Five minutes later they were weaving their way through the mountains toward the coast along a new course. They strapped Sam to the floor next to Clef's wounded leg. He checked each monitor, noted that the nanos in the hostage, Ochoa and Clef were working well.
"Hey Sam! You still with us?" asked Sikes. She was behind him somewhere and he couldn't see her.
"Yes. How is your mouth?" Sam said. "Doesn't it hurt too much to talk?"
"No, it's fine now, Sam," she said. "Just a fat lip."
"Yeah," Clef said. "We thought it would shut her up too, Sam. But never underestimate a woman's yakking ability."
No one laughed.
"You saved my ass back there, Sam," Sikes said. "Too bad I can't buy you a drink when we get back."
"Careful, Sam," Clef said. "She's trying to pick you up. Musta been all that talk about your equipment earlier."
Sikes ignored Clef.
Sam couldn't identify a direct question, but since his equipment was mentioned, his response tree settled on a simple status report. "My equipment is damaged."
This time the soldiers laughed.
"Sam?" Sikes said. "How's Ernie? Do you still have a link to his bio-monitor?"
A direct question. "Yes. Ochoa is stabilized," Sam said then scanned his response options and added. "He's going to be okay."
The soldiers grew quiet. Sam could hear one snoring and thought he heard Sikes sniffling. He wondered if her nose might be bleeding because of the grenade and checked her monitor.
Clef patted Sam's pitted and broken armor casing. "I owe you too, Sam. You're the best momma a soldier ever had. Oh and Sam, from now on you can call me Clef."
Sam changed the tag on Harmon's file. After scanning possible responses he didn't know what to say, so he kept quiet.
****
The Best Plaid Lans
Author: Loren K. Jones
Illustrated by Nathan Rosario
Professor Kenneth Campbell studied the apparatus in his lab, tweaking delicately at the vernier adjusters to achieve exactly the right settings. "This should be it, Heather. With these settings we should be able to peek into the past, to see the Battle of Culloden. We will be witness to the defeat of Bonny Prince Charlie by the British."
Heather Connally studied her monitor. "Yes, sir. The computer has refined the coordinates and downloaded them to the scanner. Are you ready to record?"
"Ready." The professor reached over and started the digital recorder. "Trial 3, TimeScape Viewer. Selected date: April 16, 1746. Place: Culloden, Scotland. Subject: the defeat of Bonny Prince Charlie." Looking up, he nodded. "Begin, Miss Connally."
Heather keyed in the starting sequence. Nothing happened for a moment, then the room exploded! The world dissolved into a blur of bright light and indescribable sound. Heather was nearly knocked unconscious and rolled under her desk by the concussion.
When Heather regained her senses, she immediately knew that something was profoundly wrong. Peeking over her toppled desk, she saw a ragged hole in the wall where the professor had been standing. Tears of pain and grief began to form, clouding her vision. The professor had been her teacher, colleague and friend, and now he was dead. Then her vision became even more blurred as the room reformed around her.
Shattered walls and windows became whole. Overturned benches dissolved and reformed where they belonged without seeming to move. Fragmented lab equipment became whole. And once again the professor was standing where she had last seen him, fiddling with the TimeScape Scanner.
"Bah! Tha' was nay supposed to 'appen!" he snarled in a shepherd's brogue.
"Professor?"
"Come 'ere, Lass. We must begin again," Professor Campbell continued in a more cultured tone. "The Scanner was supposed to show us Bonny Prince Charlie's victory over the Brits at Culloden."
"P—Professor?" Heather asked again, not understanding. Charles Stewart had been defeated. Then she really began to see her surroundings. The professor was dressed in a lab coat and kilt . . . kilt? Staggering drunkenly to the window, she looked out on a campus that was subtly wrong. Plaids and clan tartans were abundant. All of the men were in kilts. And the flag over the commons was not the flag that she knew. The flag of the Scottish Republic flew proudly in place of the Union Jack.
