 
# Time Jumpers

Episode 7: Hapsh'm and the First Coethi Encounter

### Published by Philip Bosshardt at Smashwords

### Copyright 2019 Philip Bosshardt

### Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

### A few words about this series....

  1. Time Jumpers is a series of 20,000-30,000-word episodes detailing the adventures of Ultrarch-Jump Captain Monthan Dringoth and his crew and their experiences as time jumpers with the Time Guard.

  2. Each episode will be about 40-60 pages, approximately 25,000 words in length.

  3. A new episode will be available and uploaded every 4 weeks.

  4. There will be 12 episodes. The story will be completely serialized in about 12 months.

  5. Each episode is a stand-alone story but will advance the greater theme and plot of the story arc.

  6. The main plotline: Time Guard must defeat the enemy Coethi and stop their efforts to disrupt or eliminate Uman settlements in the Galactic Inner Spiral and Lower Halo sectors of Uman space.

  7. Uploads will be made to www.smashwords.com on approximately the schedule below:

Episode # Title Approximate Upload Date

  1. 'Marooned in Voidtime' February 1, 2019

  2. 'Keaton's World' March 1, 2019

  3. 'A Small Navigation Error' April 15, 2019

  4. 'Cygnus Rift' May 3, 2019

  5. 'The Time Guard' May 31, 2019

  6. 'First Light Corridor June 28, 2019

  7. 'Hapsh'm and the First Coethi Encounter' August 2, 2019

  8. 'Operation Galactic Hammer' August 30, 2019

  9. 'Byrd's Draconis' September 27, 2019

  10. 'First Jump Squadron' November 1, 2019

  11. 'Planck Time' November 29, 2019

  12. 'The Time Twister' January 3, 2020

# Chapter 1: "A Kink in Voidtime"

"Time isn't precious at all, because it's an illusion. What you perceive as precious isn't time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is."

Eckhart Tolle

Jumpship Cygnus

Time Stream: None

T-date: Unknown

The primordial sun Leviathan had detonated early. The Coethi force was likely gone, vaporized. When it happened, Cygnus was still in a bubble of voidtime, partially but not completely protected from the supernova. The bubble was collapsing fast. And the ship was spinning out of control.

"Propulsors off line!" came Acth:On'e from the Engineering deck. "Not sure if it's a valve or some kind of pressure drop...it'll take hours to troubleshoot!"

Dringoth had already figured that out. "Voidtime is supposed to be isolated from normal spacetime...Leviathan blowing up shouldn't have slammed us like that!"

Golich couldn't count all the flags and cautions on his board. "At least the hull's not compromised...not yet." He had to speak above the wailing of the master alarm klaxon and ISAAC's sulky voice, ticking off the problems.

"I'll try the core...see if we can pulse our way back to stability—" Already the ship's wild gyrations and oscillations were causing problems. Dringoth winced at the sound of someone wretching his guts up behind them. It was Dr. Linx, pale green and spewing vomit everywhere. "Acth, status of singularity core...."

The Telitorian's voice was strained. "Core down to ten percent...we're losing pressure in the main plenum. Converger's already blown and twist fields are failing fast. Recommend we bank the core for repairs immediately...otherwise—" his voice lowered, "we could have a breach."

"No way," Dringoth decided. "I've got to get her under control. Give me whatever you've got—patch it the best you can. I'm starting a pulse sequence in ten seconds."

"Copy that."

Dringoth ordered everybody to stations.

Hundreds of years before, sailors becalmed in the doldrums of old Urth would sometimes set out small boats filled with rowers, to physically pull a ship forward, hoping to find the slightest gust of wind to fill their sails. In a sense, Cygnus was trying to do the same thing. By judicious pulsing of her singularity core, modulating the power—and it was not a practice the dockyard engineers recommended—the hope was that the ship would gain enough reactive force through her damaged twist buffers to react against the vacuum structure of spacetime itself, against the matrix foam that constituted reality at its most fundamental level, to shove and nudge and will the ship toward the outer barrier of the voidtime channel. With luck and some skillful maneuvering—they were counting on Golich and URME for this—maybe the ship could gain enough momentum to punch through voidtime itself and back out into a normal time stream.

Then, even if the ship were still damaged and adrift, she had a better chance of being detected and rescued.

URME monitored the twist field output of the core carefully while Golich worked the power controls. Over a span of a few minutes, synchronizing their efforts, the two of them managed to tweak and nudge and prod Cygnus forward, while M'Bela and Dringoth kept the ship oriented properly and headed toward the voidtime barrier. Inside of an hour, ship sensors registered the first faint tugs of the gravimetric wall that was the voidtime barrier.

"Queenie, where are we?" Dringoth asked.

M'Bela studied her plot. "Pretty damn close to the wall, Skipper. Maybe you could steer left five degrees more. That would position us better. I'm already seeing the wall's effects on our accelerometers. Momentum's picking up smartly."

Dringoth gingerly worked the ship's controls. Cygnus had only minimal maneuvering ability, so he had to plan each maneuver carefully, working with URME's core pulses and any residual trim left in Cygnus' rudders and planes. He had to worry about deadband too, so as not to 'stick' any controls in a position he couldn't recover from.

"How's that?"

"Better...much better."

"I don't want to try a jump until we know what we've got that's working."

Golich was at the secondary console next to Dringoth. He grimaced but said nothing. Finally, a little sanity. The man's going to get us all killed.

Slowly, with a lot of breath-holding and cursing and fist-squeezing, Cygnus was brought under some semblance of control. Residual shudders and vibrations reminded all of them that the ship had sustained a lot of damage, perhaps irreparable damage.

At least, Dr. Linx had stopped throwing up all over the command deck.

Dringoth decided not to look behind his seat. "Somebody get the Doc back to sick bay. And clean up that mess while you're at it."

After several hours of checking and tallying all the damage, Dringoth decided to call an all-hands briefing in the crew's mess. He frowned and shut his eyes, listening to the litany of the damage reports.

"...probable flowvater impacts too...the actuator indicators show they won't move more than a few degrees," Golich was saying. "Same goes for the rudder, really all our external controls. That supernova really slammed us."

Alicia Yang glared first at Linx, then at Dringoth. "Captain, you said we'd be protected from anything Leviathan did once we were in voidtime."

Evelyn M'Bela picked up the argument, staring at Linx. "Right. And that star wasn't supposed to be blowing up right in our faces either. URME said we had a few days, maybe even a few months."

"Maybe we shouldn't have jumped to voidtime."

"Jeez, Queenie, if we hadn't jumped we would have been flash-fried in that supernova."

Linx shrugged, still looking slightly pale from the nausea. He wiped a cool wet rag over his face. "Every star's different. And we're so early in the Universe's history, who knows how physics operates in this era. My estimate was based on what we know in our time."

M'Bela started to object, but Dringoth held up a hand. "Okay, okay, save all the recriminations for later. Acth:On'e, you and URME just came from the core. Give me the bad news."

Acth:On'e shook his head. "We've got residual core capacity, Captain, but the converger's offline. Twist buffers are damaged but the core's putting out some twist. URME--?"

The para-human swarm entity looked a little shop-worn from all the configuration changes he'd had to make, troubleshooting the guts of the ship's singularity core. The edges of his hands didn't track quite right, and URME soon hid them from view, tucking his fingers inside his torn uniform. Plus, he'd been analyzing the crew's voice patterns, noting in their vocal tones and harmonics a steadily rising level of stress, clearly affecting their ability to cooperate with each other. He needed to do a complete psych workup...and soon.

"Twist fields are at about twelve percent, Captain. The core's putting out twist but it's not stable. With the converger offline, we've got no way control the output. If we tried a jump now, there's no telling where we'd wind up, or even if we can get out of voidtime at all."

Dringoth frowned. "Great. Just friggin' great."

M'Bela pleaded with her eyes, fiddling with her neck beads nervously. "Skipper, tell me we're not going to try another jump just yet."

Dringoth said, "Keep your shirt on, Queenie. We're not going anywhere until we know we can get there. Just one question, URME...can the core be repaired?"

URME roiled slightly, the swarm equivalent of a thought, Dringoth had long surmised. "In time, yes, Captain...I believe the core can be repaired enough to boost output to seventy or eighty percent. Jumps made at that level of core capacity are usually operationally safe practices. But it'll take time."

Dringoth lips tightened; that usually happened when a big decision was coming. "Okay, here's what we're doing. Yang, you, me, Queenie and URME will work on repairs inside the ship, particularly repairs to the core. URME's the lead on this and Dr. Linx will help as needed. Got that?"

They all indicated they did.

Dringoth turned to Golich and Acth:On'e. "You two are going outside. Fix our flow vanes, rudder, any other controls that need work and do an external inspection of the hull. URME, can you pinch off a small subset of yourself to help out, guide these two on procedures?"

"Can do, Captain," URME said.

Acth:On'e raised one objection. "May I remind the Captain that Time Guard has no procedures for extra-vehicular activity in voidtime. This has never been done before. We don't know what might happen."

"Duly noted," Dringoth said. "You'll have the honor of being the first."

Golich was increasingly suspicious of Dringoth's motives. "Captain, it would be best if we secured our hypersuits to the ship with a tether. I'm not sure what effect our suit boost will have on voidtime. It's not normal spacetime."

Dringoth shrugged. "Do that. Your suit boost works like any reactive propulsion system. But you could be right. Don't take needless chances. But get our flow vanes back working."

Thanks, Golich noted sourly. But he said nothing.

"Look," Dringoth added, "We're all anxious to get home. We're all nervous about our situation. I know that. So am I. But we've got to focus on what needs to be done to get the ship ready. Cygnus working properly is our best ticket home. Time Guard gave 1st TD this mission because they knew they could count on us. I intend for that kind of confidence to be well-placed. Sure, there are risks. The whole mission is risky. But at least, we can be sure the Bugs were vaporized by that supernova. Now all we have to do is get back and make our after-action reports."

Nothing further was said and the crew dispersed to their assignments. As ordered, Golich and Acth:On'e donned hypersuits and cycled out of Cygnus' airlock, firmly attached to the ship's hull by extensible tethers.

Golich decided it would be best not to use their suit boost, but to maneuver about the hull the old-fashioned way—hand over hand. Acth:On'e didn't disagree.

Centimeter by centimeter, the two of them methodically scoured and scanned the outer hull for any damage from the supernova. Protected as they were by the barrier of voidtime, they found only faint patches of discoloration along the hull that had been fully exposed to the effects of Leviathan.

The flow vanes amidships were another story.

Acth:On'e whistled in his helmet. "Don't know if that's even repairable, Commander. The whole mount's compromised. Actuators are bent back, wiring's stripped. Control box may be fried by the radiation. I'd say this one should be replaced, wouldn't you?"

"Agreed," said Golich grimly. He shined his helmet lamp more fully on the tangled, burned-out mess. "And we'll have to do some hull plate repairs to make a new surface for the mount. Best get to work...this is going to take some time."

Quietly, the two time jumpers set to work, pulling damaged components and fried wiring free, studying schematics in their eyepieces, projected on the inner surfaces of their helmets. Golich took a moment to look up and around the ship, halfway expecting to see stars, galaxies, nebulae, but there was nothing. He had to remind himself where they were...early in the Universe's time line, where only a few stars had turned on...the time of First Light. And voidtime tended to mask everything anyway. A glowing fog surrounded them, an ethereal plasma faintly lit from afar. Golich realized he could only see his own hands and the shattered guts of the flow vane in front of him. Even Acth:On'e was barely visible, a nearby ghostly presence more felt than seen.

He heard Acth:On'e muttering something to himself over the comm, humming, maybe some old Telitorian nursery rhyme. He listened for a moment.

"...after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship  
"Upon a painted ocean.  
"Water, water, everywhere,  
"And all the boards did shrink;  
"Water, water, everywhere,  
"Nor any drop to drink.

"The very deep did rot – Oh Christ!  
"That ever this should be.  
"Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs,  
"Upon the slimy sea."

"Acth, what the hell is all that gibberish? Some kind of nursery rhyme?"

Acth:On'e coughed over the comm circuit, clearing his throat. "Sorry, Commander. Actually, it's from an ancient Urth poem. 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Being stuck here in voidtime reminded me of those old sailing ships, when they were becalmed in the doldrums."

"Fine time to come up with that. Here, give me that spanner...I need to wrestle with this damned bolt some more. I didn't know you Telitorians were such poets."

Acth:On'e handed him the tool. "We're not, necessarily. It's just that I'm studying for Time Guard OCS...in my spare time, of course. I have to pass my first exams when we get back to K-World and one track is ancient Urth history and literature."

"Swell, just focus on what you're doing out here so we don't mess this up, okay?" Golich grumbled something incoherent over the comm, something Acth:On'e didn't quite catch.

"I'm sorry, sir...you were saying--?"

"Oh, nothing. You know, I think the Captain's really got it in for us...for me, I mean. He assigned us to this duty to get rid of us."

Acth:On'e was surprised at what he heard. "Surely, you don't really believe that, Commander?"

Golich shone his helmet lamp on a darker splotch along the hull, examining the patch with a penetrant beam from his wristpad. He clucked and h'mmmed. "I don't know, Acth. Captain's made some pretty dicey decisions lately...like using the collapser from inside voidtime. I know it was supposed to have been tested, but still—it's like the man's trying to get us all killed. Haven't you sensed it? The whole crew's uneasy...except for maybe URME but he's just a cloud of bots."

Acth:On'e moved over the curve of Cygnus' hull, closely examining an emitter array folded against the side. "If you have questions about his decisions, Commander, why don't you just go right to the Captain?"

Golich hooted at that. "Yeah, right...and be accused of fomenting a mutiny? No thanks. I'd wind up in some military prison at the ass end of the Sturdivant system and you know where I mean. In the whole history of Time Guard, there's never been a mutiny on a jumpship. No sir, I'm just biding my time."

"For what?"

"Once we get back home, back to K-World--if we get back--I'm resigning my commission. I'm leaving the Guard for good. I got a lot of irons in the fire, a lot of opportunities. I've already put in an application to join Frontier Corps, pilot one of those big fat freighter ships around Sturdivant."

Acth:On'e had no idea that Commander Golich felt this way. "Pardoning me for saying so, sir but that would be a waste of a lot of talent."

"Maybe so, but I value my skin and my talents can be used in a lot safer places...safer than this."

Acth:On'e said nothing further but Golich's words troubled him. The two of them continued their hull inspection in silence, both noting on their wristpads the details and photos of areas that would need more extensive work.

It was clear that Cygnus wouldn't be making time jumps any time soon.

Inside the ship, other inspections and repairs were underway. Dringoth worked with M'Bela, both using Dr. Linx to fetch things, inside Cygnus' tailpod, closely examining the port and starboard propulsor bays and their tangle of piping and wires. The ship had minimal propulsor ability but there was a stubborn leak somewhere that prevented the thrust chambers from building up to proper flight pressure.

On the other side of the tailpod, URME and Alicia Yang were deep inside the singularity core housing, trying to puzzle out why they couldn't get the converger online.

URME, being a swarm entity, was inside the concentric rings of the converger, since only a swarm of nanobots could reconfigure itself to squeeze into such tight confines. Yang hovered outside the housing, checking off inspection points on her wristpad.

Silently, she read from a tech bulletin put out by Time Guard Engineering just before the ship had left K-World....

"The converger is designed to align the core twist field with worldlines in any given time stream. The twist field is generated by the chronotron pods and...yeah, yeah, blah, blah...tell me something I don't know...."

Her muttering was interrupted by URME's tinny voice, issuing from somewhere inside the housing. It sounded like it was coming out a barrel.

"Half these chronotron pods are shot all to hell, Jumpmaster Yang. It's a mess in here. Core really got fried by that star blowing up."

"Remember Dr. Linx described some of the effects of a supernova...the heat pulse, radiation, EM and shock waves."

From across the tailpod, Linx had heard them. He yelled over: "Those effects are still ongoing too. We're detecting them even inside this voidtime."

"Swell. So we can't just blast out of here and expect a boring ride home."

URME answered that. "Cygnus will have to jump in such a way as to put a lot of distance between us and Leviathan. Otherwise, when we jump and go back into truetime—"

He didn't have to finish the thought. Yang got the picture.

