BOOKS BY ISAAC HOOKE

Military Science Fiction

Argonauts

Bug Hunt

You Are Prey

Alien Empress

Quantum Predation

Robot Dust Bunnies

City of Phants

Rade’s Fury

Mechs vs. Dinosaurs

Alien War Trilogy

Hoplite

Zeus

Titan

ATLAS Trilogy (published by 47North)

ATLAS

ATLAS 2

ATLAS 3

A Captain's Crucible

Flagship

Test of Mettle

Cradle of War

Planet Killer

Worlds at War

Science Fiction

The Forever Gate Series

The Dream

A Second Chance

The Mirror Breaks

They Have Wakened Death

I Have Seen Forever

Rebirth

Walls of Steel

The Pendulum Swings

The Last Stand

Thrillers

The Ethan Galaal Series

Clandestine

A Cold Day in Mosul

Terminal Phase

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MECHS VS.

DINOSAURS

ARGONAUTS

BOOK EIGHT

Isaac Hooke

This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, organizations, places, events and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.

Text copyright © Isaac Hooke 2017

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

www.IsaacHooke.com

Cover design by Isaac Hooke

Cover image by Shookooboo

Special thanks to the following Beta Readers who helped out with this book:

Nicole P.

Gary F.

Sandy G.

Lance W.

Amy B.

Myles C.

Lisa A. G.

Gregg C.

Jeff K.

Mark C.

Mark P.

Jeremy G.

Doug B.

Jenny O.

Gene A.

Larry J.

Allen M.

Norman H.

Robine

Eric

And thank you to the following Special Consultants:

Martin P.

Don M.

table of contents

one

two

three

four

five

six

seven

eight

nine

ten

eleven

twelve

thirteen

fourteen

fifteen

sixteen

seventeen

eighteen

nineteen

twenty

twenty-one

twenty-two

twenty-three

twenty-four

twenty-five

twenty-six

twenty-seven

twenty-eight

twenty-nine

thirty

thirty-one

thirty-two

postscript

about the author

acknowledgments

one

Rade awakened to the sound of an emergency klaxon.

He sat up and the lights in his stateroom immediately flickered on.

Shaw arose beside him.

“Bax,” Rade said. “What’s going on?”

“An intruder has been detected in cargo bay five,” the Argonaut’s AI replied.

Rade exchanged a glance with Shaw, who was dressing.

“That’s where we stowed the package delivered by our most recent client,” Shaw said.

“I know.” Rade began pulling on his fatigues. “Need some more details Bax. What kind of intruder are we talking about? Man, robot?”

“Neither,” Bax replied. “Phant.”

“Phant?” Rade paused. “How is that possible? We scanned the package thoroughly.”

“Apparently there was a secret compartment, and it was shielded in some way,” Bax replied.

Rade tore off the fatigues—he wouldn’t need them where he was going.

“Recall Jackal and Koala immediately!” Rade said. Those were the two robots on guard duty in the respective cargo bay.

“Unfortunately, I’ve lost contact with the two units,” Bax said. “It appears they have gone offline.”

“Damn it,” Rade said. “Dispatch eight Centurions to intercept. Have them pause at the armory: I want them suited up and fully armed!”

“Understood,” Bax said.

“And sound General Quarters,” Rade said. “Have the crew suit up before returning to their duty stations.”

As the General Quarters announcement came over the main circuit, Rade glanced at Shaw.

“With me!” he told her.

“What about the twins?” Shaw said.

“We’ll go to them after we suit up!” Rade told her.

“We need to get to them now,” Shaw said.

“I doubt the Phant is heading toward them,” Rade said. “But if it is, we won’t be much use to the twins without suits protecting us.”

“I don’t care,” Shaw said. “Twins first, suits second.” She hurried from the compartment.

“Shaw wait!” Rade said. But she was already gone. “Damn it.”

He ran into the passageway after her.

“I’ll meet you in sickbay,” Shaw shouted behind her. “Bring me a suit.”

Dressed only in his skivvies, Rade turned around and retreated in the opposite direction. The air felt cold in the passageway, and the deck metal positively frigid against his bare feet.

“Bax, do you have an updated location on the Phant?” Rade asked.

“I do,” the Argonaut’s AI replied. “It has possessed Jackal. The Centurion appears to be headed to engineering.”

Rade glanced at his overhead map. Jackal was marked as a dark red dot on the Argonaut’s blueprints, halfway between Rade’s position and engineering.

“Send a Centurion to investigate cargo bay five,” Rade said. “Have it check on Koala. See if the offline combat robot’s AI core is recoverable. Also, I want a thorough examination of the ‘package’ our Phant stowaway saddled us with. Cut it open, and find out what else might be hiding in there. Make sure the Centurion is careful not to trigger any traps or bombs.”

“I will have the Centurion implement full bomb disposal policies,” Bax replied.

Rade reached the closest armory and hurried inside. He went to the jumpsuit lockers and grabbed a cooling and ventilation undergarment, sliding the holes in the fabric over the hardpoints protruding from his joints, and then began donning his jumpsuit assembly.

TJ, Bender, and Lui joined him momentarily.

“The hell is going on?” Bender said, pulling on his own undergarment.

“Phant intruder.” Rade shrugged on his torso assembly. “Originating from cargo bay five.”