Heather stumbled back to her computer and accessed the history database. April 16, 1746. A mysterious bolt of lightning striking the leaders of the British army, killing most of the officers. The Highlanders taking it as a sign from God that He was on their side. The stunning victory of Bonny Prince Charlie, and the subsequent routing of the British in the Scottish Revolution. It was all there, but her mind said that it was all wrong. Then the ripple in history returned to its origin, bringing a new reality with it.
As history adjusted itself, Heather's memories changed to match. "Professor, did ye ever wonder wha' kind a world we would live in if the Revolution had failed?"
****
Supercargo
Author: M. T. Reiten
Illustrated by John Ward
The ketones of grilling meat flooded the corridor, despite the laboring air scrubbers. I pulled my head back into the passenger compartment and tossed the reader onto my bunk. I opened the stowage locker and lifted my military issue pressure suit off the rack.
"You better suit up, kid," I said.
Hicks, a freshly promoted infantry sergeant, lay on his bunk, his viewer glasses tuned to reflective silver. At first I thought he was sleeping, but his thick jaw muscles flexed as he chomped on his ever-present gum. Not the fluoridated Chiclet that came in standard rations, but a fat cube of gourmet bubble gum exported from Earth.
"Hey, kid. Get your gear on. Something's happening." I stepped into the back of my suit and it closed around my legs and hips. I shrugged into the torso, worrying about what might be going wrong.
Traveling supercargo was normally a cushy set of orders. I almost felt guilty not getting charged for leave. I had spent my time with a reader, catching up on the latest journal articles and some of my favorite fiction, spy thrillers and pre-contact historicals. Hicks had spent the trip on his wearable system, playing what he called tactical and strategic simulations. Computer games.
"I didn't hear the alarm, sir." Hicks blew a big pink bubble. It snapped insolently.
"Do you smell anything?" I asked.
Hicks sniffed and then swung his legs around to sit up. He stared at me like a mirror-eyed cyclops. "Barbecue."
"The only meat on this ship is the crew."
Hicks was at his locker in the next instant, gearing up like a professional. I shouldn't have been surprised. Only contracted military personnel and a few select diplomats and scholars could travel into League space, exempt from the sanctions. Even though the kid hadn't impressed me so far, we were all professionals.
"What's going on, sir?" he asked as he settled his helmet onto his shoulders.
"I don't know." But that was the first thing we'd been drilled to do if anything strange happened. Suit up. I activated the intercom display on the bulkhead.
Instead of the pilot's face or the wait symbol, I saw the dimmed interior of the cockpit in the screen. Harsh white light streamed from the corridor through the opened cockpit hatch. We were still in i-space, so the hatch should have been kept closed. Shadows passed across the background, glistening and slick like oil stains.
A figure, bald headed with pale skin, moved toward the pilot's station. He leaned in to the navigation controls, coming into the intercom's focus and allowing me a good look. A clear gummy polymer coated his hawk-like face. He clawed into the polymer at his neck and tore it open, exposing his mouth. "Adjust trajectory," he said with a thick Dromed's World accent.
"Doomsday fanatics," I said, stabbing off the display before he looked down and saw my image.
Doomies had control of the ship. They wore emergency pressure suits, the disposable kind. League technology.
"I thought we took care of those bastards." Hicks frowned and reached for the c
lasps on the chest plate of his suit. An E-mag carbine should have been there, but our small arms traveled on the troop ship. He still wore his viewer glasses. The frequency of his gum chewing had increased from a lazy bovine pace to an open-mouthed gnashing. "What now?"
"We go to ground and work out a plan. Into the hold."
He nodded and followed my lead. We went to the number three airlock near our quarters and climbed down, leaving atmosphere and pseudo gravity. The hold was huge and dark. Our helmet lights were useless. The brigade's equipment hung in shadowed racks, like shells in rifle magazines, except they were tanks and bulldozers rather than cartridges.
