 
# Time Jumpers

Episode 12: The Time Twister

### Published by Philip Bosshardt at Smashwords

### Copyright 2019 Philip Bosshardt

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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: "Uneasy is the head that wears a crown..."

"If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"

William Shakespeare

Storm

Kinlok Island

Time Stream T-001 (2814 CE)

T-date: 001-01-22

Jumpship Cygnus was gone, obliterated into non-existence when her singularity core collapsed on the other side of the star-sun Sigma Albeth B. First Time Displacement Battery hunkered down on a windswept spit of land called Kinlok Island, until the last of the quantum decoherence waves had washed through the system. When it was all over, the ocean world Storm was still there and Sigma Albeth was still there, but she was mortally wounded.

Acth:On'e figured she had maybe a few years, maybe less, before the Chandrasekhar Limit would be reached and the final detonation sequence began.

But the crew had bigger problems to deal with. Evelyn M'Bela had been swarmed by Coethi bots on the Coethi homeworld Horus and the infestation had penetrated her brain. An emergency insert of URME bots into Queenie's head had been done but the Bugs were fast and clever and the result was bad, real bad.

M'Bela had died right in front of their eyes.

Now 1st TD had a grim and sober duty and they had all gathered down on the wind-swept beach, sleet flecking their eyes amid crashing surf, with the Body Dispersal Shroud containing the remains of M'Bela to conduct a memorial service.

Dringoth had done these before and it was never easy. "We're doing this one by the book," he told them up at the control shack.

"That means FADMR?" Golich asked.

Dringoth nodded. "Time Guard procedure TG88-1717, Field-ANAD Disposal of Mortal Remains. URME has already inserted the disassembly swarm in the shroud." The para-human swarm entity could never have survived in blustery conditions down on the island's narrow beach, so Alicia Yang carried him in a containment capsule on her belt.

They had littered the burial shroud down to a small sandy promontory overlooking thundering waves, barely ten meters above the hiss and spray of the surf. After the memorial service was performed by the Captain, Yang would trigger the dispersal process. Inside the shroud, barebones ANAD nanobots originally configured by URME would rapidly disassemble M'Bela's mortal remains as swell as the shroud. As a final act, once the disassembly was done, the crew would take turns shoveling the ground residue off the promontory and into the ocean.

And that would be that.

Dringoth cleared his throat. God, I hate this, he told himself but he didn't say that. Queenie deserved better, but then the same thing could be said of any time jumper, or for that matter any soldier. Maybe it was enough she had died in battle, fighting the Bugs that had been threatening Umans for decades. A soldier's death, with all the glory that came with it.

Dringoth spoke out in as clear a voice as he could muster. "Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our sister departed, and we commit her remains to the deep; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; at whose coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, the sea shall give up her dead; and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in him shall be changed, and made like unto his glorious body; according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself—"

Dringoth's words—he had memorized them the night before, straight from the Service of Committal procedure in the manual—were suddenly interrupted by a commotion.

"Hey, Captain...what the hell is that?"

"What's what?"

"That."

Beyond the surf line off the tiny beach, a creature had just emerged from the waves, a seemingly bipedal creature, covered in what looked like armored plating, shuffling and trudging through the waves toward them. Behind it, a second creature, somewhat smaller, also had emerged and had joined the first one.

"Must be that dinner we had last night," said Golich. His hands reached for the beamer on his web belt and he withdrew the weapon and flipped off the safety, automatically. Acth:On'e did the same.

"What the hell are they?"

The creatures reached the end of the water and struggled for footing in the loose sand. Their outer skin resembled suits of some kind. But their heads, if they had heads, were invisible behind the upper part of their suits.

"Stay back! Stay back...they're still coming—get back there!"

Then Alicia Yang recognized them. "Captain, they're Sea People...like we encountered before on Storm. Don't shoot...hold your fire."

Dringoth was skeptical, still fondling his own weapon. "Sea People?"

"They call themselves Seomish. Remember, Captain...the last time we were here. I actually took a trip with them."

Dringoth did remember. "You went AWOL. We almost left you behind."

Yang was already scrambling down off the promontory onto the beach. "Captain, I know these creatures—" Cautiously she approached.

"Yang, get back! That's an order!"

But the DPS tech ignored Dringoth and moved carefully, step by step toward the glistening, armored creatures. "I think they recognize me...." She held out her hand...now she was just five meters away, now, shuffling sand, four meters...three meters.

"Alicia, watch out!"

The taller creature had extended its own hand. She could hear the faint whir of motors operating and remembered the suits were called mobilitors, suits that contained a watery environment inside, allowing the creatures to survive and move about out of water. In its hand, a small cylindrical object, knobby at one end, was held. Tiny lights pulsed around its top.

"He's got a weapon--! Golich yelled.

"No...no, it's not a weapon, Commander. Hold your fire. It's one of those translator things, like we found before. I'm sure of it."

As she watched from a distance of several meters, rocked by wind gusts, the taller creature made some kind of adjustment to the device and handed it to Yang. Cautiously, she took it. When it burped sound, she was so startled, she dropped it in the sand.

"Skrrreeeach...kkklllzzzqqq...you hear me....?"

Yang retrieved the translator. From memory, she recalled the Sea People had called these devices echopods.

"Yes...yes, I hear a few words. You understand me?" She talked into the knobby head of the thing.

"Skkaaalllqqq. We...kkkxxx-derstand you. Give---?" The creature held out a hand, clearly wanting the device back. Yang handed it over and he made some more adjustments around the top. He gave it back to Yang. "Now...kkxxqq...is better, yes?"

Yang nodded. "You sound better." Over the words coming out of the device, she could hear their real language...a staccato barrage of clicks, squeaks and whistles, which the echopod was translating on the fly. "You understand me better?"

"Kkkllqq...truth we say. Tailless...you return...take away wave-zzhh—maker, yes?" The creature extended a motorized arm, in the general direction of the Twister.

Yang said, "We came back to start it up again. This world, this whole system, is in grave danger. There is an enemy out there—" she waved at the sky. "We fight this enemy to protect these worlds...your world."

Slowly, bit by bit, Yang learned their names: Kloosee was taller and male. Pakma was shorter and female. They had come to Kinlok Island before, had met Yang before and taken her on a short trip across their seas, into several underwater cities, into the polar waters up north. To Yang, it now seemed like a dream. To Dringoth and the others, always skeptical, it was a hallucination, probably something she had eaten the night before.

But Alicia Yang was convinced the trip had really happened.

Kloosee extended a hand toward the others, still above on the promontory. "Shkreeaah...klzzqq...you...with mates...this is to stop wavemaker, yes? We can zzhhllpp help with this. Many come...just below—"he indicated the surf line beyond the whitecaps of the breakers. And indeed, Yang could see the rounded humps of their ships, the little sleds they called kip'ts. There were dozens of them stretching to the horizon, lost in the fog that nearly obscured everything.

Yang tried to explain what they were doing, the memorial detail, the procedure, the rites and rituals of a Time Guard service.

"She was a crew member, like part of our family."

Kloosee conferred briefly with Pakma, which the echopod didn't translate beyond a few screeches and scratches.

"Kllzzqq...we pulse...something, you say distress. You show to us many bubbles, these are sad bubbles...we say Rot'oot'orkelte..."

Yang felt Dringoth sidle up next to her. Golich had come down to the beach too. "They have incredible sound detection, Captain. They have a kind of sonar, they can sense what we feel just by pulsing and reading echoes from our insides. It's a big part of how they communicate."

Dringoth scowled. "Why am I not impressed? Ask them what they want. We've got work today. And I need to get word off to Time Guard to send backup to this little sewer of a world."

Yang asked. Her question caused some confusion, then Kloosee tried to explain. He swayed a little in the wind and Yang was afraid he would topple over. She knew operating inside the mobilitors out of water was difficult for them.

"Kkkllqq...the rot'oot'orkelte...we help, yes? Can we pulse the mate...who has drifted into the Current of Pomt'or, beyond the T'kel..."

For a moment, Yang didn't understand. But when Pakma began shuffling toward the base of the promontory and held up her hands, the idea came to her.

"Captain, I think they want to examine Queenie."

Dringoth was firm. "Absolutely not. This is a very solemn service they've interrupted. Tell them that. We need to finish so we can get back to work."

But even as Dringoth was trying to refuse, Pakma's mobilitor was whirring loudly. Yang and Dringoth looked on in amazement as the female Sea Creature began to awkwardly scale the promontory, assisted by what appeared to be a boosted exoskeleton embedded in her mobilitor. With effort, Pakma reached the top and stood upright awkwardly. When she almost pitched backward off the cliff in a gust, Acth:On'e reacted instinctively and grabbed an arm, steadying her. Then Pakma knelt down awkwardly before the burial shroud and before Acth could react, she had slit the shroud open and uncovered M'Bela's deathly pale, slightly shrunken face.

"Hey...hey...you can't--!"

Now Pakma screeched out a barrage of clicks and whistles. Down below, the echopod in Yang's hands burped a long guttural string of sounds. The device tried to keep up, but none too successfully.

"...qqlllkkk...pulse...qqqkkkckkkllil...many pulse...she bubbles—"

Kloosee translated. "Pakma says the mate lives...she rests now, but she lives. Pakma sounds bubbles of life."

Dringoth scrambled back up the cliffside. "Impossible. She died in our arms. Not three hours ago. URME did the scans...no vitals, flat line on all scans...she died."

Yang came up too, leaving only Kloosee down on the beach. She winced at the sight of Evelyn's face, her mouth in a tight line, eyes sutured shut by URME.

"Captain, these people have incredible senses. If there's the slightest chance—"

Now Kloosee had come over to the base of the outcrop. He didn't try to climb but stayed on the beach looking up, holding on tight to a rock ledge.

"Pakma senses bubbles. Zzzhhh...your mate come...we take to mekli...the Pillars of Shooki...there are qqkkllqq...ways."

Yang looked up at Dringoth's skeptical face. "They took me to the Pillars before, Captain. They're up north. Holy waters, I was told."

Kloosee said, "The Voice makes to life...sends currents to all Seome...the Pomt'or, the Omt'chor, the Sk'ork...all come from Shooki and the Voice."

"How can a voice bring back the dead?" Golich asked of no one in particular. "What does this voice say...get up, Queenie and stop lying around?"

Kloosee didn't understand sarcasm or doubt but said simply and surprisingly clearly, "O' my loo'sheen, the Voice speaks of the most wondrous things. It speaks of love and shoo'kel, the balance of all seas. Of Ke'shoo and Ke'lee and every virtue. The Vish currents and destiny. The Dialogues. The reciting of charms and beatitudes. The Be'shoo'keen of principal ecstasies. The Voice is profound and fluent, for truth is like Seome itself, inexhaustible and imperishable."

Acth:On'e was thoughtful. "Maybe Queenie isn't dead."

Dringoth dismissed that. "Don't be ridiculous. You all saw URME's scans."

But Yang watched Pakma trying to tenderly stroke M'Bela's face, with her armored mobilitor hand. "Captain, she said she senses something. If there's something they can do—"

Acth:On'e bent down on the other side of the burial shroud. "Maybe URME didn't catch everything. Maybe Queenie's in some kind of coma—I've heard of this—caused by nanobotic trauma to her consciousness centers."

Dringoth shook his head. "URME scanned everything. You saw it. Cardio, EEG, serotonin and dopamine levels, glutamate concentrations, myoskeletal reflexes. The uptake and activity mapping showed nothing."

Yang pleaded with her eyes. "I've seen what these people can do, what they have, how they live. We have to try this. We may even learn something the Guard can use."

Pakma stood up, with help, her mobilitor servos whirring and grinding. The echopod in Yang's hand erupted. It was Kloosee.

"Skreeaah...mate come with us...the Pillars...the Voice make bubbles. Bring shoo'kel, bring litor'kel and the great current that lives in all."

"Captain...give her a chance. It can't hurt."

Dringoth wrapped his arms around himself and shivered in the icy wind. Sleet half blinded him. This was beyond insane. Turning a Time Guard jumper's body over to fish people to do their hocus-pocus rites on. There had to be rules against this sort of thing. He asked what the trip would entail.

After some misunderstandings and re-adjustments of the echopod, it was clear what the Seomish had in mind. Kloosee and Pakma were proposing to take M'Bela's body, still in the dispersal shroud, off to some place called the Pillars of Shooki. Yang claimed to have been there before. A special healing place, was how the echopod translated all their squeaks and whistles. Dringoth wasn't buying any of it but the faces of his own crew said otherwise. In return, Yang explained, the Seomish would help the Umans finish dismantling the Twister. When he heard this part, Dringoth said no.

"Can't they understand? The Twister has to be operational. Bugs are all around us, Alicia. You know that. The Twister's all that's keeping us, and them, alive. Without the Twister, the Bugs will obliterate their sun and probably absorb all of us. We'll all wind up like Queenie."

But no words would change the looks his own crew gave him. And in truth, a few more days wouldn't make that big a difference.

"I should have my head examined for this," Dringoth finally relented. "What the hell, Commandstar will shuffle me off to the ass end of the Alliance anyway, if they don't outright court-martial me. Alicia, you go along. And don't let them take forever. The rest of us will be working on getting the Twister up and operating. We're not dismantling the only defenses we have."

Yang was about to object but the look on the Captain's face dissuaded her from even trying. She figured they'd fight that battle another day. For now, M'Bela was her main concern.

Once Dringoth had made the decision, the crew of 1st TD worked with the two Seomish to bring M'Bela's body and shroud down to the beach. Yang discharged URME from her containment capsule to enter the shroud and deactivate the ANAD disassembly swarm. Once the shroud was safed and cleared, Golich and Acth:On'e carried the body out to one of the nearer kipt's. Kloosee directed them to deposit the shroud into a small pod aft of the kip't, but attached by nearly invisible tow lines.

Yang remembered what it was called. "A Notwater pod, or something like that. This is what I traveled in when they showed me their cities."

It was evident nobody really believed that but M'Bela's remains, still enshrouded, were duly lowered into the pod. At Kloosee's gestures, Yang climbed in as well.

Kloosee said a sort of goodbye. "Kkllzzqq...travel we by Pomt'or...the current take we Voice of Shooki...your mate bubbles, Shooki stirs in all of us the litor'kel...the currents of life."

Dringoth scowled at all of them. "Just get back here in three days, both of you. We've got a hell of a lot of work to do."

With that, the finger-like opening of the pod hatch closed and sealed. Clumsily, Kloosee and Pakma stumbled out into the surf in their mobilitors. At waist depth, they both dived headfirst into an onrushing wave and were gone.

Golich picked up some sand where the dispersal shroud had lain and let it sift through his fingers. The wind moaned. Sleet came at them like a billion needles.

"Captain, I've got a bad feeling about this. About the whole place."

Dringoth was already heading up the hill to the shacks and huts that were their quarters. "Me too, but we can't dwell on it now. I want to inventory what we have for the Twister and get the fabs working on new parts." He eyed the dim daub of light overhead, all that was visible of the sun. "From the looks of that thing, we don't have long before the Bugs completely absorb this whole system."

They both watched as moments later, the pod containing Alicia Yang and the body of Evelyn M'Bela disappeared under the waves.

The craft was barely large enough for one person, let alone two. It was attached to the aft end of the Seomish kip't by some kind of tow line.

With help from Pakma and Kloosee, Alicia had figured out how to position her and M'Bela inside, head to toe, each facing in opposite directions.

Like babies in a mother's womb, she thought, but she quickly banished that kind of thinking.