She peered into the guts of the core housing, watching URME as the swarm flowed and drifted in and out of tiny crevices and nooks, examining the converger at extreme nanoscale resolution.

When it came, URME's question startled her out of a daze.

"Alicia, tell me: how did you first come to be with Time Guard? Was it always a dream of yours?"

Yang snorted. "Hardly." She knew what URME was doing. Even as part of the swarm filtered like flashing smoke into and out of converger coils, he was working on a new crew psych eval. URME units had that duty on every jumpship. It was common knowledge among crews that you'd best watch what you said around URME units. They were tireless, relentless and always on duty.

"It's all part of my service record, URME. You know the details."

"I just like to hear it in your words. Hearing the words helps me be a better crewperson."

"And a better shrink too. Okay, you're on." She turned her wristpad around so the screen didn't show and sank back against the lip of the housing access hatch...to remember.

And even as she ladled out the story, URME was hard at work, comparing her words with notes from her service record...and analyzing her vocal tones and harmonics, as he scanned her record in his memory....

Alicia was born August 1, 2789, Copernicus City, the Moon (an area known as Little Shanghai). Her father was Ken Liu Yang (an engineer with Life Support Division, Copernicus Corporation). Her mother was Li Kwan Yu, a tractor tech servicing ground vehicles for Copernicus. Alicia has one older brother Zhang Li Yang and a younger sister Chen Ke Yang, born with a developmental disorder. The Yangs were often criticized for not taking steps to alter Chen's genome and prevent the problem...but there were spiritual reasons for their actions.

Alicia loves swimming and springboard diving—quite a treat in the Moon's one-sixth g environment. She also loves all forms of dance, ballet, and related disciplines. She is accomplished in tai chi and several martial arts, including judo and kung fu. Alicia is small in stature but powerfully strong, quick, sure-footed in her movements and a kind of human dynamo.

Alicia became interested in geology and selenology in school at Copernicus City. Her Net Tutor specialty and great interest was petrology and stratigraphy, the study of rocks and geological strata (layers). As a senior, she was a contributor to a seminal paper on lunar mineralogy in the South Pole Shackleton Crater region that provided scientific rationale for the explosion of settlements in that region...

Alicia is motivated by several things: science and a desire for recognition; perfection in whatever dance or athletic challenge she has adopted (Alicia is a notorious perfectionist; about which Monthan Dringoth and the other crewmembers of Cygnus kid her a lot); and a need to experience new things and new places. In this, Alicia is a sort of adrenalin explorer junkie. She is not reckless but definitely up for new experiences, the more outrageous, the better. She could never turn down a dare or a challenge, or not respond when advised that she couldn't do something. That's how you motivate Alicia: tell her she's not capable of doing something.

Alicia never seems to eat anything. She is very small and petite and her appetite "wouldn't fill a squirrel", according to fellow crewmember Evelyn M'Bela. She likes fruits and has taken a variety of synthetic fruits with her as a personal allowance on the Cygnus missions. Her favorite: kiyuva, an Indonesian fruit that has been genetically altered for low-grav environments. It's a guava-lime-mango blend. She loves it.

In her off time, Alicia practices tantric and hatha yoga. When so engaged in her compartment, she looks like a ceramic figurine. Just don't disturb her.

Alicia is strongly driven to succeed. This comes from her father. She is ambitious, focused, not particularly friendly and extremely reliable. Her word is sacred. And like any Asian, she is particularly concerned with keeping face and honoring her parents, her ancestors and her associates....

URME's own voice interrupted her reminiscences.

"I think I'm done down here," he announced. The swarm thickened, flowed out of the converger coil section, then issued out onto the deck and formed up a crude likeness of an actual Time Guard crewman. It sparkled and flashed as URME slowly assumed a more solid form. "I'll have to fashion fourteen new chronotron pods. I just hope we have enough feedstock onboard."

Yang smiled faintly, still hazy with the mists of her own past. "You can use some of that T-ration crap in the galley. No one's ever going to eat any of that."

A moment later, Captain Dringoth himself showed up outside the core housing, hands on hips. "Well, you two...how goes it? URME, give me the bad news."

URME proceeded to run down a long litany of repair work that still needed to be done.

Several days later, Dringoth decided Cygnus was as repaired as she was going to be. "She's as shipshape as we can make her," he announced to an all-hands briefing in the crew's mess.

URME spoke up, hovering like a diffuse, vaguely human-looking fog bank by the replicators. "Captain, I must advise against any jumps at this time. We have a full set of chronotron pods but they're not fully tested. The converger's not tested...we should run a systematic series of integrated—"

But Dringoth would hear no more. "Spare me, URME. I'm sure she's not in dockyard shape right now...but then we're not exactly in the dockyard, are we?"

Neither Acth:On'e nor URME could offer any firm assurances that the singularity core would work as intended.

Yang explained. "It's a patch job at best, Skipper. No offense to URME, but it's not very stable and risky as hell. We can punch out of voidtime, but I'm not sure we can control what happens afterward. And there's still Leviathan—"

Linx agreed. "Even in our own time, supernova affects extend for lightyears in all directions. We have to get as far away from Leviathan as we can...to be sure."

Dringoth waved them quiet. "Nothing's for sure on this mission—" That earned a sideways glance between M'Bela and Golich. Oh boy, here it comes now. "We've got to exit voidtime somewhere and look for a more compatible time stream. Hopefully, Queenie here can get us back to T-001, so we can find some kind of worldline and go home."

"It's a pretty significant risk," Golich said. He looked around and saw heads nodding, agreement from Yang and M'Bela. URME remained a nearly faceless cloud.

"I understand that," Dringoth told them, "but it's a chance we'll have to take. I'm responsible for completing the mission of Operation First Light and the job's not done until we get back and make our reports. Plus, I want to punch into truetime and scan for any Bugs around here, make sure they got vaporized by Leviathan."

"First Light Corridor and T-9998 are probably still pretty turbulent, Captain," M'Bela said. "Navigation will be dicey."

"I'm confident you can make it work, Jumpmaster M'Bela. We really don't have much of a choice."

No one said anything else. There really wasn't much to be said.

Dringoth brusquely ordered the crew dismissed.

After a few final details, Dringoth ordered the crew to jump stations. Dringoth and Golich would man the command consoles on A deck. M'Bela would sit behind them, at Search and Surveillance, Dr. Linx nearby. Four decks aft, at her weapons station, Alicia Yang and URME would monitor core and propulsor status during the jump.

When all stations reported ready, Dringoth took a deep breath, flexing his fingers like a pianist. Golich saw the gesture out of the corner of his eyes and just shook his head. This is insane. But what the hell. Tempus regit!

Dringoth strapped in and checked his board. All green, all copacetic and no flags. Cygnus had been powered up several hours before, her patched-up MHD power plant ticking over, humming, now sending a slight shudder through her hull.

"Ready all systems...stand by for final check and all-call."

One by one, the crew came back.

"Ready, TT1."

"Search is go!"

"DPS...yo and go!"

"Propulsors on line...ease her forward one quarter, ISAAC."

Cygnus lurched as her MHD jets opened up to one-quarter throttle and she came about, to sniff along the path ISAAC had already laid in, a path defined only by the faintest ripples in voidtime, a remnant trail left by the ship's passage.

"Answering one-quarter, handling nicely, ISAAC. Feels like we're fighting cross-currents."

The ship's AI answered back. "I have all sensors tuned to the exact frequency of vacuum field fluctuations, Captain. On course now. We are centered in the cylinder of displacement to within twelve point five zepto-arcseconds of nominal course. Adjusting now...."

Golich just shook his head. "This is like driving a car off a dock, right into the ocean."

The voidtime boundary came up much faster than anyone expected.

"I'm opening up the throttle now," Dringoth told them. "Increasing to redline. Hang on and buckle up!"

Cygnus shuddered slightly, as her power plant stroked higher and she nosed into the outer edge effects of the voidtime channel.

Just then, Cygnus lurched one last time in the growing turbulence and punched straight through the barrier, straight out of voidtime into...where?

In an instant, they were yanked out of voidtime, spinning, yawing, and rolling like a top. For Dringoth, the first impulse was insane, like being shaken to death in some dog's mouth...or maybe it was the ship itself that seemed to be coming apart. It was hard to tell. Now they were all whirling and spinning, dizzy, round and round, he could feel the force of the spin against his head, pressing, crushing him....

He had a fleeting glimpse of the crew—maybe it was Golich, maybe it was M'Bela, he couldn't really tell and he nearly vomited at the sight. It was all wrong...the image was wrong and his mind refused to accept it, even though he had seen it before.

... and then it came. An image of geometric forms—icosahedrons, polygons, trapezoids—all compressed into that same tunnel, a long curving corridor and he found himself hurtling at breakneck speed down this corridor, until—

They were in. Somewhere in time stream T-001.

And Cygnus was caught in the backwash of worldlines unraveling like threads off a spool.

Interactions Log

File No. 129952.6

U.R.M.E (101)

Interaction Targets: 1. Golich, Jump CDR Nathan A.

Interaction Mode: Acoustic, voice synthetic V-22

Date: 1.12.66 (Estimating T-date: 001-12-66)

Start Time: 127500

End Time: 128230

Output File for Psych Eval 22 (text analysis):

<<Subject: Configuration: Golich, Nathan.

<<Config Golich was emotionally troubled most of the day, before the jump out of voidtime occurred. There are several potential causes for such instability, ranked by correlation co-efficient: parametric dysplasia of amygdala patterns, hippocampal lesion or inherent resonance of ventral tegmentum with normal neuronal firing patterns across the prefrontal cortical layers, leading to impaired judgment. These instabilities are more than fifty percent above baseline values for single-config entities such as Golich, N.

<<Config Golich displayed multiple physical symptoms of intense interest, bordering on unhealthy absorption, with the routine and lawful orders and activities of Captain Dringoth, to the detriment of his normal duties. Galvanic skin response, vocal stress patterns, a slight tarsal tremor in his fingers, all are indicative of intense engagement with the Captain and his probable motivations in issuing such orders. I have formally entered this into his medlog to build a database of his responses to this unusual stressor.

<<Config Golich has previously expressed concerns regarding the orders and intentions of the Captain, especially in regard to the probability of successfully completing the mission and guiding the ship back to base.

<<This worries Config Golich. He expresses this worry with facial positioning indicative of intense emotions...the underlying musculature has contracted due to emotional states associated with the ship's tactical situation and the Captain's indicated resolution to said tactical dilemmas. This also is characteristic of single-configuration entities. I do not yet understand how Config Golich's neural processor achieves this association of emotional states with external conditions, nor the reason why this happens. But this association occurs more and more frequently in recent days.

<<I have queried Config Golich about this association. He reports that when he is 'worried' (n.)( to be anxious, to be concerned, to fret...), these emotional states make his neural processor attach great importance to the information which has triggered them. I will run statistical correlations on this explanation. Config Golich queried this Config on how my main processor assigns importance values to inputs and ranks them. I explained sorting subroutine B-20225 (Sort and Rank) and subroutine B-44455 (Probabilistic Weighting) but Config Golich still did not understand.

<<Config Golich states that URME–style swarms have fundamental misunderstandings about how human configurations operate and what conditions are needed for them to exist.

<<In analyzing Config Golich's facial musculature, I also detected additional emotional states that could not be readily associated with any normal input. Config Golich was queried about these patterns. Further correlation analysis produced medium-probability results for Config Golich and associated crewmembers engaging in actions detrimental to ship safety and crew cohesion.

<<Config Golich expressed a variant of emotional state (worry), concerning the tactical judgment of Captain Dringoth. Emotional state assignment is high when Config Golich considers these configurations. Config Golich explains that such emotional attachment is high because (audio string): "There has never been a successful mutiny on any Time Guard jumpship."

<<I will analyze emotional state musculature patterns and run correlations with input types. Understanding these correlations will help me provide greater assistance to Config Golich in restoring this configuration to proper emotional balance and homeostatic stability.>>

Output File Ends

# Chapter 2: "This is no drill!"

"I have realized that the past and future are (the) real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is...and all there is."

Alan Wilson Watts

Jumpship Cygnus

Time Stream: T-001

T-date: Estimated T-001-12-66

When Evelyn M'Bela finally took a hack off the first worldlines she could detect from her station, she whistled and swallowed hard. They had jumped into time stream T-001 all right, but nowhere near where they should have been.

"Jeez," she muttered, "this can't be right."

Dringoth called back. "What are you showing, Queenie? Where the hell are we?"

"Captain, if I'm reading this damn thing right, we're in T-001, but earlier in the main worldline...somewhere about...Jesus...no way...somewhere about 2766. ChronoNav makes it T-date T-001-12-66 plus or minus."

Golich peered out the porthole on his side. "Well, one thing's for sure...that ain't Sturdivant 2180 out there."

Dringoth took a look and felt something brassy and bitter rising in the back of his mouth. "No, Commander, it isn't. That...is Epsilon Eridani, my friends. And somewhere around here is a little world called Hapsh'm."

The very word brought shudders to his whole body.

M'Bela got Dringoth's attention. "Captain, picking up emergency traffic on V1 comm...I think it's a 101 alarm...it doesn't make any sense...but it sounds like the base is under some kind of attack."

"On speaker," Dringoth ordered.

Static and whistles chirped and crackled before words could be recognized. "...are everywhere...all hands, lay forward to the...zzzhhh... airlocks...kkkqqssszzhhh...all hands to stations...Level 1, Level 1 assault now...this is no drill!"

Dringoth's blood ran cold. "Queenie, are you sure about that ChronoNav reading?"

M'Bela checked again. "Pretty sure, Skipper. Plus or minus a few days...it's T-001-12-66 all right."

Dringoth swore under his breath. "We just can't seem to catch a break. It's the first Coethi encounter."

Golich said, "What is it, Captain? What's going on?"

Dringoth was already sliding out of his seat, heading for the gangway. "Hapsh'm, Commander. That's what's going on. We've jumped into T-001 all right. But not at the right point on the main worldline. Somehow, we've landed right in the middle of the 'Incident at Hapsh'm."

With that, the entire crew of Cygnus rushed to the airlocks on F deck. Only URME stayed behind, to run the ship and ensure they made a stable orbit about the planet. Linx stayed behind too, as a noncombatant. One after another, the time jumpers donned their hypersuits and cycled through, lighting off their suit boost to make a combat descent into the thick atmosphere of Hapsh'm, two hundred kilometers below.

Time was critical. Dringoth had been here before and he knew the Bugs were already swarming all over the main base at Hapsh'm City. The base was under assault by a formation of Bugs that had stowed away aboard a small contingent of jump ships just arrived back from Operation Perseus. Unknown to the Umans, the Coethi had hidden in the jumpships, morphed into human-like creatures and returned with the Uman crews, penetrating the secure zone and all the nanobotic barriers that way.

Umans had never encountered Coethi before. The 'Incident at Hapsh'm' was the first encounter.

Once through the upper atmosphere of Hapsh'm, Dringoth and Golich homed on the approach beacons at Hapsh'm City and let their suit boost adjust and guide them through the dense clouds. The fifth planet of Epsilon Eridani was a cloudy, scorching semi-desert world, thick with sand seas and arid arroyos, punctuated by steep mountains and volcanic escarpments resembling sawed-off mesas.

The Time Guard base, officially Forward Operating Base Hapsh'm Prime, was set in a protected enclosure at the foot of one of the mesas, just outside Hapsh'm City, the largest settlement. A scattering of crude villages across the equator of the world contained fewer than four hundred other settlers in total.

The Epsilon Eridani system was only a little more than ten light years from Urth itself. It was thus strategically critical that a Uman presence be maintained this close to the motherworld. It wasn't hard to figure out why the Bugs had come to this sector.

Under controlled descent, the five time jumpers soon punched through the lower cloud deck and Dringoth checked their line-abreast positioning. Textbook combat descent, he nodded to himself. Just like they were trained. The hypersuited jumpers looked like little white cocoons riding fiery tails of thrust as they made their approach. Beyond the small force, the clouds were swollen and purple and distant lightning veined across a surreal cloudscape.

Through the dust and haze, Dringoth could see the lights and structures of Hapsh'm City itself, and then he spied the base, a spidery layout of domes and connecting tubes with comm antennas and landing pads to the north and an engineering and power plant complex to the south.

Jeez, this close to Urth, they could use a Time Twister for defense, he told himself. But that was for later.

