 
# Time Jumpers

Episode 8: Operation Galactic Hammer

### 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: "The Sweep"

"With endless time, nothing is special. With no loss or sacrifice, we can't appreciate what we have."

Mitch Albom, The Time Keeper

Jumpship Cygnus

Time Stream: T-001

T-date: T-001-6-14

A massive operation, Operation Galactic Hammer, was now underway, to push the Coethi back past Newton's Jaw, back to their own space. Cygnus and 1st TD would have a critical role. They were one of three Time Twister detachments given the mission of operating at the forward edge of the battle front, to 'sweep' space and local time streams clean of Coethi by using the massive Twisters. Toward this end, Cygnus had been modified to support this huge and devastating weapon. The crew was well versed in operating and maintaining a Twister, having done so in multiple engagements before.

Evelyn M'Bela's voice sounded across the command deck. "Probable Coethi formation ahead, sir. It's off-axis a little, bearing two one five, mark six. Make it fifty-five thousand kilometers."

URME was alongside M'Bela, at his Temporal Fire Director console, aft end of the deck. He saw the same thing. "I concur. Possible aspect change, Captain. Convergence angles narrowing sharply, worldlines shortening to threshold values."

Golich's lips tightened. "They may be pinching...."

"It could be the Jaw," M'Bela said. "It's really active today, ripping up spacetime."

Dringoth felt his jaw muscles clench tighter. Cygnus had just jumped from T-001 near Hapsh'm all the way to the ass end of Alliance space, a contested zone between Time's Peak and Newton's Jaw, not far from the Sigma Albeth B and 40 Omicron 2 systems and all the Uman settlements surrounding those suns. His orders from TACTRON were clear enough: reconnoiter space this side of the Jaw, seek out Bug formations and use Cygnus' new Twister to yank the nasties off to oblivion, hopefully the other end of the Universe.

"We can't let 'em jump...or pinch us off in a bubble," he decided. "Acth, power up the Twister. TT1, signal Pollux and Aries. Tell 'em to fall back to safe zones. Get outside the displacement cone now. All hands, firing point procedures."

Golich sent off the signal while four decks aft on E deck, Acth:On'e's fingers flew across his board, starting the Twister's power-up sequence.

"Chronotron pods coming online, Skipper. Twist buffers energized and looking good. All green back here. Thirty seconds to enable."

"Very well," Dringoth said. He studied the tactical plot on his own panel. "Golich, take us in a little closer...let's chop the angle on the bow in half. I want a full discharge right into the face of that cloud of Bugs."

Golich said, "Aye, sir." He tickled his controls and Cygnus responded smartly, heeling over to close the setup angle and distance to the swarm centroid. Behind them, M'Bela called out time and distance to the firing point.

Dringoth chanced a quick look out his side porthole. There really wasn't much to see. There weren't any suns around Jaw space. Just turbulent, messed up spacetime, visible as a slight wavering distortion in the porthole, for Newton's Jaw was a zone of contending gravitational waves and instabilities, a gravimetric lens. That made maneuvering tricky and he could see Golich was having some difficulty keeping the ship on her approach course.

Beyond the distortion field, he could just make out a slight dimming of the starfield beyond. That would be the Bug cloud, a vast swarm of bots drifting through space, probably taking dead aim on 40 Omicron 2 and her settled worlds of Gavrilon and Nanjiang.

Anyway, that's what T2 thought. Dringoth had memorized parts of the intel briefing: a massive Coethi push in this sector of the Alliance...an attempt to seize the Jaw and cut off one end of the Alliance from the rest of Uman space...opening an assault corridor right into the Heartland, with Sol, Lalande 21185, Delta Recursa and Sturdivant 2180 sitting there like fat apples ripe for the picking. Coethi strategy seemed fairly obvious, even to a non-intel type like Dringoth. Drive a stake right through the beating heart of the Uman Alliance and the branches would quickly wither on the vine.

It was up to Task Force Newton and her squad of jumpships Cygnus, Pollux and Aries to shove the Bugs right back where they came from.

TACTRON had described their mission well as the very handle of Operation Galactic Hammer.

"Firing point coming up," came M'Bela's voice. She blinked and saw something weird on her board. "Captain, possible aspect change again."

"What's happening, Queenie?"

M'Bela rubbed her lips. "I don't know, sir. ChronoNav's showing a shift in frontal aspect. It almost looks like the Bugs are withdrawing."

URME recognized the tactic. "Don't fall for it, Captain. It's a standard Coethi flanking maneuver. We've seen this before. Like the old Mongol tactic of mangudai, on ancient Urth. Remember Temporal Tactics class at the Academy?"

"Barely. Explain."

URME had already retrieved the historical files from memory and displayed an ancient battlefield in 3d overhead. Mongol archers and light cavalry maneuvered against enemy forces across a Hungarian plain. URME narrated....

"The Mongols under Genghis Khan used a technique called mangudai. The center of the Mongol line would feign withdrawal, falling back and drawing their enemy forward. The flanks of the Mongol toumen, their divisions, would stay up front. In this graphic, the enemy are the Russians and Hungarians. The Hungarians would move into the trap, unaware they were already surrounded. When they had penetrated too deeply, the Mongol flanks sprang the trap, closed behind the penetrating force and cut them off. Then the Mongol center would turn about and charge against the trapped Hungarians. It was a slaughter." URME's swarm roiled with concern, interior lights popping and flashing with rapidity. "Captain, the Coethi may be employing the same tactic, trying to draw us into a trap."

Dringoth listened, but wasn't convinced. "Queenie, any evidence of swarm activity nearby? Has their entire formation moved off?"

M'Bela studied her board carefully, twisting knobs, scrolling and stabbing at her displays, fiddling with her bone necklace as she h'mmmed and slowly shook her head. "ChronoNav's not showing anything significant, Skipper. There is some flux along the voidtime channel...they may have slipped into voidtime...I can't really tell, it's so faint. I'm not seeing any real nano activity anywhere nearby...no electromagnetics, no high thermals, nothing. Just background stuff.,"

Dringoth said, "That's good enough for me. Golich, take us closer to the last reported position. I want to sniff around and make sure the area's sanitized." He called up Acth:On'e and Alicia Yang back on E deck. "Acth, is the Twister ready?"

Acth:On'e voice came over the ship's 1MC. "Powered up and primed, Captain. Just give the word."

To Golich, Dringoth said, "Advise Pollux and Aries. We're closing in on that spacetime ripple Queenie's seeing."

A tense silence pervaded the command deck for the next few minutes, as Cygnus maneuvered closer to M'Bela's voidtime ripple.

"I don't like this," Golich said. "It's too easy. It's not like the Bugs to just back off from a fight."

Dringoth agreed. "URME may be right. It could be a—"

But his words were cut short by a blaring klaxon. ISAAC, the ship's AI, had just detected an eruption along the voidtime channel.

"FLUX BOUNDARY WARNING...FLUX BOUNDARY WARNING...MULTIPLE TARGETS AHEAD...PROBABLE SWARM FORMATION!"

"I see 'em now!" M'Bela yelled, for her board had just lit up like a sunburst. "I've got Bugs everywhere—"

URME studied his own ChronoNav display. "Worldlines converging dead ahead...behind us too. They're trying to pinch."

It was a standard temporal warfare tactic. Pinch off a time stream upstream and downstream of your enemy and trap him in a bubble of spacetime. Once trapped, the unfortunate adversary then became easy pickings.

"Fire the Twister!" Dringoth commanded.

Back on E deck, Acth:On'e stabbed the ENABLE button. Instantly, the entire ship shuddered from the collapsing twist fields.

The wavefront from the chronotron pods erupted out into space and the effect was like a giant hand had grabbed hold of spacetime and squeezed...hard. At her Defense station alongside Acth:On'e, Alicia Yang ignored her natural impulse to stare out the porthole nearby, but out of the corner of her eye she could still see the swirling chaos that was the effect of a ship emitting twist fields.

The Twister itself slammed the very structure of spacetime and shook it violently, so violently that it ruptured spacetime itself, crinkling and crushing and snapping it like a wet rag. Anything caught in the twist fields would be instantly flung across millions of years of space and time, for all practical purposes, ceasing to exist. Even voidtime couldn't protect an unwary intruder, for the Twister rolled up the voidtime channel like a ball of yarn and nothing larger than a few scattered quarks could penetrate.

Time Guard Intelligence had always said the Twister was the one Uman weapon the Bugs truly feared. There was no real defense against it.

"Again!" Dringoth commanded. The next burst nearly knocked the Captain out of his seat. Cygnus shuddered and creaked and only quick work by Golich, muttering under his breath, kept the ship from lurching into a violent roll.

"I've got it!" Golich said, his fingers playing across multiple joysticks and knobs. "Nulling all rates...we're still in a slow roll but I'm counteracting."

Dringoth tightened his seat harness. "Surveillance...Queenie...what's going on out there?"

M'Bela studied her board. "Reading residual nano...diffuse and scattered. They're gathering again but it'll take some time. Another pulse could finish them off."

"Are we still in truetime?"

"We are, Captain. ChronoNav reports normal convergence angles. They dumped us a few years into the future, but not that far. ISAAC's computing a return path now."

A chime sounded in Dringoth's headset. Tactical comm. It was Pollux...Dringoth recognized the hoarse voice of Akbar, Pollux's skipper.

"Cygnus, we're engaging a small formation just aft of your position...maybe ten thousand klicks. Small but replicating fast...hold your position...don't jump or fire your Twister until I say it's clear."

"Understood," Dringoth said. "Cygnus holding...."

The next few minutes were an odd lull in the battle, as all around Cygnus, her sister jumpship Pollux peppered space with HERF and mag fire, shredding the remnants of the Bug cloud that had been approaching Cygnus' tail.

Dringoth used the time to take stock of the situation.

"M'Bela, give me a sweep. Any contacts?"

The Search and Surveillance specialist conducted an all-azimuth scan of surrounding space and time. "Just Pollux, sir. Aries is further back along the T-001 worldline, not anywhere near us. ISAAC's showing only very diffuse, residual bot clusters from the Bug formation. I think we pretty well sanitized the area with the Twister."

Dringoth wanted to make sure they were ready for anything. In jolt school at the Academy, old man Jellicoe had always said, Expect the unexpected. Jellicoe loved quoting that old time jumper Sun Tzu: "Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt."

"Acth:On'e, status of the Twister?" He clung to his seat armrest as one of Pollux's bursts came a little too close and the mag eruption lit up space all around them.

The Telitorian came back, "Twister is enabled to fire, Captain. ISAAC reports we lost a few chronotron pods in that last firing but she can still take a mean bite out of spacetime. I am watching converger alignment though. It's right on the upper deadband. We're good for one or two more bursts, then we'll have to take it offline."

"Got it," Dringoth said. "Keep me advised."

Another hour followed, an hour of sniffing and sensing and judicious maneuvering, with Cygnus and Pollux cleaning up leftover pockets of residual Bugs while Golich executed a series of small-scale jumps back up the worldline to their original temporal coordinates. Pollux stayed behind to look for any more probes by the Coethi in their sector. Meanwhile Aries and Cygnus assumed normal patrol posture, each ship policing the worldline up and down for several decades of time, hunting for voidtime irregularities and small flux disturbances in truetime, for even the tiniest bubble could be the signature of yet another Bug assault dropping on their heads out of voidtime. It was axiomatic among Time Guard veterans that the Coethi were unmatched in their ability to use voidtime to tactical advantage. You had to keep your eyes...and sensors...open at all times.

After half a shift, Dringoth ordered the crew to condition 2SQ...an alert but slightly more relaxed defensive posture. The ship was still navigating in the backwash of Newton's Jaw so it was imperative that either he or his exec Golich be on the command deck at all times.

"Take a break, Commander," he told Golich. "I'll take this watch...URME can keep me company."

M'Bela and Golich scrambled off the deck and by unspoken agreement, both wound up in the galley on B deck.

M'Bela brewed herself some kind of spice tea from the replicator and sat herself down heavily on a stool near the cooktop. She fingered her necklace and watched Golich thoughtfully, opening and closing cabinets to no obvious purpose. Finally, he found a fruit bar and sat down at a table, munching slowly, his eyes a million kilometers away.

"Okay, Commander, a blind arachtyl could see it. Speak. What's eating you? This isn't just combat jitters...or voidtime fatigue."

Golich stared through the hull, seeing things only he could see. "I'm sorry, Queenie. You know enlisted personnel shouldn't really be addressing ship's officers that way."

"Bullshit. Sir. I've served with you a long time, a lot of tours. I can tell when your hackles are up."

Golich ran a hand through what little buzzcut hair he still had left. "URME warned the Captain about pursuing that Bug indication. It was clearly a trap. He even cited history as an example."

"Bugs don't know Uman history, Commander."

"No, of course not, but tactical prudence would seem to dictate caution. The Captain listened to URME and just barged right into that formation. It could have been bad, real bad."

"We have a Twister."