“I knew we shouldn’t have accepted that package from the slimy bastard,” Bender said. “Whenever a mission sounds too good to be true, it probably is. ‘I just need you to transport this small package between the Praxis and Vega systems. A simple delivery. Fifty thousand credits.’ Fifty thousand credits for a simple delivery? Too good to be true.”

“The package passed all our scans.” Lui attached his helmet, and when he spoke again, his voice came over the comm. “As well as visual inspections. We couldn’t have known it harbored a Phant.”

Rade attached his own helmet, and flinched as the suit injected an accelerant into the dorsal venous region of his hand to reduce his body’s acclimation time to the internal environment.

He considered attaching a jetpack, but didn’t bother: the addition wouldn’t be all that useful in the tight passageways.

“I’m detecting what appears to be an automated signal beacon emerging from the package,” Bax announced.

“Is there a way we can shut it down?” Rade said. “Or prevent the signal from leaving the ship?”

“Short of jettisoning the contents of the cargo bay and then firing all weapons at the package,” Bax said. “At the moment, no. I have already sent a Centurion down to investigate, as per your earlier request.”

“Not sure that will be good enough.” Rade tapped in the only alien crew member he had aboard. “Surus. I need you to head down to cargo bay five. The package we picked up from the client in Praxis is sending out some sort of homing beacon. See if you can disengage it. Use whatever means necessary.”

“Will do,” Surus said, disconnecting.

There was no point in having Surus suit up for protection against the intruder, as her specific jumpsuit had no anti-Phant emitters: as a Phant herself, she wanted the ability to seep into and out of the jumpsuit at will from her host, the Artificial known as Ms. Bounty.

More members of the crew arrived at the armory to gear up.

Rade grabbed a stun rifle for himself and swung the strap over one shoulder. He chose the arcing version, which was capable of stunning multiple Phants at once. There were only two other stun rifles left, these non-arcing, and Bender and TJ took these.

Rade secured a couple of grenades to his harness, and then grabbed a jumpsuit and undergarment pair for Shaw. He also gathered the child-sized suits and undergarments he had printed up just for such an occasion. Using the remote interface on the suits, he activated the magnetic mounts and was able to bundle them all together into a large ball that he shoved underneath one arm.

He squeezed out of the compartment and hurried toward sickbay.

“Once you’ve suited up return to your duty stations,” Rade said over the comm. “I’ll keep you updated.”

“We’ve beat Jackal to engineering,” Algorithm said over the comm. “Do we have permission to engage with lethal force when the Centurion arrives?”

Rade glanced at his overhead map and saw that the requested eight combat robots had suited up and indeed reached engineering before Jackal.

“You have permission to use lethal force,” Rade replied.

On the map, Jackal’s red dot paused near engineering.

“We’ve pinned him down,” Algorithm sent. “Sending troops behind to outflank.”

As he watched, the blue dots of the defenders split into two groups. But just then another red dot appeared directly inside of engineering.

“Bax, what’s going on?” Rade said as he ran. 

“The Phant has separated from the robot,” Bax said. “It seeped through the closest bulkhead, and has emerged inside engineering in its native form.”

“Algorithm, get your team in there,” Rade said.

“Can’t,” Algorithm said. “The door won’t open.”

“What?” Rade said. “Bax, engage override. Password Rade Galaal, tango beta five niner.”

“The door won’t respond,” Bax replied.

“Would you like us to cut through?” Algorithm asked.

“Not yet,” Rade said. He tapped in TJ, his best hacker. “Get down to engineering and open that door.”

“Already on my way,” TJ said over the comm.

“Bax, do you still have access to the main engineering controls?” Rade asked.

“I do,” Bax said.

“Then lock out all engineering command capabilities,” Rade said. “Ensure that the ship can only be controlled from the bridge.”

“Done,” Bax said.

The Argonaut’s AI core, located underneath the bridge, was shielded against Phants, so Rade didn’t have to worry about losing Bax itself to possession. 

“But keep in mind,” Bax continued. “The Phant may have other intentions. Engineering contains several sensitive components. If one intended to sabotage this vessel, that would be the place to do it.”

“Noted,” Rade said. “Is Jackal back to normal?”

“It appears so,” Bax said. “His internal diagnostics have passed all tests.”

“Then mark the robot as a friendly once more and have Jackal retreat to suit up!”

“On it,” Bax replied.

As Rade neared sickbay, Lui came over the comm. According to Rade’s HUD, Lui was already at his duty station on the bridge.

“A trio of Marauder class vessels in the system have changed course,” Lui said. “They’re on an intercept trajectory with the Argonaut.”

“Likely up to no good,” Rade said. “How far away are they on our current trajectory?”

“About two hours,” Lui said.

“Enough time to come up with a battle plan, if need be,” Rade said. He remembered the signal beacon coming from the package and tapped in Surus. “Any luck on that beacon?”

“I managed to shut it down,” Surus said. “Using a well-placed shot from my blaster. However, any recipients would have already received their instructions.”

“Yeah,” Rade said. “We have three Marauder class vessels bearing down on us. Two hours away.”

Rade entered sickbay. A portion of the compartment acted as quarters for the twins. The two combat robots cum nannies, Cora and Dora, stood watch. The four-year-olds sat upright on their small beds on the far side of the compartment, no doubt awakened by the earlier klaxon and General Quarters announcement. Shaw knelt in front of them, trying to comfort the pair.