There were harnesses and Yang figured out how to slip into them and secure them. You had to contort yourself like a gymnast, but it was doable. It occurred to her that the compartment and the harnesses weren't really designed for bipedal, air-breathing humans.

Inside the cramped compartment, there was a small panel at her head, below twin portholes. The panel was clearly some kind of control station, though its buttons and switches weren't designed for human hands. The controls were more like the round end of a spoon, a series of narrow bowl-like depressions made for pressing with something other than fingers.

Yang studied the panel for awhile, then fiddled with another set of controls near the hatch. She had noticed a double row of small pod-like containers ringing the perimeter of the compartment.

I wonder...she said to herself. There didn't seem to be an echopod for translating and she could only puzzle at Kloosee and Pakma's gestures and clicks and whistles. Most of the time, the Seomish managed to make their meaning clear.

Moments later, the pod-like containers began to spew bubbles. Initially a steady stream of bubbles, the pods soon were discharging something at high pressure. The stream of bubbles became a torrent, then a flood, enveloping the entire space.

Yang closed her eyes. What are they doing now? Maybe this wasn't such a great idea. Alongside, she brushed up against the burial shroud. Sorry, Queenie, but there's not a lot of room in here.

The compartment was smothering them with bubbles but it wasn't long before Yang understood.

Air. It was air. Kloosee had called it Notwater.

The compartment was being filled with air at high pressure. And sure enough, the water level began to subside, first at her head, then dropping slowly but steadily below her face, her neck, her shoulders.

When it was done, there were still several centimeters of water left in the bottom of the compartment, but now she could breathe.

Cautiously, Yang took a deep breath. It was air, stale, smelling like iron filings and ozone, but breathable air.

"Whew...that smells good. What the hell is that odor, Queenie?"

It came to her and she answered her own question. "Must be the filters. Thank God they thought of this...I wasn't sure what we were going to do when--"

But she choked off her words for in that moment, the little craft began to move, jerking and gyrating into motion. Yang stuck her head as close to the porthole as she could.

"We're underway...we've just lifted off the sea bed...I can see that tow line. Kloosee and Pakma must be in the sub up ahead...now we're off. But to where? The Pillars of Shooki, I guess."

She let the gyrations and jolts dampen out and then peered out the porthole again. Nothing but dingy gray-green murk. An occasional shape flitted by. Some of the shapes had teeth.

Yang hmmm'ed. "We seem to be headed out to sea...the seabed's dropping off...getting deeper. I can't see that far. Just the tail of that sub."

They traveled at a steady clip for hours.

Alicia Yang dozed in and out of a fitful, restless sleep, lulled into a stupor by the steady hiss of water sliding by their small craft. She looked at the burial shroud, thought about unzipping the face so she could see M'Bela's face. But she remembered there might still be Coethi bots in her head and thought better of the idea.

"Sorry, Queenie. Better not take any chances."

Just to keep her sanity, Yang began talking to the body as if it were still alive. Kloosee and Pakma both believed M'Bela might yet live.

"Don't know if I believe that or not," she muttered. Groping with her hands, she probed the interior of the craft, wondering if there might be something to eat. The pod-like containers continued to blow air into the compartment, flexing in and out as if they were lungs in action; their front panels even resembled faces with puckered lips, which in the dim light made Yang shiver slightly.

"Queenie, I'm so sorry this happened. You got swarmed on that planet and URME and I couldn't save you. God knows...we tried. We tried everything. The damn bots were just too fast, they replicated too fast, maneuvered too fast. We couldn't—" she choked back a few tears, waved her hands around her face and finally jammed them beneath her butt. "I feel like there was more we could have done...but I don't know what." She looked down at the rough scaly texture of the burial shroud, seeing in her mind's eye M'Bela's regal face, with that silly bone hairpiece, the amulets and necklaces she always wore...she was proud of her Cameroonian heritage. What did she call herself...Dzugudini, the Rain Queen of K-World.

That made Alicia laugh. They had first met in jolt school, recruit training at Landfall (star-sun Gliese 876), near the Cygnus Rift. Time Guard Academy maintained a recruit training center at Landfall. Evelyn had entered boot camp as a Jump Master 3rd class. It would prove to be an eye-opening, rigorous experience, during which she learned the hard way, through drills and penalties and demerits and being confined to quarters that she was not, in fact, the warrior queen she thought she was. She learned a painful lesson in humility. Alicia remembered the late-night tears and talks in the cadet barracks. When she returned to Keaton's World for a short furlough near the end of boot camp, her own father paid her the ultimate compliment by complaining that she had changed, perhaps not for the better and that she had "wrecked her Igbo heritage and even dirtied her Rain Queen's necklace with all her talk of 'completing the mission' and 'sacrificing for her fellow troopers.' She wasn't acting like a 'queen' anymore and Eric M'Bela didn't like that one bit.

"Now, look at you," Yang said. At least it was a jumper's death, glory and honor and duty and all that. "But it doesn't make me feel any better. Queenie, I let you down. We all did. And I can't stop—" but she didn't finish the sentence. Instead, she sucked up her tears and sobs and scrunched herself down into as small a form as she could, nestling her body against the burial shroud.

She drifted off to an uneasy sleep.

Alicia Yang jolted awake, every sense in her body, every nerve, jangling alarm, as she felt the little craft jostling and bumping and slowing down.

We've stopped, she finally realized. The droning hiss of the water sliding by the hull had slackened and then died off. She craned and contorted herself to take a peek out the porthole.

The kip't had slowed almost to a halt. Yang looked out and saw that Kloosee was maneuvering to settle their pod onto some kind of landing pad.

"It looks like a big mushroom, split open at the top. Or a giant hand, with fingers sticking up. Cool...."

The pod was deftly placed in the center of the "palm" and tow line released. Yang saw the sled jet off into the murk and, as it did so, the fingers of the hand slowly began to close.

"My God, Queenie...the fingers are retracting, like a big fist closing."

Yang watched as their little pod was completely enveloped in the bigger pod. The view became dark outside the porthole and the little pod rocked slightly.

Then an echopod inside their craft erupted. Yang listened.

...open pod hatch...you are in Notwater pod...

Cautiously, she did as Kloosee had taught her, cycling the hatch grip. She pushed up and water flooded in. But there was air...breathable air...stale, with the burned smell she had come to associate with this world, but nonetheless air....

Grateful, she squeezed up and out. She stood shivering and drenched in the palm of the great hand, standing on some kind of soft, tissue-like floor inside the Notwater pod.

That's when Yang realized the fingers that had closed around them were translucent. She could barely make out lights outside. And eyes. Fins and flukes, dozens, scores of them.

They had an audience, staring in at them.

"It's like a zoo cage," Yang muttered. Or an aquarium.

There was some kind of commotion along the side. The echopod chirped. It was Kloosee...with Pakma. They were at the edge of the enclosure, waving.

Alicia went over to the translucent flap. "I'm kind of hungry, Kloosee. Is there something I could eat?"

Kloosee drifted down and produced something in a small sac. He pressed it against the translucent finger. Yang watched in amazement as the finger contorted and twisted around its axis, revolving and extruding the sac inside the enclosure. Almost no water squeezed through.

The sac was dropped at her feet.

...is called tong'pod...crack legs...eat tissue....

"Sort of like a crab," she decided. She sat down and went to work. The meat inside the tong'pod legs turned out to be sweet tasting...and slightly narcotic. Soon enough, Yang pitched over and fell asleep, curled up like a baby.

She fought sleep for as long as she could, but she could hold out no longer. She lay back and passed into a deep, dreamless slumber.

Alicia Yang startled awake and jumped half a foot at the sight of the grotesque creature lying next to her, staring at her. It had scaly, armored skin, with a blade-shaped head and two forelimbs, at the end of which were some kind of manipulators, in fact a whole kit of them. The legs were flukes, with open ports...what on earth....

The echopod squeaked nearby. It was Kloosee. In fact, she could see Kloosee waving at her through the translucent fingers of the pod walls.

...lifesuit...we call kee'too...you live in water...climb into suit and close....

Yang looked up skeptically. Huh? Climb into that? How the--?

After a few moments to recover her wits, Yang had become more intrigued than frightened. Okay, girl, get a grip, get a grip...you're a trained time jumper. Looking closer, she could see it was a machine, a device, though it looked just like a living creature.

"Okay, Alicia," she muttered to herself "...don't lose your breakfast...it's just a suit...they must have stuck it inside when I was out."

She crawled toward the thing. "Kloosee called it a lifesuit...crap, you know what this thing is? It's the suit we saw them wearing off the island, when they came up out of the water. It's even got the same armor plating."

Yang cautiously reached out. It felt rough and scaly to the touch. Tough stuff, she told herself. "Must be designed to hold an atmosphere, or something breathable."

Slowly, bit by bit, guided by cryptic instructions over the echopod by Kloosee and Pakma, she managed to find a seam along the spine of the suit, which split apart as if slashed with a sword. She stuck her head up through a neck dam, found the fit tight but workable, then climbed completely in. Kloosee explained how to close and seal the kee'too.

...press along opening...find small pads...press pads...kee'too will contract and seal....

Yang did that and was startled, momentarily panicked, when the suit did exactly as Kloosee had described. Pressing against a series of small finger pads, contractile fibers along the spine stitched the suit shut. She worked her head up into the blade-shaped helmet.

"Now what...how do I control this thing--?"

...kee'too controlled by sound...make sound like this...(shkreeah)...clickclickclickclick...krrrrr...this activates kee'too....

Yang listened carefully. "Kloosee, you've got to be kidding...oh, well, here goes—" She tried making some of the same sounds Kloosee had given her. At first, there was nothing. Then her legs involuntarily straightened out and the attached flukes started oscillating, dolphin-kick style, as if she were swimming.

"...don't think I want that..." she grunted.

Kloosee did something...she heard it over the echopod...wait, there was no echopod. He'd left it outside. But Kloosee's voice came through some kind of headset inside the helmet. Kloosee managed to stop the dolphin-kick and the suit was quiet.

"Thanks...I don't think I could have taken much more of that—"

She looked out through the slit-eyes of the blade-helmet and saw faces, odd fish faces peering at her from the other side of the translucent fingers. They gave her a shiver.

"I can breathe okay...don't ask me how. But I can't control anything...it's like the thing has a mind of its own."

For the next hour, Kloosee and Pakma worked with Yang to explain how the kee'too worked.

The lifesuit was controlled with sounds and scents. Yang eventually found a small control panel inside the helmet, just below her chin. More controls were on the armfins. She learned that the echopod translated Kloosee's description of the legs as mobilitors...multi-purpose propulsors, suitable both for water and Notwater...that is, land. With some experimenting and practice, she found she could waddle around inside the pod like a drunken penguin. Kloosee assured her the mobilitors would work equally well in water.

Then Kloosee told her to put the body of Evelyn M'Bela in the other suit.

"You've got to be kidding," she said. "There's no way—"

But with instructions, a lot of grunting and heaving and bending M'Bela in ways that shouldn't be done, she somehow managed to remove Queenie from the burial shroud and shove, tug and pull the other suit over her lifeless body. Kloosee guided her with final instructions.

"Ke'too will keep you as we enter Pillars," he said. "And mate. We go to mekli, the place of healing."

"How far away is it? How much longer?"

There was a string of clicks and squeals, then "Shkreeah...half mah...maybe more."

Alicia had no idea what that meant and gave up the questions for the time being.

The water around the Notwater pod was growing murkier and siltier every moment. One by one, the crowd that had gathered to stare at the Umans began to drift away

Kloosee told Yang to button up their lifesuits....you have Notwater inside...do not worry...be of litor'ke...calm and serene...we open pod...Pakma and I will guide you...

"Wait...what? Hold up, will you---? But Yang could only stare in disbelief as water began rushing in through the gaps in the pod fingers, quickly filling their small pocket of air, roaring, foaming and hissing until she and M'Bela floated with it right up to the top, where the fingertips began parting....

"Kloosee...wait...Pakma...I can't—" Yang panicked but moments later, her voice was drowned out.

Incredibly, the lifesuits seemed to know what to do. Even as the water thundered into the pod and enveloped them, the suits sealed themselves shut. Yang found she could breathe the burned air just fine...take a small breath, then another, there, see? You've got air.

"Okay, girl... just breathe normally—" She didn't even know if anyone could hear her. But a quick look through the narrow slit in her helmet showed she was fine, her eyes wide and her arms thrashing about, but otherwise fine. Finally, she got herself under control and let the suit take her where it wanted.

She found herself propelled forward, with gentle undulations of her flukes and some judicious waterjet props providing the kick. Encased in a similar enclosure, M'Bela's suit was doing the same.

Two figures swam into view. It was Kloosee and Pakma. Kloosee made gestures and Yang understood she was to use her chin controls. In time, she found the echopod switch.

...we go to Shooki...the place of healing...I will guide...

Kloosee reached for something on Yang's right arm and depressed switches she hadn't even seen. A staccato series of clicks and screeches sounded inside the helmet. Then her tail flukes started up again, dolphin-kicking like she'd never been able to do in swim meets. The two of them moved off together, Angie and Pakma alongside, out of the pod, whose fingers had now peeled back like flower petals, and off into the murky waters. It was eerie, even a little creepy, watching M'Bela's suit undulate and kick as if she were still alive. Maybe--

Yang couldn't see much through the helmet eye slits but she heard a steady pinging, along with a symphony of clicks, squeaks, grunts and chirps. Fully sound-controlled, she realized. Cool. And something liked sonar. The lifesuit was like a little ship, like a midget submarine. With legs.

Though she couldn't see much, she felt the presence of life all around her. Cubes and spheres, pods and strange glowing filaments flashed by.

"This is so cool...look at this place. They're all around us...look at those light filaments...what are they?" The ke'too continued surging forward. M'Bela's kept up right alongside. It seemed that the landing pad the kip'ts had descended on were surrounded by a small city.

The lifeless body of M'Bela was in the other lifesuit, jetting along just behind her. "Wow...Queenie, this is like a submarine...it does what it wants. I can see some things. Look at all the fish—"

Indeed they were enveloped in vast throngs of residents, roaming in knots and groups across the mesa that served as the center of the city, a flat tableland between towering seamounts, dense with canopied pavilions, strange coral shapes, lighted tubes and a dizzying variety of platforms, spheres, globes, pyramids, every kind of shape imaginable, some secured by lines to the seabed, some attached to the sides of a nearby seamount, so many that the mountains seemed to heave and throb with life, as if they were alive themselves.

Ahead of them, other creatures swam, including Kloosee and Pakma. Yang had trouble distinguishing one from another. And even as they headed for the Pillars of Shooki, Yang had seen how other swimmers joined their little group for a few moments, then peeled off to disappear, only to be replaced by still more swimmers.

A gregarious place, she decided. Everybody's out for a stroll, just like Nomad Township and Loch Lithgow back home on K-World.

The trip north across the Pomt'or Current and into the freezing polar waters where the Pillars of Shooki lay would take three days.

Chapter 2: "The Pillars of Shooki"

"We are tied to the ocean. When we go back to the sea, we are going back whence we came."

John F. Kennedy

Storm

The Pillars of Shooki

The Northern Ponk'el Sea

Time Stream T-001 (2814 CE)

T-date: 001-18-22

Halfway to the Pillars, the little expedition was set upon by a scout force from the local tribe, known as kel Ponk'et. The attack came on the fourth day, well within the holy waters of the Pillars of Shooki, and it came without warning, from a convoluted series of hills and ravines known as the T'kel Ridge that fronted the great shrine along the northern Ponk'el Sea.

