Soldiers Out of Time (13 page)

Chang hesitated momentarily at the prospect of a non-IDRF officer in command of IDRF personnel. But he knew Jason’s reputation. And there really was no alternative.

“I’ll cut the necessary orders,” he said, after only the briefest pause.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The
Hawke
class (one of several classes named after wet-nav
y
admirals from Earth’s history) was not a major space combatant, intended to deal out cataclysmic violence in fleet engagements. It was fast, compact, and versatile, with enough ship-to-ship firepower to overcome even the most well-armed smuggler, and also capable of surgical planetside strikes, but optimized for stealthy insertion of ground-assault teams, for whom there was a bunkroom just aft of the almost equally Spartan quarters of the ten-member crew. In shape it was a thick, blunt arrowhead just under a hundred and fifty feet long, with the bulges of twin drive nacelles on the sides near the stern. A dorsal turret held an X-ray laser, ideal for space combat but essentially useless in atmosphere, which absorbs X-rays. This deficiency was supplied by two waist turrets mounting lasers that could be adjusted up and down the electromagnetic spectrum from visible light through IR and UV, as conditions required. Under the chin was a retractable missile launcher with a nasty variety of munitions. Nestled in a ventral housing was a sleek gig.

Of course Jason and his companions could see none of this as their
Comet
class courier approached
De Ruyter
, for the latter circled Zirankhu under full stealth, including invisibility, even though its orbit was practically at right angles to the one used by the Transhumanists’ cargo carriers. But Van Horn and Tomori, using
De Ruyter
’s tight-beam transponder, rendezvoused expertly and extended a passage tube between airlocks.

“Who was this De Ruyter, anyway?” asked Jason as the connection was established.

“Michel Adriaanszoon De Ruyter,” said Van Horn (whose probable ethnic origin Jason belatedly remembered). Seeing Jason’s blank look, he kept his expression respectfully expressionless. “Well, sir, let’s put it this way. The only question about him is this: was he the greatest fighting admiral in history, or merely the greatest fighting admiral of the seventeenth century?”

Jason glanced at Mondrago, who nodded in agreement. He decided he’d better leave well enough alone.

Passing through the always-queasy sensation of transition from one artificial gravity field to another, they entered
De Ruyter
and requested permission to come aboard from Captain Jared Palanivel, the pilot/captain. In this case, at least, there was no naval nonsense about rank titles versus the sacrosanct title of a ship’s skipper. The IDRF used the traditional army titles for all purposes, and Palanivel was a captain—the equivalent of an old-time wet navy lieutenant senior grade, which meant he was fairly junior for command of a
Hawke
class. But Jason had been assured of his competence, and what he saw in that young predominantly Malay face inclined his instincts in the same direction.

“Captain Chang has been in communication with you, has he not, Captain?” asked Jason.

“He has, Commander. He explained the situation. And he indicated that you wished to address the Commandos.”

Commandos.
That was the term—
Marines
was not permitted, lest jealousies be aroused—for the IDRF’s planetary assault units. “Yes. In the flesh.” Jason had decided he’d better start establishing a rapport with this commando squad, and the sooner the better. “The ship’s company can listen in via intercom.”

“Certainly, Commander. The commandos are already waiting in the wardroom.”

The five-member commando squad rose to attention as they entered
De Ruyter
’s tiny wardroom. The squad was standard for ships of this class, consisting of two sections. The first, of three members, was armed with standard gauss battle rifles with integral underslung electromag grenade launchers. Then there was the two-member special weapons section, one with a Mark XI plasma gun and the other with a shoulder-fired missile launcher. They all wore fatigues at the moment. For EVA, they did not use the massive space marine powered combat armor, but rather the kind of combat environment suit with which Jason and Mondrago were already familiar, and which could function as a vacuum suit.

These were not people you really wanted to trifle with.

“As you were,” said Palanivel. “This is Commander Jason Thanou of the Temporal Service. He has been assisting Major Rojas, due to the special nature of this mission. He wishes to address you on certain matters of which you have not yet been apprised.”

Jason let them have it point blank. “Major Rojas has been killed in action. I have assumed command of this expedition.” He let the stunned silence last a second or two, during which he ran his eyes over the five faces, silently asking if anyone had a problem with that. The staff sergeant in charge, who doubled as leader of the rifle section, looked vaguely familiar . . .

“Yes, sir,” was all the sergeant said, and suddenly Jason remembered him: Emil Hamner, who had led a squad in the attack on the Transhumanist base under the southern Andes. Jason decided he might not have so much trouble after all.

“This,” Jason resumed, “is Superintendent Alexandre Mondrago of the Temporal Service. He will function as my ADC.” He didn’t think Hamner would have any objection to an outside aide-de-camp. “And this is Dr. Chantal Frey, who will accompany the expedition as a consultant on Transhumanist matters.” Again he scrutinized the commandos’ faces, not knowing if Chantal’s name meant anything to them. But all he saw was the expected grumpiness at having to be responsible for a civilian’s safety.

“Due to certain security concerns,” he continued, “we must proceed immediately. You already know that the mission involves time travel, having volunteered for it with that understanding. As soon as possible, we will descend to a desert area of the planet below, where a temporal displacer has been constructed that is capable of sending this ship back slightly less than five hundred years in time. Now, as some of you may know, a temporal retrieval device is required to restore the temporal energy potential of a displaced object and return it to the displacer stage from which it came, in its proper time. This ship has such a device, and everyone and everything inside it will be retrieved with it.”

“Question, sir,” said a member of the rifle section—a stocky female PFC. “What if the ship comes to grief in the course of the mission, while we’re separated from it?”

