Ryan Time

by Craig Robertson

  “Okay, everyone back to work,” Tank said, with a slap of his hands. He gently grabbed my arm to have me stay. To Sapale and Sachiko he said, “Come here.”

  They stepped over to us.

  “Group hug, people.” we wrapped in a bear hug. “We did good.”

  Two days later at the “7:00 am-er,” as we called it, Socorro detailed the influence of the stabilizing interventions. High speed rotation, achieved with large magnetic fields, really did the trick. She said ten wormholes generated yesterday at noon were still humming along in this plane of reality. She reported that the groups in charge of generating the stable micro-black holes had several thousand ready to pair into wormholes, presently. One of the pods of theoreticians calculated that the addition of the rotations would likely stabilize the wormholes for up to six or seven weeks. In reality, they would remain stable much longer, but I kept that to myself. Even that time period was more than long enough for our purposes. We only had thirty six more days to worry about.

  “Here's the plan. Soco, get as many of the stable wormholes as you can to Lenn, ASAP. Lenn, make them ready to fire, but be discrete. Definitely make sure we can launch them. Do a few test fires, but exclusively in the opposite direction the enemy is approaching from. You all clear on that?”

  “You're the boss,” replied Lenn. “But why can't I shoot at the bastards as soon as they're ready?”

  “Military strategy, chum,” I shot back. “If these damn things do work, we don't want to give the Edoozers a chance to alter course or develop a countermeasure, now do we? We'll commence firing only when we have an overwhelming number ready to go.” I looked down thinking. “Lenn, in seven days, how many accelerators will be fully operational?”

  “I can guarantee fifty. With luck, a hundred.”

  “How fast can we reload and fire?”

  Lenn got a deer-in-the-headlights look on his face. “Ah, would I be in trouble if I said no clue?”

  “That's why we meet, my friend. Get me those numbers, yesterday,” Tank said with understanding.

  “You got it.”

  For the first time in a long time, I felt a slim ray of hope. It was so very welcome. But, this not being my first rodeo, I know how badly the project could founder, at any of multiple points, and that we had only thirty six days left to us to try to survive.

  Ten days later, or what, by then, was called T-26, for termination minus 26 days, Tank was ready to pull the trigger. Two hundred linear accelerators of varying size were fully operational. Some were configured in sequence, so the micro-wormholes could be accelerated much faster. Though the total number of rounds fired would be decreased, some wormholes were now going to be traveling at almost the speed of light. The reload sequence turned out to be trivially short, by the way.

  Tank decided to fire our weapons off in an expanding cone pattern. He figured that if the wormholes did damage the Edoozer's ships, they would, logically, fan out. With his targeting model, the enemy would continue to encounter wave after wave of wormholes, even while taking evasive action.

  There was a serious gap in our attack strategy. We had absolutely no way of knowing if our enemy would be able to detect the incoming wormholes. It seemed unlikely, but they had been so very successful, for so very long, it would be pure insanity to underestimate them. At a final planning session, one general suggested starting with salvos of wormholes around the approaching vessels, then coning-down, and then expanding the pattern, like Tank intended to. Basically, he suggested that if the enemy detected the incoming, they'd still have to pass through them to escape. Tank deep-sixed that notion. If they had advanced warning, they might escape in a manner we couldn't anticipate. Our only hope of survival was if they could not detect our weapons. No matter what we did, if they were able to see trouble coming, we were all dead. He stuck with his initial plan.

  On T-26, the two void tunnels, with a handful of clan ships in each, were approximately thirty billion kilometers distant. That converted to around ninety light minutes away. It would take two to three hours for a salvo to reach the target and one additional hour and a half, or so, for us to see if there had been a course change. A four hour lag in intelligence was excruciating. But, that was what Tank had to deal with. Sure, I could pop over in Stingray and watch the effects in real time. But Tank'd have no way of justifying how he knew the results so quickly. Plus, if this didn't work, knowing we were doomed a few minutes sooner meant less than nothing at all.

