Ryan Time

by Craig Robertson

  He snapped a mini salute and dashed away.

  I headed to Stingray. “Everyone gone?”

  “Yes. Security backed the waiting line out the door, then they locked it.”

  “How many'd you ferry?” I asked Sapale.

  She smiled. “Almost five hundred.”

  I whistled, loudly. “Impressive.”

  “Yeah, I know. Plenty of materials, too. They'll do well for a long time. With any luck, they can be resupplied after the air clears. But, even worst-case, they might be self-sustaining. And I personally placed that time-lock device Aramthella said would isolate them if something bad happens to Earth.”

  “Perfecto,” I mumbled, not really focusing. “I'll get to Aramthella's bridge. You dust off in Stingray as soon as we emerge behind the enemy fleet.”

  “Roger that,” she returned with a grin.

  In a couple minutes I met up with the other two.

  “No change,” began Sachiko. “ETA six minutes.”

  “How many ships?”

  “Fifty seven, at present.”

  “Okay, tell Earth defense to open up with all they got. Put us four light minutes behind them. The moment we're there, we let them have it, too.”

  “Copy,” replied Aramthella. I was pleased she wasn't splitting hairs in this crisis and insisting the captain make the actual orders.

  I could feel us move, slightly. Otherwise, the world was quiet.

  We reentered real space exactly 3:58 behind the enemy force. “Fire all wormhole weapons,” called out Sachiko. “Fire for three full minutes, then cease fire.”

  Stingray folded to be just outside our time ship. In the for-what-it's-worth category, she opened up with all she had.

  A few minutes later, I called out,“Time to first Earth wormhole impact?”

  “Minus four seconds.”

  “Damage assessment.”

  “Two ships exploded, three veered severely off course, five sustained heavy damage,” replied Aramthella.

  “Still too damn many of them,” I seethed between my teeth. “Al, report?”

  “We have dinged a few enemy vessels. No significant impact.”

  “Aramthella,” I screamed as it hit me, “can you freeze the enemy ships in time?”

  “At this range, yes. It will require massive—”

  “Do it. Now.”

  “The remaining thirty seven viable clan ships are in stasis,” she reported.

  “But we can't hurt them while they're frozen?”

  “Negative. I must release them for that to be possible.”

  “Al, coordinate fire sequence and time-release sequence with Aramthella. I want a massive number of wormholes to hit each ship just as it's reanimated.”

  “Roger that, Captain,” shot back Al.

  Within fifteen minutes, the entire clan strike force was destroyed. But, I knew we'd gotten lucky. When the rest of the clan came calling, they 'd be ready for that trick. Still, it was a massive victory.

  The radio sang to life. “This is President Payette. I cannot tell you how proud we are of our guardian angels. Thank you, forever.”

  I elbowed Sachiko that she should respond, not me. “Your welcome, sir. We're just glad we could do our part.”

  “That'll go down right next to the One Small Step speech, if anybody asks me,” poked Tank.

  “The remainder of the local fleet is holding position, while repairs are made on the time makers craft. Time needed for that is unclear,” reported Aramthella.

  “Safe for now,” said a much relieved POTUS, “is good by me.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The time maker was madder than it even thought was possible. It knew insult. It knew incompetence on the part of the clan, and it knew losses from the clan in battle, for the first time ever. And all because of the defective Body Maker-lop's foolish impulses. The time maker could not sense the body maker's use-of-time signature. Perhaps it was no-time, or non-time. But if it weren't, the time maker would concentrate such negativity on the sorry imp, that it would wish it was never budded.

  The time maker lorded over tens of thousands of clan ships, scattered through out the discoverable universe. It had sent two hundred clan ships to the accursed galaxy that now was fighting back. The time maker named that galaxy The One That Lop Lost, so that the inept body maker's shame would be declared for all time, and known for even more time. All time would be one with Body Maker-lop's failure to the clan.