"When it works. It's a devastating weapon but its fragile. It's not reliable, especially the little junior version Engineering fixed us up with at the dockyard. This time, Cygnus was lucky. Next time..." He shrugged. "I'm just wondering—"

"About the Captain? Dringoth's seen more Bugs than all of us put together. You know that."

Golich nodded slowly. "I do know that. But I think all that experience and familiarity has made him cocky, overconfident. A few times, through glitches and jump errors, we've wound up back at the same time and place of earlier engagements with the Bugs. I don't think that's a coincidence. I think Captain's trying to re-fight all his old battles, make them come out differently. I think he doesn't have the same respect we have for the Bugs. I question his—" here Golich looked up at M'Bela and smiled faintly, then finished off his fruit bar. "—let's just say, I question his tactical decisions sometimes. A good executive officer should offer a different viewpoint, different options, different interpretations. That's all I'm saying."

M'Bela smirked. "That's not really all you're saying, sir, but I understand. All this has to go through channels anyway, isn't that right, sir?"

Golich nodded, a little too quickly, M'Bela thought.

In the whole history of the Time Guard, there had never been a mutiny aboard a jumpship.

Nathan Golich told himself he wasn't going to start the first one.

M'Bela went aft to speak with Alicia Yang about something. Golich went to his berth. His shift on the command deck wouldn't come for another three hours.

Plenty of time to do a little thinking.

He turned the lights off inside his compartment, and opened a small porthole. There wasn't much to see. Newton's Jaw messed up spacetime for lightyears around; most of the starfield was distorted like a broken mirror. He soon tired of the view and lay back in his bunk, eyes closed.

Golich felt something jabbing his side from inside of his uniform pocket and groped for it, pulling it out. It was the contact chip that time pirate Kisan Malakel had given him at Mariners' Bar, on Hapsh'm.

He fondled the chip for a moment.

Not yet, he told himself. Not just yet. But soon....

A day later, new orders chimed through on the flag circuit, priority one. TACTRON ordered Cygnus to execute a combat jump to a new time stream, a place and a time on the far side of the Alliance, near the star system of Delta Recursa III—near Acth:On'e's homeworld of Telitor, in fact—and help a newly formed task force fend off Coethi incursions in that sector. T2 felt and TACTRON had concurred that the Bugs were trying to flank the Uman position in that part of the Lower Halo, further upstream along the Perseus Arm of the galaxy.

Cygnus made the jump, rendezvoused with jumpship Leo and ran smack into a large field of swiftly replicating Bugs that had just dropped out of voidtime.

ISAAC's sultry voice told the story. "FORMATION AHEAD, BEARING TWO FIVE FIVE, SEVENTY THOUSAND KILOMETERS TO SWARM CENTROID...."

Dringoth swallowed hard. "HERF and mag pulsers charged?"

Golich checked weapons status with Acth:On'e on E deck. The Telitorian reported back in the affirmative. "Fully charged, Captain."

"Bring the Twister online."

Now Acth:On'e came back, "Captain, we lost over twenty chronotron pods in that last burst. Converger's out of alignment. Recommend we secure the Twister and use impulse weapons."

Dringoth didn't want to hear it. "I don't care. We've got a Twister. We've got an enemy right in front of us. Power up and enable."

Acth:On'e reluctantly complied. "Aye, sir." To himself: I hope this thing doesn't blow up in our face.

Golich checked the other ship's position. "Leo reports they're maneuvering for a broadside shot on the swarm. Discharge in thirty seconds...they want us to stand clear for their barrage."

Dringoth nodded, checking his own board. "Good. Very good. Tell Leo we'll hold off for their shot, then blast the Bugs with our Twister."

The next few minutes saw both jumpships maneuvering into best tactical position. M'Bela reported no evidence of any attempt by the Bugs to pinch off the time stream.

"All quiet along this worldline, Captain. We may have surprised them."

"Keep your eyes open. They could pinch, they could try their displacement trick, Bugs are crafty little critters."

Outside her porthole, M'Bela stole a glance, though there wasn't much to see. Cygnus was in heliocentric orbit around the red giant Delta Recursa III and only the coppery glare of the sun shone through the porthole. She knew Acth:On'e's home world of Telitor was somewhere out there, along with a score of other worlds and who knew how many moons and satellites. The Bugs had popped out of voidtime in this sector and her own sense of their strategy made her realize there was a giant pincers movement underway across hundreds of lightyears, with Coethi attacking at opposite ends of Alliance space. If the Bugs could seize control of Alliance space around Newton's Jaw and simultaneously establish a beachhead near Time's Peak, only a few dozen lightyears beyond Delta Recursa, the Umans would find themselves fighting a two-front war across the entire expanse of Uman territory. The real prize was a corridor right through the heart of the Alliance, where Urth's sun Sol, as well as the Sturdivant and Lalande systems were sitting fat and pretty, just waiting to be plucked.

Time Guard and the rest of the Alliance needed to defend the outer frontier from any serious encroachment by the Bugs. But at the same time, they couldn't afford to neuter the inner defenses around the heartland either.

M'Bela shook her head sadly. No one really knew what the Coethi were or what they were up to, but the nucleus of their strategy was clear even to a lowly jumpmaster first class.

Just then, her porthole lit up with the bright glare of Leo's HERF and mag discharges. She took a quick peek, then studied her sensor plot. Thousands of kilometers sunward of their position, she could visualize the results. The Bug swarm had just absorbed gazillions of electron volts of energy. Even on her plot, she could see how the front edge of the swarm was just so much mashed potatoes now, fried into atom fluff by Leo's barrage.

"Leo moving off, Captain," M'Bela reported. "She's already outside the displacement cone."

Dringoth's voice came on the comm. "Twister, enable. You are authorized to fire the weapon now!"

Four decks aft, Acth:On'e glanced warily over at Alicia Yang, still manning the defense console, and closed his eyes. His fingers stabbed a button, discharging the Twister out into space.

Cygnus shuddered, her hull creaked and groaned and there came a blinding, eye-searing flash outside the portholes.

For a brief moment, the ship spun violently but her dampers kicked in and Golich was able to wrestle control away from the force that had grabbed them.

"What the—?"

Acth:On'e saw it right away. His own instruments had just gone haywire, lights flashing, dials spinning, alarms beeping. The twist field had lost alignment, the Twister had burped into space with its converger offline and spacetime had protested and kicked back. Tangled worldlines had bounced right back to the ship, fully enveloping the ship and torqueing them across several time streams at once...he knew the ship couldn't take the stresses for long....

ISAAC's voice was calm but insistent. "TWIST FIELD DISTORTION EXCEEDING STRUCTURAL LIMITS...WORLDLINES COLLAPSING...CORE COLLAPSE IMMINENT...POWER DOWN TWISTER IMMEDIATELY—"

The next few moments, Evelyn M'Bela could only hang on to her seat, tighten her shoulder harness and pray loudly. Her bone necklace strained at her neck and nearly strangled her.

Golich fought to bring Cygnus under control. "I'm full throttle on the propulsors...trying to counteract the spin..."

Dringoth shouted, "We're tumbling in all axes...I'll take pitch...you work roll and yaw!"

Working together, alternately pulsing the ship's thrusters and propulsors, sucking every bit of MHD plasma into their maneuvering controls, Dringoth and Golich were eventually able to stabilize Cygnus and bring her under some semblance of control.

Behind them, between groans and creaks in the hull, violent wretching sounds could be heard. It wasn't URME; the swarm had dispersed and was trying to re-gather itself into some kind of recognizable form.

M'Bela wiped her mouth with a flap of her uniform sleeve. "Sorry, guys, I just couldn't—"

"Save it," Dringoth ordered for he had just taken a glance out his side porthole. What he saw made his mouth go dry.

Somehow, the Twister had fired in such a way as to fling Cygnus sunward, toward the orange giant of Delta Recursa. "Queenie, check our position. Are we still heliocentric?"

M'Bela was grateful for something to do to take her mind off her heaving insides. Her eyes widened at what she saw on her board.

"Captain, we're still heliocentric, still in ballistic orbit...but the orbit's changed. We're heading right for the sun...could be a close pass...ISAAC's still running computations."

Her words confirmed what Dringoth and Golich were seeing.

Golich was already trying to pulse their thrusters, but nothing was happening. Delta Recursa was growing steadily larger in their portholes, a huge swollen orange-red disk, bright prominences swirling along her outer limb.

Dringoth coughed. "Acth, what's wrong with maneuvering? Why can't I do anything with my thrusters or propulsors up here?"

Acth:On'e's voice was strained. "Could be a valve issue...or a leak. We got slammed pretty good back here."

M'Bela spoke up. "ISAAC's computed our current orbit...Captain, we're heading...looks like we...uh, we intercept the star's photosphere in forty-two minutes."

Dringoth felt his blood run cold. "Say again?"

M'Bela repeated the news. "Cygnus is heading straight for Delta Recursa...our current orbit takes us inside the photosphere in just over forty minutes."

Dringoth swallowed audibly. "Acth, I've got to have thrusters and propulsors...now!"

"Working on it, sir...."

Golich said, "We could try a jump."

URME nixed that. "We don't know what the Twister did to the core, Commander. We need time to find out what happened. If the converger's damaged, or the core contaminated, we could blow ourselves up trying to jump...or wind up someplace worse."

"We don't have time to troubleshoot the core," Dringoth decided. "M'Bela, where and when are we?"

M'Bela's bone necklace rattled as she shifted from refining the ship's orbit to studying ChronoNav. "Best I can make out, Captain, we're still in T-001, the same time stream. But we've backed up the worldline...about maybe twenty-five years. ChronoNav's putting us at around 2789 CE, give or take."

"Any sign of Leo out there?"

M'Bela said, "None, sir. Not at this point on the worldline."

Dringoth grimaced. "Well, this is just friggin' great. We're damaged, with a balky Twister, alone and headed right for a star. Acth, give me what you can...we've got to pull out of this orbit, get away from the sun."

There was a pause, then Acth:On'e came back. "Try it now, Skipper. You may have about thirty percent on propulsor."

Dringoth throttled up the propulsor, while Golich tried to keep the ship steady with faint puffs from her thrusters. Slowly, bit by bit, they were able to raise Cygnus to a slightly higher orbit, change her perihelion point by just enough to avoid skimming inside the visible upper photosphere of the star-sun Delta Recursa. Outside the portholes, the glare was painful, a blinding reddish-orange glow that washed out all other details. Loops of prominences and flare eruptions boiled along the limb of the sun.

"HULL TEMPERATURE APPROACHING CRITICAL LIMITS," came ISAAC's voice. "RECOMMEND MANEUVERING TO REDUCE HULL STRESSES...."

"No shit, ISAAC," Golich muttered.

It was going to be close but when the perihelion point came and passed, with M'Bela reporting new altitude figures from ISAAC, the entire crew on the command deck breathed audible signs of relief.

They had made a perilously close pass through the outer gaseous envelope of a star, and somehow survived.

"We're not out of the woods yet," M'Bela announced. Her eyes stung from sweat as the ship's life support system struggled with the temperatures. "Our new orbit keeps us too low in Delta's gravity well. Period is forty-four point five days. We'll be back around at perihelion then. And if Delta burps or throws off a flare...."

She didn't have to finish the thought. Every crewmember onboard Cygnus figured it was unlikely they would survive another close pass.

The all-hands briefing in the crews' mess was a somber affair.

"Okay, let's have it," Dringoth said. "Acth, you and Alicia first."

Acth:On'e ticked off problems from E deck aft. "The core's shot. We don't know what happened with the Twister, but somehow it scrambled the core, probably contaminated it beyond repair. It looks like a Level One failure...not repairable onboard."

Yang added, "We got the Twister powered down safely. But until we know what happened and what, if anything, the core can and can't do, we're not jumping anywhere. And maneuvering is at best under fifty-percent capacity. We've got multiple plasma leaks and structural failures in the main plenum of the thrust chamber. Plus, inverter and neutralizer damage to look into. Cygnus has minimal thruster and propulsor capability, at this time."

M'Bela snorted. "Now tell us the bad news."

Dringoth ignored that. "If we can't jump and Leo's not around in this worldline and we've got no propulsors, we're eventually going to dive right into the sun."

Golich said, "Not a pleasant prospect, folks. What about comms? Telitor's nearby."

URME spoke to that. "Coupler links are operating. I've been able to raise somebody on Comm 2...Telitor Space Rescue, I think. But in this worldline, Time Guard doesn't have much of a presence out here. Remember, Telitor hasn't yet joined the Alliance, at this point in time. No other jumpships around and the Telitorians are still trying to figure out whether joining the Alliance is worth it."

Golich snapped his fingers. "If I remember history right, that would mean the Bugs haven't yet shown up on this sector...that's something in our favor."

"What about hypersuits?" Yang proposed. She sipped at a cool drink, smacked her lips loudly.

"Are you insane? You'd be flash-fried in less than a minute, this close to the star. And they don't have enough delta-vee ability to put you anywhere useful anyway."

Dringoth agreed. "We'd better keep a close eye on Cygnus' hull temperature. ISAAC, divert every scrap of power you can scrounge up to keep our hull temps down."

