by Peter Ward
Geoff looked around to see who had just spoken. There didn’t seem to be anyone here, save a couple of male technicians sitting at a control terminal, who certainly didn’t look capable of speaking in a female voice, sultry or otherwise. In front of them, a huge grid of square glass pillars towered upwards towards a distant white ceiling, each one glowing in a relaxing pale blue light. There must have been well over a hundred of these pillars equally spaced apart, each one geometrically identical, perhaps a little wider than a person with their arms outstretched.
“Good evening, Mai,” the captain replied. “How are you feeling?”
“I feel fine, captain,” came a reply. As the computer spoke, a different cluster of pillars pulsated in time with each syllable, like a giant musical instrument. “I think I’ve just worked out a way to improve the fleet’s engine efficiency by 20 percent.”
“That’s excellent, Mai,” the captain said. “Excellent.”
“This is Mai?” Geoff said, walking over to the front of the grid to get a closer look. He reached out and touched the nearest pillar. The surface was cool and smooth but felt ever so slightly wet, as if it were coated in a thick, transparent liquid. He pulled his hand back and sniffed it—it smelled like soap. Perhaps this was some sort of futuristic cooling gel designed to stop the computer from overheating or a superconductive liquid that could carry information within its molecular structure.
“Do you mind?” Mai said. “I’ve just been cleaned.”
“Sorry,” Geoff said, wiping his hand on his pants. “I didn’t think you’d mind being touched.”
“Do you mind being touched?”
“That depends,” Geoff said. “Look, I’m really sorry—I didn’t think you could feel anything.”
“I feel everything on this ship,” Mai said. “I can feel your feet on the floor, your breath in the air—I even felt that thing you flicked onto the wall earlier when you thought no one was looking.”
“You felt that?” Geoff said. She was referring to a piece of fluff he’d found stuck to his elbow which he thought he’d disposed of quite discretely.
The computer said nothing.
Captain Holland stepped forward.
“Mai, we need your help,” he said.
“I know,” Mai replied. “You want me to take control of the fleet so you can go back to the twenty-first century and defeat an alien invasion.”
“Wow,” Geoff said. “Can you read minds?”
“No,” Mai replied. “I’ve been following your conversation since the captain met up with you in the hangar bay.”
The captain smiled.
“Can you help us?”
“I’ve already begun to make the necessary preparations,” Mai said, her glass pillars looking as though they were flashing in excitement with every word. “I’ve set up a remote uplink with every vacant ship in the fleet, and I’m in the process of performing a pre-battle diagnostic check. All manned ships are on standby awaiting your orders.”
“Thank you, Mai,” the captain said. “Sometimes, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“I’ve also taken the liberty of analyzing the historical archives from the original battle of 2781 to formulate an attack strategy,” Mai continued. “According to my records, the alien fleet consisted of one thousand ships with an accompanying armada of fifty capital ships flying alongside. When we attack, the fleet should split into fifty separate waves with twenty standard saucers forming a protective shield around one capital ship. If the aliens use this same strategy, I would recommend that we use attack approach Delta-341. This would allow us to exploit the weaknesses at the top and bottom of this protective formation.”
“Sounds like you know what you’re doing,” the captain said, turning to face the Defence Minister. “Still feel uncomfortable about leaving this to the computer?”
“I’m not convinced,” the Defence Minister said, shaking his head. “If you ask me, this all sounds too good to be true.”
“I listened to your reservations about my ability to control the fleet while you were in the lift,” Mai said, her voice flat and unemotional despite the Defence Minister’s criticism. “Can I just assure you that …”
“Let me guess,” the Defence Minister interrupted. “Nothing can go wrong? You’re incapable of making mistakes?”
“Not at all,” Mai replied. “In fact, I sense that’s what bothers you. You don’t like it when things are too perfect, and I was going to assure you that I probably will make a few mistakes.”
“You will?”
“Of course,” Mai said. “Whilst I’m more than capable of controlling this fleet and reacting to different battle conditions, I won’t always make the right decision. Some things will take me by surprise. Ships will be lost. And I know there’s no guarantee that we will win. I may be one of the most powerful computers in existence, but I know I’m not perfect.”
“I like this computer,” Geoff said.
“So do I,” the Defence Minister said, looking up at Mai’s tall glowing pillars with a new look of understanding on his face. “At least it’s got a bit of humility.”
The Defence Minister turned to the captain and smiled for the first time since, well, since Geoff had met him, come to think of it.
“What is it?” the captain said.
“I don’t know,” the Defence Minister replied. “For some reason, I don’t feel quite so nervous anymore. This computer of yours is more human than I thought.”
“Well that’s settled then,” the captain said, walking back over to the lift and pressing the call button. “Mai?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Fire up all auxiliary thrusters and move the fleet away from the Earth. If you need us, we’ll be on the bridge.”
