 
# Time Jumpers

Episode 9: Byrd's Draconis

### Published by Philip Bosshardt at Smashwords

### Copyright 2019 Philip Bosshardt

### Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode # Title Approximate Upload Date

  1. 'Marooned in Voidtime' February 1, 2019

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

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

  4. 'Cygnus Rift' May 3, 2019

  5. 'The Time Guard' May 31, 2019

  6. 'First Light Corridor June 28, 2019

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

  8. 'Operation Galactic Hammer' August 30, 2019

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

  10. 'First Jump Squadron' November 1, 2019

  11. 'Planck Time' November 29, 2019

  12. 'The Time Twister' January 3, 2020

# Chapter 1: "AWOL"

"It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present."

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Jumpship Cygnus

Time Stream: T-002

T-date: T-002-7-28

Jumpship Cygnus and her 1st TD crew arrived in the Ross 154 system, near the world Byrd's Draconis, time stream T-002 with a simple mission from TACTRON: set up, test and make operational a new Time Twister, to defend against suspected Coethi incursions in this sector, at the far end of Uman space beyond Cygnus Rift. Her crew took the SkyLift down to the planet and, after consulting with local authorities and the local Time Guard commander, began setup activities straightaway.

Byrd's Draconis was a small, cool world of forests, lakes and rolling hills. The only settlement of any consequence was Byrdtown. The Twister installation was set for a cleared site twenty kilometers outside of town, deep in the boreal forests of which Byrd's Draconis had thousands of square kilometers.

The Time Guard base on the outskirts of town would provide technicians, engineers and guardsmen to help with the installation. Dringoth had decreed that the whole crew minus one would be involved. Only URME remained aboard Cygnus, running systems and conducting checks.

Late one afternoon, Golich was working with Yang and M'Bela, overseeing the installation of the critical chronotron pods.

"Ten down," M'Bela muttered, checking off a list on her slate, "Only seventy more to go."

The installation site was strewn with crates, cabling, tools and fixbots scurrying around bearing supplies and parts. From the air, the Twister would resemble two dinner plates mashed together, the upper surface studded the pods that were the guts of the whole thing, along with bristling antennas and an emitter array at the apex.

"Queenie, have you seen a track wrench around here anywhere? Those two bozos up there can't seem to get that pod in place."

M'Bela shook her head. "Fresh out, Commander."

A nearby guardsman offered an idea. "We've got fab shops back at base, Commander. They could print you one in no time."

That's when Golich made up his mind. Kisan Malakel's words rang in the back of his head like a metronome. "...that which is lost cannot be found...until it is discovered."

Golich knew Malakel was nearby, somewhere on this woody planet, probably in Byrdtown. The contact chip had chirped that much when Golich had activated it. The question was where? Could they meet somewhere?

Should they meet?

"I'll take a turbo back to the base," Golich decided. "I've got the specs for a track wrench in my wristpad. Where's the Captain?"

M'Bela shrugged but Alicia Yang, who had climbed up on the Twister itself, overseeing some support bracing being fitted to the side, called down.

"Captain's inside. Working with a few techs on the controls."

Golich said, "I'll just be a few minutes. I'm taking one of the turbos...back to the base. We need more track wrenches."

And with that, Nathan Golich was off, barreling down the narrow access road that had been cleared out to the Twister site.

It wasn't until he skidded onto the motorway that led back to Byrdtown that he had made up his mind completely.

Now was the time. Hell, it was way past time. He ran the bike up to a hundred, maybe more and let the cool damp wind blast his face.

Monthan Dringoth was one of the Guard's most decorated and experienced jump ship captains. He'd engaged the Bugs numerous times, usually with success and some of his actions were still required reading in the textbooks, not so much for their tactical genius as for sheer daring and guts, even balls.

Dringoth had never suffered much in the way of doubts about what to do. The fact that his own chutzpah had nearly cost Golich and the Cygnus crew their lives too many times to count didn't slow Dringoth down a bit. The Captain knew one speed...full speed, no matter what lay ahead.

Golich figured they'd been lucky, damned lucky. And it was only a matter of time before statistics or the Universe or fate or karma or whatever you wanted to call it caught up with them.

It had happened before, notably at Hapsh'm, when the Bugs had first come calling in serious numbers.

Golich figured he didn't plan on being around when it happened again.

The turnoff to the Time Guard base, Byrd Base was the official name, came and went zooming by. Golich surprised even himself. Not even a flinch toward making that turn. He checked his mirror and watched the guardsmen stir slightly around the security shack and gate. No one lifted a finger. Evidently, turbos speeding by at ludicrous speeds was normal for this crazy place.

He was committed now and he sped on toward Byrdtown at a hundred klicks an hour.

The rules regarding going AWOL from a Time Guard assignment were pretty straightforward and not subject to a whole lot of interpretation. Over the last few days, Golich had managed to consult and almost memorize the words...failure to go to the assigned place of duty...leaving an assigned duty station without permission...absence from the assigned unit...abandoning watch or guard duty...absence from unit with intent to avoid maneuvers or field exercises....

Golich figured he'd violated pretty much all of them at one time or another.

No, now was the time and this was the place. Before leaving the Twister, Golich had inserted the contact chip into his wristpad. Now the thing was chirping and vibrating like crazy, giving him turn-by-turn directions to Malakel.

He zoomed into Byrdtown and decided to slow down. The town wasn't much to look at: a small grid of streets, most buildings were low two and three-story things, exteriors of wood or faux wood, which Byrd's Draconis had in abundance. Light turbo and skimmer traffic, a few pedestrians. Byrdies always looked like bears to Golich, wrapped as they were in heavy coats and shapkas, to ward off the chill wind that seemed to blow all the time here.

The contact chip led him straight to the SkyLift terminal, the very place he and his Cygnus crewmates had just endured coming down to the surface.

He got off the turbo, took a doubtful look at the towering tether stalk arrowing straight up into the lowering rain clouds, all the way to its counterweighted orbital station, and hustled inside.

Malakel was located after a quick walk down the public promenade. He was tucked away in a back booth of some dimly lit tavern. The sign outside said Drake's...or Dragon's...Golich couldn't tell which.

He wasn't a particularly imposing man. He was smallish, thin, dense black beard flecked with gray around rather effeminate lips. Beer suds soaked the lips and he wiped them off with the back of his hand. His forearms were tattooed and thick with black curly hair. An unusual tattoo always got Golich's interest right away...an arachtyl's beak, open to reveal rows of sharp teeth.

Malakel looked up from his beer. "I knew it wouldn't be long. My chip vibrated an hour ago."

Golich sat down without invitation and made a selection from the menu. A barbot trundled by moments later to bring the drink.

"We're installing a Twister here, just outside of town. I had to...find the right time."

Malakel rubbed his beard. "And now is the right time?"

"Look, I've just vaporized my whole Time Guard career. You have any idea what the penalty is for going AWOL?" He stared into his drink.

Malakel said nothing for a long time. The silence annoyed Golich more than he wanted to let on. Say something, you dirtbag. Make words. Congratulate me for finally making a decision.

"I'm not even sure why I did this. If I leave now—"

Malakel cleared his throat. "I'm thinking that's impossible for you, now."

"Why is that?"

Malakel shrugged, finished off his beer. "You've taken an irrevocable step. Even you know that. You're just wanting me to confirm that it was the right step."

Golich looked up and their eyes met. "It wasn't easy, you know. Doing what I did. I have a lot of years in the Guard. What are you, some kind of empath?"

Malakel shrugged. "Just a simple merchant now. A trader. I have a ship. I cruise around nearby space...and local time streams...hawking all kinds of wares and goods. You know of my ship. The Pisces is here now, right up there at Byrd Station."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Malakel smiled humorlessly. "And you're here now, conversing with me. Let's say I prefer trader. It sounds better. Commander Golich, I meant what I said...both before and now. That which is lost cannot be found...until it is discovered."

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

He held up a gnarled hand. "A proposition. I know you want to join with me and my crew aboard Pisces. Even if you can't yet admit it to yourself. Give up your commission in Time Guard---we both know you were going to do it anyway. Be part of a great adventure. Achieve that which you always dreamed of, plus great riches and acclaim, with us." His eyes bored in and he leaned closer. "Now you have finally discovered what you have sought for so long. It's time...."

Golich swallowed hard. Malakel was right. This was irrevocable. In fact, this was borderline insanity. Was he just trying to get back at Dringoth? Was he just trying to get back at the Guard for all the years wasted, flitting in and out of voidtime, traipsing across time streams? If you couldn't be honest with yourself--?

"What do you want, Malakel? I'm tired of these games and riddles."

"Ah, now we speak of motives, yes? 'It doesn't matter how slow you go as long as you don't stop.' My man Confucius, somewhere back on Old Urth, said something like that. You know that if you get up and walk out now, you can be back at your Time Guard base and no one will be any wiser. Your secret's safe with me."

Malakel glared at Golich with an intensity that exceeded even the star-sun Ross 154.

Eyes like death rays, Golich heard a small voice whisper in the back of his head. In five years with the Guard, Golich had stared down death a dozen times, seen the first light of the Universe, surfed past Cygnus Rift and survived the Gullet and Newton's Jaw. He'd fixed anything that needed fixing and slammed heads together when strong leadership was needed. His dress unis were top heavy with ribbons, medals, awards and commendations. He was sure he was in line for a command of his own, and soon, Monthan Dringoth notwithstanding. All of that he saw in Malakel's eyes, in the suds of his beer, in the sworls of faux wood grain on the table top.

The decision, when it came, was surprisingly easy. It was like going eyeball to eyeball with your own image in the mirror...and blinking.

His voice sounded weak, even to him, not the decisive voice a Commander in Time Guard should have.

"What do I have to do?"

Malakel's fierce stare relaxed a bit. He finished off his own beer.

"Pisces is just a short ride away, right up the SkyLift at Byrd Station." He swiped a thumb across the payport on the table and stood up abruptly. Just follow me."

They left the tavern and rode the SkyLift into the heavens. Byrd Station, orbiting several hundred kilometers above the green carpet of Byrd's Draconis, was the terminus of the huge stalk, though the tether extended out for thousands of kilometers beyond the Station, as a counterweight to the lower end.

Pisces was one of several ships docked there. Once aboard, Golich realized she didn't look like anything he remembered.

"I see you've made some 'improvements."

"Indeed. Much more homey, don't you think? Wait'll you see our galley. Here, let me introduce you to my crew."

They had all gathered on the command deck, one of the oddest ship's companies Golich had ever encountered in five years with the Guard.

"My First Officer, Vinh, over by the secondary console. Tuan Vinh...V2, isn't it? Tuan's Telitorian."

"And proud of it, Malakel." Vinh was heavily muscled, tatoo'ed, with the leering grin of a tiger about to pounce on dinner.

Malakel indicated a willowy red-headed female in the rear of the compartment. "Natalya Afrem, our Chief Engineer."

Afrem smiled enigmatically.

"And of course, we can't forget Dikeme Lukasi, our weapons officer. And Lothar Buttrick, sensor tech and that one over there—" he pointed to a young crewman who seemed barely old enough to shave, "—that's de Salta. Ivan de Salta. Ivan's the navigator...picked him up right here at Byrd's a few years ago. Ivan was, shall we say, somewhat at odds with the local law enforcement."

Golich couldn't help but wonder how each of them had been snared by Malakel. But that would have to wait.

Malakel motioned de Salta over. "Show the Commander our next prospective target."

De Salta showed Golich a plot at his nav station. All the worlds of Ross 154 were laid out, circling about their sun like fireflies around a flame.

The kid pointed to one of the outworlds. "Got us a big freighter coming in from Landfall. She's due tomorrow, and she's making a stop at Wolfburg, right at the ass end of this system."

"Gemini Queen," explained Malakel, who had come over to study the plot. "We don't have a full list of what she's manifesting, but we do know she made stops at K-World and Landfall before coming here. One of my, er, contacts at Landfall messaged me a few days ago with some interesting news. He happened to see some well-guarded crates in her cargo hold, crates bearing items from Keaton's World. Scuttlebutt has it the crates hold items from an archeological dig on K-World. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, Commander?"

