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chapter eight

Transtemporal Vehicle Kleio

Transverse, non-congruent


Elzbietá leaned back in her seat at the command table.

“You know,” she said with a whimsical smile, “we’ve been calling these ships the wrong thing for over a year now.”

Raibert looked up from the set of charts he’d been examining.

“What’s this now?”

“The ships.” She swept her hand around to indicate the Kleio.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“TTV. It’s the wrong name.”

“Seems fine to me.”

Off to the side of the bridge, Benjamin continued to scrutinize his own sets of chronometric charts, perhaps keeping his head down for a reason.

“But it really isn’t,” Elzbietá insisted. “We should call them something else.”

“What? All of them?”

“Yeah.” She grinned at him. “All of them.”

Raibert let out a slow, patient sigh.

“Okay, I’ll bite. What’s wrong with the name?”

“It’s not accurate anymore. TTV? Trans-Temporal Vehicle? We do a lot more than that these days.”

“So? We still travel through time. It’s accurate enough.”

“But it doesn’t paint the complete picture. We’re not traveling down a timeline right now, are we?”

“So?”

“So, we should call them something that includes our ability to travel through the transverse.”

“What? Like TDV? Transdimensional Vehicle?”

“Yeah!” Elzbietá’s face lit up. “Like that!”

“But wouldn’t that have the same problem?” Benjamin raised his gaze with an air of reluctance. “It leaves out our ability to travel through time.”

“You know, you make a good point.” Elzbietá tapped a finger to the side of her cheek and took on a thoughtful expression. “Perhaps something that includes both? Maybe TDTTV?”

“No,” Raibert said with finality.

“Why not?”

“I’m not calling this ship a Tuh-Dat-Vuh. Not happening.”

“T-D-T-T-V,” Elzbietá enunciated. “See? The name says it all, and in only five letters.”

“Not. Happening.”

“It is more accurate,” Benjamin said, though he didn’t sound pleased with the results either.

“That’s about all it is,” Raibert said. “Look, if either of you have a genuine suggestion, take it up with the boss. I just work here.” He returned his attention to the charts and didn’t look up no matter how much he subconsciously felt Elzbietá’s gaze.

The bridge settled into relative silence, save for the distant sounds of the ship’s drive, power, and atmospheric systems. Several minutes later, Raibert swiped one of the charts aside and opened up a new one.

“How soon until we reach Q5?”

“We should hit the outer wall in about nineteen minutes,” Elzbietá said. “Give or take. The survey data on this one isn’t the best.”

“Understandably,” Benjamin said, “given what they found.”

Q5 was a quarantine universe roughly thirteen thousand chens from SysGov, and it had earned that classification for some very good reasons. Q5’s version of Earth didn’t host any intelligent life—or, at the very least, nothing obviously intelligent—but something was growing down there, and that something did not like visitors.

The original survey ship—the Alcyone—had confirmed from orbit that Q5 once hosted a thriving human population, a fact apparent from the skeletal remains of cities protruding from its surface like broken teeth. But that’s not all they saw down there. Some strange form of macro life grew on the surface, stretching across whole continents in a web of twisted, interlinked biomass that threaded its way through corpse cities and desolate plains alike.

No plants grew on Q5. Or rather, nothing with the green of chlorophyll or the rainbow hues of flowering life. But forests of a sort did indeed grow down on its gruesome surface, with trees and vast stretches of moss more bestial than plant.

During the initial survey, the Alcyone had descended to a high-altitude holding position, obscured safely within its metamaterial shroud, before releasing its drones to collect samples for further study. However, the local fauna responded with unexpected ferocity, and every drone fell victim to swarms of nightmarish creatures.

Only one drone managed to transmit any worthwhile data back to the ship, and its analysis confirmed the macro life infesting Q5 contained a great deal of recognizable DNA.

Human DNA.

The very air was rife with complex microscopic organisms, often ejected from hideous flesh geysers that dotted the landscape. Some of those organisms bore the telltale signs of designer lifeforms, though their purposes couldn’t be determined without more extensive testing and study.

The crew concluded that Q5’s original human population had been wiped out by some form of rampant bioweapon and recommended the universe be placed on the quarantine list. Gordian Operations saw no reason to dispute the recommendation, and the universe was reclassified as Q5.

“Approaching Q5,” Elzbietá announced. “Estimating one minute until contact with the outer wall.”

“Nothing unusual on the array.” Benjamin stood up and joined them at the table. “No evidence of timeline branching or any other unusual activity.”