Rade set down the jumpsuit and undergarment ball in front of her and deactivated the magnetic mounts so that the various-sized suits and undergarments unfolded.

“It’s in engineering,” Rade said.

“I heard.” Shaw removed her fatigues and began donning the undergarment.

Rade glanced at Cora and Dora. “Help the twins get suited up. Then report to the nearest armory and get suited up yourselves. Afterward, return here.”

The robots moved forward to assist the twins.

“Mommy, what’s going on?” Sil asked as Cora helped her undress.

“Nothing, sweetie,” Shaw answered. “I told you, it’s just a drill.”

“Keep your eye on the overhead map,” Rade told Shaw. “Move the twins if you even get so much as a whiff that the Phant is coming this way.”

“Oh I intend to,” Shaw said. “What about you? What are you doing?”

“I’m going to engineering,” Rade said.

“Be careful,” Shaw told him.

“Always am.” Rade entered the tight passageway outside and lowered the stun rifle so that he would be ready to fire.

“I’ve made several course updates,” Lui said over the comm. Ordinarily, as Astrogator Shaw would have been the one piloting the ship. But since she wasn’t on the bridge, Lui had taken over the astrogation for the time being. “The incoming Marauders keep altering course to intercept.”

“If we turn around,” Rade asked. “Can we outrun them?”

“These are Marauder Model IIs,” Lui said. “About four times the size of our own Marauder. With twice the cargo and engine capacity. So no, we can’t. If we turn around, we’ll have a day, max, before they’re within weapons range.”

“Start working with Bax on a strategy,” Rade said. “If you think you need more time to prepare, I’ll give the order to turn us around. But otherwise, no point in delaying the inevitable.”

“Understood,” Lui replied. A moment later: “Uh, boss? Engines just went offline.”

“And now we’ve lost weapons systems,” Manic said.

“Damn it.” Rade glanced at the overhead map. The red dot of the Phant was still located in the middle of engineering.

“Bax, is there no way you can stop the Phant from cutting off key systems?” Rade said.

“No,” the Argonaut’s AI replied. “Speaking of which, we’ve just lost life support.”

Rade tapped in Shaw. “Please tell me you and the kids have finished suiting up?” He pulled up their status indicators on his HUD and had his answer before she spoke: green across the board.

“We’re all in suits down here,” Shaw said. “Cora and Dora have gone to the nearest armory, and should be back soon. I’ve told Cora to bring an extra rifle for me, since you neglected to do so.”

“Sorry about that,” Rade said. “Though I’m not sure a laser rifle will be of much help, anyway.”

“Then have one of the men bring me a stun rifle,” Shaw said.

“The suits will protect you well enough,” Rade said. “If for some reason the Phant decides to come to sickbay, I’ll be right there behind it.”

Rade glanced at the tactical display, which showed the Argonaut in relation to the other ships and celestial objects in the system. The three Marauder class vessels were about an hour and fifty-three minutes away, according to the latest calculations.

“Fret, see if you can hail those Marauders,” Rade said over the comm.

“No response,” Fret said a moment later.

Rade neared the area where Jackal had been pinned down. He saw the dark smears on the edge of the bulkhead where laser fire had darkened the metal.

He rounded the bend. The hatch ahead that led to engineering was recessed slightly, forming an alcove of sorts. Dressed in jumpsuits, the eight Centurions dispatched there had formed defensive positions within the alcove. They were protecting TJ, who seemed to be interfacing with the door.

“How are we doing, TJ?” Rade asked.

“Ah, you know,” TJ said. “Could be better. Being awakened in the middle of the night to suit up and service a door isn’t my idea of a good time, but hey.”

“Nor is waking up to find a Phant aboard one’s ship,” Rade said.

“Not that, either,” TJ replied. Then: “Got it.”

The hatch slid aside.

Rade tightened his grip on the stun rifle.

“TJ, with me,” Rade said.

two

Rade and TJ entered the engineering department, their stun rifles held to eye level.

Rade swung his weapon to and fro. He used the iron sights rather than the scope, since the range was so close. There was no sign of the liquid Phant on any of the bulkheads or various control panels.

He glanced at the overhead map, which marked the last known location of the entity as recorded by the lightfield cameras in engineering. The intruder lay around a bend in the L-shaped compartment.

Rade signaled TJ forward with a gesture, and the man took up a position next to the bend in his jumpsuit. Rade moved forward, wide of the edge, and then rapidly stepped past.

He scanned the deck, ceiling, and bulkheads, but there was no incongruous liquid anywhere.

He checked the overhead map again; the red dot indicated the Phant should have resided in front of the bulkhead directly opposite him.

“Must have seeped into the metal,” TJ said.

“Is that a panel?” Rade asked, gazing at the outline of a square line engraved into the bulkhead surface.

“It is,” TJ replied.

“Algorithm, come here,” Rade said.

The combat robot promptly arrived.

“Bax, if I fire a stun shot into that panel, it’s not going to affect any key ship systems, is it?” Rade asked.

“It shouldn’t,” the Argonaut’s AI replied.

Rade squeezed the trigger, unleashing a plasma channel into the bulkhead. Then he glanced at Algorithm.

“I want you to open up that panel,” Rade said, gesturing toward the bulkhead in question.

Algorithm approached it.

“Careful,” TJ said. “It could be anywhere behind there.”

