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chapter six

Providence Station

Transverse, non-congruent


Director-General Csaba Shigeki sat in the conference room, still stewing from his one-on-one with Muntero. The meeting hadn’t been a complete waste, in the same way bashing one’s head against a malmetal bulkhead could—eventually—dent it. He had succeeded in pulling some minor concessions out of her, but the process had been a painful, grueling experience.

Nox stepped in a minute after Shigeki sent out the summons. He’d called his “inner circle” over for a meeting, though their ranks were thinner than usual with Jonas on Argus Station and Dahvid Kloss, Under-Director of Espionage, up to his eyeballs in antiterrorism work back home.

“Is Katja on her way?” Shigeki asked, starting a discreet timer in his virtual vision.

“I couldn’t say, sir.” Nox took the seat to Shigeki’s left.

Shigeki let the white lie slide. He suspected his two subordinates had probably come from the same room, leaving at staggered times to keep up appearances.

You two aren’t nearly as subtle as you think you are, he thought.

Two minutes later, Hinnerkopf walked in and palmed the door shut behind her.

“You wished to speak with us, Director?” Hinnerkopf sat down to his right. Her eyes never met Nox’s, who sat stiffly on the other side of the table, his gaze locked on Shigeki.

Is this really the best they could come up with? Shigeki thought. Show up at different times and avoid eye contact? But then he pushed his mild amusement aside and turned his attention toward more important matters.

“First, some good news. I was able to get Muntero to budge a little, and she’s agreed to allow us to help Gordian out, in a limited fashion. We’re going to split four chronoports off from Blockade Squadron and have them inspect universes in close proximity to the Admin’s outer wall.”

“How far out into the transverse?” Hinnerkopf asked.

“Within a radius of five thousand chens.”

The transverse possessed seven dimensions: three realspace (which corresponded to actual physical coordinates in a given universe), one temporal (which could be traversed as easily as any timeline, up to its True Present), and three more that were unique to the transverse. It was those last three, the hyperdimensions, that ships navigated when moving from one universe’s outer wall to another.

Hyperdimensions didn’t possess length or width the same way realspace dimensions did. Rather, they possessed time-like qualities, which allowed ships with chronoton impellers—and the correct transdimensional refinements—to move freely through them. This meant that “distance” along a hyperdimension was equivalent to “time” for the purposes of navigation.

“Five thousand?” Hinnerkopf frowned. “But that’s . . . ” She placed a hand on the table, and a map of the transverse appeared. Icons blinked for T1 and T2, with Providence Station at the midpoint. A sphere ballooned out, centered around T2 and enveloping the Local 15, if barely.

A chen was a unit of measure proposed, unsurprisingly, by Doctor Andover-Chen and recently adopted as the standard for mapping the multiverse. Traveling one chen in the transverse was the equivalent of traveling one day into the past, and since Admin chronoports could reach speeds of ninety-five kilofactors, they could zip from one end of the sphere to the other in two and a half hours.

“Not much,” Nox finished.

“It’s all I could squeeze out of her,” Shigeki said. “And it is better than nothing. Our chronoports aren’t strictly limited to this zone, since they can detect anomalies at a distance. By surveilling anything within or near this region, we’ll allow Gordian to focus their efforts farther out.”

“Better than nothing,” Hinnerkopf echoed softly.

“What about your own efforts, Katja?” Shigeki asked. “I understand Andover-Chen hit you with a doozy.”

“He did, but we may have come up with a workaround.”

Hinnerkopf spread her hand on the table again, and a schematic of Providence Station appeared. The image zoomed into the top of the station, where a dome housed the chronometric array, located as far as feasible from the station’s impeller to minimize interference.

“We believe we can use a limited number of the array segments to form a makeshift chronometric dish,” Hinnerkopf explained, “similar to what we have on all our chronoports but larger and more powerful. It won’t be nearly as good as the full array, but it won’t take months to complete either. Doctor Andover-Chen is inspecting the array as we speak.”

“Excellent,” Shigeki said. “Keep me informed.”

“Yes, Director.”

“Now, there’s one more thought I’d like to run by you two. As I see it, we have two chronoports back home we’re not using.”

“Which two?” Nox asked.

“The impeller testbeds.”

“Ah, yes. Swiftsure and Imperative,” Hinnerkopf said. “Their hyperchargers aren’t ready yet, though. They won’t be for months.”

“But they have impellers,” Shigeki pointed out.

