A Gulf in Time

by Chris Kennedy

  Master Chief sighed internally. “So, we’re going to give every soldier the capability to fire antimatter grenades? The chain of command thought this was a good idea?”

  “Absolutely,” Bradford replied. “Every trooper is going to get one of these. Well, once we fix it so it’s not shiny, anyway. Think of the increased capability you’ll have once everyone is armed with one of these. Think of the devastation you’ll be able to wreak on the enemy!”

  “I’m sure there’ll be devastation,” Master Chief said, thinking about some of the troopers who would be getting the new capability. “I just hope we’re able to keep the devastation focused on the enemy, and we don’t inadvertently do it to ourselves.”

  “Oh, well, that shouldn’t be an issue,” Bradford noted.

  “Why’s that?”

  “The guys in X were worried about that, too, so they put in a safety. In addition to the main laser, there’s also a laser rangefinder incorporated into the rifle. Before the grenade launcher fires, it runs a check. If the user is within the expected blast radius of the grenade being launched, the rifle won’t fire.”

  “Hmm…” Master Chief said as he ran through some scenarios in his head. He wasn’t entirely sure the safety feature was a positive thing, as he could think of some scenarios—like if he was behind cover—where he might want to fire from within the blast radius. But then again, if it also kept idiots from fragging themselves…

  “What?” Bradford asked. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  “Maybe,” Master Chief allowed. “Are you sure that’s going to work as advertised?”

  “Well, I think so,” Bradford temporized. “It should.” He shrugged. “Why do you ask?”

  “I can think of some times when it might be handy to fire from within the blast radius, but you’re right—the inability to do that is balanced by preventing idiots from blasting themselves. And blasting me, too, when it comes right down to it.” He shrugged. “I’m going to have to delay judgement on it, I guess.”

  “Okay.” Bradford shrugged, too, obviously not entirely sure why “not fragging oneself” might not be a good feature to have. He handed the rifle over to Master Chief. “Regardless, the laser portion of the rifle is powered the same as your old laser, and the functionality of the grenade launcher should be similar to the older model, but in a less clumsy weapon to use.”

  Master Chief nodded. That much was true—the grenade launcher would be a lot less cumbersome than one of the older tridents, even if he wasn’t entirely sold on some of the other “features.” He gave the weapon a once-over and smiled. At least the rifle looked like a real weapon. The earlier laser rifle had looked like a kid’s toy. Maybe it would be okay after all.

  “Is that it?” Master Chief asked, handing it back. “What’s in the square boxes?”

  “Those are the new suits.”

  “New suits?”

  “Yes, they upgraded them.” He looked at several of the boxes, muttering to himself, before finding the one he wanted. He unlatched it, opened it, and pulled out a folded-up suit of powered armor. “Here you…go,” he said, straining as he handed it over. “Your new suit.”

  Master Chief took the armored exoskeleton, then laid it down on the deck. “Darn thing’s bigger, bulkier, and heavier than the last suit.”

  “It is, but I think you’ll find it’s worth it. This model is adapted from a heavy Archon combat suit X found in the replicators. The suit weighs about fifty pounds, but you won’t know it once you put it on.”

  “How exactly do you do that?” Master Chief asked. “Without hurting yourself, that is.”

  “Easy.” Bradford grabbed the suit’s shoulders and lifted, straightening out the suit. As the joints reached maximum extension, they snapped into place, and the suit turned into a free-standing exoskeleton that was slightly taller than Master Chief. “Want to try it out?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okie dokie. Just step into the inner, rubber suit and zip it up; it provides an airtight seal and pressurization. It isn’t really rubber, by the way, but a high-tech alien substance that looks like it.” Bradford reached back into the box and pulled out a helmet. “You’ll need to put this on, too.” He pointed to two wires that dangled from the helmet. “These control the suit from your implants. You don’t need any sort of haptic bodysuit or anything like that to tell the suit what you’re doing; when you think you’re running, the suit will follow along, augmenting your muscle power by a factor of about ten.”