“In theory I have nothing to fear while the anti-Phant emitter is active in my jumpsuit,” Algorithm said.

“Oftentimes reality proves much different than theory,” TJ said.

“Noted,” Algorithm replied.

Rade kept his rifle aimed at the square outline as Algorithm retrieved a tool from its utility belt and promptly opened the four fasteners. Then the robot grabbed the panel by the inward facing handle and separated it from the bulkhead.

Algorithm hesitated before removing the panel entirely. It glanced at Rade, who nodded.

Algorithm stepped back all at once, revealing the inner workings of the panel.

Rade saw several different conduits, some of them color-coded, a couple with blue or red LED markers streaking across their surfaces, but otherwise no Phant.

“Bax, where is it?” Rade asked.

“I am unable to detect the intruder when it traverses the ship via the metal composing the bulkheads and deck,” Bax said. “I will let you know the moment it returns to one of my video feeds.”

“I don’t like this,” TJ said. “It feels like it’s toying with us. The Phant purposely revealed itself when it emerged from the package, when it could have remained hidden, advancing to engineering from inside the deck, staying out of view of the AI. But instead it decided to possess one of our robots and provide a theatrical show. Feels like a distraction to me.”

“You think there are more than one?” Rade asked.

“Either that, or this Phant takes cruel pleasure in teasing humans,” TJ said.

“Given what we know about Phants,” Rade said. “The latter seems entirely feasible. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was acting alone.”

Rade glanced at the tactical map; the Marauder ships continued to close.

“Fret, keep trying to communicate with those vessels,” Rade said.

“Will do,” Fret replied.

“TJ, see if you can repair the engine and weapon system damage,” Rade said.

“I’ll get on it,” TJ said. He knelt in front of the open panel. “I’d appreciate it if you left a few of the robots here to help me out. And send Harlequin my way.”

“I’ll leave them all,” Rade said. “As well as Harlequin. Consider them your personal honor guard. In the meantime, the rest of us have to get ready to repel a boarding party.”

“You don’t sound too confident in my repair abilities,” TJ said.

“Let’s just say I’m not about to sit around idling while you work,” Rade told him.

“And what about the Phant?” TJ said.

“We’ll deal with it when it rears its ugly head,” Rade said. “But if you see it, you know what to do.” He nodded toward the stun rifle that TJ had slung over his shoulder.

During Rade’s return trip to the bridge, the Centurion assigned to cargo bay five tapped in.

“Ernie, you have an update on the package?” Rade asked.

“After Surus disabled the beacon,” Ernie said. “I finished removing the contents of the package: several bottles of Flame.” That was an expensive perfume produced by a rare strain of bacteria that thrived in zero-G. “I emptied the contents out into separate vials, but otherwise discovered nothing else in the bottles. Then I cut the container open. I found the power source for the beacon, along with a small, empty holding cell, with no clear openings. It was obviously where the Phant hid. There does seem to be some shielding in place. We’ll have to analyze the material further. But otherwise, the package is clean.”

“Did you have a look at Koala?” Rade asked.

“I did,” Ernie said. “I have recovered the AI core from Koala’s damaged body. It appears undamaged.”

“Glad to hear it,” Rade said.

He reached the bridge. That circular arrangement of stations affectionately known as the Sphinx was very difficult to navigate in the bulky jumpsuit, given the proximity of the stations and their occupants to the bulkhead. And he thought it was tight before...

Before sitting, he issued the appropriate widening instructions to his chair so that it would fit the cumbersome suit. Even with the extra space, there was no way the chair would fit a jetpack—it was just as well he hadn’t given the order to don them.

After taking his seat he began making plans with the crew, going over different boarding scenarios, and how to repel them. He wasn’t satisfied with any of the procedures, and hoped he could find a way to prevent the boarding in the first place.

There were no further sightings of the Phant—or Phants—over the next hour and a half.

“The Marauders are well within long distance firing range at this point,” Lui said over the shared comm line they used while inside the jumpsuits. “But still haven’t unleashed any weapons.”

“Why would they?” Bender said. “We got our wings clipped and our beaks snipped. A giraffe’s dick could cause more damage.”

“A giraffe’s dick?” Lui said. “I don’t get the analogy.”

“Well, giraffes have long necks, right?” Bender told him. “So it goes without saying that they have long dicks, too. A giraffe’s dick is like a long range weapon in my analogy.”

“I still don’t get it,” Lui said.

“Ah, I’m surrounded by dense prudes,” Bender said.

TJ tapped in from engineering. “Boss, I finally got the weapons systems online. Essentially all the Phant did was burn out the equivalent of a few fuses, and I replaced them.”

“I didn’t know starship power systems used fuses,” Rade said.

“I said the equivalent of fuses,” TJ clarified.

“So the missile tubes and Vipers are online?” Rade asked.

“Fully,” TJ said. “As well as the mag-rail point-defenses.”

“What about the engines?” Rade said.

“Those will take a little longer,” TJ said.

“What do you mean by a little longer?” Rade said. “Are we talking minutes, or hours?”

“Hours, unfortunately,” TJ said.

“Keep me posted,” Rade said and disconnected. He turned toward Manic. “Prepare to unleash our weapons against the Marauders: begin charging Vipers. Target their missile tubes.” Rade intended to fire the heavy lasers at essentially point-blank range, allowing the Vipers to hit with maximum punch. He was confident the attack would cause any queued missiles in the enemy ships to detonate, the explosions fusing their launch tubes shut. With luck, the explosions might even cascade to missiles in the storage bays beyond, causing multiple Hellfires to detonate, inflicting further damage.