"Descent jumpers, make for that dome to the right! Copernicus Wing...if my memory's right, that's where the Bugs first showed up. That's where the threat's the greatest."

M'Bela shuddered at the faint flickering fog beginning to surround Copernicus Wing, for she knew what that meant. "Captain, are we fighting the same battle that Time Guard fought forty-eight years ago? Is this really the 'Incident at Hapsh'm' all over again?"

"We have to assume it is. Spread out. Touch down along that crawlerway that goes north. We'll re-group and try to establish some kind of comms with the poor bastards inside."

One after another, the jumpers made landings along the rutted road that led out of Copernicus Wing, north to the antenna fields and the landing pads. Already they could see much of the Wing was enveloped in a faintly sparkling fog, visual evidence of a swelling Bug swarm beginning to expand across the base.

"Okay, spread out!" Dringoth yelled. "Let's try flanking the bastards and hosing down the perimeter with HERF and mag fire!"

Dringoth and Acth:On'e headed left, toward the crawler garage and the airlocks. Golich, M'Bela and Yang went right, creeping along the tube that connected Copernicus with Yang Liwei Wing, an Ops and engineering enclosure.

Once in position, Dringoth checked around and found the jumpers in defilade positions, ready to fire.

"Okay, jumpers, light 'em up! Fry the bastards!"

For a few seconds, the northern face of Copernicus Wing was bathed in thunderclaps of rf blasts from the HERF weapons. Coils of intense magnetic rounds slammed the swarm again and again, blowing up gouts of dirt with every pulse, shredding the outer bands of bots that were even now beginning to drift in their direction.

"Let's try opening a path to Copernicus!" Dringoth told them. "Push the Bugs away from the airlocks and try to shove them away from the whole compound, back toward the landing pads!"

The jumpers adjusted their positions and firing to achieve that result, but it was slow going for as soon as a hole was blasted in the swarm, it closed up just as quickly. Dringoth knew just how fast the bastards could reconstitute and soon decided to change tactics.

"Commander, you and me are going inside. M'Bela, Acth, Yang, concentrate on making a hole in that swarm, right around the airlocks. Golich and I are going to make a run for it."

As ordered, HERF and mag fire zeroed in on the thickest flank of the swarm, surrounding the crawler garage and airlocks. After a few minutes, a faint dimming of the swarm indicated their path.

"Come on!" Dringoth yelled. One after another, he and Golich plunged into the maelstrom, swatting and batting at the bots as they dove through the swarm and made their way to the airlocks.

In front of the heavy hatch, Dringoth and Golich huddled against the outer hull of the dome, while Dringoth checked a schematic of the base layout on his helmet eyepiece.

The four domes were connected to each other by buried access tunnels, along with wireways, and other service piping. Crawlerways circled the compound, and two of the domes sported what looked like growths along the sides of the domes; these were crawler garages and workshops. A longer crawlerway snaked off to the northeast, toward the base perimeter.

"Let's try to force this hatch," Dringoth suggested. "I don't know what we may find on the other side."

"Any other airlocks?" Golich asked.

"That closest dome at Huygens Wing should have one, according to my specs. Treaty-standard gear, the usual interfaces. But we should be able to get in here, if the Bugs haven't already jammed it."

"I'm keeping my mag gun primed, just in case," Golich said.

They came up to the airlock and cycled their way through with no problem.

"The V1 comm channel is still open," Golich noted, "but our screamer seems to have vanished. I'll try to raise him—" Golich keyed his own mic, then "Cygnus Assault One to anyone, Cygnus Assault One to anyone, responding to V1 comm emergency...we're inside the base. Responding to an emergency call...here to render assistance and aid—"

But no one answered the call.

Dringoth then got on their own crewnet and ordered M'Bela, Acth:On'e and Yang to ingress through the diminished swarm as soon as they could stabilize the opening.

"Meet us inside," he told them.

The two jumpers cycled out of the airlock into a room crammed with gear, a crawler parked in its bay, hooked up by cables and wires, several suits hanging in support frames from the ceiling, consoles winking with lights and an odd patch of white ash next to one of the seats.

Dringoth bent down, his suit servos whining to adjust, to examine the patch. He dragged his fingers through the ash. "I've got a bad feeling about this. Put your scope on this patch...ten to one, this is atom fluff."

Golich examined the patch with a portable analyzer from his web belt. "Bingo! Readings off scale...high thermals, high EMs, some badass atom smashing right here and not long ago either. Whoever or whatever this was, they were disassembled in a hurry and it's not an ANAD signature either. I don't recognize the graphs at all...something new."

"And plenty nasty," muttered Dringoth. "Come on...and keep your weapon primed."

They pushed through and found themselves in a circular corridor, a hallway that appeared to circle the dome along its outer circumference. They passed hab spaces, berths and beds and bathrooms and shower stalls. They came to a compact commissary, with counters, and refrigerators and cabinets, all well stocked with supplies.

They also passed two more patches along the corridor flooring, the last one near an escape hatch. The hatch was closed but not fully sealed. A thin high-pitched squeal of air could be heard.

"Better launch an ANAD subswarm and get that sealed," Dringoth said. "My ears are already popping." They paused for a moment, while Golich did the honors, launching his own embed and pecking out a basic config to form a seal over the hatch ring. The small swarm was barely visible, only an occasional pop of light gave away the fact that a formation of nanoscale assemblers was hard at work. Moments later, the hatch was sealed and the leak had been stopped.

"We'll send 'em the bill," Golich said. "Where the hell are we? And where is everybody?"

"My specs say this is Copernicus Dome," Dringoth replied. "Mostly hab spaces, residential units, this—" but his words were suddenly interrupted by a commotion up ahead. A short, stocky man clad only in a long-john undergarment, came barreling around the curve of the corridor, the cooling tubes of his undergarment flapping and spraying water everywhere. His face was scrunched up in some kind of frozen scream and his hands were waving and flailing about his head.

He stumbled and went head first to the floor when he saw the hypersuited jumpers.

Dringoth and Golich immediately had their mag carbines trained on the crewman, who struggled up to his feet and immediately raised his hands. His face was shiny with sweat, pocked with lacerations and his voice hoarse and halting, Mandarin Chinese mixed with snatches of English.

"Tamen laile...tamen laile...they're coming...inside the dome...get away while you can!"

His face was wild and strained and only a mag gun barrel in the chest forced him to calm down and take stock of his own situation.

"Who's coming?" asked Dringoth. "What's inside the dome?"

Bit by bit, haltingly at first, the words came tumbling out. Chinese mixed with English, punctuated with great heaving gasps for air and arms still waving about, the crewman admitted he was actually the Chief Engineer for the whole base. His name was Liu Wei Fong.

They moved to the commissary, where Liu took a seat at a table. Golich managed to get some tea going. Liu sipped greedily and gratefully, warily eyeing the troopers through steam from his cup.

They could hardly believe what he told them.

Liu reported that it was true: the Chinese contingent at the base had been digging up by a place called the Mounds, excavating, under Time Guard contract, another of some strange spheres that had turned up all over Hapsh'm. Some kind of quantum sphere, able to give anyone who mastered it unprecedented access to the archives and knowledge of a race not of the Urth.

"We call them Lao bufen...the Old Ones," Liu reported. "This sphere...this lingyu...he is like a door. Like a portal to their library...all kinds of knowledge is there...new devices, new sciences, a fabulous discovery—"

"And more for anyone with the right connections, I imagine," Dringoth said sourly. "We know they're here...we've seen the deco wake evidence—surveillance gear from the Bugs."

"Yes, yes, Hong Chui...they're here. But when we uncovered the sphere, we found something else...very bad."

Golich was skeptical. "Oh, yeah...like what? A gold mine?"

Lui shook his head vigorously, downing the scalding hot tea in one gulp. "No, no...a swarm...a massive swarm, like never encountered before...it's already escaping the muzang—"

"Like a dust cloud, maybe?" surmised Dringoth. "That must be what we saw boosting in."

Lui agreed. "This swarm...he is massive. It's underground, below the excavation, below the base. Moving below the surface, hundreds of meters below the surface. Truly it is big, maybe half a kilometer in dimension, maybe more. This is what is causing the tremors, all the quakes and seismic activity. Truly a danger—the whole town is in danger."

Even as he spoke, another tremor rocked the dome and pots and pans fell clattering to the floor from shelves along the galley walls. Liu's eyes widened in terror.

"You must help us now...this swarm is damaging Tian Jia...one of our scientists thinks it could even consume the entire planet."

"We did see a lot of landslides on the way down to Copernicus," admitted Dringoth.

"Sinkholes too," said Golich. "Remember that big ravine just before we landed, along that ridge over the hills?"

"How many of you are left?" Dringoth asked.

Liu shrugged. "Few. Maybe I am the only one. But we need help. This swarm –this Guanli ren...your own people have called them Bugs, I believe...is moving toward the surface. What you see as dust clouds are only the farthest projections of the formation...it isn't dust at all. Small robots, nanorobotic devices, emerging from fissures in the surface...some are even leaving the surface. They have propulsors---we've examined some in our labs. They can move under their own power...some may even have left the base entirely."

"We'd better recon the area," Dringoth decided. "Find out who's still here." Before he could choose a direction, there was a commotion outside the commissary. Evelyn M'Bela popped her head inside, along with Acth:On'e and Alicia Yang.

"We came when we heard voices," she admitted. "Just penetrated the swarm outside...it's stabilized for a moment, holding back the worst of the Bugs, but for how long—" she shrugged. "We left Yang's HERF outside, set to max."

"It'll run out of charge in about ten minutes," Yang said.

Dringoth filled them in on what he and Golich had encountered. "Acth, you and Yang head over to Huygens dome, recon the area. Queenie, you and Golich do likewise at Yang Liwei dome—it's that way, according to my schematics—he pointed over his shoulder. "I'll scope out the rest of Copernicus with Liu here."

Left unsaid was what Dringoth clearly remembered from his experience at Hapsh'm before, for he had done all these same things nearly forty years ago.

The time jumpers dispersed to their assigned sectors. Dringoth grabbed a reluctant, still shaken Liu and lifted him to his feet.

"You're coming with me."

Dringoth knew from his earlier encounter with the Bugs here that the Coethi were everywhere. They could replicate into practically anything—people, doors, furniture, cabinets—replicate exponentially and at blazing speeds, mimicking any structure in minutes, even looking like other Umans. HERF and mag pulse weapons worked, even counter-swarming with ANAD units helped, but he knew the jumpers had to move fast, for the Coethi were already steadily overwhelming the defenders.

Dringoth felt firmly of Lui's shaking shoulder and decided in that moment that the frightened Chinese engineer really was the real thing.

Outside the commissary, he decided to maneuver cautiously around the circular corridor and systematically investigate each and every room.

Just outside the still-secured entrance to the SpaceGuard center, he ran right into another Uman, a face he hadn't seen or thought about in decades.

He was Uman all right, medium height but stocky build, with wispy blond hair on top and big jugs for ears. His eyes were like pinpricks, closed nearly shut and his cheeks were splotched red and puffy. A nasty slash across his lower jaw and neck still oozed blood from behind a dingy strip of bandaging.

Jump Master Oscar Keaton had been a good friend of Dringoth back in the day, back when he had first served as a systems mechanic here on Hapsh'm, humping duty for a small detachment of time troopers, jumpers who rode special vehicles called chronopods into alternate time streams to hunt down Coethi scouts and troopers, Bugs trying to alter the local time streams. Dringoth had just come out of Basic from Poona-Peona, a raw jolt ready to make a name for himself.

It was Oscar Keaton who had put him in his place.

Keaton rubbed his jaw. "Been looking for you, Drinkhead. Where ya been...and where's that ammo I sent you out for? Jeez, I can't trust you to do anything."

Dringoth tried to explain who he was, introducing his crew, detailing how they had jumped here by mistake, from the First Light Corridor.

It was clear from the start that Keaton wasn't buying any of it. "That's about the lamest excuse I've heard today. And where the hell did you get that Captain's uniform anyway? How does a systems mechanic rate that...you swipe that from some poor sucker the Bugs got?"

Dringoth started to reply but Keaton wasn't listening.

"Doesn't matter, son...I don't really blame you." He motioned Dringoth's crew—M'Bela, Golich, Acth:On'e and Yang—inside the SpaceGuard center, which look like a boy's camp inside, debris, dust, rubble and T-ration kits everywhere, chairs overturned, ceiling tiles and wire bundles hanging down. The watch center had four others inside, all armed with some kind of weapon, some clearly wounded. Dringoth saw facial scars and neck burns indicating Bug swarm encounters.

Dringoth remembered that Oscar Keaton himself had been a dispatcher at the time of the original Incident at Hapsh'm. Most of the command staff had died in the early Bug assault. Keaton had taken charge of a small crew—this crew—and holed up inside SpaceGuard center, trying to hold out until help arrived. That help had never come and Dringoth had later joined up with the tiny force of cooks, mechanics, armorers and office staff whom Keaton had whipped into a fighting force, able to hold their position until Time Guard could send reinforcements.

It was clear that already Keaton's mind was already working overtime, formulating plans.

"The way I see it is this: once we get enough ammo and a few more weapons—"here, he glared over at Dringoth—"we'll make one all-out assault and try to push the Bugs out of Copernicus Wing for good. There are some lifters nearby...I think they're still flyable. We grab a chronopod and a lifter, take off and HERF the rest of the base, slam 'em with everything we've got—" He stopped, seeing Golich with a hand up. "Yeah, what is it, Commander—"

"Golich, sir. Nathan Golich. I just wanted to report that we think Copernicus Wing's all clear. We didn't run into any Bugs coming in, after we cleared the entrance."

Keaton's face grew a faint smirk. "Is that so?" He thought for a moment. "That may mean they're moving on toward the City itself. We'd better get loaded up now and move out. If the Bugs get into the City, it'll be bad."

Dringoth and Golich exchanged glances. This wasn't the way Dringoth remembered the Incident. Somehow they had messed up the main worldline. Time streams branched and branched again; often, all it took was a small change in the flow of events. There was no telling what Cygnus had done to the worldline when she'd jumped from T-9998.

Dringoth's eyes told Golich: we'd better play along for now. The Bugs they had run into were very real. The threat to Hapsh'm City was real. Over the next few minutes, the crew of 1st TD mingled with Keaton's tiny force and names were exchanged. Keaton had gathered together a disparate gang of survivors. There was Ismail Ghawri, a cook. Eddie Said, a mechanic. Fong Luzhou, one of the base armorers. The lone officer was female...Jump Lieutenant Marta Reaves.

"We'll head out for the airlocks and the crawler garage," Keaton was outlining the tactical approach. He rubbed his tired eyes vigorously. "All you new guys...you have weapons?"

The crew of 1st TD brandished HERF carbines and mag pulsers. "We came equipped," Golich replied.

"Let's go."

They cracked open the hatch to the SpaceGuard center and sniffed around with sensors.

"Nothing detectable," Alicia Yang reported, scanning for high thermals, high electromag- netics and acoustics of nearby atom smashing. "Just background stuff. Bugs may have dispersed or pulled out."

Keaton led the way. He took them quickly along the curving corridors of Copernicus Wing, past several misshapen lumps of ash and debris—once they had been human, until the Coethi swarm had penetrated the dome.

"Head for the airlocks. There should still be several lifters outside."

The crawler garage was a wreck, but the path to the airlocks was clear. One after another, the troopers cycled outside, 1st TD and Keaton's team. Up a short, inclined roadbed, tilted on buckled landing struts, was one lifter, gleaming dull black in the morning sun, looking like a beat-up bird of prey.

They found the second one half a kilometer away, half buried in sand.

Miraculously, both seemed flyable.

"The Bugs must have moved off toward the City," Keaton decided. "We got to intercept that swarm, give the poor bastards in town a chance to defend themselves."

Dringoth had an idea. "My crew can take that one," he said, indicating the half-buried flyer. "After we dig it out. I've got lifter-qualified jumpers."

"Agreed," Keaton decided. He spoke into his helmet mike, conversing with someone unseen. "Time Guard Patrol already has a small force moving toward Hapsh'm City now. They're setting up a command post on the other side of that mesa, alongside a dried -up arroyo. The City has also collected a small force of Public Security officers there. They want us to rendezvous before we move in. Coordinate plans and assign sectors."