  For those first few hours, his guesses as to targeting would have to do. After that initial phase, Tank was going to have to wing it in terms of a firing pattern. Whatever he did, he'd have to hope that two or three hours later, the enemy would still be where he'd guessed they would be. Space warfare, new to our species in this time zone, turns out to be a double-bitch. The target you see is no longer there, and is usually in a spot you wouldn't have predicted. So, you can only fire at where you think they will be, when the weapon arrives on scene. As we got closer to T-3, our limit to ensure planet survival, that lag would become tolerably short, so at least there was that ray of hope.

  “I'm preparing to give Lenn the final order to commence firing,” Tank said to those attending the teleconference. “Now would be the time for anyone to voice any last concerns.”

  “Everyone here in the Situation Room is comfortable the plan, Tank.” Even the president had started calling him by nickname.

  “Okay, Lenn, give'em hell and a half.”

  “Roger that, Boss.”

  And so Earth's bombardment of the Edoozer's fleet began. I said a not so quick prayer that this might even work. What struck me the most, however, was the nonevent of the event. I pictured blasts like in a Star Wars movie with plasma cannons barking and targets flying to pieces. There was no sound change. Not even the lights dimmed. I check with Lenn later, too. Nothing observable happened up there, either. Pooh.

  Then we waited. That was to be anticipated, but it was oh, so unwelcome. We knew, ninety minutes into our attack, that whatever damage the wormholes were going to do was occurring. All we could do past that point was wait. Tank couldn't even settle his nerves by shouting changes in firing patterns like a submarine captain in a sea battle. Lenn had preprogrammed everything. The only actions needed were for the techs to place another rack of wormholes in the accelerator and push the illuminated green button.

  Six hours into our attack we knew the initial response. Nothing. Radio interferometers could glean no change in tunnel direction or size.

  “Mr. President, I can confirm, at this point, the void tunnels continues on their earlier course,” Tank said soberly, over the teleconference.

  “Does that have to mean we did no damage?” he asked.

  Tank ran a hand though his hair. “No, not necessarily. If we destroyed something, it could produce forward-debris moving in the same direction.”

  “No, Tank,” I said, “if it was debris it wouldn't still be no-timing.” I was in my usual spot, right by his side, with Sachiko right beside me.

  “Ah, you're probably right. It is still possible we damaged the SOBs, but I'm less and less keen on the notion, as time passes.”

  “So, you're saying our best efforts are completely ineffective?” asked Darlene Masterson.

  “Too early to tell,” I answered for Tank.

  “When will you know for certain?” she pressed.

  “We'll know much more in a day. Until then, all we can do is continue firing and hope for the best.”

  “Very well. Be advised I'm strongly considering launching all our nuclear assets down that same path, very soon,” the general said flatly.

  Tank shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat, Dar Dar. It won't interfere with our work, either way.”

  “But yours might interfere with mine. I may have to place your operations on hold,” she said with steely resolve.

  “For now, we stay with the plan,” said Payette, with palpable fatigue. “Keep me posted, Tank. Sit Room out.”

  That feed
went blank.

  “I'm going to lay down for ten minutes,” Tank announced. “You're in charge, kiddo. Wake me if anything happens.”

  I told her to let him sleep for six hours. Lord knew he needed it. Fortunately, I woke him with pleasant news.

  “Tank,” I whispered as I shook his shoulder. “I brought you some coffee. Tank?”

  He stirred, then began smacking his lips. My, how revolting. I had to suggest some kind of support group to Daisy, if we lived that long.

  “'Zit been ten minutes already?” he asked with a yawn.

  “A few times over. There was nothing to announce, so we let you sleep.”

  “Okay, th … wait. There's something to announce?” he went from supine to standing in a millisecond.

  I smiled with affected innocence. “No, nothing, boss man.”

  “What? Spill the beans.”

  “The tunnels got bigger, then they altered course.”