  “Will it allow me to run faster?”

  “Tests with the suit have shown people who’re used to the suit can run about four times their normal speed, especially once they figure out the lope.”

  “The lope?”

  “Yeah. If you take longer strides, you cover more ground. Most people end up making the same number of strides per minute, regardless of the length of the stride, so longer strides equal faster speeds. You’ll have to experiment with it to see what I mean.” He smiled. “Want to give it a try?”

  “Sure.” Master Chief put the helmet on, then stepped back into the exoskeleton. Nothing happened at first, but then Bradford plugged the helmet into the rest of the suit, and it came alive. Just like the earlier models, a picture of the exoskeleton appeared on the far left of his vision. The suit was outlined in green, showing it was operational and had full structural integrity. Alongside the suit were two status bars—power and oxygen levels, both at 100%—as well as a menu system next to it.

  He toggled the menu and saw it had the same functions. ‘Pharma’ showed the suit’s pharmacopeia of drugs, which held a variety of stimulants, analgesics, and other drugs that could be dispensed when required. ‘Nano’ was for the suit’s nanobots. A submenu showed there were nanobots for both repairing damage to the suit and healing damage to the person wearing the suit. The reservoirs for both Pharma and Nano, however, were currently empty and shown in red. ‘Sensors’ showed his suit’s ability to sense dangers like radiation, toxins, explosives, and a hostile atmosphere. The last one, ‘Def Sys,’ were his suit’s defensive systems, which allowed it to camouflage itself.

  “Okay,” Master Chief said. “Looks a lot like the menus on the old suit. Aside from the fact that they’re all in red, of course.”

  Bradford smiled. “The armorers will be filling them up as we make the transit and prepping them for use. In the meantime, we also got new simulators, so you and the team can practice using them. There really shouldn’t be any problems, though; they’re all very straightforward.”

  “Until you put them in the hands of troopers, anyway.”

  * * *

  “We do what with this?” Master Chief asked, looking down at the electrical cord he was holding. One of the shuttle bays had been cleared, and a black box sat in the center of it. The box had several monitors on top of it, and a line from the box ran to each of the members of the platoon’s First Squad, also known as the Space Force. Each was standing on a mat covered in miniature rollers. Circular with a 10-foot diameter, the mats were designed so the members of the squad could walk in any direction, but never move from the same spot.

  “You plug it into your implant, just like you were going to download something,” Lieutenant Bradford said.

  “I don’t know…” Corporal Pat Viebey, one of the new troopers said, looking critically at the black box. “It’s not going to suck my brain out, is it?”

  “Ha!” Corporal Chris Hogshead said with a laugh. “That wouldn’t take more than a little sip. I’m not sure you’d miss it!”

  “It’s perfectly safe,” Bradford said, ignoring the interruption. “They haven’t had any issues with the simulator in a long time. It’s been working great for the folks in X.”

  “What happened at the start that made it unsafe?” Master Chief asked.

  “It had nothing to do with combat training, so you don’t need—”

  “What. Happened?”

  Bradford’s face reddened. “Well, it seems the first simulators
they replicated were more than just combat simulators. They could be used for a variety of simulations, from combat to…um…other things.”

  “Rule 34,” Gunnery Sergeant Dantone said. “Not that I give a shit about that anymore.” Most of the troopers nodded knowingly.

  “What’s that?” Bradford asked.

  “Rule 34?” Dantone asked. Bradford nodded. “It’s the rule that states if something exists, there’s porn of it. And if there isn’t, there will be.”

  “Yes…umm…exactly,” Bradford replied, his face growing even redder as several of the troopers chuckled. “Well, you see, there were some issues with some of the initial scientists being…err…unable to stop using the simulator once they started. You could set it for whatever race you wanted and enter any number of other conditions. Apparently, it was quite…addicting.”

  “Cool,” Corporal Kevin Walsh said. “Does it still work? Have you tried it out yet?”