  But there was no time to dwell on reverse time. It needed a plan for forward time. Fifty three clan ships remained in-time, with the time maker's ship, in The One That Lop Lost. The vile supreme desecrators had un-timed the initial assault wave, and no-timed them. Fools, that were the assault force body makers. What form of deconcentration of mind power allows itself to be un-timed in battle? If it was saddled with one more mental derelict, the time maker would simply end all time. It would be superior to seeing its beloved clan so mocked, so disgraced.

  No, no, it hounded itself in its awareness. Focus on forward time. Save the clan. The clan will reign forever, so help that be true. Yes. It would lead the next wave, the final wave, against the sinful scum that defiled its clan.

  “When can we make forward vector to the planet that harbors the profaners?” screamed the time maker.

  “Soon, lordfullness,” replied a single repair maker.

  “Cowards besmirch this clan,” howled the time maker. “Only one repair maker is in agreement with my request of knowledge?”

  One by one, the lead repair makers of the other clan ships whispered truth to the time maker, and were ashamed of themselves.

  The assessment was not pleasure making for the time maker. But, if truth was truth, it was unable to countermand it. The lag time for full functionality was ten subunits. But, in ten point one subunits, the desecraters would become one with no-time. No-time was the only time left for those who dared to act against the clan.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I'm not much of a houseplant guy. You probably figured that already. They're decorations that aren't decorative. They require fuss and attention, they always die, pathetically, but only after they decompose and smell bad. And, if they're vigorous and live forever, what do you have? A houseplant. You can't eat it, converse with it, or sell it for anything near what you paid for the damn thing. Whoever invented the houseplant needs to suffer, IMHO.

  Sapale never had much use for them either. If you recall, her species are herbivores. The only value she places in houseplants is in their worth as a last-ditch snack, in a crisis. That said, she did display, at the time, a circumturus. Those are kind of like houseplants, and kind of not. They're alive, they need feeding, and they can't move on their own accord. Similar enough, if you ask me. But, they're more crystalline than animal or plant tissue. If you picture a one foot tall pyramid, cut it in half, and turn it upside down, you have the shape of a circumturus, as it resides in nature. It'll weigh around a quarter pound. If a circumturus is left pretty much alone, doused with a protein slurry, once in a while, it pulses a faint magenta light you can see if the room is dark enough. It'll do that a long while, decades, then it won't do that, any longer. Then, it's dead-like, but not really, because it wasn't so very alive, before.

  What good are they? Not enough, I'll tell you straight up. But, the value others place in them, the reason circumturusus are kept on shelves to gather dust, is that they are mildly telepathic. Maybe slightly telepathic is a better word. If you sit within a couple feet of one, you might, or might not, get an occasional mental image. Say you're reading the sports section. In the middle of the box scores for a game, you'll suddenly think purple pudding, or sexy socks. Those impulses originate from the stupid circumturus. Whether a circumturus has any idea what a pudding or a sock actually is can be debated. But, those are the brain-farts that people with too much time on their hands live to experience, when they commit to owning a circumturus.

  Why is this important to relate, in the middle of an existential crisis?
Here's why. Keeping in mind that no circumturus, ever, has transmitted a single deep, or important thought to anyone, it did something most unexpected to me.

  I was sitting alone in the mess, drinking tea. No. Got you. I was drinking coffee, of course. Come on, tea? Anyway, my mind was straining to work out some defense against the next assault of the clan ships. No plan that tickled my fancy was anywhere near being spawned to life. Out of nowhere, I began to think about the dawn of creation, of the earliest universe. I saw superheated plasma spin, coalesce, then fly into randomness. I felt cosmic inflation, and smelled the plasma roil angrily. I knew there was something, where there had been, just an instant before, less than nothing.

  I was present at the beginning of time.

  I was time.

  No, time was known to me. It was … that's all I can say. The experience was so fleeting and so nebulous. But, somehow, I met time. No, I got what it was to be time.

  Yes. That is the closest I can put what I knew in that instant. I got time.