  He grabbed my shoulders and began spinning us while hopping. “Hot damn. We got their attention.”

  “We got their attention. In fact, that course change?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It went from almost straight at us to perfectly straight at us,” I said, staring into his eyes to see how he'd receive that news.

  He stopped hopping and spinning. “I guess that's good news.”

  “I hope that's good.”

  “Yeah. If nothing else, pretty soon we can reach out and punch the sonsabitches.”

  “Or maybe use conventional weapons?”

  “Oh crap. You're right. I better get on the phone with the dragon lady.”

  “And for once, she'll be happy with you. She's going to get a chance to try to kill Edoozers, up close and personal.”

  “I hope she does more than try. Otherwise we just switched our method of demise from automatic to manual.”

  ELEVEN

  Body Maker-lop was in rest mode, wishing he could dream. Waking was such bliss, that it seemed wrong to it that rest should be necessary but so dull. It was pleased, when awake, that the ship's time-energy stores were three quarters full. That was unheard of. The best any clan ship ever achieved before was just over a fifty percent load. After assimilating the central singularity, the various clans had begun trolling the galaxy for lesser, but rich, fields to make no-time. In a month, the galaxy would be mostly transformed and the clans could make for new space. New assimilations. New joy. Joy could only be felt when awake, so that was what the body-maker preferred. If it was able …

  In its personal area, there resting, it heard a sound that that never existed before. The squawk of an alarm. Many generations ago, it was told that alarms had been installed, but none had ever spoken. Their sound was most unwelcome. The body maker grew angry with the alarm. It willed that they didn't speak. The sound made it … afraid. It had been told fear existed, but it thought those were just idle words, air-beliefs of lesser beings.

  Slowly it drifted toward the control space. The alarm-speech grew louder, and more unwelcome, as it advanced.

  “Mechanical maker,” it said upon entering control, “what is this alarm? Why is this alarm?”

  “I am now uncertain. Signal makers are saying it speaks because there is trouble. A disturbance is amongst the clan.”

  “What is trouble, fool?”

  “Word makers tell me it means events touch us that we must not want.”

  “Summon a word maker. These words are void of meaning.”

  “I believe the trouble is that one of our clan ships is gone, and our own ship is impaired.”

  “Where did a clan ship go? I agreed on no going.”

  “It went nowhere.”

  “If it went nowhere, it is still here, you desiccated fool.”

  “No, body maker, it went and where it went was to nowhere. It went to oblivion.”

  “You are disagreed with by me. Is the clan ship not present here?”

  “Yes and no. Yes parts are here, but meaning is not. The clan ship and the clan family are random now.”

  The body maker swelled to three times its favorite size. It struck the ceiling and huge chunks flew away. It roared like death and thought of the end time. Then it shrank back and was able to ask, “What impairment does our craft have?”

  “A tunnel now exists in Engine One and part of Personal Arena POF is not attached. Clan who were there are now random.”

  “You speak the null set. They cannot be random. There can exist no tunnel. We make tunnels. We do not be tunneled.”

  “I am in agreement with you, but that makes me not in agreement with the way reality is presently configured.”

  “I will go to Engine One and see this tunnel.”

  “Body maker, another clan ship has just gone nowhere.”

  So two are not?”

  “Two are not. Five are impaired. On one of five, the speech maker says randomness is visible to it in minutes. It can taste no-time where time once tasted.”

  “No-time or non-time?”

  “In agreement. I will confirm.” After no delay, it spoke again. “It says it tastes non-time.”

  “Then it will be random?”

  “It is in unable-to-agree-or-disagree mode. It thinks so, yes. I,” it said in CYA mode, “do not think.”

  “Why is nowhere and randomness being now?”

  “Thought Maker-urr has spoken. It says clans that are not our clan are throwing would-be damage at us.”

  “Would-be damage is frequently thrown at us. It can't randomize us. That thought is unreal.”

  “Unreal possibly, but being.”