ISAAC replied, "ALREADY SHUNTING EXTRA COOLING CAPACITY FROM LIFE SUPPORT...WILL MAINTAIN CABIN TEMPS ABOVE EIGHTY-FIVE DEGREES FOR THE NEXT FORTY-EIGHT HOURS...."

"Jeez," said M'Bela, "no wonder my hair's all frizzy and kinky—"

Now URME asked for their attention. The swarm seemed turbulent, usually indicating it was deep in thought. The fog bank in the vague shape of a human roiled with lights and flashes popping on and off inside.

"Perhaps we should re-visit the idea of using hypersuits."

Dringoth nixed that immediately. "None of us would survive, URME. You know that as well as we do. You've done the math. They have neither delta-vee to get us higher or life support to keep us cool enough to survive."

"Not to mention the radiation bath," Golich added.

URME said, "My computations show that two hypersuits, with suit boost units ganged from the other four suits, could raise the suit wearers' orbits by several thousand miles in a matter of several days. True, there would have to be extra shielding, but our onboard ANAD system should be able to fashion that from local feedstock. The configs would be fairly simple."

Dringoth was skeptical but intrigued. "So what does that get us, URME? Two survivors from Cygnus...out of a crew of six? Time Guard will have my—"

But Acth:On'e had sensed where the swarm was going with the idea. "Telitor Space Rescue, Captain. That's what URME's driving at. Queenie, haven't you been in contact with someone out there?"

M'Bela shrugged. "Intermittently. I believe it's a Telitorian contact."

Now Acth:On'e was warming to the idea quickly. "I'm Telitorian. Even at this point in the historical timeline, Telitor was known for its science and engineering. Remember, it was a big deal in the Alliance negotiations. What URME's suggesting—URME, correct me if I'm wrong here—is we gang four suit boost units onto two hypersuits. Then two of us leave the ship, with extra shielding, for sure, and boost as high as we can. Cygnus contacts Telitor Space Rescue and with any luck, the two jumpers have boosted high enough for Telitor Space Rescue to reach them."

M'Bela scoffed at that. "Then what? So, two of us are rescued. What about the rest of us? We just fry like bacon inside Cygnus for the next forty days?"

Acth:On'e shook his head. "The jumpers go to Telitor, explain the situation and Telitor engineering works out a way to get Cygnus out of the deep gravity well, maybe even fix her core."

You could tell what Dringoth thought of the idea by the look on his face. "You know this is truly nuts. URME, is this what you had in mind?"

The swarm roiled some more, then said, "More or less, Captain. Odds are more favorable in this scenario for full rescue to be effected. With onboard skills and resources limited, and given the time constraints imposed by Cygnus' current orbit, outside help is surely needed. We could continue to try and boost the ship's orbit to keep us from plunging into the star but long-term survival probabilities decrease with each orbit this close."

"Understood," Dringoth said coldly.

M'Bela spoke up. "So, who gets to go? Do we draw straws or something?"

"I'll make that decision, Queenie," Dringoth cut her off. To Acth:On'e: "Do you think Telitor has the science and engineering smarts to help us in time? You're Telitorian. You know this place. Can they troubleshoot and repair singularity cores, from this point in their history?"

Acth:On'e shrugged. "I knew of several projects investigating singularity physics when I was young, both at the Bhaktapur lab. A lot of the early settlers emigrated from Tibet and the Himalayan regions of old Urth. I remember experiments being done on time-loop logic, artificially generating Novikov curves, converger concepts, that sort of thing. So yes, even in this part of the time line, Telitorian scientists were looking at singularity concepts and designs. The question really is: if they can come up with some fixes, can they get them to us while Cygnus is so deep in Delta's gravity well?"

Dringoth had already made up his mind. "If Time Guard finds out what we're doing, they'll have my head on a pike, strung up for every jolt to spit at. This is definitely not in the books."

Golich said, "We need to find out what happened with the Twister? Why did it damage the core...and kick us two decades into the past?"

Acth:On'e shrugged. "That needs to be determined. One thing's for sure: we can't operate either the Twister or the core safely now. Without knowing what happened, we could blow ourselves to pieces."

"Or kick us off into some wacko time stream nobody's ever heard of," added M'Bela.

Dringoth looked around. Every face looked back at him, even URME's blurry cloud of almost-eyes, nose and mouth seemed expectant, waiting for a decision.

When you're in command, someone once said, command.

"Anybody have a better idea than what URME and Acth are proposing?"

Nobody did.

Dringoth said, "Okay, Acth:On'e has to go. He's Telitorian. He speaks the language. Golich, you'll go too. The rest of us will work on getting your hypersuits ready, hacking out a config for ANAD to fab extra shielding, and for the ship too, if we have enough feedstock. The stay-behinds will troubleshoot the ship, and the core. Try to figure out what happened. Questions?"

Dead silence.

"Let's get to work."

Three days later, the modified hypersuits and shields were ready. Golich and Acth:On'e tried the suits on. Some form and fit modifications were made and the jumpers finally pronounced themselves satisfied.

URME swarmed over Golich and Acth:On'e as they completed fitting out on F deck, just outside the lockout, checking seals, connections, the shield itself. With the shielding ANAD had fabricated, the jumpers looked like winged gods.

The swarm said, "Your modified suit boost should give you enough push to raise your orbit by several thousand kilometers. It may not to be enough. But it'll have to do. That's all the delta-vee I can give you."

Golich's eyes met M'Bela's. "You've been in contact with Telitor about this crazy stunt? They can come get us, even this close to Delta?"

M'Bela shrugged. "They do think this is a crazy stunt, even suicidal. Some of the expletives I didn't quite grasp...and Acth said I didn't need to know. But they seem to understand what we're doing. Telitor Space Rescue said two ships are already on the way, with special gear. But they can't reach Cygnus...we're too deep, too low."

Acth:On'e's lips tightened. "Then we'll just have to reach them."

"Okay, you two," Dringoth said, "let's go. Into the lockout."

One at a time, the jumpers cycled out. First Golich, then Acth:On'e emerged out into space, into the blinding, scalding heat of the star. They saw nothing, save for a vast fiery glow all around them, and the glare of Cygnus' scarred and pitted hull. Golich swallowed hard, seeing the hull's condition.

The ship can't take too much more of this.

Once they had maneuvered off to a safe distance, Golich made sure their shielding was positioned properly, then gave the order to light off their suit boost.

"Three...two...one...kick it!"

In less than ten seconds, Cygnus was gone from view and the two jumpers were enveloped in the furnace of Delta Recursa's outer envelope. They both saw nothing, but even at max cooling and shielding, the jumpers could feel the incinerating heat surrounding them, a heavy, smothering, scalding, scorching, blistering quilt that seemed to suck the very life out of them.

Only the pulsing of the suit boost at their legs reminded them they were even in motion.

Nathan Golich closed his eyes and tried to think of more pleasant times and places...like sailing Loch Lithgow back on K-World, a stiff breeze filling the sails of a little skiff.

A few meters away, Acth:On'e had very different thoughts, for the Telitorian was going back home and there were still matters unresolved in his past, matters that had led him to escape to Time Guard many years before. Even in the flames of hell his mind conjured up, the face of Max: Margie 4 soon materialized out of the blast furnace that surrounded him and when he succumbed to the heat at last, the final image was of her and the new baby they would soon enough name Willie...Acthax Willow 1.

# Chapter 2: "Telitor Time"

"The now that passes creates time; the now that remains creates eternity."

Boethius (Roman philosopher)

Kasala Township, Telitor

Time Stream: T-001

T-date: T-001-2-89

After enduring endless rounds of greetings and introductions at the landing pad outside Kasala, Nathan Golich and Acth:On'e were exhaustively debriefed on Cygnus' critical situation by a small platoon of engineers and scientists from Bhaktapur Lab. The critical need was for help with the ship's singularity core.

A tall, rather gangly white-haired man named Sorrell Edd 5 seemed to be in charge. Acth explained that Sorrell was from the Lab's engineering section.

"We don't fully understand your situation," Sorrell admitted. "Our experiments seem to indicate that navigating time through the careful use of an artificial singularity is theoretically possible, but we've seen no examples of this—" he looked around at his fellow engineers, "until now. To this point, we had only theories. Conjectures. Suppositions. But you...you seem to be the proof. Your ship has come to the Delta system from many years in our future?"

Golich and Acth:On'e explained what had happened, drawing eyebrows on the assembled engineers ever higher with each sentence. It was clear that Sorrell wanted to understand, to believe, but was swayed by the skepticism of his associates.

"Perhaps, if we went to the Lab...you could examine our work. Our instruments."

Acth:On'e agreed. "I know the way."

Sorrell's grave face softened. "You are clearly Telitorian. You say you joined Time Guard, part of the Alliance, just a few years from now?"

Acth:On'e replied, "I went through my first Upload as a young boy, age 5, at the Kasala School. I was actually born Randolph Gainey in 2789 (U(rth) time), in the month of Quaternary right here in Kasala. My father is Acth:Tomay 17 and my mother is Acth:Lilly12. I have one sibling, an older sister Acth:Luna7." He went on to explain how he had come into Time Guard. But he didn't explain why...not just yet.

"Perhaps you would like to see your old village. Why don't you meet us at the Lab in two hours. You know the way?"

"I do."

Acth:On'e then led Golich outside and they headed down Kanpur Street, deeper into town.

After Acth:On'e had taken them both on a quick walking tour through Kasala Township, Golich reminded him they still needed help on Cygnus' problems.

"Let's get on to the Lab, Acth, and see what this place can do for us. I feel guilty enough leaving the others behind as it is."

Headed out into the desert beyond the village, Acth stopped suddenly, and quickly dragged Golich behind the corner of a rundown ghara, a local residence whose stone façade was crumbling into the street.

Acth:On'e pointed. Two young boys were at the end of the street, headed past the town walls, out into the Red Desert of Maxwell Regio beyond.

"They're just two kids," Golich said. "Come on...we've got to get to the Lab."

"I know them, Commander."

"Those two...how could you know them...we just got here."

Acth:On'e smiled faintly. "Remember ChronoNav said we got thrown twenty-five years back up the worldline. The taller one is me."

Now Golich understood what was going on. "Leave it alone, Acth. That's an order. You know the regs on causality violations as well as me."

But Acth:On'e wasn't listening. He'd already started off after the kids.

"Acth--!" Golich hustled to catch up. "Acth, don't—"

They followed the two boys off into the desert, hanging back a half kilometer.

"Just what do you think you're doing, Master Guard Acth:On'e?" Golich grabbed him by the arm. "Drop it, okay? That's an order. You know we can't be interacting too much. We've probably already violated a dozen regs already."

Acth:On'e pointed at a small hill in the distance, a mound of red sandstone rock really, riddled with caves. "I remember this. I know what's going to happen...."

They both watched the boys hover at the entrance of a large cave, then slip inside. Not half a minute later, the sky overhead darkened and Golich peered up into the blazing sun to see several pairs of wings beating down on them. The birds were huge, not really birds at all, but flying predators bigger than a man, with crested heads, sharp beaks, spiked tails. Two of them dipped and cawed at the cave entrance, then both landed, folded their massive wings and waddled inside, after the boys.

"Thermosaurs," Acth:On'e explained. "That cave is their nest."

Now Golich was truly alarmed. "They're going after those boys. Maybe we should warn—"

"No. The boys can handle the situation. The other kid is Dominus: Marks 2. He was my best friend growing up."

There came a great screeching sound, with the sound of wings flapping, beating the air heavily and dust boiled out of the cave. Shouts erupted, something was engaged in a fierce battle inside. More shouts, something heavy was hit, or fell to the ground, and one of the thermosaurs staggered bleeding out of the cave, crawling back into the air, one if its wings nearly torn off, blood pumping from its gray-yellow chest.

One of the boys appeared, then the other. They were pulling something heavy and with a start, Golich realized it was the other 'saur. It writhed and twisted; the damn thing was still alive.

The boys dragged it out of the cave and kicked at it for a moment, until it crawled off around the hill to lick its wounds. That was when Golich realized one of the boys was injured, badly from the looks of it. His right arm hung down at an angle that wasn't right.

Acth:On'e nodded wisely. "You know what to do," he muttered to himself. "Go on, get him up on your back...that's it, hoist him up there—" The tall child that was the young Acth:On'e grunted and lifted his injured friend onto his back, staggered a bit and trudged carefully, slowly back to the city walls.

Acth:On'e wrested his arm out of Golich's grasp and went to meet them.

"Acth--!"

At the gate, the two Acth:On'es met in person. Golich hustled after his crewmate, not sure what might happen. Maybe they'll touch and blow up. You never knew about these things. That's why Time Guard had strict regulations against violating causality. Polchinski's Paradox bubbled up for a second in his mind. The Paradox said you could fire a billiard ball into a wormhole at an angle such that, if it continued along its path, it would exit in the past at just the right angle to collide with its earlier self, knocking it off course and preventing it from entering the wormhole in the first place.