  And then, in a flash that snapped my head back, I was siting in the mess, looking down at a mug half full of lukewarm coffee.

  I looked to the damn circumturus Sapale had left on the table, after she cleaned it, then forgot to stow back where it belonged. It was dead. Well, that's not totally correct, either. It was no longer flashing magenta light, like it had been for years. I began to take deep breaths, and to calm my rapidly accelerating brain. The exact words that throbbed in my mind were WTF. Over and over. WTF?

  I reached to pick up the circumturus. Before I could …

  “All personnel to the bridge,” boomed overhead. It was Aramthella, and there was fear in her tone.

  I sprinted there as fast as my feet would carry me. Sachiko and Tank were already there. In seconds, Sapale pounded up from behind, and caught an arm around me to fully stop.

  “The time maker has committed every ship left to it in the galaxy. They are bearing down on Earth,” Sachiko relayed almost matter-of-factly.

  “How many, how soon?” I asked.

  “Fifty three ships. ETA ten minutes.” She turned to face me. “Aramthella says they will arrive in a closed formation, resembling a two-dimensional wedge.”

  “We're being attacked by a flock of birds,” I mumbled to my self. In any conventional sense of air warfare, that was a lousy way to attack. But, I was guessing the time maker either didn't know it was, or didn't care that it was. Either way, it did not factor in losing as a potential outcome.

  “When can Earth defenses commence firing?” I shot back.

  “Not until the formation is three light minutes away.”

  “What? Why so late?”

  “The spacing and Z-axis positioning of the enemy vessels is changing, randomly. It is vanishingly likely to hit one until they are much closer, and their potential evasion maneuvers are less effective.”

  “Put us ninety degrees to their vector, at an equal distance. Fire everything the moment we are there. And tell Earth to begin firing. There's no tomorrow if they can't stop the entire fleet.”

  “Roger than,” Sachiko replied, grimly.

  My brain went numb. This was not looking good. In fact, it was looking to end badly.

  “… three ships exploded. Jon, did you hear me?” Sapale shouted as she shook my right shoulder.

  “Huh? What?”

  “We're fully engaged. The formation split into three smaller wedges. Three ships in the nearest wedge had exploded. But they're shielding the other two wedges from our line-of-fire. Jon, most of the clan ships'll be inside the asteroid belt, intact, in less than a thirty seconds.”

  “Ha … have Earth target the other two columns.”

  “The are. They fried a few bogies, but not nearly enough. Honey, what are we going to do?”

  “Aramthella, de-time the enemy fleet,” I screamed.

  “I am unable to,” she said flatly.

  “Why? You did last time.”

  “The time maker is clever. It appears to have locked time in the space-time between us and them. The layers of blockade progress like a tank tread. Our past strategy will not work.”

  “Position to their ninety degrees, Z-axis and fire.”

  “Executed, and ineffective. Their time lock shifted as quickly as we did.”

  “Jon, there has to be something we can do,” shouted Sachiko. “Jon, tell me what to do to save Earth.” She was within moments of emotional collapse. So was I.

  “Aramthella, can we ram the time maker's ship?”

  At the same time:

  “What?” came from Sapale.

  “Are you—” came from Tank.

  “No. The time shield will not permit that,” came from Aramthella.

  Crap.

  “Put us directly in front of the fleet, one light second ahead. Fire continuously.”

  “Done,” the ship replied.

  “ETA to maximal firing distance for the clan ships?” I yelled.

  “Forty seven seconds.”

  “Are we slowing the fleet's advance?”

  “Negative. Time shield is negating our attempts.”

  “Fly through the center of the combined formations. Flank speed,” I said loudly.

  At the same time:

  “No, you idiot,” came for you know who.

  “Jon, why?” came from Sachiko.

  “Belay that order,” came from Tank.

  “Done,” came from Aramthella.

  “Report,” I called out.

  “We passed through the fleet.”

  “And?”

  Half the ships broke-off and are in active pursuit. The remainder are continuing their flight to Earth.”