"Agreed," Dringoth said. "We'll meet you there, as soon as we can this bird flying."

They headed off to the lifters. Moments later, the black spidery vehicles were winging their way westward in formation over the misty Kharg River, heading for the sector command post two kilometers distant.

Seen from the air, the valley of the Kharg was a ribbon of green mist in an otherwise bleak moonscape of dun and ocher. Wave after wave of sand dunes marched west to the horizon, while stark mountain escarpments formed a natural bowl feeding meandering wadis now full of dust toward the river. In season, Dringoth knew, the wadis would flash with great floods of rainwater, often flooding and silting the lowlands around the river.

Crossing the river at several hundred meters altitude, the formation of lifters banked left over a dust-choked refugee camp and chopped speed, settling toward a grassy sward just east of the camp entrance. The Public Security sector command post was a scattering of temporary huts erected on a small rise overlooking a narrow stream trickling out of nearby hills. The bivouac area was surrounded by security fencing and barrier nanobots sparkled in the morning sunlight, while shanties, tents and lean-to's of every size and shape crowded in on the green field like waves of wreckage washing ashore.

"Refugees from the City," Golich informed them. "I've been listening in on the public nets." The lifters hovered momentarily while soldiers from the PubSec command company shooed off beggars and pickpockets and secured the field. After a cordon had been set up, the lifters touched down.

"Fall out!" Dringoth ordered over the crewnet. "Tactical One and keep your eyes and ears open."

"Skipper—" it was Alicia Yang, DPS tech for the 1st TD. "Superfly's already deployed...I'm already getting thermals and atomic fluff big time. Intense nanobotic activity all around us—"

"Could be angels in that crowd," Acth:On'e observed. "Better assume the worst—"

"Public Security has protective nano around the compound," Golich told them. "Anything develops in that crowd, we can deal with it."

Dringoth wasn't so sure and told his jumpers to spool up their HERF guns, just in case. When bots went big bang, you didn't have a second to waste. "Fry 'em fast if anything breaches the barrier," he said.

They left the lifters and went into the command post. Keaton and his crew were already there. A Hapsh'mite Public Security captain told them the post had been assembled by their own bots just two days before. It looked like an upside-down sauce pan with a forest of antennas on top.

The briefing theater was a round room, multi-level, crammed with displays and consoles. The captain, whose name tag read Klimuk, took them to the tactical plot, a desk-sized holodeck in the center. Three-D feeds from recon drones shimmered and shifted on the plot.

"We're taking feeds from dozens of drones and bots, circling overhead. This sector extends from Hapsh'm City itself west to the Birkat Qa-run and the Mounds, then sweeps south to Al Fayyum and the Kharg valley. Several hundred square kilometers, as you can see."

Dringoth studied the plot for a few moments. Clots of haze and dust drifted through the plot, bearing from the south, thickening in some places, thinning out in others. He saw occasional pops and flashes of light along the forward edges of the haze.

"I'm guessing those aren't sandstorms, Captain."

Klimuk frowned, massaged his black moustache. "Enemy swarms, I am afraid. We are counter-swarming, with help from your Time Guard Patrol. Where you see the light flashes, we are engaging." The Hapsh'mite ran down a list of countermeasures and tactical weapons, everything from HERF batteries to coilguns, kinetic rounds to mag impulse.

Another Public Security officer, one Lieutenant Sudan, shook his head. "We've had some local successes...we can push back the swarms in one sector, but they are relentless. We push here, they push there—" he waved his hand along the front, "—we counter here, they penetrate there...we sweep one way, the enemy flows like the Kharg, probing every little gap. It is like the sandstorms out of our southwest desert. And every hour, every minute, the swarms push north...always north."

Alicia Yang had been studying the plot. "Hey, what's this little blob up here?" She had seen a tendril of swarming bots, extending like a finger, up the east side of the Kharg Valley.

Klimuk spluttered in surprise. "That has just happened...do you see, Captain Dringoth? Even as we talk, the swarms have trickled up into the City—"

Sudan manipulated the plot and zoomed in tighter, overlaying the display with bubbles of video feed from drones further north. "—it's bad...that's the first penetration into Hapsh'm City itself...looks like the Citadel, the Moquattam Hills. Look---you can already see the panic—"

Even as the scene from the drones shifted and the bubbles gave them different perspectives, it was plain that the streets and alleys around the Citadel complex were choked with refugees. A massive river of humanity was in flight, heading north, along the riverbanks, along every street and path that could be found, surging out of control inexorably north, away from the oncoming swarms. Lights flickered around the edge of the blob and the video feed shook with concussions from kinetic and magnetic rounds detonating nearby.

"How did it get so far north...that's out of our sector?"

"Maybe up the other bank of the river—"

Dringoth had already made up his mind. "That's where we engage. Captain, Lieutenant Sudan, I'll need both of your lifters, good pilots too and maybe some crewtracs too. I want you to drop my detachment right in front of that swarm." He turned to Golich. "Get back to the detachment...tell 'em we're going in opposed entry, Tactical One. And get their embeds primed and ready for launch; we'll need all the protection we can get."

"I'm on it, Skipper." Golich hurried out of the command post.

Dringoth and Keaton both studied the situation. "Can you get me maps, detailed maps, of this area? This Citadel, all the structures, roads, underground conduits?"

Klimuk was already at another console, his fingers flying over a keyboard. "I'm porting it to your Net now. Give me your key—"

Dringoth gave him the crypto and then headed out after Golich. The rest of 1st TD was huddled around one of the lifters, checking out their gear, trading insults with local Public Security officers.

"First Time Displacement Battery, listen up!" Dringoth hoisted himself up on a lifter skid. "Recon just detected an enemy penetration way up north, inside the City barrier. Local Public Security—PubSec--can't hold. Civilian pop is panicked and in flight, so the roads are jammed. We're going in there. This may be just a probe, or a diversion from something else, so keep your eyes open."

There weren't many questions. The nature of the threat was clear. 1st TD loaded up aboard its lifter and headed off to battle. Keaton's force followed in another.

The recon drones had clearly shown an extended swarm mass probing north along the east bank of the Kharg River. With Keaton, Dringoth had worked out a two-pronged assault at the command post.

"Sergeant Keaton will take his squad and insert along the river bank here-" he pointed at the 3-D panorama of southern Hapsh'm City on the display deck. "They'll try to cut through the swarm here and cut off the probe further north. With that element isolated, we'll deal with them. Ghawri...it's imperative that you seal off that southern approach. Take the heavy HERF batteries and the mag weapons. Slam 'em hard and keep slamming 'em."

"What if they try to flank us, Captain?" Ghawri had asked. "Swarms can shift direction in an instant."

"You'll have to try to contain any movement northward. We have to give the City a chance to set up defenses, and evacuate whoever wants to get out. Time is what we need. From the drones, this probe is kind of elongated...the main swarm body is three kilometers further south. It's narrow and extended out front, like a projection. That should be enough for you to punch through and cut them off."

The first lifter descended toward the east bank of the river, through light dust. Every jumper was glued to the portholes, eyeing the swelling swarm front as it boiled up from the south like a gathering storm. It was a dense, flickering fog, shot through with flashes of light as uncountable trillions of mechs slammed atoms and devoured everything in its path.

"We're going in hot!" Keaton's high-pitched voice called over the crewnet. Just to clear a spot for his squad to boost down in their hypersuits, the lifter made several passes by the swarm front and lit off its high-freq rf guns. The air shook with thunderclaps as the radio wave bursts detonated along the wall of seething bots. It was like trying to blow holes in a sandstorm. Fried bots fell out of the sky in sheets but the swarm was so active it could re-constitute and fill in gaps in seconds.

Keaton watched as the lifter pilot made several passes, then corkscrewed closer to the sloping river bank, coming to a hover fifty meters above the ground. One by one, Ghawri, Said, Reaves and Luzhou, jumped out and lit off their suit boost, thrusting on small rockets as they maneuvered away from the swarm front and each sought open ground to set down.

"First squad on the ground!" the crewnet crackled from below them. "Moving out—secure that wall over there—Ghawri, you and Luzhou, lay down suppressing fire! Cut off that cloud of bots—"

Dringoth satisfied himself that Keaton had the situation under control. Already, as the lifter pulled up and away to HERF the swarm again, 1st TD's lifter turned north.

"Jumpers, prepare to exit!"

The trip took only two minutes. The lifter turned northeast and below them, the Moquattam Hills rose abruptly like a rugged chin, giving onto the jumble of the Citadel complex, crammed with domes and minarets and thick with clouds of bots.

"Put us down there," Dringoth told the pilot, a lift jockey named Hernandez that PubSec had loaned them. The kid was an ace lifter pilot, despite his youth. Dringoth pointed to a patch of bare ground between the a nearby mosque and the Settlers Museum. "Right between that mosque and the swarm ball." Indeed, a growing bank of mechs had oozed onto the grounds even as Hernandez maneuvered. "Put us fifty meters over that wing of the museum. We'll drop behind it and come out smokin' at the Bugs from there." Dringoth got on the crewnet. "1st TD, arm your boost! We're dropping right in front of 'em—"

The lifter came to a hover as Hernandez fought the controls and tried to fend off probes from the swarmbots, pulsing the lifter's mag cannon left and right. Bots died by the billion and tinkled off the Perspex cockpit windows.

Dringoth headed aft and waited for the green light over the drop ramp. The rest of the Battery formed up behind him, ready to go on his command. Seconds later, the ramp screeched open and the wind was fierce, swirling in and around the cabin. Dringoth clung to the ropes until the lifter came to a halt. When the light burned green in the dust, he chopped his hand.

"GO...GO...GO...GO...."

On a well-honed three-count, one by one, 1st TD troopers leaped off the drop ramp and lit off their suit boost. With staccato roars, each jumper banked hard and dropped like hungry hawks on several hundred pounds of thrust, heading down toward the south wing of the Settlers Museum, inside the Citadel complex. In seconds, each trooper had made the ground.

Dringoth was the last to go. He sucked in his breath, took note of a nearby tendril of swarm bots drifting toward the open ramp and made his leap into space. Automatically, his suit boost lit off and he joysticked sideways away from the bots, then cut the rocket back by half and fell toward the ground.

He hit hard but stayed upright, feeling hands grab him and steady him as his center of mass shifted with the impact. It was Evelyn M'Bela.

"Gotcha, Skipper!"

But they had no time to waste. "Thanks, Queenie. 1st TD, form up on me!"

The jumpers hustled over to Dringoth's position, hard by a stone staircase along one wing of the huge museum. On the other side, a seething wall of bots boiled up and over the ramparts of the Citadel.

"Listen up...we're going around this end and meet the Bugs head-on. Golich—you and M'Bela HERF that wall of bots. Slam 'em with everything you got. Alicia, you and I are going small and try driving our ANADs directly. Acth, on my command, I'll send you a config based on what I find, then you replicate max rate. We've got to stop these bots right here and now or the City's lost."

"Skipper—" it was M'Bela, "what about air support?"

"I've requested immediate lifter sorties from PubSec...South Zone's supposed to be on the way now. Remember, these guys are just police officers, though, not full military. If we can slam 'em from above and below, we should be able to stun them enough for Alicia and I to do an insert and get a quick look, before they grow back. Let's see what the drones show us—"

Golich drew M'Bela aside as they hustled off to take up their positions. When he was sure they were out of sight, he motioned Queenie to go to Comm 2, not the normal Comm 1.

"What is it, Commander?"

Golich's face was a mix of disgust and anger. "This is just nuts, Queenie. I can't explain it but somehow Captain's taking us back to every battle he ever fought in the past, trying to re-live it, maybe change the outcome. This isn't going to end well."

But before M'Bela could respond, the Bugs were practically on top of them.

Twenty meters away, Dringoth tapped at keys on his wristpad and the small screen dissolved into an aerial view of the other side of the Citadel; recon drones and entomopters circled high above the swarm front, sending back detailed vid and EM imagery.

The swarm churned and boiled like an angry thunderstorm, pops and flashes of light winking on and off inside the dark gray cloud like fireflies as the nanoscale bots stripped atoms clean and replicated like frantic brick masons, building structure at blinding speed. The main mass of the swarm had overtopped the sandstone walls of the great complex and were flowing unopposed across the grounds. Already, several smaller buildings were in ruins, disassembled into atom fluff by the bots as they surged into the fortress.

Dringoth swallowed hard. "Okay, Golich, Acth, M'Bela...it's time to bogey. HERF guns, front and center!"

Golich and M'Bela hustled off with rf cannon slapping the sides of their hypersuits. Each one rounded the museum wing and set up at separate firing positions behind shrubbery and stone columns on the other side.

"Charging now!" came Golich.

"Fire in the hole!" yelled M'Bela.

The thunderclaps of rf discharge boomed out across the esplanade, shattering windows and eardrums everywhere. At the boiling front wall of the swarm front, bots fried by the trillion

and tinkled to the ground. Soon the stone pavement was thick with clattering remnants of bots and the light pops that sizzled through the horde died off noticeably.

"Keep hitting 'em!" Dringoth commanded. "Acth:On'e, suppressing coilgun fire now! Keep their freakin' little nanobotic heads down! We're going small!"

The two jumpers charged around the museum end and lit off their magnetic impulse carbines, sending charge after charge of intense magnetic loop energy into the front. The loops ripped gaping holes in the wall of bots and along with the continuing shock of radio freq waves from the HERF guns, the forward advance of the bots was halted at least momentarily.

Good, very good, thought Dringoth. That'll give 'em something to chew on.

Now it was time to get down with the bugs on their level.

"Alicia, go small NOW!"

Dringoth and Yang both toggled into pilot mode on their own wristpads and let the nanoscale world of atoms and molecules and Brownian motion wash over them. It was like careening out of control down a waterfall, but the sensation subsided in a few seconds.

No doubt about it, combat at the scale of atoms was a different ball game. Every time jumper had his own routine for preparing for the transition from one world to another.

"Now...Queenie! Hit 'em again! Hit 'em hard and fast."

The HERF batteries discharged.

The first image Yang had was that of plowing through heavy surf on some spray-washed beach in a stiff wind. But after years of grabbing atoms and diving in and out of ANAD's world, Alicia Yang knew how to adjust quickly.

She tweaked her propulsors and jetted ahead, fighting currents and bumping through the cascade of molecules that sleeted past her.

Let's get full effectors out, she decided. This latest ANAD had extensible fullerene 'hooks' for better grasping plus a stiffer diamondoid base with more reactive bond ends...the better to stick to whatever she wanted to examine. The Lab's engineers had really been tinkering under the hood and Yang was glad of it.

The ANAD master responded like a champ, deploying grabbers, extractors, hydrogen probes and bond disrupters quickly. Now bristling with his full complement of tools and weapons, he sounded ahead to get his bearings.

Through the heavy 'rain' of jostling molecules, still recovering from the HERF blast, Dringoth had sensed unusual structures ahead. A thermal bloom of assembler activity lit up his viewer and he cut propulsors to reconnoiter the target.

"Could be a screen of defensive bots," he told Yang. He shifted his approach heading, trying to hide behind a clump of oxygens, then scooted past a gust of phosphorus molecules as he tacked against the prevailing current. I'll put the scope on 'em.

Dead ahead, an array of assembler bots had formed a defense line and was quickly closing the gap. Dringoth swallowed hard as the first acoustic image of the mechs settled into view.

Each assembler was shaped like a squat barbell, with top and bottom spheres of pulsating molecule groups bristling with effectors of every conceivable shape and type. The connecting columns were themselves multi-stranded chains of peptides, able to extend and contract the whole structure with lightning speed. The barbells rotated in unison, whirling like tiny motors. Whiplike propulsors churned at either end, lending the bot matchless maneuverability.

Fantastic engineering, Dringoth realized. "Could be the first view anyone's ever had of Coethi."

Time Guard had nothing like it. But before he could probe further for more details, the entire defensive line had whipped forward, almost as a single unit, and enveloped ANAD and its replicant swarm without warning.

Before Dringoth could even react, he got warnings left and right on his coupler circuit:

***Carbene effectors disabled***

***Hydrogen abstractors disabled***

***Port propulsor disabled***

"I'm losing control!" he told Yang. ANAD's response was sluggish and he soon realized why.