  “What damage is thrown?”

  “Thought maker says anti no-time is harming our substances.”

  “Anti no-time? That has never been. Why is it now?”

  “Thought maker spoke that was not its expert area. It said others must make those understandings.”

  “Which others? Are others?”

  “Thought maker says that, too, is not its expert area.”

  The body maker stood absolutely still for two hours. No happening like this happening had ever happened. Response was unfamiliar, not a part of it. Finally the body maker was ready to act.

  “In the period you were away, body maker, seven clan ships are now not. Four more are impaired. An impaired one is destined to join the other clans now in nowhere.”

  “If anti no-time is thrown at us, where is it thrown from? Are there other ships near, non-clan ships?”

  “Not in agreement. Science Maker-jrdy knows the tunnels come from a planet near our forward vector.”

  “Does the planet speak to us?”

  “Not in agreement. Only anti no-time is sent. No words. No ships.”

  “How many clan ships are left to me?”

  “One unimpaired and two impaired.”

  “Is impairment being removed?”

  “Yes, where possible. Some impairments will require more time to remove.”

  “Can I add time to the impairments from our time stores?”

  “In agreement. That it would be positive help. Removal of impairment will be sooner.”

  “Then allow for rapid removal. How impaired is this clan ship?”

  “Some so.”

  “Ah. Change vector. Make vector point at anti no-time casting planet. Make forward as fast as possible.”

  “Body maker, do you say I should go straight as a single vector?”

  “Yes. Why would non-linear be more agreeable?”

  “If enough anti no-time strikes our clan ship, we could go nowhere, fast.”

  “Ah. Make many sub-vectors. Choose as you chose. I will be away. I will speak with the thought maker who makes illusiveness.”

  “In agreement. Sub-vectors to avoid anti no-time and to acquire the planet we will go.”

  TWELVE

  Two days later, a lot was clear, and a lot more was new and unsettling. The T-minus count was out the door. The tunnel was zigzagging, just as Tank predicted it would, as soon as he heard
of the course change. The speed seemed to pick up a little, but that didn't keep the ETA from being pushed several weeks later due to the longer course. The cross sectional area of the tunnel was definitely decreased. All but the most pessimistic agreed that meant we'd taken out several ships. Sure, they could be traveling single file, but that was a stretch to imagine happening.

  A change for the worse did come fairly early on after the attack. The void tunnels stopped. Yeah, they turned off the time-eating machines. Whether that was to go faster, or to enter stealth mode, we couldn't know. It did mean our fire control was now blind. Given the stakes, models of where the ships might have been were created. Then, basically best-guess estimates as to where to target were selected. It was disheartening, but Tank felt we had resources to waste and everything to gain. Plus it gave us all a sense that we were doing something proactive. I could have sent Sapale off with Stingray to provide us exact locations, but, if Tank acted on those data, he'd not be able to explain why he was so darn lucky a general.

  A new twist was detected a few days after the first wormhole must have struck an Edoozer vessel. Microwave and radio telescopes began seeing patches of absolute weirdness where the tunnels had been. I know, absolute weirdness is not a very technical term, but we were baffled. It took a while, but a team from the CIA finally made a connection. The weird areas were configured like the blast clouds of an object being blow up at distance. If I might slip back into a Star Wars frame of reference, it was like when a fighter was blown up during an attack run. A cloud of hot debris and fuel festooned forward and outward from a destroyed craft. That's the shape these patches had.

  We concluded they were the result of a destroyed enemy ship, but what we were actually seeing was inexplicable. What it wasn't was hot gas, metal, smoke, or anything we might have predicted from a space ship exploding. If the enemy used fusion drives, we'd expect to see hot hydrogen residue. If their ships were constructed of conventional metals, we'd expect to see spectra of iron, titanium, and aluminum. But none of those were seen in significant amounts. The gallows humor had it that we needn't worry. They'd be landing soon enough and we could generate samples to analyze, locally.