Ancient's War 01 - Shadow Run

by A. C. Ellis

  “I’ve been expecting you,” the other said.

  “Have you?” Susan didn’t know what else to say.

  “Of course I have. Think it through.”

  But Susan couldn’t think it through. The headache pounded behind her eyes, draining both her strength and her will. Then the snowflake pattern formed in her thoughts and she mumbled the mantra. The headache became less intense, but did not disappear, and the residual pain was more than it had been last time.

  But at least now she could think. And suddenly she knew her duplicate was right. She would be expected. After all, this other had done in her past exactly what Susan was doing now. Her duplicate had the advantage of knowing what would happen, because everything that would happen to Susan had already happened to her. She had come through, solved all the problems. The proof was that she was here, in free-fall, onboard Photon.

  Susan kicked off the bulkhead and glided to the webbing. Grabbing it, she steadied herself beside her duplicate.

  She couldn’t remember ever being so tired. And it wasn’t simply physical tiredness—it was a mental exhaustion as well. More had happened to her in the past week that she simply could not comprehend than had occurred in her entire previous life.

  Her duplicate seemed to know what she was thinking. “Don’t give up now,” the other said.

  Of course her duplicate knew what she was thinking. After all, this other had once been in the same position Susan was in now. She had thought the same thoughts Susan was thinking.

  “Then it will all work out?” Susan asked.

  The other shook her head. “I didn’t say that. At this very instant, you and I are inhabiting a possible future, but it is only that. Its existence is by no means assured—much might still go wrong.”

  “What you’re saying is, I still might not come through this alive.”

  “That’s right.”

  Susan fell silent for a few seconds, as did her possible-future self. Finally, she asked, “What do I have to do to make it come out right?”

  “I can’t tell you that. If I say too much, it won’t come out like this.”

  Susan nodded. She was beginning to understand—some of it.

  “What can you tell me?” she asked.

  “Only what I was told when I was in your place. Simply this: Part of the answer lies in your past.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can say no more.”

  “But I don’t understand…”

  “I know.” The other smiled. “You’ll have to learn to trust yourself, rely on your own instincts. You are the only true ally you have. Remember that. But also remember that you can be your own worst enemy as well.”

  Again riddles. “Would you just tell me what you mean—what I should do?”

  “I can’t. I wasn’t told, so you can’t be. And I felt the same confusion you’re feeling now.”

  Suddenly, Susan knew this other was as trapped by her past as Susan herself was. After all, she was Susan.

  Trapped in my past…, she thought, and instantly she knew what she must do. She had just thought it—she was trapped by her past.

  The nightmare. The missing occurrences from ten years before. Her duplicate had said the answers were in her past.

  Could she jump that far into her past? And could she possibly jump to another star system?

  She did not know. She didn’t even know if she dared return to that past. If she changed it in any way, everything could be upset. She might conceivably alter her own future.

  But she had no choice. As dangerous as it might be, she had to jump back ten years—to Aldebaran, and that fearful time that had produced her nightmares.

  Her duplicate smiled knowingly. She knew Susan had hit on the solution. As much as she feared it, it was the only way.

  Susan cleared her mind of all thought beyond returning to a time ten years in her past, to a star system sixty light-years distant in space. She felt the dizziness, and the world around her vanished.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chaos and confusion exploded around her as she materialized in the Engineering berthing compartment onboard Defiant. The compartment was on fire. Young men and women in Fleet red scurried about, beating at sheets of flame with blankets, clothing, and anything else they could lay their hands on, in a vain attempt to reach the compartment’s closed hatch. A wall of fire blazed between them and that hatch; they could not get near it.

  The pain pounded behind Susan’s eyes. The snowflake pattern and the mantra came, but did nothing to relieve it. When the pattern cleared, the pain still burned in her head like radiation from a supernova.

  But she did not have time to worry about it now. First, she had a job to perform.

  She nearly coughed as she drew in a shallow breath of smoke and fumes, but stopped herself just in time. If she got started coughing, she would not be able to stop. The stiflingly hot air was barely breathable in short pants. If she took in the deep breaths a coughing jag would cause, it would all be over.

  Then she saw her, barely discernable through dense smoke. To her left, in the far corner, she made out a tall form with long dark hair. The other also wore Fleet red, captain’s stripes sewn on at her sleeves.

  It was her past self.

  But there was something wrong. Ten years ago, in Aldebaran system, Susan had been a commander, not a captain. Yet the stripes on that other’s sleeves were those of a captain.

  She noticed the pendant hanging from its silver chain around the other’s neck, and knew what was happening. This was not her past self at all. She, too, was an interloper in this time. And she held a blaster pistol in her right hand.

  That other paid no attention to the frantic crowd around her. Instead, she held the pistol aimed at the closed hatch beyond the flames. She watched that hatch calmly, yet intently.

  Hyatt’s words floated to the surface of her mind: “You two are so very much alike.”