All along the line of engagement, the enemy bots had unraveled their multi-stranded peptides and wrapped themselves tightly around each ANAD assembler, hugging the assemblers with arms of collapsing molecules.

Soon the entire line was a tangled snare of peptide chains, like balls of twine hopelessly knotted together.

"Time to get ANAD some help," Yang agreed. She had already started backpedaling her own ANAD away from the Bugs.

Dringoth opened another coupler channel.

"ANAD master to Battery...Golich, M'Bela...anybody...get your swarms going! Get into pilot mode and get down here with me..."

He did what he could, trying every trick he could think of...first was to fire off the bond disrupters...see if I can zap these buggers off me...that was Alicia's idea.

He salvoed ANAD's full array of disrupters, lighting up the tangle of thrashing molecule chains...again and again. Each jolt tore through tight covalent bonds in the enemy's peptide chains, liberating thousands of electron volts but to no effect. If anything, the chains re-assembled even tighter, slowly crushing each ANAD assembler.

Yang gritted her teeth. If at first you don't succeed... Next tactic was to try and slash her way out...she rammed her pyridine probes to full out, quickly re-configging the buckyball ends to something a little more deadly...an undulating knot of really reactive oxygens. With her new 'swords' thus in place, she revved ANAD's propulsors to get some spin going, and tried slashing and cutting and flailing her way through the seaweed-like chains of enemy peptides.

The effect was even worse. Each time an enemy bot had its chain severed, it replicated a new one before Yang or Dringoth could maneuver ANAD through the opening. It was like hacking through a jungle thick with vine, only the vine grew back faster than you could cut it back.

Yang was getting frustrated. She thought briefly about executing a quantum collapse, but that was a desperation tactic, a retreat and besides, they had to know what the hell they were dealing with here inside the Citadel.

She'd save the quantum maneuver for later, if she needed it.

Still thrashing and hacking at the enemy bots, Dringoth caught a glimpse of some thermals on his scope...familiar blooms growing fast.

It was the cavalry.

His coupler circuit crackled. "Skipper, it's Golich, with Queenie and Acth on my flanks. We're on max propulsor...sensing you're stuck inside all that garbage up ahead—"

Dringoth and Yang were both glad for the help. Dringoth knew perfectly well that the real time jumpers were crouching near him on the grounds in front of the museum, while the ANAD swarms approaching were being remotely piloted. But all the same, it was like having his Battery right with him even on this godforsaken molecular battlefield.

"Queenie, you and Golich see if you can out-replicate these buggers...big-bang if you have to. Acth, close from your side and try to draw off some of this swarm."

As the battlefield churned and heated up with max ANAD replication, Evelyn M'Bela closed the distance, piloting her own ANAD swarm like a miniscule battalion, wading right into the middle of the fray.

"I'm going bang," she told them. She triggered off a max rate replication with her own swarm, churning the air with furious atom-grabbing. Nathan Golich did the same. Soon, the air burned supernova hot as assemblers copied themselves and built structure like frantic brick masons.

I hope this works, Dringoth thought. He was running out of tactical options fast.

The tactic was a basic ANAD operation: try to out-replicate the enemy and overwhelm him with sheer mass. Nobody knew what would work with an unknown enemy like the Coethi. With any luck, the swarm bots would soon find themselves smothered and unable to react fast enough to ANAD's exponential attack.

Yang decided to try flexing her effectors and detected a slight loosening.

Maybe if I just fold up my outer pyridines...retract the buckyball ends...I can—

She tried it and was able to squirm free of the enemy bots' grasp. Spinning up propulsors, she shot free of captivity...only to run into another knot of mechs. Yang flexed and thrashed her effectors but it was no use.

The damn bots were more maneuverable, quicker than ANAD.

"Captain...it's not working...I'm stuck in a bog of mechs here...."

"That's not all," Dringoth came back. "I've got big thermals nearby, another flood of bots coming in...I don't know where they come from--take a look on your viewer."

Yang did that. The image made her heart sink. She'd been able to grapple and hold off this small force but now more hordes were pouring over the sandstone walls of the Citadel and onto the grounds.

"Queenie, we just can't hold here...they're out-repping us everywhere. Golich, Acth, any luck at your end?"

The comeback was immediate. "No dice, Skipper!" It was Acth:On'e, a hundred meters away across open ground, near a huge statue. Dringoth came up out of the world of ANAD, shaking off the dizziness and saw how precarious the Telitorian's situation was. Acth:On'e was about to be overrun by a swarm pouring over the walls.

"Acth--!! Pull back now! Pull back to those steps!"

The jumper needed no encouragement. He scooted and crabwalked backward like a beetle scuttling away and soon re-joined the others.

Dringoth could see the tactical situation was bad, real bad. They couldn't replicate bots fast enough to deal with the swarm, which was filling out the Citadel grounds like an enveloping fog. One on one, Dringoth figured they could battle the bots, but a few million against a gazillion and growing, there was no way. He looked around, saw the ornate blue domes of the mosque off to his right. People were fleeing from the mosque even as he watched.

"First TD, listen up: we're falling back to that mosque over there. If we can get inside, we may be able to set up a perimeter and wait for air support."

"Skipper,--" it was M'Bela. "Just got a report from PubSec...both lifters had to turn back...they were damaged trying to penetrate the swarm. They're sending more out but it'll be half an hour at best."

"Swell," Dringoth muttered. "Just freakin' swell." He estimated the distance to the mosque entrance. Maybe two hundred meters. There was a low stone wall and an ablution station to get past. "Queenie, anybody, got charge left in your HERF guns?"

"Maybe a few rounds," replied Golich. The commander cycled his weapon to check. "Maybe four or five—"

"Here's what we do," Dringoth told them. "On my mark, Golich, you slam 'em with all the HERF you got." Dringoth gave him an axis to aim for. "I want to seal off a path for us to make it to that mosque. When I give the word, everybody scoots...got that? Head for the main entrance, those steps."

There was a chorus of murmurs and assent around the troopers. M'Bela was troubled by a thought. "Skipper, looks like we got civilians trying to get out. You really want to draw more Bugs that way while they're evacuating?"

Dringoth knew it was a dicey call. First TD was here to protect, to drive the bugs back, not draw them forward. "Look, we can't do anybody any good if we don't survive. That mosque gives us some protection. The civvies are in a battle zone, whether they like it or not. Plus—" Dringoth checked out the thickening streams of worshippers fleeing the mosque on his scope. "—I'm not so sure they're all human. I'm betting we've got some angels in that crowd. More bots. Casualties of war, Queenie."

He studied the situation for a few moments. The Battery was hunkered down behind a huge staircase along the eastern front of the Settlers Museum. They were already cut off from any escape that way. Lifter support was gone. They still had feeds from SuperFly and the entomopter drones so they had some eyes up top. There was a chance their last HERF rounds could seal off a small path long enough for the unit to make it to the mosque, which at least offered some structure for protection. But with this kind of bot assault by the swarms, even that wouldn't last long.

Seal off the entrance and maybe we get ten minutes, maybe more, he figured. URME, I sure could use a few ideas right about now....

Before the Unit Reserve Memory Entity could respond from Cygnus, orbiting several hundred kilometers overhead, Dringoth hand-signaled Golich to let loose.

"Fire in the hole!" the commander screamed. And the deafening boom of rf waves being lit off smashed into the approaching swarm front, shredding trillions of mechs and driving the bots back a few meters, just far enough, just long enough—

"GO...GO...GO...!" Dringoth called out. One by one, the Battery half-ran, half crouched and made like crazed dogs for the safety of the mosque, two hundred meters away.

At the mosque, they ran into streams of fleeing worshippers, some half-dressed, running wildly for the far walls of the Citadel. For a few frightening moments, the Battery and the worshippers were mixed together and Dringoth was afraid the swarm would be upon all of them. They couldn't very well use their weapons on the Bugs if they were surrounded by civilians.

The mosque was perched on a low hill in the southwest corner of the compound. Built in the early 28th century a few years after the First Settlers had come to Hapsh'm, the mosque was built of limestone with alabaster walls around an inner courtyard.

Dringoth motioned the Battery toward the courtyard and in seconds, the jumpers had gathered before the main entrance, huddling among a row of ornate columns.

"Jeez, look at this place," said Acth:On'e. "The Bugs are already here—"

Indeed, it seemed that fully half, perhaps more, of the worshippers were not even human, but angels or half-formed para-human swarm entities, drifting about the courtyard, while real humans stumbled and choked and fought each other to get out, clawing their way through the miasma of disembodied bots.

"Skipper—" it was Yang, the DPS1. "I'm getting flags on the air quality inside—" she was scanning her wristpad. "I just sent a SuperFly drone in to recon and it's reporting big-time atmosphere changes...O2 levels dropping fast, wind speed picking up...it's almost like a storm going off inside."

"It's the Bugs...it must be part of their program," Dringoth recalled, remembering intel briefings from his earlier encounters. "They modify the environment, air, water, everything...we've got to sweep that mosque clean if we can."

A chime sounded in the back of his head. It was URME, on the coupler circuit. "Yeah, URME...what is it?"

***If I may offer a suggestion, Captain...perhaps a new tactical approach is needed***

"Hey, I'm all ears. Shoot—"

***The adversary bots are too fast and too maneuverable for direct engagement. Thus, indirect engagement is a better tactic. Recommend a new config...Battery must simulate natural forms, natural processes, so that the swarm does not detect your presence...allow the adversary to occupy this space and surround the Battery. Masquerade as something else, something not threatening to the swarm. Then, when surrounded, attack from within...I believe your own human config Sun Tzu once said: "In war, practice dissimulation and you will succeed. Ponder and deliberate before you make a move. He will conquer who has learned the artifice of deviation."***

"URME, you're nuts...I can't let the Bugs overrun this place...what about the civilians?"

"What's he saying, Skipper?" asked Golich. The exec was accustomed to seeing his C/O having talks with an invisible companion. Every time jumper deployed with an ANAD-style embed the same way.

Dringoth explained URME's idea. "I'm still not sure how much we can trust him...why the hell isn't he affected by the Coethi?"

"I don't know, Captain," said Evelyn M'Bela, crouching behind a pillar as more angels and half-formed humans, and a few desperate worshippers clawed their way past. "But it's worth a try. We stay here like this and we'll be overrun for sure. Any chance of lifter support...maybe a few killdrones too, to blast these sumbitches?"

Dringoth checked with PubSec and learned the bad news. "Lifters have their own battle south of here. It's up to us to hold this sector. I'm trying to contact Keaton...see if they can cut off the swarms from the south...but there's no response."

"It's up to us," muttered Yang, looking around uneasily at the phantasm of disembodied bot clouds drifting across the courtyard. "It always is—"

In the end, Dringoth figured he didn't have much of a choice. That's what command often came down to in the Guard...making one choice from a bunch of bad choices. "Okay, URME, what's in that config library of yours?"

***Scanning now...recommend deploy all embedded ANAD masters with config C-2288. This config closely resembles swarm nanobotic configuration in appearance. I have just altered config to make this resemblance as close as possible. Deployed swarm will have similar effector arrangement and propulsor capability. Once deployed and replicated, First TD Battery swarms will be absorbed by enemy swarm but commlinked via quantum coupler through me. I will coordinate operations. Once fully absorbed inside enemy swarm, best tactical approach would be to use bond disrupters on a new setting I have developed...disrupters will be amplified and more effective against enemy effectors, especially pyridine probes and peptide chains***

Dringoth relayed URME's idea to the others.

"What about us normal flesh and blood humans?" asked M'Bela. "We just going to let the Bugs chew us up and spit us out?"

Dringoth switched URME from his own personal coupler circuit to the crewnet. Now everybody could hear.

***Single configuration entities, such as humans, should make themselves as small a target as possible. Assume minimum radius structure and remain inactive, until further notice...I will deploy a shield for all entities***

"In other words, tuck tail and hide," M'Bela growled. "That's not what I signed up for."

"Skipper,--" it was Yang. "He's asking us to put an awful lot of trust in a bot...how much can we really trust him now? All ANAD bots are suspect, if you ask me. Direct pilot mode...that's the only way to go."

There were murmurs of agreement. But Dringoth knew it was his call.

"No offense, URME, but somebody has to pilot the attack. Get that config ready...we'll re-locate to a more secure position. Then we'll launch our embeds and duck under your shield."

Dringoth ordered his people inside the mosque. They slid along the courtyard, sidestepping the stragglers still coming out. Mixed in with the crowd were scores of angels, many good likenesses of humans, but some half-formed, disembodied torsos and heads drifting along as their forms continued to replicate, their config changes aborted by the attack.

"It's a freak show," muttered Evelyn M'Bela. She squirmed through a knot of angels, thrashing her coilgun left and right to clear a space.

"Or a nightmare," added Acth:On'e.

Moments later, they were inside the mosque, gathered around the oblong marble tomb of Muhammad Ali Pasha. The air was thin, blowing like a hurricane and debris went flying all about their heads.

Dringoth explained what was about to happen. "URME's got a config that resembles the enemy swarm bots. We're going to launch all our embedded ANADs and let him take control. Once that's done, I want everybody to get small. URME will throw up a shield of bots. Alicia and I will pilot the replicated swarm with URME and we'll see what kind of havoc we can wreak from inside the swarm. I can't think of anything better."

Golich wondered, "Skipper, have we somehow branched too far off the main worldline here? Is this how the Incident at Hapsh'm really went down? We've been pretty closely involved with everything here since we jumped."

"I'm aware of that, Commander. But we fight the battle we're in, regardless of the timestream. That's what jumpers do. Now...launch embeds! URME...get that config going. And the rest of you get down, get small...come on, on the ground, get your faces dirty."

Reluctantly, grumbling, the jumpers discharged their embedded ANADs from hypersuit belt capsules and dropped to the floor of the mosque. A few worshippers nearby took them for new converts and came over to direct them to the minbar further ahead, where good Muslims always prayed. They were quickly shooed away.

The ANAD masters were invisible to the naked eye, but URME had already triggered max rate replication, so the air over the huddled troopers soon burned supernova hot with bots slamming atoms and replicating themselves.

"Okay, ANAD," Dringoth told the tiny assembler. "Out you go—" He pressed the switch on his wristpad and the port on his hypersuit shoulder opened. The master bot swooshed out and exited into the air overhead.

***Sending configuration C-2288 now...***

"I'm going direct—" Dringoth said. "You too, Alicia." He found a spot on a prayer mat below an ornate chandelier and squatted down, letting the nausea of the transition wash over him. When the fog cleared, he was standing in a sleet storm of pelting molecules, trying to keep his balance. "URME, get that shield up now. The swarms will be here any minute." He could only hope that URME's distance, being in orbit aboard Cygnus several hundred kilometers away, wouldn't affect control.

***Executing barrier shield config now...all entities, keep your heads down--***

Monthan Dringoth didn't see the shield forming, since he was already poking around the environment at nanoscale now, but nearby worshippers saw the bots forming up fast and fled the mosque in terror, mistaking the barrier bots for the enemy swarms outside. In a few moments, a light translucent sparkling fog had descended over the gathered jumpers, encamped on the mosque floor. Clots of disembodied nanobots and angels wafted by, bouncing off the shield, as they lightly probed every angle, looking for purchase. The shield hummed and flickered like a ghostly carapace.

Dringoth decided to shift his view, recon the tactical situation. Momentarily, he left the world of atoms and connected with the vidlink to a Superfly drone outside. What he saw made his throat go dry.

The whole Citadel complex was enveloped in a boiling, seething cloud of bots, pouring across the grounds in a flickering fog. Flashes of light erupted like veins of lightning as the swarm assemblers grabbed atoms and decomposed everything in their path. Even the domes of the mosque were half gone, disassembled into atom fluff as the swarms advanced. At the rate of advance, the entire fortress, now nearly a hundred years old, would be rubble and dust inside of an hour.

He tapped out of the Superfly link and looked up at the rotunda of the mosque overhead. Already, the sky was visible, now darkened with the thickening horde that spilled over the top. Most of the structure was enveloped in the swarm; what was left was gone and he found the air thick, hard to inhale.

They were inside the swarm now.

"Okay, Alicia...it's time to get small again." He switched back to the nanoscale world and immediately saw the results of the new config URME had just sent. The ANAD master he was now piloting had hundreds of effectors, pyridine probes and peptide chains, all blurred by the whip-like propulsors that spun crazily.