  “No!” Bradford exclaimed, his face reddening again. “I mean no, I haven’t tried it out,” he added in a more normal tone of voice. “They removed that part of its programming, so you can’t anymore.”

  “But you looked, didn’t you, sir?” Hogshead asked.

  “I—” Bradford spluttered. “No! I mean—”

  “Okay, you knuckleheads, we don’t have all day,” Master Chief said. “If you’d all just shut the hell up, maybe the lieutenant could tell us how to operate the simulator so you can all learn to use the wonderful gear we’ve just received.”

  “I know what part of the simulator I want to learn how to use,” Walsh muttered.

  “Do you know how many things there are to clean and polish on a starship, Corporal?” Master Chief asked.

  “No, Master Chief!” Walsh replied.

  “You’re going to find out the next time you open your pie hole.” Master Chief stared at Walsh a moment to see if the corporal would add anything. When he didn’t, Master Chief turned to Bradford. “I believe you were going to tell us how to use the simulator?”

  “Yes,” Bradford said, the blush fading. “All you have to do is plug the lead into your implant through the jack in your helmet, and it’ll establish a link to the simulator that makes any previous immersive experience you’ve had seem like a 1970’s movie in comparison. It’s exactly like being there, with full motion and the ability to move and shoot. You can even jump and dive, although if you dive too far, you can go off the pads. And with the non-skid surface of the hangar, I wouldn’t recommend doing that.”

  Heads nodded as the troopers looked at the deck coating. Designed to keep the shuttles from skidding, it had a series of micro-ridges in the hard surface that would easily flay your skin if you slid along it.

  “You’ll also—through the use of your implant—feel as if you were there. You’ll smell things—”

  “Did they program Fenn’s farts?” Hogshead asked, earning him a glare from Master Chief. “Gods, I hope not.”

  “Anyway,” Bradford continued, “you’ll smell, hear, and feel everything going on around you. If you get shot, you’ll feel that, too.”

  “What about cyborgs?” Dantone asked. “I already know what it feels like to die and don’t need to experience it again.”

  “Good question,” Bradford said. “I asked about that and was told the system interfaces with the cyborg system. You’ll get whatever notifications of pain and damage you have your systems set for now.”

  Dantone and Weinert both nodded. “Fair enough,” Dantone replied.

  “So what do we do?” Master Chief asked.

  “You just plug in the lead and follow the prompts.” Bradford smiled. “The system is being turned into a gaming system back home that even third graders should be able to use, so you shouldn’t have any issues.”

  “Maybe even Hogshead can use it, then,” Corporal Darrell Fenn said, earning a glare from the Master Chief and chuckles from the squad.

  “Seriously,” Bradford said. “It’s so easy. What could possibly go wrong?”

  * * *

  The simulation ended three minutes later.

  “Oops,” Lieutenant Bradford said. “I didn’t think that could happen.”

  “Okay,” Master Chief said. “We’re going to try that again. And Hogshead, dial your grenade launcher down from nuclear. Everyone else, check that you’re not going to immediately kill us, too. Let’s see if we can…I don’t know…maybe last a minute or two beyond first contact with the enemy?”

  * * *

  The second iteration lasted 10 minutes, at which time a grenade fired by Sergeant Jamal ‘Bad Twin’ Gordon blew everyone up, including the two cyborgs, who were torn gear from servo.

  “Dammit, Bad Twin!” Master Chief roared. “I thought I told everyone to dial it down!”

  “Dude!” the long-time member of the platoon exclaimed. “I didn’t have my rifle set for nuclear. I totally dialed it down when we started, just like you said. This simulator is seriously screwed up.”

  “Let me look at the logs,” Bradford said. He was acting as the game controller and, like the rest of the squad, he was jacked into the system. “Okay, I see Sergeant Gordon did dial his grenade launcher down to normal grenade-sized projectiles at the start—”

  “See, Dudes! I wasn’t lying. I told you I totally had it turned down.”