  Now Susan knew what he had meant. This other, the woman across the room who appeared to be her exact duplicate, was in fact her counterpart from another time—from her future. She had to be from Susan’s future, because Susan did not remember doing what that other now did. For some reason, her future self had jumped back in time, just as she had. But that future Susan had come to kill her past self!

  A sound from beyond the wall of flame caught Susan’s attention, scattering her thoughts—the scraping of metal on metal.

  Instantly she knew what it was. It was her past self. Beyond the flames, on the other side of that sealed hatch, she worked at the dogs. And where ten years ago it had seemed to take a lifetime to get the hatch open, it now felt like mere seconds.

  As she watched, the hatch began to inch open.

  She didn’t think—she didn’t have time to think. Lowering her head, she charged her future counterpart.

  Susan’s shoulder caught the other in the side, driving her against the bulkhead. Air was forced from that other’s lungs in a loud grunt, as she brought the gun’s butt down hard on the back of Susan’s head. The pain behind Susan’s eyes intensified.

  A sudden thought flashed through Susan’s mind: Would this other, with whom she fought, kill her past self? Could she? After all, that other was here, onboard Defiant, in her own past. Didn’t her very existence here and now assure that she could not kill her past self?

  Not necessarily. If what Hyatt—that future Hyatt—had said was true, the Susan beyond that hatch could be killed without affecting either of the two future Susans. The pendants took them both out of the time stream, allowing them to somehow operate independently of its normal flow, while permitting them to interact with it. That was why the future Hyatt existed in spite of the fact that his past self was dead.

  But why would her future self even try to kill their mutual past self? Was there something waiting in Susan’s future that would make that necessary? Or did she have to try in her future simply because she now saw her future self trying, even though she might know by the t
ime she became that future self that it would not work?

  That sort of thinking intensified her headache. She simply couldn’t continue to think about it. For now, all she could do was push those thoughts down, and fight to maintain consciousness.

  Clawing her way up the other’s body, Susan reached for the gun. She caught her duplicate’s wrist just as that other brought the weapon’s barrel to bear on Susan’s head. With all her strength, she wrenched its aim away, and it went off, a searing lance of green light that burned a hole into the overhead.

  Just then, the hatch beyond the flames creaked fully open.

  Simultaneously, both Susan and her future self turned their attention toward the sound. Dressed in Fleet red with commander’s stripes sewn on her sleeves, their past self stood framed in the open hatch. The newcomer stared wide-eyed at the impossible scene in front of her.

  And suddenly Susan knew what had caused her amnesia ten years ago. She had opened the hatch into Engineering’s berthing compartment to witness two duplicates of herself battling each other. It was no wonder she had flushed everything surrounding that observance from her memory.

  She felt the pistol move under her hand—the way she had been forcing it, away from herself. The momentum she gave it was working to the other’s advantage now. The pistol’s aim slid toward the open hatch, centering on her past self standing framed in it.

  Instantly Susan knew what she must do. She let go of the hand holding the pistol and reached to the pendant at her future self’s throat. Without thought, she pulled.

  The chain’s soft silver links parted as it slipped from the other’s neck, then she vanished from Susan’s grasp.

  Susan stood as still as a stone, staring at that past self across the compartment. That other still stood in the open hatchway, watching with wide, glazed eyes, her face expressionless. She was in shock.

  Susan, too, was having trouble focusing her mind, and somehow her body refused to function. What had just occurred bordered on the impossible. She had killed a future self, while a past self—a duplicate common to both Susan’s and that future self’s past—looked on.

  If she had been told what would happen even a day ago, she would not have believed it. Yet, it had happened. She had lived the occurrences leading up to that climactic moment a few seconds ago. As improbable as they seemed, she knew they were true.

  Her head throbbed. Not only did she have to contend with the headache caused by this strange time jumping, but now there was another pain, centered more to the back of her head. Although it was less intense than that other headache, somehow it possessed a sharp fierceness all its own. Her duplicate from a future time had struck her with the blaster, and she was positive that had caused a concussion.

  But she didn’t have time to worry about that now. An earlier version of herself stood on the far side of the compartment, staring blankly in her direction. That other needed Susan’s help.

  Ten years ago Susan had had help from a future self in saving as much of her crew as possible. At her court-martial it had been said more than once that she seemed to be in several places at once, doing more than humanly possible for her crew. She knew now that, in fact, she had been in more than one place at a time.

  Again that circular thinking. It increased the pain in her head when she thought like that. She pushed those thoughts from her mind and slipped her vanished duplicate’s pendant into a pouch at her waist. Then she put her arms up in front of her face to protect her eyes from the flames, and took a step toward her past self.

  The heat was so intense it burned the sleeves of her uniform. She stepped back and looked down at her prosthetic arms. The specially formulated plastic had melted away, exposing their metal skeleton and electronics.

  Again she looked at the wall of fire. The heat was too intense. Her prosthetic arms would not survive if she stepped through those flames.