The heavy transport, Marie Celeste, was over 99% cargo space and filled the spherical tunneling sheathe that the monopole drive produced, a vast bubble that skirted the laws of physics for a maximum volume with a minimum surface area. The scant habitable area was a long corridor, like the spine on an expanded puffer fish, leading from the cockpit at the front to the monopole drive at the rear in engineering. Crew quarters, support systems, and access ways to the hold were spread evenly down the arc of the spine. We had to assume the positive life support areas had been compromised.
The number one airlock sat closest to the cockpit, and it was in fact a shorter straight-line distance through the hold than along the corridor. As we maneuvered between the stowed machinery, I came across the brigade's engineer support vehicle. The rear hatch hung open and construction tools floated randomly about the back. The hatch had been sealed during our last inspection two days ago.
The Doomsday fanatics had been hidden in the hold and broke in to our equipment.
I grabbed a hammer out of the mess. "Get a weapon."
"Got one." He had already taken a large screwdriver. The shaft was nearly as thick as a crowbar. He slashed twice and made a practice thrust. "It'll work."
We pulled our way to the number one airlock. After we cycled through, I climbed up, opened my visor, and poked my head out to scan the corridor. I saw and smelled the carnage just outside the cockpit entrance.
The navigator's body lay against the open cockpit hatch. A hand laser dangled from his lifeless hand. His face had been squashed into an unrecognizable concave mass of blood and pinkish brain. Three dismembered bodies, each coated in a gummy transparent film, had sprawled on the deck. Large charred gouges still smoked in their chests. Plastic wrapped fingers and arms had been sliced off and littered the corridor. But the burned bodies all had shaved heads and pasty-white skin and didn't wear crew uniforms.
"I'll get eyes on the cockpit," Hicks said.
I grabbed his arm to stop him.
"Sir, it's my job. Let me do it. Unless you have a better idea." He crept forward after I released him.
I felt useless in those agonizing minutes, hanging back in the airlock. As an engineer, I oversaw the construction of roads and landing zones for our bases. My last serious infantry training had been seventeen years ago at the academy.
Hicks came back, carrying the hand laser. "There are three of them at the controls. They seem to know what they're doing. No living crew."
"How'd they get in?"
"There's a big hole in the hatch. You can't see it from here." Hicks held up his hands forming a circle with his fingers the size of a dinner plate.
The Doomsday fanatics had the punch. The short-range cavitation tool was standard equipment on the engineer support vehicle and it could put holes in about anything if enough charges were expended. That explained what happened to the navigator. One half charge at two feet.
"Couldn't catch everything they were saying, but one Doomie talked about changing trajectories." He checked the battery life on the hand laser. "I can drop them."
"I'm sure you could," I whispered. "But test fire the laser first."
He aimed away from me, sighting on an empty locker, and depressed the trigger. Nothing happened. "What the—?"
"Security keyed to crewmembers only."
Some of Hicks' confidence left him. He slumped against the bulkhead, but kept a grip on the hand laser. "Maybe we could signal for help?"
I shook my head. The Marie Celeste had a huge displacement, so that meant slow going in imaginary space. She also took a long time to build velocity in real space, nearing light speed before tunneling up. The rest of our brigade hadn't even lifted yet in the swifter troop transports. They would depart Dromed's World two weeks from now and arrive at our destination three days before we did. No chance of anyone within range to hear our transmission.
"We rush them then." Hicks drew the screwdriver from his cargo pouch.
"Wait. You said they were talking?"
He nodded. "But I couldn't make out most of what they were saying."
"But they had the hoods peeled back?"
"All three did. They must think they've got complete control of the ship."
"Good. Those League suits are single use. If they broke the seal, they're worthless. I've got a plan that might not get us killed." I made a mental list of what we'd need. "Strip a good sized piece off a body and meet me in the airlock."
I returned to the hold to gather additional tools. Hicks waited for me in the dim light of the evacuated airlock. He was chewing his gum and toying with a patch of tough polymer when I got back.
