“I’ve had the computer calculate the year, based on the star positions above and our rough longitude and latitude,” Toby said. “Near as it can tell, we’re not in 2256. We’re not even close.”
That was their target year. Scott already knew they’d overshot. But by how much? At this point, did it really matter?
“How bad is it?” Scott asked, when Toby didn’t go on right away.
“We landed sometime around the year 2456. We overshot our mark by about two hundred extra years.”
Nineteen
For a long moment Scott was frozen, barely able to think, let alone speak. Four hundred years in the future? Jumping forward two hundred had seemed a massive leap. But four? It was crazy. Earth should have been populated by a humanity that was as far ahead of the world he’d left behind as his era was beyond the middle ages. Maybe more, given the way technology had been advancing at a geometric rate.
Instead, he’d found humans living in warrens that were left over from the twenty-first century, using tech that was more reminiscent of the stone age, albeit with scraps of iron and steel. They’d probably gathered those from the ruins of his civilization, Scott realized.
Four hundred years. If he’d arrived at the correct year, would he have lived out his entire life before any of this happened? Would he have missed humanity’s fall entirely? Or been there to watch it happen?
Instead, he was here to watch the scraps of what was still left, clinging to life even after all the lights had quite literally gone out.
Scott felt more tired than he’d been for a long time. In a way that was a good sign. Being able to sleep meant the FFI hadn’t yet kicked into overdrive. His personal time-bomb was still ticking. But this exhaustion was more than just ordinary sleepiness.
“It’s all gone, isn’t it?” Scott asked.
Toby didn’t answer at first. It was more or less a rhetorical question anyway, so Scott wasn’t expecting much of an answer. He already knew. All he had to do was look out the window or check out the great bastion of society that was the cave-dwelling people who’d tried to imprison him within minutes of meeting him.
“It might be. Or it might not,” Toby said at last. “We have the means to go and find out, if we work at it enough.”
“The ship?” It didn’t seem especially likely to ever fly again. They’d need to remove the nose from the ground and literally flip it end over end. The technology to accomplish that had existed when Scott departed Earth, but it would have been hard even in 2056. In 2456, it was beyond possibility.
“Humans made Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid with less technology than these people have,” Toby reminded him.
That was true, but hadn’t he heard once that archaeologists had tried to replicate those feats without success? No one could figure out how they’d done it. That didn’t bode well for trying to lever a hundred-and-twenty foot spaceship into launch position.
“I just don’t know what to do, now,” Scott said. He kicked aimlessly at the chair. “I figured we’d have so much catching up to do when we landed that I’d spend the rest of my life learning about all the advances that had taken place while I was gone. And I could teach others, too, about how things had actually been in the twenty-first century.”
Historians had a bad tendency to get the details wrong, in Scott’s opinion. There always seemed to be things missing from the stories, and his best guess was that was the human element. People did things for reasons. Often, those reasons were more important than the actions themselves. But history tended to just recall the acts and not the motives behind them.
“You certainly have a lot you can teach here,” Toby said.
Scott laughed. “Assuming they don’t just drop me in a cell again?”
“You got out last time. I think you’ll be even more prepared next time.”
“You sound awfully confident there’s going to be a next time,” Scott said. “I’m not planning on getting captured again anytime soon.”
Toby stared at him and make a strange sound from his speakers. It took Scott a moment to realize he was doing a dog-chuff version of laughter.
“What’s so funny?” Scott asked.
“Knowing you, I think we can count on getting into trouble more often than not,” Toby said, still laughing. But then he grew more serious and added another thought. “You do seem to be almost as adept at getting yourself back out of your predicaments as you are at getting into them, though.”
Scott blinked. “Was that another compliment? That’s what, two in one day? Three?”
“Don’t push your luck,” Toby growled. “Get some sleep. I’ll watch the cameras and wake you if anything happens outside.”
“OK,” Scott said. He yawned cavernously. It had been an exhausting morning. Even though the sun was still high overhead, a nap seemed like a good idea.
He made his way up from the cockpit into the next section. He peeked in on Tamara. She was still asleep, sealed in the pod as it treated her injuries. Scott smiled when he saw her. She looked so different asleep. The hard-ass warrior wasn’t there anymore.
With luck, the pod would be able to repair her injuries. He felt guilty about that. It was his fault that she’d been hurt, his ship and its tech that had caused her eardrums to burst. The ship’s medical systems were the best money could buy when he left. Would they be enough to heal her injuries?
Scott checked the readout. The prognosis looked good. His computer gave a high probability of Tamara recovering completely. That was a relief. Some good news at last.
His eyelids felt like they were growing heavier by the minute. Scott grabbed a blanket and slipped down to the lower wall, the one closest to the ground. Then he bedded himself down as best he could beneath a computer console. Tucked away like that, he felt secure. The cubby-like space felt comforting rather than confining.
Toby would remain alert to any problems. Scott knew he’d probably wake up to some other emergency soon enough, and that made it difficult for him to fall asleep right away. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place, here. Deadly dragon above and dangerous humans below.