“Hate to meet the fool who’d want to copy this place,” Elzbietá said.

Raibert affirmed her sentiment with a grunt, then turned his eyes toward the command table’s main display. Less than a minute later, the ship shuddered as it punched through the outer wall, and the chronometric environment of the transverse vanished, replaced with a picture of an Earth that was almost unrecognizable.

The orb took shape over the command table, entirely devoid of greens and blues. Its oceans were coated in sludge-like swirls of pink and crimson, slick with strange life and organic chemicals. The surface resembled a landscape of bone and flesh rather than rocks, dirt, and vegetation.

“Gosh,” Elzbietá breathed with a shake of her head. “I knew what to expect but still . . . ”

“Yeah.” Benjamin glanced at his controls and initiated a chronometric survey, his face grim. “I know what you mean. It’s a whole other thing seeing this place in person.”

They waited in silence for the survey to finish. Philo appeared by Raibert’s side but didn’t say anything, merely placed his virtual hands on the command table and stared at one of SysGov’s horrific siblings.

“Survey’s complete.” Benjamin closed the chart. “Nothing to report.”

“Any reason for us to stick around?” Raibert asked.

Benjamin shook his head.

“Then let’s get the hell out of here. Ella?”

“Way ahead of you.” She took hold of her virtual controls. “Next stop, Q3. Home of the silver butterflies.”

“Wonderful,” Raibert said with a sigh.

Elzbietá flashed a quick smile, though it looked somewhat forced.

“We get to visit all the garden spots in this job.”

* * *

“Unknown contact!” Elzbietá said.

Raibert snapped alert and checked the chronometric readout over the command table. A new icon pulsed ominously roughly two hundred and fifty chens ahead of their position, indicating an approximate location for the new contact. Philo appeared opposite him, and Benjamin hurried over from his seat along the outer wall.

“What do we have?” Raibert asked.

“Not sure,” Elzbietá said. “Whoever they are, I don’t think they’ve spotted us yet. We’re almost on the same course for Q3, which places us close to the edge of their impeller wake. Contact’s speed is fifty kilofactors. I’m adjusting course and speed to keep us hidden until we have a better read on the situation.”

“They could be friendly,” Philo said hopefully.

Raibert gave his IC a doubtful look.

“All I’m saying is it’s possible,” Philo added.

“There shouldn’t be anyone else out here,” Raibert said “and certainly no one heading for a quarantine universe. Doc, does that thing have a SysGov impeller?”

“Checking now.” Benjamin opened a new chart. “Impeller is non-rotating, so we’re not dealing with a chronoport. However, the drive profile doesn’t match either an Aion or Windfall-class TTV. The signature resembles an Aion, but it’s not an exact match. I’d say we’re dealing with a TTV roughly our own size.”

“How’s it differ?”

“The wake it’s generating should be larger by about fifteen or twenty percent.”

“Then it’s not Gordian Division?”

“No.” Benjamin shook his head. “Not one of ours.”

“So, we’ve got a strange TTV heading somewhere it shouldn’t.” Raibert clapped his hands together. “All right, team. Assume this one’s up to no good.”

“Retagging contact to Hostile-One.” Benjamin tapped a command into his display. The TTV’s icon turned red, and the text above it changed.

“Ella,” Raibert asked, “how confident are you they didn’t spot us?”

“Eh.” Elzbietá raised a level hand and wobbled it back and forth. “I give it even odds. We lucked out by coming up behind them, but we were also really close when we spotted them.”

“We were heading to Q3 at max speed,” Benjamin said. “Add to that their lower speed and quieter drive, and we were lucky to spot them when we did.”

“They haven’t shown any signs of spotting us, though,” Philo noted. “No course corrections or speed changes. No telegraph signals, either. Then again, they could be waiting for us to make the first move.”

“Which is exactly what I’m afraid of.” Raibert tapped his fingers on the table, his eyes fixed on the unidentified TTV’s icon. “Time to Q3’s outer wall?”

“Thirty-two minutes for Hostile-One,” Elzbietá said. “At present speed, we’ll hit the outer wall seven minutes after them.”

“Then stay the course. We follow them in and see where they go from there.”

“Hard to believe anyone in their right mind would want to visit Q3,” Benjamin said.

“They’re here for a reason.” Raibert pointed a finger at the TTV icon. “We just need to figure out what it is.”

“And in the meantime?” Elzbietá said.