All that just made Golich's head hurt. Another reason to leave the Guard when this was all over. Flitting in and out of voidtime did that to you.

"Acth, leave 'em alone. That's an order."

But the Telitorian wasn't listening. He shook hands with his younger self, and helped him put his injured friend on the ground. He had a broken arm for sure, facial bruises and cuts, maybe more. The older Acth:On'e examined Dominus carefully, with his younger self hovering over them both.

"He'll live. I'll get a medbot here—" he waved at Golich, mimed making a call on his wristpad. "He'll be okay but that leg'll need surgery."

Young Acth looked up. "They jumped us so quickly, came out of nowhere...we didn't even know. That cave must have been a nest."

Older Acth studied his younger self curiously. "That was pretty dumb, going in there. You knew 'saurs are around here. You could have been killed. You know better than that."

Young Acth squinted suspiciously at the older one. "You sound just like my father."

Older Acth said, "I know your father."

"You won't tell...he'll kill me, kill both of us."

"He should. But...no, I won't tell. I can't. It would be—" But Acth:On'e thought better of that. Too much explaining was bad.

Young Acth looked on his friend Dominus. "He'll be all right? You're sure?"

"He'll recover fine. And you two will become best friends, big buddies. I'm sure of it."

"How do you know that? You don't even know us. At least, I don't know you."

Now it was older Acth's turn to smile. "I know you like I know myself, better than you think."

"Well, anyway, thanks for helping...hey, here come the bots."

Two small medrones alighted nearby and wheeled over. One hoisted Dominus up carefully, and secured the injured boy in a sling-like harness. The other bent to examine lacerations on young Acth's face. The boy turned his head up to let himself be treated, wincing at some kind of salve the bot applied to a cut.

Older Acth waited until he was sure the boys would be taken care of. "Do yourself a favor," he advised, with Golich still tugging on his shoulder. "You did the right thing bringing Dominus back here for help. But don't be going out in the desert this time of day. 'Saurs eat up kids like you for dinner."

Acth:On'e finally relented to Golich's tugging and the two of them headed out across the sand dunes toward a small cluster of hills just beyond the caves. The Bhaktapur Lab was up in those hills.

Once they were away from the city walls, Golich lit into the Telitorian.

"Just what the hell do you think you're doing back there, Master Guard Acth:On'e? I gave you a direct order. No interactions. What part of 'no' don't you understand?"

Acth:On'e knew he was in trouble. "I guess you'll be writing me up now."

"Captain will hear about this, you can count on that. When I give you an order, that order is to be obeyed immediately, understand? We've got crewmates in serious trouble and we need help from these people, your people. Come on—"

The two of them walked for a while, trudging in lockstep up and down the dunes, making steadily for the lights of the Lab, at the crest of a hump-backed hill.

After a time, Golich broke the strained silence. "How do you know that was you anyway? Or the younger you?"

Acth:On'e shrugged, scooped up a small rock and flung it into the sky. They lost sight of the thing in the glare of Delta-Recursa's orange late-afternoon glow.

"I remember the incident. Dominus and I became best buddies after the 'saurs attacked us. And I did a hell of a lot of growing up afterward too."

"Did you meet an older guy trying to foist off some advice after the attack?"

Acth:On'e was thoughtful. "I don't remember but no, I don't think so."

That's when Nathan Golich knew they had committed a serious causality violation. Who knew what they had done to the timeline now.

The Bhaktapur Lab perched on the crest of the hill like a bird just landed, its foundations clinging like claws to the sandstone scarp. There were gables and turrets and a nice cupola on top; probably some builder's whimsical notion of a fairytale castle situated on a steep slope overlooking the ocher hardpan of the Red Desert, hundreds of meters below.

Sorrell: Edd 5 was at the door to greet them.

"Come in, come in...I see you remembered how to get up here," he said to Acth:On'e. "I've just been getting our singularity cell ready for a little demonstration."

Right away, Golich noticed a striking brunette standing behind Sorrell. Nearly as tall as Sorrell, her face was angular, with high cheeks and her broad shoulders said 'serious athlete,' perhaps a runner or swimmer.

Sorrell motioned her forward. "My assistant, Max: Margie 5. She's an engineer here at the Lab, works with me on singularity physics. She's a wiz on test protocols too."

Golich shook hands with Margie and then noticed the flushed look that had come over Acth:On'e's face.

Jeez, not again, he thought.

"Oh, we've met," Acth:On'e said. Margie smiled humorlessly at both of them. "We were a couple...once. I was a pod-father."

Sorrell seemed surprised. "Really. I didn't know that."

To cut off any more awkwardness, Golich intervened. "Show us your singularity cell. Time is pretty short. Cygnus needs whatever help you can offer. She's running out of time."

"Surely." Sorrell let Margie go in front and the group wound their way through several corridors to a small vault-like room behind locked doors. He went through an intricate series of biometrics and the heavy door hissed open, revealing a clean-room complex at slightly lower pressure.

The containment chamber in the center was draped with thick ganglia of cables, tubes and ducts.

"We've been able to generate rather extreme matter compression inside this chamber," Sorrell explained. "That gives us our singularity. Keeping it stable has been the real problem. I'd like to know how Time Guard has been able to achieve that."

Acth:On'e had been keeping a wary eye on Margie. He withdrew a datatab from his pocket and gave it to Sorrell. "These are schematics for Cygnus's singularity core. That's highly classified, by the way. Not to go beyond these walls."

Sorrell handled the tab like it was contaminated. "The reader's in my office." He gave the tab to Margie. "Would you please set it up so we can have a look?"

"Surely." Max: Margie 5 took the tab and left.

Sorrell asked, "What do you think happened with your core?"

Golich deferred to Acth:On'e. "We think it was a Twister malfunction."

"I'm not familiar with Twisters," Sorrell admitted. "Other than what I've heard."

Acth explained how the Twister worked, then offered, "Our onboard URME believes the Twister lost converger alignment. When that happened, the twist fields came out unconstrained and some of the field lines passed through the singularity core. The underlying matrix was affected, probably banking the compression process. The singularity itself was lost, or so distorted, it wouldn't work, wouldn't grab worldlines, so to speak, so we couldn't jump."

Golich added, "Unfortunately, the ship was thrown deep into your sun's gravity well. We have only minimal propulsor too, so Cygnus is trapped in a descending orbit. She may dive deeper into Delta's photosphere on the next pass, so getting propulsors working and the core repaired is vital. We have a few weeks at most."

"It was fortunate our Rescue people were able to find you and get you out of there. That was a pretty daring attempt you made."

"Desperate is probably a better word," Golich admitted. "Acth felt we could get help from your people if we could just get a few of us our off the ship. Can you help?"

Sorrell rubbed his chin. "We'll look at your schematics and compare the design with what we've done. We've got some pretty clever people around—" but he was interrupted by a technician at the chamber door. The tech waved at them through the thick porthole and pointed in the direction of Sorrell's office. He mimed a request: come and help Margie with the reader right away. "Excuse me for a moment. I'll see what Margie wants."

He cycled out of the chamber. Golich and Acth:On'e were momentarily alone in the containment vault.

Golich was curious. "You were married to that...Margie lady?"

Acth:On'e shrugged and nodded. "We were in a coupling, yes. It's a little different here on Telitor, different from what you K-Worlders understand about relationships." He took a deep breath. "I see they all refer to her as Max: Margie 5. She's gone through another upgrade."

"I knew Telitorians liked to do that. Your official name is Acth:On'e V5, isn't it?"

"It is. Once in awhile, we all go through mind upgrades. New files, new rules and orders, new information, it all gets uploaded into our minds. The original colony of Telitor was founded in 2705 CE. A transhumanist colony. Even from those days, Telitorians believed in uploading new data to our minds, memories and consciousness every five years or so. These uploads or transferences are always treated and celebrated as something like birthdays, bar mitzvahs, coming of age or rite of passage moments in a Telitorian's life. After each upload, a citizen is given a new ID, indicating which version he's uploaded. In my case, I'm a V5, indicating I have completed five version uploads or transferences...i.e. I'm on my fifth version."

"That sounds kind of risky."

"Not really. Each upload is a chance to do a little editing, a little pruning. Clear out old memories, add new memories, new files. That's what happened to Margie and me. After we...sort of separated, we both edited out of lot of our previous memories. I don't have the same feelings for her that I once did."

"And Telitorians look forward to this?"

"Oh, yes. There are special ceremonies surrounding V1, like I said, almost like a bar mitzvah. There are elective and mandatory parts of each upgrade. The mandatory part is to be uploaded with the latest rules and regulations, health and welfare recommendations and educational support from the Ultrarch of the Concordance. That's the big AI that essentially governs all the settlements here. There is also a massive file backup of all your current memories. The elective part can include things like appending other people's memories to yours and even memories from things like plants and animals, though that's pretty weird and only a few have tried. Even new skills can be added, though they still have to be practiced. The V1 and each upload (typically every five to ten years) is a time for celebration and many parties over several days. The final day is a city-wide Carnival called Rotundas, which lasts most of the day with parades and speeches and the crowning of a Rotundas King and Queen."

Golich sniffed. "I'm not sure whether to admire you Telitorians or pity you. I just don't want anybody messing around with my memories." He stared for a moment at the glowing singularity orb undulating and writhing and coruscating inside containment. "I just hope they can help us. Your past with this Margie...this won't affect how you work with these people, will it? What actually happened between you two?"

Acth:On'e sighed and spilled the story.

"It started in my V4 years, after I'd gone through my fourth upgrade. It was during this time period that I met and developed a romantic interest in Max: Margie 4. She was of the same version as me and also in Net-Tutor class with me in many subjects. After Net-Tutor was over, we both applied for jobs at Magellan Mining, as Bot Tech apprentices. We were both accepted. That's when I moved out of my family domicile and rented a common pod with Margie 4 and two other couples. Soon, Margie became pregnant. She had a daughter. We named her Willow 1, giving her a combined family patronymic of Acthax: Willow 1. We called her Willie. We weren't married as you K-Worlders understand it but this doesn't cause problems on Telitor, as Willie would be raised by all the pod members anyway. The pod went by the name of Bhaktapur, like the Lab here...the founders were distant descendants of Nepalese families who had emigrated to Uman space several hundred years ago and were vaguely Buddhist in orientation. But just before my fifth upload, I noticed that Margie had developed an interest in another pod-member, a Nepalese guy named Laktim: Kendrick 4. I got mad and I confronted her about it. After that, we separated and the pod decided that I couldn't have any but minimal time with Willie. This made me even angrier."

"I guess I can understand that."

"The time came for my V5 upgrade. On Telitor that corresponds to an age of about 21-25 years. I was still furious with Margie and maybe my own perceived failings as a pod-father, too. So, I elected to not carry forward many shared files I had with Margie into my fifth upload. In effect, I was wiping many of the files dealing with Margie from my mind and memory. Telitorians can do that. Not only that, I learned that Time Guard has accepted my application to recruit school on Keaton's World. In a fit of pique and against my own mother's explicit wishes, I ended my contract with Bhaktapur pod and left Telitor, shipping out on a freighter bound for Keaton's World. I reported to Time Guard's recruit base for induction and the beginning of boot camp just after my V5 upload." Acth stared off into the distance, seeing things only he could see. "And here I am."

Golich cleared his throat. "Acth, I didn't know you were such a dog."

Just then, Sorrell came back to the containment chamber and motioned for them to cycle out. The heavy door hissed open, recorded their departure for Security, and hissed shut behind them.

"We may have found something in your schematics that could be helpful. Come take a look."

They went to Sorrell's office. Margie was still there, standing over the 3-d pedestal that displayed Cygnus's singularity core and its surrounding attachments and containment. Another female stood next to her, younger, thin, short blond hair with highlights but bearing a noticeable resemblance.

Sorrell introduced Acthax: Willow 2.

Acth:On'e swallowed so hard Golich could hear it.

It was their daughter Willie.

Sorrell paid no attention to the tense veil that descended on the gathering. "Willie here is one of our brightest singularity physicists. She saw something in your schematics that...well, I'll let her explain."

Willie cleared her throat, gave no hint of even recognizing Acth, and launched into a detailed explanation.

Acth:On'e heard her words but he wasn't really listening. Maybe it was the last upgrade, he thought. She's just wiped me from her mind. Old files deleted and expunged.

"...your ship seems to have what we call a hybrid filter net...like an outer covering that envelops the core. If it works like I think, it filters out extraneous unwanted signals, quantum state changes, entanglement distortions, decoherence wake trails, that sort of things. Is this true? Am I understanding your system right?"

For a long awkward moment, Acth:On'e said nothing but simply stared at Willie. Finally, annoyed, Golich nudged him.

"Uh, yes...I believe all that's correct. The filter system is designed...er, designed to maintain a distortion blocking field around the core."

Willie stabbed a finger in the air. "I think I know what happened...your converger went off line, didn't it?"

Acth:On'e mumbled out a thin "Yes."