Alicia Yang saw it too. "Hey, all of sudden I can dance...look at those suckers go!" Experimentally, she cranked up the props and went spinning off crazily into the distance, only to crash into a wall of bots busily replicating copies. She jerked to a halt and backed off.

They were inside the Coethi swarm, part of the organism itself, and nobody seemed any wiser. The bots nearby continued their reps and undulations, oblivious to their presence. As far as the swarm was concerned, they were two nanobotic assemblers in a horde of several gazillion.

And this one's got a mind of its own, Dringoth told himself. URME, you've really cooked up one hell of a config...nobody suspects a thing.

***Config C-2288 is a close match to existing swarm configuration...estimating 98.7% commonality. As soon as you have positive control of your effectors, I suggest replicating a small formation. As long as you closely resemble the other bots, that shouldn't trigger any response***

"Good idea..." Dringoth said. He flexed one group of effectors after another, systematically getting the feel of them. He tried his propulsors at various speeds, zipping and careening about the other bots. They must think I'm drunk, he concluded. If they think at all. Sorry about that. Once, he even got himself hung up and entangled in the peptide mesh of another bot...it took three others to separate them and pull them apart.

Alicia laughed. "This is so wicked, URME...no wonder these buggers can run circles around us. They're all propulsor. Skipper, let's start replicating and see what happens. Maybe we can grow an army from inside...just like the Trojan horse."

She laid in the config and toggled the rep button. Like a hyperjet on autopilot, the bot's effectors started grabbing atoms as they whizzed by and stacking them together like puzzle pieces, turning the fuzzballs this way and that so fast he couldn't keep up.

In a few moments, she had replicated a few trillion bots.

Dringoth was more and more impressed. "Okay, Alicia, time to go create havoc."

He slipped back into the nanoscale world and cranked up his propulsors to full. The ANAD master jetted forward, along with all its replicants, looking for trouble.

They didn't have to look for long. Sounding ahead, he got back returns for something big, lots of thermals and EM, a big mass dead ahead. Dringoth ordered a slowing to one-quarter propulsor and drifted forward.

The line of defense looked like a solid wall of barbell-shaped bots, all whizzing and slashing as it undulated its way forward. The enemy bots hacked and snapped through a dense forest of lattice-like molecules, solid-phase structure, Dringoth soon realized.

They were chewing their way through pieces of the mosque itself.

"Time to make an entrance," Dringoth told Yang. He made sure his effectors were fully extended and primed. Carbene grabbers and bond disrupters were twitching for action.

As he eased his small army forward, the enemy bots gave no indication of noticing him at all. URME's config was working. The enemy bots took them for one of their own.

Dringoth waded into the very middle of the slashing assault. Bots were hacking away at silicon and aluminum tetrapods, lights flashing as molecular bonds were snapped and billions of electrons were suddenly liberated. Slowly, but surely, the mosque was being disassembled.

Now.

As one, Dringoth and Yang flicked their joysticks and jetted into one flank, tearing atom groups from a long row of mechs, like tearing the guts out of a beast. Electron bonds snapped and crackled and the mechs flinched and recoiled with a wave at the onslaught. The whole line undulated and whipped like a rope in reaction and in seconds, the battle was joined.

With the element of surprise, the jumpers moved in to grapple with a cluster of mechs nearby. Slashing forward with their own peptide chains, they slapped and clawed and yanked at their opponent's effectors. Bonds snapped and electrons crackled. The air was thick with loose atoms as the combat intensified. All along the line of assault, the jumpers' replicant army duplicated the maneuver.

"Now, if we can could just get in a little closer," Dringoth muttered, right where the two barbells seemed to join. There were fewer effectors there and he figured the core processor was hiding somewhere inside that jungle of peptide chains.

As if to confirm his thinking, URME chimed in on the coupler circuit.

***Recommend steering left, Captain...that central node is the main processor...get your disrupters in there and you can fry its brains like an egg***

Yang smiled inwardly. URME was beginning to sound just like a time jumper.

"I'm on it, URME—" he twisted the ANAD master and brought more effectors to bear on the grapple. Peptides and carbenes flailed like a cat fight and, as he worked his way along the barbell, scratching and grabbing and yanking and zapping, he kept his scope on the image of the cage-like structure at the very center...the lattice supporting the core processor, studded and dimpled with quantum traps. Fighting off the enemy was like thrashing in heavy ocean surf, but he grimly battled on, trying to keep ANAD stable and on course.

Finally, the lattice was in reach. Time Guard Intel should find this quite interesting, he told himself. He knew they needed to get as much structure as they could on the Coethi swarm.

"URME, I'm arming forward disrupters...just a little bit further—" he tried reaching in but the barbell contracted slightly, like a reflex, and that pushed the core just out of reach. Again, he extended the disrupter tips as far as they would go but no dice. He'd have to come at a different angle, or disengage and replicate more structure to make his disrupters a little longer.

"Here, Captain, let me help—" Yang had severed disrupters from nearby and bucket brigade style, moved them along through her own grabbers, then stitched them onto the ends of her center disrupters, extending their length half again. "Now try it, Captain."

Dringoth couldn't help but be amazed. With URME's help, Yang had a veteran trooper's feel for close-quarters combat. She knew how to tickle and massage atoms to grab any advantage needed to win.

"Closing in, URME...just a little bit more—" The enemy mech recoiled again and flailed away at him from all sides, sensing that ANAD was nearing a vulnerable point. "Got it\--!"

His disrupter tips engaged and at that exact moment, Dringoth lit off the weapon and slashed through the lattice molecular cage like a knife through butter. A huge flash exploded as the lattice disintegrated. Dringoth pulsed his propulsors and drove the disrupters deep into the core. More flashes and he was soon spinning away in a maelstrom of atom wreckage, caught for a brief moment in the turbulence of a dying core.

"Got em!" Yang exulted.

All along the line of enemy bots, ANAD replicants did the same. The entire front of the swarm was soon recoiling backward, stung by the assault. The momentum of the assault had been broken. Now all that remained was to work their way back and forth, maneuvering ever closer to every bot's central node and zapping its lattice cage into oblivion.

"It worked, URME...it worked!"

***Config C-2288 was close enough to the enemy's config that we could get in close and not trigger any defenses. Recommend continuing this tactical approach along the entire swarm front. Recommend max rate replication. I'll send this config to all replicants along with the same maneuver profile...Captain, your moves were brilliant...I recorded every one of them***

Dringoth was about to say thank you, but then the idea of complimenting a nanoscale assembler for its appreciation of his tactical smarts seemed a bit much. Soon enough, he'd be certain to make sure Time Guard understood his brilliance. Monthan Dringoth is way too clever for these stupid Bugs. But he didn't say that.

Instead, he said, "Very well, URME...send the config and the maneuvers. I'm going big and see what this looks like from above."

He slipped out of the nanoscale and linked in with the Superfly drone's vidfeed. It took some getting used to, slipping back and forth from the world of atoms to a bird's eye view of the Citadel. Time jumpers had to have split brains.

From a thousand meters up, it was hard to tell what difference he had made, but the damage done to the Citadel and the mosque was unmistakable.

Most of the mosque domes looked like huge broken egg shells, shattered, enveloped in dust. A great cloud of bots covered the entire complex like a sandstorm. Through the cloud, the ruins of the museums and mosques were mute testimony to the power of the swarm that had fallen upon Hapsh'm City. Even the sandstone walls were mostly gone.

Dringoth studied the scene for a few minutes, knowing that somewhere below the Superfly drone, furious combat between two invisible armies was underway. There was no indication that the enemy swarms were still advancing; every view showed the same thing: the forward momentum of the swarm advance had been blunted and a stalemate existed all along the line of engagement.

Dringoth got on the crewnet, after assuring himself that the latest tactics he had developed were having the intended effect.

Evelyn M'Bela's voice crackled over the net. "Skipper, you did it! We slammed the bastards good...it's working. My guys have a stranglehold on the bugs right now...we're zapping them left and right."

Acth:On'e chimed in, "Ditto, my sector, Captain...we got 'em by the short hairs...they never saw us coming!"

Dringoth checked in with every trooper, every axis and sector. The news was the same. 1st TD had somehow managed to close the door on the flood of bots pouring into the Citadel complex. He wondered how A Detachment was faring. Time to contact Oscar Keaton.

At that very moment, A Detachment was fighting for its life along the east bank of the Kharg River. Hunkered down and surrounded, Keaton and the rest of the squad were in danger of being completely overrun. Frantic calls had been made to PubSec to get some kind of air support...lifters, drones, angry birds, anything, but the swarm front was so powerful, surging north along the river, that none could get through.

Keaton's voice was weak and strained on the crewnet.

"It's a losing battle, Dringoth! We've tried everything: coilguns, HERF, going small. They replicate faster than we can...the bots make us look like we're standing still!"

Dringoth could see from a drone feed that the whole river channel was obscured by what looked like a massive cloud...the bot swarm had swollen to monstrous size and was sweeping everything before it. To the west, even the Mounds were lost in the haze and it wasn't sand. Where the hell was Lieutenant Klimuk and the rest of PubSec? Where were the Hapsh'mites?

"Sergeant, we found a config that seems to work...I'm sending it now. URME came up with a config that closely resembles the bots in the swarm. I'm sending our tactical moves as well...URME recorded everything. Let the bugs overwhelm you and fight 'em from inside."

Keaton was dubious. "Dringoth, you've got to be kidding—"

But there was no time to argue. Keaton took the config and loaded it into the squad's ANAD masters. The swarm had already overrun them; it was just a matter of choosing the right time to spring the surprise. The troopers of A Detachment—Ghawri, Said, Reaves, all of them—made themselves as small as they could while the hurricane thrashed over them. Keaton studied the tactical plan Dringoth had sent and when he judged the time to be right, he gave the word.

"Detachment....max rate replication! Big bang 'em in the chops...all effectors out full...let's eat some bots--!!"

Dringoth watched the scene from an overhead Superfly feed. At first, there wasn't much to see. Where the Kharg forked into several channels around an island, the famous Khargometer depth gauge was barely visible in the flickering mist. Although it was nearly midday, the orange hue of the sun Epsilon Eridani was dim from the thickening swarm. For a few minutes, the swarm billowed and surged ever northward, spilling out of the river channel to consume neighborhoods and small buildings. Even in the dim light, Dringoth could see the roads and streets jammed with cars and pedestrians panicked and in flight from the bots. He resisted an effort to zoom in; there was no need. He knew what he would see. They had seen enough of it around the Citadel.

After a few minutes, though, there was a noticeable thinning of the swarm at its leading edge. The half-disassembled remnants of rooftops and walls emerged from the dust, as if a great wind were sweeping south, driving the swarm back into the nearby desert. At first, the effect was barely discernible, but as Dringoth continued watching on his wristpad, the thinning became unmistakable.

It was Nathan Golich, a few meters away from Dringoth and watching on his own wristpad, who said, "They're beating 'em, Skipper! They're driving 'em back—"

"Kick atomic ass!" said Alicia Yang.

And it was true. While the drone circled the river valley over the southern outskirts of the great city, the enemy swarm had been caught in a surprise, slammed from within by the ANAD bots of A Detachment. Using the same tactics 1st TD had used, Oscar Keaton had been able to hollow out the swarm from inside and meter by meter, slowly shove the mass back down the river channel. After half an hour, a stalemate had developed across the sector.

"We're holding 'em, Dringoth," Keaton reported. "For the life of me, I don't know how. But that config worked...we snuck up on 'em and blasted the bejeezus out of 'em from inside. Now we're just holding 'em back...not sure how long, but we've stopped their advance."

Before Dringoth could respond, he heard Lieutenant Klimuk's voice on the net. "Public Security to Time Guard squads, I am inbound on a heading of zero five five degrees...we have lifters, killdrones and entomopter fire support. Say your position and we will HERF a clear landing zone for pickup—"

About damn time, Dringoth thought sourly. We're down here getting our butts kicked and where the hell have you been? But he didn't say that. PubSec wasn't equipped to deal with a swarm like this. Hell, his own jumpers had nearly been eaten alive themselves.

Dringoth gave their position to Klimuk and in two minutes, the whine of the lifters was audible over the roar of swarm bots.

"Take cover, 1st TD...we're HERFing the ground...sanitizing an LZ—"

Dringoth scattered his troops and zipped up his hypersuit just as the first of the thunderclaps scoured the area. He huddled behind an outer wall of the mosque—what was left of it—and let the hot radio freq waves fry everything in sight. With the enemy swarm held up by their ANAD formation, trillions of bugs clattered to the tile floor of the mosque. Moments later, the black shape of a lifter materialized into view beyond the ruins of the walls.

It was Public Security, Zone 3. Lieutenant Klimuk leaped out of the cabin as the lifter's skids touched down.

"Good news," the Lieutenant said, as Dringoth and the rest of 1st TD climbed aboard. "Recon shows that swarms in Zones One and Two have been halted. They are no longer advancing north. You've done it, Captain! The swarms are holding their position."

Dringoth was covered with dust and mech debris. He found a seat up front. "What about your flanks, Lieutenant? East and west?"

"The same," Klimuk told them. "The Hapsh'mites are assembling squads from other settlements now...Navajoa, Seguridad, Huambo all sent troops...there are probes from the swarm but no breakthroughs yet. We have stopped the swarms from entering Hapsh'm City itself."

"For the moment." Dringoth peeled off his helmet and dialed up the recon feeds Klimuk had sent to the squad. They confirmed everything the Lieutenant was saying. Somehow, with help from URME's new config and some out-of-the book tactics they didn't teach in jolt school, 1st TD had managed to blunt the northward movement of the main swarm element. PubSec was even now sweeping along the western edges of the swarm, trying to contain it and if possible, push it back south toward the shores of Hapsh'm huge, briny Central Sea. Other Hapsh'mite units were deployed east, north of the Desolates, to do the same. "What about Keaton's squad?"

The lifter banked hard about and scooted off through the haze, turning to a more southerly heading. Right away, the ship began a corkscrewing descent toward the Kharg River valley. Dringoth could see the dim outlines of two more lifters off their port and starboard sides. Superfly and Wasp drones buzzed along in formation with the lifters, HERFing off any curious swarmbots.

"We're picking them up right now," Klimuk said. "The Hapsh'mites are very grateful...both of your squads achieved their missions. Recon shows the northward probe of the swarms was checked at the Citadel and the main body has ceased its advance. How did you do this, Captain? PubSec has fought this cloud of bots for two days now and nothing we did would even slow them down."

Because I fought this same battle before, in another branch of this worldline, he thought but didn't say. Dringoth gave him a quick and dirty briefing, mentally rehearsing his after-action report. Ultrarch-Admiral Guryev would want the gory details as soon as possible. The lifters briefly landed along the riverbank and took on Keaton and his squad. From the looks on Keaton's face and the grime and blood streaking the troopers' hypersuits, they had had a rough go of it.

Keaton fell heavily into a seat next to Dringoth and didn't bother strapping in. He wiped dirt and sweat from a bruised and pocked face.

"A few bot stings, that's all, Dringoth. It was touch and go for a while there...I thought we were going to get shoved right into the river. Maybe have to swim for it. But that config—Jeez, that worked like a dream."

"URME came up with that...I wasn't too sure about using an untested config in combat but what the hell did we have to lose..."

Keaton sucked on a canteen, drawing deep gulps of the high-energy protein drink as the lifters swung south toward the command post. "We let the bugs overrun us, just like you said, then went big bang from inside. Man, it was unreal...like being in the middle of a hurricane. But we stunned the sonsabitches good. They never knew what hit 'em. I've never seen an adversary like this one. Where do these damned Bugs come from?"

From time streams you never imagined, Dringoth thought. But he didn't say that either. Golich was right. Best not to tamper any more with events in this branch.

The lifter fleet made its way back to the Time Guard base, twenty kilometers east of Hapsh'm City. After being allowed an hour to clean up and slam some food and drink down, Dringoth and Keaton were both ordered to a briefing in Huygens Wing, Ultrarch-Admiral Gurvev's office.

Two others were present when they showed up, now in new uniforms and smelling of soap and disinfectant.