Such violence inside the holy waters in the very shadow of the Pillars was considered the worst apostasy that could be imagined.

The Pillars of Shooki lay at the very top of the world. Surrounded by vast sheets of floating ice, far to the north of the Ponk'el Sea, the shrine sat at the edge of the polar ice cap itself. A swift but narrow current, the Pomt'or, rushed by some two hundred beats to the south, curving across the bleak Northern Hemisphere until it split apart near Kinlok Island.

The Pomt'or was the northern arm of the Pom'tel, and it was the only current that directly approached the Pillars. To get there meant a long tedious trip through the eastern Orkn'tel. The waters there were dense and sluggish, stagnant at the equator, and brimming with foul-tasting and dangerous mah'jeet fields, so thick in patches that no kip't could get through without clogging its jets. But there was no quicker way to the holy waters.

The scout force consisted of twenty Ponkti prodsmen, in formation. They quickly surrounded the small expedition and closed in.

Kloosee turned his body nose on to the closest prodsmen. He accelerated and tried to ram his way through. But the prodsmen were quick and skirted the speeding bodies. Several prodsmen slashed at Kloosee as he went by and an electric charge from their prods shot through his body. In an instant, Kloosee was stunned into a stupor. A prod brushed Alicia Yang too. Pakma, only slightly injured, managed to shove them out of the way and brought them to a halt just before smashing into the side of a cliff.

In moments, others who had been escorting the expedition—Yang would later learn they were kelmates of Kloosee and Pakma, called Omtorish, had emerged from the murk and engaged the Ponkti force. Yang shook off the worst effects of the shock.

"Don't you have weapons?" she yelled into her echopod.

Kloosee produced a ceremonial scimitar from the back of their sled. Another kip't, this one piloted by someone named Lohket had an older prod, one unused for several mah, barely full of charge. He appeared out of the murk, brandishing the thing as if were a seamother's beak.

"We have these!" Kloosee yelled back.

That's when Yang figured they were in trouble. She pulled the ke'too suit containing Evelyn M'Bela closer. "We've got to protect her."

But Kloosee was already lunging forward. Pakma edged closer to Yang and M'Bela, fearing for their lives. Kloosee motioned for Lohket and the others to charge at the Ponkti, swinging what they had, in an attempt to give the eekoti Yang and Pakma a chance.

They closed the distance in seconds and the melee erupted in a shower of prod zaps and thrashing tails and swinging armfins. The water boiled with fury and combat, made worse by a steady rain of ice shards and chips drifting down from bergs and ice floes at the surface.

Kloosee found himself on the other side of a large stalactite of ice projecting down from above. An idea suddenly came to him: the ice itself. It was hard. It was sharp. If he could just break off a few pieces...they'd make great weapons themselves.

He tugged and pulled on the shards, until at last one broke off, jagged and cocked. Just in time, he swung around, backpedaling to avoid the Ponkti prod which flashed out and nearly swiped against him.

Can't let that touch me.

He lunged and managed to spear the side of the Ponkti attacker, drawing a stream of blood. The Ponkti withdrew, recoiled and came at him again.

They struggled for leverage. The Ponkti was bigger, quicker, more efficient at moving. But Kloosee was determined and for each slash of the prod, he managed to make a lunge and strike the larger attacker. Soon, the water was stained with blood and Kloosee was beginning to find more and more openings.

Then there came a deafening explosion. The shock wave rolled through like a slap in the head and punch to the gut. Kloosee reeled, stunned, and found himself momentarily drifting, his head spinning, his ears throbbing. He caught a glimpse of his Ponkti adversary and saw a huge gray mass, barely moving, equally dazed.

Moments later, both combatants had recovered enough to regain the fight. The Ponkti swiped and thrashed with the prod and once managed to brush Kloosee's scaly skin. The shock jolted him but somehow, he managed to recover. Just as he was about to lunge again, another explosion thundered in the water, slapping them both with fists of shock waves. Kloosee and his assailant both went reeling.

That's when Kloosee saw what he was sure was a dream...materializing out of the ice-choked debris. An apparition floated before them, tiny and serene, almost petite. Pure white skin and delicate fins that seemed more like tissue. Her beak was knobbed at the point and Kloosee sensed tingling again—like the k'orpuh, like the Ponkti prod, clearly she carried voltage.

In her tiny hands, she held a small fist-shaped object, oval, with projections at each end. The apparition shook the object and another deafening explosion came, a boil of bubbles and froth and heaving shock waves that flattened Kloosee and drove him deeper. The Ponkti prodsman was nowhere in sight.

Kloosee's voice came stuttering over his echopod.

"Eekoti Kang—" for that was how her name came through the echopod "...back away quickly! It's one of the priestesses. One of the mekli—move away--"

The Ponkti had already done likewise, warily drifting at the outer edge of visibility. Yang was dimly aware that the entire fight had stopped and all the fighters were coiled and poised, but no one made any movement.

Her echopod chirped. "This is one of mekli priestesses. We're inside the holy waters...the Pillars of Shooki. The mekli won't let the fight continue...we've done a terrible thing."

Yang was still recovering her senses, clinging desperately to the feet of M'Bela's suit. Her ears rang like a bell. "Didn't they start it?"

"It doesn't matter. Now the mekli have put a stop to the fight. We'll have to accompany her...make recompense to Shooki. Look...they're all around us."

And Yang saw that Kloosee was right. Dozens of the whitish figures hovered above, below, all around them, each bearing the strange oval suppressors.

"They can detonate the water," Pakma explained. "It's a chemical reaction...closely guarded by the mekli. They enforce the shoo'kel here. The mekli will let nothing disturb these waters. Only the most serene are permitted."

"But why—" Yang had about a million questions. "The other guys attacked us—"

But the circle of mekli was already closing in on them, herding both Ponkti, Omtorish and Yang and M'Bela's suit into a tighter group. Kloosee didn't object. The Ponkti seemed resigned. They decided it was expedient to go along.

"Where are they taking us?" she asked Kloosee.

Kloosee seemed a bit nervous. Something came through her echopod that didn't translate. Then: "Inside the Pillars, I think."

"What's going to happen to us?"

"I don't know."

And with that, the circle of mekli priestesses, with their grenades and a line of fearsome-looking spearfish behind them, nudged their captives into motion. Above them, the ice floes groaned and screeched as the bergs bumped against each other.

Yang found the pace easy enough to keep up with, despite her scaly, itchy suit and webbed feet. The ice pack played strange tricks with the light. It coalesced in patches, forming apparitions that frightened and confused them at the same time. Schools of scapet and tooket swirled in the twilight. Thick clouds of sediment rolled along the bottom, obscuring everything.

And the huge floes rained chunks of ice down on them from above.

The captives bore on for what seemed like hours. The sameness was monotony, agony, even misery. They seemed stuck on the same course, wedded by sheer exhausted numbness to a heading that never changed. Beat after beat of frozen tubegrass and ice mounds. Unending hail from above. Nothing living, save for themselves. Only ice and ice and more ice: ice kels, ice kip'ts, ice tillet, ice ompods. The image of it burned in their minds, searing their vision into a gray-white void. For a brief instant, Yang felt herself falling, as if a whirlpool had reached out and grabbed her. Maybe this wasn't such a great idea. Maybe we should have let Queenie go. But she welcomed the giddiness gladly—it was something she could still feel. It washed over her like the great currents themselves, strong, overwhelming, a wonderfully delicious feeling of helplessness.

And then, there it was.

The berg was so large that it blocked a clear view of anything beyond, refracting most of what little light there was off its chalky white slopes. But even with that, the presence of a vast structure, dense and hard, could be felt.

They slowed their approach and came into the holy waters of the Voice with hushed awe. Yang watched the reactions of both the Ponkti and Pakma and Kloosee and the rest of the Omtorish. Guess I'd better act the same way. The Pillars rose up out of the silted bottomland like legs of rock. Cruising near the seafloor, the captives and their guards circled the Pillars completely, gulping in the scented waters voraciously. There seemed to be no way in. After several circuits, they halted and settled in a clump of tubegrass half a beat away.

The mekli seemed to be waiting for something, perhaps a signal.

Then it came. High on the side of the nearest Pillar, a ring of bubbles swirled around the edge. The stream was emanating from a narrow elliptical crevice. One of the mekli separated herself from their guard detail and poked her beak into the crevice.

In that moment, powered by some device Yang couldn't see, the entire side of the Pillar grated and groaned and started moving to one side. The mekli entered. The captives were herded inside after her.

Kloosee pulsed gently. He had never been here before. Inside, steep ramparts scattered echoes in all directions. Yang hung close by, watching her friend's amazed reaction. Behind her, Pakma nudged the lifeless cocoon that contained M'Bela along. A complex network of chapels, crypts, cells, catacombs and other chambers would be dimly sensed. Above the ramparts, heavy bedrock foundations loomed like a crest, tapering out of sight as they extended upward into the Pillars. It was a tight and uncomfortable wriggle to get inside. Yang hesitated, then squeezed through.

They were in a tiny cave, sectioned by a post in the middle that seemed to have buckled. It was dark—the only light came from glowfish trained to float through the corridors in set patterns, casting their spectral copper light in diffuse ovals in the bare stone walls. They went half a beat or so, then came to an intersection. More corridors merged in the crossing, leading out in every direction, above, below, and beside them.

"Where are they taking us?" Yang whispered into her echopod.

Kloosee's voice came back hushed, strained. "The Judging Chambers, I suppose. Be quiet."

They could have taken any of the corridors, but the mekli leading the convoy chose one passageway that angled off on the other side of the post. It was soon apparent that the corridor wasn't really a corridor at all, rather more like a tunnel, low and cramped. Yang could barely kick her legs. It was quite uncomfortable—she could hear someone behind, maybe one of the Ponkti, grumbling at the effort, hard even to get a full breath in such close confines, but the discomfort was alleviated somewhat by a savory blend of scents that filtered through the waters, an amalgam of smells that would have really been delightful if she had been able to breathe more deeply.

Yang tried creating a pulse from inside her suit—it sounded more like a bad cough, earning a glare from several of the mekli—and found that the tunnel widened a few beats ahead. There was more light too—glowfish she was sure, since the mekli seemed to abhor anything artificial inside the Pillars. But it was pitch black in the tunnel. Almost like a burrow, hollowed out down through uncounted spans of time, the tunnel sides had been worn completely smooth, for which they were all thankful. Otherwise, they would have skinned themselves badly.

Chase heard Pakma's voice on his echopod. "The water is so still," she said. "And the ke'too so stiff," she added. Yang went back to help her with M'Bela.

Kloosee agreed. "It must be the shape of the chamber...pulse how it damps out any currents." He thrashed an armfin to disturb the water. Sure enough, the waves died out in seconds. The chamber crossing was designed to maintain an imperturbable tranquility.

Indeed, the Pillars pulsed much like a womb. Pakma was the first to notice that and say it. All her life, Pakma had heard stories from pilgrims about the serenity of the place, the warmth, the concord, the strong bond of Ke'shoo that it made with all comers. Nothing was unaffected. That explained the constricted spaces and the pleasant scents: the mekli had re-created the ancient womb of the cave cities here. Like Old Kengtoo, they had preserved in sharp redolence the scents of the first days, down to the most ethereal details. The Pillars mirrored and embodied the timeless aspirations of all Seomish: Ke'shoo and Ke'lee and Shoo'kel, the inward eye blind to anything beyond the immediate concerns of family and kel.

Their mekli guard detail herded them on, through one maze after another, indifferent to the discomforts of the trek. The lead priestess could be heard swooshing well ahead of them, leading them deeper and deeper into the Pillars, into the Quarter of Melodies, where the shape of the caves altered the quality of their sound. There seemed to Yang to be no meter to it, only the vaguest sort of melancholy, yet the water whispered with definite musical tones. The tunnels had now widened the deeper they went into the Pillars, making it easier for her to keep up with everybody else.

They traveled an endless and confusing course through the tunnels; all the time, it seemed to Yang, they were ascending. On occasion, the faintest, fleeting tinkle of notes rippled by them, like delicate chimes being gently tapped. There would be voices too, or what seemed like voices, whispers just beyond hearing, though Yang sometimes thought it was no more than the ever-present swish of the water. They were herded through fairly large caverns as they ascended, caverns dimly lit with glowfish and among the shadows, Yang could make out faces: forlorn, sepulchral, and weary.

"Pilgrims, resting after their journey here," Kloosee told her.

Through narrow tunnels and rock-hewn chambers, the guards and the convoy followed the mekli. Kloosee knew well that the Pillars of Shooki did not stop at the surface; they extended well beyond, far into the Notwater. They were still ascending, traveling the convoluted labyrinth of corridors, occasionally coming upon larger caves and crypts, and he wondered. How far would they go?

Tradition had always said the Judging Chambers were near the pinnacle of the Pillars.

The mekli brought them to the edge of a cliff, at the end of one of the tunnels. Even as they approached, they could pulse through the opening that the cavern beyond was deep and wide, and filled with fast-rising columns of water. It was at the core of one of the Pillars, hollow from its bedrock foundations to its majestic pinnacle high above the surface.

The mekli priestess then lunged from the cliff and caught one of the streams. It whisked her away from the opening and carried her upward. She soon vanished beyond an overhanging ledge.

Prodded by the guards, one by one, the Ponkti and the Omtorish and Uman captives launched themselves into the midst of the currents.

The water was both brisk and exhilarating. It carried them rapidly along, past other landings and portals, sweeping them toward the summit of the Pillar. Kloosee and Pakma both tried pulsing in the direction they were heading—seven full beats later, the first echoes returned. A tiny ring of white light capped the heights.

The mekli was somewhere above them, no more than a blip in the pulse. Her tail was dimly silhouetted against the brighter background. Below them, the trunk of the cavern spread out into the vast hills from which the Pillars had been formed. The walls beneath the bottommost shelf of landings widened to an immense grotto, the floor of which was covered in exquisitely sculpted stalagmites.

But as they rose further, the radiance from the top washed out all other detail.

A blinding white blaze enveloped them. The light of Notwater, Kloosee realized. Painful, penetrating, it cascaded down and streaked the water with shafts of luminous blue-green. Kloosee clutched at his eyes; Yang did likewise. They throbbed from the exposure and she found they were useless. Opening them, she saw only a shimmering glow.

She pulsed and found the top of the tower near, a beat or so away. Even as she tried to sort out the confusing echoes in her helmet—she was still getting used to this pulsing business-- the lifting current slacked off and they drifted aimlessly for a minute, barely touched by the fringe of the current. Other currents dispersed here too; it was a gathering point for entry to the Echopods.

Another tunnel, this one smooth like a pipe, bent around in a wide sweeping curve. They were wriggling straight up and the waters murmured to them with a mischievous stealth. Voices, hushed and furtive, sprinkled the pauses in their own swishing. The tunnel straightened, leveled out and the mekli slowed down, whispering for silence from the captives and guards. Now the voices were clearer, sharper. The Echopods. Distinct accents. Inflections. Someone trilling, arguing. A bass reply, deep and ponderous. An aria. A flurry of oratory, crisp and pointed.

The passageway widened abruptly and suddenly, the voices were everywhere, swelling in unison, falling away, crackling and whistling, a chorus softly floating. In the next moment, the chorus faded and the voices rose again in argument, thousands of them, strident yet gentle, firmly commanding, clashing, conflicting, filling the Chamber with incessant chatter. Kloosee felt Yang and Pakma bump him behind. He opened his eyes.