Golich nodded. "Not much. There are several dig sites there. Maybe artifacts from First Landing. It could be old man Keaton's underwear, for all I know."

Malakel smiled humorlessly. "Well, it doesn't matter. I intend to find out directly. We'll be paying Gemini Queen a little visit pretty soon."

Golich studied the plot. "Wolfburg's a few billion kilometers away, if I'm reading this right, Malakel."

"So it is. But remember where you are, Commander. Pisces still has jump capability. All I have to do is let Ivan here do a little blip for us and we appear right over Wolfsburg, right where Gemini Queen will heave to, just a few hours before she appears. Then we let Lukasi here do his magic with a few well-timed bursts from our magpulsers and we have one juicy freighter dead in the water, ripe for the picking."

Golich stifled a laugh. "And you expect Cygnus and Time Guard to just twiddle their thumbs while this little hijack's going on?"

"Oh, no, not at all, Commander. That's where you come in. As an executive officer of a Time Guard jumpship, you're privy to all the little details and nuances of Time Guard procedure. I'm counting on you to make Pisces look like an official Time Guard inspection to the unfortunate crew of Gemini Queen. We've even got the costumes on board, thanks to our fabs, to dress my crew up and play the part of a jumpship crew. We'll call it a routine safety inspection, maybe even a customs investigation...contraband items, tariff evasion, that sort of thing. Oh, no, Commander, you've got a big part to play in this little theatrical production. In fact, you'll be the star of the whole show."

Golich figured there wasn't any point in objecting for this was clearly some kind of test, some kind of initiation, for him. When Malakel sent him aft with Natalya Afrem to monitor Pisces' singularity core during the jump, he made a point of noting all the many changes Malakel had made to what had once been a regulation Time Guard jumpship.

It was particularly significant in his mind that Malakel had seen fit to eliminate all of Pisces' normal complement of escape and emergency gear. Only a few 'garbage' cans lined the outer hull of the lower decks. At least, he thought they were garbage cans.

For better or worse, Golich realized he had already crossed a line and there was no turning back now.

Moments later, Malakel's voice boomed out over the ship's 1MC circuit.

"All hands, prepare for jump!"

The killdrones got Henzik Tavoy before Golich could. He'd seen the blast at the end of Sabra's main road, the flash, the black smoke...there wasn't much left. Which made the situation even more unbearable, for the time jumper had been denied the feel of Tavoy's scrawny neck in his hands...the icy glare in the murderer's eyes as Golich throttled the very life out of him.

But none of that would happen yet, not in this time stream.

Golich had walked from the skyship terminal that evening...a short walk home to their bungalow. He bore a small gift—nothing really, just a little locket shaped like a tiny skyship, something for Amanda's neck and a small one for Kylie too. He was hungry and tired from a day of winging back and forth across the Sand Sea, dodging dust devils and mistrals, loading and unloading passengers at Gibbstown, Nomad, Hay River, Sabra. It was Fourthday and he could taste the tostapie Amanda always made this day.

But when Golich let himself in the front door, his life was ripped inside out in a single instant, in a few seconds, a slice of time forever branded on his mind.

First was the blood. It was everywhere, handprints outlined on the walls, pooling on the floor, on chairs, tables, curtains, the stalk of the bamboo tree in the living room. He followed the trail, eyes stinging with tears, not even daring to breathe, until he found them.

Kylie was in the hall, her head cleaved open with something heavy and sharp, prostrate on her side, hands up and frozen stiff to ward off the blows. Her eyes were open, glassy and unseeing; that was the worst part. Golich sucked in a breath and even as he bent to close Kylie's eyelids, his own eyes caught sight of a foot in the door to their bedroom. He staggered back to his knees and crawled forward and found...a foot. Amanda's foot, severed and blood-soaked by the door hinge.

The rest of her was in the bed, or half on it, half off, head hanging down only by its neck ligaments still dripping onto the floor.

Golich never remembered what happened next, only that when some kind of clear thought came back to his head hours later, he had bundled the both of them in blankets and laid them to some kind of rest the best he could. He staggered and paced throughout the house for how long he couldn't say, mind spinning, eyes stinging, hands flailing. He didn't scream, or really cry at that point, for his throat was dry as the Sand Sea and nothing would come out. That would come later.

Only one cold thought consumed him now, presiding over his mind like a tyrant.

This had to be undone. Time jumpers could do that, couldn't they? Sure, there were regulations against violating causality and all that. But the technology was there in Time Guard and he knew that time jumpers had the knowledge and skills to stalk back up the worldline in any time stream and throttle the very life out of scum like Henzik Tavoy, so none of this could ever, ever happen, temporal consequences be damned.

It was just a matter of choosing the right time and place.

That thought alone would sustain him in the days and weeks ahead and form the bedrock for his life in the years to come.

Now wifeless and childless, Golich was bereft and devastated. He nearly caused accidents as a skyship pilot and finally the Service had to ground him for his own good and the safety of passengers. For months, after he had been disabled out, Golich moped around Sabra village, taking long dangerous trips into the Sand Sea, hoping to be killed himself by mesodonts and generally showing little desire to live any longer.

It was a sandseer up in the Central Hills who befriended a wandering Golich and nursed him back to health, then 'employed' Golich for weeks as a helper. It was from the sandseer that Golich came across the idea—this was foreseen by the sandseer-- of joining Time Guard. He needed to get away from Keaton's World. He needed to get away from himself. The sandseer had prophesied this very decision, saying "that which is lost cannot be found...until it is discovered." The mysterious saying made no sense to Nathan Golich until he learned that Time Guard was hiring.

"Maybe he's injured somewhere," Queenie M'Bela said. "He took off on that turbo like a demon on fire...he could be in some roadside gully, broken arms, legs, a head injury. Who knows? We need to go look for him."

Monthan Dringoth rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Or maybe he's a hostage somewhere. You know how it is around the Ross system...pirates, anarchists, assorted nutcases just looking for an opportunity. Grabbing a Time Guard officer...if you survived that, you might get a pretty good price."

Acth:On'e kept quiet. He was pretty sure Golich hadn't been abducted. "The Guard has a policy about not negotiating, Captain."

"True enough, but policies are made to be broken." Dringoth stared up at the partially finished dome of the Twister. "What's left with this contraption?"

Acth:On'e ticked off the remaining tasks. The Telitorian seemed to have the list memorized.

"Compactor, collimator and emitter all have finish work to be done. All the pods are installed but nothing's been powered up yet. Twist buffers are in and aligned. We're about a week from being ready for the first matter pallet. Once that's dropped in and we go live, then it's all setup and alignment, for the most part."

Dringoth was thinking. You could tell he was thinking when his moustache straightened out, like it had a mind of its own. M'Bela thought it probably did.

"Okay, here's what we do. Acth, you and Yang stay here, stay on these guardsmen and make sure they stay on task and on schedule. Time Guard says we have to be operational in two weeks and I intend to beat that by a day at least. Bugs could show up on our front door step at any moment and the whole system's got two jumpships, counting us, to put up some kind of defense."

M'Bela said, "What about me, sir? I've got calibration work inside, inside the core module."

"Leave it to Acth. You and I are going hunting. We'll track down Mr. Golich, one way or another.

Orders in hand, 1st TD split up according to Dringoth's command. The Captain and M'Bela rode two turbos back into town, checking out every little suspicious clump of weeds and brush along the highway. They found nothing.

They checked every dive and bar in Byrdtown, not too difficult for the town was small and compact, and surrounded on all sides by dense boreal forests, steep hills and ravines. M'Bela took off on her own to prowl around some of the nearer villages and towns, New Hope, Hay River and Crowley. Dringoth repeatedly pinged Golich's ID chip, embedded in his wrist per Time Guard policy, but got nothing back.

The two of them backtracked through every dirt path and trail they could find between the towns that surrounded Byrdtown but no sign of the Commander was ever found.

"It's like he's just vanished," she decided, as she and Dringoth sped back to the Twister site on their turbos.

"I've got Byrd Station security checking the space dock areas and the stations in orbit right now," Dringoth said. "I'm getting nothing on the ID ping and no one claims to have seen a Time Guard officer...not that I'm surprised by that. This whole place is crawling with crooks. Anybody official-looking gets a wide berth from this crowd."

The 1st TD crew gathered at the base of the Twister for a quick rundown. Overhead, guardsmen and technicians were clambering all over the Twister like ants, securing fittings, tightening things down, running continuity checks.

"The Commander appears to have left Byrd's Draconis, somehow," Dringoth told them. "Willingly or not, he doesn't seem to be on the surface or anywhere in orbit. Unless there's more to this than I realize. I'll have to put in a call to TACTRON, tell him we've got a missing officer."

Acth:On'e spoke up, a bit hesitantly. "There is another possibility, Captain."

"What's that?"

Acth:On'e described the strange signal he had recorded, originating from somewhere inside Cygnus just before the ship had jumped to Draconis.

"It was an encrypted signal, sir. I was about to try washing it through ISAAC but we were getting ready to jump and I had to secure my station."

"Did the signal ever recur?"

"No, sir. One pulse, that's all. I did get a rough bearing on the transmission though. It seemed to be aimed here, at the Ross system."

Dringoth rubbed his chin. "I don't believe Nathan Golich would deliberately go AWOL. It's not like him." His face softened a bit. "We've had our differences, but one of the XO's jobs is to offer alternatives to the captain."

M'Bela cleared her throat. "Skipper, the Commander hasn't really been himself lately. He's been...I'm not quite sure how to say this, sir—well, I guess he's been a bit moody. Maybe even a little depressed."

"Golich?"

"Yes, sir. I've heard him talk about getting out of the Guard."

Dringoth seemed surprised. "The man was always a lifer. Leaving the Guard...no, that's preposterous. No way I can believe that." A sharp chime sounded on Dringoth's wristpad. He checked it out, mumbled something and killed the chime. When he looked up, his whole face had changed, the blood already draining out of his cheeks.

"What is it, Captain?"

"What's going on?"

Dringoth sucked in a deep breath. "That was Byrd Station. Traffic control. The other ship we thought was local Time Guard...wasn't. It resembled a jumpship but this—" he tapped at his wristpad, "—this just informed me she was actually the Pisces."

Acth:On'e seemed surprised. "Pisces? How can that be, sir? Wasn't Pisces destroyed...that mission near The Gullet?"

Yang snapped her fingers. "Twenty years ago, wasn't it? The Donkey Tail mission...Gavrilon and that area."

"That's what I thought too," Dringoth said. "Byrd Traffic Control says she just undocked an hour ago. Moved off and made an unauthorized jump. Just like that."

"No flight plan?"

"Nothing."

The dawning realization that Nathan Golich might have deliberately ducked out and wound up on a ship full of pirates and crooks and anarchists affected each crew member of 1st Time Displacement Battery differently.

M'Bela seemed hurt, disappointed, jangling her bone necklaces and hair braids nervously, not looking anybody in the eye. Alicia Yang frowned, trying to make sense of what had happened. Acth:On'e buried his face in a slate full of Twister checklists.

Monthan Dringoth burned. Sure, he and the XO had had numerous run-ins before. The Commander was a by-the-book officer, always quick to cite rules and regs and standard procedure, without realizing that half of Cygnus' missions had no book to go by. They were making the book up as they went along. That's what happened when you signed up for jumpship duty, especially with the Bug War on. The Bugs didn't play by Man's rules and Dringoth had never been able to make Golich see that.

Now, the man had gone and—

Dringoth's voice came out low and hard, the words clipped and bitten off sharply. "I'm contacting TACTRON for new orders. This one we gotta phone in."

The plan was for Pisces to scoot up the local worldline and come out of her jump just a few hours before Gemini Queen appeared in orbit around Wolfburg. Even by Time Guard standards, the navigator kid de Salta turned out to be a wizard at putting Malakel's pirate ship right on the money.

Pisces dropped out of jump into high orbit around the ice world known as Wolfburg, scant moments before their target delta-v'eed her way into a rather sloppy approach to Wolfburg Station.

Golich watched the cracked-billiard ball of a world slide by below them as Malakel and his First Officer Vinh made a stealth approach to the unsuspecting freighter. Half an hour before Gemini Queen would have made her last approach burn, Pisces had already positioned herself between the station and the freighter.