Somehow he needed to figure out a way to resolve both issues safely. All while also getting his ship upright so that he could continue his journey.
None of which he had any idea how he was going to do.
“Well, it can’t get any harder, at least,” Scott murmured to himself.
He almost immediately regretted saying those words. Of course it could. Inviting Murphy over for a visit was never a good idea. In fact, with his luck, he had a bad feeling that not only could his situation get worse, it probably would.
Sleep took a long while to come, and when it did, Scott dreamt of dragons chasing him down dark tunnels.
Twenty
“We’ve got a problem.”
Toby’s words snapped Scott awake. He sat up quickly. Too fast, in fact. His head collided against the console over his head with an echoing thud. He groaned and lay back down again.
“Are you all right? I felt that from up here,” Toby asked.
Scott groaned a second time in response.
“Well, when you’re finished banging your skull against the computer, our friends are back,” Toby said.
Scott lifted his head again, careful this time to avoid smashing it into anything. He rose and clambered back down to the cockpit area. The new knot on his forehead joined the one from the day before on the back of his head. Scott touched the tender spot and winced. That was gonna leave a mark.
“What’s going on?” Scott asked as he slid down the deck to the pilot’s station.
A glance down at the monitor told him most of the story. The chief and his little band of tunnel dwellers were back. The threat of the dragon had kept them away for a while, but they were persistent. As he watched, they crept through the brush toward his ship.
“If they start banging on the hull again, there’s going to be trouble,” Toby said.
“Why?” Scott asked.
“Because our friend upstairs didn’t leave. In fact, it looks like she’s settling in to stay,” Toby said.
“She?” Scott asked.
Toby tapped a monitor with a paw .The screen showed an image of the dragon still curled up in the rocket cone. But there was something new alongside the beast: three cat-sized oval orbs. They gleamed in reflected sunlight. Scott knew at once what they had to be.
The dragon had laid eggs on top of his ship.
“Unless males lay eggs in this species, it’s a she,” Toby said.
“Yeah, that could be a problem,” Scott agreed.
The humans were almost to his ship. If they started trying to crack through the hull again, it would probably wake the dragon. Based on his interactions with the other dragon — the one now squashed beneath the nose of his ship — he didn’t think that was going to go well for the humans. Mama dragon there was going to decide the humans looked like a tasty snack.
As irritated as Scott was at the chief for imprisoning him, he didn’t think the man deserved to be eaten. After all, he was just trying to rescue his daughter.
“Oh shoot! Tamara!” He’d completely forgotten her in his rush to get down and see what was going on. She was still asleep in the medical pod.
Scott glanced at the screen again. Her people were still stalking their way toward the ship. Their movements were slow and cautious. Like they thought they could sneak up on him. They probably did think that, and to be fair, they had no understanding of the tech at his disposal. They didn’t have heat and motion sensitive cameras like he did, and they probably wouldn’t understand what they were even if he tried to explain them. But he knew someone who might be able to explain the danger they were headed into.
“I’m going to wake Tamara,” Scott said. “She might be able to warn them off. They’ll believe her, where they probably won’t trust us.”
“I’d suggest you hurry, then,” Toby said.
Wishing again that he’d thought to arm the ship, Scott raced back to the handholds and started climbing up into the next ship section.
“Just one phaser bank and I could make most of my problems go away,” he muttered, daydreaming about science fictional weaponry.
He’d figured that would be the sort of tech Earth would have when he returned. Nope, not even close. If the Stargazer represented the last significant technology still functioning on Earth, then it was a damned treasure trove for anyone who understood what it represented. The humans here would either fight over it or try to destroy it, once they understood it better.
Was there some way to go back in time? If he could just return the way he’d come, go back those extra two hundred years, then he could warn Earth what was coming. Maybe he could change the outcome.
Or maybe it was all locked. Scott shook his head. The ship wasn’t a time machine. All he’d done was fly so fast that time swept by more rapidly for the rest of the universe. It was a one-way trip forward through time. He’d cast the dice, hoping to find a better world when he arrived.
Instead, he had this mess. He tapped the buttons on the medical console a bit harder than he really had to. What was he going to do now? In the short term, Scott knew he’d simply been reacting to one crisis after another. Sooner or later, he needed to break out of that loop and work on longer-term planning. If he kept this up, eventually one of these emergencies was going to overwhelm him.
The medical pod opened, breaking into his thoughts. Tamara was still strapped down. Her limp body would have tumbled free from the pod otherwise. Scott tapped another command, and the system injected her with a stimulant to bring her back around. He’d have preferred to let her sleep it off. That was the safest, best bet. But her father didn’t have time for that.
Tamara’s eyelids fluttered. “What? Where am I?”
“In my ship. Remember? Your ears were hurt. I used my machines to help heal them. Can you hear me better now?” Scott said.
“Yes, I can hear you fine. Just a little dizzy,” she replied.