“Plan to follow up the Viper attack with a volley of Hellfires,” Rade continued. “Target any missile tubes that survive the first attack, such as those on the opposite flanks of the Marauders, and then aim for their heavy lasers as well. Use up every last one of our Hellfires in that final volley—seeing as we’re outnumbered three to one, I doubt we’ll get another chance to strike. So make it count.”

“I’m programming in a firing solution,” Manic said.

“You know, it’s possible they might detect the heat signature of the charging Vipers,” Tahoe said from where he sat beside Rade. “They might realize we’ve repaired the weapons.”

“Bax, thoughts on that?” Rade asked the Argonaut’s AI.

“There is a chance, yes,” Bax said. “But the thermal pattern could also be interpreted as heat leakage, caused by internal damage when we attempted to defend against the intruder. The AIs of the Marauders will come to similar conclusions.”

“So what’s to stop them from firing?” Tahoe asked. “If only to confirm that our weapons are offline?”

“They would have fired already if that was their intention,” Bax said. “I believe they are under specific orders not to use their weapons any more than is necessary against our ship.”

“Why?” Tahoe said.

“They don’t want to damage my precious cargo,” Bax said.

“You mean the Phant?” Tahoe asked.

“It’s impossible to say at the moment,” Bax said. “Though I doubt the Phant is the cargo.”

“What are they here for, then?” Tahoe said. “They intend to capture Surus?”

“Again, impossible to say,” Bax said.

“I think the more likely scenario is they’re mercenaries in the employ of the Phant,” Rade said. “And the Phant has promised them salvage rights to our vessel. After it collects what it came for, the ship is theirs. Why damage the prize more than necessary? Far easier to repair a few damaged components in engineering than to replace a melted focusing mirror in a laser core.”

“Wait wait wait,” Bender said. “What color is this Phant of ours? Is it a Green? A Black? Or what? If it’s a Green, then that tells us the target is Surus. Anything else, and all bets are off.”

“Actually it’s a Purple, according to camera logs,” Bax said.

“Purple?” Lui said. “What are those again?”

Rade tapped in Surus, who had returned to her quarters in cargo bay six, and shared the channel with the bridge crew.

“Surus, what do we know about Purples?” Rade asked.

“They are the fighting class of the species,” Surus said. “And the tacticians, responsible for developing the strategies used to conquer other races. The Purples also contain a clandestine branch, whose members are responsible for infiltrating new species and preparing the way for the main invasion force.”

“Lovely,” Rade said. “I’m dispatching four Centurions to guard you, Surus. Bax, see that it’s done.”

“Yes boss,” Bax replied.

The minutes passed and the Marauders continued their approach. Still none of the ships opened fire.

“The vessels have reached the ten thousand kilometer mark, and are rapidly decelerating,” Lui said.

“Should I open fire?” Manic asked.

“Hold,” Rade said.

“If they fire now, and eliminate our weapons, we lose our chance...” Tahoe said.

“They won’t fire,” Rade said. Though his voice betrayed no uncertainty, he knew they might fire at any time. It was a gamble, yes. But if he wanted to do the most damage, he needed to wait.

The minutes ticked past. Finally:

“They’ve halted,” Lui said. “Three kilometers out.”

“All right,” Rade said. “Looks like that’s as close as they’re going to get. Set the proximity fuses on the missiles to detonate at two hundred meters from the target.” That range would be more than enough to cause significant damage. “On my word, Manic.”

“They’re launching shuttles on an intercept course with the Argonaut,” Lui said. “I’m counting three of them.”

“Do you want me to include the shuttles in my volley?” Manic asked.

“No,” Rade said. “It’s of utmost importance that we disable the weapons on the main ships. Fire when ready.”

Rade watched as white lines appeared on the tactical display, connecting the Argonaut to the different ships. Those lines represented lasers, and were followed up nearly instantaneously by yellow dots representing missiles fired from the Argonaut. Those Hellfires rapidly closed, some diverging to make for the far flanks of the different ships. He saw similar white lines flash from the three vessels as the Marauders targeted the yellow dots of the Hellfires with their own lasers.

The deck vibrated as some of those enemy lasers struck the Argonaut.

A moment later, all of the new dots and lines vanished. It was over.

“What happened?” Rade said.

“Our laser attack eliminated the missile tubes across all three ships,” Manic said. “I launched the Hellfire volley almost at the same time, but the enemy fired back with their own Vipers. They spread out their targeting between the incoming Hellfires and our Viper turrets: they managed to prematurely detonate about half of our missiles, despite the minuscule time window afforded by our close range. They also knocked out all of our heavy lasers. We still have our missile tubes, but seeing as we have no Hellfires left, those are useless. “

“You say they prematurely detonated half our missiles,” Rade said. “That means the other half hit their targets. So how many Vipers do they have left?”

“The remaining Hellfires struck the laser turrets on both flanks of all three ships,” Manic said. “It appears their Vipers are offline across the board. If the enemy had concentrated their laser fire on the Hellfires instead of dividing their shots between them and our Vipers, these Marauders might still have some weapons left.”

“Too bad for them,” Rade said.

“So we’re all disarmed for the time being,” Tahoe said.