"When your Twister malfunctioned, the forces it exerted on your converger knocked it out of alignment. That let the twist fields fly everywhere. Since the twist fields were flowing around where they shouldn't, they cooked the filter net and fried your core when it was no longer protected. What has to happen is the converger should be re-aligned, the filter net re-loaded and then the compactor started up to compress the matter seed enough to generate another singularity."

"Pretty much in that order," Sorrell added. He noticed the glaze in Acth:On'e eyes. "Excuse me but I can't help noticing there seems to be some tension between you two."

Golich decided to step in, get everybody re-focused. "I'm wondering if working with Margie and Willow here will cause some complications. Sorrell, our situation is critical. Cygnus can't survive another pass through the sun's photosphere. Somehow, some way, we have to get her moved to a higher orbit. Or we have to find a way to rescue the rest of the crew."

Sorrell nodded. "I've talked with our Free Council. They've given us the Council's full approval to use any and all resources to help your ship. But this—" he indicated with his arms the thick tension between Acth and Margie. Willie's presence had only made it worse. "I don't know...."

Now Margie had an idea. "We've been through a lot of upgrades, Acth and I. And Willie—" she put a comforting hand on her daughter's face. "Her last upgrade pretty much wiped out the past."

"It was my choice, you know," Willie protested. "I didn't want—" But Margie's hand went to Willie's mouth and shushed her.

"Look, Commander Golich's right. We can't let our personal feelings get in the way of doing what has to be done. I've got an idea. If Acth will agree, I'm willing to do a Link and try to synch up our mindfiles. Coordinate versions so we can work together better."

Sorrell said, "You know the Council will have to approve that. The Upload Authority won't like it. It isn't done so much anymore...and with good reasons. It's not safe."

After a glare from Golich, Acth:On'e said, "I'm willing."

Margie said nothing.

Sorrell shrugged. "Okay, if that's the way you two want it. I'll talk to Bledsoe...see if the Council can prevail on the Upload Authority. In the meantime, maybe Willie can work out a repair protocol for your ship."

"I'll work with her," Golich offered. It was clear that Acth couldn't. To his crewmate, Golich said, "You go back to the containment vault. Study up on their core. See what the differences are. That's an order."

Sorrell thought the idea had merit. "I'll get another tech in there to work with you. Come on."

Reluctantly, Acth avoided Margie and let himself be led out of Sorrell's office. Sorrell cycled Acth through the biometrics and the door hissed open again. Moments later, a young man showed up.

Sorrell introduced him. "Laktim: Layton 3. He's an intern, really an apprentice...just out of University. Layton's working on entanglement suppression and quantum distortions. He'll help you, answer any of your questions." Sorrell turned to leave. "I'll come get you when the Link's ready. Assuming the Authority approves."

Back in Sorrell's office, Golich watched Margie and Willie chattering to each other about details of the Cygnus schematics.

He made a quiet decision while listening to their chatter. If I ever get back to K-World, I'm walking out of this. The contact chip Malakel had given him on Hapsh'm was still in his pocket.

It was time. Maybe way past time.

The mindlink was a straightforward procedure, for all the concerns, conducted in a clinic inside the sandstone, castle-like headquarters of Telitor's Upload Authority, right in the middle of Kasala Township.

Margie and Acth had to deal with some preliminaries first. The counselor was a prim, lanky blond named Garwin: Magdalena 3.

"Call me Maggie, please," she smiled sweetly. She passed a tablet across her desk. "These are all the consent forms, the waivers, exemptions and acknowledgements. All perfectly normal."

The two of them briefly scanned the tablet pages and pressed their thumbprints where indicated.

Maggie took the tablet back. "Now, you both are aware that mindfile synching isn't done very often. The Authority officially discourages it; it's hard to predict the outcome. You may not end up as fully synched as you want. You both understand this?"

Margie nodded. Acth:On'e said quietly, "Yes."

"Why are you pursuing this?"

They looked at each other. Acth spoke first, explaining the critical situation Cygnus was in. "We need to be able to work together...somehow. The past is...well, you know, past. We've moved on, had different uploads. We—"

Margie cut in abruptly. "We're not that close anymore. But he's right. It would help us help the Time Guard ship if we were a bit more compatible." Now Margie seemed concerned, her forehead wrinkling in concentration. "I won't lose anything, will I? After this is all over—"

Maggie waved a hand. "Don't worry. Your current memory states will be recorded and preserved. Soon as you want, they can be easily restored. The synching is just to ensure consistent and compatible memory engrams for as far back as you've chosen—" she scanned her tablet, "I see several years. Is that right?"

They both nodded.

"Very well, then. If you'll both go back to the waiting room, we'll start prepping the upload rooms. The nurse will call you back."

Acth and Margie went back to the waiting room. They were alone.

The silence was awkward for a while. Then Margie asked a question.

"I didn't think you'd ever get back to Telitor, after you joined the Time Guard."

Acth stared at his shoes. "Well, you know...there's a war on. The Guard sends us where we're needed. The Bugs are nearby."

"There haven't been any sightings I've heard of."

"Coethi don't exactly announce when they're appearing. Mostly, they maneuver around inside voidtime."

"Your ship's in danger. That was pretty risky, what you and the Commander did."

Acth shrugged. "We discussed it. Captain felt it was the best way."

"Now, you're here. You think this will work, this synching?"

"Who knows? We have to try it." Without really meaning to, Acth blurted out, "I guess you're still with that Laktim guy, huh?" They had been tiptoeing around the subject the whole time. Now it was out in the open.

Margie stiffened. "Laktim's a pod-father, if that's what you mean. He helped raise Willie...and a bunch of the pod's kids. He's a good man."

"I'm sure. You know, what you did—"

"Look, don't, okay? Just don't. Let's don't make this any harder."

Acth fumed, twisted around in his seat, then got up and moved to another chair. "I was perfectly within my rights not to carry forward any shared mindfiles into my fifth upload. You know that."

"It doesn't matter now. Let's just get through this."

Now Acth laughed a snorky kind of laugh. "It'd be weird if the synching put us back to before you...you know, met Laktim. Before you ran off. Back to where we were...kind of together. Like a couple."

"I did not 'run off.' Get that through your thick skull. Laktim was—" Margie looked down at her hands, not sure what to do with them. She finally sat on them. "Laktim was kind. He cared. You...you were always off at Magellan, running the bots, working all the time."

"I was just trying to support my family, my pod. Jeez, do I even have to explain that\--?"

Margie just shook her head and looked up at the ceiling. "Buddha, get me through this. So help me, if this synching puts all those memories back—"

Just then, a white-jacketed nurse appeared at the door. "We're ready, you two. Acth, you're first. I'll come back for you in a sec, Margie."

Acth:On'e disappeared down the hallway, leaving Margie to wonder.

I just hope this is worth all the aggravation. Cygnus and singularity cores or not, there was no way she was going to re-live the memories of the last few years.

When the mindfile synching was done, Acth and Margie walked back through town and up to the Bhaktapur Lab.

Neither said a word to the other.

They ran into Willie inside the containment chamber. Golich and Sorrell were there as well.

"Your daughter's come up with an idea," Sorrell announced. "Willie--?"

Willie shoved her curls behind her ears and said, "It's a patch, really. For the core's operating system. I've been studying your ship's schematics. I think you need a new filter...a dynamic filter that can adjust and adapt to current conditions on the fly. Your Twister breached the installed filter pretty easily and that's what scrambled the core. Something—maybe the Twister itself—threw your converger out of alignment and your normal filters couldn't handle the load. My dynamic filter should be able to."

"We've been running tests on our singularity," Sorrell added. "It seems to work. Of course, these are lab conditions, controlled conditions. We've been trying to simulate your ship's situation as best we can. But it's hard to know for sure."

Acth:On'e watched Willie explain her fix. He found himself both amazed and impressed at his estranged daughter's insight and ideas. Then when Margie went over to hug Willie, he swallowed his annoyance and did the same, patting her cheeks as if she were a five-year old. Willie's eyes blazed and she backed off.

Golich spoke up. "We need to get this fix to Cygnus as fast as we can."

Sorrell waved everybody out of the containment room and back to his office. He rigged up a display on his 3-d pedestal, showing the sun Delta-Recursa and Telitor Space Rescue's current track on Cygnus. It was plain to see where the track would take the ship...into a region of the sun's photosphere where she could never survive.

Sorrell let the display speak for itself for a few moments. "Returning to your ship will be exceedingly dangerous. That's obvious." He looked at Golich and Acth:On'e. "You two both were lucky to make it to a higher orbit, lucky Space Rescue detected you when they did. It could be suicide to make this kind of return."

Golich was matter-of-fact. "Cygnus is pretty beat up. She can't maneuver away from the sun without repairs. I'm hoping the Captain and the rest of the crew have been able to get some kind of propulsors up and operating. Otherwise—"

"I want to go," Willie said firmly.

Margie erupted, "Willie, no...don't say that...you don't—"

Willie held up her hands, brushed her mother away. "It's my fix. I know how it works. I know how to install it. Face it, I have to go."

Margie was about to object, but Acth:On'e cut in. "Willie, it's suicidal. Show me what you've done. Let us make the repairs and the patches."

"You don't have the time," she said. "Commander Golich just said so. This is the best way, maybe the only way. I can do the job faster...you know that's true."

Acth stared at Margie with a helpless feeling. "I can't ask—"

"I'm volunteering," Willie practically shouted. "Give me a chance, okay? Let me help you."

Sorrell said, "The pod will have to agree to this."

"Then we'd better get things moving. Every minute we delay, the ship gets closer to the edge."

Nobody could argue with that.

Margie wrestled with a thought, then blurted out. "If you're going, Willie, then I'm going too. I've got some background in this as well." Her eyes blazed and she dared anyone to object.

Acth started to, then just shook his head. What had gotten into her? Was it the synching? "I don't think that's such a good—"

But Margie chopped her hand through the air with finality. "Enough talk. You came to us for help. Now, for God's sake, let us help you."

Sorrell was increasingly uneasy with this turn of events. "Well, not only will the pod have to agree, but Space Rescue will have to come up with a way of getting all of you back to the ship." He jammed his hands in his pocket, stared solemnly the 3-d display, let his fingers follow the blip that was Cygnus, now being tracked in real-time in its descending orbit around the sun. "This is insane. But I'll contact Director Murray: Gates 4 and see what he thinks. If Space Rescue thinks it's doable and your pod goes along, then so be it."

Acth:On'e and Margie glared across the display at each other. Willie stood apart, kept her own eyes on the ship, following its track, mesmerized at the challenge.

Willie was the key, the common factor. Maggie at Upload had said synching didn't always work the way the participants wanted. But even in the midst of wildly incompatible memories and mindfiles, Willie seemed like a common thread.

Acth smiled ruefully and thought he saw the barest hint of a smirk at the edge of Margie's lips. Hardly anything, but it was enough.

The Time Guard ship Cygnus wasn't the only thing that needed repairs and patches.

# Chapter 3: "Patches and Repairs"

"Time is what we want most, but use worst."

William Penn

Kasala Township, Telitor

Time Stream: T-001

T-date: T-001-3-89

Getting four people back aboard Cygnus was going to be dicey and Nathan Golich didn't bother to compute any odds. In fact, he tried to avoid thinking about it, for the method chosen by Telitor Space Rescue was risky and probably suicidal. Ingenious but Golich wouldn't give odds, even to himself, on any kind of survivable outcome.

The shuttle was little more than a tiny survey craft, confiscated from a boneyard of spare parts and ship components in a graveyard orbit high above Telitor, cobbled together and outfitted to support a four-person crew for a few days.

Golich would do the piloting and he listened carefully to the dockyard engineers as they described what the shuttle could and mostly couldn't do.

Murphy: Figueroa 4 was the lead engineer. He insisted Golich call him Figgy.

Figgy briskly scratched a rather bushy beard. "Dock hands gave her the name Phoenix. You know: rebirth, fire, ashes, the sun. She ain't much to look at but she'll get the job done. We added extra shielding all around, ablative shielding. Where you're going, she'll need all of it. She's got enough to last for a few close orbits, maybe inside of a million kilometers. And one deep dive...that's it." Figgy shook his head slowly. "After that, no guarantees. Son, I'm sure glad I'm not going where you're going. Dock birds started taking bets on the outcome, but I didn't like the odds."

"What about docking? Cygnus doesn't have much in the way of universal docking gear."

Figgy nodded sagely. "So I heard. We rigged up a grappling device...that's those arm-like things on the front. From what I saw of your schematics, you should able to grab hold of your ship and swing Phoenix around and seal up against her airlock...that is, if I got the dimensions right. It's all based on your schematics."

"And jumpships were supposed to be classified...I heard Phoenix is getting a ride to her dropoff orbit."

Figgy said, "Yup. Rescue Service cutter...Tibetan Clipper, I heard. She'll take you as close to the sun as she can and give you a swift kick. After that—" Figgy offered a humorless smile.

For a day, Figgy and the dock hands checked Golich and Acth:On'e out on Phoenix's controls, sensors and systems. She was barely big enough for two, let alone four.