  As she watched, her past self moved. Still without life in her expression, that other brought her arms up before her own eyes, then stepped toward Susan, through the wall of flame.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  This jump was the worst she had yet experienced. She made half a dozen attempts before she finally left Defiant, and arrived back in her proper time. The resulting physical effects were nearly dehabilatating.

  She stood trembling in the corridor outside Hyatt’s office, the headache pulsing behind her eyes. Her uniform was soiled, stained, torn, and burned, and her hair and eyebrows were singed. Beneath dirty rag bandages, the plastic covering her prosthetic arms and hands was melted away, exposing their complicated electronics and mechanics. The first thing she had done, after bringing her past self somewhat out of shock, was to bandage them, so neither her past self nor Defiant‘s crew would see them. She didn’t want that crew any more panicked than it already was.

  The previous forty-eight hours had been horrible. For two straight days she had helped her past self battle fires, dress wounds, and comfort the dying. She was exhausted—both physically and mentally.

  Somewhere in all that, someone had bandaged her head, although she could remember neither who nor when. But the pain in her head did not come from the crack her future self had given her with the blaster butt. This headache had been caused by a multitude of jumps through time.

  Then the snowflake pattern appeared in her mind, and she began mouthing the mantra. It did still less good this time than it had the times before—more of the headache remained when she was finished reciting the chant than had the last time.

  Susan stepped to the door and it irised open. The outer office was empty. She went through to the door to the inner office, and it opened as she approached. Within, the future Hyatt sat behind the desk, going through a stack of computer printouts. The blaster pistol rested on the desk within quick reach.

  “So, you are back,” he said, looking up from the stack of papers. His hand went to the pistol, rested on it, but he did not pick it up.

  Susan took what she hoped was a casual step toward the desk and nodded. If she could bluff him into thinking she was the other Susan, her future self…

  Hyatt picked up the pistol and pointed it at her. “It won’t work,” he said. “Step back.” He waved the pistol in her direction.

  “How did you know?” she asked as she stepped away from the desk. “How could you tell?”

  He smiled. “I wasn’t really expecting the other Susan back. That’s the way it had to be.”

  “Had to be? You mean, my duplicate actually knew she wouldn’t succeed?”

  Hyatt nodded. “Of course she knew.”

  “Then why even try?”

  “Because she had to, because she had watched herself try five years ago, in your place. Remember, she already experienced everything you just went through.” Again, that circular thinking.

  “But if she had succeeded—if she had killed our past self—she would have died, too.”

  “Not necessarily. Only if she had lost her pendant after she’d killed that past self. And she would have taken your pendant as soon as she’d killed that other. At that point, you would have ceased to exist.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Susan said. “She was taking the same chance. She was putting herself in jeopardy, as well.”

  Hyatt nodded. “But it had to be done. First, because it was done. And it was worth any risk to stop you.”

  “And so I killed her…”

  “You killed her?”

  Susan nodded. “I snatched the pendant from around her neck, and she vanished.”

  Hyatt laughed. “Then she isn’t dead.”

  “What?”

  “It’s like cutting a stretched rubber band,” he said, motioning Susan to the chair before the desk. She sat, and he kept his hand on the blaster. “She was snapped back to our time, five years into the future. Had she succeeded in killing your past self, then had you taken her pendant, she would be dead. But your mutual past self lives.” He shook his head.

  Susan still couldn’t believe
what she was hearing. It all seemed so horribly strange.

  After a few seconds, she said, “There are only four of you in on this, then.” More a statement of fact than a question.

  “No, there are only two from your future—myself and your double. Krueger, of course, was hired here, in this time.”

  “But what about the short belter, and the tall man outside the curio shop on Fleet Base?”

  “I’m afraid they aren’t with us.”

  “Then who are they with? They both wore pendants.”

  “That is interesting. But I assure you, I do not know. Originally, there were only two pendants.”

  Susan reached into her breast pocket and pulled out the pendant she had ripped from around her future self’s neck. The old man’s gaze went from that pendant to the one she wore around her neck, while his hand strayed to his own.

  “I assure you,” he said, “originally, there were only two pendants. Everything has become so mucked up—probably because of your indiscriminate jumps, as well as our own jumps while attempting to stop you.”

  Again Susan thought of the belter, and the tall man in the corridor outside the curio shop. Both had worn a pendant. And the old man in the shop had said the man who had sold him the pendant she now wore had possessed another those many years ago.

  As if he could read her mind, Hyatt asked, “Where did you get the one you have been using?”

  “That isn’t important,” she said.

  “It might be extremely important. Don’t you see that?”

  He was right, of course. But Susan knew she couldn’t tell him. Such knowledge might be just what he needed to use against her.

  “Where did you get your pendants?” she asked.

  “They were found on a cinder of a planet circling the Crab Nebula’s star of origin,” he answered.

  “And there were only the two of them?”

  He nodded.

  “What are they?”

  Hyatt shrugged. “Artifacts from some ancient civilization, I imagine. What use their creators put them to, we have no idea.”