The Legacy of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic

by Robert Kroese

  This conversation was beginning to remind Huiskamp of his exchange with Christina Prince. “Balderdash,” he said. “Traveling very fast is not the same as traveling back in time.”

  “With respect, sir, it is exactly the same. Nothing can travel faster than light. Therefore the only way to get from point A to point B in less time than it would take a beam of light is to bend time. You’re essentially moving from point A to point B before the wave we call the present gets there. It’s counterintuitive, but it’s just Einsteinian physics and some very basic math.”

  “Then hyperspace travel is time travel, by definition.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So we can change the past by traveling through hyperspace?”

  “I apologize, sir, but I’m afraid it—”

  “Depends on your perspective.”

  “Yes, sir. That is, suppose we put a powerful laser on the Gliese gate and aim it at the Geneva gate. We then put a sensor on the Geneva gate that is programmed to receive a message encoded in the laser’s frequency. If the correct string of, say, a hundred characters is received by the sensor, the Geneva gate will self-destruct. So we send the appropriate encoded message from the Gliese laser. But at the same moment, we send a robotic drone through the Gliese gate to the Geneva gate. This drone is programmed to deactivate the sensor and prevent the Geneva gate from self-destructing. Now, using our current understanding of the propagation of simultaneity, the wave we call the ‘present’ moves through space from Gliese to Geneva at the speed of light. Thus, from the perspective of someone at the Gliese gate, the drone was sent through at the same moment the laser was turned on. But from the perspective of someone at the Geneva gate, the drone deactivates the sensor twenty years before the laser was turned on. So did sending the drone through the gate change the past? Well, yes and no, depending on your perspective.”

  “It seems like you’re playing pretty fast and loose with the definition of the past.”

  “Yes, sir. In a way, that’s my point. Once you have a reliable means of altering the past, it stops being the past in any meaningful way—in the same way that the Gliese system and the Geneva system are no longer twenty light-years away from each other. If I look at a map of the surface of Geneva, I can see that Geneva City and New Berne are twenty centimeters away from each other. But if I fold the map, suddenly they are only one centimeter away from each other. One could insist that they are still separated by twenty centimeters, but this is true only for one way of looking at the map, and it’s an irrelevant viewpoint to an ant trying to get from the Geneva City dot to the New Berne dot. A physicist watching the ant move between those two cities can either insist that what the ant is doing is impossible or she can accept that Geneva City and New Berne are now much closer than they used to be.”

  Huiskamp nodded. As much as he wanted to argue, he couldn’t find the flaw in Haas’s position. Huiskamp remembered learning in geometry that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but he later learned this wasn’t always true. In fact, in space travel, straight lines were the exception. Usually you were dealing with one or more gravitational fields, which warped the space you were traveling through. One could insist that in some sense Euclidean geometry still applied, but for all practical purposes, the shortest distance between two points was a curved line. Human beings had evolved to survive in Euclidean space, just as they’d evolved to deal with a model of time where the present was a straight line cutting through the arrow of time, which moved inexorably from past to future. But an idea wasn’t false just because it was counterintuitive or hard to believe. Maybe the hyperspace gates really were time machines all along. Haas’s explanation of the problem of simultaneity sounded uncomfortably similar to Christina Prince’s mumbo-jumbo about time being subjective. It was like they were coming at the problem from two different angles but arriving at the same conclusion.

  “If I understand you correctly,” he said, “what we consider the past may actually be the present or even the future to someone very far away from us.”

  “Yes, sir. But to be clear, we’ve been talking about incredibly vast spaces. The disparity in simultaneity between human-inhabited star systems is much smaller. Earth, for example, is only twenty light-years away. So events happening here are twenty years in Earth’s future, and vice versa. And of course, that discrepancy has effectively collapsed with the advent of the hyperspace gates. Now we’re only a few days apart.”

  “You’re telling me that no matter how much we bend time, it is not currently the ninth century on Earth.”

