by Shawn Jones
Cort sighed. “Was I evil before you came into my life?”
“You had others then. You don’t now.”
Cort realized he couldn’t read Kim. The thought made him absentmindedly reach for his neck. The inhibitor was there, so he pulled it out of the Atlas socket. Still nothing. She was blocking him somehow.
“You can’t do that to me anymore.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Bazal taught me how to hide from you.”
“Answer my question then. Do you think I’m evil?”
“You know I don’t, Cort. But I know the only reason you are mine is because she was dead. Now she’s not. And as much as I want it to be different, you have to keep her alive for Diane. So your reason for being with me doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Do you think her death is why I’m with you?”
“You kept going back to her,” Kim said. “You tell me how miserable you were, but you keep…you kept going back. You were free from her once. Divorced. Then you married her again. She has a power over you. Without me to stand up to you, for you, she will win. And you will go back to being who you were then.”
Cort was confused. He had remarried Angela after he quit working for Ben Natsumo, thinking it would be better. But it wasn’t better; it got worse. “I’m not sure where you are going with this. Is it about my conscience or about Angela?”
Kim looked back at the image of the enemy ship. “They are all woven together. Like a tapestry. Bazal compared it to fate. The Fates. Somehow, threads that were cut have been re-spun. Now they are upsetting the balance of everything.”
“You want me to let them die.”
“It’s not that simple. I don’t expect you to let anyone die. But there are going to be consequences. Both here and in the future. Not just for us, either. For the Collaboration, for wars that are already in our past, and for people we’ve lost.”
Cort finally caught on. “Even your husband might still be alive.”
“He might. We are manipulating time Cort. The whole universe is going to be different. Even for the enemy species.”
Kim finally walked toward him, but she stopped short of his reach. “I am your wife right now. But in a few days, that might be different.”
“Everyone agrees that paradox won’t affect us,” Cort protested.
“But when we get back, will I have other children and a husband waiting for me at home? Will Clare be waiting for you with a cake in the oven? You’d have three women then. Maybe things will be different with Quinn Faulks, too. How many others might there be?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“There aren’t any easy answers, Cort.”
Kim turned and walked out the room, leaving Cort with an even heavier burden than he had entered with.
“She’s not prettier than you,” he said to the door that closed behind her.
--
Cort was still reeling from his conversation when the door chimed. His comm unit told him it was Clem. He motioned the door open and Clem walked in. “You wanted to see me, sir?”
“What? Oh. Yeah. Not ‘sir’ right now, though.” Cort poured two drinks and walked into the dining area, with Clem behind him. On the table, there was a stack of photographs. He motioned Clem to a seat, and sat beside him.
“When I went to the future, I just took a few things with me. Well, let me back up.” Cort took a sip of scotch and went on. “After Diane died, I checked out of society. I took two photographs with me. One was of Diane with her mom, just before they died. The other was my parents’ wedding picture.”
Clem said, “I’ve seen the one of your parents. It’s in the living room.”
“Yes. Well, when I was down there in my old house, I had to wait for a sedative to take effect on Diane and Addison.” Cort looked at his glass. After emptying it, he said, “Gods damned but that is weird to say. I copied the old family pictures while I waited.”
Clem looked at the file in front of them. “That’s my family?”
“Our family. Your future, my past.”
Clem downed his drink, and stood up. He grabbed Cort’s glass and said, “We’re going to need more.”
Cort tried to smile and said, “Just bring the decanter. We’re going to drink it all.”
Clem stopped and turned at the door. “Wait. I’ve been meaning to ask something. How does alcohol still work? Don’t the synthetics burn it off?”
Cort chuckled sincerely. “That’s another story. I had a hand in designing the new style synthetics. I told the woman who designed them, another of our descendants, to make sure I could get well and truly drunk once in a while.”
“Hm. Well, that’s good enough for me. But what happens if you need to get sober quick?”
“They are tuned to endorphins, adrenaline, things like that. When those things spike, the synthetics get rid of the alcohol PDQ.”
“I get it. Okay.” Clem disappeared briefly and reappeared with two decanters. “Which one is better?”
“The lighter colored one. The other is small batch whiskey. Still good, but not as good as single malt.”
Clem sat down next to Cort and began to pour. “Let’s drink the scotch first, then.”
“I should have brought some more back from Earth.”
“Drunk paradox? No thanks.”
Cort emptied the first glass and said, “Good point.” And when do I tell Clem I don’t want to go back to the future? How will he take it?
Clem opened the file and said, “She was a pistol.”
Cort looked at the woman in the black and white photograph. She was wearing a bonnet and smoking a long-stemmed pipe. The black dress she wore looked slightly off on her left arm, cutting into her body much sooner than it should have. Cort said, “I know she was your wife’s grandmother. And that they used her kitchen table as an operating table when they cut her arm off, but that’s all anyone I ever met knew about her. Tell me her story.”