  “—but when he dove behind the rock at the 9:52 minute mark, the rifle’s setting changed to a blast yield of 10 tons of TNT.”

  “I totally didn’t do that,” Bad Twin said. “Not on purpose, anyway.”

  “Stand by,” Bradford said. The monitors on top of the box flickered to life, showing a still image of Bad Twin in mid-dive. The scene advanced slowly, and Bad Twin hit the ground. As he did, his left hand lost its grip and slid up the rifle, going across the dial-a-yield rotary switch. The picture zoomed in to show the setting.

  “Dude!” said his twin, Sergeant Austin ‘Good Twin’ Gordon. “You totally did blow us all up.”

  “We’re going to have to do something about that switch,” Calvin said. He’d come in during the second simulator run, just in time to see the wipeout.

  Bradford nodded slowly. “I think you’re right.”

  “Okay,” Calvin said, “we’re going to try something new on the next run.”

  “Besides blow ourselves up?” Walsh asked.

  “What did I tell you, Walsh?” Master Chief roared.

  “To shut my pie hole.”

  “Yet there it is, flapping again. You can come see me after we’re done. A couple of the shitters are plugged, and you’re just the man to snake them out and clean ‘em up afterward.”

  “But—”

  “One more word and you can do it for a week.”

  Walsh closed his mouth with an audible snap.

  Master Chief turned to Calvin. “I think you were about to tell us about something new, sir?”

  “Yes, Master Chief, I want to try out some of the suits’ new systems and integrate them with our current capabilities.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “I want to do a transporter beam insertion.”

  “But sir, we haven’t been scanned, or whatever the hell you have to do to use the transporters safely. It would be an awfully bad start to an assault if someone materialized inside a rock or something. Really bad.”

  “Yes it would,” Calvin said. “But what if we had Solomon transport us to a spot about 100 feet above our target zone? The suits are gyro stabilized and have rocket boots—we could show up unexpectedly over our enemies’ heads and ride the suit right down into them. That would give us the element of surprise and keep us from getting our shuttles shot down.”

  “Ooh, I kind of like that,” Master Chief said. “I think 50 feet would be better, though.”

  “I talked with Solomon, and he swears he won’t miss by more than about 10 feet, so we could go a little lower still. My point in showing up at 100 feet was to be able to have a good view of the battlefield.”

  “And
you should do just that,” Master Chief agreed. “I think I’d rather be at about 25 feet so I can drop right in on the bastards and get started on the killing. You can do that officer shit from higher up and guide us to where we need to go.”

  Calvin nodded, walked up to the box, and picked up one of the unused leads, then took it to an unused pad. “Let’s find out what we can do then, shall we?”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Four

  Emperor Yazhak the Third’s Estate, Grrrnow, 61 Virginis

  “I will have to contemplate what we are going to do,” Emperor Yazhak said. The leader of the Mrowry, a race of felinoid warriors that looked like Bengal tigers, Emperor Yazhak was one of Terra’s closest allies. He stalked back and forth across the room, before finally stopping to look out the large bay window at the rock formation several miles away. It glowed bright red in the morning sun, and he growled at the massive sandstone monolith that had played a part in the situation they now found themselves in.

  “If what you say is true,” he continued, still staring at the rock, “their craft, or symbiotic organism, or whatever the hells it is, is far too powerful for our ships to fight. If it turned off your shields, I’m sure it can do the same to any of our ships that try to fight it. And if they can turn off our shields, their weapons are going to be more powerful than ours, too. It would be suicide to stand up to them with the technology we have at our disposal.”

  “So you’re going to give in to them?” Captain Sheppard asked.

  “No!” the Mrowry roared as he spun around. “We will not give in to them. I will not see my subjects killed and fed to them so they can have longer life. Nor will we run from them. No matter how far we run, a ship that powerful will certainly find us again, and next time, we might not have time to prepare.” He shook his head. “No…we will fight. Even if there is no hope of success.”