The glow was dazzling, resplendent in shades of amber, gray and white. It is Notwater, Kloosee breathed. The light streamed into the Chamber from all sides, as if the water itself were ablaze. Despite the intensity, Kloosee held his eyes open to see and wonder.

The Chamber itself was oblong. Panels of some transparent substance wrapped the walls. The floor was arrayed with rows of cells, each of which contained one echopod. More cells lined the walls between the panels. Open holdpods swayed from the ceiling, their bowls carrying scentbulbs. Om'pshoo was the scent predominating, aromatic and sweet. That brought a smile to Pakma. She had worked with this scent before. The waters were litor'kel and shoo'kel, and the Voice of the Echopods steadfast. Shooki's Voice.

But it was what he saw through the transparent walls that made Kloosee tremble.

My God, Yang breathed. We're at the surface, above the ocean surface.

They were now above the surface, in this Chamber of Echopods, thrust like a sharp blade right into the very heart of the Notwater. Though the glow of the day was fierce, Kloosee blinked in amazement at the view. Even Yang seemed speechless at the sight before them. Beside them, Pakma and other Omtorish and Ponkti stared in mute fascination. Kloosee had seen Notwater before, the first time was the Circling, when as a midling he had made the great voyage of passage and snuck up to the surface for a peek. He thought himself accustomed to its mutable and marvelous scenery. But this—the Pillars of Shooki revealed aspects of that dry and harsh world he could never have imagined.

All about the Pillars, the bleak and desolate white of the polar icecap stretched to infinity. A solid flat plate, littered with mounds and hillocks and wind-shaped edges, frozen and silent. Above, a hoary sheet of gray clouds scudded by. Kloosee gasped at the sight while Pakma gouged at her eyes. Something moved. The hillocks had legs—a head—a spiked tail—

"Puk'lek," Pakma whispered.

It was true. The entire convoy stared in wonder as hundreds of seamothers, half-buried in snow, reared themselves and shook the powder off their backs. As one, they marched past the Pillars, honking, bellowing loudly, heading for a fissure in the ice on the other side of the Pillars. It was half-hidden by the snow-dusted bulk of the towers, but even so, the beasts could be seen waddling into the frigid blue waters, wallowing for a few minutes, then submerging in a spray of foam.

Alicia Yang had never seen anything like them.

There were now several mekli in the Chamber, along with the guards. The mekli were attending the Echopods, listening, arguing their interpretations of the Voice. All the pods seemed active together and the sayings, parables and utterances of pak'to Shooki were at once both confusing and reassuring. Their own mekli beckoned them deeper into the Chamber and slowly, prodded by the guards, they complied.

"This is the Judging Chamber," she told them. "Listen to the Voice. The Voice will soothe you. Let it enter you and fill you with the right shoo'kel. The waters of this Chamber are the standard. Shoo'kel here is correct for all kelke, everywhere in the world. Now, speak the truth to me...why have you come to the Pillars and disturbed these waters with violence in your hearts?"

The Ponkti spokesman was called Poklu lin, a muscular fellow, with scars along his face and beak. "Ke'mekli, I am free-bound to Loptoheen tu, tukmaster and tekmetah to Lektereenah, Metah of Ponk'et. We have a simple mission: we were commanded to intercept any attempt by Omtorish kelke to negotiate and work with the Tailless. We heard this group coming—" he indicated Kloosee and the rest of the Omtorish, Yang and M'Bela's cocoon "—so we engaged them."

Kloosee spoke up, without permission. "We have a right to talk with who we want...the Tailless, the eekoti—" he looked back, indicating Yang and M'Bela--"have come for a healing. One of the eekoti is still, yet we pulse the currents of Shooki insider her. We request the puk'lek kek'ot."

Poklu was ready to respond, but the mekli held up her hands. "Talk no more. Listen to the Voice, instead."

Poklu held his tongue. "Ke'mekli, what does the Voice say? We can't hear it here." He glared at Kloosee with scarcely disguised contempt. "There's too much noise."

"O' my loo'sheen, the most wondrous things." The mekli pulsed with radiance. "It speaks of love and shoo'kel, the balance of all seas. Of Ke'shoo and Ke'lee and every virtue. The Vish currents and destiny. The Dialogues. The reciting of charms and beatitudes. The Be'shoo'keen of principal ecstasies. The Voice is profound and fluent, for truth is like Seome itself, inexhaustible and imperishable."

Kloosee wanted to press home his point. "Seome is in danger, ke'mekli. Even Poklu can't deny that. The Ponkti even have a word for it: akloosh. That's what we face from the Tailless, the aliens, if we can't convince them...and help them move their machine. They come requesting puk'lek kek'ot for the fallen one, and in return offer to move the wavemaker."

Yang looked puzzled. That wasn't quite right. They hadn't agreed to any such thing.

Poklu exploded in fury. "Who says the Omtorish are the only ones who can help—"

The Ponkti made to lunge at Kloosee but stopped when he saw the mekli produce a sound grenade in her hands. "Omt'or can't monopolize the Farpool, ke'mekli. The Tailless know things. The Omtorish want to keep that knowledge to themselves...it's always been like this. Keep the Ponkti in their caves...keep them ignorant. Now, the other kels have a chance...it's not just Ponk'et. The Sk'ork, the Eep'kostic...they think as we do. Let—"

But the mekli would listen to no more argument. "You've both infected the sacred waters. The Voice speaks, even now. Judgment is made...there is no alternative, no middle ground here. Both sides must be consumed..."

Before Kloosee could answer, another mekli intervened, a younger one. She darted forward into the center of the gathering and waved her armfins abruptly, scattering those nearest to her. A few scowled indignantly and sulked at the interruption, but this mekli had prevailed, had heard the Voice more clearly, and assumed the right to address them. She extended herself to full length—she was graced with the most supple of skins, a polished veneer of milky gray that shone like porcelain in the brilliance of the Notwater light. Kloosee pulsed her and envied her self-control.

"This argument is both curious and troubling," she began, twitching at Poklu. "We find no solution in the pods that can be deciphered. That doesn't mean Shooki has no answer—only that he conceals it from us now. That is Vish. But Puk'lek is a different matter. Here, the Voice is ambiguous, telling us in one instance that she is to be feared and respected, a shield against the intrusions of the aliens, and in the other instance, that she may serve us in ways both great and small. There is room for either interpretation. It's clear, though, that what you desire, Kloosee ank, does exist. The Voice speaks quietly and eloquently of the value of maintaining shoo'kel. Your method, a way of talking and persuading and convincing and even debating, the Voice is convinced that this is the way. Understand me: the Voice is firm in saying that no kel, nor single kelke, may possess what the Tailless have. That is Vik't. But to engage the aliens, to talk with them, offer help to them...this the Voice finds appropriate." This young mekli now darkened when she addressed Poklu and the Ponkti contingent. "On the other hand, the Voice cannot allow the waters to be disturbed. Poklu lin, what you do, though done through bonding with your superiors, cannot continue. The Pillars are for thought, reflection, tranquility. The Voice cannot be misinterpreted on this: disturbances must be smoothed out, they must be dampened out quickly...or no one will hear anything. Puk'lek will have these kelke now—"she swept her armfins in an arc, indicating all of the Ponkti captives.

Even before Poklu could respond, the guards had moved in and thrown a large mesh netting over the group. Someone shoved Yang out of the way...it was Kloosee, backing away from the circle of mekli which now closed on the doomed Ponkti. There was a swirl of thrashing and struggle but it was useless. Poklu fought briefly but was stung into silence by a mekli who administered a sting from a small creature she kept in her hands. The rest of the Ponkti glared out from behind the mesh, sullen and grim. Guards secured the net and began hauling it toward one of the translucent walls. Beyond and below them, at the foot of the Pillar, seamothers trundled back and forth across the icescape, butting heads, bellowing and honking, feeding, sensing a meal. A light snow began to fall, softening the scene.

Yang hadn't seen it before, but the wall had a small hatch embedded in it. The guards positioned the netting with all the Ponkti inside in front of the hatch. One of the mekli came up and spoke to the captives.

"Kesh, ke t'shoo'lee opmah...Tekmah puk'lek vish tchuk'te."

Yang's echopod tried to translate. "Shhkkrreah...judgment is final...the seamother keeps our waters undisturbed."

With that, the seams of the hatch split apart and the hatch opened. Water flowed briskly into a small outchamber beyond the wall, almost like a pouch made of rock. The guards shoved the netting with the Ponkti inside through the hatch and into the outchamber. Then the hatch was closed.

"What's happening?" Yang whispered to Kloosee, who waved her silent. Still mystified, she watched as the mekli stuck her beak into a round horn-like opening beside the hatch, whistling and clicking, issuing some kind of strange commands.

At that moment, the outchamber opened to the Notwater. The netting plummeted from view and slid down the outside of the Pillar, rolling and tumbling and bouncing all the way down to the ice below, directly into the gaping mouths and salivating jaws of the seamothers gathered there.

The seamothers flailed and thrashed and bellowed and churned almost as one in their efforts to consume this unexpected dinner. Chase shuddered at the sounds issuing up from the icecap...teeth clicking, claws slashing, cries and screams and then...silence. Only the sounds of ravenous eating.

The seamothers had begun to consume the doomed Ponkti.

The mekli turned back from the hatch. Her face was sad, but set with a hard edge of determination. "So it is that disturbing leads to disturbing. Pak'to Shooki is now satisfied."

"Jeez, she killed them, dumped them right into the seamothers' mouths—" Yang could hardly believe her eyes. "Why did—"

Kloosee murmured to Yang quietly, making sure to show only a pleasant demeanor to the mekli, "They violated the holy waters by attacking us. They disturbed shoo'kel. Keep quiet, eekoti Kang—"

The mekli now took an interest in this unusual creature of the Omtorish. She whipped her tail and came to float directly in front of Alicia, then reached out her arms and hands and felt her face. "You are not Omtorish...tell me, talkative one, from what kel do you come?"

Yang looked helplessly at Kloosee and Pakma. She didn't know what to say. Kloosee tried to intervene.

"She is eekoti, ke mekli. Not of these waters. She and her kind have come from distant waters. In fact, we were on our way to talk with the Tailless People...their machine will destroy everything...even here, I see the effects. We want to make an offer to the Tailless...help them dismantle and relocate their machine."

This made the mekli sad. "This is true. Shooki tells us that ak'loosh is coming. A great wave will circle the world, and all will be destroyed. Perhaps the Tailless are his instruments."

Kloosee went on. "Ke mekli, we petition pakto Shooki for the puk'lek kek'ot, for the healing." He drifted over and dragged M'Bela's cocoon forward. "This eekoti is still, yet we have pulsed the currents of Shooki inside."

The mekli came over and examined the cocoon, momentarily unzipping it from the back. She reached in with an armfin, ran her six fingers along M'Bela's cold spine. Bubbles escaped the mekli's lips and she seemed to frown.

"To petition for puk'lek kekot...this is most serious. Yet I too pulse currents." To the other priestesses nearby, she said, "The Voice must speak on this." With that, all of them left the Judging Chambers, save for two guards armed with prods, and disappeared.

Yang spoke quietly into her echopod. "What's happening, Kloosee?"

Kloosee and Pakma huddled with her around M'Bela's cocoon, which remained open at the back. "The priestesses are consulting with the Voice, with Shooki. I think the puk'lek kek'ot hasn't been permitted in many mah, many generations."

"What exactly is this puk'lek thing?"

Pakma explained. "The kek'ot is like an absorbing. Your eekoti mate is given to puk'lek—" she indicated the bellowing herd of seamothers on the icecap below them. They consume her, absorb her into themselves. She spends some time inside and comes out healed, filled with the Vish currents of the puk'lek...life unto life, ke'shoo and ke'lee from the healing waters. It is an ancient tradition. But it might work with—" she laid an armfin softly on M'Bela's cold, pale face-- "with this one."

Yang thought she had misheard. "You feed her to those...things? They eat her--?"

"It is the way," Pakma agreed.

Yang swallowed hard. She wished she had never convinced the Captain to go along with this scheme. But it was too late now. She looked down on M'Bela. Queenie, forgive me, girl. I didn't mean for it to be this way.

Before the puk'lek kekot could be started, the mekli came back. The Voice of pakto Shooki had spoken.

"The eekoti must be prepared. I have brought the k'orpuh to begin."

Yang's eyes widened at the translucent bag another mekli held up. Inside, a writhing snake coiled and hissed at them. The mekli motioned for the bag to brought over to M'Bela's cocoon.

Yang's eyes grew wide. She started to say something but felt Pakma grasping her arm firmly. Eekoti, stay quiet...be still, her eyes said. Yang swallowed a scream.

The mekli opened the bag and let the k'orpuh snake uncoil and slither its way inside M'Bela's suit. Once inside, another mekli buttoned the suit up. Then the two of them dragged the inert body of her Cygnus crewmate over to the hatch in the wall. Another outchamber hung from the outside, exposed to the icy air, dangling several hundred feet above the still honking and bellowing herd of the seamothers. Yang stifled another scream.

All of her years of service with Time Guard had not prepared Alicia Yang for what came next.

For a few moments nothing changed. Then M'Bela's cocoon shook with the slightest movement. Yang thought she was imagining things.

Pakma whispered in her ear, through the echopod.

"The sting of the k'orpuh prepares the still one. It's a reaction. Your mate still courses with the currents of Shooki...see? The k'orpuh draws this current in, pulls it through. Once the venom is in her blood, she will be ready"

Yang gulped. "Ready for what...dinner time? I'm not sure this is such a—"

But before she could get an answer, the hatch had opened and both mekli pushed the cocoon inside. The hatch shut. And instead of opening on the other side, the outchamber began to descend, like a lift, like a shuttle car on K-World's Skystalk, dropping quickly from view.

Yang moved forward to the translucent wall, ignoring protocol and slight protests from the mekli, both of whom were murmuring soft incantations as the chamber descended.

Yang squinted through the translucent wall and saw the chamber bounce at it touched down on the icecap. A hatch opened. Several seamothers shuffled forward to investigate, sniffing dinner and desert.

The mekli's incantations trilled higher, and soon enveloped the Judging Chambers with a shrieking, ululating lament. Yang shook her head to clear the wailing.

One of the seamothers stuck her nose inside the outchamber, started dragging the cocoon out.

Alicia Yang felt faint and went limp, for how long, she couldn't say. She never saw what happened next and for that, she was eternally grateful.

Evelyn Kokone M'Bela, Search and Surveillance tech aboard jumpship Cygnus, Jumpmaster 1st class in the UA Time Guard, awakened to the heavy rhythmic beat of a heart. With a start, she opened her eyes, not sure where she was. A dull, oppressive heat soaked into her muscles and the water tasted salty. She coughed and gagged for a moment, until she adapted.

She remembered being swarmed by Coethi bots on the Coethi homeworld Horus. She remembered being prepped for an URME insert...she recalled snatches of voices: they're in her head...she's losing synaptic flow...Jeez, look at those things...my effectors aren't working...and then, nothing. Everything else was black, or a gauzy nightmare, like she was the Rain Queen and she had been swallowed by a giraffe, the great Igbo spirit Chukwu. Then nothing, until—

"What the hell is this place?" she muttered. Her head throbbed like someone was hammering her brain from the inside.

She studied her surroundings. Mounds of pinkish pulp throbbed beside her head, beating in rhythm with her own heart. Between the mounds were stretched translucent veils of skin, ribbed with red and blue arteries, billowing back and forth with the same rhythm as the mounds. A heavy arch of cartilage was dimly visible on the other side of the skin.