Launch day came soon afterward and Clipper was underway, coursing along a descending orbit that would intersect Delta Recursa some million and a half kilometers above her photosphere layer.

The trip would take about a week.

One afternoon, in his cabin aboard Clipper, Golich stared at the swelling red-orange disk of Delta Recursa. Her limb was roiled by huge flexing prominences and loops of gas, all of them following intense magnetic spirals. This is truly insane, he told himself, yet he knew Dringoth, M'Bela, Yang and URME were still down there, somewhere hopefully still alive. And there was still the matter of the Coethi, who could easily be nearby, shielded from detection inside voidtime. If the Bugs showed up now, there was only Leo to protect the entire system. But she had sustained damage herself, plus she could well be trapped in another time stream and she didn't have a Twister.

Below the ship, the upper chromosphere and photosphere churned and heaved like a boiling pot of soup...all yellow and orange and beige and tan, streaked with dark patches that were still the subject of endless debates. Delta Recursa was a burnt orange-hued world, mottled and banded with reds, browns and ambers, a cauldron of clouds, storms and majestic seething turbulence. Alternating strips of light and dark wrapped the star in a calico shroud and several small dark spots boiled away in the north tropical zone, companions to larger cyclonic disturbances in the south, centuries-old sunspot disturbances churning since the time of the first landfall on Telitor.

When this is all over, if we somehow survive it, I'm out of here, Golich promised himself. Once again, he felt the reassuring solidity of Malakel's contact chip in his pocket.

He heard a faint commotion outside his bunk. It was Acth:On'e.

"Just headed to the galley. You want anything, Commander?"

Golich demurred. "I'll be up in a few moments." Acth shrugged at that and pressed on up the gangway.

He decided to grab something from the galley himself. Acth made his way forward to Clipper's wardroom and was about to enter when he heard two familiar voices inside. Margie and Willie. They were arguing about something and two tablets were on a nearby table.

He decided to enter and the arguing stopped abruptly. Margie's face was a mixture of barely contained irritation and disgust with her daughter. Willie was defiant, her lips tight as a line.

"Don't let me interrupt anything," Acth said. "Just came in for something to drink." He probed the fridge for a moment, found some juice and started unscrewing the cap.

"I'm in the cupola," Willie announced, a bit too loudly. She brushed past Acth and swept out of the wardroom.

Now Margie just glared at him, her hands on her hips. She seemed at a loss for something to do, then sat down abruptly. "She's just like you. Stubborn as a 'saur, headstrong, determined to have her own way."

"All that's on me?"

Margie waved a hand. "No, of course not. I just said that to hear myself talk."

Acth decided to try another tack. "She seems to have grown up to be a strong woman. Somebody raised her right."

Margie eyed his drink. "Get me one too, will you?" Acth retrieved a juice and handed it over. She sipped for a moment, then got up, found a small flask in a nearby drawer and poured some of it into the juice. "That's better."

They studied each other for a time, saying nothing, just appraising each other like thermosaurs defending a nest.

They had spent...what was it? Three, no, make it four years in the pod together. He and Margie had lived together until Willie was born. By normal standards, it wasn't love that kept them together. It started out as respect, then slowly graduated to fond courtesy, with occasional excursions into admiration and sympathy and once, fleetingly, a frightening descent into tenderness. But never love.

Acth really had no words to describe what he felt about Margie now.

"Laktim...he's a good podfather?"

Margie nodded. "He's attentive, supportive, plays with all the kids. He's there for them, gives them attention. He and Willie...well, you know how it is with teens. She's growing up, trying to leave the nest. Laktim tries...but Willie, she's—" Margie shrugged, almost smiled. "Let's just say she has her own mind."

Maybe it was the synching. Acth found mentioning Laktim didn't sting like it used to, didn't get his blood boiling anymore. It was like he was elsewhere, above the argument, able to look down like some disembodied spirit and see more clearly.

"Remember when we when sailing on Loch Lemaster? The boat, that grubby little skiff, capsized. The wind came and that big wave—"

Margie's face remembered how to smile and a big one creased her lips, gone almost as soon as it had appeared. "I do remember...we got drenched. You somehow got the skiff upright, got the mast and sail up...but weren't there--?"

"Theelodonts, weren't they? That's what the responders called them. Whole school of them."

"Yeah, with teeth as big as my head." Margie nodded her head wistfully, recalling the time. "That was crazy. But you got us out of there."

"It seems like our mindfiles are more compatible now. The synching worked."

"I suppose so." Margie turned more serious, unwilling to linger in the glow of shared memories. "You're up on Phoenix's systems now? You and Commander Golich know how to pilot her?"

Acth cleared his throat. "Figgy went over everything back at the dockyard. Some of Clipper's crew have helped me out too. The Commander can pilot the thing." It was asking too much to call her a ship.

Just then, a voice erupted over the intercom.

"ALL HANDS, PHASING BURN IN FIVE MINUTES...RETURN TO YOUR STATIONS AND STRAP IN...ALL HANDS....'

Tibetan Clipper completed her phasing burn in good order, placing the ship and her piggybacked shuttle in a low orbit, barely a million kilometers above the sun's visible surface. Outside, Delta Recursa loomed gargantuan in every porthole, filling their views with churning convective cells bigger than Telitor, blotches of dark sunspots creeping past, and blazing loops of incandescent gas bubbling and bursting out into space in corkscrew columns millions of kilometers tall.

Clipper's captain was a tall, sun-burned officer named Koolapurnam. 'Koolie' came by a few minutes after the phasing burn and poked his head into Golich's cabin.

"Best get your crew aboard Phoenix, Commander. We'll be at the drop-off point in two and half hours. WINSTON's loading last-minute trajectory and guidance updates now."

Golich bolted out of his bunk, banging his forehead on a stanchion. He rubbed the bruise ruefully. "Sorry, Captain. Just when I was getting used to Clipper's nasty little surprises. All our gear's aboard?"

Koolie nodded. "Everything you manifested. I don't mind telling you this will be one hairy ride. I don't envy you. I just hope your ship's still down there."

"Your yeoman said you had a skin track on Cygnus right after we phased."

Koolie said, "We did, briefly. But we lost it. That doesn't mean anything...sensors are mostly haywire in these conditions. All I can do is make sure you're ready to de-orbit at the right time and place."

An hour later, Golich, Acth:On'e, Margie and Willie were secured in their seats and the outer hatch had been dogged shut.

Phoenix had been powered up and she was ready to undock and drop.

Right into hell itself, thought Acth:On'e.

Golich had run the rescue scenario multiple times through WINSTON, the shuttle's onboard computer. Trajectories, descent angles, burn times for her tiny de-orbit motor, roll rates during the descent, chromosphere and photosphere circulation models, storms, all of it chewed on by WINSTON to come up with a time and duration for the de-orbit burn. He had run the numbers several dozen times, taking into account the retrograde super-rotation of Delta's outer layers, the angular speeds of its Hadley cells, pressure gradients, adiabatic cooling rates in its convective storms.

Now as he watched the timer count down the last few seconds to de-orbit, he felt a lump in his throat. The burn, once started, initiated an irrevocable chain of events. Once out of high orbit, Phoenix would be completely at the mercy of the star's atmosphere, intense heat and gravity. Golich hoped WINSTON was right in all his calculations and that he really understood the dynamics of the sun's atmosphere as well as he tried to convey in all those pre-drop briefings.

There would be no turning back.

"Three...two...one...mark!" Golich mouthed the final seconds. The de-orbit motor kicked in on time and he felt it as a strong shove in his back. Phoenix lost several dozen meters per second in forward velocity. Automatically orienting itself blunt-end forward, the ship angled downward and began its steep plunge into the upper reaches of the star's atmosphere.

Soon, an orange glow began to envelop the outer hull. He could feel the ship slowing as it plummeted into the soup, pieces of ablative shielding shedding off as the fiery heat burned and ablated her heat shield. Flames licked the portholes and Golich shut his eyes, feeling the ship as it lurched ever downward. He could feel Phoenix shuddering in auto-roll, taking advantage of her offset center of gravity to make slight maneuvering adjustments, clinging to the trajectory that would lead her a point only a few kilometers from Cygnus, if all went well, if they had a good track, if the guidance was accurate.

Golich and Acth:On'e locked eyes for a moment. They said nothing. What was there to say?

WINSTON pinged out a warning tone and Golich reacted instantly. By the numbers, if the descent trajectory was right and final track on Cygnus had been analyzed properly, he was descending below six hundred thousand klicks and it was time to pop the wing. He took a peek out of the porthole, flinched as a dark shadow passed by right overhead.

What the hell was that? he wondered. Probably a streaker, an isolated cloud bank passing nearby. Golich was momentarily between cloud decks, still descending and the clouds looked like a saffron-hued lake in a thunderstorm, with massive cumulous banks and towering columns twisting and flexing like snakes all around them. The clouds weren't really clouds, just intensely heated convective cells. The air was thick, dense and light refracted crazily. Five hundred thousand kilometers and still going down. The charts said the temperature here ran upwards of ten thousand degrees. And it was rising rapidly.

Time to fly, he muttered to himself. Golich stabbed a button, releasing Phoenix's para-wing. The drogue came out, reefed properly, then the wing jerked free and unfolded like a baby chick trying to fly. The sudden deployment jerked the capsule hard and, behind them, Margie banged her forehead on the porthole.

Ouch! She rubbed the bump, found a thin trickle of blood, but bit her lips and stayed quiet. Golich now bent to the task of steering Phoenix across the cloud deck, aiming for WINSTON's computed rendezvous point, some seventy kilometers ahead and, if the computer was right, twenty kilometers below.

For the first few minutes, Golich concentrated on just getting the feel of the wing. He had trained for this very task countless times in Clipper's sim tank; he would have one pass, one chance, at rendezvous. If WINSTON was wrong, if Cygnus wasn't there--

Nope, not thinking about that, he told himself. Grimly, doggedly, he pressed on.

Winds and turbulence were picking up fast, as they plunged deeper into the inferno. Phoenix had the flying qualities of a brick, but with her wing deployed, each gust twisted and tossed the ship in every direction at once. In time, he and Acth had gained a fair sense of how to steer the ship and managed to ride a few thermals up and down, like surfing an ocean wave, diving here, lifting there, steering this way, then that, all the while still descending, riding the gusts forward, ever forward, skimming the cloud deck as a surfer would track a big one off the north shore of Loch Lithgow back on K-World. For a time, he even imagined himself riding on the back of a short-tailed arachtyl, swooping over the sea, hovering and flicking its black-tipped wings, then diving into the water for a tasty morsel of some unfortunate crustacean.

Momentarily in a pleasant daze, Golich was startled when WINSTON chirped with the first radar signal.

Cygnus?

Golich held his breath as he closed the distance. Then, slowly materializing out of the blazing orange murk, there! Right there!

He swooped and rolled and dove and careened closer. The jumpship looked like an oblong scorched eggshell. The hull seemed intact. There didn't seem to be any breaches. The whole ship was rotating slowly, caught in cross-gusts, spinning out of control. Golich told Acth to try comms.

"Cygnus, this is Phoenix...inbound on approach your seven o'clock, do you copy, over?"

Nothing.

"Cygnus...Evelyn M 'Bela, you stuck-up mother, Captain Dringoth, anybody...it's Acth:On'e...come to rescue your sorry asses. Do you read me?"

Now, some chirps and whistles. Weird keying sounds. Something banging. Then: "Phoenix...how the hell? Wait. Don't tell me...I don't want to know. Is that really you, Acth?"

"Live and in person, Queenie. I'm on wing, about two thousand meters behind you. We're diving below. We'll try to come up right in front of you."

"I don't think you can time the rotation that—"

"Just shut up, okay? I'm saving your ass. Just make sure the docking adapter's not damaged."

For the next few minutes, Golich ignored the clearly flabbergasted and still scratchy voice of M'Bela and concentrated on maneuvering Phoenix. Lightning flashed nearby--they must be over some sunspots, highly magnetized loops releasing stupendous energies and the shock wave slammed the ship sideways, but Golich countered with more yaw and straightened out. He descended carefully beneath the ship, eyeing the scorch marks from earlier lightning strikes and the intense heat with a concerned eye, then waited for the next gust, timed it perfectly and rode the swells right up until the blunt forward end of Cygnus slammed right into Phoenix's docking collar.

"Jeez, Golich," came M'Bela's voice, now a bit clearer as WINSTON cleaned up the signal. "Watch it down there...you may have just crushed the docking ring,"

"You wish," he teased. There would be no capture latches in this docking attempt. No hard dock. No secure connection. Just slam and bang, hold her hard against the ring, and open the hatches. "Get your suits buttoned up. I'll try to grapple. One hell of a storm out here."

"Hey, hydrogen rain, ionized helium sleet, gale force winds, heat and pressure rising fast enough to crush us to pulp, what's not to like. Just another beautiful day in the neighborhood." A few moments of silence. Then: "Hey, Commander, don't get me wrong when I say this...but today, I really am glad Time Guard assigned you to this mission."