“Yes . . . ” Hinnerkopf said carefully. “They do, but they’re being heavily reworked.”

“Could they be pressed into service as scouts?”

“I’m not sure.” Hinnerkopf glanced down in thought. “Maybe. Depends how torn apart their impellers are.”

“What’s Muntero going to say?” Nox asked. “Wouldn’t she want these ships protecting the outer wall with the rest of the fleet?”

“The prototypes are unarmed,” Hinnerkopf pointed out. “They have no defensive value, which is Muntero’s main concern. If she throws a tantrum, we have a perfectly reasonable response.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Shigeki said.

“Are you even going to tell her about them?” Nox asked.

Shigeki gave him a sly half smile. “I’ll apologize for the omission if it comes up.”

“Do you want me to head back home?” Hinnerkopf asked.

“No. Stay here and focus on the array rework. I’ll fly back to headquarters and see what state the prototypes are in. If I need you, I’ll telegraph.”

“Understood, Director. Though, be aware, there’s a nasty storm moving in. We may be out of telegraph contact for a while.”

“Noted.” Shigeki stood up. “Nox?”

“Yes, sir?” The synthoid rose to attention.

“Check in with Hammerhead-Prime. We’ll leave as soon as they’re ready.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hinnerkopf stood up as well. It was almost painful watching how the two avoided looking at each other.

“Also . . . ” Shigeki permitted himself a mischievous grin. “You two are terrible at keeping secrets.”

“Sir?” Nox asked.

“I’m not sure what you mean by that,” Hinnerkopf said.

“Oh, please. You two know exactly what I mean.” His grin warmed into a friendly smile. “May I see the sigil?”

Nox and Hinnerkopf exchanged guarded looks. Hinnerkopf cocked an eyebrow, and Nox nodded. She held out her left hand and tugged her sleeve back. The virtual image of a stout pillar appeared, draped in vines and purple flowers.

“Beautiful.” Shigeki chuckled softly. “Took you two long enough.”

* * *

Hammerhead-Prime should be ready for departure by the time we reach the hangar,” Nox said as they came out of the grav tube leading down from CHRONO Operations.

“Good.” Shigeki hurried down one of several branching corridors, and Nox filed in by his side.

“That storm is rolling in fast,” Nox said. “However, if we hurry, we should be safely back home by the time it hits.”

“Should I start running?”

“No, sir. We have enough time.”

The two men took long strides down the corridor, past the blocked entrance to a horizontal counter-grav shaft still under construction. Milky blobs oozed across patches of the wall.

Nox positioned himself between Shigeki and the SysGov microbot swarms.

“It’s all right for us to fear change,” Shigeki commented as they hurried along. “Nothing wrong with approaching the unknown with caution. But we shouldn’t let that fear paralyze us into inaction.”

“I’m not afraid of SysGov’s toys,” Nox replied. “Just wary.”

“I wasn’t talking about governments.”

Nox glanced over at him, his yellow eyes unsure.

“Nox, I was talking about you and Katja. I meant it when I said you two took long enough.”

“You think I fear commitment?”

“Hardly!” Shigeki scoffed. “How many years have you served my family?”

“I haven’t counted them in a while.”

Shigeki laughed and shook his head. “Nox, you’re like the walking, talking definition of a long-term commitment.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“You’re afraid of pain.”

“I don’t feel pain anymore.”

“You feel it here”—Shigeki thumped the left side of his chest—“same as the rest of us.”

Nox fell silent at that. He faced forward as they walked.

“You fear becoming too attached again,” Shigeki continued. “Of once again losing someone you love to old age. Of watching someone fade away, bit by bit, while you remain as you are. And, more than anything, you don’t want it to be her.”

“You . . . ” Nox sighed. “You may be right, sir.”

“I am right. But pain is just a part of life, as much as we hate to admit it. It’s one side of an essential coin, and if we try to avoid it, try to shield ourselves from its misery, there’s a price we must pay. Because, in order to lose nothing, we can’t let ourselves gain anything first.”

“I know, sir,” Nox replied solemnly. “And those very thoughts have been on my mind. But—”

Neither of them noticed the bomb before it was too late, and only Nox, with his synthoid reflexes, had time to react, throwing out an arm to partially shield the other man’s frail, organic body from the explosion.

A wave of searing heat and intense force slammed into Shigeki like an anvil from hell. The world roared around him, blinding him, screaming at him, crushing the wind out of his chest. Air gasped out of his throat. Air mixed with blood and chunks of his own lungs.