Just as Captain Holland had ordered, thousands of engines simultaneously roared to life and began to propel the battle fleet out of the Earth’s orbit. Within a few minutes, each ship had slowly built up a determined momentum, displaying both the grace of a ballerina gliding across a stage and the force of a rhinoceroses breaking into a stampede. This is not to say you could mix these metaphors and liken each ship to a rhinoceros in mid-chassé, as no one would have been able to take the fleet seriously.
The bridge of the Concordia was about the same size as a large lecture hall, situated right at the nose of the ship. At the very front, a huge reinforced window gave a magnificent view of the space ahead, with the captain’s chair positioned a suitable distance away so he didn’t have to crick his neck to see where they were going. The walls and floor of the bridge were an off-white color, almost exactly the same shade that people paint their walls when they want to try and sell their house, and all around, banks of monitors were housed flush inside rows and rows of control terminals, displaying reams of incomprehensible numbers, fluctuating line charts, and cross-sectional diagrams of the ship. The whole place was bustling with various crew members: some stationed attentively at their posts, others wandering purposely between different terminals and typing things into their small handheld computers. It all looked very exciting.
Tim, Ruth, and Mr. Knight stood at the back of the room, with Geoff sitting next to them in an annoyingly high swivel chair. He thought about fiddling with a few buttons on the armrest to try and make things more comfortable but remembered he had enough trouble adjusting chairs in his own time, let alone a futuristic chair on a the bridge of a spaceship with more controls than those toilets you only found in Japanese hotels. Too embarrassed to get down from the chair so soon after deciding to sit in it, Geoff shifted his body weight as best he could to minimize the discomfort and watched as Captain Holland and the Defence Minister walked to the front of the bridge to address the crew.
“Everyone!” the captain said, holding up his hands. “Can I have your attention please?”
The room quietened down. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked round.
“Mai,” the captain said, looking u
p at the ceiling, “can you please open a channel to the fleet?”
“Channel open,” Mai said.
The captain cleared his throat.
“Everyone, this is your captain,” he said, his voice sounding firm and authoritative as it echoed over the loudspeaker. “I’m afraid I come to you today with some very bad news. A serious situation has developed in the twenty-first century, one that could threaten the very survival of the human race. To brief you on the situation, I am handing you over to the Defence Minister, David Cartwright.”
A few of the younger-looking crew members glanced at each other with widened eyes. One man even dropped his little portable computer thingy, although he picked it up again in one swift movement as if nothing had happened, much like the way a cat always tries to style things out when they accidentally fall off the back of a sofa.
“Good evening everyone,” the Defence Minister said, looking around the room to catch as many people’s eyes as possible. “We don’t have much time, so I’ll make this quick: Earlier today, a Varsarian hiding in human form successfully managed to exploit the time-tourism industry—they managed to change the course of history.”
A few people gasped, which Geoff thought was understandable—an alien impostor changing the course of history wasn’t the sort of thing that happened every day, and the odd gasp was probably more restrained than what his reaction would have been, had he not heard this story twenty times already. The Defence Minister stood firm in front of everyone, waiting for silence to return before continuing.
“The human race is now in danger of becoming the victim of a vicious plot—a plot to change the outcome of the failed Varsarian invasion in the twenty-second century. If history is allowed to run along its new course, these bastards will succeed in wiping out mankind two hundred years earlier, before we had developed the technology to banish the invading fleet safely through a temporal vortex.”
The Defence Minister must have thought this was a good moment for a dramatic pause because he executed one with all the consummate professionalism you would expect from an experienced public speaker, drawing on the silence to create a sense of tension. Obviously, the political fiber of his being couldn’t resist an opportunity to make him look good.
“But we’re not going to let that happen,” he continued, his voice getting louder with emotion as he spoke. “We’re going back in time to the twenty-first century, and we’re going to defend our planet. We’re going to show these Varsarians the true power of the human race and the true force of its wrath. That is why I believe today will go down in history. Not as the day when we finally wiped out the Varsarians once and for all, and not as the day when we fought for the future of the human race. Today will go down in history as the day we stood together as once race and fought for its past!”
“Yeah!!” the crew cheered collectively.
“Are we ready?!” the Defence Minister shouted, his voice bursting with either genuine or well-manufactured passion.
“Yeah!!!” the crew cheered again, anxiously poised at their stations to go into battle.
“Then let’s fight for our past!” the Defence Minister exclaimed.
All around, people punched the air aggressively and cheered again, as if they were auditioning for a part in Top Gun. Even those who had previously looked as though they wished they’d called in sick today were standing up straight with their heads held high, a surge of optimism apparently flowing through their veins thanks to the Defence Minister’s rousing speech. Geoff had to hand it to the man—he obviously knew how to work up a crowd.
“How are we doing, Mai?” the captain said, patting the Defence Minister on the back for his speech and sitting down in his seat.
“The fleet is armed and ready,” Mai replied, her calm female voice providing a welcome antidote to the sea of testosterone Geoff felt like he was drowning in. “My remote uplink with all empty ships is stable, and all systems are fully functional.”
“Then let’s get this over with,” the captain said, leaning forward in his chair and staring intently through the window. “Calibrate a temporal vortex for the twenty-first century, and project it straight ahead.”