The hull shuddered as the first of the magpulser bursts went off. The shots were true, highlighting the unmatched marksmanship of Weapons Officer Lukasi, disabling Queen's engine pods with a few strategically placed rounds. A coup de grace was applied to her maneuvering thrusters and the unfortunate freighter was soon deader than dirt, drifting helplessly hundreds of kilometers from Wolfburg Station and any kind of help.

Golich couldn't help but be impressed by the efficient, well-practiced routine of the engagement. The crew would have done well in any Time Guard war game if they had so desired.

Golich watched his dials and instruments, as instructed by Malakel, from the confines of the Engineering deck. Whereas the Guard would have posted two crewmen in Engineering, for that was normal policy on jumpships, Pisces had been automated enough so that a single watch officer could handle most duties and tasks. Malakel was smart enough to know that Golich's Guard experience would make him an excellent watch-stander on E deck.

What happened next would have amazed even the most experience jumpship crewman for Malakel had been right: Pisces was equipped with special gear and equipment, enough to blow a few minds even back in Time Guard's tactical labs at K-World.

He both watched and felt Pisces' final maneuvers as she closed on the freighter. Just when Golich was sure she would hit the Queen, Vinh nulled out their approach and snuggled up to the freighter's main hatch with some kind of combo grapple and airlock contraption. Like a snake with outsized lips, Pisces's boarding module was made fast to the side of the freighter's portside hull.

Malakel's voice announced, "All hands, lay aft to the lockout. Hostile boarding procedures in force. Arm your weapons!"

Malakel stuck his head into Engineering. He handed a small canister to Golich. "You do the honors, Commander. Any crewmen resists too strenuously, just MOB 'em. Come on...you're with me."

Malakel had given him a canister full of Mobility Obstruction Barrier, a containment capsule filled with fast-replicating nanobots that, when discharged, would envelope and crush any resisting adversary. Time Guard had its own version but Golich handled the canister with care for he was sure Malakel and his crew had tinkered under the hood of the device and souped up its capabilities.

They boarded without incident and Golich only had to MOB two smart-mouthed loadmasters who made a bad decision to try and prevent anyone from approaching the cargo hold. Once discharged, the MOB mesh flew out in a flash and slumped onto the crewmen like a malevolent fog with claws and the men were writhing and suffocating on the deck like stunned insects in seconds.

Lothar Buttrick, Pisces' sensor tech, slammed a foot into the side of one of the bound men, earning a squeal and a grunt in the process. Others followed suit as they passed the whimpering squirmers—it had become something of a tradition in previous boardings—and even Golich found it expedient to plant a foot in the posterior of one of them.

The cargo hold was forced in good order and Malakel and his crew poured into the cavernous space, flashlights darting about and sniffers sniffing until a cry caught everyone's attention.

It was Natalya Afrem, Pisces' engineer. "Over here...this crate. What's the manifest say?"

De Salta had just come from the command deck, where he'd nearly strangled the captain getting the manifest chip. He inserted it into his wristpad and the list came up in mid-air, in 3-d. Voices mumbled and lips moved silently as they read down the list.

Malakel pointed to the probable description of the crate's contents. "Must be this one..." he read it off, "...plaster of Captain Oscar Keaton's first steps on K-World...from the dig site at First Landing...holy mother of—you realize what this is?"

Golich was stunned. "That was in the museum in Nomad Township, wasn't it? How'd it get here?"

Malakel grinned a leering smirk. "Someone trying to make a buck, most likely. What would the Authority pay to get this relic back...just imagine it, Old Man Keaton's first steps on K-World. Priceless. This is a real piece of history."

"And now it's ours," added Vinh. Golich could almost see the First Officer's eyes glowing as he toted up the ransom money.

"Spread out," Malakel ordered. "Scour this hold and every deck." He checked the time on his pad. "We need to shove off in an hour, before Wolfburg Station sends their patrol skiff snooping around here. Golich, get back to Pisces, back to Engineering. You too, Natalya. Get the core up and cooking. We may have to jump out of here in a hurry."

For the next half hour, Malakel's people looked into every corner of Gemini Queen. They grabbed a handful of precious stones from Landfall, more ancient artifacts from K-World and a containment case with two live but anesthetized thermosaurs from Poona-Peona, enveloped in an impenetrable nanobotic barrier.

Buttrick, the sensor tech, felt his wristpad go off; it was slaved to Pisces' sensor array. He hustled down the gangway and found Malakel just outside the cargo hold.

"Contact approaching, Captain...less than ten thousand klicks and closing fast."

Malakel was busy recording the details of their haul on his own pad. "That'll be the cavalry." He opened a channel through his wristpad and said, "All hands, grab what you can and get the hell off this garbage scow now. Patrol skiff approaching." He re-boarded Pisces, and found Golich on the engineering deck. "Commander, haul ass. We're departing the neighborhood in ten minutes. Is the core ready?"

Golich had checked everything. "Showing twenty percent, no anomalies, no flags, Malakel. The core's ready to power a jump. Whoever's been working on this thing has really been tinkering under the hood. Time Guard jumpships don't work this well."

Malakel beamed. "I'll take that as a compliment. Works every time, doesn't it? A little free enterprise and some stolen treasure...people do wonders when motivated like that."

"What about the Queen's crew?"

Malakel shrugged. "They'll recover. We're not savages here, you know. I do take pride in my work, in a job well done. Plus, Wolfburg's got help on the way. But we'll be long gone by then."

Golich studied his instruments. "What's the next stop? Personally, I would like to wind up at K-World eventually."

Malakel fingered a few rings on his fingers, lightly kissed one for good luck. "Why K-World? There are lots of possibilities."

Golich didn't know whether to confide in this pirate or not. "I'd really like to take Pisces back to an earlier worldline, an earlier time."

"So you can stay forever young? Really, Commander—"

"It's not that. I'd like to go back to before my skyship crash. Before Amanda and Kylie were—" his face darkened and he forced his fists to unclench. "—before they were murdered."

Malakel was sympathetic. "I'm glad to see you've become such a willing and able participant in our motley crew. You did well over there."

"I have my reasons."

"No doubt. As a matter of fact, what with these artifacts we confiscated from the Queen, I think a little visit to K-World might well be in order. The archeologists must be working overtime around First Landing, digging up all kinds of treasures. And I know a few patrons who'll pay handsomely for what we've already got. Commander, secure your station and make ready to jump. I don't want to hang around here any longer. There's at least one Time Guard jumpship sunward of our position...your old ship Cygnus. And who knows what the Bugs may have up their slimy little sleeves. We don't want to stir up any nests we don't have to."

With that, Malakel left Engineering and made his way up to the command deck. Pisces undocked hurriedly, retracted all her grapples and moorings and scooted off to a safe distance, just as Wolfburg's patrol skiff appeared off Gemini Queen's port bow.

Malakel's voice came over the ship's comm. "All hands, prepare for jump."

Golich scanned his displays one last time: the core was ticking along in perfect condition, her entanglers well aligned, her twist buffers cleared and ready for action.

Cygnus should operate this well, he told himself. There was something that felt good about a ship that was tight and well run, clean and poised to fly and go time jumping. It just felt right.

Moments later, Malakel gave the word and Pisces shuddered as her singularity core was engaged.

By then, Golich had already strapped himself into his seat. Outside, the porthole flashed with crazy mirror fragments of light as the jumpship scooted off into the vortex of a million tomorrows.

Two billion kilometers sunward of Pisces' jump position, Queenie M'Bela saw the flash signal come up on her own board.

Somebody's just made a jump, she told herself. She started a track on the worldline convergence angles and called up to Captain Dringoth to let the Skipper know.

# Chapter 2: "Pursuit"

"Success doesn't consist of never making mistakes, but of never making the same one a second time."

George Bernard Shaw

Jumpship Cygnus

Time Stream: T-004

T-date: T-004-2-20

Monthan Dringoth felt betrayed, personally insulted. In a twenty-six-year career with Time Guard, no crewmate of his had ever abandoned his station or deserted his buddies in combat. Now Golich had gone and done the unthinkable. If Acth:On'e was even close to being right, Golich had deserted Cygnus and taken up with a ring of pirates using a salvaged jumpship to flit across time streams and ambush unsuspecting freighters, lighters, maybe even unguarded worlds for anything of value they might be manifesting.

It was probably inevitable that crooks would someday find a way to grab a jumpship and make use of it.

Doesn't say much for the Guard and the Alliance, Dringoth thought sourly. If our own malcontents can do something like this, what might the real enemy—the Bugs—manage to do?

He didn't want to think about it. He just wanted his XO back and the pirates locked up, or worse.

Dringoth had already advised TACTRON of the situation and he was sitting on the command deck reviewing status of the Twister installation when his orders came back. Queenie had a decent track on Pisces' last position and with some finagling, ought to be able to project some likely courses across the time streams. Even now, she was plotting likely temporal trajectories, for Dringoth had already decided there would be some kind of pursuit, even if he had to commandeer his own ship from its approved mission.

Now the pirates had gone and done it. It was way past time to start enforcing Alliance laws against brigandage and robbery and put an end to the scourge that had been the Alliance's dirty little secret for too long.

TACTRON's orders weren't unexpected but Dringoth was already working out ways to make the most of them, without violating the letter of the commands....

"...pursuit authorized subject to demands of Twister installation...Twister will be operational on T-date T-002-8-11....maintain readiness for additional defensive support of Byrd's Draconis...Commandstar visits T-002-8-15 for operational readiness inspection...all installation and maintenance work orders must be completed T-002-8-14 at latest...advise combat readiness as of T-002-7-31...TACTRON out...."

So that was it. Once he had orders in hand, Dringoth wasted no time in hailing M'Bela up to the command deck. The TS1 had been taking a well-earned break in the crews' mess and was about to indulge in a few sweetchews when Dringoth's voice came over the 1MC.

"TS1 to command deck at once. TS1, report to command deck...."

M'Bela shrugged and rolled her eyes, earning a sympathetic smile from Alicia Yang, herself sipping at a hot spice tea.

"No rest for the weary," M'Bela mumbled.

On the command deck, Dringoth was direct. "Give me your best trajectory plot on Pisces."

M'Bela went to her own console, portside aft of Dringoth's command seat and called up the data. "I washed all the convergence data through ISAAC an hour ago, Skipper. And I input the residual decoherence wake signals from the jump itself. ISAAC crunched on it for awhile and came up with these possibilities—"

Dringoth studied what looked like a 'fan' of possibilities on the screen. "All these are possible?"

"According to ISAAC. The probability cone is densest in the center—here." She tapped the display with a finger clanking with rings and bracelets. "That's ISAAC's call on the most likely course."

Dringoth h'mmed and stroked his beard. "K-World, or someplace nearby, in the Sturdivant system. Why the hell would pirates go there, right into the teeth of the Alliance's strongest patrol defenses? Doesn't make any sense, Queenie."

M'Bela had a theory but she was reluctant to voice it. However, Dringoth was an acknowledged expert at dragging theories and hunches out of his crew.

"Okay, Queenie, I see the wheels turning inside that head. Out with it."

M'Bela idly fingered her bone necklace. "Well, sir, if Commander Golich's with Pisces—willingly or not—then K-World might be a logical objective even with all its defenses and Time Guard ships and patrols. The Commander has family there, or did. I don't know what the pirates might be after but K-World could be a juicy target, even with the risk of capture. A lot of trading goes on inside the bazaars around Gibbstown and Nomad and Sabra and the other villages. Plus, the Alliance has its people there...the General Assembly, the Secretariat, the Security Council. If the payoff is rich enough, maybe some kind of hijacking or kidnapping for ransom, these pirates might be willing to take a pretty big risk." She patted her display. "And anyway, ISAAC thinks K-World is the most probable target."

"That's good enough for me. Let's make ready to jump. Set K-World as the destination. Can you follow the deco wake during the jump?"

"I've already programmed ISAAC to do that, sir. If there's even a faint wisp of a trail of decoherence wake, we'll smoke 'em out."

"Very well." Dringoth passed the word over the ship's 1MC to make ready to jump.

