit back to our original time reference to rendezvous with the task force. Engage the instant we’re outside their perimeter."
"Do not turn around Ensign," she said clutching her hands together behind her back. "Can we lay in a course, reversing past the ship behind us without a collision and shielding us from most of the other ships?"
"Yes, Captain," Carl said through the corner of his mouth.
"Make it so, Ensign," she said. "Tac-2, any ideas where to hurt that ship behind us most?"
"I have the damage analysis of the dead ship. I can tighten the spread and target the same area."
"Very well," Rori said. "Do not stop firing until after the temporal dive engages. Everyone, execute on my mark."
"Understood," Jen replied from behind her console as the machine finally spoke.
"Badlife," the bridges com relayed as the mech remained inanimate, "I am designated Commander C3M. I hope your anxiety has decreased since the engagement."
"Audio on," Rori ordered Wigwag.
"Our anxiety is still significantly elevated," she said to the mech while raising an eyebrow.
"Self harm is not permitted," it said. "So, I wish to assure you that your organic components will be preserved for significant use as goodlife, and the vessel will be replicated into many."
"We appreciate that," the captain replied. "What can we do for you in the meantime?"
"Prepare your organic components," it said. "We will board the vessel now."
"Just before you do that," Rori said, "I need to communicate briefly with the other organic components. It will decrease anxiety," she added quickly as her com chirped.
"You may do so even as boarding devices now approach your vessel," it said.
"Very well," she said calmly and then yelled, "Mark!"
Rori lunged into her command chair, shouting to Wigwag "Cut transmission!"
John felt the Monitor's cannon fire a single, sustained blast as his sensor display showed them passing the ship that was previously behind them just before it vanished along with the others.
RefPlane: Stardate 211562.94
"We're being hailed by USS Saranac," Wigwag announced.
"Main view," Rori ordered breathing an obvious sigh of relief.
"Jerry," Rori said to the Saranac's captain appearing on the main viewscreen, "at least five mech warships are about to appear in this location."
"Then I advise you to depart the sector," the Saranac's captain said as the main viewscreen when blank.
Turning back to his display, John saw the Saranac, USS Manistee and USS Marquette disappear then instantly reappear 10,000 meters distant in a defensive formation around the Monitor. He knew they must be timeships.
"Status, Grayson?" Rori requested hurriedly.
"Shields at 70 percent," he replied, "Warp drive on your command."
The Monitor shuddered.
"Aft shields 20 percent," Grayson said through clinched fangs.
"Damn. How did they follow us?" John muttered while ensuring other bridge stations had the four machine ships' new coordinates that had just appeared.
From his sensor display, John watched as the three Confederation starships engaged the enemy. He felt the Monitor's cannon fire just as two mech ships disappeared and Rori ordered warp speed.