Battle for Time Read online

  By now, Judith was more confused than before, then went back to unlock the door.

  But she never made it outside.

  Where have you been?” Judith’s husband Graham asked, seeing Judith appear from nowhere, and looking like she’d just been through the wringer.

  Judith was bewildered. She wasn’t sure just where she had been. It was as if one set of memories had been replaced by another.

  “Mummy, mummy,” a child called as she ran up to Judith and tried to hug her.

  “I’m here now, Candy,” she soothed.

  Doctor Hanson watched in dismay, as the News Flash on the Acarea came in.

  He had been working on the Acarea project at Cebro for nearly fifty years. He was old now, but he was still able to feel the pain of the Acarea’s loss.

  The Nuclear Pulse Engine for the Settler Starship had been his baby. Its development and testing had been a dream project. Yes, everything had worked the first time, but now, with all those years of work and material down the drain, it would probably take another hundred years for humanity to attempt another colonizing trip to a Star.

  In the back of his mind, though, like an irritating itch, he still thought that the Acarea had launched successfully.

  Then, even that thought slowly ebbed away until the only reality was the here and now. One in which the Settler-ship, Acarea, had been destroyed.

  Then, that irritating itch was back, as the telemetry readings from Acarea returned but seemed to be continually changing.

  No, that can’t be right, he thought.

  The Varons afterthoughts.

  “It was a brilliant operation. We’ve finally fulfilled our dream, and the Varons are now the Galaxy’s dominant race.”

  “That’s true, Tamar. But if the humans should ever find out what we have done to them, they could still be a threat to us in the future.”

  “Never. The time crystal has been destroyed.”

  “You should never have saved those six humans.”

  “It was the right thing to do. I had to give the humans an incentive.”

  “I hope you are right, Tamar.”

  Chapter 1

  Transit Interruption

  Frank Richardson panicked when he realized he wasn’t where he’d expected to be.

  Surely, this isn’t the last Time quake? He asked himself. But it felt as if he’d been here forever, and he somehow knew that he could die here.

  Frank quickly assessed the situation. He was in the second of two small, single-seat Earth attack-ships, and they appeared to be fighting a Varon ship.

  He found himself automatically firing his ship’s particle beam cannon virtually point-blank at the Varon ship’s hull, then Frank swerved at the last minute, and continued moving on while keeping close to the side of the Varon ship.

  Frank looked on in horror as he noted his wingman’s ship, up ahead, and saw it curving in and across the bow of the Varon ship and its main forward weapons array.

  “Taggart,” he yelled in disbelief into his ship-to-ship comms.

  Then Frank’s attack ship shuddered as it was hit by a particle beam volley. He swore at himself for not seeing the Varon ship’s turret.

  “Stupid, stupid,” he shouted out at his lack of concentration. Then, smoke, and acid fumes that stung his nostrils, flooded into his cockpit.

  “Containment sphere rupture in sixteen seconds,” came a garbled sounding warning from the ship’s AI, whose speech gradually disintegrated into a crackle, then into silence.

  As his ship started veering to port, Frank knew there wasn’t time to try and run a diagnostic. Instead, he’d have to mentally count down the seconds, and trust in his senses.

  Frank pushed the sub-light drive to the max, but the drive’s operation was erratic. Nevertheless, Frank gambled that the starboard steering thrusters were still working, and gave them max thrust, as he curved around the front of the Varon ship, and right between its two closest forward particle cannon collimator tubes. With the flash startling him as the particle cannons fired at Taggart’s escaping ship.

  He glimpsed the Varon beams hitting Taggart’s ship, which instantly disintegrated. While its debris carried on with the particle beam, like a fine powder released into the wind.

  Ten seconds, Frank thought, mentally estimating the time remaining as his ship reached its apex and plunged towards the Varon’s massive landing bay.

  Frank’s attack vessel curved tightly in towards the bay as he closed down his starboard thrusters.

  Six seconds. Now, directly in front of him, Frank could see the greenish colored protective force-field, and beyond that the Varon ship’s landing bay. Both seemingly rushing towards him.

  Frank fired his forward weapon, causing the bay’s forcefield to weaken just enough for his small craft to plunge through, and crash onto the bay’s deck.

  The Varon ship’s crew dived for cover as Frank’s craft, with flames now bellowing from the rear, hurtled down the deck.

  Two seconds, Frank judged. Then his body tingled, and the craft plunged into the Varon’s bulkhead, without him.

  Earth, 2300.

  The boy was sure that the massive crystal-like object that was floating just above the ground hadn’t been there a moment ago. To him, it felt as if the crystal object radiated a sort of field that made his body tingle, and that this field encompassed everything around him.

  A short distance away, the boy saw five people suddenly appear from nowhere. He watched them as they quickly surveyed the area, then one of the males looked in his direction, and the boy was pretty sure that he had noticed him. This scared the boy, so he moved as stealthily as he could further back into the shade cast by an overhanging rock formation. Then wondered if the man had really seen him, or perhaps the people weren’t really there, and it was just a trick of his imagination.

