The Depths of Time (11 page)

For Captain Anton Koffield still had one last weapon, one that was still undamaged, one that he could still use against the faceless and ineffable intruders. A weapon that had never been used, and scarcely ever discussed, in all the long history of the Chronologic Patrol.

“
Very well, then,
”
Koffield said.
“
If we can
’
t shoot down the intruders, I don
’
t see that I have any choice. I
’
m going to blow the wormhole shut.
”

The bridge went quiet, as silent as space.

“
Our mission,
”
he said,
“
the
sole
mission of the Chronologic Patrol, is to defend time. All of our wildly elaborate precautions, all of our careful procedures, exist for that reason alone. We are here to keep the future from interfering with the past, to protect causality from paradox. Those intruder ships have spent weeks in their own future. I suspect they may even be capable of faster-than-light travel, though I have no idea how that could be. There is no end to what they could have learned of past events in all that time.

“
Now they are driving for the wormhole, and there is no realistic chance of our destroying all of them before they reach it. They waited until there was a convoy coming through, so that we would be occupied with other matters and, they hoped, less willing to put legitimate ships at risk. They sent in six ships at once in an envelopment maneuver, so as to overwhelm our defensive ability. They are plainly attempting to do what we are here to stop. And we will stop it.
”

The bridge was silent for five seconds, perhaps longer, before anyone had the nerve to speak.
“
Sir?
”
It was Sheelton, sitting at the comm station.

“
Yes, Sheelton?
”

“
Sir, if we blow the wormhole shut, it can never be opened again! There
’
s another hole, six lights the other side of Lodestar, that serves Solace, but Glister will be all but cut off from the outside universe. And the convoy ships will be stranded here, as cut off—
”

“
As cut off from the past as we will be—as cut off as we are already.
”
Why not admit it now?
he asked himself.
“
I am aware of the consequences, Lieutenant Sheelton.
”

“
But, sir—
”

“
I
’
m sorry,
”
said Koffield.
“
But I don
’
t see any other option for us. The people on those convoy ships will suffer, perhaps die. The people of Glister will suffer. But the damage and chaos that these intruders could create, throughout all of Settled Space, would be far worse. Think of all the horror stories and nightmares we were trained on. They could go back in time and kill the parents or grandparents of important leaders. They could bring back stolen inventions, take advantage of market panics—or know how to cause panics they could then take advantage of. They could prevent the discovery of whole worlds, or claim-jump worlds no one has yet found. They could be bringing back anything from unknown technology to mutant viruses. We have to stop them.
”

“
Captain, surely we need time to think it through, call a ship
’
s council—
”

“
There is no time,
”
Koffield said, and smiled at that irony. No time at all to consider how to guard time.
“
No time to call a council or consider the situation. We must act now, or let the enemy pass. Let the log reflect that this was my decision, and mine alone.
”

Again, the bridge was silent. Koffield let the moment last as long as he could. This was the moment to protest. No one spoke, no one argued or called out, and the silence became acceptance.

“
Comm—any response from convoy ships?
”

Sheelton swallowed nervously.
“
Mirror response from the lead ship, Captain. No other replies. No changes in course or heading as of yet.
”

“
Keep me advised. Weapons—are we going to have
any
sort of firing solution?
”

“
The intruders
’
deceleration is so violent I can
’
t get a good forward projection yet, sir. But we ought to be able to take a shot at one of them at least.
”

“
Weapons, take full helm control. Do what you can to optimize your firing solutions.
”

“
Aye sir.
”

Koffield flipped the comm, detection, and weapons displays onto his repeater screens and gave a moment
’
s concentrated study to each, but saw nothing that his officers had not told him already. He relegated them to background displays and brought up the wormhole control interface. There were six layers of security clearance to get through before it was even possible to get the control screen up. The security mask rose up out of the arm of the command chair, and he set his face into its rounded black scanface. A pinprick on the side of his jaw for the blood-drop DNA and drug scan, a whiskery caress as the brainscan contacts worked under his thinning hair to rest on his scalp. A brief dazzle of light for the retinal scan. He wrapped his hands around the rounded exterior of the mask and let the finger-and hand-print scanners do their work. A tiny hidden Artlnt-driven speaker whispered intimate questions in his ear, and the voice systems listened, not just to the correctness of his answers, but to the stress levels in his voice and, of course, to his voiceprint as well.

It took less than a minute to satisfy the artificial-intelligence systems and the automatic machines that he was Anton Koffield, that he was sane, that he was not under the influence of any drug, and that he was not acting under duress. But it seemed infinitely longer than that. The wait seemed endless, but at last the mask
’
s interior display flashed the words
cleared and approved.

Anton Koffield pulled the mask away from his face— and was greeted by the sight of every single person on the bridge staring at him, watching him.
“
Return to your work,
”
he said quietly, and they turned back to the screens and displays full of information that would do them no good. The security mask retreated back into its storage niche, and Koffield found himself wishing that he too had someplace to hide.

The privacy screens rose up around Koffield
’
s displays, shielding them from anyone else
’
s sight.