One way or another, he was going to find Commander Nathan Golich and put his wayward XO before at least a captain's mast...maybe even a court-martial, for the Guard couldn't abide top officers deserting their posts in the midst of a dirty war with the Bugs.

When Pisces came out of jump and found herself on approach to Keaton's World, time stream T-004, she ran into a rather unpleasant surprise. M'Bela's analysis of Pisces' trajectory across time streams had been spot on and jumpship Cygnus was already there, ready and waiting, when the pirate ship appeared in a flash of light and spinning worldlines. M'Bela had made a guess as to Pisces' destination, mapped out a temporal shortcut and put Cygnus in the same time stream less than a hundred kilometers off Malakel's port bow.

And she wasn't alone either, for two other jumpships had rendezvoused with Cygnus to form an impenetrable flotilla around the pirates' ship.

To make matters worse, as soon as Pisces had appeared, Cygnus had made a carefully calibrated shot from her magpulse cannon and expertly disabled Pisces' singularity core.

Golich was studying the smoking mess inside the tailpod when Malakel arrived. The two of them said nothing for a few moments. The core chamber was blackened and scorched, smoke and debris still drifting about the compartment. The same shot had also fried Pisces' propulsors as well. The entire tailpod was a pile of melted slag. Only the hull breach bots had worked, quickly sealing off the tailpod from the vacuum outside.

"We're dead and adrift for the moment," Golich muttered. "This is not fixable. She needs to be careened and docked...somewhere."

Malakel said, "A momentary standoff. Perhaps we can reason with them, yes? Offer them something of value, something that would lure them away."

"Like what?"

Malakel was deep in thought when the comm buzzed. It was Vinh, up on the command deck. His voice was thick.

"Message coming in, Captain. On the public channel."

"What does it say, Vinh?"

"It reads 'You are surrounded. Surrender, secure your weapons, and prepare to be boarded. Not answering will be considered an escape attempt. We will respond accordingly....'"

Golich shook his head slowly. "That sounds like Dringoth, Malakel." He left the tailpod, after ensuring the hull bots would hold and made his way forward one deck to the lockout. He took a quick peek out a nearby porthole. "That's Cygnus, all right. She could blow us into atom fluff with one shot. And she's got company too."

"We have items they would find valuable. It's just a matter of negotiation among reasonable people. Everybody has a price."

Golich stared at Malakel like he had two heads. "You don't get it, do you? That's Time Guard out there. Monthan Dringoth. Dringoth is not 'reasonable people'. He's a fanatic, he wears black and gold to bed every night. He eats, drinks, breathes and craps Time Guard. You can't negotiate with the man. Believe me, I've tried."

But Malakel wasn't persuaded. He stroked his beard. "Something valuable...what would a Time Guard jumpship captain find valuable?"

Golich said, "Look, Malakel, it's me they're after. There's never been a mutiny or a desertion under combat in the whole history of Time Guard. If I know Dringoth, he'll die before he lefts that happen on his watch. It's me they want."

"What are you suggesting, Commander? That you are what they value most. Surely—"

Golich held up a hand and the idea came tumbling out almost before it became fully formed in his mind, unwanted, unbidden, hazy, but there all the same.

"Just this. Let me leave the ship. You have escape pods?"

"Three," Malakel admitted. "Disguised to look like garbage cans."

"Put me in one. Load another one with as much loot as you can fit in. I'll drop to the surface...in fact, put me down in the Sand Sea. I know the area. So do you. I can hide forever down there."

"How does this help us?"

"I'll hide your loot. Put that plaster cast of Keaton's first steps in there...that's probably the most valuable thing. Then let Cygnus board you. They'll find nothing, maybe a few items you leave behind to make it worth their while. They write you up, issue a few citations for safety violations, maybe a summons, whatever and they leave. I won't be here. They won't find what they really want and they'll have to look somewhere else."

Malakel was skeptical. "Time Guard will take us into custody. Impound my ship. You said it yourself...it's illegal for civilians to operate jumpships. This solves nothing."

Golich conceded it was possible. "I'm sure it's me they want. Once they realize I've gotten away, their attentions will be focused on finding me. If you and your crew seem harmless enough, they may let their guard down. If I can draw their attention to the surface, they'll forget about you. I could even draw up some kind of fake orders from TACTRON you could put out. My wristpad's still got the encryption chip and the right frequency coupler. Something telling the other ships to pull back, go off and investigate some made-up target of interest, in the outworlds, a long way off. That makes it a little more even...just you and Cygnus."

Malakel was warming to the idea. "I'll consider it as long as I come with you, down to the surface." He smiled a thin smirk. "I like to keep up with my investments. You're right about one thing, Commander. Of all the loot we've seized over the last few years, you are indeed the most valuable." He patted Golich on the cheek. "I wouldn't want anything to happen to my biggest investment."

"Once the odds are more even, I can come back to the ship. Or you and me together. I'm sure I can arrange passage on the SkyLift. We'll have to disguise ourselves, hide the stuff we've taken. But you've got nanoderm. We'll just be a couple of hard-working merchants, just trying to make a buck."

"Serving K-World's finest in orbit," Malakel added with a grin. "Commander, I like the way you think. You'll do well here."

"I have my reasons, Malakel."

"Yes, I remember. Let's get to work."

Over the next few hours, every stolen artifact they could cram into an escape pod was loaded into one of the capsules. Its onboard controller was an AI called GENGHIS. The controller was programmed for a ballistic descent to coded coordinates in the middle of K-World's Sand Sea, hundreds of kilometers from Gibbstown or any other settlement.

"We'll try to drop to the same coordinates," Golich explained. "We'll find a place to bury the goods, mark it well and get the hell out of there. If we're accurate, we shouldn't be too far from the Central Hills."

Malakel said, "Trying to relive the past, Commander? In this time stream, you and I hadn't yet met. And I hadn't taken up a life of crime yet."

"You were a hermit, Malakel."

"I prefer the term 'sandseer.' I may have been anti-social but I was already making plans...all I needed was a ride to all the riches I had foreseen. That's when Pisces showed up."

Golich's face turned serious. "If your navigator, the de Salta kid, is accurate, we've arrived before Amanda and Kylie were murdered. That's what I have to stop."

Malakel could see the grim determination lining Golich's face. Wrinkles, creases, furrows, lines and crow's feet tightened into fists. He said nothing and the two of them set to work preparing to drop to the surface.

Malakel had a question. "How long does this drop take?"

Natalya Afrem was helping Malakel and Golich into a single pod. She shrugged. "Who knows? These lifeboats are just basically big cans with oxygen and seats. Extremely limited maneuverability. Basically, you'll be making a ballistic entry...in fact, you may hit seven or eight G's on the way down. We haven't had time to do much more than a quick check of systems on these pods. So to answer your question, the best answer is: it depends. A nominal profile should put you on the ground in half an hour after hitting the upper atmosphere...entry interface. About a hundred kilometers above ground."

"And we are headed for ground, aren't we, Natalya?" asked Golich. "As in... solid ground. What's our projected landing point?"

"The Sand Sea, just east of Sabra Township, maybe about fifty klicks from Loch Lithgow," de Salta cut in.

"I guess that about covers it," Natalya announced. "Stay in your suits all the way to the ground. I can't guarantee these pods will hold up. Hell, the last time they had a thorough checkout, Pisces had just gotten in a scrap with Time Guard at Telitor. Two years ago at least. But it's the best we have." Her lips tightened, thinking of how close that one had been.

"Okay...let's move out!" Golich decided. Malakel looked a little less sure of what was coming.

Pisces' garbage cans were docked to a ring between the command deck and the Hab and crew deck. With a great deal of jostling and thumping, the two hypersuited occupants of Pod A pushed down the central gangway in a tense silence and boarded. As they were climbing in, Vinh told Malakel the other pod was loaded up to her hatch flanges.

"We crammed everything in we could, even that cast of Old Man Keaton's footsteps. It should land near your drop...if we're lucky."

Atmosphere entry was less than an hour away.

Golich took the pilot's seat with Malakel beside him. It was like being in a closet.

"Powering up," Golich announced. "Auto sep in ten minutes." He checked with Vinh on Pisces' command deck, coordinating and synchronizing.

As Golich went through his departure checklist, Malakel stared grimly at the changing cloudscape three hundred and twenty kilometers below them. It was just dawn. The day-night terminator was sliding westward like a great curtain, revealing the dappled surface of the eastern Sand Sea, with its waves of tan and ocher dunes rolling into view.

"One minute to auto separation," Golich told him. "Check your harness. Go to max on your suit oxygen. Close your visor and button up. I don't trust GENGHIS so I'm doing this manually. This is likely to get hairy before we're all done."

"Commander," Malakel reminded him, "whenever I have to go diving into some planet's atmosphere, I'm asking for you."

Golich smiled a taut smile, his eyes rapidly scanning instruments. "Thanks. I'd rather not make a habit of this. We train for this in Time Guard, but I've never done it for real."

The separation maneuver was a series of loud bangs, followed by a mild jolt as A Pod undocked cleanly. Her aft thrusters fired briefly to put her on a path up and away from Pisces. Golich spotted the other pod out of the corner of his eye. It seemed to have made the separation cleanly. Vinh soon confirmed that.

"Two pods away...that's a good start." Pisces' XO didn't know it, but both pods were immediately picked up and tracked by Cygnus.

"I make us at about one five six kilometers above entry point," Golich said. "Setting up for ballistic entry now."

Malakel stared out the porthole beside his head. The coastline of Loch Lithgow had just drifted into view at the horizon, streaked with ruddy desert and deep brown blotches. Comforting thought, he told himself. At least we have land under our feet.

"How well does this garbage can fly?" Malakel wondered.

Golich maneuvered them around to make entry, flying with their backs to the planet.

"She should fly about like a garbage can," he replied. "I've got an offset center of lift, so I can roll us left and right and shift the trajectory that way, if I want. Beyond that, we're basically making a big dive into the atmosphere."

"I just hope we stay dry. There's an awful lot of Loch Lithgow coming up."

Pod A was shaped like a squat ball with a flattened top. With her broad bottom now facing into the direction of flight, Golich rolled the little ship first one way, then the other, trying to keep a blinking red dot centered between lines on his attitude display. "Too shallow and we may skip off the top of the atmosphere. Too steep and—"

"We're toast," finished Malakel. He tugged on his shoulder straps a little tighter.

The first reddish-orange streamers appeared outside the porthole a few moments later, tongues of flame licking up the side of the pod as the ship plunged steeply into the atmosphere.

As they settled deeper, Malakel felt a weight pressing down on his chest. Deceleration was already generating measurable forces on the crew.

"Two g's," Golich announced. "I'm rolling sixty degrees left...trying to null out a little drift. We're in the corridor okay...a little high but still in the green."

Malakel wondered just how they were going to find the other pod and hide its contents.

"Three g's..." Golich said, a moment later. Malakel didn't need an announcement. He realized all the grunts and pants were coming from him.

"Passing through four hundred k," Golich muttered. He tweaked a hand controller and the tiny capsule rolled to port, shifting her offset center of lift to bend the trajectory a little shallower. "Going shallow...I'm trying to cut down on the g's a little, give us a break."

They were now below one hundred twenty kilometers altitude, enveloped in a white-hot sheath of ionized plasma, streaking landward at twenty-four thousand kilometers an hour.

Golich and Malakel were both soon bathed in sweat, while outside the ship's portholes, orange flames lapped at the edges of the glass, forming ribbons and curlicues and tree branches and fantastic nameless shapes of incandescent pink. A pearlescent bow formed a few centimeters beyond Malakel's porthole, bending and twisting as if it were alive.

And through it all, the g's rose steadily on both of them...three, three and a half, four...five...six g's.

Malakel forced out short oomphs of breath, as Golich had taught him, but breath was steadily becoming precious. He tried focusing on the instrument panel, on the porthole, anything to take his mind off the crushing weight sitting on his chest.

"Under two hundred k," Golich gritted out. The pilot zeroed in on their corridor, his eyes glued to the graph on the panel and the red dot indicating their position. "Drogue should be coming out in fifty seconds."