The explosion flung him back, deaf and blind and mauled.

But strangely, not in agony. It was as if his mind couldn’t fully process what was happening. The avalanche of stimuli had overwhelmed him, if only for the briefest of moments.

He smashed against the wall hard enough to leave a dent, then slid down the side in a wet, brutalized, inhuman heap.

And then pain augured its way into his mind.

Searing, excruciating anguish the likes of which he’d never imagined.

He tried to scream, but couldn’t.

Because what he didn’t know. What he couldn’t know—

—was there wasn’t enough of him left to scream.

* * *

CHRONO’s executive medical suite was located one floor below Operations, nestled in a narrow slice of the station. At the moment, it consisted of a warmly decorated foyer and one exam room, with eighteen more rooms situated behind a construction barrier, either empty or packed from floor to ceiling with unopened crates of medical equipment.

Doctor Chadwick Ziegler sat stiffly behind one edge of the wide, wooden reception counter, his Gordian Division uniform tugged straight. The cosmetic layer of his synthoid matched his original meat body with cool blue eyes below a mop of sandy hair.

Medical Specialist Melissa Gillespie stood behind the same counter, handling their first patient of the day. Her Peacekeeper uniform didn’t sit well on her thin shoulders, and her peaked cap was fitted at an odd angle atop her curly blonde hair. Pale, freckled cheeks glowed with rosy warmth, and she seemed to conceal a measure of unease behind her professional smile.

“Here you go, Madam Consul.” Gillespie set a small bottle of medibot capsules on the counter. “This should help with your headaches.”

“Thanks,” Muntero grumbled as she accepted the bottle. She pressed the tab on the top and dispensed two pills into her palm.

“Would you like a glass of water?” Gillespie asked, gesturing toward the foyer’s medical-grade printer.

Muntero shook her head, then turned to leave. Her eyes grazed past Ziegler’s, then snapped back with an air of suspicion. If he’d possessed a heart, it would have skipped a beat.

“Consul,” Ziegler greeted with words as stiff as his posture.

“Doctor,” Muntero replied with equal formality.

She tossed back the pills, and swallowed them dry, then walked out of the room, mumbling something under her breath. Ziegler thought he caught the phrase “pigheaded directors” within the mush of consonants.

The door sealed shut. Ziegler and Gillespie exchanged a cautious glance—

—and then both deflated with relief.

Ziegler leaned his head back against the headrest and blew out a long exhale while Gillespie collapsed into her chair. She spilt open the front of her uniform, adjusted her bra, then sealed the smart fabric back up.

“Do you think she noticed?” Gillespie asked, smoothing out the contours along her uniform, of which there was plenty of appealing . . . topology.

“Nah.” Ziegler sat up again. “Though, perhaps we should be a bit more discreet.”

“Yeah.” Gillespie nodded in agreement.

Ziegler had transferred to Gordian from Arete Division shortly after the Providence Project received congressional approval. He’d spent eleven years in Arete serving as a First Responder and had been looking for a change in pace. A chance to introduce some stability back into his hectic life.

As an Arete First Responder, he’d never known where he’d end up—or even what body he’d be inside—by the end of each day. So much of the last eleven years saw his connectome being lasered from one disaster area to another, his mind loaded into whatever drones or mechs or spare bodies were available close by.

That sort of life had proven intensely rewarding, but it had also been exhausting, and he’d found himself eager for something more consistent. Maybe a chance to put roots down somewhere.

A medical post on a station had seemed like a good place to start, and the Gordian Division had certainly made a reputation for itself in the year-and-some-change it had existed. The position had tantalized him with the promise of a stable, consistent place to work and a place in an organization that was on the cutting edge. He couldn’t have been happier when he donned the feldgrau of Gordian Division for the first time.

It was only then that he learned he’d be working alongside a doctor from the goddamned Admin! As if those backward yokels knew the first thing about modern medical science!

He hadn’t taken the news well.

Fortunately, Melissa Gillespie had proven the opposite of a stereotypical Peacekeeper. Surprisingly open minded, and not just when it came to SysGov technology and culture, but about him as well. Curious about his life as a synthoid in SysGov. She’d peppered him with friendly questions from the start, and Zeigler had warmed to her quickly, though the final destination had surprised him even more.

Because one curiosity of hers had led to another, then another and another, all the way to, well . . . 