Evelyn shuddered and moved slightly, feeling her feet slide over wet, stringy cords. She looked down and saw what looked like muscle tissue—it could only be that.

What the\--?

She was somehow inside some animal, trapped in the folds of tissue. Each throb of the chamber only confirmed her suspicions.

How had she gotten here?

She tried to stretch out for some leverage but got nowhere. Instead the chamber started contracting, squeezing her into a painful contortion. M'Bela hit her head on an outcrop of hard muscle, then nearly slipped into the crease between two mounds. The chamber was lurching, bending out of shape. She struck the glistening tissue hard with her arm, inadvertently scraping one of the delicate veils. Instantly, there was a deafening gasp, a whistling, rushing sound. Before she could recover her balance, M'Bela was raked with a fierce blast of air.

In time, she came to realize she was in the belly of some large beast. At least, her head wasn't hurting anymore.

Maybe the Bugs left the premises, she wondered. But she didn't have time to dwell on it.

Somehow, she had been swallowed by some huge creature. Hadn't Alicia talked about such creatures, roaming the seas of Storm? They're like dragons, she had said. But how--? Frantically, M'Bela punched and kicked at everything she could reach, hoping to irritate the beast enough to vomit her up. She didn't relish the idea of being someone's dinner.

Even as she struggled, the walls of tissue tightened around her. Her vision was getting worse but she could feel the chamber closing in, contracting. She felt dizzy and slashed at the muscle and bone, hoping to rupture the vessel so she could scramble out. One of the veils tore loose and wrapped itself around her, crushing the very life out of her, and only after completely exhausting herself, did she weaken its grip and manage to tear the skin away, feeling it shrivel in her hands as she did so. The chamber reacted by constricting even more. Another blast of air seared her face and eyes until they burned. She scanned around frantically for a way out.

An echo reflected back at her. Somewhere back of that shield of tissue. It spanned the mouth of a bony cavity, crinkled like dried hide and was marbled with loops and twirls of fat. It seemed the only way out, the only protection from another blast of that godawful-smelling air. M'Bela lunged for it.

Her headaches had subsided and she struggled forward, sliding over pulpy matter until she could almost press her face against the membrane. She tried and found it tore easily enough. The odor of damp tissue spilled out and M'Bela scrunched up her face and held her breath. She dragged herself on, wincing as her arms scraped a raw edge.

It was a short dark length of bone, not even half a meter long, that flared out in the confines of the animal's belly onto a ledge of muscle.

She floated for a few moments in a daze of fatigue, not caring where she was or where she was going. A disturbance shook the waters around her and she tumbled. She felt a wave carry her along and she twisted in the curl of the wave to find out what had caused it. A huge stone was bearing down on her and she froze for an instant, horrified. She lurched out of its way just in time.

She looked all around. The waters—the fluids-- were full of debris. Scraps of fish, with occasional pieces of things she couldn't identify. There were more fragments of flesh and bone. She saw what looked like a piece of a rudder, perhaps one of the local boats. Shards of some kind of plastic. Roots and branches. And everywhere she looked: stones.

She remembered Alicia Yang telling her, after her trip around Storm before, that in the sheltered mountain valleys underwater, these big creatures were said to strip off slabs of rock and eat them, to help digestion. In one of her stomach clusters, the rock was collected and thrashed to help grind the food into more digestible pieces.

M'Bela saw an oncoming hail of rocks. Thousands of them, some larger than she was, swirled and jostled. Even as she stared in horror, another contraction jolted the chamber and more rocks were pumped in. They spewed into the gizzard from an opening at the far end. And not just rocks. Every kind of hard-edged matter possible. The beast was preparing to feed.

The fluid was turbulent with all the thrashing. M'Bela found herself swept along by tides she couldn't fight. The gizzard was an enormous grinding chamber and the din of rock being pulverized was deafening. She was struck often by sharp fragments and blood began flowing from her arms. She tried to protect herself but it was hopeless. There was too much matter in the chamber. It was only a matter of time before the rocks ground her down, for that seemed the very purpose of this chamber.

She spied a tangle of branches drifting beneath her. They hadn't yet been broken up. M'Bela realized it was her best hope. She paddled hard through thickening mush, nursing a badly lacerated arm and pulled the stems apart. If she could surround herself in time....

One branch broke, then another. A heavy chunk grazed her face. She fought the stiff branches, clearing out a tiny space for herself. There wasn't much time left; breathing was becoming difficult again and she gagged on the smell of the broth. Strong directed currents stirred the sluggish fluid. She was being pulled, sucked to one end of the chamber. The weight of the ground matter shoved her abruptly into the branches. She screamed in pain as her arm was bent back and shuddered with aching throbs. The coarse bark of a branch raked her face but she had no more strength left to do anything but grimace. The spin was tightening and she clung desperately to the branches.

With a powerful rush, tons of water and fluid and debris forced were forced into the lower stomach.

She was battered and buffeted until she lost consciousness for awhile. The sheer mass of the gruel made the air flowing into this tract dense and high pressure, a constant ache and exhausting to breathe. M'Bela came to gasping, on the brink of panic. A cold knot gripped her stomach.

How the hell can I get out of here? Think, girl...think....

It was a different chamber from the first. Maybe there was a way to crawl her way around until she found the beast's esophagus. With any luck, she could scramble out that way, or maybe be vomited up and out.

She realized she was in some kind of second stomach. What the hell kind of anatomy is this? Evelyn M'Bela had been trained in jolt school at Time Guard Academy in search and surveillance techniques, not biology or the anatomy of some gigantic beast. At least, there were no more stones to grind against each other and the silence here was eerie. The pulp began smothering her, languid and warm. It rippled periodically but was otherwise still. Like being buried in mud along Loch Lithgow, on K-World, she thought. A distant crackling sound could be heard and M'Bela found the air acidic. She gulped it down tenderly—there was a definite smell of something acidic. And it was getting worse.

She pulled apart the cage of branches that had sheltered her. The air was stronger and more pungent than ever and a moment of fear touched her. What if she couldn't--? But the fear passed and she began dragging herself through the soft, moist pulp, trying to visualize in her mind where she might be, how things were connected, was there a way out from here?

Yelling and shouting was useless. Likely, nobody was listening. Much as she found it fetid and rank, M'Bela figured it was best to try and follow the trails of scent she was sniffing. Otherwise, she was blind. The trails might lead her to some kind of impression about the chamber, or even better, a way out of this sewer pit.

She picked out the strongest scent and stuck to it. It shifted at times but she had no trouble picking it up again. It was the strongest, vilest odor she had ever encountered.

She tracked for a time, finding it hard work to move through the pulp with any speed. The scent seemed to be growing stronger. Maybe new food was coming in—escape could be in that direction. M'Bela stopped to rub her arms and legs. The air was still acrid and her skin burned. She rubbed it hard and tasted the film that came off...not the best idea she had ever had. Stinging and hot, like a pepper. And it itched like crazy, like the mud fleas of Telitor.

The pulp was becoming more and more abrasive and grating and seemed to be eating at her skin. She brushed something with her arm and jerked it back. It stung badly. Cautiously she probed the object. It gave slightly, then bobbed back, as though it were attached to something larger. She probed further and felt a hard lining, perhaps the wall of the chamber. A row of vesicles clung to a cord of muscle.

The esophagus, maybe?

She was about to turn back into the pulp when the entire chamber heaved about and shuddered. Instantly, the vesicles released their chemicals and M'Bela felt the sting and flinched. It felt like a hundred electric prods discharging at once.

She convulsed and grabbed blindly for the wall. The bath scalded her badly. The vesicles had burst open and sprayed their contents into the second stomach. Digestive acids. Teeth like knives tore at her skin.

Her legs went numb and she clawed at her hands and arms. Needles ripped her and she felt paralysis spreading. She had to find a way to reach the esophagus, before the damned beast digested her completely.

She struggled back to the wall of the chamber and groped for the muscle lining. Acid seared her face but she didn't back off. She was blind and deadened, but she punched her fists into the tissue, tearing it.

The chamber shook violently and M'Bela clung to the muscle fibers. Where there were muscles, there had to be blood vessels, she reasoned. Maybe that could be a way out. And where there were blood vessels, there were likely nerves. She tore at the frayed ends of the lining, hoping to have some effect on the beast.

Again, the chamber trembled. M'Bela felt the muscle fibers flex and the wall swayed obediently but the rip had severed many tendons and the force of the contraction wasn't that strong. She punched again and the reaction yanked her out of the stomach altogether, into the midst of a bundle of contractile tissue. The bands of fiber slid past each other, squeezing the breath out of her, pressing her along.

She was fatigued and near to collapse. In desperation, she reached out blindly and found something hard. The muscle fibers had extruded her into an airy cavern of cartilage, where she tumbled into a spongy bed of tissue and sank. It was fragile and gave way easily. M'Bela let herself slide along until a thick tube struck her in the belly. She wrapped herself around it. It felt like it might be wide enough to be the esophagus. She hoped it was. If she could somehow punch her way into it, the reflex reaction might do the trick.

When she strong enough, and brave enough, to let go, she slipped off the side of the tube and burrowed deeper into the tissue in search of a weaker spot. The tube itself seemed little more than a bulky tail of gelatinous matter, with thick lateral walls, a thin roof and bony floor plates.

Jeez, what kind of creature is this?

A longitudinal groove ran along one side, dividing it in two. M'Bela dropped down from the horn of a rib onto the roof of the tube.

The tube quivered slightly as she settled onto it and that gave her an idea.

Maybe if I could somehow break off part of that bone, I could hack my way in.

Straightaway, she went to pulling, punching and kicking at some nearby cartilage. After a few contractions, she managed to break off a jagged piece the length of her hand.

Yes, she examined her handiwork. That'll do nicely.

Like a frantic woodcarver on Landfall, she set to work, slashing and cutting and jabbing at the thick outer hide of the tube.

Her work triggered several convulsions. M'Bela clung to the tube as wave after convulsive wave passed along the tube, clinging to keep from being thrown off into the bed of spongy tissue below her.

Sorry about this pal, but I'm just passing through and I need to get out.

She hacked and whacked, timing her blows to hit between contractions, and was finally rewarded when a tear appeared in the lining. Exultant, she tore and flailed at the tear, widening it more and more until she had secured an oblong opening just big enough to slip into.

She took a few deep breaths, then held her breath and kicked and grabbed to pull herself into the tube, hoping it was the esophagus.

Pummeling and pounding and snagging at anything she could find, she managed to extrude herself inside.

That's when the big convulsive wave slammed her sideways.

M'Bela tumbled end for end for what seemed like hours, by turns scraping sharp projections along the walls, then roaring along in the middle of a swift foaming river, caught like a particle in a storm.

She banged and tumbled and felt rather than saw that the tube was narrowing up ahead, and the flow was speeding up. There seemed to be some kind of barrier up ahead, jagged, angled, opening and closing, some kind of wall that seemed to be moving.

But she held her breath. There was light! It was brighter ahead. Light and more light!

Evelyn M'Bela caromed from one side of the tube to another, momentarily losing consciousness and then found herself airborne, mid-flight, tossed and heaved into cold, freezing air that penetrated every bone and sinew in her body...tumbling, plunging, lurching until she slammed into something hard that knocked the very breath out of her.

She lay on her back and offered a faint smile when she stared through tissue and mucous-caked eyes at a swirl of gray clouds scudding by and realized she was mercifully, thankfully and wonderfully outside...FINALLY OUTSIDE! And lying on an icy slope while all around her, the shadows of huge shapes moved and jostled and bellowed and honked.

She was lying in the very midst of a herd of seamothers. And one was coming right for her, its gaping mouth wide open, the teeth like swords clenching and opening....

Startled, M'Bela groaned upright and straight away saw she'd better get out of there as fast as she could. She scrambled and stumbled and slipped up to her feet, staggering and wobbling away from the herd and that's when she saw some kind of movement in the sleet ahead. It was a person, a human.

It was Alicia Yang, clad in some kind of armored suit, the mobilitor, she realized, gesturing at her, stumbling herself as she slipped and slid across the ice.

Her voice was faint above the keening wind but some words came through:

"COME ON, MOVE IT...COME ON!"

Barely upright, Evelyn M'Bela stumbled forward blindly, fighting wind gusts and sleet stinging her eyes and tumbled to the ice at the edge of a small oval, open water showing in a pool just beyond her arms.

Alicia Yang dragged her crewmate into the water and into the rear compartment of the kip't floating there. In the front compartment, underwater, M'Bela spied dim shapes and forms moving. There were others there, perhaps Seomish, perhaps humans.

The kip't compartment was sealed and the craft immediately submerged. The whir of its motors was soothing to M'Bela and she lay on her side, her head in Yang's lap and soon passed down a deep black hole of unconsciousness, feeling the comforting stroke of Yang's fingers on her face and her braided hair.

The noise was deafening and physical, like hammers smashing into the side of her skull. With a violent start, Evelyn M'Bela awoke and sat up, banging her head into the canopy of the kip't. Alicia Yang was there too, but peering out a porthole, trying to see something, anything outside.

They were still in motion. She could tell that from the swish of the water against the hull and the drone of the kip't's jets. She rubbed a painful knot on her forehead and groaned back down, closing her eyes.

Perhaps it had all been a bad dream. Something she had eaten last night...except she couldn't remember last night.

"Leesh, what the hell is that noise?"

Yang turned around, lay back down and placed a soothing hand on M'Bela's face. "It has to be the Time Twister, Queenie. They must have started it up. God knows where the Bugs are...probably right on top of us."

They were stashed in the Notwater pod like canned fish, being towed by a kip't, itself piloted by Kloosee and Pakma. Their destination was Kinlok Island.

M'Bela groaned and closed her eyes. "My head feels like it's in a vise. What happened...all I remember was being swarmed on Horus...the Bugs were all over me."

Yang squirmed to get as comfortable as possible. It was a long way to Kinlok and there wasn't much to see outside, just gray-green murk, the occasional gaping mouth and chunks of ice drifting down like slow-motion rain.

She explained what had happened. "The insert failed, Queenie. URME couldn't fight the Bugs inside you. You died. At least, we thought you died. Then the Seomish came up on the beach and said there was a chance you could be brought back. Captain was already to finish the memorial service, but we convinced him to let the Seomish try. That's when we went up to those Pillars and you were swallowed, by a dragon beast of some kind."

M'Bela said, "I thought that was a nightmare. I don't know what happened when I came to, but I eventually realized I was inside some kind of animal. It was hell, I can tell you. I'm still not sure how I got out."

Yang thought for a moment. "What I don't understand is how you could seem dead to every instrument we have, yet still be brought back by the Seomish, by those animals. Kloosee tried to describe the healing powers these beasts are supposed to have, but you know, that translator thing—"

They said nothing for awhile. M'Bela dozed in and out of a light sleep. Yang tried to catch glimpses of what was around them. From time to time, she thought she saw other kip'ts accompanying them, as if they were part of a convey. Once, she was sure saw a spiked, crested head, maybe a slash of tail and wondered. Are they bringing dragons along too?

She tried asking Kloosee about this.

The echopod chirped and squeaked. "Shkreeah...kkkzzzzpppqqq...we go island to talk...zzzppp...the Sound hurts us...make wavemaker stop..."

Something in the tone of his voice, maybe just an artifact of the echopod, caught her attention. Was it sadness? Resignation? Some kind of grim determination? It was hard to tell when the language was squeals and clicks and whistles.