“Not entirely,” Rade said. “We still have mag-rails.”

“Not for long,” Lui said. “The shuttles are firing onboard cobra lasers at our point defenses.”

“Unleash the mag-rails!” Rade said. “Take down those shuttles.”

“Unleash the Kraken,” Bender muttered.

“The shuttles are issuing evasive maneuvers,” Lui said. “We’ve lost thirty percent of our mag-rails.”

“Keep firing,” Rade said.

“Shuttles have closed to within three hundred meters,” Lui said. He looked up. “We’ve disabled one of them.” His eyes defocused. “The remaining two shuttles are spreading apart and moving beyond the sight lines of our mag-rails. They’re approaching our hull, preparing to dock.”

“Bax, I need to know what hatches they’re heading to,” Rade said.

“They’ve chosen airlocks located on opposite sides of the hull,” Bax said. “It appears they’re heading to 3S on the starboard flank, and 3P on the port flank.”

“Prepare for boarding,” Rade told his crew.

three

We’ll have to defend both airlocks,” Rade continued. “Tahoe, organize two fire teams.”

Tahoe split the crew and Centurions into two fire teams. Rade led Team One, while Tahoe took Team Two.

Rade tapped in Shaw. “You’ve heard the news?”

“Yes,” Shaw said. “We’re about to be boarded. I’m staying in sickbay to protect the twins.”

“I’m ordering Bax to send you two more Centurions,” Rade said. “Bax? Do it.”

“It’s done,” the Argonaut’s AI said.

“Do you want more, Shaw?” Rade asked.

“Two is more than enough,” Shaw said. “Considering that I already have Cora and Dora. Not to mention myself.”

“Any members of the enemy boarding party will be in for a rude awakening if they manage to reach sickbay,” Rade said. “And discover the angry momma bear waiting for them.”

“They’ll never reach sickbay,” Shaw said. “Not while poppa bear is out there.”

“Probably not,” Rade said.

He disconnected and headed down to 3S; once there he had his fire team assume defensive positions in front of the airlock: the team members hid inside the small alcoves formed by nearby hatches, and also around the bends located on both flanks of the passageway.

Rade lurked inside the alcove closest to the airlock on the righthand side with Bender, who was ducked underneath him. Both of them had their rifles aimed past the edge at the airlock. Rade had stepped most of his body out from cover so that he had the entire outer hatch in his sights. He had dropped by the armory to pick up a laser rifle for himself, which he used now; he kept the arcing stun rifle slung over his opposite shoulder as a backup. He had given Surus one of the remaining non-arcing stun rifles.

Rade felt vibrations issue from the deck.

“Both shuttles have docked,” Bax announced. “Prepare for forced entry.”

Rade saw the sparks of a laser cutter as the enemy boarding party got to work on the other side.

“Let’s open the airlock outright,” Rade said. “Surprise these a-holes.”

The outer hatch opened up, catching the cutting personnel off guard: two Centurions, of similar make and model to his own units. Their bodies and limbs were of blocky polycarbonate, and their joints spherical. They weren’t wearing jumpsuits—all the better for their Phant master to possess them.

Rade and the others opened fire.

The two robots clattered to the deck.

“Ha, dumb-ass bitches!” Bender said.

Rade ducked behind the alcove as more robots burst inside, firing away.

“Got one,” Algorithm said.

“Me too,” Brat said.

Rade heard a pair of loud clangs in the hall and peered past; two more enemy combat robots lay on the deck.

Four intruders in jumpsuits peered past from the opening. Two of them faced Rade, the other two had their weapons pointed in the opposite direction. They were positioned high and low like the members of Rade’s own fire team.

Rade knew that Bender would be taking the lower tango; Rade aimed at the upper helmet, centering his sights over the head of the merc inside: Sino-Korean, judging from the features. Then again, the man could have been employing a holoemitter in his helmet to mask his true identity. The attacker could have been a robot for all Rade knew.

Rade squeezed the trigger and the target flopped over like a rag doll. The man underneath him fell almost instantaneously; both of them had boreholes piercing the faceplates of their helmets. The other two individuals facing in the opposite direction suffered similar fates.

Rade loosed a grenade from his harness and tossed it into the airlock. “Frag out.”

An explosion shook the deck.

“Bax, status?” Rade asked.

“The enemy shuttle is still attached,” Bax said. “The grenade landed in their airlock, and as far as I can determine, the explosion didn’t reach the interior of their craft. The airlock itself remains intact.”

Damn.

An enemy grenade came bouncing out into the passageway.

“Frag!” Rade accessed the side hatch beside him, opening it; he and Bender dove inside the compartment and the door sealed behind them. 

The explosion ripped through the passageway a moment later. Rade glanced at the status indicators of his men, shown on his HUD as stacked vertical bars. Everyone remained in the green.

Rade opened the hatch and quickly resumed his place at the edge of the alcove as more tangos in jumpsuits fired from the airlock opening.

“Boss, Surus is under attack,” Bax announced.

“What?” Rade said. “How?”

“It’s Jackal,” Bax said.

“I thought I told you to have the robot suit up!” Rade said.

“Jackal did suit up,” Bax replied. “But apparently the Phant possessed the Centurion before it could finish donning the jumpsuit.”

Rade tried to tap in Surus. “Surus, do you read? Surus?”

No response.