Her flexibility had surprised him.

In more ways than one.

“You know.” Gillespie’s eyebrows perked up. “We have all those crates in the back. We could start unpacking.”

“Not without at least one conveyor drone,” Ziegler cautioned. “I can lift some of those crates, but all you’ll get is a hernia if you try.”

“True.” She rested her chin on a hammock of laced fingers. “But look on the bright side. At least we have the equipment to fix it.”

Ziegler gave her a bit of side-eye.

“When do we get those drones again?” she asked.

“Not until the middle of next week at the earliest.”

“Then I guess we just wait here. As we’ve been. Fixing sprained ankles and the like.”

“Yup.”

Gillespie grabbed the base of her seat and scooched it over until she was right next to him.

“Did you see Muntero’s face?” she asked. “Wonder what has her so upset.”

“You mean besides all those terrorists?”

“Yeah. Besides. Though, honestly, I don’t see why everyone’s all worked up. All this commotion over an uptick in attacks. I mean, really!” She rolled her eyes. “We’re the Admin! We have people trying to kill us all the time!”

“I think it’s more an issue of what they’re using rather than who.”

“But that’s just it. What did people expect would happen? That everything SysGov would stay on one side and everything Admin on the other?” She snorted. “That’s just not realistic! There’s going to be some blending. Even if we tried to seal our borders, some influence would leak through. I mean, just look at recent events. Someone must have leaked the designs to our transdimensional drives.”

“Or other parties figured it out once they knew it was possible.”

Gillespie nodded. “Could be that, too.”

“I honestly don’t know what to make of—”

A dull, distant shudder rumbled up through their feet.

Ziegler and Gillespie paused. Then looked at each other curiously.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Not sure,” he said, moments before abstract screens flashed open in front of them, drenched in crimson alert messages.

“Medical emergency!” Gillespie snapped upright and pulled one of the screens over. “Docking Section, Deck Nineteen. Unfinished corridor between Central Access and the Admin hangars. Two victims, both in bad shape. One synthoid and one . . . ”

She paused, and her lower lip twitched. She turned to him with horrified eyes.

“It’s Director Shigeki.”

“How bad?”

“Very. It’s like his PIN pumped out every medical alert all at once.”

“Then we need to get down there.” Ziegler brought up the station map. “There’s an EM station sixty meters from their location. I’ll transmit into the medical drone and assess the situation.”

“Good luck. I’ll join you as fast as I can.” Gillespie spun around in her seat. “Gordito!”

An Admin drone the size of a large, fat dog padded out into the foyer. The drone’s white skin bulged from numerous compartments loaded with medical gear.

“Awaiting instructions,” said the modified Wolverine drone.

“We’re heading for the medical alert!” Gillespie said, rising.

“Acknowledged.”

“See you there.” Ziegler locked his synthoid in place, closed his eyes—

—and opened new “eyes” to darkness.

The EM station’s shutter split open, and Ziegler piloted the drone into the open corridor.

The Hippocrates-pattern drone consisted of a floating torso with four arms, the upper two large and strong, the bottom two designed for more delicate work. An assortment of medical equipment hung heavily from the drone in a tall backpack.

Ziegler was an old veteran when it came to Hippocrates drones, and he took to the mental controls with practiced ease. He checked the corridor in both directions. Overhead lights flickered, and smoke obscured his vision to the left. Virtual alerts pulsed beyond the smoke.

He eased power into the drone’s graviton thruster and sped down the corridor, smoke curling around him, thinning ahead until he caught sight of a crater blasted into the floor and wall, along with two victims: one Admin synthoid and one organic male.

Ziegler didn’t afford himself the luxury of wondering what had caused this terrible carnage. Rather, he focused purely on the task at hand, analyzing the situation as swiftly as he could in order to determine the best course of action.

The explosion had gutted both men. The synthoid lay on his back, missing his head, left arm, and nearly half of his torso. Shrapnel had shredded his uniform and artificial skin to reveal mangled synthetic muscles and warped metallic bones.

The synthoid lay motionless, but Ziegler wasn’t worried. According to his understanding of Admin synthoid design, the man’s connectome case resided about halfway down his spine in a small, shielded cartridge. That part of his body had survived, which meant he could be recovered.