How long they traveled, Alicia Yang couldn't say. The Seomish had been thoughtful enough to provide some food...the same pod things that tasted a little like crab. And there was water, also held in flexible pod-like containers. The air breathers hanging on the side of their enclosure continued huffing and puffing, their little cheeks flexing in and out like a row of baby faces. But there was no way to know where they were or how long it would take to get there.

The only constant was the pounding beat of the distant Twister, throwing off vibrations and acoustic waves that traveled for hundreds of kilometers around Storm's world ocean. She knew how much the Seomish hated the machine. On their earlier visit to Storm, she had seen some of the damage the Twister could do to their cities.

But Kloosee provided no further information.

Countless hours later, Yang was drowsy and sluggish when she felt the kip't changing course, angling distinctly upward toward the surface. She popped her eyes open, shook M'Bela awake and plastered her nose to the tiny porthole.

"Water's getting lighter. It's brighter outside. I can see further. And there looks to be big ice floes above us. We must be near."

M'Bela lay quietly, trying to feel the little craft's maneuvering. "We're slowing down too."

"My God," Yang said, "there are dragons all around us. I can see, maybe half a dozen. Why'd they bring those along? They must be able to control them somehow."

A series of bumps and scraps followed as the kip't towing them maneuvered closer to the windswept spit of land that was Kinlok's beach. Finally, the Notwater pod breached the surface and lay wallowing in heavy surf like a beached whale.

Kloosee's guttural voice erupted from the echopod. "QQQzzzllpp...this is island...you leave Notwater pod now—"

Yang tried speaking back to the echopod. "Kloosee, it looks like there are dozens of ships around us...and those seamother animals too. What's going on?"

But Kloosee remained silent.

Hearing nothing, Yang worked to figure out how to unseal the hatch. Finally, she had it and kicked and shoved until the thing sprang open. Her face was met by a blast of icy wind.

Yang staggered and stumbled climbing out, her legs knee-deep in freezing water, knocked nearly over by heavy waves foaming and hissing all around them. The beach was maybe twenty meters off. She reached in and helped M'Bela unsteadily out of the kip't and to her own feet.

The two crewmates leaned on each other as they kicked and sloshed through the waves and up onto the dingy sand of the beach and fell to their knees, grateful to finally be on land.

That's when M'Bela murmured something unintelligible and pointed out to sea. Yang turned around and her heart nearly stopped at the sight.

They had been part of convoy, a large convoy. The sea was now thick with scores of the little kip'ts, their humped-back hulls dull black in the ice-flecked waves, stretching almost to the horizon, floating at the surface like dead fish.

"Look!" cried M'Bela, pointing further down the beach.

A small platoon of Seomish had exited their small ships and were advancing through the waves toward the end of the beach, where the promontory angled down into the sand, forming a sloping headland. Maybe twenty in all, each clad in armored mobilitors, each carrying some kind of device, possible echopods, maybe weapons.

"Those things look like those prods I saw at the Pillars," Yang said. She scrambled to her feet.

That's when the mists that had drifted over this end of the island cleared momentarily in a gust and she could see further out to sea, all the way to the rounded dome and apex of the Twister itself, studded with its chronotron pods that looked like so many blisters.

The dragons Alicia Yang had seen, the seamothers, were already clambering all over the Twister surface, happily honking and bellowing, chewing and tearing at the chronotron pods. Dozens of them climbed out of the water, thrashing and systematically destroying the very weapon that was needed to drive off the Coethi from the Sigma Albeth system.

High on the promontory overhead, the crew of Cygnus had emerged from the control hut. A flash of light swept the beach. Mag fire! More flashes came and a few Seomish were hit, falling heavily into the surf.

Even as Yang and M'Bela looked on helplessly, a full-scale skirmish had erupted across the narrow beach of Kinlok Island.

Chapter 3: "The Continuum"

"He will win who knows when to fight, and when not to fight."

Sun Tzu

Storm

Kinlok Island

Time Stream T-001 (2814 CE)

T-date: 001-01-28

The skirmish between Umans and Seomish lasted only a few minutes. Alicia Yang stood up and shouted at the top of her lungs.

"STOP! STOP! CEASE FIRE! CEASE FIRE!"

She ran sloshing and stumbling out into the waves and tried to position herself between the lead Seomish and the mag fire from the hill. A few beams lanced the air nearby and fell hissing and sizzling into the sea.

She heard Golich's thin voice from the hill. "Yang! Alicia, get away from there! Get out of the way!"

Already, Acth:On'e was clambering and sliding down the steep headland toward the beach, toward the skimmer that had been careened in the shelter of a rock overhang. She knew the Telitorian was trying to get out to the Twister and drive the seamothers off, before the weapon was damaged irreparably.

Yang came to one of the first Seomish and pushed him back. The creature staggered momentarily in its mobilitor but embedded servos kept it upright and it swung around its prod and slashed across Yang's midsection.

The jolt slammed her like a fist to the head and she went down face first in the water. For a few moments, she sucked in a ton of the salty, ice-cold ocean and thrashed and turned herself over to get some air. Slowly, she got to her feet but by then the first squad of Seomish had passed by and were already climbing out of the water. That's when the Seomish team lit off their suppressors.

A strong eye-blinding light went off, followed by a deafening BOOM! It came again, the light and the BOOM! Up on the hill, Dringoth and Golich had both been knocked to their knees by the concussion, but got up. Golich somehow regained his senses and went after the creatures. And now there were at least several dozen...Golich stared dumbfounded as more figures emerged from the waves, at least another dozen, all clad in the same strange gear, armored gator skin was what it looked like.

Dringoth staggered to one knee and ordered more suppressing fire. "Spray the area! Keep them down...we've got to flank this beach and get some crossfire down there!" But only Dringoth and Golich remained on the hill, for Acth:On'e was already pushing the skimmer out to sea.

Down among the advancing Seomish, force leader Pelspo was just dragging himself up out of the water and trying to stabilize himself in his mobilitor. "Kah\--!" he muttered to himself. "It's so hard to move these blasted things." But Kok'tek wanted surveillance, so he got himself upright, then dug the stek'loo out of its egg-shaped pod and flung it into the air.

Her wings snapped out smartly and the dactyl spun up her wings and took off, climbing quickly into the sky, sniffing for the scent trail of the eekoti enemy. To Nathan Golich, still lying on his side, his ears ringing and bleeding, his head pounding from the suppressor burst, the sight of the pterodactyl-like creature swooping and diving and careening overhead made him figure he was dreaming some nightmare horror show of a dream. Presently, as he struggled to stay conscious, he squinted out of one eye and saw the flying beast from a million years B.C. began to circle meaningfully and intently over the roof of the control hut, a few hundred meters up the hill. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the assault team of sea monsters—for that's what they looked like—begin to move out, clambering awkwardly up the sand hill toward their shelters, huts and equipment, the squad arrayed in perfect diamond formation with weapons trained outward at every compass point.

Man, Golich told himself, this is no circus troop. These guys are pros.

When the next suppressor burst came and the sky filled with a deafening white light, everything became a blur and Golich passed out again.

Kok'tek led his assault team steadily toward the building above which the stek'loo circled, having picked up the scent trail of the eekoti Umans. He was mildly surprised at how effective the suppressors had been, having leveled everything around them in a several hundred-meter radius. He knew it was only a matter of time before the Tailless mustered greater forces. They would have to hurry.

For good measure, element leader Kok'tek slogged and sloshed his own way onto the beach and then had Klensbok hang back at the rear-guard position and let loose a full discharge of mah'jeet. Nobody knew if the toxic bloom of tiny creatures would even have any effect on the Tailless but the fog of the discharge would at least make them cautious about approaching any closer.

But it was Evelyn M'Bela who finally managed to enforce a temporary lull, a ceasefire amid all the firing and shouting. It was an old Igbo trick to confuse your enemies.

Drawing on stories her own father had told her many times, stories of their Cameroonian heritage back on old Urth, M'Bela yelled at Yang, who was nearby on her knees, still in the water.

"Do you still have URME with you?"

Alicia nodded in the affirmative, patting a small capsule on her belt.

"Release him now! Launch the master and give me control!"

Unsure of what Queenie had in mind, Yang hesitated but more firing around her made her act fast and she thumbed the control stud on top of the capsule. Instantly, a faint mist began issuing from the capture port, quickly dispersing in the wind gusts.

***URME underway...reporting ready in all respects...what is the nature of the problem, please?***

M'Bela heard the words transmitted by coupler from URME in the back of her head, for all time jumpers were equipped with quantum couplers to command the bot swarms.

She started pecking at the water-logged wristpad on her arm, praying it would still work. From memory, she knew the right configuration commands. She and URME had played this little game many times on long jumps aboard Cygnus, a game she sometimes played in the solitude of her own quarters, just to honor her father and recall and refresh her own Igbo heritage.

Papa would be proud of me, thinking of this in the middle of a firefight. She pecked out the commands quickly, while all around, mag flashes sizzled through the air and suppressor booms deafened the beach. In the back of her mind, she recited the story to herself....

Centuries before, on old Urth, the leadership crisis had been resolved by accession of the first Mujaji, a Rain Queen with both political and ceremonial power. Chiefs presented her with wives. She had no military, but even the Zulu king Shaka paid her tribute because of her rain power. Her successors had less authority, but still presided over womanhood initiations and other important rituals. Mujaji had become the most powerful rainmaker in Southern Africa. Even the mighty Zulus feared and respected her, and gave her the name Mabelemane ("four breasts"). They were certain that the fertility and richness which she brought to the earth would be mirrored in her own body. The necessary rituals were usually performed in October. The rain came at a price. The magical medicine once included the brain of a sacrificed child. Later, a goat was considered sufficient. The skins of dead rain queens and their counsellors were also used. After a corpse was left for a few days, the skin came away easily in skilled hands. A human skull was used in the ritual, as were "gomana" drums, which helped to summon the rain. The medicine was stored in pots called mehago. When the medicine was burned in magical horns, the smoke rose into the sky and seeded rain clouds. While the magical horns were placed on the ground, rain continued to fall. When Mujaji wished the rain to stop, she hung up the horns....

M'Bela finished hacking out the configs and squirted them to URME. Nothing happened for a few minutes, as more fire swept the beach, but after a few moments, subtle forms began to materialize in mid-air, blurred slightly by the wind gusts, but steadily growing, filling in, forms of human skulls, first two hung over the beach, now littered with writhing bodies of Seomish in their armored suits, then four, then eight, then sixteen, an exponential eruption of human 'skulls' appearing as if out of nowhere.

The effect was dramatic. Except for a few sporadic shots, the mag firing died off, as Golich and Dringoth stared in wonder at what M'Bela was doing down on the beach. From the waves, the platoon of Seomish attackers also stopped their suppressor and prod fire. Overhead, the stek'loo circled aimlessly, cawing out for further orders. And the purplish mah'jeet blooms lost cohesion and were quickly dispersed by the wind.

Dringoth called down from the hill.

"Queenie, I don't know what the hell you're trying to do, but good work anyway!" Cautiously, he held up his hands, lowering his mag carbine to the ground, to show the Seomish he was willing to cease firing and to listen. "You and Yang get your asses up here!"

Golich kept his own carbine ready, but lowered.

Yang headed toward the sloping headland, still keeping an eye on the replicating human 'skulls' URME was creating overhead. Soon, the entire sky was filled with the swarms. Cautious, the Seomish slowly retreated back toward the water.

All except one.

Alicia had nearly reached the slope when a single Seomish warrior shuffled out of the water and carefully placed a cylinder on the sand. It was a translator device.

Yang studied the creature. She could never be completely sure but she wondered if it was Kloosee. Carefully, she approached the creature.

Golich saw what was happening. He raised his carbine, prepared to fire.

"Alicia, no! Get back... get away!"

She yelled up. "I think I know this one...don't fire. It's okay...." She stood three meters away and retrieved the device. It was an echopod translator. She thumbed the control stud in the middle of the blinking red lights. A screech erupted from the thing.

"RRqqkkkqq...take...we zzzhhh...we talk...."

The creature wore several obvious weapons but made no move to use them. They stared at each other for several long seconds...a Uman time jumper and a Seomish warrior clad in mobilitor suit.

Now, she was more sure than ever.

"Okay...I'll just take this—" She backed away, echopod in hand, and even as she was climbing up the rocky slope, the creature was backpedaling into the waves. Soon it dove under and was gone. Indeed, most of the Seomish had retreated into deeper water, into their own world.

Yang reached the rest of her crew.

Dringoth saw the device. "Watch out...what the hell is that?"

"Sound grenade," Golich said. "Or something—"

But Yang waved them off. "No, sir...it's one of their translators. He wanted me to take it. I think I know that one. He's one of the pilots, who took me and Queenie into their Pillars shrine. One of the good ones."

Just then, they all saw Acth:On'e returning in the skimmer from the Twister site. Seamothers were still circling the installation, but most had dived off the structure into the water and the upper casing of the weapon was clear, save for the torn chronotron pod mounts. Acth beached the skimmer and climbed up.

"Sir, I ran them off but I don't know how long that will last. There a lot of damage out there."

Dringoth made up his mind. "There seems to be an unofficial truce holding. Back to the control shed."

Inside the hut, creaking and moaning from icy wind gusts, the crew of 1st Time Displacement Battery reviewed their options.

Dringoth was grim. "We've got no Twister at the moment. Those dragons made sure of that. And Coethi must be in this system. That sun up there gets dimmer by the hour."

Acth:On'e had been scanning the skies with instruments after they came back. "Multiple starball hits, Captain. No telling how long Sigma Albeth will last now."

"And limited arms," Golich added. "HERF and mag have a few charges left. We could probably drive off one more full-bore assault, but after that—" He didn't have to finish the thought.

M'Bela noted what they were up against. "Those fish people have sound grenades of some type. And microbots or bugs that swarm from the air."

"And the dinosaurs," Golich pointed out. "Don't forget about them."

Dringoth shook his head. "We need help...bad. I'm composing a message for Time Guard. We need more ships, more help. Some kind of backup and fast. I don't think Sigma Albeth's going to last much longer. Bugs are all around us and we can't do a thing about it, not with the Twister down. If Storm goes, 40 Omicron 2 is next. That means Nanjiang and Gavrilon."

"And that would leave Newton's Jaw wide open," Golich reminded them. "Half the Alliance in one blow."

"And a clear path right into the Heartland, right into the Sol system. Time Guard's got to send more ships."

"Captain," Yang asked, "Maybe we should listen to this translator. There may be a message on it, something we can use."

Dringoth was skeptical. "All I want is for those fish people to leave us alone. Let us do our jobs. Don't they realize the Twister's protecting them as well?"

"No, sir, I don't think they do. When I was with Queenie and traveling around their seas, I could tell what the Twister does to their world. It's destroying their cities. That's why they're here...to stop all the noise and vibration."

"Then we have to make them understand," M'Bela decided. "Either the Twister operates or their sun and their world is gone...it's that simple."

Dringoth indicated the echopod, sitting on a small table. "You know how to work that thing?"

"Yes, sir...I think so." Yang picked it up and fiddled with the buttons. A series of chirps and screeches and whistles erupted and the lights ringing the top flickered, by turns showing red, then orange, then green. Finally, Yang got a scratchy voice out of it.

"Shhkkrreeah...zzzllpp...a stop we fight...qqqllzzhh...we talk...."

They listened to the recorded message several times, both puzzled and intrigued.

Dringoth sniffed. "What do you make of it?"

Yang offered, "I think they want a truce, sir. They want to talk."

Golich said, "What about the part where they mention some kind of shelter...I didn't get that part."

They played the recording one more time. Acth:On'e seemed to understand.