“We prepare for the worst.” Raibert rose to his feet. “Combat stations, everyone!”

* * *

Elzbietá hurried into one of three opening acceleration-compensation bunks along the bridge’s outer wall. The chamber sealed her in and a thick, milky soup poured in through vents along the side. Her wetware interfaced with the microbot swarm and authorized it to surround and suffuse her body, fortifying her organs for the harsh g-forces to come.

The swarm climbed up her legs in a translucent sheen, even as more of the fluidized machines flooded the chamber. She shut her eyes and released control of her physical body to the ship’s care. She could have stayed alert for the entire process, but only if she wanted to experience that disgusting goop pouring into her lungs.

No, thank you! she thought with a wry smile, moments before her perception of the physical vanished.

She opened the eyes of her avatar—which matched her real body—to join Philo within the abstract realm of the ship’s virtual cockpit. She stood atop an invisible floor, surrounded by a visual representation of the transverse, the icon of Hostile-One highlighted in the distance. A pair of tandem seats waited for them, the only other objects.

“Ready?” she asked her weapon systems officer and copilot.

Philo took hold of a tab atop his horned aviator’s helmet and brought it down with a loud click! that locked a reflective visor over his eyes.

“Ready!”

Elzbietá nodded to him with a smile and sank into her seat. Various floating displays and controls popped into existence, and she took hold of the joystick and omnidirectional throttle.

Philo assumed his post in the seat next to her.

“Deploying meta-armor.” He tapped a virtual key.

Over a dozen pods opened across the Kleio’s surface, represented on a wire-frame schematic of the ship positioned between the two seats. Metamaterial unfurled like blurry, metal drapes that snapped rigid and locked together to form a protective shell against directed-energy weapons. Anything that punched through that—energy or kinetic—would still have to contend with the ship’s adaptive prog-steel hull.

“Armor active.” Philo tapped several more keys. “Bringing our weapons online.”

Four heavy blisters split open, and the nine-barreled muzzles of 45mm Gatling guns swiveled out. Prog-steel parted ways, and the four gun pods flowed across the surface, congregating near the nose of the vessel. Meta-armor split and then reformed with their passing.

The Kleio’s bow opened like an angry eyeball with two irises, and two massive guns trained out: one a powerful mass driver, and the other an x-ray laser tied directly to the ship’s reactor.

“Weapons ready,” Philo said.

“Good.” Elzbietá eyed the distant TTV. “Now, let’s hope we don’t have to ruin someone’s day.”

* * *

The ship lurched as it passed through Q3’s outer wall, and Elzbietá felt the transition in her gut. Not because of anything happening to her physical body, but through her virtual senses. The cockpit simulation let a controlled amount of g-forces and other cues leak through, allowing her to perceive the ship’s motion and status on a subconscious level.

Kleio phased into Q3 realspace in high orbit around Earth. Or rather, what remained of this universe’s Earth. In some ways, Q3 was the polar opposite of Q5—a terrifying portrait of death rather than twisted, horrific life. The planet was a stark ball of rock, metal, and polluted oceans, all encircled by the silvery haze of a ghostly, smeared halo. Massive blocks of machinery coated every continent: mines, refineries, and endless stretches of factories.

All automated, all lifeless.

The haze thinned with greater altitude, only to thicken again thirty-five thousand kilometers above the surface. The ghostly, mechanical miasma was the reason why Q3 had been quarantined. It may have resembled a silvery mist at a distance, but closer inspection would reveal swarms of self-replicating machines, some microscopic in size while others spanned dozens of meters. The most common variants were roughly the size of a human hand, and all of them—all of them—resembled nightmarish metal butterflies, as if someone had twisted a surgeon’s scalpels to create their wings.

The original survey crew had barely made it out with their lives.

“Position verified,” Philo reported. “We’re right on target, about thirty-one thousand kilometers above the surface and in stable orbit.”

“Any sign of the TTV?” Elzbietá asked.

“Searching.” Philo scrutinized his instrumentation for less than a minute. “There, above us.” Hostile-One’s icon reappeared on their scope. “Heading straight toward that dense cluster in geosynchronous orbit.”

“Do they have a death wish or something?”

“They must be here for a reason,” Raibert chimed in from the virtual bridge.

“You keep saying that, but damned if I know what it is.” Elzbietá took hold of her controls and swung the nose up to face the other TTV. The ship was a distant, almost invisible pinprick against the backdrop of an elongated silver blob. “You want me to head after them?”