Why's that?"

"'Cause only a K-Worlder would even think of trying a stunt like this...okay, here comes the hatch."

Phoenix slammed into the side of Cygnus and this time, with Acth:On'e's help, she held fast, grappling for any purchase she could find on the hull.

The heavy pressure hatch squeaked and groaned—there were clearly bent parts inside—then with a loud grunt, Acth forced the thing open.

Golich concentrated on keeping Phoenix pinned against the hatch, not easy as they corkscrewed in a slow-motion tailspin deeper and deeper into the photosphere. It was like riding the crest of a Sabine's gull just after it spotted dinner below the sea surface.

Inside Cygnus' lockout, M'Bela chirped in delight at the sight. First, came Acth:On'e's white helmet with the big red stripe. Then his shoulders. He grabbed the edge of airlock's outer hatch flange and with loud grunts, curses, sounds she couldn't identify and one mighty last heave, he was able to yank and jerk himself across the gap, fall into the egress bay and then, after Golich had made the perilous crossing, kick-slam the hatch shut behind them. Golich lay heavily on his side for a moment, breathing hard, then twisted his helmet off and poked his head up, right at M'Bela's feet. A cock-eyed grin split his bearded, sweaty face.

Dringoth stood just outside the chamber, a big grin on his own stubbly face.

"Well, Commander, I see you somehow managed to swipe a pile of parts and make a ship out of it. Wonder how well that went down at Telitor?" With a few more grunts, he hoisted Golich up and helped him climb out of his suit. M'Bela helped Acth:On'e.

"I have two more crew still over there," Golich announced. "They've got a patch for the core. They believe they can fix it."

Dringoth peered out the hatch porthole and saw two female faces a few meters away. "Telitorian," he surmised. To M'Bela and Yang: "Okay, get these two out of here. We'll have to work the others across one at a time."

Eventually, Phoenix's entire crew made it inside Cygnus. Alicia Yang examined each one in turn—they had all gathered in the jumpship's galley—and pronounced all more or less fit.

The same could not be said for the crew of Cygnus.

"We're holding up for the moment, except for URME. His config's on the fritz, so we shut him down for the time being. It's the heat. Our systems are failing, a little bit more every day," Dringoth admitted. "We've got some propulsor, but not enough to make much of a difference. We managed to raise orbit by a few hundred kilometers. We've got life support on max, but the heat's degrading everything. Now our orbit's decaying...it won't be long now."

Golich agreed. "The hull looks like a burned-out wreck." He introduced Margie and Willie. "They work at the Bhaktapur Lab. Willie's got a software patch for ISAAC, for the core driver. She thinks we can get the core up and operating again."

Dringoth took a deep breath. "Let's get to it, then. That core's the only way we're getting out of here."

Inside Cygnus' tailpod, Margie, Willie and Acth:On'e found conditions nearly impossible to endure, with every surface scalding hot to the touch. Draped in cloth coveralls and sporting thermal gloves, the three of them delicately removed the core's burned-out filter and threaded new wiring and new filter panels into place. It was exacting, tedious, sweaty work, and they quickly found they could only accomplish it in shifts of ten minutes of less, for the heat was so intense, it sucked the very life out of them.

Waiting out in the gangway for their own shifts to commence, Margie and Acth:On'e listened to the hoarse, labored breathing and barely muffled curses of Willie as she tried to finish the final connections and secure the filter and its controller in place.

"She's quite a worker," Margie said. "Doesn't know when to quit. She's been like that her whole life."

"Dedicated," agreed Acth:On'e. "She takes after her mom."

Margie smiled faintly and moved a millimeter closer. "Laktim thinks she'll be running that Lab before long. I can see it too."

"You're still with Magellan...with the bot mining?"

"Twenty-two years now. I'm a shift supervisor. How about you? Time Guard is your life now?"

Acth nodded. He patted a bulkhead. "I just flit around time streams like it was nothing. The ship is my home."

Margie said, "And the crew's your family, I guess."

Acth said, "No...not really. My family's here. Or rather back on Telitor."

"Why did you join the Guard...to get away from me?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I wasn't the one who was seeing someone else."

"You were never around. I see that hasn't changed."

Acth took a deep breath. "I guess I left because the pod sided with you. I was trying to be a good provider."

"Being a good provider means providing for your mate's emotional needs as well, you know."

"No argument...but food on the table comes first." He shrugged, peered in over top of Willie's legs to see how she was coming. "The pod didn't agree. When they restricted how often I could see Willie—"

"That wasn't right," Margie agreed. "The pod's different now. Not so many high-minded idealists and know-it-alls as before."

"Glad to hear it. Willie, what's going on in there?"

A muffled voice came drifting out. "Almost...nearly got the last panel in place. Jeez, it's tight in here...and hot as hell."

Margie poked Acth in the side. "I'd like it if you showed up once in a while."

"Not my call. The Guard sends us where we're needed. Right now, you've got Bugs on your doorstep. If we get out of this, we've still got a job to do. And the Twister needs work. Once the frontier's stabilized, we'll see. There are still a lot of repairs to be done around here."

Margie agreed. "Repairs..." she tried the word out. "And not just to the ship, Acth." Their eyes met for a moment, just as Willie was backing herself out of the core compartment, banging her shins and her shoulders and head as she did so. She took the towel Acth offered and wiped her face, then noticed the peculiar look on both their faces. "Did I miss something?"

"I'll get the matter seed ready for transfer," Acth said. The seed, once inserted into a live singularity core, would be compressed by the compactor until its structure was squeezed down to a quark stew, past the Schwarzschild radius itself. From that point, the basic singularity would be developed, managed, shaped and controlled by strong magnetic fields. The singularity was what enabled Cygnus to grab worldlines at the very heart of spacetime and thrust the jumpship across time streams.

And a re-lit singularity core would allow Cygnus to jump out of the inferno of Delta Recursa, back to some semblance of normal space and time.

Acth came back with a small suitcase-sized container along with Dringoth and Golich. With help from Willie, he was able to position the case properly and trigger the timed lock that would release the seed into the core. But before that happened, the entire tailpod had to be vacated and the rest of the crew notified.

Twenty minutes later and with a great sigh of relief, Acth studied the displays in Engineering that indicated the seed had been properly released and was in position. He signaled Dringoth.

"Ready to fire up the core, Captain."

Dringoth had been listening to an advisory from ISAAC on his earbud. "Sorry, ISAAC just picked up some snippets of comm, probably from Leo. It looks like the Bugs are emerging from voidtime in force, halfway to Demeter." Demeter was the next-to-last world in the Delta Recursa system. "ISAAC's getting intermittent reports of a battle. If we can jump Cygnus out of here, we'll try to backtrack along the same worldline. With any luck, we can pop out before the Bugs arrived."

At Dringoth's orders, the entire crew took their stations. Margie and Willie were confined to temporary quarters on B deck, both of them in Acth:On'e's berthing space.

The core lit up in good order and Cygnus hummed with the welcome sound of her powerful singularity drive, ticking over, while Acth and Golich quickly ran down a lengthy checklist before attempting a jump. Evelyn M'Bela studied ChronoNav and her other navigation systems for a moment.

"We won't complete this orbit, Captain. Delta's gravity is dragging us down. Estimating crush depth in forty-two minutes if we stay in this orbit."

URME—the Unit Reserve Memory Entity who had just been released from containment-- added, "Concur, Captain, based on hull structural constraints and strain sensors. Temps are rising to redline now."

Golich said, "We still don't have full propulsor, Captain. We won't have much maneuvering even if we can make a jump."

"We'll worry about that later. We've just got to get Cygnus out of the oven first. Crew, make ready for jump and all call."

One by one, the crew came back with status and readiness.

"TT1...temporal systems on line and cooking."

"TM1, maintenance and sustainment, yo and go."

"Sensors?"

M'bela's voice crackled over the comm. "Sensors up and sniffing, Captain."

"Fire director?"

"Ready, Captain."

"DPS?"

That was Alicia Yang. "All defense systems primed...HERF, mag, collapser, all Level 1 across the board."

Dringoth took a last look out his side porthole. Nothing but a blazing yellow-orange glare filled the window, though he could still see occasional fiery, incandescent loops and swirls of gas thrashing about just beyond them. There were diving into the star's photosphere and temps on the hull were rapidly rising to critical levels.

"Jettison Phoenix now," Dringoth commanded.

Acth:On'e swallowed hard at that. Phoenix had brought them back to Cygnus. Now she was being cast off into a lake of fire. The jump had to work now.

The ship shuddered as the shuttle was released, soon to be consumed in the inferno rising around them.

"Start the count," Dringoth ordered.

Golich's voice was nearly drowned out by the swelling roar just outside the hull.

"Three...two...one...mark!"

Dringoth stabbed the ENABLE button. "Executing jump...NOW!"

Back on B deck, Margie and Willie lurched into each other's arms. Cocooned in the bunk compartment, they were well strapped in, but the violence of the jump startled them both.

"Willie...Willie, wake up. Something's happening—"

She stirred. "What is it?"

"I don't know, but it feels like we're moving sideways." Margie plastered her nose to the porthole, trying to make something out. "It's too bright out there. I see some streamers, some kind of loops. You feel that?"

Some kind of force was pushing them sideways. At the same time, the compartment picked up a light shuddering vibration, gyrating like a top at the end of a string.

"Yeah...what's happening?"

"I don't know, but I think we're on the outer edge of some kind of vortex...everything's rushing sideways, dirt, pieces of things...I can't really make it out."

"God, it's hot in here."

The force began to increase, a centrifugal force that soon shoved them to one side of the compartment and pressed them hard against the walls. Worse, the compartment began a slow roll, a rotation that didn't remain slow for long, but picked up rate at a steady clip.

Soon, they were spinning enough to become disoriented and dizzy.

"Willie...my stomach...I don't feel so—"

Margie's words were suddenly lost in a bright flash of light, a searing, painfully white strobing light that flooded the compartment and blinded her.

"Ow...I can't see—"

The spin kept accelerating and moments later, Willie and Margie both passed out.

Whenever he talked publicly about the experience, Dringoth mentioned that going through a time jump was hard to describe: moments of peaceful weightlessness, almost a dreamlike quality, except for the bright strobing lights outside the porthole and then the sudden stop.

It was like having a horse kick the crap out of you. Or maybe driving your turboflyer headfirst into a brick wall at eighty miles an hour.

The jumpship shuddered and hurtled out of the time stream, in a flash of light, a roaring rush of deceleration, knocking Dringoth and Golich hard against their seat harnesses. Still trapped on the edge of the vortex, Dringoth struggled to regain consciousness and, by instinct and training, rammed the ship's rudder hard over, while firing her jets to counteract the residual force of the spin. For a moment, they were both pinned sideways against the cockpit, until the force of the jets shot them through the core of the vortex and out into calmer world of truetime.

Golich breathed hard, wiping his face with his hands. He checked the instruments.

"Sounding smoother flow, Captain...rough and turbulent, but visibility improving. I can pulse ahead...looks like we made it...somewhere."

"And some when," Dringoth said. "Queenie, give me a hack. Where and when are we?"

M'Bela was still groggy but functional. Her fingers played over her board, checking their position and heading. "ChronoNav says we're where we're supposed to be...I read us as smack in the middle of T-001, sixty-two degrees down by thirty-four degrees left, drifting a bit off center. URME, do you concur? I really need to get topside and shoot some stars to know for sure."

URME was now physically stationed at the engineering console on E deck. "Analyzing now, sir...Captain, detecting massive decoherence wake, dead ahead, forty-two thousand one hundred and five kilometers. Could be the Coethi...lots of entanglement ripping spacetime around that heading."

"Is it the Coethi?"

"Can't determine yet, sir. I'm asking ISAAC for a full sensor sweep."

Dringoth studied his board. "Where exactly are we?"

M'Bela tapped a few keys. "ISAAC puts us still in heliocentric orbit about Delta Recursa, but barely and way out...twenty-four billion kilometers at least."

Dringoth made his decision. Like they said at the Academy, when you're in command, command. "I'm bringing us closer to that disturbance. It has to be our target. ISAAC, can you resolve the target?"

The ship's AI said back, "Long-range scan indicates that the formation is a diffuse cluster of discrete elements of mean size approximately twenty-five nanometers main dimension...smaller than normal dust particles. Detecting increased energy levels in certain electromagnetic bands, consistent with assembler activity as we understand it. Probability that this formation is a swarm of nanobotic elements now approaching eighty-four percent. Probable Coethi formation now at six point one billion, four hundred million kilometers, best range."

"That's good enough for me," Dringoth decided. "URME, bring the Twister on line."

But his words were cut short by a blaring klaxon. ISAAC, the ship's AI, had just detected an eruption along the voidtime channel.

"FLUX BOUNDARY WARNING...FLUX BOUNDARY WARNING...MULTIPLE TARGETS AHEAD...PROBABLE SWARM FORMATION!"