“This is a genuine possibility, Private Armasova,” said Jason, reading her name tag. “Against such a contingency, we will also have individual TRDs implanted in us. This is a very simple, painless procedure which the ship’s surgeon will perform presently.” The five faces showed less distaste than might have been expected in products of their culture; worse things happened to these people. “These TRDs are of the ‘controllable’ variety used by the Service’s Special Operations Section. What this means is that they are not timed to activate at a preset moment as is usually the case. My own TRD is a special one which I can activate by direct neural interface at my discretion—and when I do so, all the others, including the ship’s, are simultaneously activated, as long as they are within a rather short range.” It had always been a source of potential awkwardness, with Rojas in command but Jason holding the power to terminate the mission at any time. That problem, at least, no longer existed.

“Uh . . . but what if something happens to
you
, sir?” Armasova persisted.

“That,” Jason deadpanned, “is something they didn’t emphasize when they called for volunteers.” They all chuckled with the grim cynicism of veterans. “I assure you that I’m renowned for my caution concerning my personal safety.” He stonily ignored the faint choking noises from Chantal, behind him. “But it has to be this way, because as on-scene commander I need to be able to exercise my judgment on the basis of the situation as we find it. We have no way of knowing in advance how long this mission is going to take. The displacer stage will be kept empty until such time as we return—which isn’t a problem, inasmuch as we’re the only traffic it has to handle.”

“Speaking of the mission, Commander,” said Hamner, “we’ve been told very little about it. Can you fill us in?”

“Not as much as you—or I—would like. After our temporal displacement, we will proceed to the star HC+31 8213, just under nineteen and a half light-years from here. That should come to about five days for this ship.” Jason glanced at Palanivel, who nodded in confirmation. “We know nothing about this star except that the Transhumanist underground commenced some kind of project beginning a little over ten years before our target time period, on some planet of that system that we’ve been calling ‘Planet B’ for convenience. We don’t know what this project is, or why they’ve gone to enormous trouble and expense to go back so far in time. So I can’t tell you even approximately what kind of opposition you’re going to be facing. But we have reason to believe that whatever they’re doing is—or, I suppose I should say, was—vulnerable in its early stages, and that after those stages they left it alone. The magnitude of our displacement represents out best guess as to when their ships had ceased going there, for we want the Transhumanists in the present era to be unaware that their project was aborted.

“We’re going to reconnoiter the system very cautiously and ascertain what the Transhumanists have there. We will then do whatever seems indicated. If we have sufficient force to destroy whatever it is, we will go ahead and do so. But if it looks like more than we can handle, we will depart without making our presence known—quite easy, inasmuch as the ship’s temporal retrieval will snatch it instantaneously back to the displacer stage from which it departed, here on Zirankhu.” They all goggled a bit at that. “After which, an expedition strong enough to do the job can be dispatched. If that happens, I for one would like to be on it. I’m thinking you might, also, after . . . what happened to Major Rojas.”

There was no bloodthirsty bluster, no dramatics. These were professionals. But their expressions told Jason all he needed to know.
Yes,
he thought.
We’ll get along just fine.

“One final point. At the beginning, I mentioned security concerns. The Transhumanists have known for some time that the IDRF has been taking an interest in their activities on Zirankhu. But now there is a possibility that one of them has sighted me—and my face is rather well-known to them. If I’ve been recognized, they may have put two and two together and concluded that we know their little game involves time travel. This, in turn, could result in them being put on the alert at our destination system, even though there’s no indication that our displacer here has been compromised.”

“Well, then, sir,” said Hamner, “it ought to be all right if we act quickly enough, when the ones at Planet B haven’t been alerted yet.”

“Whatever ‘yet’ means in this context, Sergeant,” Jason pointed out. “They might go back from sometime in our future to a point prior to our arrival at Planet B.”

Hamner opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.

“But what we call the Observer Effect will prevent them from giving the warning early. Because if the Transhumanists at Planet B had already gotten the word, then they would have been able through the regular supply runs to inform the ones back here, who would then have made it their business to sabotage our displacer before it was finished—which, in fact, they haven’t.”

The commandos’ eyes were starting to glaze over.

“But don’t worry about any of this,” Jason concluded reassuringly. “There are no paradoxes. We have a saying: ‘Reality protects itself.’”

“Sir,” said Hamner with out-of-character plaintiveness, “I’m very confused.”

Jason grinned. “That means you’re starting to get it.”

De Ruyter
was, of course, under maximum stealth for her descent from orbit. But Jason was taking no chances. It was midnight over the Xinkahn Desert when they swooped down under grav repulsion and approached the lights of the displacer facility.

Had it been daylight, Jason knew he would have viewed a scene of raw, crude newness. To call this a no-frills installation would have been an understatement. As it was, the lights were all that was visible. They made for a circle of them that defined the perimeter of the two-hundred-foot-diameter displacer stage. Off to the side, a cluster of lights marked the powerplant and massive capacitors that would provide the energy surge to send them back in time.

In what Jason was already thinking of as the old days, when the Authority’s Kasugawa/Weintraub technology had required a bigger power plant than this to displace a few humans, the idea of displacing
De Ruyter
’s almost three thousand tons of loaded mass almost half a millenium would have occasioned howls of laughter. Even with reverse-engineered Transhumanist technology, it required an antimatter powerplant which had presented the biggest engineering problems in the whole clandestine construction project. In particular, the converter which processed the sand of the Xinkhan into antimatter had not lent itself to modular construction techniques.

But now all was ready. And as
De Ruyter
settled down in a cloud of dust, Jason radioed the chief technician and confirmed that the capacitors were fully charged.