Koffield brought up the portal nexi status display. All systems functional, all security features up and running. For half a heartbeat, Koffield toyed with the tempting idea that the security locks might stop the intruders. But the intruders had already demonstrated their ability to get past the security controls. If they could force their way from downtime to uptime, he had to assume they could travel in the other direction.

There was nothing else he could do, other than shut down every single nexus, completely and irrevocably.

The timing. The timing of the thing. That was all he had left, the only thing he had a choice about.

He checked the convoy
’
s status. All five ships were still on course for the timeshaft. The absolute theoretical point of no return for an ideal ship appeared as a red line on the display. Even as he watched, the first transport in line, the vehicle that the Artlnts had labeled Ship One, crossed it and redlined. Koffield cursed silently.

He could not blame that ship, at least, for disregarding his commands. He would not care to abort so close to the absolute line, even in the newest, most agile, most powerful, and most heavily armored ship—and the convoy ships were far from being any of those things. Ship One—indeed any or all of the ships—might well have passed their own structural redlines long before. Ordering them to abort as late as he had left the ships with nothing but bad choices. They could risk the run through the timeshaft in spite of Koffield
’
s command or have their ships torn apart in doomed attempts to escape the wormhole
’
s gravity well and reach parking orbits. Ship One had told him which choice she had made, by sending a mirror reply and continuing her run.

“
Comm! Send the flash alert abort to all ships in the convoy again.
”

“
I
’
ve been sending it on constant repeat, Captain. Stand by. Mirror response from Ship Five, the last in line. Additional response from Five, sir. Text message—
’
Will attempt to comply.
’
Stand by. Getting similar messages from Ships Two, Three, and Four. No further reply from Ship One.
”

“
Very well,
”
Koffield said, the automatic reply coming to his lips. But precious little was going well. The first ship was heading in, and now nothing could stop her. Perhaps there was still a way for her to survive. But he would have to be ready to shut the wormhole nexi down at precisely the right moment.

He activated the nexus control system and set to work getting through the deliberately long and complicated job of satisfying its security, an entirely separate system from the one he had just cleared. It would have been painstaking work under the best of circumstances, and these circumstances were far from the best.

The security Artlnt on the nexus control system concerned itself with questions of situation, rather than identity. It took a data handoff from the access security system, and thus satisfied itself that Koffield was Koffield and had the right and power to do what he wanted to do. The nexus Artlnt
’
s job was to consider the situation Koffield faced and the regulations concerning the situation. It was a passive control system. The Artlnt could not take any action itself, or even suggest any course of action. It could do nothing but determine if whatever Koffield intended was legal under the regulations, then block any acts it determined to be illegal.

Like nearly all the Artlnts aboard ship, the nexus controller had been deliberately stripped as bare as possible of personality. It was not human, was not alive, and was not meant to be treated as if it were. Thus it was given no personality construct, no voice, no simulated face that could be projected on the screen. Both to keep it from being treated as human, and for the sake of security, the nexus Artlnt had been built without even the capacity for audio pickup. It was a quite sensible arrangement, but it could be a damnably frustrating one. In the midst of the greatest crisis Koffield had ever faced in his whole career, he could not talk to the machine he needed to command, but was instead reduced to typing out his commands and queries, and choosing his way through endless screen menus.

He ordered the Artlnt to pull in data from the comm, detection, and weapons systems, and instructed it to scan in the ship
’
s log of the last month as well. It was a lot to take in, even for a machine, and pulling in the data was the smallest part of the job. The Artlnt had to evaluate the situation and see how the current, unprecedented crisis matched up with the rules and regs intended for a quite different situation.

He found himself glancing up at his repeater displays as he worked. Convoy ships Two through Five were beginning their aborts. The intruders were still decelerating at the same mad, impossible rate. Koffield couldn
’
t see how his ship was going to be able to manage a shot at any of them, and the job would be made all the harder if the intruders performed anything like the evasive maneuvers they had shown on the way out of the wormhole.

“
Come on, damn it,
”
Koffield muttered under his breath.
“
Let me in.
”
Time was slipping away. At last the nexus controller flashed
clear to proceed
on its main display. It was ready to accept and evaluate commands. Whether or not it would allow them to be carried out was another question.

Timing. Timing. He had to get this right. The last four ships of the convoy were on their own. There was nothing he could do for them. But the lead ship. It was at least possible that he could hold the nexus open long enough for her to make her run. The other ships had at least half a hope of aborting their runs, but if he had to shut down the wormhole before Ship One went through, then he knew, to an absolute certainty, that he was dooming, killing, everyone aboard her. He kept half an eye on the status displays as he started keying in the power-down command for the first nexus. Would the Artlnt accept the commands, pass them on for execution? .

Execution. A chilling word to use, under the circumstances.

Koffield checked the navigation projections for Ship One. The time-on-target prediction gave a precise time for her to reach the event horizon, and her course and speed had been carefully timed to ensure that she would reach the event horizon just as an open portal nexus swept past in its orbit. He confirmed that her course and speed were right, and that Portal Nexus D would be in position for the timeshaft drop. Koffield sent the standard nexus-open command to Nexus D, programming it to open just seconds before Ship One arrived, and to slam shut moments afterward.