Department of Temporal Investigations

by Christopher L. Bennett

  Moments later, the ship that had been Dulmur’s entire world for the past nine days dissolved into a cloud of electric-blue mist. Dulmur was deliriously happy to see it go.

  Aegis observation post

  The timeline might not have changed, but that didn’t mean there were no surprises awaiting the group once they returned to the Aegis outpost. One of the Aegis agents—a six-limbed, spidery arthropod of roughly humanoid size, with a green carapace and an elongated, six-eyed head—scuttled up on its rear four limbs to meet Rodal and the others once they re-entered the complex. “Welcome back, Supervisor. You were missed. The attack on Tanka Misata occurred several days ago. As predicted, only a few dozen Tankans escaped the city. Thirty-three, to be exact, mostly mothers and children.”

  Rodal grimaced. “Thank you, 1652. Did you succeed in transporting the rest to safety?”

  “As many as we could, sir. It was to our advantage that the attackers’ firebombs produced abundant smoke. I gambled that our transporter beams would be mistaken for smoke, and thus rescued a larger percentage of the community than we predicted. Our probes gave no indication that the attackers recognized our intervention for what it was—just a few confused accounts that were dismissed by the other attackers as imagination. Most of them were quite intoxicated as it was.” The technician lowered her head. “We rescued one hundred ninety-three, including nearly all of the remaining children. They’ve been treated and sent on to the homeworld. Confirmed death toll was fifty-six adults . . . seven children.”

  Garcia tamped down on her eagerness to ask about Ranjea, respecting the Aegis members’ moment of silence for those they were unable to save. Finally, though, Rodal asked the question for her. “Has there been any success in tracking Daiyar in the past? Any anomalous regions of subspace interference consistent with the effect of the temporal drive?”

  Agent 1652 hesitated, tapping together the small digits at the ends of her long, spiky forelimbs. “There was one such anomaly registered, Supervisor, in the Skalat star system during a crisis intervention. But that situation appears to have been resolved on site. Further transtemporal intervention proved unnecessary.”

  Garcia’s heart raced at that. “Was it Ranjea? Did he stop her? Did you get him back?”

  The arthropod agent dithered again, her multiple eyes darting between Garcia and Rodal. “We were notified just hours after you left, sir—ma’am—that a message has been waiting in the Aegis’s file system for over five centuries, coded to be unlocked and decrypted upon voice command by Federation Department of Temporal Investigations Agent Teresa Garcia. With your permission, Supervisor?”

  Rodal nodded, and the agent led Garcia over to a wall console whose black surface flickered with colored bars of light. At the agent’s prompt, she addressed it, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “Ah-h, this is Agent Teresa Gabriela Garcia, Federation Department of Temporal Investigations. Agent number—” The Aegis operative shook her head, indicating that was unnecessary. “Um, please unlock and decrypt the message coded for my receipt.”

  The console bleeped, and a circular inset screen lit up. Only a text file appeared on the screen, but the voice that spoke over it was one Garcia had feared she would never hear again. “Teresa. This is Meyo Ranjea. If this works as I have been assured, you should be receiving this message shortly after I last saw you. Much has transpired for me since then. You may take this as my official report on the incident. After Daiyar abducted me on Qhembembem, she took me to the planet Lakina II, where your team later found us. I was placed under the hypnotic influence of an Aegis servo device, but I was able to converse with her and learn her motives . . .”

  Ranjea’s voice proceeded to give a concise yet thorough account of his and Daiyar’s conversation on Lakina II, their flight to the Skalat system in 1807, their impersonation of a pair of Aegis agents, their meeting with a Rikeen agent named Tseechin on the surface of the planet Feth, the revelation of Daiyar’s plan to prevent Tseechin from rescuing a Fethetrit conqueror named Vanthralak, and the subsequent torture of Tseechin for speaking in their defense. Though Ranjea did not have a hateful bone in his body, his description of the Fethetrit’s brutality was uncompromising enough to make Garcia understand Daiyar’s conviction that the Aegis had been wrong to unleash them on the galaxy.