“She hated me. I mean absolutely hated me. But she was a good woman. Her people were Quakers, and she had a falling out with her pa. Something about a secular man. That was long before I met her obviously, but Mary knew a little of the story. I guess her man got her to leave the group, and he took her out west. I don’t know how he died, but Mary told me an aunt had said she caught him with an Indian woman and killed them both.”
“Wow. What about her arm? How did she lose it?”
“She was working a farm with her second husband and the plow horse got spooked by a snake. She had the reins wrapped around her wrist, and when the horse took off, she got pult across the plow. She had a nasty cut all the way up her arm, and by the time the doc got there, it was already bad infected. He cut it off right there on her table, sure as sin. She smoked that damned pipe of hers while he did it, too. Some Indian plant kept her from feeling the pain, I guess. Or not caring about it anyway.”
“Peyote?” Cort asked.
“Oh no! Peyote is locoweed. It causes you to twitch and see things. It’s what they used in their ceremonies to find their spirits. Makes you bleed quick, too. If she’d smoked it that day, she’d probly have bled out.”
“Hmm. Okay then. I didn’t know that.”
“I ate dinner on that table a few times. She loved to tell the story when she served meat.”
“I’d like you to write down what you know about the people you recognize. For Diane and Dalek.”
Cort turned the picture over and looked at the next one. It was of a young girl riding a pony. She was in full cowgirl garb, and the pony was being led by an old, bald man. In the background, there was an old Buick and some railroad tracks. Clem asked who the man was, as he didn’t know him. Cort said, “He was a neighbor named Lee Peck. He was ancient by the time I came around, and he was good to us kids. Kind of a grandpa to us. He was who you would have been if you hadn’t been taken. The girl is my sister Ann. The Pecks would pay us boys for chores, like washing their car, or mowing their yard. If I worked for them in the mornin
g, Mabel Peck would make me breakfast. It would always be two pieces of bacon, two pieces of toast with butter and honey on them, and a glass of Tang.”
“What’s Tang?”
“Oh, it was like fake orange juice powder you mixed with water. It was pretty good as I recall.”
Cort looked at his great grandfather and thought about sending the man to his death, and looking at himself in the mirror afterward.
--
When Kim and Dalek got back to their quarters two hours later, both men were unconscious with their heads on the table, and pictures surrounding them. With the help of a FALCON and its strength enhancements, she put them both to bed.
“If you’d let my FALCON be strong like yours, I could help you, Momma.”
Kim dropped Cort on a couch, and turned to Dalek. “You will get that soon enough.”
“Are you and Poppa still fighting? Is that why you are leaving him here?”
She ruffled his hair and lied. “No, Honey. I just slipped.” Picking Cort up again, she carried him to their bedroom.
Five
In the armory bay, Cort and his sole lieutenant, a man named Rai, led CONDORs through a mock invasion of the ship they were chasing. Thanks to the octopods, they had a reasonable idea of what the ship looked like from the inside, but they still had no way of knowing how many aliens were aboard. The number was at least two hundred and fifty, but the ship was large enough to house well over a thousand. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that the octopods could only see into the minds of nearby aliens, and those minds were confused, as if they were fighting their own battles.
“We need another LT, sir.”
Rai was right. There were just too many men for the young lieutenant to corral, even with Cort’s help. He would have liked to promote Clem, but even with his own admitted favoritism, the twentieth-century man just didn’t know enough about modern tech, weapons, or strategy. He asked Rai for input, and they talked about their options, while the fighters took a break.
“I don’t think I can even take Clem with us. He’s just not ready. It’d be like killing him myself.”
Rai agreed and suggested two of his sergeants, and a corporal named Schwartz. Cort gave each of the three a squad of men, and had them run through several battle simulations, rotating the squads every few battles. When the sims were finished, Cort asked each Marine to give their assessment of the potential LTs. Without exception, every Marine gave Schwartz the lowest rating, having achieved the fewest sim goals under his leadership. Seeing what bothered them, Cort ordered one more sim, involving all three teams. After the squads were in place around the shuttle bay, he started the melee.
“This time, you fight each other, live fire. Begin now.”
Schwartz’s men moved through the bay silently, clearing one room after another, as they approached their foes. The other two teams, true to their leaders, moved quickly and efficiently, both making nearly double the progress of Schwartz’s Bravo Team.
Alpha’s team leader called out a command to his squad, and they burst into the simulated enemy command center, with two men cutting in each direction as they burst through the entry. All four CONDORs dropped when Charlie Team’s rifles fired actual rounds into their opponents. Alpha’s leader rolled into the room, and came to a stop under the barrels of five of Charlie Team’s weapons.