“Can we keep an eye on them from here?” Raibert asked.

“Not for much longer,” Philo said. “I’m already having difficulty tracking them against the background activity. We’ll lose them if they head into that cluster.”

“Then lay in a pursuit course.”

“You’ve got it!” Elzbietá pushed her omni-throttle forward, and the ship accelerated on a plume of gravitons.

“Adjusting meta-armor for increased stealth.” Philo closed their weapon apertures and spread meta-armor over those surfaces. A wide spectrum of photon wavelengths flowed around the ship, masking its presence. It wasn’t a perfect illusion; that required the metamaterial to be in shroud-mode while the ship kept its acceleration low and tried not make any sudden moves. But the meta-armor did reduce their signature to radar and lidar detectors.

The butterfly swarm loomed large ahead, thick enough at its core to resemble a shimmering metal comet, except this comet featured its own satellites buzzing around the periphery.

“You see those?” Elzbietá asked, pointing.

“Sentries,” Philo said. “Big ones, too.”

“And our mystery ship is heading straight for them.”

“No evidence the sentries have spotted either of us. I haven’t detected any active signals from the TTV either, but we are being pinged by swarm radar. Meta-armor seems to be doing its job. For now, at least, but we’re getting close to the point where one of us will be spotted.”

“You hear that, Raibert?” Elzbietá asked.

“Stay with them. We need to know what that ship is—”

“Missile launch!” Philo shouted. “Two contacts! One’s heading for us, the other for the swarm.”

“What the hell?” Elzbietá watched the projectiles diverge from Hostile-One’s position. “Are they trying to get us both killed?”

“Maybe they are. The swarm’s reacting. Sentries inbound toward both of us. Too many to count. I think Hostile-One is using one of the missiles to guide them to our location.”

“Fantastic,” Elzbietá snarled under her breath as the scope lit up with red icons. “Raibert?”

“Time to cut loose.”

“With pleasure!” Elzbietá shoved the omni-throttle forward, and Kleio surged ahead under five gees.

“All weapons ready,” Philo reported. “Meta-armor adapted for max defense. Active scopes engaged. I’ve got a clean lock on Hostile-One and its missiles. Targeting the closest missile.” He waited for the range to drop. “Firing!”

Three of Kleio’s four Gatling guns blazed alive, spewing a combined total of one hundred fifty bullets per second. The three streams of speeding metal converged on the missile, and explosions flooded space with cones of scything shrapnel. Fléchettes punched through the missile from all sides and shredded it into useless scrap.

“Got it!”

The second missile exploded in a brief, tiny flash within the heart of the orbital formation. It was an inconsequential, almost insulting attack, and the self-replicators responded by mobilizing almost the entire swarm.

“Oh, they didn’t like that!” Elzbietá kept her nose pointed toward the hostile TTV, even as it dove deeper into the clutches of the enraged swarm.

“Targeting Hostile-One,” Philo said. “Firing!”

X-rays lanced into the enemy TTV, but the high-energy photons slipped around its surface and scattered into space.

“Solid hit, but minimal damage,” Philo reported. “Their meta-armor took the brunt of it. I’d say their defenses are at least as good as ours.”

“Then we use the mass driver.”

“Not at this range. Get us in closer.”

“On it!” Elzbietá adjusted course, tailing the other TTV into the swarm, tendrils of grasping replicators reaching toward both craft, their tips composed of larger, more powerful machines.

“Watch it!” Philo warned. “Those sentries are getting awfully close.”

“I see them.”

Kleio could accelerate in any direction thanks to her graviton thrusters, and Elzbietá applied perpendicular thrust, easing them away from the closest sentries, even as she kept the nose pointed at the enemy craft.

One of the sentries, a gargantuan mechanical cross between a butterfly and a hornet, spread its solar-collecting wings and angled the railgun mounted on his thorax. Kinetic slugs punched into the Kleio’s prog-steel hull, and Philo returned fire. A stream of high-explosives shredded the machine, but more sentries sped in, converging on the TTV from all sides.

Philo worked frantically, tasking the Gatlings with each new target, prioritizing hostile machines for destruction. The Kleio’s defensive weapons swung around, vomiting metal in brief but deadly spurts, and explosions lit up on all sides, even as the ship climbed deeper into danger.

“Our defenses are close to saturation!” Philo warned.