“Bax, I need a video feed on cargo bay six,” Rade said.

“I’m sorry,” the Argonaut’s AI said. “Jackal has shot out all lightfield cameras.”

“Are you able to reach Surus, or any of the other robots in the cargo bay?” Rade asked.

“Negative,” Bax replied.

“I’m going to have to check on her,” Rade said. “Bender, you’re in command here. Algorithm, let’s get some suppressive fire!”

Algorithm and the other robots laid down covering fire, forcing the tangos in jumpsuits to retreat. Rade left his cover and ran through the passageway away from the airlock, and quickly ducked around the bend. He hurried through the corridors, making his way toward cargo bay six.

“By the way, Bax,” Rade said as he jogged. “Could the Phant really have moved that fast? I mean to arrive at the armory all the way from engineering before Jackal finished suiting up?”

“Yes, judging from the speed it crossed engineering earlier,” Bax said. “But just barely.”

“What about the anti-Phant emitter inside the suit?” Rade said. “How does the Phant expect to emerge from the suit, without first taking it off?”

“Maybe it doesn’t,” Bax said. “But then again, I have reviewed footage from the armory. Jackal turned its back to the camera after retrieving the jumpsuit chest assembly: the robot could have torn away the emitter and deposited it in the jumpsuit locker during the short interval while I was unable to see. The Phant obviously seeped inside, likely through the foot region, before that point.”

“Damn it,” Rade said. “Remind me to upgrade all our cameras to LIDAR sometime.”

“I have already reminded you,” Bax said. “Several times. Your response has always been: ‘that costs too much.’”

Rade reached the hatch to cargo bay six. The door opened when Rade approached.

Inside he discovered Surus’ host, Ms. Bounty, with her arms in the air, her wrists flexicuffed to an exposed conduit running along the overhead. The upper half of her fatigues had been ripped open, exposing her naked chest; her sternum had been removed entirely, leaving a large metallic hole between her breasts.

The four Centurions he had assigned to guard her lay on the deck, their bodies riddled with laser bores. The stun rifle Rade had given Surus lay broken in half beside one of them.

“Surus is gone,” Ms. Bounty said.

“Captured?” Rade asked.

“No,” the stunningly beautiful Artificial said. “She left to pursue the Phant. She intends to possess the first combat robot she is able.”

“Are you all right by the way?” Rade asked, cutting her down.

“Yes,” Ms. Bounty said. She self-consciously hauled up the remains of her fatigues, securing them with a hairpin so that her chest was covered once more. “The Phant only removed my comm node. It wanted me conscious to answer any questions it might have.”

“Questions, like what?” Rade asked.

“The location of a certain artifact,” Ms. Bounty said. “But it turned out it didn’t need to ask any questions. Because the artifact was precisely where it guessed.” Her eyes drifted to a metallic vault on the far side of the room. The vault was open, its contents ransacked: clothing, holographic storage sticks, and other miscellany were scattered about.

“I don’t want to know what was in that vault, do I?” Rade said.

“Surus is returning to my body,” Ms. Bounty said, gazing off into the distance.

Rade stepped back. He glanced at the deck, but didn’t spot the telltale liquid that signified the presence of the Green. The Phant must have been entering directly through the sole of the foot, via the deck. He could understand why Bax hadn’t noticed the enemy seeping into Jackal.

Ms. Bounty looked at him. Rade saw green condensation momentarily flash over her eyes, and he knew Surus had returned.

“Surus?” Rade asked.

“I’m back,” Surus replied through Ms. Bounty. “I have some bad news.”

“Wait,” Rade said. “How do I know it’s you, and not another Green?”

“Bax, I’m granting you remote access to my thought patterns,” Surus said. “Confirm that they match previous scans I have allowed you to make.”

“It is Surus,” Bax said a moment later.

“What was in the vault?” Rade asked her.

“The Purple stole the Time Selector,” Ms. Bounty said.

“The Time Selector?” Rade asked.

“Yes,” Ms. Bounty said. “You remember a certain pyramidal artifact we acquired from the conquered world of the Xaranth? The species your team referred to as gatorbeetles?”

“Vaguely,” Rade said.

“It is an artifact that could affect the flow of time when used in conjunction with a matching Acceptor,” Surus said. “An artifact that, in the wrong hands, could be used as a Time Weapon, capable of wiping out a species before it ever evolved from the primordial soup of its homeworld.”

“Oh no.” Rade ran into the hall. “Bax, I need Jackal’s location.”

“Jackal is no longer aboard,” Bax said.

“What?” Rade said.

“The Centurion has taken a lifepod and ejected from the ship,” Bax said.

Rade glanced at Surus, who stood at his side. “That explains why you returned to Ms. Bounty.”

“Yes,” Surus replied.

“Boss,” Tahoe said over the comm. “The boarding party members have returned to their shuttles, and they’ve forcibly broken away, tearing away the outer portions of the airlocks. Atmosphere is venting on the port and starboard sides of deck three. Breach seals have closed, protecting the rest of the ship. All of us are safe—we activated our magnetic mounts and held on during the explosive decompression.”

“Thanks for the update,” Rade told his friend.

“One of the shuttles just rendezvoused with the jettisoned lifepod,” Bax said. “They’ve attached grappling hooks and are retrieving it.”

“Shoot them down with the mag-rails!” Rade said.