Time Guard Intelligence (T2) had detached one Jump Lieutenant Miriam Yazid to Hapsh'm, for the briefing. She had just arrived aboard jumpship Perseus, commanded by Jump Captain Liza Marcello. Yazid was olive-skinned, with high cheekbones and dark hair cut short and piled high on the back of her head. Marcello was short, a hard face, with a bristly red skull cut on top. Both officers nodded gravely at Dringoth and smirked slightly at Sergeant Keaton, who shifted about uncomfortably in the presence of so much brass.

Guryev told them the City had authorized him to issue awards and citations to both men, "for courage under fire and valor unequalled in the history of Uman settlement on this world."

Both were given Distinguished Valor medals (DVM 3rd class with star clusters). Keaton was also promoted to Jump Sergeant. Dringoth smiled silently, knowing as he did that Oscar Keaton would soon leave Hapsh'm altogether and lead an expedition years later to a place that would come to be called Keaton's World...K-World. But that was for another time, and another time stream.

Guryev was bald as a rock, though tall and a bit gangly. He sat down heavily behind his desk, fired up the 3-d pedestal in front of him and bade the others to be seated.

Captain Marcello said to Dringoth, "Right after we dropped out of flux into orbit, I communicated with your ship's AI, Captain. ISAAC, I think you call him. He indicated Cygnus is actually here from sometime in the future, our future. That true?"

Dringoth recounted what he could reveal of Operation First Light, watching Guryev's eyes grow wider and wider.

"It was a classified recon mission, Admiral. Authorized by the UA and Commandstar himself. We just popped out of voidtime after pursuing a Coethi force down the First Light Corridor." He gave them all a quick, sanitized rundown on the results of their mission, not sure if anybody here was really cleared for SCI-Purple information. "We wound up near a star about to go supernova...we named it Leviathan. In fact, it did detonate, almost right in our faces. We were in voidtime at the time—that's what saved us—but the Bugs were obliterated. After some repairs to Cygnus, we tried a jump, made some nav errors...and wound up here instead. Wrong branch of the worldline, wrong time stream, but here we are."

"And a good thing," Guryev decided. "You were able to help us fight off these...Bugs, you call them. Coethi is the name T2 has given them. We've not encountered this adversary before."

Dringoth nodded. "Hapsh'm was...is...the first recorded direct incursion of the Coethi into Uman space. I was, er...shall we say...here before."

Urged on by JLT Yazid and Guryev, Dringoth recounted from memory what was known of the Coethi, fully aware that he was probably messing up the worldline branch even more by divulging all this data. Finally, he decided it was pointless to hold back anymore and instructed URME, aboard Cygnus, to dump the ship's intelligence files directly to Admiral Guryev's pedestal.

The 3-D display sparkled and pixelated before settling down to a sort of history vid of Uman experience with the Coethi, from the time of the Incident at Hapsh'm....

...The Coethi originated in the Perseus Arm and view the Halo sectors as convenient ways to expand their territory and influence into the Orion and other arms in this quadrant of the galaxy. But Umans are in the way.

The Coethi are a distributed intelligence. They are a swarm of nanoscale robotic elements several light years in extent, drifting through space.

The basic element of the Coethi is a nanobot. An autonomous, nanoscale assembler/disassembler of incredible sophistication and complexity.

Nobody knows how the Coethi came to be, not even the Coethi themselves. As an organized superorganism of bots several light-years in extent, they have existed for a substantial fraction of the age of the Universe. Best guess by Time Guard scientists is 4-5 billion years old.

The Coethi are a true superswarm of vast proportions. In size and extent and connection density, it exceeds the complexity of all the human minds that have ever lived on Urth combined. It is a thinking sentience, whose true environment is now interstellar space....

As he watched the vid unfold, Dringoth knew he would eventually have to explain all this to TACTRON and probably Commandstar himself, when and if 1st TD ever got back to their own time stream, for he had violated just about every directive against interfering with local time streams. Already, in his mind, he was trying out excuses and explanations: it was a navigation error...it was equipment failure...the Bugs were right on top of us...we couldn't just stand off and watch Hapsh'm be destroyed....

Whether the brass would buy any of it was another question.

# Chapter 3: "The Proposition"

"Lost time is never found again."

Benjamin Franklin

Mariners' Bar

Hapsh'm City

T-date: T-001-12-82

Jump Commander Nathan Golich had begged off from bar-hopping with the rest of the crew and decided to take a stroll about Hapsh'm City alone. He needed time to think. Time to sort things out. Time to make some decisions.

Dringoth had granted limited liberty to Golich, Yang and M'Bela, while repairs were underway aboard Cygnus. Acth:On'e and URME could handle the core repairs and collapser upgrades themselves. Dringoth was at a briefing with Admiral Guryev.

Golich just wanted to be left alone. "I've never seen Hapsh'm City before," he told M'Bela and the others. "I just want to be a tourist for a few hours, okay?"

M'Bela winked at Yang. "Okay, Commander, but whatever her name is, just make sure you get your money's worth. Places like this can make a man a beggar in no time."

Golich blew them off and set out, strolling in deep thought down the boardwalk at Ancol Beach, while hundreds of sightseers and revelers swept past him, pouring into and out of bars, cafes, parlors, and dives up and down the promenade.

Hapsh'm City was a desert town with an improbable beach along its southern outskirts, the result of a canal dug from the Central Sea hundreds of kilometers to the south. The boardwalk itself was a non-stop circus of sights and sounds. A bazaar marked one end of the walk.

The bazaar was slammed with people. It was like fighting swirling ocean currents to move anywhere. The place was loud and chaotic, filled with smoke and pungent smells—the high-octane odor of masala tobacco was especially strong at the Garden Street entrance—and the air was thick with loose nano, clouds of bots mingling with incense, opium and scores of cooking oil fires. Vendors hawked grapes and mangoes, bananas and fabricator shells of every type, vials of rogue DNA called twist hung from clothes lines strung up between light poles and dilapidated tents. Women in sarongs with teeth black from chewing betel nuts zipped and weaved through the labyrinth balancing huge baskets on their heads, baskets filled with everything from buffalo patties to rebuilt matter compilers for the fabs that were on sale everywhere.

Ten minutes later, he had pushed his way into a smoke-filled dump called Mariners' Bar.

Golich found a stool at the bar and ordered a beer. He licked frost off the mug, then was deep into his drink when he felt a presence at the stool next to him. A new patron had just sat down and ordered a beer as well.

The man was smallish, thin, dense black beard flecked with gray around rather effeminate lips. Beer suds soaked the lips and he wiped them off with the back of his hand. His forearms were tattooed and thick with black curly hair. An unusual tattoo got Golich's interest right away...an arachtyl's beak, open to reveal rows of sharp teeth.

Arachtyls were indigenous to only one world that Golich knew of.

"Malakel," the man said. He'd noticed Golich's attempt to stare without being too obvious. "Kisan Malakel. And yes, I am a K-Worlder."

Golich mumbled an introduction, turned back to his beer. There was something about the man, about Malakel...he couldn't quite put a finger on it.

"You're a Time Guard officer."

Golich stared into the suds of his mug. "Does it show that much?" He was not wearing a uniform.

"You have a certain...shall we say, manner. Bearing. A kind of way about you. And thanks for what you did with those Bugs, by the way. The Citadel and the mosque are a wreck. The south side is a shambles, all that rubble and dust. But at least the bastards are gone."

"For now." Golich turned slightly to face Malakel. "You do seem to know a lot about me."

Malakel offered a faint smile, peered into his own mug. "Occupational hazard, I guess. I make it my business to know people. I do believe you and I have met before."

"Really? Where?"

Malakel sniffed at his beer, polished it off. "I was wondering what makes people like yourself join the Time Guard. All that training, the commitment, the missions, flitting in and out of voidtime...it has to wear on a body after a while."

Golich felt a cool shiver down his back. Could the man read minds? "I was thinking along the same lines...just when you came up," he admitted. "Maybe it's time for a change. Something new."

"So how did you wind up in Time Guard?"

Golich shrugged. "It's a long story...really, kind of—"

Malakel gently pressed fingers into Golich's arm. "No, really, I'd like to hear. I'm a good listener. And I sense you need to talk."

Golich took a breath, waved at the bartender for another beer. "Okay, but you asked for it...I'm a K-Worlder myself, by the way. Different time stream. I guess I first got the notion to look into Time Guard after they drummed me out of the Sky Service...after the accident...I was just making another mid-day run, over the Sand Sea. I had only one passenger...."

Rotors whirring, the ship lifted off and they were underway. Following invisible airways in the sky, Songbird ascended in mild midday turbulence and settled in for the two-hour trip. Golich could see a storm gathering off to their right, a blur of haze gathered into a mistral forming up on the horizon.

He wondered about his sole passenger. Would she see the storm building? Would she be worried? Why would a sole female passenger even take a skyship trip across the Sand Sea anyway?

There were many questions but Golich forced himself to keep an eye on the gathering cyclone.

From the open cockpit up front, Golich noticed her watching the weather warily. "Hey, don't sweat it, okay. It's probably just a bot cloud. Gibbstown's thick with loose nano. What's your name?"

"Oh, yeah, like we saw around the terminal. Fab lords, hacker queens, rogue bots. Why don't the cops clean all that up?"

Golich snorted. "Money."

She was tall statuesque black women, even regal in the way she carried herself, with a bone necklace, hair braids dangling down. "My name's Adanna. Just came by vac train from Douala, barely made it, in fact."

"Where are you headed?"

Adanna smiled a broad smile. "I'm hoping you'll take me to Bukhara. My boyfriend's there."

Songbird rose to her cruising altitude and headed southwest across the rolling tan and ocher dunes of the Sand Sea. From three thousand meters, in the pearl glow of a late afternoon sun, the sand really did look like a sea, frozen in place, waves and crests and shadows playing tricks on their eyes, fantastic shapes appearing and disappearing with each look out the gondola's big picture windows. They had the entire ship to themselves. Golich put Songbird on auto and came back to the compartment to visit.

"Where are you from?" Golich asked.

Adanna shrugged, her eyes riveted to strange shapes morphing along the edges of the growing mistral. Then she became more talkative, unburdening herself. "My family's Igbo, from Cameroon, Old Urth, see? My father often read me stories of the great warrior princes and princesses of our ancient Igbo forebears. He told me I was a direct descendant of Dzugudini, the Rain Queen of Lovedu and that I had great, even magical powers. One of my prize possessions was this necklace of cowrie shells—" she fondled the necklace and made it clink noisily, "—it was said to have been handed down from the hands of Dzugudini. In this period of my life, maybe I was fifteen, maybe sixteen, I had become intensely interested in all things Igbo and was constantly reminded by my father of my royal background and illustrious heritage. I was always warned to honor that heritage, to honor Dzugudini. He always said to me: "Ura ga-eju onye nwuru anwu afo," which means "A dead person shall have all the sleep necessary." In other words, 'keep our heritage alive in your heart and never forget who you are.'"

Golich watched the mistral approaching with growing apprehension. That stupid auto-pilot should be turning north by now.... "Seems to me you are doing that...well, you do have that necklace."

Adanna's lips tightened, as did her fists on the gondola rail, for the ship had begun to sway more violently in the updrafts and gusts.

And then the sand devil seemed to swallow them whole.

Songbird shuddered for a moment, then out of the murk came a huge wing...then a spiked tail. It swept right by the windows and struck the aft end of the ship with sickening thud.

"Arachtyls!" Golich yelled. "Get down...get away from the windows!"

Another wing materialized, then a horned and crested head, then clawed feet and another tail. It too sideswiped Songbird, sending the skyship yawing hard left, corkscrewing and crabbing through the air as the autopilot sought to trim her out and keep her aloft.

They had drifted into a flock of the huge sandbirds, and two of them were chasing each other around the outer bands of the mistral, riding updrafts, diving into tufts of sand haze, cawing and screeching loudly at each other.

"We're hit!" Golich yelled. It was obvious that Songbird was down by her stern. As he peered out the portside windows, Golich's heart sank. The first impact had done the damage. Songbird's aft gasbags were holed, the outer fabric skin flapping crazily in the gusts. He could see wild swings of the rudder and stabilitors as the ship's auto-pilot tried to manage lift. Songbird shuddered again. He clawed his way back up to the cockpit.

"That's ballast...autopilot's dumping ballast, trying to regain lift!" he yelled over the roar of the wind, for they were now fully enveloped in the mistral's clutches and the ship seesawed like a loose tree limb in the crashing, swirling gusts.

Adanna clung tightly to a rail, groped her way back to a nearby seat. Hurriedly, fighting the centrifugal forces of the whipsawing ship, she buckled herself in.

"Are we...are we...?"

Golich said something but it was lost in the blare of sirens, klaxons and an automated voice, calmly ordering all hands to "TIGHTEN SEAT BELTS...GROUND PROXIMITY WARNING ...BRACE FOR IMPACT...BRACE BRACE...!"

Songbird was driven hard into the ground, with a grinding roar. As the balloon envelope crumpled and collapsed all around them, the gondola separated from its davits and began a wild careening roll—they had impacted the slope of a tall dune, and began cascading down the side, rolling turning bouncing vaulting somersaulting down the sand hills until it finally came to a rest in a shallow depression, one end buried meters deep in the ever-shifting and blowing sand.

All around them, the mistral howled like a thing alive, punctuated every so often by the raucous screech of arachtyls overhead, riding the wild thermals, banking and diving, their heavy wings beating the air as they swarmed around the wreckage of the skyship.

Adanna was knocked unconscious by a piece of flying trimwork, spalled off the gondola ceiling. Golich lay still, purple bruises swelling on his neck and face.

For many minutes, only the wind howled around them.

It took time, but Adanna eventually realized when she came to, that the skyship pilot named Golich wasn't moving. Not even breathing. Hurriedly, she unbuckled and went over, dropping to her knees, sucking in her breath at what she found.

His head was covered with blood, still oozing from a deep forehead gash. There were other bruises, lacerations and cuts. He stirred slightly and she bent down to whisper.

"Stay still, sir...be still. I'll see if there's a med kit somewhere around here."

With some fumbling and pointing and grunts from Golich, she found some kits in the back of the gondola, in a cabinet. She applied a medpatch to his head wounds and let it go to work. In a few minutes, the bots inside would start their regime of medicating, cauterizing and auto-suturing the wound.

She tried to make Golich as comfortable as possible. Presently, he groaned and his eyes fluttered open.

"How bad...?" he forced out.

Adanna shrugged. "I wrenched a shoulder, but otherwise, I'm intact. Nothing broken. I'm worried about your head, though."

Golich winced and smirked slightly. "A lot of people are worried about my head. My right ankle, though, it's—" He tried to bend over and touch it, but the pain was too great.

Adanna examined it. "May be broken, sir. Leave it alone...I'll gin up something for it. Medpatches won't help that."

She raised up enough to rest an elbow on the torn seat next to them, peering out through starred and crazed picture window. The sand haze seemed to be lessening and the mistral winds had slackened, though the battered gondola still groaned and creaked with the occasional gust. Worse, the gondola hull had been breached in multiple places and sand was sifting in, piling up in the lower reaches of the gondola.

"Where are we?" she wondered out loud. "Nothing but dunes out there, as far as I can see. We must have come to rest on top of one. Maybe we'd better stay put, for the shelter. Don't these ships have emergency beacons?"

Golich struggled to a sitting position, bracing his back against the seat, which had been torn from its mount. "They do, but it may have been shattered in the impact. We came down pretty hard. Hard to say." He craned his head, wincing from the laceration and the medpatch, and peered out. "See those hills, over there? Central Hills. That's where we should be heading."

Adanna looked out through haze shimmering in the distance. She could just make out the faint outlines of the slopes. "We should stay here for now. Somebody has to know we went down. And that sand storm's moving on."

Golich shook his head emphatically. "We can't stay here, ma'am. Not safe. These dunes move, several meters a day. We stay here and we could get rolled, even buried. No...we have to get out, while we still can."

Adanna said, "To where? Those hills look to be several klicks away, at least. And you've got a bad wheel."

"You'll have to support me."

"What about the sand...and the wind? And where would we go anyway? There's nothing but dunes out there."

He looked around, ripped out some stuffing from the seat. "Here...use this. We make headgear to protect us, balaclava masks for our faces. Then we hobble up and down the dunes, to the hills. I know those hills. They're full of caves. In fact, that old hermit may still be there."