"I think they're saying could we build a shelter near the water, some place they could meet us...they could stay in or around water and we could stay on land...or something like that."

Dringoth made decision. "Check with URME on that. Maybe he can fab something. I've got to get a flash Level 1 message off to Time Guard."

Over the next few hours, Dringoth and Golich composed the Time Guard message. It was marked URGENT FLASH TACTRON CODED, for the Directorate of Temporal Operations. TACTRON Eyes Only.

Golich dictated the contents of Dringoth's message to the quantum coupler message editor. "This will still take a week to get to K-World, sir, maybe more. And if the Bugs are interfering with entanglement signals, who knows if it'll get there at all."

"I'd like to know what happened to that supernova that was supposed to destroy the Coethi homeworld. Did we follow the wrong time stream back?"

"Unknown, sir. But there's no question the Bugs are still here...I don't know what happened. I'm just not sure about this coupler signal, if it'll even work."

"We have to try," Dringoth said. "Nothing like being the tip of the spear in this man's war. Or maybe ass end of the Alliance is a better way to put it. Finish coding and send it. Send it three times. I'll check with Yang and Queenie...see how the diplomatic front is coming along."

M'Bela and Yang were in another hut, a dozen meters from the control shack. URME was there too, a loose and diffuse cloud of bots, slowly drifting about the small enclosure.

Yang brightened as Dringoth squeezed inside. "Captain, URME thinks he can fashion a shelter like the Seomish proposed. We were just hacking out some configs."

"What about our fishy friends out there. Anything more?"

Yang shrugged. "They've moved off deeper into the water but their ships are still visible. I think they're waiting for word from us. I was just trying to record some words to explain what we're proposing."

"Do it. The sooner we can get the Twister repaired and operating, the sooner we can get out of here. Or maybe survive at all."

Over the next few days, Yang and M'Bela exchanged echopods several times with the Seomish, trying to puzzle out what they wanted and explaining what the Umans were doing. At the same time, Acth:On'e was monitoring URME as the para-human swarm entity detached a small swarm from itself to replicate and build a simple shelter on the beach, near a tiny inlet below the headland and promontory. The shelter would cover some beach and also cover the pool itself, for it was clear that the Seomish much preferred to be near water with a clear path out to the sea.

"They don't trust us," M'Bela said as the shelter was taking shape.

"Can you blame them?" Yang said.

"Hey, don't get me wrong, Alicia, I'm grateful for what they did for me. But I just want to get off this sewer planet alive and back to some kind of civilization, and I mean Uman civilization."

After a tense three days of standoff, the shelter was finally declared ready and this was communicated by Yang to the Seomish by passing the echopod back and forth. The Umans learned that two Seomish would come forth, the one who had been handling echopod comms with Yang—she figured this was Kloosee—and another Seomish whose name came out as something that sounded like Pelspo.

"Probably their Captain," Golich surmised. "Coming to dictate terms."

An urgent flash traffic message on long-range coupler from Time Guard was received just before the first meeting. Dringoth scanned the message. The crew studied the Dringoth's face, as it morphed from a scowl to a thoughtful stare to something like a satisfied smirk.

"What is it, Captain?"

Dringoth shut down the coupler link. "It says TACTRON's sending three ships our way: Libra, Pollux and Pisces. They should be here tomorrow. It also says a large Coethi formation has been detected in our sector, roughly paralleling their course, popping in and out of voidtime to harass them. There may be a skirmish before we can expect relief."

Golich h'mmed. "If they can get through at all. We need that Twister up to help clear a path."

"One more thing," Dringoth added. "TACTRON himself is coming. He's aboard one of the ships."

That raised eyebrows. "The DTO himself...wow," said M'Bela. "How'd we rate such a distinguished visit from the high and mighty?"

Dringoth smiled a mischievous little grin. "Must be the way I worded that message. Commandstar and the Alliance must have gotten a little shiver when I explained what might happen to this whole sector if the Bugs overran us. They're sending TACTRON to give us some backbone, I imagine."

Golich snorted. "Backbone, my ass...sir. TACTRON just wants a piece of the glory when we finally smash the Bugs. I guess we should police the area and make ready."

Dringoth nodded. "Let's see what the fish people have to say."

The two Seomish visitors were clad in what could only be described as diving suits, scaly, armored outer covering with helmets and some kind of motorized legs. When they spoke at all, which seemed rare, their voices emerged from some kind of speaker that made them sound like they were stuck inside a barrel.

"Shkkkkrreeah...we fight no...zzhhllpp...wavemaker stop...we qqkkllppkk...we help remove...."

By fits and starts, the two Seomish negotiators eventually made it clear that they wanted the Twister to be removed, dismantled. They explained what the noise and vibration from its operation was doing—had already done—to their world, their cities, their kels and families.

Alicia Yang and Evelyn M'Bela tried to explain to Dringoth and the crew what was being asked.

Dringoth was stern and unmoving. "Tell them I have my orders. We're here on this world to complete a mission, and to defend this sector against the Bugs. We're not the enemy. There is a greater enemy to deal with."

Yang put that into the echopod and gave it to the Seomish. They listened behind impassive mobilitor masks as a series of chirps, clicks and whistles translated her words into their own language. Then the echopod was shoved back across the table. Yang picked it up, made some adjustments and the Umans listened to the response.

"Shhkkreeah...qlklklqq...we help...but wavemaker must xxzzkkll stop now. Puk'lek stay—"

Yang knew the word puk'lek. "Those are the dragon beasts, sir. They're saying they want to help but the Twister must not be operated. The dragons are being kept nearby to make sure the Twister stays quiet."

Dringoth was growing angry and impatient. "Alicia, make them understand. The Twister--wave-thing, whatever they call it—is what keeps the Bugs—the far enemy—away. They have to understand that."

But before the echopod could be exchanged again, Acth:On'e burst into the shelter. He carried a small capsule, a Captain's signaler.

"From TACTRON, sir...urgent, flash priority."

Dringoth snatched the signaler out of Acth's hands and pressed a button on top. He pressed the signaler to an ear, listened quietly to the message from the DTO, his eyes widening in disbelief. After a minute, he stuffed the signaler into a coat pocket and looked at everyone around. His eyes narrowed.

"That was TACTRON. The ships are here, standard orbit around Sigma Albeth, maybe a day away from Storm. There's no sign of the Bugs either...anywhere."

Golich looked up. "They must have slinked off back into voidtime."

"Or," said Acth:On'e, "the sun Tonatiah of the Coethi homeworld finally blew up and they were obliterated earlier in the time stream...just like we thought might happen."

The crew considered that for a moment.

"Let's not jump to conclusions," Dringoth said. "TACTRON's message reports no evidence the Coethi were ever here. Acth could be right but we don't know for sure. If the fleet can't find any trace evidence of the Bugs, you could be right. I'll advise TACTRON." He left the shelter and went back to the control shack on the hill.

A day later, three Time Guard jumpships appeared in high orbit around Storm. One ship, Libra, bearing TACTRON himself, landed on the other side of Kinlok Island. Dringoth and Golich met the commanding officer at the landing site, on a small plateau overlooking steep cliffs and crashing surf.

The officers shook hands. TACTRON, like URME, a para-human swarm entity, was clad in a sort of hypersuit, configured for Storm's gravity and weather conditions. His hand grip seemed as mushy as always but it was getting better. The DTO preferred to minimize physical contact. On the walk back through howling, sleet-flecked winds, Dringoth explained the tactical situation.

"Every time we try to start up the Twister, these fish people attack. They keep damaging the chronotron pods, the emitters, converger cone, it's a mess. Yesterday, they started attacking us. Came right up out of the water in these suits, flash-bang sound grenades, toxic flying bots, the works."

TACTRON was struggling with the wind gusts as they made their way across rubbly ground to the tiny beach.

"What's their problem, Captain? Don't they realize the Twister's protecting them?"

"Apparently not, sir. We can communicate a little with a translator device they've given us. But their main beef is that the Twister creates a lot of sound and vibration when it operates and that messes up their world, their cities and so forth. We're at a kind of impasse now...while we figure what it'll take to repair the Twister. We've been meeting them in that shack down there."

They reached the promontory and TACTRON stood outside the control hut, surveying the scene. There were scores of kip'ts half submerged in the waters off shore, looking like humps of turtles migrating to lay eggs. The small shack where negotiations had been underway lay below them, around a small tidal pool.

TACTRON huddled deeper inside his hypersuit and pulled the helmet visor down. Dringoth thought in some ways he resembled the Seomish in their mobilitors.

"We saw no evidence of any Bug formations when we dropped out of jump into this system," he said. "Not even residual decoherence wakes. It's like they were never here."

"Oh, sir, they were here all right. It was one hell of a swarm we jumped into when we first got here. The only explanation I can think of is that their homeworld sun finally blew up...we tried to trap the bastards early in the time stream on their homeworld because we knew their sun was unstable. My crew figured if we could keep them from dispersing and their sun went kablooey, causality conservation would take care of the rest." Dringoth pulled up his own tunic jacket tighter against the howl of the wind. "I guess it worked. Their star supernova'ed and that was the end of them."

"At least across that time stream," TACTRON said. "There may be other branches. We'll have to explore all of them to be sure. Dringoth, you were lucky."

"Yes, sir, we were. Would you care to meet our fishy friends? We were in the midst of some talks when you landed."

"Lead the way, Captain."

The two officers carefully descended the headland slope, picking their way down a narrow trail, and came to the shack.

TACTRON introduced himself to Pelspo and Kloosee and nodded to Golich, Yang and M'Bela.

"I am Director of Temporal Operations for Time Guard," TACTRON explained. "The Captain here tells me you want the Twister to be stopped."

A burst of clicks, squeaks and whistles erupted from both Seomish. TACTRON raised his visor, turned with a questioning face to Dringoth and was about to say something, when the echopod issued a string of guttural more-or-less words and phrases, punctuated by squawks and chirps that couldn't be translated.

"Shhkkrreeah...wave-qqkkllzz...stop. This zzhound is...kkllpp...'maging to us...krrppll...not leave until..."

The 'discussions' went on for several hours. From time to time, either Pelspo or Kloosee would duck below the water, swim out to sea for a few minutes and return. Alicia Yang explained what was happening.

"I've spent some time with them, sir. Kind of an in-country liaison. Being out of water, even in those suits, is extremely tiring. They submerge to regain strength and probably to consult with others. It seems to be a very collegial culture...they talk a lot."

TACTRON sniffed, sat down himself. "Sounds like gibberish to me. This thing—" he indicated the echopod—" can actually translate back and forth?"

"It can, sir. It's also a kind of encyclopedia as well. I've learned a lot about the Seomish just from interrogating the device."

TACTRON considered the situation. "Thanks to your crew, Dringoth, the Coethi are no longer in evidence in this sector. Long-range scans show nothing. But that doesn't mean the Bugs won't be back. This system is strategically located. Whoever controls this space has a clear path right into the heart of the Alliance. K-World wants this sector secured and well-guarded."

Pressed relentlessly by the Seomish, TACTRON made a command decision late in the day. He gave Dringoth permission, once the Twister was repaired and operable, to shut down the weapon, but maintain it at Level 2 readiness for possible use later. "I want it maintained to become fully operational in less than two hours. We'll assign a small crew on rotating shifts to do that. Is that clear, Dringoth?"

"Perfectly, sir. Twister powered down and safed but ready for use again if needed. Sir, I hope 1st TD can be relieved of this sentinel duty and given leave or at least be re-assigned. My people are nearly exhausted. We've been jumping across time streams and worldlines for some time now, distant past all the way to here and now. They need relief, sir."

TACTRON considered that. "Granted, Dringoth. For now, there's no detectable Coethi presence along the frontier, from here to Newton's Jaw. But you're not leaving until that weapon is fully repaired, tested and made operable. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

The decision was communicated to Pelspo and Kloosee. Their excited chatter and the echopod eruptions made it clear they were pleased with the decision.

"Shkkrreeah...qqllzzpp...we talk with kels...Metah zzzhhh...be pleased...."

Yang explained that the 'Metah' was like a sort of queen of the tribes. "Sir, there seem to be many tribes or clans down there. I'm not sure how they organize their society. Time Guard and the Alliance should sponsor more cultural visits in the future."

TACTRON was already leaving the shack. "So noted, Jumpmaster Yang." The DTO promised to deliver the request and the Seomish message, recorded on the echopod, to Commandstar and the Alliance. Perhaps once the disappearance of the Coethi had been confirmed by Time Guard Intelligence, diplomats from the Alliance could return and relations between the Umans and the Seomish formalized.

And with that, the session was over. The Seomish departed, diving back into the water and were gone. The Umans left and retreated back up the hill to the control and supply huts. Darkness was approaching and a dense fog was settling over the hilltops of the island. URME had the fabs working overtime to get some kind rations done for dinner.

Three days later, jumpship Libra was ready to depart. Dringoth and his 1st TD crew were given temporary bunks anywhere space could be found, shoehorned in among equipment on Libra's E and F decks, along with their own gear. Acth:On'e and Golich had worked overtime to replace the damaged chronotron pods on the Twister, with new ones fabbed on board Libra. The weapon was powered up, tested briefly and declared operational. TACTRON observed the test, ordered additional tests done and then pronounced himself satisfied.

Yang and M'Bela worked to secure the site, with its control and supply huts locked down and all equipment placed in standby or sleep mode, ready to be activated quickly if needed. They left the huts and were making their way across the island to Libra's position, when Yang saw a single Seomish kip't breach just beyond the waves below.

"Hold up, Queenie. I think we have more visitors."

"Leesh, we don't have time for visits. Ship's launching in half an hour."

"This'll only take a few minutes. I think I know who it is."

Yang scrambled down the rocky slope and hustled to the water's edge. It was Kloosee and Pakma, just emerging from the kip't in their mobilitors. Kloosee handed her an echopod, which immediately crackled with noise.

"Shhkkrreeah...it is litorkel...wavemaker off...smooth waters here now..."

Yang reached out and touched Kloosee's mobilitor hand. "We'll come back. This time as friends. Before you know it, your world and mine will be best buddies." In the back of her mind was the nagging worry that the Coethi might come back as well, for she knew TACTRON was right and Storm was well placed strategically, a prize for whoever controlled the sector. "You must leave the Twister...the wavemaker...alone. Don't touch it. Don't damage it. It protects you."

"Shkkrreeah...litorkel ge, ke vishtu...have ke'shoo and ke'lee in travel...roam with currents always...."

Kloosee's mobilitor hand and Alicia Yang's hand closed in a bond that couldn't be explained in words, in either language. Then she let go and rejoined M'Bela on the hillside. A few moments later, the Umans had disappeared over the hilltops.

Kloosee and Pakma retreated through the waves to their kip't, awkwardly shuffling against the current.

Over the roar and hiss of the waves, they both heard the low whine of the jumpship and saw it disappear momentarily in a haze of whirling sand. On the ground, rockets were the rule. Displacement engines tended to drag whole planets into voidtime if they were used too near to them. A parabolic orbit was needed first, to take advantage of Sigma Albeth's enormous gravity well. Once Libra had rendezvoused with her sister ships, the squadron would make the jump across time back to K-World.

The jumpship rode a spear of flame into the heavens and soon vanished in the clouds. The thunder of her rockets pealed across the beach and echoed off the cliffs, resounding for several minutes afterward. Pakma let the image settle in her mind.