  “Vanthralak’s royal court descended on the city the following day,” Ranjea’s voice went on. “The cities were designed to accommodate the large migratory populations of Fethetrit that roved between them seasonally, with estates reserved for the elites and barracks for their soldiers and slaves. The ruling courts would devour the resources of whatever communities they descended on, requiring months if not years of hard Rikeen labor for the economy to recover between visits. But this time, the city was even more densely crowded, for Vanthralak had brought factions from across the planet together to pay tribute and obeisance to him and petition his court for favor—a way of asserting his dominance and solidifying his power. It was no wonder that this was when the attempt against his life would occur. No doubt many of his enemies were on hand, and there was much activity and confusion to conceal the assassins’ plans.

  “Tseechin had learned that large amounts of fertilizer, solvents, and fuel had gone missing from her agricultural complex and others, suggesting that the assassination weapon would be a high-powered chemical explosive. Since the imperial estate was too well-protected to allow the smuggling of such a large device, her conclusion was that the bomb would have to be placed somewhere along the route of Vanthralak’s parade through the city. The need to search such a large volume was why she had called in extra agents. An Aegis computer can lock onto nearly any location on a planet, but only if it knows where to look. Tseechin was not yet fully recovered from her injuries, but the search demanded all hands. Thus, she made a valiant effort to lead us into the field . . .”

  1807 CE

  Feth

  The pre-parade sweep by Vanthralak’s own security meant that the bomb could not be emplaced until just before or during the parade. However, the delay due to Tseechin’s injuries meant that the Aegis team was unable to take to the field until roughly the same time. It would be a tight window, increasing the risk of failure. Ranjea wondered briefly if they had already altered history simply by being here. More likely, he realized, Tseechin would have stood up the same way for the real Aegis agents and endured the same punishment. Still, the risk of failure was high enough that Ranjea could understand why Daiyar had chosen this as the best mission to intervene in.

  The parade was meant for Fethetrit only, so those few Rikeen allowed out on the streets were expected to avoid the main thoroughfare along which it would travel. Thus, the Aegis team had to stick to the back roads and alleys as they searched for the bomb, their servos set to sniff out the chemical signature of the stolen fertilizer and fuel. Still, Ranjea was able to catch glimpses of the diverse Fethetrit making up the crowd, their fur in various shades of red and orange and occasionally white, their bodily adornments and mane stylings denoting their origins in different tribes and ethnic groups. According to Tseechin, in the past they would have stood apart in their own separate, often feuding groups, and mass gatherings like this would have been fraught with intertribal clashes and duels to the death. But Vanthralak’s army and bureaucracy had forcibly desegregated the tribes, imposing a rigorous new order that rewarded loyalty to the state and the service over blood ties. So far, it seemed to be working, at least to a point. While some degree of tension was inevitable, the gathered Fethetrit contingents currently seemed united in their fervor to celebrate Vanthralak and the spoils he had brought back from his latest raid on Keekuwa.

  “These raids are the key to his success,” Tseechin had explained back at the office. “What industry you see here is limited and crude next to what the Rikeen have on the homeworld. The majority of the Fethetrit’s material wealth and high technology is taken from Keekuwa, either as tribute or as plunder
. Over the years of his reign, Vanthralak has shown that his unified force is able to stage larger raids and force the Rikeen to surrender more of their wealth. Feth has prospered as a result.”

  “At the Rikeen’s expense,” Daiyar had added grimly.

  “In the short term, yes. But this is a step toward the Fethetrit’s development into a starfaring power. Once they use up Feth and spread into space, Keekuwa will be left relatively alone, able to recover. As uptimers, you should know that better than I.”

  Ranjea could sense the comeback Daiyar had wanted to make: But what of all those they prey on instead? Still, she had kept her counsel at the time, not wishing to hint at her true agenda.

  Now Daiyar might be free to act on that agenda. Splitting up to search the parade route could give her total freedom to act, with Ranjea unable to do anything about it—assuming he was able to resist the hypnotic effect enough to try. What if she found the bomb before the others? All she would need to do was keep its discovery to herself.