Kleio cut through the grasping pseudopods of the swarm, each extending for tens of kilometers. Kinetic slugs rained in from all sides and a heavy impact slammed into their starboard flank. A loud clang echoed through the ship as if a great bell had been struck, and a section of the ship’s schematic flared yellow.

“Never mind!” Philo’s fingers danced over his controls. “We’re past saturation! Reinforcing damaged armor.”

“Raibert,” Elzbietá strained, “it’s getting hot out here.”

“Keep after Hostile-One, but phase out if you need to.”

Another impact rang against the hull.

“Got it.” She gritted her teeth and checked the position of the enemy TTV. The distance between the two craft dropped away. Slowly but steadily, even as both vessels charged deeper into the contracting arms of the swarm.

“Main gun standing by,” Philo said. “Just give me a shot.”

Elzbietá permitted herself a cold, shallow smile. “Here it comes.”

Kleio chased after Hostile-One, swerving this way and that, dodging through the incoming fire, even as its Gatling guns blasted away at the swarm. Expansive streamers of broken, spinning metal floated in their wake, but the machine sentries squeezed in ever closer.

Two new icons lit up, detaching from the enemy TTV.

“Missile launch!” Philo snapped. “Two incoming!”

Elzbietá’s hand hovered over the phase-out button.

“Not yet!” Philo shooed her hand away from the button. “I’ve got this!”

His fingers blurred over the controls, quite literally as he entered commands faster than her brain could process. The bow laser fired, raking through one of the missiles and blowing it to pieces while the Gatlings unleashed a sleet of metal. Strings of tiny explosions peppered space, and the second missile winked out.

Elzbietá kept the ship’s nose on target.

“In range,” Philo declared. “Shot away!”

A one-ton slug blasted out of Kleio’s nose mass driver. Hostile-One juked to the side, and the shot flew wide, but Philo’s detonation profile triggered as it passed. Cold gas jets turned the projectile to face the enemy craft, and then the payload exploded, spraying the TTV with heavy shrapnel.

“That’s a hit!” Philo declared viciously. “Damage to their meta-armor and impeller.”

Another impact shuddered through the Kleio’s decks, and a new patch of yellow lit up.

Elzbietá checked their surroundings and the machines streaking in.

“We can’t stick around much longer!”

“Neither can they,” Philo said. “Look!”

Hostile-One vanished from the realspace scopes, reemerging as a chronometric signature exiting Q3’s outer wall.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Elzbietá hit the phase-out button and followed them into the transverse.

Q3, and all its self-replicating hostility, dissolved into nothingness, and the ship lurched as it punched through the dimensional barrier. Their chronometric array interpreted the drive signature from Hostile-One as a cloud of potential positions directly ahead.

“We’re closing on them,” Philo said. “That hit to their impeller must’ve taken some of the wind out of their sails. Either that or they’re slower than us. Phase-lock in fifteen seconds.”

Elzbietá matched speeds with the hostile craft, holding the distance open.

“Raibert, you want to try reasoning with these idiots before we send them to hell?”

“Not really,” he answered in a resigned tone, “but I suppose it’s my job to give diplomacy a shot. Kleio, send the following telegraph to the other ship: This is Agent Kaminski of Gordian Division TTV Kleio. You are hereby ordered to stand down immediately or be destroyed. This is your final warning. You have sixty seconds to comply.”

“Transmitting now, Agent,” the ship replied.

Sixty seconds passed with no response and no actions from the other ship.

“Then that’s that,” Raibert said with a grim finality. “Ella, finish this.”

Elzbietá increased their speed, and the two craft phase-locked in a matter of seconds. Hostile-One blinked into existence ahead and above them, and Elzbietá spun the ship upward to bring their main weapons to bear. Philo fired the mass driver, and this time the shot tore through the base of Hostile-One’s impeller.

The spike of exotic matter oscillated like a struck tuning fork, cracks chasing down its length before it shattered into a million glittering pieces. Most scattered away from the vessel’s elliptical body, but some flew into it, passed through it. The debris’ phase state bled away as incorporeal fragments flitted through solid matter.

The ship distorted, crinkling inward like a fragile toy. Disparate sections of the hull meshed together, overlapping, interposing, bleeding into and through one another until only a twisted, lump-ridden hulk remained of the once streamlined craft.

“Want me to hit them again?” Philo asked, his tone somewhat uncomfortable. “You know, just to be sure.”

“I think”—Elzbietá flashed a sudden, sharklike grin—“they’ve had enough.”



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