The pod was now falling faster, picking up speed again, through the upper levels of the stratosphere. Golich's maneuvering had forced them beyond the nominal corridor; the dot had moved outside the lines on the graph. They were landing long, overshooting the original impact zone in the central Sand Sea. The Commander deployed the periscope once the worst of the plasma sheath had vanished and quickly realized what was happening.

"Coastline up ahead. Looks like we've gone past the original landing zone."

Malakel saw the same thing. He sucked in a few deliciously deep breaths, then forced out, "Can you tell where we are?"

"Maybe the Loch," Golich grunted. "Computer's projecting touchdown just off the east coast, not too far from Sabra Township, near the canal."

"That doesn't sound good to me," Malakel grumbled.

Golich concentrated on steering them back on course, but the pod's descent path was too steep. "Drogue chute in less than five...four...three...two...one...mark!"

Almost before the words were out of his mouth, a great shuddering jolt slammed the little pod. Through his porthole, Malakel could see the chute reefing lines stream out, snapping and twisting in the slipstream, then snapping smartly into the welcome sight of a red and white canopy. The drogue filled quickly with air and Pod A jerked and slowed its descent from several thousand kilometers an hour to less than three hundred.

Golich studied the view on his periscope. "It's the Loch, for sure. There's the coastline."

Malakel watched the clock carefully, counting down the last seconds to main chute deployment. "Maybe we can still steer back toward land. Isn't the main chute pretty maneuverable?"

"Here go the mains—"

Another series of jerks and jolts was followed by a sharp deceleration force, throwing the crew of Pod A forward against their harnesses. The little pod shimmied and shuddered like a wet dog before the chutes stabilized her oscillation and damped out the swaying. The mains filled with air and billowed out to their full twenty-meter dimension, looking like a huge inflatable wing...a paraglider.

"I'm banking now..." Golich told them. "Hold on to your hat...this can be a bit of a carnival ride."

The Commander used the paraglider's extensible risers to alternately bank and turn, trying to steer them back on shore. But their descent and the prevailing winds worked against Golich's efforts.

"Still water...lots of it," Malakel told him. "We're through ten-thousand...down at forty- two...landing bag deploy coming up."

The last few minutes of Pod A's descent seemed to flash by in a blur of frantic activity, punctuated by jerks, jolts, bangs, pops and whistles.

The impact, when it came, was a careening slap against the side of the pod's hull. When he peered out his porthole, Malakel saw only water, frothing, bubbling water. Then the little ship rolled upright as her flotation gear hissed out into place and the welcome view of sun and sky replaced the underwater scene.

That's when Malakel saw the echinotops cruising by right outside the hatch.

"Uh, Commander...looks like we've got company."

Pod A had splashed down in the very center, the deepest part, of Loch Lithgow.

Evelyn M'Bela was sure that Commander Golich was aboard one of those 'garbage' pods Pisces had just jettisoned. It was partly a hunch and partly an encrypted signal that had emanated from one of the pods, a signal on a reserve Time Guard frequency used only for emergency, flash traffic. The signal was encrypted but M'Bela triangulated the source back to one of the rapidly descending pods.

"Where'd they come down?" Dringoth asked.

M'Bela explained. "I think the signal was an ELB...emergency locator beacon. We all have the chips in our shoulder capsules. My best guess is somewhere in the middle of that big lake."

"Loch Lithgow?" Dringoth gave that some thought. "I thought Alicia saw two canisters dropped from Pisces."

"I did," Yang agreed. "Both entered the atmosphere."

"We've got to find Commander Golich," Dringoth decided. "He may be in danger, or being held hostage."

M'Bela glanced at Yang but said nothing.

"Yang, you and Queenie, get down to the surface. Contact the Time Guard commander in Gibbstown—last I heard, it was Jump Admiral Hoyt something or other—but in this time stream, who knows? Organize a search party, and concentrate on Lithgow and the Sand Sea. Find Golich."

"Yes, sir," they both answered.

"URME and I will work with the other ships here to organize a boarding party. We'll search Pisces from bow to stern and take her crew into custody. That's all...move out!"

As M'Bela and Yang prepared to leave Cygnus for the SkyLift terminal at Gateway Station, Dringoth checked his message from Acth:On'e, still back at Byrd's Draconis, still overseeing installation and checkout of the Time Twister.

There was nothing on his wristpad or any ship comms. No news is good news, I hope. That Twister's got to be operational in ten days or it's my head, Dringoth told himself. He slid aft down the gangway to the armory on Cygnus' E deck to grab a mag rifle. "URME, meet me at the lockout. I'm putting you in a capsule for this little expedition."

<<Begging the Captain's pardon, sir but swarm entities such as myself should be left uncontained in forced entry situations, where the target is considered hostile. Time Guard regulation....>>

"I don't care about Time Guard regulations, URME, do as you're ordered. I don't know what we might find on that pirate ship and I can't risk losing my onboard memory reserve entity to a lucky shot."

URME took his time breaking down structure and only reluctantly drifted toward the containment capsule in Dringoth's hand. When the master signaled full containment, he snapped the capsule shut, hung it on a web belt and cycled through the lockout, already clad in full hypersuit.

He looked forward to finally roughing up a few goons, scoundrels and pirates when they boarded Pisces.

As ordered, Evelyn M'Bela and Alicia Yang took a SkyLift shuttle down to the terminal in the middle of Gibbstown and walked to the Time Guard base on the outskirts. Flashing IDs and cycling through biometrics, they were eventually escorted into the offices of Jump Admiral Hoyt, who had already received a flash message from Dringoth about his missing officer.

Hoyt was a burly, barrel-chested and bearded O-8, who ripped off a return salute with the enthusiasm of a ten-year old.

"Dringoth sent me the details," Hoyt told the time jumpers. "I don't pretend to understand it all. How the hell does a jump ship XO get himself kidnapped by pirates...?" Hoyt shrugged, answering his own question. "Anyway, I've requisitioned a ship from Sky Service. You two will join my T2 staff—Jump Lieutenant Kitale will be in command—on a systematic search centered on the coordinates Cygnus provided. If your XO's in the Sand Sea or splashing around in Loch Lithgow, we'll find him."

With that, Yang and M'Bela were driven to the skyship garage a few blocks away and found themselves soaring over the trackless wastes of the Sand Sea less than half an hour later. M'Bela kept trying to get a fix on the ghostly signal she had seen before, but it kept cutting out.

"Could be a lot of reasons," she told the skyship crew. "Interference from another signal. The wearer's injured. He's turned the thing off, although that's against regulations. Our best bet is to head for the original touchdown coordinates and work outward from there."

The skyship pilot agreed and they were soon nosing around the scablands bordering the vast lake that was Loch Lithgow, following a spiral search pattern of increasing radius, all eyes glued to the windows and other detection gear the ship carried.

But they've found no evidence that human beings had been in the area at all.

Other skyships were plying the skies across K-World at that same time. One of them, nicknamed Arak, bore two unusual passengers, for it had been Arak that had spotted the escape pod bobbing about in the Loch an hour before and dropped down for a closer look at two figures waving at them from a nearby sandbar.

Nathan Golich and Kisan Malakel were hoisted aboard, given dry clothes and towels and hot tea and bread to eat, while Arak reported her unscheduled stop and pickup.

When Golich inquired of the ship steward where Arak was headed, the servbot whirred happily and replied "Next stop is Sabra Township...Sabra Township twenty-five minutes ahead."

Golich lay back against the headrest of the seat and watch the tan and ocher dunes sliding behind them as they bore east by southeast. "Perfect," he said quietly. "I just hope I'm not too late."

Malakel was nursing his own spice tea and started to say something but didn't. What troubled this time jumper so? What storms roiled his mind...you could see it in the lines of his face, the way his brow furrowed as he kept asking how much longer.

Malakel decided maybe it hadn't been such a great idea to drop down to the surface at all. He closed his eyes, trying to visualize what was happening on his prized ship Pisces, several hundred kilometers above them. He wanted in the worst way to contact Vinh and the others, but Golich had warned him about comm silence and the time jumper was probably right. Still, he worried and fidgeted in his seat.

Sabra Township was little more than scattering of huts and shops and crude hovels and habs, perched at the foot of the rose-colored Central Hills, surrounded on three sides of its peninsula by dunes and sand bogs.

Arak set down on a narrow ledge behind the village and Golich was pushing his way through the debarking passengers, Malakel in tow, before the nose anchor of the ship had even been secured to its mooring mast.

"This way," the Commander yelled. He hustled through thickets of waiting passengers and shot out of the lounge onto a winding trail that led down the hill into the heart of the village. "It's just a few blocks. When I was a boy, I used to watch skyships coming and going from that hill over there...watched 'em and dreamed about being a pilot one day—"

Golich's house was a five-minute walk, little more than a few domes clustered around a courtyard, a sandbrick and mortar pile that could have been mistaken for dozens of similar structures about the township.

"Commander," Malakel hustled after the XO, "maybe this isn't such a—"

"Nonsense, I'll just see if Amanda's here...and Kylie...she might be at Tutor this morning."

Inside, Amanda Golich was working on the guts of some broken-down bot, a medbot it turned out, for Amanda was a nurse supervisor at the local hospital. She started when she saw Golich and stood up, a crooked smile on her face.

"Nathan...what...how'd you get here? When did you get in? I thought you were on flight duty today...weren't you going to Nomad and back?"

They kissed. Golich held on to her a bit too tightly, and she smiled and twisted free. "I was in the neighborhood...just a quick stop at Gibbstown. Got some liberty time, they're turning around the ship, so---"he shrugged, "—here I am." He pinched himself, remembering what time stream, what worldline they were in. In this time stream, he was still with Sky Service.

She looked at him doubtfully, and shook her head. "You never were a very good liar. What've you done, gone AWOL or something? And who is this?"

Golich quickly blew off her words—the very mention of AWOL had momentarily chilled him, but he hoped she hadn't noticed. "This is, er, Kisan Malakel. Friend of mine in the Service...he's studying to be a pilot, so he's with me...kind of like a training ride."

Malakel nodded.

Golich looked around the little family room. It was compact and tidy. Amanda kept Howie the housebot busy cleaning day and night. "Where's Little One?"

Amanda was about to summon Howie for a few drinks to treat their guest. "I guess outside. She wanted to help the gardener. Hennie's doing something way in the back, in the woods, something special, Kylie said. She was really curious."

Henny?

With a cold gnawing pit of fear settling in his stomach, Golich looked at Malakel. The pirate noticed how all the color had suddenly drained out of Golich's face.

"Henzik? Tavoy?"

Amanda had bent back to her wiring job with the medbot, just as Howie the housebot whirred up with a tray of fruits and some drinks. "Of course, silly, who else? He's only been the gardener for this district for a million years. Why?"

Golich was out the door before Malakel could even react. The pirate caught up with the time jumper as he jogged around the corner of their house and streaked for some woods in the distance.

"Hey, Commander, hold up. What is it? What's the matter?"

Golich stopped at an old rotted-out tree stump, just on the edge of the woods. He caught his breath.

"I don't know what's happened. Maybe your navigator--de Salta—made a mistake. This is the wrong time stream. Tavoy, he's the one. He's the murderer. Thank God it hasn't happened yet. But he was never a gardener in the original worldline. Somehow, we've branched off...de Salta put us in the wrong worldline—" With that, Golich disappeared off into the woods, crashing heavily through thick brush and vines. Malakel blinked and had no choice but to follow him.

It was muggy and stuffy in the dark woods west of the main compound, flies and mosquitoes and lightning bugs strobing the air, when Golich and Malakel plunged into the trees. The land was gently rolling, tending downhill toward a service road that wrapped around the western edge of the woods, and Lockhart Creek beyond. The creek had no official name but everybody called it Lockhart Creek. That was because Vic Lockhart, who lived at Sabra Township, was always wading and fishing in it.

It was after six p.m., nicely dark, and Golich was sweaty and nervous, swatting at flies and bugs as he plunged ahead. What was it that Henzik Tavoy—the gardener, for God's sake!—was doing back here in the woods, with his daughter Kylie? He tried not to think about it.