"I see 'em now!" M'Bela yelled, for her board had just lit up like a sunburst. "I've got Bugs everywhere—"

URME studied his own ChronoNav display. "Worldlines converging dead ahead...behind us too. They're trying to pinch."

"Fire the Twister!" Dringoth commanded.

Back on E deck, Acth:On'e stabbed the ENABLE button. Instantly, the entire ship shuddered from the collapsing twist fields.

The wavefront from the chronotron pods erupted out into space and the effect was like a giant hand had grabbed hold of spacetime and squeezed...hard. At her Defense station alongside Acth:On'e, Alicia Yang ignored her natural impulse to stare out the porthole nearby, but out of the corner of her eye she could still see the swirling chaos that was the effect of a ship emitting twist fields.

The Twister itself slammed the very structure of spacetime and shook it violently, so violently that it ruptured spacetime itself, crinkling and crushing and snapping it like a wet rag. Anything caught in the twist fields would be instantly flung across millions of years of space and time, for all practical purposes, ceasing to exist.

"Again!" Dringoth commanded. The next burst nearly knocked the Captain out of his seat. Cygnus shuddered and creaked and only quick work by Golich, muttering under his breath, kept the ship from lurching into a violent roll.

"I've got it!" Golich said, his fingers playing across multiple joysticks and knobs. "Nulling all rates...we're still in a slow roll but I'm counteracting."

Dringoth tightened his seat harness. "Surveillance...Queenie...what's going on out there?"

M'Bela studied her board. "Reading residual nano...diffuse and scattered. They're gathering again but it'll take some time. Another pulse could finish them off."

"Are we still in truetime?"

"We are, Captain. ChronoNav reports normal convergence angles. They dumped us a few years into the future, but not that far. ISAAC's computing a return path now."

A chime sounded in Dringoth's headset. Tactical comm. It was Leo...Dringoth recognized the hoarse voice of Coltrax, Leo's skipper.

"Cygnus, glad you could join us... we're engaging a small formation just aft of your position...maybe twenty thousand klicks. Small but replicating fast...hold your position...don't jump or fire your Twister until I say it's clear."

"Understood," Dringoth said. "Cygnus holding...."

The next few minutes were an odd lull in the battle, as all around Cygnus, her sister jumpship Leo peppered space with HERF and mag fire, shredding the remnants of the Bug cloud that had been approaching Cygnus' tail.

Dringoth used the time to take stock of the situation.

"M'Bela, give me a sweep. Any contacts?"

The Search and Surveillance specialist conducted an all-azimuth scan of surrounding space and time. "Just Leo, sir. ISAAC's showing only very diffuse, residual bot clusters from the Bug formation. I think we pretty well sanitized the area with the Twister."

Dringoth wanted to make sure they were ready for anything.

"Acth:On'e, status of the Twister?" He clung to his seat armrest as one of Leo's bursts came a little too close and the mag eruption lit up space all around them.

The Telitorian came back, "Twister is enabled to fire, Captain. ISAAC reports we lost a few chronotron pods in that last firing but she'll still take a mean bite out of spacetime. I am watching converger alignment though. It's right on the upper deadband again. We're good for one or two more bursts, then we'll have to take it offline. But the filter seems to be working."

"Got it," Dringoth said. "Keep me advised."

Another hour followed, an hour of sniffing and sensing and judicious maneuvering, with Cygnus and Leo cleaning up leftover pockets of residual Bugs while Golich executed a series of small-scale jumps back up the worldline to their original temporal coordinates. Leo stayed behind to look for any more probes by the Coethi in their sector. After her recon, both ships assumed normal patrol posture, each ship policing the worldline up and down for several decades of time, hunting for voidtime irregularities and small flux disturbances in truetime, for even the tiniest bubble could be the signature of yet another Bug assault dropping on their heads out of voidtime. It was axiomatic among Time Guard veterans that the Coethi were unmatched in their ability to use voidtime to tactical advantage. You had to keep your eyes...and sensors...open at all times.

After half a shift, Dringoth ordered the crew to condition 2SQ...an alert but slightly more relaxed defensive posture. The ship was still navigating in the backwash of the jump so it was imperative that either he or his exec Golich be on the command deck at all times.

"Go check on our civilians, Commander. See if they're still in one piece."

Golich went aft, finding Acth:On'e with Margie and Willie, all headed for the crews' mess.

Golich ordered up some food and drink from the fabs and made sure the women were comfortable at a table.

He chuckled at the pale green look on their faces. "Ever made a jump before?"

Margie shook her head. "Never...and it's not something I want to go through again either."

But Willie was aglow. "I loved it! Best ride ever...better than the Rotundas Carnival. When can we do that again?" She munched on a bar and smacked loudly.

Golich studied Acth:On'e, who was hovering protectively around the females. "For you, not anytime soon. You two are civilians. You're going back to Telitor, soon as we're sure this sector is safe."

Margie looked over her shoulder at Acth:On'e. She didn't say it but she knew the rescue effort and their earlier mindfile synching had changed things. Their eyes met. No words or thoughts were exchanged, but nothing had to be said. When you were synched, your mindfiles were in a kind of resonance and spoken words were superfluous.

"Now I know what Acth's been doing all these years," she said, sipping at her tea.

"Yeah," said Acth, "kicking the bejeezus out of Bugs and other nasties. It's just a job."

Margie's hand groped for Acth and their fingers briefly touched. They didn't stay together, for the barest touch seemed to be enough. "Come back to Telitor with us."

Acth:On'e started to say something but Golich intervened. "Sorry, but that won't be happening. The Guard's got their hooks into him for a few more years. Plus he's too good an engineer."

Now Acth reached out his fingers again and this time, Margie didn't shy away. "When you do come back, Acth, we should try synching again. I guess I found out some things about you I never knew."

"Yeah, maybe we can give the uploads a rest for awhile."

Max: Margie 4 and Acthax: Willow 1 were dropped off at Telitor a few days later. After the Space Rescue cutter had departed, Acth:On'e and Golich both left the lockout chamber on F deck. Golich was headed up the gangway and Acth had been intending to stop by in Engineering and run a diagnostic on the Twister, with Yang. But they both met the Captain hustling down the gangway with a severe look on his face, the small vein above his eyes already starting to redden and bulge.

"Captain, what is it? What's wrong?"

Dringoth swore under his breath. "We just can't seem to catch a break. We just received a ship commendation from TACTRON for the engagement here...and new orders."

Golich felt his heart sink. "What new orders?"

"We're still supporting Galactic Hammer. Cygnus is to transit voidtime immediately. Time stream T-002, eventual destination is Byrd's Draconis."

"Are you serious, sir? That's the other end of the Alliance...past the Rift."

"I know that, Commander, but T2 thinks the Coethi may be planning a flanking move there, near Ross 154 and TACTRON wants a Twister operational in that sector before it happens."

"Sir, I need to run a diagnostic on the Twister before we operate it again. I was headed that way."

"Do it now, Acth. Make sure we're all copacetic. I don't want Cygnus to be thrown into some star or the Rift next time we fire it."

Golich just shook his head ruefully. "What's happening with that project to build more Twisters? We can't be everywhere at once."

Dringoth was already headed back up the gangway to the command deck. "I started to mention that very point to TACTRON but he cut me off. Apparently, the tactical situation at Byrd is pretty bad. Be up here in five."

"Aye, sir—" Golich started to follow, but remembered he needed to stop by his own bunk and retrieve something.

Inside the bunk, he withdrew the contact chip Malakel had given him on Hapsh'm. He'd stuffed it in a small chest when they'd had returned aboard Phoenix.

Hadn't the time pirate indicated he'd be heading off toward Byrd's Draconis? Golich shook his head. Pirates, privateers, corsairs...every war had them. They were like leeches, stripping discarded gear and dead soldiers of any and everything of value.

Golich paused a moment before heading up to the command deck. Outside the porthole, the red-orange disk of Delta Recursa was mercifully hundreds of millions of kilometers away, a small dim star when viewed from this far out. Telitor was a receding limb in the dark as well, half in shadow.

Nathan Golich had never considered himself a renegade or a privateer. The very words didn't sit too well with him. Kisan Malakel was a pirate, you couldn't call him anything else. A time pirate. And he'd never denied that.

Over the last few months, he had asked himself again and again one single question. Why did I join Time Guard? Why am I here?

Sure, it was true that the most formative event of his life had come when he turned 30. Still flying for the Sky Service, he returned home one night to their bungalow in Sabra Village on K-World to find both Amanda and Kylie dead, murdered it seemed by a mentally disturbed villager named Henzik Tavoy who had gone on a rampage that day and killed several people, before he was said to have been terminated by killbots just outside the village.

Now wifeless and childless, Golich had been 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 was disabled out, Golich moped around the village, took long dangerous trips into the Sand Sea, hoping to be killed himself by mesodonts and generally showed little desire to live any longer.

It was the sandseer who had befriended an unconscious Golich and nursed him back to health, then 'employed' Golich for weeks as a helper. From the sandseer, Golich came across the idea (foreseen by the sandseer) of joining Time Guard. He needed to get away from Keaton's World and 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.

Now he knew that Kisan Malakel was the sandseer. Again and again, their paths had crossed.

But to join the Guard, he would have to make his way to Urth, the mother world, and apply and take a physical. The journey would take two years by torch ship, but Golich figured he had nothing to lose. He had boarded the Frontier Corps ship Columbo, had gone into stasis for two years and awakened to find himself at Gateway Station in high Urth orbit, entering Time Guard's Recruit Center. He applied, passed the physical and was sent on to the Time Guard Academy then at Lunar Farside, shortly thereafter.

At TGA, Nathan Golich, after years of emotional desolation and purposeless wandering, came to find himself. He excelled in sports (especially megaball) and in science and engineering courses. After four years, at the age of 33, Golich had graduated fifth in his class and with the eight-year commitment, joined the Blue crew of Time Guard jumpship Pisces—now in Malakel's possession after she had been due to be scrapped-- which was homeported at Sedna Base, in the solar system's Kuiper Belt beyond the orbit of Pluto, where the Guard maintained a very powerful voidtime confluence called Einstein's Fissure.

It all makes sense, he told himself. It was all destined to happen. Maybe Malakel had been guiding his life ever since their first encounter. Or maybe that was just so much arachtyl crap. There was one thing he knew for sure though. "Time Guard has made walking skeletons of all us, with all this flitting in and out of voidtime."

Now TACTRON was ready to send them on yet another mission. Golich realized with a clarity he hadn't encountered before that he wanted out of the Guard. He wanted out now.

He turned the contact chip end for end in his hand. It had a single small stud on the bottom. All he had to do was press it. One press and his life would change forever.

With surprising ease, he activated the chip. The programmed message went out of Cygnus as a burst transmission, barely a picosecond's worth of signal. Impressed on a quantum coupler carrier wave, entangled with encryption supposedly impossible to break, the message would hopefully be received by Malakel in a few days, a week at most.

Malakel would be at or around Byrd's Draconis. The pirate had promised him that much.

The message was simple. Let's meet and talk.

Golich sent the message twice, squeezing the button extra hard the second time. Then he headed out of the berth and up the gangway to the command deck. The ship had to be ready for another jump in less than an hour. He thought no more about the message.

But the transmission had been received by someone else. At his station in Engineering, Acth:On'e noted the flash of an encrypted signal appearing on his panel and just as quickly disappearing. He noted the signal seem to originate from somewhere aboard Cygnus. He was about to try to locate the source when Captain Dringoth's voice came over the 1MC.

"All hands to stations immediately! Prepare for a jump!"

END

# Appendix

Time Guard Officer and Enlisted Ranks and Insignia

Like any good military service, Time Guard employs both officers and enlisted personnel in its bases, stations and ships. Below is a list of officer and enlisted ranks, by title with a description of the insignia.

Officer Ranks:

UATG Code Rank Insignia and Description

01 Junior Lieutenant Single orbital

02 Lieutenant Superior Dual orbital

03 Jump Lieutenant Tri-orbital

04 Commander Superior Single cross orbital

05 Jump Commander Cross orbital with star

06 Jump Captain Cross orbital with 2 stars

07 Commodore Single tri-orbital

08 Jump Admiral Single tri-orbital with top diamond

09 Admiral Superior Single tri-orbital with 2 top diamonds

010 Ultrarch Admiral* Single tri-orbital with 4 diamonds

*Note: 'Ultrarch' denotes a graduate of Time Guard Academy and can be applied to any rank from Jump Captain or above.

Enlisted Ranks:

UATG Code Rank Insignia and Description

E1 Jump Master 3rd class Hexagon

E2 Jump Master 2nd class Hexagon and 2 bars

E3 Jump Master 1st class Hexagon and 3 bars

E4 Junior Guardsman Dual hexagon

E5 Senior Guardsman Triple hexagon

E6 Quantum Guard Atom and nucleus

E7 Master Quantum Guard Atom with wings

E8 Command Quantum Guard Atom and star

E9 Guardsman Superior Hexagon and atom

E10 Ultrarch Guard (wartime) Twin spiral galaxies

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 'Byrd's Draconis'. Available on September 27, 2019.