  “That’s right, sir. The present propagates at a constant rate. The rate is relatively slow, on a galactic scale, but it gets there eventually. Once it does, the past is the past. You can’t change what’s already happened.”

  Huiskamp’s brow furrowed. “So it’s possible to travel twenty years into the past by traveling twenty light-years across space through the gates, but I can’t go farther back than that?”

  “Well,” said Haas, suddenly unsure of himself. “I have to admit that at the moment, I can’t think of any reason why not, at least on a theoretical level. If you can go back twenty light-years, theoretically you could go back a hundred.”

  “Or thirteen hundred.”

  “Yes, sir. There are plenty of practical problems, of course. The classic grandfather paradox, for one.”

  “If you could travel back in time, you could kill your own grandfather, preventing yourself from ever existing. But doesn’t that presuppose the reality of free will?” Huiskamp was surprised to find himself playing devil’s advocate. It seemed his subconscious had been working on the riddles posed by Christina Prince.

  “Sir?”

  “What if one of the side effects of traveling back in time is the loss of free will? As a result of traveling back in time, I no longer wish to kill my grandfather, so the past is preserved.”

  “There would still be other sorts of paradoxes, sir. You might step on a bug, unintentionally causing a chain of events that alters history.”

  “Maybe there are safeguards to prevent that sort of thing.”

  “Safeguards, sir? Are you talking about some kind of… organization that preserves the integrity of the past?”

  “No, no. I don’t mean literal safeguards. I mean a sort of natural feedback mechanism, like the way an ecosystem balances carbon dioxide and oxygen. If the level of carbon dioxide gets too high, plants grow faster and absorb it, producing more oxygen.”

  “Temporal equilibrium.”

  “Something like that.”

  “If something like that were the case, then an individual’s actions wouldn’t matter at all. The system would just absorb any input and level everything out.”

  “It sure does feel that way sometimes, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m not sure it’s a helpful way to look at history, though. I’d like to think that my actions make some difference.”

  “As would I, Haas. Thank you. You’re dismissed.”

  Huiskamp looked down on the white-blue surface of Geneva. In less than two weeks, Arc Zero would hit the ionosphere and begin to burn. Perhaps someone on that doomed planet would look up and see a shooting star as Arc Zero streaked across the atmosphere. That would have to suffice for a memorial. A funeral pyre, just like the Vikings used to make.

  I’ve got Vikings on the brain, he thought, thanks to that crackpot Prince. But there was something about the idea that he couldn’t let go. How strange, he thought, to commemorate a death with fire. Not a headstone to last a thousand years, but the most ephemeral of elements. A momentary burst of light and heat, leaving nothing behind but ashes. And yet, well over a thousand years later we still remember the Vikings and their rituals. Perhaps Valhalla was a myth, but through their ferocity, bravery and resourcefulness, the Vikings achieved a sort of immortality.

  And maybe light was a better medium for a memorial than stone anyway: tens of thousands of years from now, an observer in a distant ga
laxy might see a momentary flicker of light from the Geneva system, and in that moment Huiskamp and his crew would live on, their memory propagating across the universe at the speed of light. Maybe that was all that humanity was ever meant to be: a momentary burst of light and heat across the galaxy.

  The idea lingered in his mind. A momentary burst of light and heat. I’m turning into a poet in my old age, he thought. Or maybe it was just the blow on his head that was making him overly sentimental. No, there was more to it than that.

  He tapped his wrist comm. “Mr. Haas,” he said.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Arc Zero has a new mission. We’re going to build a transmitter.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Very well,” said Rufus. “Take me to the prisoner.”

  Lucius gave a bow and then turned and made his way across the valley floor. “Make way!” he shouted to the men scurrying across his path carrying gurneys, skins of water or other supplies. “The governor is coming through!”