They stepped carefully along a dusty dirt path as they made their way down a hill toward the service road. First Golich, then Malakel crossed the road and entered denser woods on the other side, the Sabra Woods. Everybody called them the Black Forest. The woods were dark and gloomy, even in daylight. Now, they had only armies of crickets and fireflies for company. Golich felt his way along carefully, treading a path as much from memory as feel. This deep in the gloom, no one would ever suspect that the desert of the Sand Sea was less than a kilometer away. Sabra villagers were proud and famous across K-World for their botanical and genetic accomplishments.

It had been a long time since he had been this far.

In time, a dim, yellow glow materialized through the thorny vine ahead and Golich made for it. The glow turned out to be the lantern on the front of Tavoy's tool shed. The gardener was right where Amanda said, painting some fencing on a pair of old sawhorses. Behind him the shed was silvery gray, with wood siding and a slate roof. It sagged from the years, like an old horse. Tavoy looked up as a branch snapped, noticed Golich and smiled.

"So you finally made it, I see. Welcome to the shed."

Golich was dubious. His eyes narrowed. "Alright, where's Kylie...what have you done with my daughter?"

Tavoy looked hurt, scrunching up all the crinkly lines around his eyes and mouth as if he'd been shot. "Nothing at all, nothing at all. Just thought you'd like to see something."

"And what would that be?"

He motioned them both around the back of the shed. "My new garden. Come on—I'll show you."

Cautiously, Golich and Malakel followed. A few dozen meters back of the shed, the brush opened onto a clearing, where Tavoy had fashioned a Japanese garden, right there in the middle of the Black Forest.

The clearing was roughly elliptical, maybe twenty meters long, ten to fifteen wide. It was dominated by an egg-shaped pool, some four to six meters deep, with a small wooden footbridge at one end. A small grotto beyond the footbridge was made of smooth, round stones, fashioned into the arc of a low wall, overlooking the deepest end of the water. A stream fed into the other end of the pool, where Tavoy had fashioned an earthen dam, creating the pool from the backflow out of Lockhart Creek. A gravel path filled with white stones led down to the pool, by the footbridge, and resumed climbing on the other side, toward a small pagoda mounted on a rocky rise. The pagoda was ringed with bronze lanterns—Tavoy called them yukidoro—and hordes of flies swarmed around the gently swaying lights. Water burbled and foamed around the bridge pilings. With the buzz of the flies and moths, only the burble and a steady drip-drip-drip from water gliding down the grotto walls filled the clearing.

Tavoy swept his arms around proudly. "Welcome to my garden. It's called the Time Garden."

Behind Golich, Malakel took a deep breath, letting his eyes follow the natural forms and contours of the place. "Sir, it is a beautiful place. So peaceful here. Why do you call it the Time Garden?"

Tavoy winked at them. "Kylie came back here on her own, not an hour ago. She found the place fascinating. Here, she could turn the clock back, have one more arachtyl game with Pete Eldridge. She wanted to win for once, you now...beat the Eldridge kid."

Golich nodded. Petey Eldridge lived next door to the Goliches. "Where'd she go? What have you done with her?" In this worldline, he couldn't be sure about Tavoy. In this time stream, maybe the guy didn't go off and murder anybody. Time Guard regs on causality violations filled his mind but he tried to blow them off.

Tavoy beckoned them down to the footbridge. They crossed to the middle, then stood there, leaning over the railing, peering down at the roiling, foaming water. "You don't want anything more than any of us wants. The Time Garden can make that possible. If you do it right, you can go visit Kylie and Pete. I'll bet they're having a great old time."

Golich figured he had heard just about every excuse a man could come up with. "Henzik Tavoy, that's the biggest pile of horse manure I've ever heard. You expect me to believe this nonsense? What've you been drinking?"

Tavoy turned dead serious. "Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. I'm the gardener for this place. Maybe operator is a better word. Been doing gardening and landscaping for longer than you know. The Time Garden's special. It ain't no ordinary garden."

Malakel was increasingly uneasy with how this was going. "Commander, maybe we should go back to—"

Golich waved him off brusquely. "No, I want to find Kylie. She needs to come home...now."

Tavoy was sympathetic. "Look...come down here. I'll show you." He came off the footbridge, stood on a slate landing beside the bridge piling. "I want to show you something."

Without understanding why—maybe it was his voice—Golich obeyed, silently trudging back down the hill. They stood together on top of the slate landing, the three of them, watching the patterns of swirling water, watching the reflected light of the lanterns break up into crazy forms.

"The Time Garden is like a door. Kind of a gateway or portal. If you go through it, the right way—and I'll have to show you how—it'll send you to whenever and wherever you want to go. Back into the past. That's where your Kylie just went. Even into the future, though that's a bit trickier."

Golich cocked his head, regarded Tavoy quizzically. "You're serious, aren't you? How do you know all this? Who the hell are you?"

Tavoy beamed. "I know this 'cause I run the portal. I'm the operator. Best damned operator in the whole Service, too."

Golich glared at him for a long minute, not knowing what to say. Was this real? Was Tavoy pulling his leg? Had he drowned Kylie...or worse? Then, he dabbed at a few tears with a handkerchief. "Sorry...maybe it's all the travel...all the time jumping. What do I have to do?"

Tavoy cradled his shoulders with his big ropy arms. "Sir, trust me...you can see Kylie again. You can play the game with her. You can say anything you want to, change anything, just the way you want it. Want to try it out?"

Golich suddenly stood upright, steeling himself. He snuffled back the last teardrops. Had Kylie already been murdered? "What a ridiculous idea. Why are you telling me all this...baloney?"

"'Cause it's not baloney. I been working on this garden for a long time...finally tinkered and scrounged and nurtured it along enough so that it works, at least most of the time. That's the key to it—time. Something we don't have a lot of around here...none of us do. We shouldn't be wasting what we have. This garden lets you go back, re-live what you want to, change anything you'd like—"

Golich pursed his lips, studied the gardener as if he were a specimen he'd just discovered, a strange new creature he'd stumbled over in the woods. "You really are serious...about all this--?"

"Dead serious." Now it was Tavoy's turn to show off a sort of half-cocked smile. "But there's one little catch."

"Of course there is. What is it? How does this contraption work?"

"Well, first thing is...you get in the water."

Golich studied the foaming pool. "You've got to be kidding."

"No, sir...just ease on down there—here, hold on to me, I'll help you—" With Malakel's help, Tavoy held him under an arm—after he'd removed his shoepacs—and let Golich sit for a moment on the slate landing. When he was ready, he pushed forward and slid in one motion right into the pool, sending a big splash all over Henzik Tavoy. He laughed and shivered.

"It's not as cold as it looks...in fact, it feels real good. You want me to strip...right, right here in the grotto?"

"Not at all." Tavoy went around the bridge piling to the grotto side, calling him. "Come under the bridge to about here—"

Golich glided through the foam. The water came up to his waist. He reached the spot Tavoy had indicated and waved for Malakel to come on in too. "Now what?"

"See the rock wall in front of you?"

"I see it."

"At the very base of that wall—right in the center of the curve—is an opening. It's about the size of your head and shoulders. You can squeeze through it, even you can—" he added, when Golich looked skeptical. "The way the Time Garden works is...you just duck below the water, hold your breath, and find that opening in the rock wall. Stick your head through and kick off. The Time Garden will do the rest."

Golich glared up at him. "That's the most cockeyed idea I ever heard. You want me to go under the water? Hold my breath and go below the surface and hope to hell I find this opening? And squeeze through it?"

Tavoy beamed. "That's how she works. Tried her out myself just the other night."

"Oh, really. And where did you go when you tried her out?"

Tavoy seemed to blush in the shadowy lantern light. "Rather not say, exactly...kind of personal. But it works. I came back okay. Kind of a shakedown cruise, you might say."

Now Malakel had slipped in and was shaking his head. "This is insane. We should both be sent to the rubber place for stunt like this. Commander...if I didn't know you better, I'd-"

"Just try it. Both of you. Hold your breath and go below. Hold out your hands. See that big black rock, right there?" He pointed to a fist-sized stone just above the waterline. "The opening's right below it. Maybe two meters down. But you'll have to hold your breath, kind of grope around to get into it."

Golich wasn't so sure about any of this. Amanda was okay, at least in this time stream. But Kylie...he had to find Kylie. And he wasn't so sure about Tavoy either. In the original time stream, Tavoy had gone berserk, killed several people, then slaughtered Amanda and Kylie before the killdrones got him. He just couldn't he sure.... "I'll bet—" He made up his mind. "Well, why the hell not? Hey...if I drown here, just tell Dringoth and Queenie and the others that I was stinking drunk...had ten Scotches in my room and wandered off. They'll believe that. This...no one will believe. I don't believe it myself."

"Remember—put your head through. And kick. Kick hard."

Golich nodded, sucking in huge gulps of air. He started to feel dizzy and stopped, then, suddenly without warning, he ducked his head under with a splash and a geyser of bubbles. In seconds, his black and gold tunic disappeared from view. Malakel waited a long moment, took a final glance at Tavoy, then did the same.

Tavoy stood silently by the side of the grotto wall, counting the seconds. Five...ten...fifteen...twenty...twenty-five...thirty—Most people didn't stay down any longer than half a minute....

# Chapter 3: "That which is lost...."

"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today."

Mother Theresa

Jumpship Pisces

Time Stream: T-119

T-date: T-010-2-08

When he opened his eyes, Nathan Golich knew with a certainty he could taste that he had been here before. The chaos, the creaking hull, the shouts and swirling bodies flashing by...it was Pisces, it was probably T-119, the ship had been hit and she was drifting.

Golich sat up, realizing he was lying prone on the deck in Engineering. Others were getting up too: Vance, the Chief Engineer and Pelu, the Fire Director. They had all been slammed to the deck after the collision...the thing, the debris, whatever, had hit Pisces.

Golich staggered to his feet.

"You okay, Lieutenant?" Pelu asked.

He was about to reply when Captain Quint's voice came over the 1MC.

"ABANDON SHIP BRIEFING IN THE CREWS' MESS...TEN MINUTES. ABANDON SHIP, ALL HANDS TO THE CREWS' MESS...."

Outside Engineering in the gangway, he had run into Malakel, but in the commotion, no one seemed to notice a strange face. That in itself was odd and, not for the first time, Golich wondered what the hell worldline they were in.

Golich was furious with Henzik Tavoy. He had ducked into Tavoy's homemade time portal to find Kylie, to get Kylie away before Tavoy could do anything to her. But instead, he'd wound up twenty years further back on the worldline, inside a doomed jumpship, and this time with a pirate and swindler for a partner.

Golich shoved Malakel back up the gangway toward the crews' mess. He explained what had happened, as best he could remember.

Pisces had been investigating a debris field, in the vicinity of a known neutron star, JSR1101-P88, a steep gravity well more commonly known as The Gullet. The place was on the other side of Time's Peak, near the borderlands, and was known to be a graveyard for unwitting and careless ships navigating the Peak and its peculiar confluence of time streams. Debris and ship wreckage were scattered through the sector and onboard Pisces, someone hadn't been paying attention. The ship struck some wreckage and her singularity core was offline. Worse, her propulsors were damaged and Pisces was effectively dead in space, unable to maneuver or jump out of The Gullet's powerful gravitational grip.

Now she was in a rapidly decaying orbit around The Gullet and unless maneuvering or jump capability could be re-established and soon, she would have to be abandoned.

"Abandoned?" Malakel cried. "But we found this ship drifting, lifeless and unmanned, we found her fair and square. We salvaged her—we followed Alliance laws to the letter, pulled her back into free space and made her shipshape again."

Golich said, "You haven't done that yet. She hasn't been abandoned. That prick Tavoy somehow sent us to this time stream. I'm just trying to find my daughter. In one of these time streams, maybe more than one, Tavoy goes berserk and murders Amanda and Kylie. I have to find that one and stop it...before--."

The Abandon Ship briefing by Captain Quint was short and to the point. Malakel was anxious that nothing happen to the ship he would later salvage but Golich wouldn't let him chew on it, for the order to abandon ship had already been given and the crew had to man the escape pods.