“That should pass. Listen, I could use your help this time.”
Tamara nodded. “Sure. What do you need?”
“Your father is outside. They were scared off for a bit, but they’re coming back now,” Scott said.
“I don’t know if I can talk him out of attacking. Is your ship secure enough to hold them off?”
“Definitely. I don’t think they can break in anytime soon,” Scott said. “But that’s not the problem. We need to stop them before they wake up the dragon sleeping on top of my ship and it decides they look like dinner.”
Twenty-One
By the time Tamara and Scott got down to the cockpit, her father’s team had managed to reach the ship. They were still being stealthy about their approach, thank god. If they’d already started banging on the door, it wouldn’t have been pretty. Scott peered through the monitor, trying to figure out what they were up to. Two of the warriors kept watch while the other three and their chief were working with something on the ground.
“What are they doing?” Scott asked. He tapped the monitor to zoom the camera in, but the angle was still bad.
“At a guess, they’re assembling a drill,” Tamara said.
“You have drills?” Scott asked, his eyebrows shooting up.
“They’re not hard to build from scraps of the old world, and they’re essential to our survival. We’ve lost much, according to our records, but not everything.”
Scott nodded absently. It figured that they’d have retained whatever they could of technology. He doubted they’d have a motor, but if they could power a drill by hand for long enough, it might well be able to rip through his hull. A lot would depend on what quality alloy they used for the drill bit. The Stargazer was designed to take a beating, and Scott didn’t think hand tools would be able to penetrate it easily.
“We need to stop them before they wake that up,” Scott said, tapping the screen showing the sleeping dragon and her eggs.
“The laser might work as well,” Toby reminded him.
“Or it might just wound the dragon and piss it off,” Scott replied. “Tamara, can you let your father know about the danger?”
The cockpit was designed for one person. One person and a dog fit fairly well. Two people and a dog was getting overcrowded, and Scott was uncomfortably aware of how close she was to him. She seemed to be aware as well and took care to brush her arm against his as little as possible. He did the same out of respect for the woman, but her presence was… distracting. In a good way, he had to admit, but he could ill afford to lose his concentration just then.
“Can we speak to them with the device you used before? But with less volume?” Tamara asked.
“We could, but the speakers are set high enough on the ship that I worry anything loud enough for the men to hear it will also reach the dragon,” Scott said.
“You’re saying I have to go out there,” Tamara said.
Scott nodded. “I’d do it, but I doubt your father would listen to me. He might listen to you.”
Hell, half the reason Hector was still down there trying to break in was likely that the man’s daughter was inside the Stargazer. If Scott had left her outside to fend for herself, he might have picked her up and taken her home, leaving him the hell alone. But then Tamara might have lost her hearing. Scott couldn’t find it in himself to regret his decision.
“I’ll do it. Show me how to exit?” Tamara asked.
“Of course. Toby, mind the screens?”
“Of course,” the dog parroted back at him. Was it rolling its eyes?
There were a bunch of things on board the Stargazer that might be useful in this scenario, but most of them were back in the hold. He did have a few useful tools close at hand, though. Scott broke open the weapons locker in the main area and surveyed the handful of guns there. They had seemed like overkill back on Earth in 2056. But out here, in this mess? He found himself wishing he’d brought along a rocket launcher.
He slipped a .44
pistol from the rack and picked up a magazine for the weapon. Scott was proud that his hands didn’t shake as he seated the rounds into the gun and pulled back the slide to chamber the first one. He’d never used a gun in violence. Never really thought he would ever need to. But he had enough hours on the range to know how to use all the weapons on board his ship.
Tamara stared at him as he clipped a holster to his belt and slid the pistol into it. She watched every move he made. Did she know what the weapon was? Scott didn’t think it was likely any firearms had survived this long, and they certainly lacked the manufacturing capabilities here to make new ones. He didn’t think she recognized it, but she might see the care he used in handling the gun and recognize it was a weapon.
Regardless, she didn’t ask, and he didn’t offer any information. With luck he wouldn’t have to use the thing. If anything would wake up the dragon, gunshots would almost certainly do the trick.
Armed and ready, Scott led Tamara up to the airlock, then started it cycling. A quick glance at the monitors showed the coast was clear. Once he was sure there was no one outside waiting for them, Scott opened the interior door. He let Tamara slip in ahead of him, then followed her and closed the inner door. He held his hand over the palm-print reader, but before he pressed it and opened the door, he turned to Tamara.
“You helped me, back there. If this goes badly, try to get back into the ship. I can protect you in here,” Scott said.
“And my people? My father?” she asked.
Scott frowned. How was he supposed to answer that? If he let them inside the ship, they’d have him and it. He wasn’t about to just stand there and let them have everything.
“They imprisoned me,” he replied.
“They were frightened. You are something new, and that scares people,” Tamara said. “Give them time, and they will come to see you in a better light.”
The Quantum Dragonslayer Page 8