We wedged the hold side hatch open with a pair of titanium crowbars. Industrial staples took care of the physical interlocks on the hatch, so the computer would think it was closed and safe. I needed a way to override the atmosphere sensor, but I couldn't find a gas cylinder. But our suits had buddy umbilicals, so I played out the short length of hose from my hip. I motioned for the patch of polymer and the kid slapped it in my hand. I sealed the sides the patch over the gas sensor and the nozzle of my buddy umbilical.
"Cycle it," I said.
"Yes, sir." He pushed the cycle button and the inlet valve opened up. "I've got flow."
I eased open my umbilical, conscious of the gauge readings on my suit. The polymer patch ballooned up partially like the bubble gum the kid still gnawed on. I hoped it would read close enough to ship's atmosphere to fool the computer. "Let me know if it stops."
After a few seconds, Hicks said, "The flow is off."
"Open the inner hatch."
Hicks initiated the opening sequence. I felt vibrations through the bulkhead as restraining bolts withdrew, but nothing happened. "Open it manually."
"The mechanism is open all the way, but the door is stuck." He pushed on the hatch. "If the hinges were on this side we could just break them off."
"The hinges are on the other side because of the pressure differential." The pressure differential, I thought angry with myself. I tried to slap my forehead, but smacked my helmet visor instead. I had been so clever, that I had forgotten basic physics. The atmospheric pressure from the crew compartments kept the inner hatch of the airlock firmly in place, so there was no way it could accidentally open and vent to vacuum. "Oh, God, I'm stupid."
"How's that, sir?"
"I don't design spaceships. I direct soldiers with bulldozers. I should just stick to what I know best."
"And that is.?"
"Big hammer technology. If it doesn't work, hit it with a bigger hammer." But the Doomies had the punch, the biggest hammer in the brigade's inventory.
"I'm all about that, sir." Hicks flashed me a goofy grin with too many teeth. "I'd just slap some Synth-Tex putty on the door and blow it. But we don't have any explosives."
He was right. Ammo went on a different ship, and, as tempting as it was, we were better off without live rounds or explosives. A main gun round would be suicidal even if we could get a tank off a shipping rack. What did we have? I knew the equipment my engineer section carried. Burning a hole through the hatch with welding equipment would take too long and flying sparks would be obvious. Perhaps a hydraulic jack? That would be slow too, and the Doomsday fanatics would notice a steady loss in pressure. We needed something fast and dramatic.
"So we don't try to push the hatch open. We
pull it in." I maneuvered around the braced open outer hatch and exited the airlock. I launched myself at the nearest rack of vehicles.
The second one down was the commander's mobile HQ. The boxy command track had a winch on the front capable of hauling a twelve ton hunk of armor out of a ditch. I played out several hundred feet of carbon rope and launched myself back to airlock number one.
We attached the rope to several points on the crew-side hatch. I had the kid operate the winch. He gingerly took the slack out of the line, following my hand signals and somewhat curt directions.
I moved away from the outer hatch, pressing myself against the slight curve of the hold bulkhead. "Give it all she's got."
The line vibrated as it snapped completely taut, seeming to blur into four separate ropes under the light from my helmet. I felt the jagged creak of shredding metal through my palms. The rope went limp as light poured through the airlock. The inner hatch slammed into the cargo-side hatch, but it held open. Bits of trash tumbled into the hold on the rushing wind trying to fill the immense space. Instantly I recognized them as severed fingers. Alarms flashed red in silence.
After a minute of tense waiting, we squeezed into the airlock. The crew-side hatch had buckled, blown out, and had wedged firmly behind the cargo-side hatch, but there wasn't much damage to the airlock otherwise. We climbed into the corridor. I held the hammer ready and the kid had his screwdriver poised like a bayonet. Our shadows leaped around us, cast in black from the red glow of the alarms.
We stepped over the remains in the corridor, tumbled around by the explosive decompression. The hatch to the cockpit had a large hole with precisely dimpled edges, the signature of a punch. Hicks booted the hatch open and charged in.
The darkened cockpit was a triangular shaped room, more like a multimedia suite than the control center for a spaceship. Large viewer screens lined the forward bulkheads, displaying statuses and course projections. The crew stations were empty.
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