Cort said, “Bravo Team, you have a new objective. Alpha Leader has been taken captive. Rescue him.”
In a painstakingly slow manner, Schwartz continued to move his people through the mock-up of the alien ship. They cleared the outer ring, leaving motion sensors behind them, and moved one level deeper into the ship. He led two Marines into the third command ring of the enemy ship, and left two others with instructions to take positions outside the command center’s bulkhead.
Schwartz opened fire outside the entryway, and when Charlie returned fire, the two remaining Bravos breached the wall, and eliminated all five members of Charlie team from behind.
Cort took another vote, and the team members of all three teams chose Schwartz.
“Of course speed is important, but Bravo took control of this mock-up without a single casualty. Do you want to get to your objective quickly, or get to it alive?”
--
Because Kim refused to leave him, Cort ordered that she be sedated. Ceram and Dalek accompanied her on board the larger shuttle, along with four Marines and five additional Jaifans. There were also twenty other humans, and four members of each species rescued from the Gryll universe.
Cort stood in front of the avatar, his hands on George’s shoulders, and spoke in a solemn tone. “You are the only person in the universe I trust with the lives of my loved ones.”
“I understand, Father.”
“Is your memory synced with the ship’s core?”
The avatar straightened up and said, “Yes, sir. I have duplicated all information since Bazal first made contact with me on Solitude. I have also put a small memory core in the shuttle that contains another copy of my avatar’s memory, and some additional information from my past in case I have difficulty syncing with myself on Solitude.”
“Good. Study the planet while you are there. When we get back, Doctor Pan and his science people will appreciate the data. Get on board then, Son.”
Cort hugged the avatar and stood up. Turning to the two senior Jaifans, and knowing they would follow his wishes, he simply said, “Thank you.”
“Pledge Father,” Tur stood a bit more erect and clicked, “It has been the greatest hon…”
Cort raised his hand. “Stop. Just take care of my family.”
Ceram clicked, “Cortland…” but Cort held his hand up again.
He turned to walk away from the shuttle bay. As he reached the vacuum barrier, he whispered, “I feel the same way. About both of you,” knowing the two Jaifans would hear his words.
When the shuttle moved off, he climbed into the hatch of the HAWC, which had a CONDOR strapped to its back. Connecting to the system, he ordered George to disconnect from his avatar on the shuttle.
“Disconnected. The shuttle is away. They have jumped to the heliosphere of the Ares system. They are out of harm’s way, Father.”
Cort opened another channel, “Clem, are your people ready?”
“Yes, sir. We are suited up. If you need us, we’ll get there quick.”
“Lieutenant Schwartz, is your CONDOR team ready?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve each got a combat drone on our back, too. Standing by.”
“Rai?”
“Yes, sir. As soon as the tethers are in place, my people will follow.”
Cort switched to the battle net. “Ares to task force. Okay people, we’ve simmed this thirty times.” He chuckled. “But this time, let’s try to get it right.”
After a chorus of, “Oohrah!” Cort ordered George to put the Remington in position. Thirty seconds later the ship slipped into place on the edge of a two-dimensional grid of gravity generators. Long-range scans picked up the enemy ship over thirty light years away, and less than a second later, the grid activated, and the enemy ship came into visual range, appearing as a streak of light to human eyes.
For the briefest moment, the ship shimmered like the heat of a desert highway; it was almost a beckoning mirage. Through his HUD, he watched gravity generators move into position around the enemy ship. When all the generators were in place, and the gravity field was complete, light bathed the entirety of the enemy ship, blinding HUDs and sensors for a moment. When they reset, the scene before Cort was shocking and somewhat unreal.
A field of debris seemed to be bathed in the frozen beam of a flashlight. In the center of the field was a framework that Cort recognized as the core of the ship, resembling a building with no outer walls. Bodies, equipment, and what seemed like thousands of pieces of flotsam, escaped the unprotected vessel from the areas that were open to space.
The outer sections of every deck looked like a warehouse, with large open spaces, and cargo str
apped to open decks. It could have passed for a loading dock on Earth or Solitude, but in the far reaches of space, this sight was incredible and fantastic. Interior walls and bulkheads were visible beyond the cargo areas, with airlocks or hatchways that seemed to be large enough for CONDORs to pass through.
“What the hell?” Cort asked no one in particular.
“I don’t know what happened, Father.”
“Take us in close. Now!” Cort ordered as he started running back down the barrel of the ship. “All the way in! I want to be able to walk onto that ship. And close the gravity net!”
Two minutes later, the barrels of the Remington were only a hundred meters from the enemy ship. Cort dropped from his HAWC, suited up in his CONDOR, and ran down one of the barrels that had, in their own right, destroyed entire worlds.