  Just then, the boy spotted a strange-looking and enormous dumbbell-shaped craft, resting on the ground more than four hundred meters away. He hadn’t noticed it before, but maybe it hadn’t been there earlier. And, even though the craft was dark and dead looking, it appeared evil and frightening to him.

  This time, the Varon trackers had done their job, and all six humans had been moved through time by the final Time-Quake and had materialized in the same place as each other, on Earth, and in 2300.

  The humans finally understood that they had been tricked. This had obviously been the Varons objective all along, and no doubt the Varon’s were now the dominant race in 2330, the Time-period that the six humans had just come from.

  “The Varons tricked us,” Cindy bitterly stated. “We were puppets, alright.”

  “No, they weren’t as clever as they thought,” Frank replied. “It seems as if Gerry has done the impossible, thankfully.”

  “Brilliant, Gerry,” Charlotte said, congratulating him.

  “I have to agree,” Gerry Stevens smugly replied. “I altered the crystal’s destruction procedure. Then made it, and the Time-ship, follow our Varon trackers instead.”

  “Fantastic, Gerry. Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can sense all of you, so we must have retained our mental abilities,” Frank stated.

  “Absolutely,” Cindy acknowledged.

  “Yes, and that should give us an edge,” Charlotte added.

  “But we should keep out of each other’s minds unless it’s necessary,” Gerry suggested.

  ‘Agreed,’ they mentally sent each other.

  Just then, Anton, the Delta Time ship’s pilot cum technician, left his ship and joined them.

  “At least we’re all together now,” Anton said. “And, we have a Time-ship, plus the Time-Crystal complete with its control and interface disc.”

  “Yea, but no way to use them, unfortunately,” Susanna pointed out.

  “Maybe. But even so, it’s not all bad,” Anton cautiously stated. “The ship’s date still reads Earth 2330. So, the Timeline-matrix is still functioning, and luckily, the matrix in the ship is protected by a temporal shie
ld that’s still operational.”

  “That is good news,” Frank said.

  “It is, but don’t forget that we had to protect the primary matrix in case of a power failure or a temporal-shaft interruption. Otherwise, any ship still traveling in the shaft or at a Spur’s end would be lost in time,” Anton pointed out.

  “So, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t move the crystal inside the ship now,” Gerry speculated out loud. “We can connect the control and interface disc to one of the predictor's interfaces in the ship. Then, once active, the crystal will generate a new temporal-shaft, with the ship being its new Temporal Anchor.”

  “That makes sense,” Anton agreed. “And, since there’s only one-time ship involved, then there’s no reason why our Time ship can’t be the Anchor.”

  “Does anyone know if the old Timeline-strand is irretrievably lost. If not, how the hell do we reconnect with it?” Charlotte asked.

  “If it’s still in existence, then we can program the matrix to search for it,” Anton suggested.

  “By the look of the Time ship’s dullness, even if we find it. it must be virtually out of power,” Susanna pointed out, “So, we’ll be going nowhere.”

  “The ship still has enough power to run basic systems. And its already recharging the power-unit from the Sun, and from Earth’s magnetic field,” Anton replied, then pondered a moment.

  “Susanna, am I right in thinking that you're an Encryption and Data Analysis Specialist?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, you could assist Gerry and me in re-writing part of the search algorithm.”

  “Really? I think you’re both much more advanced than I am,” Susanna stated.

  “Sometimes, another opinion is helpful.”

  “If it’ll help, then yes.”

  “Good.”

  “We can’t use anything unless we can get the Time ship off the surface of the Earth,” Gerry cautioned.

  Anton looked back at the Time ship, then thought for a while before speaking.

  “It’ll be about two hours before the first food replicator comes back online. And another six hours or so before the ship’s power level is high enough to try and move it somewhere safe and away from prying eyes.”

  “Okay. Can we start searching the Matrix, then?” Gerry asked, wanting to get on with things.

  “There are a lot of unknowns, Gerry,” Anton cautioned. “The ship’s secondary Matrix has been corrupted, so it’ll take at least a couple of days for the primary Matrix to copy the mass of relevant data across to it…It’s a long process.”

  “But the primary’s fine,” Gerry impatiently replied.

  No one said anything for a while.

  “Did anyone else see that boy watching us?” Charlotte finally asked.

  “Yes,” Frank replied. “And this doesn’t look like the 24th century we all knew. I haven’t seen any hi-tech so far.

  “Me neither,” Gerry agreed while wondering if the warship Ronin, was back in its own time. Or, had Ronin, by copying his Varon disc, changed things?

  Even so, it had finally come home to Frank, Susanna, and Charlotte, that they would never see their children again. And, even though all six wanted revenge on the Varons, no-one believed that they would ever leave this place. Or this Time-period.

  Chapter 2

  The Boy

  Frank had noticed the boy as he moved further back into the shade cast by an overhanging rock. He had also felt the boy’s fear of the six oddly dressed humans who had seemingly come from nowhere, and Frank realized that he must prevent the boy from leaving while in his present state of mind, or he might bring people from his village, putting all of them in danger.