  Luckily, the call came from Tseechin. “I’ve detected the bomb signature. But there are life readings nearby. I need backup. Beam here at once.”

  Daiyar had not given Ranjea enough instruction in servo use to let him access the Aegis transporter himself, but fortunately the Tomika renegade set her device to beam them both to Tseechin’s side at the rear entrance of a large building. No doubt she wasn’t ready to raise Tseechin’s suspicions by leaving him behind. But what would she do now to prevent Tseechin from disarming the bomb?

  For the moment, it seemed, she would do nothing. “Are you positive?” she asked the genuine Rikeen.

  “As much as I can be from out here.” Tseechin was breathing a bit hard, weakened by her injuries.

  “We should go in. We have to see it to be certain.”

  Was this merely her usual careful planning, Ranjea wondered, or perhaps hesitation? Could some part of her be reluctant to let the assassination happen?

  “There are Fethet biosigns inside,” Tseechin pointed out. “Guards left to protect the bomb until it blows.”

  Ranjea frowned. “That seems . . . like a very unrewarding duty.”

  “Their war priests have no doubt assured them of rewards in the afterlife. Fethetrit, as a matter of cultural conditioning, are rather casual about getting themselves killed.”

  “Their one redeeming feature,” Daiyar muttered.

  “And what if the guards are nonbelievers?” Ranjea wondered.

  “There’s an old Fethetrit saying. ‘Beware the war priests, for they are reasonable. Dispute them on the nature of the Maker, and they will send you to meet Him so you may learn the truth for yourself.’ ”

  “Charming. And that’s who we’re about to confront?”

  Tseechin smiled and held up her servo. “They haven’t seen what our makers can do.”

  That same servo made short work of the lock, but the efficacy of it and its siblings against the Fethetrit guards they found in the building’s basement was more mixed. Daiyar and Ranjea took down the first two with ease, but Tseechin was panting from the descent and missed her shot, allowing the guard to close in and swing at her with his knuckle claws. The Rikeen dodged, but she sustained deep gashes across her arm before Daiyar took the guard down. Ranjea stunned the fourth guard, apparently the last, then joined Daiyar in jogging to Tseechin’s side.

  “You’re hurt,” Daiyar said. She applied her servo to the Rikeen’s wounds on a setting that appeared to stem the bleeding. “That will hold for now . . . but you’ve lost a fair amount of blood, and you’re weak as it is. You need to go back to the office for treatment.”

  Tseechin nodded. “I can handle that. You two disarm the bomb—I’ll monitor from the office and beam you back.”

  “All right,” Daiyar said. Ranjea heard the determination in her voice, but he was still unable to speak up.

  Tseechin twisted her servo to signal for transport, and Daiyar circled behind her. Just as the sphere of cloudy blue light began to form around the Rikeen agent, Daiyar drew Ranjea’s hand phaser from her pocket and fired a brief, low-power burst. Tseechin collapsed and vanished along with the energy cloud.

  “Was that necessary?” Ranjea asked.

  “She’ll be all right. The rest might even do her good. She’ll recover in a while and assume she simply fainted; the beam energy should scatter any phaser signature.” She strode past Ranjea resolutely. “But by then, it will be too late.”

  They found the bomb in a corner of the building’s basement, a set of large drums and detonators placed around a heavy support column, with sandbags lashed tightly around the perimeter to direct the blast inward. Ranjea studied the column and its placement in the building, putting it together with what he’d seen of the building’s construction on the outside. “If I’m right, this could bring down the whole front of this building into the street. Hundreds could be crushed.”

  Daiyar looked almost relieved. “And all we have to do is nothing. Just step back and let history play out the way it was meant to.”

  “Daiyar, Tseechin and the others are native to this time. Don’t pretend this is about the purity of history.”

  “It isn’t. It’s about the morality of it.” She checked the timer, then took a servo reading. “Vanthralak’s convoy is right on time, and we don’t have long. Come on, let’s go.”

  She led him out of the building. Once outside, she headed in the direction of the approaching imperial procession. “We can get a good view from the roof of the adjacent building. There should be enough space between them for us to be safe.”

  “You actually want to see them suffer?”