"Hermit? People live up there?"

"The sandseer. Some old geezer who left Gibbstown eons ago and hides out up in the caves along those slopes."

Adanna was already helping him fashion some kind of head covering from the seat fabric and stuffing. "We've got rations here. And some shelter. If we leave the gondola now...."

"If we don't leave now, we'll be buried alive. I'm from Nomad Township. I know the Sand Sea. Now...get your ass moving, that's an order."

With some clever improvising, the two of them fashioned makeshift protective coverings and masks for their heads and face. Adanna tried to shove open the hatch and found it jammed. Golich climbed up on another seat and looked out the picture window.

"It's a sand drift. And it's piling up fast...feel that? We're already sliding down slope. We'll be buried in no time. Here, let me help—"

"Sir, I wouldn't—" But he wouldn't be dissuaded and between the two of them, they forced open the jammed hatch, shoving and straining to make an opening they could squeeze through. Golich had been right. Even though the mistral had mostly passed by and the winds had died off, the sand was shifting and the gondola was rolling and skidding down from the top of sand dune.

Adanna worked with Golich to get him into a position she could support, as comfortable as either of them could be. One arm around her neck, the other grasping a small bag of supplies they would need...rations, canteens of water, batteries, light sticks, more medpatches. They half slid and half fell down the slope to the hardpan below and set off.

In the distance, the rose-colored Central Hills shimmered like a million mirror fragments in the haze. Adanna studied the sky, realized that some of the haze was likely bot clouds, wafting over from Gibbstown, the ever-present loose nano that darkened the late afternoon skies in shadowy clumps like pollen, drifting down and blanketing everything around them.

They were easily a dozen klicks from the hills, she figured.

The coppery glow of Sturdivant 2180's late afternoon light made long reddish shadows over the sand and she found herself imagining the two shadows trudging along, growing larger and wider with each passing moment, soon taking flight. Night would come soon enough to Keaton's World, and with it, shapes and sounds and smells unknown, perhaps unknowable. They moved together as one, in a mechanical rhythm: step, shuffle, step, shuffle, step, shuffle, ever onward, a metronome of physical movement that seemed at the same time hypnotic, surreal and eternal. Flocks of arachtyls cawed and screeched and beat their wings overhead, bringing momentary relief from their shadows.

Adanna Likasi and Nathan Golich pressed on as best they could, trying to make the lower slopes of the Central Hills before the fullness of K-World's night fell upon them.

Adanna and Nathan Golich pressed on as best they could, trying to make the lower slopes of the Central Hills before night came.

Golich grunted and slumped in her arms and that startled Adanna out of her daydream. She stooped down. His face was pale. He was sweating hard.

"Not too far now," he croaked out. "A few more hills."

"You can't make it a few more hills," Adanna decided. She looked around. They were moving into the upper Hills now, wedged between sheer rock walls, with clefts and burrows and hollows all around. At least the sand was gone, replaced by ocher rubble and house-sized boulders. Golich murmured and grunted directions, though she could barely hear him.

That's when she saw a faint light ahead, a flicker, like a fire or a candle or light stick.

They finally found the cave on the steepest slopes of the Central Hills, nearly a thousand meters above the surrounding desert. Adanna and Golich were exhausted by the climb; the effort had taken half the night, it seemed.

The cave complex, where Adanna had first seen the flicker of light, was well hidden in the folds and crevices of the upper slopes, above a cloud deck and slick with ice and snow drifts. The wind screamed and gusted at well over eighty knots here and both of them had to hunker down in the lee of a rocky barren to keep from being shredded with ice shards and rock chips scoured off the mountainside.

The entrance was little more than a fold in the ground, like a bedsheet bent over and tucked under, maybe a meter across in its widest dimension. "I think this may be it," Golich forced out.

The two of them moved deeper into the cave, following a drifting mist of bots that wavered in and out of view. A faint glow emanated from the swarms and Adanna realized this was the light she had seen: bots slamming atoms, breaking bonds, creating a glow about the cave. They descended several levels, crossed a rock bridge across a deep chasm and maneuvered through more tunnels. Lighting was created by the mist, a pulsing, flickering light that cast deep shadows on the gnarled veins of rock lining the cave. The floor was slick, patches of ice everywhere. Soon enough, they came to a narrow opening, barely waist high. More light flickered from inside.

The mist of bots which had floated with them swirled like dust in a storm and gathered around the opening like a frame, coruscating and flashing as if lit from within. Bonds were broken and atoms slung together...in moments, the mist formed itself into a small ramp, extending over a sluggish pool of water. At least, Adanna thought it was water, even as tendrils of steam hovered over the surface like a fog.

Cautiously, first Golich, then Adanna, edged out onto the newly formed ramp and walked ahead.

The cave of the sandseer was behind a low-hanging barrier of stalactites. They had to duck to get in. A brighter glow issued from the center of the cave, a ball of pulsating light, flickering, phosphorescing, undulating like a thing alive.

More bots, Adanna realized. It's like a bot nursery in here.

The sandseer sat on his haunches over the glowpit. He was a gnome of an old man, skin sagging like desiccated rice paper, arms and face splotched with age and veins. He wore a simple, rough gray tunic, cinched at the waist and dingy slippers. His head was oddly misshapen, topped with wisps of white hair. His eyes were black slits, shadowed almost to nothing in the glow. His forearms were hairy, barely concealing some faded tattoos.

"Can you help us?" Adanna asked. Golich leaned heavily against her, nearly unable to stand. "Our ship crashed. My friend here, he's injured. I think his ankle's broken."

The sandseer gestured at a pile of rags on the ground, other side of the glowpit. "There."

Adanna helped Golich lie down among the rags. Presently, the glowing orb over the pit brightened noticeably and fingers of light, streams of bots, unraveled and snaked their way to envelop Golich.

Adanna shrank back, hesitant at first, but when she felt the sting of the swarm brushing against her arms, squirmed off to a safe distance. Soon, Nathan Golich was completely enshrouded in a 'quilt' of flickering light.

Adanna's mouth went dry. "What do you do up here?"

The sandseer never moved, but continued stirring a mound of small stones in the pit. The fire that wasn't a fire glowed overhead. "I see things that are broken and fix them."

"Can you fix my friend?"

"Watch."

Adanna spent an hour watching, as the shroud of bots coruscated and glowed and pulsed over and around Golich's prostrate form. Something stung her ears and eyes and she swatted at it. Loose bots, most likely. She had seen medbots at work before but nothing like this. The sandseer paid no attention to any of it.

"Will he die?"

The sandseer took a deep, rattling breath. "Yes, in time he will cease to exist."

"I mean from his injuries. Will he die from his injuries?"

Now, the sandseer rocked back and forth on his knees. He moaned a bit. "My little explorers say only that after a certain time, his detectable memory trails will cease to exist."

Just then, Golich stirred and sat up, propping himself on his elbows. The shroud of flickering light had dimmed noticeably. His color had returned. Adanna went over, gingerly forcing her fingers through the remaining wisps of bots, to feel his face and forehead. "Sir...are you...do you feel--?"

He managed a wan smile. "Better. A little. My head feels like it's in a vise. And my ankle—"

She checked out his ankle. "The swelling's gone down. Can you move it at all?"

He tried, then winced. "A little. It's not as sore."

"The bots...I've never seen anything like it. This...man, this—"

Golich said, "Sandseer."

"Yeah, he seems to live with these bots, commune with them, control them. They're all around us."

"My little friends are part of us," the sandseer explained. "Part of the world, like the air and the sand and the winds." From a small tray on the ground, the sandseer gave Golich a cup, indicating he should drink. Golich took the cup, hesitated a moment, then slurped it down, whatever it was. He made a face. "Drink all," the sandseer told him.

Golich drank. He heard something, realized the sandseer was saying something, something very soft, almost a whisper.

"That which is lost—"

And his attention snapped back to the bar and to Malakel's grinning face.

"...cannot be found," Malakel was saying, "until it is discovered."

Golich blinked. "You...are you--?"

Malakel nodded. "Yes. I am the sandseer."

Golich swallowed hard. "How...I don't understand this—I must be drunk."

This made Malakel laugh out loud. "As I said, we met before...on K-World. A different time stream. The Central Hills. The cave."

"You tended to me, fixed me up."

Malakel shrugged. "I'm just a simple merchant now. A trader. I have a ship. I cruise around nearby space...and local time streams...hawking all kinds of wares and goods. You might know of my ship. She's the Pisces."

"Pi—" Golich's eyes narrowed. "Wait a minute. I served on that ship. She was destroyed...what, twenty years ago. Neutron star called The Gullet."

Malakel rubbed his hands together. They were wrinkled beyond his outward years, calloused and rough. "Not quite. You're partly right. After she was rather severely damaged by The Gullet, Time Guard abandoned her. But I had a small crew. We salvaged her, made her shipshape again. And added some new features to boot. Now she's a tradeship. Quite space and time-worthy, if I do say so myself."

Golich was suspicious. "You run this ship? Can she still jump?"

"Oh, she can jump very well. We navigate all kinds of time streams now."

"You know it's illegal for anyone to operate a jumpship except for Time Guard. What's a trader need with a jumpship anyway?"

"It's just business. Here's an example: say you're happily married and your wife wants a certain, shall we say, famous painting, for her anniversary present. Say it's...oh, I don't know: The Adoration of the Magi. Botticelli. You've got the money. The painting used to be in the Uffizi Gallery on old Urth, now somebody else has it. You contact me. Front me some money. I take Pisces and my crew, navigate all kinds of time streams, find the painting and bring it to you. Voila! You now possess one of the great art treasures of all time. That's our business."

Golich spat. "You nothing but a time pirate, Malakel. A high-end thief. With an illegal jumpship."

Malakel smiled humorlessly. "I prefer trader. It sounds better. Commander Golich, I meant what I said...both before and now. That which is lost cannot be found...until it is discovered."

"What is that...some kind of riddle?"

He held up a gnarled hand. "A proposition. Join with me and my crew aboard Pisces. Give up your commission in Time Guard---we both know you're going to do it anyway. Be part of a great adventure. Achieve that which you always dreamed of, plus great riches and acclaim, with us." His eyes bored in and he leaned closer. "Now you have finally discovered what you have sought for so long. Join us...."

Golich started to reply, but felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Acth:On'e and Evelyn M'Bela.

"Sorry, Commander," M'Bela said. "We looked up and down the boardwalk for an hour for you."

"Went in every bar and club," Acth:On'e added.

"What is it?"

"Captain wants all crew back aboard Cygnus in four hours. URME's finished all the repairs. We're making a jump tonight."

"A jump? Now? Where?"

M'Bela leaned closer, while Acth:On'e gently pushed Malakel back. "Back home. T-001. Our time. There's scuttlebutt of a major operation being planned for some place between Time's Peak and Newton's Jaw. Coordinated op to push the Bugs back to their own space beyond the Lower Halo."

Malakel took the hint and pried Acth:On'e's fingers from his lapel. He stood up, straightening his jacket. He took Golich's right hand and dropped a small coin-sized disk into it, a contact chip, then closed Golich's fingers around it.

"Contact me, Commander, when you're ready. You'll know when." Then he swept out of the bar and dived into the crowds outside.

Golich finished off his beer and wondered if he had imagined the whole thing, brushing off questioning stares from the others.

The three time jumpers departed Mariners' Bar and headed back to FOB Hapsh'm Prime, back to the Time Guard base. The boost up to Cygnus in orbit would take several hours.

END

# Appendix

The Time Guard Academy

All cadet applicants entering Time Guard have to go through 'jolt' school,' also known as the Time Guard Academy. It's a four-year science and engineering-heavy school that takes a raw recruit and makes him into a galaxy-class time jumper. There are separate tracks for officers and enlisted personnel.

Below are some details about the Academy, specifically the officer track:

  1. The Academy is physically located at Farside Center, Korolev Crater, the Moon.

  2. The Academy is a 4-year school. Officer cadets graduate after 4 years and are commissioned into Time Guard as Junior Lieutenants.

  3. There are multiple schools and specialties within the Academy. Most cluster around the following areas (all cadets must choose a course of concentration in one of these):

    1. Command and Control (CC) School

    2. Temporal Operations (TTO) School

    3. Temporal Engineering, Maintenance and Sustainment (TMS) School

    4. Time Stream Search and Surveillance (TSS) School

    5. Defense and Protective Systems (DPS) School

    6. Temporal Weapons and Tactics (TWT) School

  4. The first 2 years (Jolt 1 and Jolt 2) are for foundational instruction in Languages, History, other Social Sciences, Mathematics, Sciences and Engineering Fundamentals.

  5. The last two years (Jolt 3 and Time Jumper) are for applied studies, command and leadership studies, strategy and tactics, Guard history and philosophy, higher level math, science and engineering, unit-level assignments as a cadet apprentices or interns, and senior projects.

  6. The more or less derisive term jolt comes from the feeling you first experience when you jump time streams or enter voidtime. First and second year cadets are referred to as jolts. It's not a term of endearment.

Here's a closer look at the sequence of courses a typical cadet might take during his or her four years at jolt school:

1st year Freshman ("Jolt 1")

Fall Semester: Foreign language, Psychology, History, Math 1, Computer Science, PE

Winter Semester: Foreign language, English 1, Chemistry 1, Engineering 1, Math 2, Physics 1, PE

Spring Semester: Foreign language, English 2, Chemistry 2, Engineering 2, Math 3, Physics 2, PE

Summer Semester: Electives, Apprenticeship

2nd year Sophomore ("Jolt 2")

Fall Semester: Temp Eng 1, Eng Mech 1, Econ 1, Physics 3, Pol Sci, PE

Winter Semester: Temp Eng 2, Eng Mech 2, Law, Chemistry 3, Physics 4, Molecular Eng 1, PE

Spring Semester: Temp Eng 3, Eng Mech 3, Chemistry 4, Molecular Eng 2, PE, Time Guard History

Summer Semester: Electives, Internship

3rd year Junior ("Jolt 3")

Fall Semester: Temporal Ops 1, Intro to Jumps, Chemistry 5, Time Sim 1, Quant Phys 1

Winter Semester: Molecular Ops 2, ANAD Sys 1, Time Sim 2, Jumps 2, Battalion Ops, Quantum Sys 1

Spring Semester: Molecular Ops 3, ANAD Sys 2, Time Sim 3, Quantum Sys 2

Summer Semester: Electives, Internship

4th year Senior ("Time Jumper")

Fall Semester: Jump Sys 3, Temporal Tactics 1, Jumpship Ops 1

Winter Semester: Command and Control, Temp Tactics 2, Jumpship Ops 2, DPS, Senior Project 1

Spring Semester: Temporal Strategy, Temp Tactics 3, Jumpship Ops 3, Philosophy, Senior Project 2

Summer Semester: Unit Assignments

Time Guard Academy turns out world-class temporal troopers. Once you've fulfilled all requirements for graduation, you receive a diploma awarding you a Bachelor of Temporal Engineering and you're authorized to wear the gold time jumper's pin on your black and gold UATG uniform. The graduation ceremony (always at night) at Farside's Hawking Field is a sight to behold: the graduation and commissioning ceremony ends with a small, tightly controlled formation of escort jumpships popping out of voidtime right over the reviewing stands and forming the Time Guard emblem in the star-lit night-time sky.

And, of course, now that you're a newly commissioned Junior Lieutenant in Time Guard, you soon learn how to say "tempus regit!" ("Time rules!") with a new-found conviction.

About the Author

Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He recently retired but worked for nearly 25 years for a large company that makes products everyone uses...just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He's been happily married for over 28 years. He's also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Pekingese dog named Chance.

For technical and background details on his series Tales of the Quantum Corps, visit his blog Quantum Corps Times at http://qcorpstimes.blogspot.com. For details on other books in this series, visit his website at http://philbosshardt.wix.com/philip-bosshardt or learn about other books by Philip Bosshardt by visiting www.smashwords.com.

To get a peek at Philip Bosshardt's notes and the backstory on how the Time Jumpers series was created, recent reviews, excerpts from upcoming books and general updates on the writing life, visit his blog The Word Shed at: http://thewdshed.blogspot.com.

Download the next exciting episode of Time Jumpers from Smashwords.com and other fine ebook retailers. It's called 'Operation Galactic Hammer'. Available on August 30, 2019.