Just as they came to their kip't, Kloosee spotted a strange moss-like substance on a rock sticking up out of the water. Very curious. He moved inside his mobilitor suit to bend down and touch the substance, but it quickly dispersed into the wind in a fine mist. Kloosee and Pakma were both quickly covered in the wind-blown residue, coating their mobilitor helmets, arms and legs with a fine residue.

Once inside the kip't, with the canopy down and sealed, Pakma began complaining of an irritating itch...an itch she couldn't scratch while inside the suit. A low-grade headache also developed, in both of them.

What had the Tailless left out there on the beach?

Alarmed, Kloosee powered up the kip't and quickly submerged, making tracks to catch the first faint tendrils of the great Pomt'or Current that would take them home.

And as the kip't jetted down and forward through murky ice-choked waters, speeding off to the welcoming seas of Omt'or, the residual Coethi bots who had escaped Evelyn M'Bela's head now embedded themselves deeper into Kloosee and Pakma's skin.

The bots began to execute an ancient set of instructions:

Imperative1_state = 0;

Initiate cycle 1;

Zero all counters;

Replication initiate;

Return.

END OF SERIES

Following is an excerpt from the new, upcoming series Quantum Troopers Return. Download the first exciting episode from Smashwords.com and other fine ebook retailers. It's called 'Fab Lords.' Available on February 7, 2020.

A few words about this series....

Quantum Troopers Return is a series of 25,000-30,000-word episodes detailing the adventures of Johnny Winger and his experiences as a quantum trooper with the United Nations Quantum Corps. This series continues the original serial stories of Quantum Troopers, Episodes 1-22 (formerly Nanotroopers).

Each episode will be about 40-60 pages, approximately 30,000 words in length.

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

There will be 10 episodes. The story will be completely serialized in about 12 months.

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

The main plotline: U.N. Quantum Corps must defeat the criminal cartel Red Harmony's efforts to use their nanorobotic ANAD systems for the cartel's own nefarious and illegal purposes.

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

Episode # (*) Title Approximate Upload Date

1 (23) 'Fab Lords' 2-7-20

2 (24) "Free Fall' 3-6-20

3 (25) "Forbidden City" 4-3-20

4 (26) "Deep Encounter" 5-8-20

5 (27) "HAVOC" 6-12-20

6 (28) "The Empty Quarter" 7-10-20

7 (29) "The Hellas Paradox" 8-14-20

8 (30) "Twist Pirates" 9-11-20

9 (31) "The Better Angels" 10-9-20

10 (32) "The Ship of Theseus" 11-13-20

(Note *: Episode numbers start with Episode 1 in this new series but the continuation of episode numbers from Quantum Troopers is also provided).

Excerpt from...Chapter 1: Rogue Nano

Tunis, Tunisia

May 2, 2062

0500 hours

"It looks like a giant caterpillar," said Dr. Christian Hayes. The UN Quantum Corps inspector circled the vehicle, studying its unusual hull shape, circumferential treads and bulbous nose. "Or maybe a big armored beetle."

Lieutenant Will Mack chuckled. "This beetle has quite a bite. Mole can burrow into the ground and be completely submerged in less than a minute. And she can dive to five kilometers depth, given her composite armor and thermal regulation system. That borer lens up front you're looking at can penetrate the hardest shales and rock on earth, just like butter. She's a true creature of the deep...the deep earth, that is."

Geoplane Mole squatted among the rubble piles and smoking ruins of the Grand Mosque, while all around her, scores of fixbots scurried around removing debris from the site, dumping broken glass, broken stone, mangled rebar and trash into loaders lined up along El Attarine Street for half a kilometer. A huge gaping fissure crossed the street in a jagged line, where the underlying faults had lifted the earth in the massive quake several days before. As a result, the toppled statue of Ibn Khaldoun across the street were several meters higher than the Mosque itself.

Mole's crew, assigned from Boundary Patrol Detachment BP-4, explained her features to Hayes and to Reza Hokmar, the Tunis-based official from UNDERO, the UN Disaster and Emergency Relief Organization. It was Hokmar's job to head up the recovery efforts in Tunis, still reeling from a series of magnitude 8 and 9 tremors.

"You have the coordinates of that last swarm sighting?" Hayes asked. "Somewhere a few kilometers southeast of here."

Mack was Mole's CC1, the senior command rating, in charge of the mission. "Got 'em from Q2 on the trip over. I don't have intel on any other sightings."

"I haven't heard of anything official," Hayes admitted. "Just rumors. Reza--?"

Hokmar shrugged. "People here are frightened. They see all kinds of things. My office has reports of ghosts, three-headed tigers, the Prophet Mohammed, you name it. We've had a hard time distinguishing fact from superstition. Most people here lost family in the quake. And the tremors...you know they continue."

Mack went over the mission orders with both of them. "I'm going deep right here, right through that fissure across the street. After we descend to about two thousand meters, we'll turn south and head for the coordinates of that last sighting. Quantum Corps has been scanning this area for days, looking for any kind of unique signature. But there's so much noise down there, it's hard to get a fix. Even the quantum detectors can't grab anything solid."

"I guess the real question we have," said Hokmar, "is whether the quake and the tremors are natural phenomena. Tabriz is no stranger to earthquakes. The city was eighty per cent destroyed in the late 20th century, over a hundred and twenty years ago. It's all the tremors following...and the swarm sightings...that have people on edge."

Mack understood. "Q2 has plenty of related intel that it's Red Hammer. Mole'll smoke 'em out. If you've got swarms operating in the area, we'll find them." Mack got on the crewnet through his lip mike and ordered the rest of the Detachment to mount up. "Let's go, troops. Mole's rolling and digging in two minutes." He stepped through the forward hatch and disappeared inside the geoplane.

Hayes and Hokmar stepped back and gave the vehicle plenty of clearance. On the hull beside the forward hatch, Hayes saw the Boundary Patrol insignia and the Latin inscription: Subterraneus defensores percutant dure.

"'Subterranean defenders strike hard'", he translated for Hokmar. Mole's treads started up with a screeching clank and a blue-white glow soon enveloped the nose of the ship as the borer lens came fully online. The cylindrical geoplane huffed and shuddered as she motored forward on her treads, clambering over nearby rubble piles and across the three-meter ledge that marked the fissure in the ground. Fixbots stopped in their own tracks and police held up traffic as the ship rumbled across the street. Passing the recently re-erected statue of the poet Khaqani in a small park opposite the Mosque, Mole started her descent, angling nose-first toward the ground.

Inside the command deck, Mack gave directions to Corporal Robles, the Detachment's DSO1 (Driver/Systems Operator). Pressing a few buttons, Robles manipulated the borer that formed a huge dish-shaped nose on the geoplane's bow. Inside the borer, actuators fired to release the ANAD swarm contained there. In seconds, the outer surface of the dish was thick with nanoscale disassemblers, forming a shimmering half-globe around Mole's nose. Like a single huge blue-white headlamp, the dish and its halo of mechs formed the geoplane's working surface for subterranean operations.

"Let's go digging," Mack said. "Head for that fissure and contact Ops... tell 'em we're going under."

Robles complied. "Turning left, heading now... one three five degrees. Depth is forty five meters, five degrees down angle."

"Borer coming on line," Sergeant Li Kejiang reported. Li was the Borer Operator, BOP1 for the Detachment. She scanned her instrument panel, reading swarm density, alignment and other parameters. "Bots are ready to bite—"

Mole slowed down as the fissure approached, then a high keening wail could be heard through the hull, as the borer bit into the rock. The geoplane shuddered as she decelerated. Outside the command deck, unseen by the six-person crew, Mole's nose buried itself in a shimmering blue-white fog as the borer revved up and uncountable trillions of mechs tore at the rock.

Li licked her lips nervously, reading her instruments. "Coming back mostly quartz and pyroxenes, with some sandstone mixed in. Bots should eat this stuff up."

The geoplane plunged into the tunnel created by the borer, angling nose down as she bit deeper into the side of the fissure.

Mole's instrument panel showed the results of acoustic sounding, displaying rock layers on a graph, with temperature and pressure readings all around the graph. Borer status was displayed as well.

"Looking good," Robles muttered. "Borer configured for quartz and pyroxenes...ANAD's chewing through at a rate of two point five kilometers per hour. Treads are functioning fine."

"She's a real hot rod...let's try some basic maneuvers," Mack suggested. "Mole's never had a proper shakedown cruise."

"Aye, sir--" Robles turned the stick to port and Mole initiated a shallow left-hand bank. The command deck listed slightly, then stabilized. For the next few minutes, first Robles, then Mack took turns putting the geoplane through a series of turns, dives and climbs.

Mack began to relax his grip on the stick slightly, trying to forget they were now hundreds of meters below ground.

"There's a layer of basaltic rock a few klicks south of here," he remembered. "It's nearly a kilometer down. We should see how Mole handles there."

Robles was cautious. "Sir, remember what Captain Karst told us in the briefing: don't push her too hard on this first test. Basaltic stuff is superhard and dense...all shale inclusions and quartzite. We're not sure Mole's hull can take the pressure."

"I know but this is supposed to be a recon mission to find Red Hammer swarms. We have to find out how she'll handle. Sergeant Rounds, anything yet?"

Sergeant Rounds was the SS1, Sensors and Surveillance Technician. "Nothing yet, Lieutenant. I'm scanning all bands...EM, thermal, acoustic, quantum...some plate shifting, crustal grinding...that's about it."

"Very well." Mack programmed a new heading into the tread control system and Robles steered them southeast on a heading of one two five degrees, roughly paralleling the volcanic cone of Sahand and the Eynali ridge at the surface. Acoustic sounding soon showed the geoplane was entering harder, denser rock layers.

"Shales," Sergeant Rita Rono muttered. Rono was GET1 for the Detachment, the Geo Engineering Technician. From earlier briefings with Quantum Corps geologists, she knew the layer was sheeted with hard slate and mica, compacted over millions of years by glaciers and the overriding Eynali mountain range. "Nothing to worry about...just sit back and enjoy the view."

Mack snorted. The only view they had was of the inner pressure hull of the geoplane. Even as he watched, he imagined that he could see the compression of Mole's interior frame under the millions of tons pressing down on them.

"Sounding ahead..." Rounds reported. "Your depth is now four eight eight meters. Signal distortion coming back...it's probably the shale zone."

Robles shoved the control stick forward. "I'm going a little deeper...see if we can plow through some of that quartzite."

Mack was dubious. He studied the sounding profile. "Just don't push Mole too hard, okay? Let's don't press our luck on the first run. I'm showing discontinuities dead ahead...some kind of boundary layer, maybe."

"Inclusion zone? Maybe it's the quartzite."

Rono shook her head. "It looks more like a fault, maybe a transform fault. The geos said there were fracture zones north of Tabriz."

Mole angled slightly downward and slowed, as the borer swarm bit into denser rock.

"Cabin temps going up," Robles reported.

"Acknowledged. Those mechs are working overtime up front, making us a tunnel. I—"

Mack' last words were cut off as Mole shuddered violently. For a brief moment, there was an unmistakable sensation of sliding, sliding sideways and downward. Almost at the same moment, something hit Mole's nose with a sickening crunch and the geoplane shuddered again and ground violently to a halt. The cabin tilted to port and stayed tilted.

Mole's cabin was deathly still for a few moments, then the creaking and groaning of the hull under tremendous pressure started.

"What happened?" Mack asked, wincing as the tortured sounds of the hull being compressed grew louder.

Robles scanned his instruments nervously. "Borer is offline. I'm getting no responses from the forward module...pressure drop in containment...we may have a breach."

"Great," Mack muttered. "Just friggin' great. And it looks like we've got a breach in the pressure hull too."

"I see it...cabin air pressure fluctuating...we'd better activate emergency flasks, just in case." Robles toggled a few switches and immediately, high pressure air began flooding all compartments.

Rono was studying the acoustic sounder, replaying the last few moments before the—what exactly had happened? An accident? "Lieutenant, I'm not sure but I think we may have created our own earthquake."

"What? That can't be...can it?"

Rono went over the soundings again. "We were approaching some kind of discontinuity—see right here?" She pointed to the display. "Like a layer or inclusion zone. Remember when the geos told us there were some transform faults and fracture zones around this big volcanic ridge?"

Mack said, "Vaguely."

Rono was figuring out the scenario as she replayed in her mind what must have happened. "It was the bots in the borer module. The swarm disassembled just enough shale and quartzite and other rock to loosen up the fault. It slipped, shifted around and we were caught in the slide."

So we did create our own earthquake."

Rono took a deep breath. "So it would seem, sir..."

Mack drummed fingers on the instrument panel. "Now we've got to figure out a way of getting out of here. What do we have to work with?"

Robles went over his instruments again. "Borer's offline, like I said, and it looks like containment was breached in the accident. I've got no response from the borer swarm, no configs, no data of any kind. That swarm's gone and it's not responding to commands."

Mack tried a few tricks of his own but with no success. "Well, I do have a master in my shoulder capsule. We could jerry-rig a swarm for the borer if we had to."

"If the module's not too damaged. On top of that, the tread system's not responding...so we have no mobility. And the pressure hull...."

Mack saw the oxygen level had been dropping significantly in the last few minutes. "We've got to stop that leak...here, let me launch our secondary ANAD." He started to link in.

"ANAD, this is Mack...do you read me?"

***ANAD copies...reading you loud and clear...what has happened?...ANAD's coupler indicates some kind of swarm break...is the borer functioning?***

"ANAD, Mole's had an accident. The pressure hull has been breached. Configure for launch and max replication. I need a local swarm to find and plug the leaks."

***ANAD configuring now...systems initializing...ANAD reporting ready in all respects...***

Mack unstrapped himself and went aft through the tunnel to the power plant. "Launch, ANAD. Launch now...." As the CC1 went off to check on their power systems, a shimmering light blue fog emerged from the containment canister on the bulkhead.

***ANAD replicating...can I get a heading to the target?***

"I'm doing that now," Mack reported, as he scrambled through the galley and berthing deck and the engineering deck. "Robles, where's the leak? Can you localize it?"

Still back at the command deck, Robles scanned his instruments. "I'm showing maximum pressure drop at frame ninety-six, starboard side...somewhere between E and F deck."

Mack squirmed through the central access tube. He knew E deck was for Engineering, Shops and Utilities. Just aft was F deck, home to Mole's hybrid battery and fuel cell power plant.

"I feel it...there's a whistle just off to my left—" Mack paused, sniffing, letting his senses guide him. There. A utilities duct penetrating the bulkhead seemed to be the center of the leak. He saw a faint mist in the air swirling around the duct. "I found it...ANAD configure max propulsor. Home on my signal." He pressed a button on his wristpad.

Several decks forward, the shimmering fog of the assembler swarm wheeled about and began transiting the access tube.

***ANAD is en route to your location...estimated time is twenty-two minutes***

Mack tried examining the source of the leak, where the inner pressure hull had been stove in. It was scalding hot with swirling steam and air and he couldn't get any closer.

"Hurry, ANAD...this break is getting bigger by the minute."

The ANAD swarm eventually arrived at the site of the breach and promptly went to work. Configuring itself as a tightly interlinked mesh, ANAD sought out the pressure hull penetrations and quickly formed a nanoscale patch over the holes with its trillions of replicants. Gradually, the whistling subsided, then stopped altogether...

...Download Quantum Troopers Return Episode 1 "Fab Lords" to see what happens next.

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 Time Jumpers, Tales of the Quantum Corps and Quantum Troopers, 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 his many series were 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 first exciting episode of Quantum Troopers Return from Smashwords.com and other fine ebook retailers. It's called 'Fab Lords.' Available on February 7, 2020.