  She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I just want to make sure this works. And be close enough to deal with any Aegis intervention.”

  Daiyar used the servo to break into the adjacent building, which was closed and vacant due to the parade. From the roof, Ranjea could see the dense, diverse crowd of Fethetrit pushing closer and growing excited as the imperial convoy rolled toward them on the wide thoroughfare. The convoy was like a larger version of the horde of motor vehicles that had descended on the farm complex the day before. Dozens of such vehicles rode at the front and along the sides, bracketing larger, open-roofed ground cars carrying the various elites of the imperial court. At their rear, a large, high float, heavy-walled and armed, tapered upward in a series of gold-plated steps to a heavy throne on which sat Emperor Vanthralak himself—a massive, burly Fethet with blood-red fur and a mane of pure white, adorned in an ornate codpiece and jeweled bandoliers. Flanking and following the royal float was a chain of large, motorized transports whose flatbeds displayed the spoils of the emperor’s latest raid on Keekuwa. Several transports carried rockets and cannons, others jet-propelled aircraft, others piles of precious metals or plundered artworks.

  But as the emperor’s own float drew nearer, Ranjea and Daiyar saw that the transports immediately around it carried a different cargo. Kneeling or splayed flat on the platforms, naked and chained by the necks and wrists, were dozens of Rikeen slaves.

  “No,” Daiyar said. “Oh, no. The plunder . . . Why didn’t Tseechin say it included live captives?”

  “No doubt because such things are a routine part of the Rikeen’s existence here,” Ranjea replied after a solemn moment. “She assumed you already knew.”

  Daiyar’s breathing was hard and fast for several moments, but then she brought it under control. “It changes nothing. Those prisoners . . . They’re not for labor. They’re tonight’s royal feast, Ranjea. They’re doomed either way. At least this way it will be quick.”

  “And it will be the result of your choices, Daiyar. Your actions.”

  “No! I’ve merely removed an obstacle to the Fethetrit traitors’ own actions. This is necessary, Ranjea, to prevent . . . that”—she gestured weakly at the prisoners—“from happening to countless others from dozens of worlds across t
he Gum Nebula.”

  He took her shoulders, speaking urgently but not harshly. “I don’t believe you can live with this, Daiyar. You began on this path because of guilt. You felt that, as part of the Aegis, you were responsible for the tragedy that befell Lakina II and other worlds like it. I understand that. I feel it in Riroa’s memories. She admired your sense of ethics, of duty to others. And she knew how hard you could be on yourself when you fell short of the Aegis’s standards. No wonder you would be so outraged when you believed they had fallen short of their own.

  “But that guilt will not go away if all you do is trade one set of deaths for another. This is not the answer you seek. You cannot let that bomb go off—not if you hope to live with yourself.”

  “And how can I live with myself if I just accept the decisions that led to the Fethetrit being unleashed on the galaxy?”

  Ranjea realized that his ability to touch her meant that the hypnosis was wearing off. He could try to stop her physically if he chose. But he believed there was a better way. “That was not your decision, Daiyar,” he went on. “You spoke to me of how the Aegis values the self-determination of the civilizations it helps. It assists where it can, but with the goal of preserving a civilization’s ability to make its own choices about its future—by ensuring that it still has a future in which to choose.

  “But the freedom of choice does not, cannot, guarantee that those choices will be good or devoid of harm. The Tomika, the Dhei’ten—our peoples used the chance we were given to grow into healthy, adult starfaring civilizations. But sometimes adults who go out into the world meet terrible fates. There is no avoiding that in every case.”

  “And sometimes they go out and choose to inflict terrible fates on others.”

  “Yes. That cannot be helped either. Once they are given the choice, the choice is theirs, and that means there is no guarantee that it will be the one you wished for. That is the self-determination prized by the Aegis, and by the Federation in its own way: The right, not only to succeed, but to fail. Not only to make the right decisions, but to be free to make the wrong ones. There cannot be one without the other. But what matters, what both our civilizations prize, is that all beings have the right to choose for themselves. To take responsibility for their own fates, and the fates of those they affect.