  “Can you stop time, in the entire solar system. That would include the clan ships.”

  “Negative. The volume of space is too large.”

  “How about the plane of their attack?”

  “Negative. The—”

  “The what? Why can't you stop—”

  “Captain,” said a very somber Aramthella. “It is my sad duty to report to you that the Earth has never existed.”

  “Wha … what do you mean?” she cried out.

  “The clan fleet has just no-timed the Earth-Moon system.”

  EPILOGUE

  Seven days later, I ordered Aramthella to land on Doxie-5 beta 12. The planet was in utter ruin. Ten, maybe twelve hundred years prior, it had self-destructed in an atomic holocaust. A decade-long nuclear winter had left the place all but void of life. Presently, a few bacterial species, creeping up from the depths, was the best the ecosystem could manage to support. It was a perfect spot for us, both physically, and emotionally. The clan ships chasing us would have a huge problem detecting us, given the radioactive nightmare we wallowed in. Furthermore, they'd never think we'd be stupid enough to land there. Plus, the planet looked like we felt. Blighted and hopeless.

  It had been one hell of a week. After the Earth was no-timed, the other half of the clan fleet, which had killed the Earth, were freed up to regroup with the ones right on our tails. Thirty three bedeviled clan ships were focused on only one thing in all the universe. To punish us. My guess was they did not want to simply no-time us. No, my bet was on capture, torture, kill, reanimate, and repeat. Forever.

  Frankly, not a one of us would have cared much, one way or the other. Assuming the few hundred kids on Mars were spared, we were members of a highly endangered species. Time was not on our side. There was no spark of life in anyone aboard.

  Initially, Aramthella's superior speed allowed us to outpace the pack of wolves on our heels. Once it was clear to the time maker that simple pursuit wasn't going to bring us down, he started launching squadrons of clan ships ahead of us, using time. The ship'd drop into the past, accelerate along our vector, and be where we were heading before we got there. That trick only worked once, and we took out the three ships that pulled that stunt the first time. That was more luck than skill, but who's doing the statistics? If your enemy dies and you do not, you w
on that skirmish.

  I had Aramthella skip forward and backward in time, and alter course mid jump. It turns out neither the clan nor she ever thought to attempt that maneuver. It worked really well for several days. By the time the enemy figured out what we were doing, we'd taken out seventeen more of their ships. Those were hollow victories, however. Sure, the ratio was down to thirteen to one. But there existed a limitless supply of clan ships, just far enough away to make their joining the present fray impossible. But, in no time, they'd more than replace the enemy's strength.

  We finally lost them with a mixture of dumb luck, stupid bravado, and ingenuity. There was a lot of science the time ships were capable of that the clan, and maybe even those before them, had never conceived of.

  There is a red giant star I've always loved. Arcturus. It's about forty light years from Earth, and it a big sucker. It occurred to me that, if Aramthella was inside a star, the clan would almost certainly never think to look for us there. Why would they? It was a complete unknown whether a time ship could survive those extremes. Well, there was one fighter pilot just crazy enough to find out if it could.

  After we swung behind Arcturus, and were temporarily out of sight to the clan fleet, I ordered Aramthella to shift to the center of the star. As she was doing so, I had Stingray place a full membrane around the lot of us. I knew from before that Stingray, herself, could survive several hours inside a star, with that level of protection. We did fine. Once we were positioned inside Arcturus, we moved ten thousand years into the future, and exited.

  It worked. The clan ships, ten thousand years after losing our trail, were dispersed to the solar winds. I'm sure they never stopped hunting us. They never would, if I read the time maker properly. But they'd had to spread out, in order to suck the time out of some other unfortunate, involuntary donors. That placed space between them, since they needed enough concentration of space-time to harvest from.

  We'd established that, if Aramthella powered down to a very low level, and we used Stingray as our main propulsion, we were virtually invisible to the clan fleet. Now, virtually isn't entirely, so we were on borrowed time, so to speak. But, we were free and able to hide as long as we could.