Golich shoved Malakel, still protesting, into a pod mounted on Pisces' F deck and dogged the hatch shut. After a brief countdown, Golich got Quint's permission to jettison and the pod shuddered as her escape thrusters flung her out into space, tumbling and yawing crazily until the pod's attitude controls could stabilize her.

Golich chanced a quick glance out his side porthole and saw the doomed Pisces momentarily surrounded by a halo of pods, all ejecting away from the mother ship. After a few moments, and a bout of unwelcome vomiting by Malakel, Golich managed to get the pod under control...for the time being.

But they were still caught in The Gullet's gravity well and it was only a matter of time before the pods, all of them, and Pisces herself were swallowed and obliterated by the intense gravity of the star.

"Just like before," Golich said to himself. "This worldline must be close to the one I went through before."

"What was that?" Malakel was cleaning up the mess he had made and dabbing at his mouth and face with wet wipes from a small locker nearby. "You were muttering something."

Golich sat back in his seat, loosened the harness and closed his eyes. The memories came flooding back. "Most of the crew was lost. Pisces was abandoned and the crew left in the pods. But these old pods still had some maneuvering capability back then. If I'm remembering right, we should be able to maneuver this bucket well enough, this far from The Gullet, to just pass by, a grazing approach. It's tricky. We were lucky. But when it happened before, the pod I was in managed to make a grazing pass just a few thousand kilometers from the star. In fact, we were accelerated to such a speed, we actually skimmed off the voidtime channel in this sector. That created a ripple on the edge of voidtime and that, my pirate friend, was detected by a jumpship in a nearby sector. I think it was the Aquarius. She jumped to our location and several pods were picked up, the crew brought on board, a little shaken but alive."

Golich looked over at his passenger. Malakel seemed pale, not at all the blustering, preternaturally calm confidence man he'd always been before. "I just don't want anything to happen to Pisces. I want to be able to salvage her later."

"And I didn't want anything to happen to Amanda and Kylie," Golich said.

"You were ready to kill Tavoy," Malakel was rummaging through the locker for some kind of rations. He found a pack and opened it, sniffing dubiously.

"I should have killed him in the garden. But when I realized we were in the wrong time stream—" Golich shrugged. "Maybe it's the Time Guard in me. We've all been trained on causality violations and what to do when they crop up. I just couldn't—and I let the dirtbag lead me on."

"And here we are. I guess time is like that. Pull on one string and everything else is affected."

Golich studied his instruments, concentrating on the pod's accelerometer. "We're picking up speed...feel it? We're accelerating and fast. I've got to figure out—or remember again—how to maneuver this crate."

Malakel munched on something from the ration pack. "This crap tastes like rat leg." He spat the stuff out, back into the opened pack. "Can you do it, Commander?"

"I have to. Aren't you always saying 'that which is lost cannot be found...until it's discovered.'"

"I say a lot of things."

"But it makes sense." Golich tried a few puffs on their thrusters and the pod responded smartly. "It's coming back to me now. Once we were rescued, the Guard promoted me. Gave me all kinds of medals and commendations, said I saved half the crew by showing them how to maneuver their pods to use The Gullet's gravity. They even offered me my own command, my own jumpship." Golich fondled the control handles gently, almost reverently. "But I turned it down."

"Why would you do that? I mean...your own ship—"

Golich thought. "I wasn't ready for command. And I knew that. True, I managed to pull a bunch of escape pods through a close encounter with a neutron star and get us rescued. But I had doubts, about myself. About whether I was really cut out for the pressure, the responsibility. The accountability. Captain Dringoth talks about that, too. I've had my run-ins with the Captain...don't get me wrong. And I still think he's a prima donna and a glory-seeking scoundrel with some kind of messiah complex. But he's right about what happens when you sit in that left-hand seat on the command deck. You're responsible...for everything. The ship, the mission, the lives of your crew..." Golich chuckled. "The crew's well-being. Maybe that's what I lost...until now. Maybe that's what I discovered. I never really trusted myself...or wanted to trust myself, in command situations. I couldn't stop what happened to Amanda and Kylie. I tried to but I couldn't protect them. That's what put us here. It just didn't seem that I should be entrusted with other lives either."

Malakel peered out his own porthole at the rapidly growing bulk of JSR1101-P88, a brilliant blue-white, mostly featureless orb that outshone half the starfield around them. Already the pod's radiation counters were clicking away madly.

"I do think you should be thinking about our lives, Commander. And quickly, if you please."

"Oh...right."

Over the next few hours, while Malakel alternately dozed and stared in terror at the looming face of The Gullet, Golich managed to pulse the pod's thrusters enough to gain even more speed. He knew that the pod had only a rudimentary navigation system. Most of the maneuvers, the attitude adjustments and the thruster pulses he had to make were little more than seat-of-the-pants, educated guesses, feeling their way deeper into JSR's gravity well and dredging up little tweaks and adjustments from his memory of having done this before.

"Anything I can do to help?" Malakel said.

"You can pray."

At the pod's perihelion point, she was little more than five thousand kilometers from JSR's visible surface, screaming past at several hundred thousand kilometers per hour. Malakel cranked up the pod's life support system to full in an effort to cool the cabin down but it was hopeless and they were both bathed in sweat and breathing hard from extra g's under their increasing acceleration.

Finally, Golich announced. "That's it. We're out of fuel. It's up to Sir Isaac Newton now. I've got our speed up as high as we can go. I just hope it's enough."

Malakel prayed, for the first time in years.

With prayer, some last minute finagling with the propellant fumes still left in the thrusters, and careful attention to their orientation and attitude, the escape pod skimmed the top of the photosphere, cooking in a scalding bath of radiation and heat and shot out the other side of the star, screaming through intense magnetic fields, twisted filaments of plasma dancing across their field of view and enveloped in a superheated bubble that blinded them to anything around them.

Golich closed his eyes, dimly aware that Malakel had already passed out. His hands still clung to the now-useless control handles. It took too much effort to move them. Sweat stung his eyes. His skin felt shrunken and desiccated. His lips were cracked and his throat felt like a desert. He dreamed of being buried alive in a bog in the Sand Sea, clawing at the surface, clawing for air but unable to reach safety.

They were at the mercy now of forces that no man could handle.

He'd done everything he could. For Amanda. For Kylie. For himself. Once, he'd been here before and managed to avoid careening down the gravitational throat of The Gullet, but now...did this worldline work the same way? Had he done the right things, made the right moves, the right decisions?

Lives were at stake here. When you're in command, command. One of Dringoth's favorite sayings. But he couldn't undo the murder of Amanda and Kylie without affecting everything else. Pull on a string and causality just bites you in the ass.

With his last shred of consciousness, Golich thought he saw something outside the porthole that made his heart skip...had he imagined it?

Faint spiderweb lines crisscrossed the starfield. Gossamer string draped across the universe and, with effort, he moved his eyes to the accelerometer. The dial showed the pod's velocity at incomprehensible levels, off scale high, pegging the top of the indicator.

Then, with the barest hint of a smile on his face, he knew what it was. The pod had gained so much speed she had twisted local spacetime into a bare ripple.

It was voidtime they were skimming past. The pod had gained so much velocity whipping around JSR1101-P88 that she had buckled the fabric of spacetime and pinched open a tiny sliver of a seam in voidtime.

And that meant someone somewhere would find them, for Time Guard had always kept a close eye on anything entering and leaving voidtime.

Golich then let the void of unconsciousness wash over him.

When he came to, Nathan Golich didn't know what time stream they were in or whether he and Malakel might have just died and gone off to spend eternity in some kind of purgatory. He willed his eyes open and the blur eventually settled down to something he could focus on.

If this was purgatory or hell, it bore a close resemblance to a jumpship sickbay.

When a face appeared in his field of view, and a black and gold tunic bearing Time Guard insignia bent over him, Golich finally relaxed and let every sensation he could feel wash over him.

"Just lie still, Commander," came the voice. It was female, with a distinct but comforting lilt to it. "The medbots are still at work inside you."

Golich squinted at her rank and name patch. "Okay, Jumpmaster Figaretti, where am I? What time stream is this?"

There was movement behind Figaretti and another person came in. He was tall, black-haired, olive-complexioned and the cross-orbital and two stars insignia on his lapels said Captain.

"I can answer that, Commander. This is T-119 but we're getting ready to make a jump back to T-001. We're headed to Keaton's World and you, sir, are in my custody."

Golich blinked. His head felt like it was stuffed with a mattress. "Nathan Golich, XO of the Cygnus."

The Captain stuck out a hand, which Golich shook weakly. "Captain Angel Herrera, commander, U.A.S. Aquarius. And I see the question in your eyes...yes, Commander, we did rescue several escape pods. And we do have your...shall we say, your partner, also in custody. Special custody."

"I assume you mean Malakel."

"Indeed. Mr. Malakel is wanted across the Alliance from Time's Peak to Newton's Jaw...robbery, piracy, kidnapping, hijacking, money laundering, trafficking in stolen goods, quite a long list of indiscretions, if I do say so."

Golich gratefully took a small cup of tea from Figaretti and sipped. "I'm also in custody too?"

Herrera's face became an impassive, official-looking mask. "I'm afraid I have orders to convey you to K-World. Time Guard takes a dim view of desertion, dereliction of duty and that sort of thing."

"Orders?"

"From Commandstar himself. I can show you. But once you're well enough to stand up, I'm afraid you'll be confined to quarters for the duration. Also orders."

Golich finished the tea. Herrera's words weighed heavily on his mind. And he was still furious at Henzik Tavoy, for tricking both he and Malakel. Maybe Malakel was right: pull on one string in a worldline and everything else was affected.

"Captain, in this time stream T-119, I received all kinds of awards and commendations for getting my crew aboard Pisces through the Gullet. You can check the records. That should count for something."

"Perhaps it does, in T-119," Herrera said coldly. "But in T-001, you're still a deserter. And that's where we're headed in—"he checked his wristpad, "—about ten minutes."

"I wish I could just stay here, in this time."

Herrera just glared at him. "The time doesn't matter, when it's dereliction of duty." He turned to his sensor tech, Figaretti. "Get him up. Put him in Zhang's bunk. Commander," Herrera turned back, "your conditions in custody are at my discretion. I could apply restraints, even a MOB."

Golich was already struggling upright. "That won't be necessary, Captain. I'll behave."

Figaretti and one other crewman then escorted Golich around the deck passageway to a tiny berth on the other side. He was shoved in firmly and the door locked behind. There was barely room enough to stand or turn around.

Golich tried the bunk, found it still warm. Zhang must have just gone on duty, he decided. Hope he had a good night's sleep.

Golich had just shut his eyes when the 1MC chirped outside the berth. It was Herrera's voice.

"All hands, make ready to jump. T-001 is loaded. Standby the core and propulsors."

Moments later, Golich felt the first spinning of the twist fields collapsing around the ship. He closed his eyes and thought of more pleasant things: like the last day he and Amanda and Kylie had been on their little sloop Windsong, carving the waves across Loch Lithgow, the sails filled to billowing with a stiff following wind...or maybe the day he'd finished jolt school and how he stood there proudly under the night sky of Urth's Moon Luna, while the ceremony unfolded. The graduation ceremony—it was always at night--at Farside's Hawking Field was a sight to behold: the graduation and commissioning ceremony always ended with a small, tightly controlled formation of escort jumpships popping out of voidtime right over the reviewing stands and forming the Time Guard emblem in the star-lit night-time sky.

He'd found himself shouting "Tempus Regit!" as loud as any of the cadets back then. And he meant it.

The spinning grew more pronounced and Golich steeled himself for the jump.

He counted down the seconds in his mind, the procedure he knew so well. "Three...two...one...mark!" He felt the reassuring shudder as Aquarius lurched violently into the river of time.

Up on the command deck, Captain Angel Herrera slammed Aquarius' flow vanes out full and punched the ship hard over, right into the faint, barely perceptible fingers of Time Stream T-001. Like a cocked fist, T-001 grabbed them and yanked them out of the mainstream and into the midst of a million tomorrows.

After that, Golich slumped in his bunk and let the black hole of the Zone-Out wash over him.

His last fleeting thought was an image of Monthan Dringoth looming over his head, like a malevolent spirit, ready to devour him whole.