Twenty-Three
Geoff waited on his stupid chair as the fleet continued to drift through space.
Nothing appeared to be happening.
“What’s going on?” Geoff said. “Did everyone change their mind about this whole battle thing?”
“What?” Tim said. “What makes you think that?”
“I thought we were going back to the twenty-first century,” Geoff said. “Weren’t we going to project a temporal whatsit into space and fly through it?”
“A temporal whatsit?”
“Yeah, you know—a temporal whatsit.”
“You mean a temporal vortex?”
“That’s it—one of them.”
“That was ten minutes ago,” Tim said. “We’re already in the twenty-first century.”
“We are?”
“Can’t you tell?”
Geoff swiveled around in his chair and looked out of the main window. To be honest, everything looked pretty similar to him, although he guessed there weren’t many telltale signs of twenty-first century-ness in outer space, like flat-screen TVs or smartphones floating around.
“You sure this is the twenty-first century?” Geoff said, giving Tim a skeptical look. “I didn’t see anything happen.”
“You wouldn’t have,” Tim said. “Traveling through a temporal vortex is instantaneous, and they’re invisible to the naked eye. That’s why the aliens didn’t realize that they’d flown through one in the twenty-second century, remember? That’s why we were able to take them by surprise when they appeared in 2781.”
Captain Holland stood up from his chair and walked over to an officer hunched over a computer terminal.
“Bring the ship around 180 degrees,” he said. “I want to be facing the Earth.”
“Yes, sir,” the officer replied.
“Mai, can you do the same for the rest of the fleet?”
“Yes, captain,” Mai said.
Geoff watched as the stars streaked across the window in a blur of light as the ship turned on its axis to face the Earth. He looked closer at the planet as it came into view—from here, it looked exactly the same as the Earth of the future, although he presumed that at a glance, planets didn’t really change much over the years like people did, say by putting on a bit of weight or getting a new haircut.
The captain sat back down in his chair and looked over his shoulder at a female officer leaning over a radar display.
“Report,” he said. “Do you see anything?”
“Nothing as yet,” the officer replied.
“Keep looking. I want …”
“Wait,” the officer interrupted, pointing at some little green dots that had just appeared on the radar screen. “I think I’ve got something …”
“What is it?”
“An unidentified swarm of vessels bearing 3-4-0 mark 2-1-5. They’re heading straight for Earth.”
“How many?” the captain said, leaping out of his chair and rushing over to the radar station.
“Five hundred,” the officer replied. “No, wait,” she said, looking closer, “Seven hundred. No—over a thousand! We have over a thousand ships on a direct course for Earth!”
The captain smiled.
“They’re gonna get the fright of their lives when they see us,” he said, not taking his eyes off the radar screen. “They’re expecting no more resistance than fighter jets and nuclear missiles. Everyone into position! Mai—plot an intercept course on attack approach Delta-314.”
“Yes, captain,” Mai replied.
Geoff lurched back in his chair as the Concordia suddenly began to accelerate towards the invading fleet. Through the window, he could see a shimmering cluster of gray specks in the distance, screaming relentlessly towards the Earth like an angry swarm of giant bee
s. In space.
“Recommend we maintain radio silence from now on,” Mai said. “According to my historical records, the aliens almost gained the upper hand in the original battle by monitoring our communications. By listening in to what we were saying, they were momentarily able to anticipate our attack strategy.”
“Very well,” the captain said, returning to the middle of the bridge and leaning on the back of his chair. “It’s up to you now, Mai. Maintain radio silence.”
“They’ve seen us!” the radar officer said, looking up from her screen and pointing at the window. The gray specks seemed to be getting a lot larger, revealing a generic, saucer-like appearance to each craft. Geoff could now see that most of the ships looked exactly the same size and shape with the exception of a few larger capital ships, which seemed to be a lot chunkier and heavily armored in their construction. All at once, the ships broke off from their original course and headed straight towards the Concordia.
“They’re coming around to bearing 5-7-1 mark 3-6-4!”
The captain narrowed his eyes.
“Lock on to all available targets and open fire,” he said, his voice unwavering.
Under Mai’s control, a few hundred of the more nimble ships in the fleet accelerated past the Concordia and engaged the first layer of flying saucers, firing all manner of multicolored laser beams and missiles into their path. Many of the missiles shot harmlessly in between the oncoming craft, but when one connected with a flying saucer that wasn’t paying enough attention, the damage inflicted was severe, causing the ship to explode in a dazzling shower of molten metal and yellow sparks. As the first few ships were destroyed, the crew on the bridge applauded, as if they were merely spectators at a football match.
Just as Mai had predicted, the swarm of incoming craft split off into separate waves, with twenty or so flying saucers each forming a protective shield around the larger, more menacing capital ships. Geoff watched as Mai split the fleet off to pursue separate formations. In the background, the Earth looked calm and peaceful, its inhabitants blissfully unaware of the huge battle taking place on its doorstep.