  So, Frank gently felt for the boy’s mind, being careful not to scare him even more, and quickly obtained the information he needed without panicking the boy, who would otherwise have legged it before Frank could calm him.

  Hello Billy, Frank mentally greeted the boy.

  Billy looked around but didn’t see anyone close-by. Then, realizing that the voice was in his head, panicked as he saw one of the new-comers starting to walk towards him.

  No, no, Billy. We will not harm you, the voice calmly assured him.

  “Who are you?”

  “Travelers,” Frank said as he came close enough to speak to Billy.

  On hearing this, an image of a supposedly secret military base some way away, called Tranic, popped into the boy’s mind.

  “We came from Tranic,” Frank said, having sensed the boy’s thought. But, as you can see, we’ve had a little problem.”

  Then the boy’s attention shifted to the one hundred and-eighty-meters long Time ship.

  “You didn’t all come in that,” he said. “Only one of you came out of that thing. The rest of you came from nowhere.”

  “Very astute for a thirteen-year-old,” Frank heard himself saying without thinking.

  “How do you know how old I am?”

  “Just a guess,” Frank replied. “We were dropped off close-by,” Frank added, correcting his error. Then, having taken all the information he needed from the boy’s memory, adjusted it to forget all about the six humans and their ship, and remind the boy instead that he should head off home.

  Frank went back to the group after ensuring that the boy had actually left on his long trek.

  “So, what did you get Frank,” Susanna asked.

  “He’s on his way home. About six kilometers south of us.”

  “That’s a long walk. And?” Susanna asked, pressing Frank for more.

  “Well, it seems that they have Spaceships but no FTLs as yet,” Frank told them.

  “So, this time-period is technically well below the level it was in our day, then,” Gerry suggested.

  “Seems so. But the good thing about this area is that we are somewhere in Montana, and there are plenty of places to hide the ship. Apparently, there’s a small airfield about 22 kilometers north of us, but, thankfully, the air traffic across us is minimal,” Frank told them, then paused.

  “And?” Susanna prompted him again, noting that Frank was still thinking about something. But, respecting their agreement not to rummage through each other’s minds, she didn’t search his.

  “The boy thought we’d come from a secret military base called Tranic,” Frank told them.

  “Do you feel that this Base could be a threat to us, Frank?” Anton queried.

  “I don’t think so. But we need to be wary of it.”

  “Well, that’s something anyway,” Charlotte said as she checked the time on her wrist pad. It read sixteen-hundred hours.

  “That’s the right time,” Anton assured her. “I managed to pick up a Terrestrial TV transmission that gave me the local time and date, which I sent to your pads.”

  “If we’re staying here much longer, Anton, we’ll need clothing that matches this period,” Frank pointed out.

  “Agreed, but we can’t do much about it right now, Frank, we’re stuck as long as the replicators are off-line.”

  “Then we’ll have to be extra careful while we’re waiting outside,” Susanna warned.

  “That’s pretty obvious with this weird looking ship just sitting here. Anyway, I’m hungry. Have we really got to wait another hour and forty minutes Anton?” Charlotte asked.

  “Can’t speed it up, Charlotte?”

  “Can we go inside the ship?” Cindy asked. “I feel uneasy as if we’re being watched.”

  They all listened mentally. But didn’t sense anything.

  “Okay. Let’s get the Time crystal inside the ship, and put it close to the nearest Predictor’s interface,” Anton said, taking control. “By the time we’ve got it in place, the food vendors should be back online, and we can eat,” he added.

  “Sounds good,” Frank agreed.

  Six hundred meters away, two large grizzly bears watched the humans move the floating crystal object into the vessel and close its door. The bears had been hunting near the edge of the Judith Basin when activity s
ome distance away had attracted their attention, bringing them closer to the time ship. The Bears sat and waited, drooling in anticipation as they ran their tongues over their teeth. They would feed on these humans when they came out.

  Chapter 3

  Earth, 2300.

  It was more than three hours before the Time ship’s food replicators would come back online. So, Frank decided to use the time to search the ship for items that would help them all to survive. However, even though Frank had been in a time ship before, he hadn’t been able to explore it, so he decided to take a walk around to familiarize himself with the layout before he began his search.

  The Time-ship was only one hundred and eighty meters long and was similar in shape to a Dumbbell. The vessel didn’t have any weapons, nor did it have any shields to protect itself. Nevertheless, the Time ship had a massive warp rating, and its ability to shift in time made it virtually impossible for any hostile weapon’s systems to sustain a lock on the ship.

  Running through the center of the vessel was a rapid induction transfer corridor that provided easy access to all compartments within the ship. With all habitable areas being protected from the high energy field that was generated during warp and time shift functions.

  Each of the two bulbous end sections of the Time ship contained a massive warp generator. And a time-shift array that was needed to manipulate time. With two cockpits, and the pilot and technician's operations control sections being located closer to each end. Each cockpit led to a sizeable open space that held eight inertia-damping seats and a predictor’s station. With a standard airlock situated in a sidewall.