When he awakened, Golich twisted out of the bunk, hitting his head on the overhead stanchion, and craned to see out the porthole. It was K-World, all right.

A tan and ocher desert world, with a few drops of blue spotted across the landscape and the big blue elliptical bowl of Loch Lithgow just past the terminator.

Gateway Station loomed ahead and that's when the berth door swung open. It was Herrera and a crewman Golich hadn't met before. His name patch read Bioko.

"Sorry about this," Herrera announced. "But I have my orders." He nodded to Bioko, who carried a small capsule in one hand. He motioned for Golich to hold out his wrists.

Livecuffs, Golich realized. Standard procedure for transporting prisoners. As Bioko discharged the capsule and the bot cloud wrapped itself around his wrists, forming an unbreakable restraint, Herrera went on, reading some official words from his own wristpad....

"Commander Nathan Golich, I remand you to the custody of the Judge Advocate General Office of Time Guard Hawking Base. Captain Kolyanova and her men will take you into custody. You're being transported down on SkyLift to Hawking Base, to the brig there, for further legal action. Do you have anything to say?"

"No...let's just get this over with."

Golich could just see the blond buzzcut and hard, chiseled face of Kolyanova. She offered not the slightest twitch of sympathy as she and her men escorted Golich to Aquarius' lockout. The ship had docked at Gateway Station and he was inside a shuttle car with his guard detail close by in minutes.

The shuttle dropped like a rock, through faint wisps of cloud and the soft haze of late afternoon dust devils, until the car hissed to a landing at the SkyLift terminal. A Time Guard lifter waited for them on Liftpad B, outside the terminal. It took off and was approaching Hawking Base in less than ten minutes.

The brig turned out to be a small warren of cells and isolated common areas, well protected with multiple barriers and barred doors. One of Kolyanova's detail dissolved Golich's livecuffs and he was firmly nudged into a cell. The door clanged shut and the botscreen went up almost immediately, flickering and popping as the bots laid down their barrier.

Golich surveyed his four-by-six-meter domain, sighed and fell heavily into the bunk.

Desertion. Dereliction of duty. Abandoning post. Absent without leave. Trafficking with pirates. Hijacking. Brigandage. Causality violations too numerous to count. The words rolled through his mind like waves on Loch Lithgow. Finally, the words ran out and he was getting up to splash his face in the sink when the botscreen suddenly collapsed in a flash of light and the heavy door swung open.

Monthan Dringoth stood there, in full dress uniform, along with another officer, a female Jump Commander whose name patch read Mbeki. Her black skin glistened in the pale light of the hall. Mbeki wore a small bone hairpiece, much like Queenie M'Bela's in a way. But her face was the same officially bland and impassive mask he'd come to know all too well over the last day.

"Commander, Cygnus just pulled in to Gateway." Dringoth's face seemed almost avuncular, compared to the machine that was Mbeki. Jeez, even URME can put on a softer look than that. Then Golich had an idea...maybe she was an angel like URME, a swarm entity. "I met Commander Mbeki on the way down here. She'll be your legal counsel, throughout all this."

Golich sat down. "I'm assuming there will be a captain's mast."

Dringoth shook his head. "Sorry, no. Commandstar has ordered a full court-martial. Commander—I think this is your area."

Mbeki spoke, her voice had an almost musical lilt to it, with an odd, halfway-annoying hiss at the end of each sentence.

"Commander, JAG's following the book on this one, to the letter. First, there'll be a Board of Inquiry, with due diligence, discovery, all that. Then a panel of judges will be formed to conduct the hearing. I'm here today to take down any statements you want to make. Basically, to hear your side of the story. Captain Dringoth asked to come along and permission was given."

Golich nodded solemnly. "First of all, I'd like to know what's happened at Byrd's Draconis, Captain. With the Twister."

"The Twister's operational," Dringoth told him. "Acth:On'e worked with local Guard and Byrd's people and brought it online a few days ago. And not a moment too soon, from what I hear."

Golich was immediately intrigued. "Something up, Captain?"

Dringoth was vague. "Just rumors, really. Scuttlebutt. There's talk the Bugs may be making a move on the Urth-Sol system, this time stream. But I'm afraid you won't be part of it."

Golich looked at Mbeki. "What's going to happen to me, Commander?"

Mbeki never looked up from her slate. "Right now, the evidentiary tribunal is looking at the charges. Formal charges will come from that. Commandstar has appointed TACTRON as the convening authority. He'll have to approve all formal charges."

Golich sank back into the pillow and closed his eyes. "Then just send me back to T-119. I was just trying to change something in my past. When I did that, it changed everything and made it worse. At least, there I was a hero. I could make a life there."

"And here you're a deserter," Dringoth said coldly. "That'll be up to TACTRON. And the panel of judges."

Mbeki said, "In point of fact, Commander Golich, Time Guard has access to all your actions and decisions across all time streams. It's all part of your service record. The Board of Inquiry will be working with TACTRON to determine which violations are most serious. That's what I want to go over with you today." She held out a small tab. "It's all right here."

Dringoth decided it was time for him to leave. "I'm due back at Hawking Ops. T2's holding a briefing for all division jump staff. Commander, for what's worth, I see this whole matter as a terrible waste. You were a damn fine officer. Nobody knows temporal tactics better than you. Nobody knows Cygnus and jumpship systems better than you. You were respected by your peers and showed unfailing leadership and courage in dicey situations...what just happened in T-119 is proof of that. But you went and threw it all away. Why?"

Golich slowly opened his eyes. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

Dringoth nodded. "Go ahead."

"Captain, I've been asking myself that ever since I skipped out on Byrd's Draconis. I don't know—" he held his hands out to examine them, looking at the creases of his palms for something, an explanation, something that made sense. "It's no secret you and I have had our differences. Frankly, Captain—" here, he knew he had to be careful around Mbeki—"there were times, like our First Light mission, when I thought you were reckless and careless with the lives of the crew. I thought you'd probably get us killed someday, just to prove how courageous you were. Sir, I felt you had some kind of complex, like you were trying to show the galaxy you weren't like your father, you were better, you could make the Universe do what you wanted and you didn't care who got in the way." Golich sprang up and sat on the edge of his bunk, examining his hands as if they were alien appendages. "I had to get out. I needed a change. Kisan Malakel offered a new life. Oh, sure, I knew what I was doing. I knew what Malakel was. When I learned he had his own jumpship, I knew here was my chance." Now, he buried his head in his hands. "I just needed to change something...like stopping Amanda and Kylie from dying...just to go back and start over—"

Dringoth felt a faint stirring of sympathy, seeing his XO reduced to this kind of sniveling lump. "Commander, you know the regs about causality violations. Every Time Guard officer and enlisted person takes the same oath...we're all accountable for our actions, in every time stream, every worldline. If we don't take that oath seriously, it's chaos. Paradoxes on top paradoxes. That's why only Time Guard operates jump ships. That's why to be a time jumper, you have to know what you're doing, know how to react, how to think. Everything you say and do has consequences. And those consequences are going to play out somewhere, on some worldline. Time jumpers know all this. That's why we have our rally cry, 'Tempus regit!' Time rules."

Now Mbeki gently intervened. "Captain, perhaps the Commander and I could have some time together...to go over his record, review probable charges—"

Dringoth glared at both of them, then just shook his head. "Damn waste, that's what this is. All that Time Guard has invested in you, Commander, all of that's now down the toilet. It's a shame and you threw it all away yourself, Golich. I'd like to help, but—" With that, he nodded at Mbeki and backed out of the cell and was gone.

Mbeki cleared her throat. Re-positioned her bone hairpiece and necklace and set her face just so. She sat down at the tiny table in the corner.

"Very well, Commander, perhaps we should just start at the beginning. Time stream T-001. You're just a raw, fresh-faced jolt, just commissioned out of the Academy. Your first mission was...."

But Golich wasn't even listening. Her words were just vibrations in the air. He found his mind wandering off to other times and places...serving as a time jumper did that to you. Flitting in and out of voidtime, surfing across worldlines, jumping from one time stream to another...no wonder jumpers were so messed up.

The hell of it was that the only way he could have prevented Amanda and Kylie from dying was to mess up everything else in the Universe. Pull this string here and the whole fabric of spacetime over there unravels. The game was fixed, it was rigged against him. Action and reaction, down through the eons, from the Big Bang to right now.

He heard Mbeki's voice reciting the details of his missions, the whole panoply of his service record and answered automatically, perfunctorily, as needed, watching her out of the corner of his eye as she recorded his answers. But his mind inevitably drifted back to T-119 and then further back to his days as a skyship pilot with the Service, drifting like a cloud over the trackless wastes of the Sand Sea, communing with the clouds and the dust devils and the occasional arachtyl screeching by, just him and his ship and the great dirty brown bowl of K-World's dusty sky.

He never even noticed when Commander Mbeki silently closed up her slate, glared at him with barely concealed disgust—I am trying to help you, Commander\-- and backed out of the cell. The door closed with a clang. The botscreen barrier flashed and went up and Nathan Golich was alone, but not really there in C-18B. Maybe time jumpers did have one advantage over ordinary mortals.

They could scoot across time streams with a single thought and be anywhere at any time with a snap of a finger. No court-martial or JAG proceeding could take that away.

Nathan Golich had the faintest hint of a smile on his lips as he drifted off to a dreamless sleep.

That which is lost cannot be found...until it is discovered....

It was dark, late, the only light a single glowstrip in the corner, when Golich was startled awake. Noises, voices, commotion intruded on his world. The botscreen collapsed in a flash and the cell door slid back. Glowstrips glowed brighter, too bright, and he covered his eyes.

Monthan Dringoth stood there, two officers on each side. Commander Mbeki was behind them.

Golich didn't recognize the officers. He struggled up to an elbow.

Dringoth's face wore his I'm in charge look. The Captain's face. "Get up, Commander. Get your things."

"What is...what's going on?"

"This..." Dringoth tossed a small cube onto the bunk. Golich picked it up, studied Dringoth and the officers. The Captain indicated with a gesture he should activate it. Golich did.

Instantly, the cell was filled with a 3-d vid of a briefing. Dringoth was there, TACTRON, even Commandstar at the end of a table. Officers he didn't know. A T2 officer was running the briefing, his voice was coming up, Golich strained to hear it, caught snatches, it didn't make any sense....

"...incursion in sizeable strength...near Sedna Base...Sentinel Net's been destroyed...Urth-Sol activating EarthShield to Level 1...Alliance staff evacuated to emergency jump stations...."

Golich blinked, looked up.

Dringoth explained. "T2 has multiple sources and indications showing a massive push by the Bugs toward the Urth-Sol system. They're slipping out of voidtime right on Urth's doorstep, Commander. This is it. This is the Big One we always expected. The heartland is under assault and all jumpships are being mobilized, even ships drydocked and undergoing refit. Cygnus too."

"But what about—"

Dringoth cut him off. "Commandstar's put the court-martial on hold. Call it a temporary pardon. I need a full crew and I told the brass that included you. There's no time to train anyone else. They're releasing you, Golich, releasing you for duty. You're in my custody, sort of probation, I guess. Get your stuff. We're powering up for a jump in two hours."

Golich was still confused but gathered his meager belongings as if on auto. He followed Dringoth out into the hall. Guards and sentrybots lined the hall but no one made any move to stop him.

They had labelled him a deserter and a traitor but that didn't matter now. What mattered was duty and mission.

Urth and her system were in the crosshairs of the Coethi and even as he hurried down the hall behind Dringoth and a bevy of officers, buttoning his tunic and stuffing his shirttail in, Nathan Golich knew it was bad.

T2 had said the forward edge of the battle area was just inside the Kuiper Belt, a few billion kilometers from the inner system. The question now was could Time Guard put enough firepower, enough jumpships and heavy weapons in place to slug it out with the Bugs and drive them off, drive them back into voidtime.

Golich hustled after the Captain, realizing that, even in the age of time jumpers, the Universe didn't grant second chances or do-overs very often.

TO BE CONTINUED

About the Author

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

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

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

Download the next exciting episode of Time Jumpers from Smashwords.com and other fine ebook retailers. It's called 'First Jump Squadron'. Available on November 1, 2019.