Director Shigeki was another matter entirely. There was even less of him left: just the ragged remains of his upper torso, the stub of one arm, and a mostly intact head, all sitting within a pool of blood. His legs and pelvis were several meters away. Shrapnel had chewed through his neck, leaving strips of ragged meat and a broken spine, and his face had been brutally slashed, but his skull—and the brain inside—appeared more or less intact.

Ziegler set the equipment pack next to Shigeki’s body.

He checked a timer running from the original alert. Shigeki had a total of four minutes until his brain started dying from lack of oxygen, and one of those minutes had already been spent.

Three minutes and counting.

The drone’s sensors tested the air for micro- or nanotech hazards and found no immediate threats. Regardless, Ziegler tried to establish a virtual medical cordon around the site as a standard precaution, but the order failed to connect with the corridor’s unfinished infostructure, so he used the drone as a mobile node instead. He selected a shot of medibots, programmed them for head-trauma response, and injected them into the base of Shigeki’s skull.

The medibot swarm networked with his drone and spread through the man’s head. A diagram of his internal wounds formed in Ziegler’s virtual sight, but he immediately picked up on a problem.

“I’m here!” Gillespie ran through the cordon and stopped next to Ziegler. She took in the bloodbath with a horrified eye, then turned to him. “Well?”

“I gave him a shot of medibots, but they’re having trouble stabilizing him.”

“Hostile microtech?”

“No, I checked for that already. So far, nothing of the sort.”

“Then what are they struggling with?”

Ziegler pointed to the abstract version of Shigeki’s head. “His head’s full of microscopic holes and bits of shrapnel. They’re trying to enact repairs, but there’s just too much damage.”

“Then we pump his head full of more.”

“I’ll try.” Ziegler readied another dose and injected it at a different site. He watched the progress unfold.

Or rather, the lack of progress.

“No good. They’re getting confused by all the extra holes, plus they’re leaking out everywhere, losing swarm cohesion.”

“Then we keep pumping him with more.”

“The problem is we’re not oxygenating his brain. We’re running out of time.”

“Can we get him to a recovery casket?”

“Not unless we can stabilize his head. Otherwise, his brain’ll be dead long before surgery can repair enough of the damage.”

“Then we keep shooting him up.”

Ziegler nodded and administered another shot.

Then another.

And a fifth one.

Milky fluid oozed from Shigeki’s wounds, forming a puddle of lost and bewildered medibots beneath his head.

“Report!” Commissioner Klaus-Wilhelm von Schröder strode through the cordon and joined the medics. Several other Gordian and DTI personnel had gathered outside the cordon.

“It’s not looking good, sir,” Ziegler reported. “We’ve got about seventy seconds before his brain cells start dying, and we’ve been unable to stabilize his head.”

“Then forget the head. Yank his connectome.”

“I can’t, sir.”

“Why can’t you?”

“That’s not an approved procedure for Admin personnel. And even if it was, I can only perform an extraction if the victim has given prior consent. I cannot violate that requirement!”

Schröder took one step forward, his eyes dark and grim, his face harsh as he gazed down at the remains of his DTI counterpart.

“Do it.”

“Sir?”

“That’s a direct order.” The Commissioner clasped his hands behind his back and stood a little straighter. “I take full responsibility. Now save this man’s life!”

The force of the Commissioner’s order shook Ziegler to the core, but he still hesitated, unsure what to do next, a sense of great unease settling over his mind. He glanced to Gillespie and saw the conflict in her face as well. But then she nodded to him, her lips forming the words, “Save him.”

That simple gesture was enough, all that Ziegler needed to drive away the hesitation. Enough for him to justify the actions he was about to take, the oaths he was about to violate.

If our peoples were just a little further along, he told himself as he pulled the equipment from his pack, if we’d had just a little more time, then yes, surely, he would have given his consent.

It was a bitter, self-deceptive pill, but he swallowed it nonetheless.

Gillespie helped him set up the machinery around Shigeki’s head, which then contracted into a metallic cocoon.

An automated form appeared, and Ziegler confirmed—no, lied—that consent had been given.

The machine did the rest. Almost instantly, it collected the essence of who the man was, frying his brain tissue in the process.

“Brain death confirmed.” Gillespie swallowed hard. “Legally, Director Shigeki is now deceased. I’ve logged the time of death.”

“And practically?” Schröder asked.

“Connectome extraction was successful, sir,” Ziegler said. “Neural map looks to be coherent. There was some noise generated by the shrapnel in his head, but the system seems to have compensated. We’ll know more once we load him into a synthoid.”

Schröder only nodded.



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