  Rufus and Septimus followed Lucius a hundred yards or so to where the man lay on the rocky ground. They smelled him before they saw him: the telltale stench of a belly wound. Several soldiers stood around him; they moved aside to let the three esteemed men through. The man was perhaps forty years of age, short and wiry, with a bushy beard. He wore a makeshift leather cuirass and greaves. His skin was pale and his arms and legs were streaked with blood. Both of his hands were at his belly, clutching torn entrails that nevertheless spilled to the ground at his side. His face was contorted in agony.

  “You wish to speak to me?” Rufus said. The man continued to moan, his eyes failing to focus.

  Rufus turned to Lucius. “Why do you trouble me with the senseless jabbering of a dead man?” he asked.

  “Apologies, Governor. I am told he is a lieutenant and confidant of Simon ben Kosevah.”

  “The rabbi, Eleazar?” Rufus asked. “No, he is too young.”

  “His name is Yoel, Governor,” said a centurion standing nearby. “He is known for stirring up trouble in several towns in southern Judaea. It is believed he is a close confidant of Simon ben Kosevah.”

  “Simon bar Koziba,” spat the dying man.

  “What is he saying?” Rufus asked.

  “It is an Aramaic play on the rebel’s name. His enemies among the Jews call him Simon bar Koziba, son of a lie.”

  “Son of a lie,” echoed the man in harshly accented Latin. “Yes, that is Simon. See how he flee like a dog, and leave men to die in his place? He promise us Yerusalem, and leave us with blood and dust.” The man coughed and then screamed as his entrails slipped to the ground. Rufus and several others winced as the smell grew worse. One man took a step away and then fell to his knees, retching.

  “Tell me what you have to say, Yoel,” Rufus said, “and your death will be swift and painless.”

  Yoel, pale and quivering, his forehead beaded with sweat, nodded slightly. “Metsudhah,” he murmured.

  “What is he saying?” Rufus demanded.

  “He speaks Aramaic,” the centurion said. “I think the word means something like ‘fortress.’”

  “Metsudhah,” said the man again. “Mistar…”

  “A secret hiding place,” the centurion said.

  “Hiding place,” said the man. “Secret. Tunnel.” His speech became incomprehensible.

  “Sir,” said a man behind Rufus. “There is a dead man who—”

  “Quiet, fool!” Rufus snapped. He knelt down next to the dying man, fighting the urge to retch as the stench filled his nostrils. “Speak, Yoel! You have fought for a liar and assassin, but you can yet be of some service to the Empire. Speak and you shall have peace.”

  “Sir,” said the man behind him more insistently. “The man’s belly has been—”

  “Take that man away!” Rufus growled. He leaned in closer to Yoel. “You know of a way into Herodium? Tell me!”

  “I know…” said Yoel weakly, “that Simon ben Kosevah is the true moschiach, and I know how to use a sica!”

  The knife flashed toward Rufus before he could fall back, the curved blade slashing across his throat. Rufus tried to cry out but found he could not. He got to his feet and stumbled backwards, both hands holding his throat. Blood poured between his fingers.

  The assassin lunged at him, the entrails falling to the ground in front of him. Yoel’s belly, they saw now, was unscathed. Before he could reach the governor, though, the centurion stepped forward, gladius drawn, and beheaded the man. He fell to the ground, now truly dead. A moment later, Rufus fell as well.

  Lucius knelt over the governor, trying to staunch the bleeding with his cape, but it was too late. Rufus’s face had gone pale and he had lost consciousness. A minute later, he was dead.

  Lucius got to his feet, and for a moment he stood with Septimus and the others, staring at the corpse of the governor. “Take him away,” Lucius said at last to the centurion. “He was a good man. Treat him with respect.”

  “Of course,” said the centurion. He gathered six of his men and they carried the governor away on a litter. Shortly thereafter, another officer arrived with a preliminary casualty report. He estimated that the legion had lost eight hundred men. It was a staggering figure.

  “One of us will have to draft a letter to the Emperor,” Septimus said. “Felix Marcus will act as governor for now, but the Emperor may wish to pick someone with more experience.”

  “I will do it,” said Lucius. “Go get yourself something to eat. You and your men look like you have not eaten in days.”

  “There is truth in your observation,” Septimus said grimly, watching the men carrying corpses off the valley floor. “Lucius, I would say this to no other, but I cannot help thinking….”

  “Speak, friend.”

  “If this is victory over the Jews, perhaps we should prefer defeat.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  A thorough search of what was left of GODCOM turned up sixteen low-power transmitters—mostly from helmet radios. Although individually the transmitters didn’t have the wattage to reach the surface of Geneva, Haas suggested that using all sixteen together in a phased array would be more than powerful enough. Huiskamp was skeptical.

  “How are sixteen transmitters wired together more powerful than a single transmitter?” he asked. “Isn’t that like putting sixteen firehoses together and expecting the water to go farther?”

  Haas shook his head. “A transmitter isn’t a firehose. It’s more like a pebble dropped in the middle of a pond. Waves spread out in all directions from the point of impact. Suppose you are trying to signal someone at the edge of the pond by making a cork float bob, but all you have is pebbles, and the waves from dropping a pebble don’t reach the edge. One option would be to drop a bigger rock, but let’s say all you have is pebbles. So you drop a bunch of pebbles at once, hoping to make a big enough wave to reach the float, but it’s still not enough. You need a better solution. So you try dropping several pebbles at the same time, but a few centimeters apart. This seems promising: you create a lot of waves. Sometimes the waves overlap and get bigger, but sometimes they are slightly out of phase with each other and end up canceling each other out. On balance, you’re no better off than you were with a single pebble. But what if you could drop a bunch of pebbles a few centimeters apart, and time them precisely so that all the waves going in a particular direction overlap? With enough pebbles, you could send a series of powerful waves directly at the cork float. You haven’t increased the net energy of the waves, but you’ve channeled the waves where you want them to go. That’s what a phased array does.”

  Creating the phased array required carefully removing the transmitter components from the helmets, re-wiring them, and then affixing them to a panel in rows a few centimeters apart from each other. A computer would be used to time the delivery of the signal to each transmitter to ensure that the nodes were in phase, increasing radiation in the desired direction while canceling it in others. Once he had the basic design dow
n, Haas put the crew to work on the project. They were happy to have something to do. When work was well underway, Haas went again to speak with the admiral in his quarters.

  “If I may ask, sir,” Haas said, “is there a particular reason we need to communicate with the surface?”

  “We’re a military vessel charged with protecting Geneva, Haas. You don’t think it might be a good idea to be able to communicate with the planet?”

  “Of course, sir, but… we’re dead in the water, with no guns and no radar. And in less than two weeks, we’re going to burn up in the atmosphere.”

  “Our mission doesn’t end simply because things look particularly grim at the moment, Haas. In any case, it’s better to keep the crew occupied.”

  “Yes, sir. If that’s all it is, sir….”

  “Do you have something to say, Mr. Haas?”

  Haas hesitated. “Sir, I’m concerned that you’re not thinking clearly.”

  Huiskamp smiled. “Worried that I’m going to get us all killed, Mr. Haas?”

  “No, sir. I mean, nobody blames you for that.”

  “But there’s been talk about my competence.”

  “If I may speak freely, sir?”

  “Of course.”

  “You don’t need to worry about a mutiny, sir. I think we’ve all made peace with what’s going to happen, more or less. It’s just that… well, while keeping busy is important… Sir, what I’m trying to say is that if you have some reason to think we can still win this war, you should tell us.”

  Huiskamp considered the matter. The truth was, he hadn’t allowed himself to believe that winning the war was still possible. He’d latched onto the idea of getting a message to Jason, but he wasn’t sure yet what that message would be. Did he intend his final transmission to be a last will and testament, a simple goodbye, or a memorial? A momentary burst of light and heat screaming I was here? The last words of one dying man to another? No, he had intended something else. He intended to send a message of hope. A message that no matter how bad things seemed, there was still a chance. That was what kept him going, and the crew needed something to keep them going as well—even if they thought he was crazy.