“The two shuttles are fleeing in a zig-zag motion,” Bax said. “Which makes targeting difficult. They’re also firing their cobras repeatedly at our mag-rails, and have taken several of them offline in the process.”

Rade hesitated. It seemed obvious that the shuttles were going to get away.

“Bax, how big are the passageways aboard Marauder Model IIs?” Rade asked.

“Wide enough for Hoplites to fit in single file, if that’s what you’re thinking,” the Argonaut’s AI said.

“Good guess,” Rade said. “Inform the Argonauts of the situation involving the missing Time Selector, and have them gather in the mech hangar bay. Prep the Hoplites for launch.”

“What about the Centurions?” Bax asked.

“They are to remain aboard, guarding the ship,” Rade said. “Just in case another Phant is stowed somewhere aboard.”

He hurried through the passageways, hatches and scuttles, opening breach seals as necessary. Surus followed close behind him.

He glanced at her. “I want you to suit up as soon as we reach the hangar.”

At the bay, Rade went to the internal lockers and threw on a jetpack. Surus meanwhile swapped out her fatigues for cooling and ventilation undergarments, and began donning the jumpsuit components. She chose the one specifically set aside for her that didn’t have an anti-Phant emitter, allowing her to come and go from the suit in her native form as she pleased. Rade helped her put it on.

“We have to assume the Phant has found a matching Acceptor,” Surus said. “It might even be aboard one of those vessels.”

“I know,” Rade said, holding the leg assembly while she slid into it. “Why do you think I’m pursuing them right now? There’s no time to lose. Literally. By the way, how did the Phant know you had the artifact?”

“I’m guessing it had me under surveillance for a long time,” Surus said. “Purples are known for their clandestine ways. I suspect the Phant infiltrated one of the Artificials at my secret base and somehow accessed my database. It would have found a log of all my missions there, along with where I kept the artifact.”

“So this is all due to lax security on your part, you’re saying?” Rade told her.

“Hey,” Surus said. “Even with all the security you have aboard the Argonaut, we still lost it. So I’m not the only one lacking in the security department. It’s your fault for accepting the package from an unvetted client in the first place. It’s not like I don’t pay you enough to secure your services exclusively.”

“You agreed the team could accept side missions if such operations didn’t interfere with our main objective,” Rade said.

“And so I did,” Surus said. “But perhaps it is time to change that. In light of recent circumstances.”

“While laying blame for what happened might make you feel better,” Rade told her as he helped her fit into the chest assembly. “It doesn’t change the fact that the enemy of humanity has just stolen one of the most powerful weapons in the universe from you.”

“No, it does not,” Surus said.

“Why would you even keep that aboard?” Rade said. “And not in some secure location somewhere?”

“My supposition that my base was infiltrated tells me that there is no such thing as a secure location,” Surus said. “And what better place to guard such a weapon than in my own quarters? Or so I thought... besides, I was studying it.”

Rade shook his head. “A time weapon. We had a time weapon aboard, and you lost it. I seem to remember you saying at one point that the special kind of Acceptor the artifact needed didn’t exist anymore?”

“No,” Surus told him. “I said very few of them still existed, and that there might not be any left at all. I doubt our Phant friend would have gone through all of this trouble to steal the Time Selector if it had not found a matching Acceptor.”

She pulled on her boots and attached the helmet, finished donning the jumpsuit. With that suit on, she wouldn’t have to worry about replacing the missing comm node in her Artificial body, because she could utilize the node in the jumpsuit to interface with the rest of the team.

By then the other Argonauts had begun to arrive.

“Get jetpacks,” Rade told them.

The crew members rushed to the jumpsuit lockers to obey.

Rade clambered into his Hoplite, Electron, while Surus took Sprint.

“Welcome aboard, Rade,” Electron said after the cockpit sealed and the inner actuators enveloped him.

“How’s it hanging?” Rade asked.

“It is hanging well,” Electron replied. “We are going to kick some bug ass, I presume?”

“As always,” Rade said. He tapped in Shaw, voice and video. Her face appeared in the upper right of his vision. “I couldn’t help but noticing you weren’t among the men. When I told Bax to have all the Argonauts report to the mech bay, I meant it.”

“I know,” Shaw said. “I want to come with you. I really do. But I can’t leave the twins. Not while there might be a rogue Phant still aboard.”

“There probably isn’t,” Rade said. “The Phant found what it came for. You heard, right?”

“Yes,” Shaw said. “Bax updated me. Something about a time device.”

“A time weapon, actually,” Rade said. “This Phant could be holding the key to destroying humanity in its hands.”

“But why would it even want to do that?” Shaw said. “I thought Phants used the inter-dimensional imprints produced by humans and other living things to create geronium? What would they gain by destroying humanity?”

“Honestly, I have no idea what the Phant intends to do,” Rade said. “But as I said, I believe no Phants remain aboard. But the choice to come, or not come, is yours.”

Her eyes gleamed and Rade knew she was excited by the prospect of joining him.

A part of him hoped she would indeed come, but another part badly wanted her to remain behind. The dangers would be immense: boarding a mercenary ship and facing off against a Phant and whatever machinations it had aboard would not be easy.

Shaw slumped, lowering her gaze. “I’m going to stay. My place is here. Even if no Phants are aboard, there’s still a chance those Marauders will attempt another attack. I have to be ready to evacuate the ship if the enemy weapons come back online.”

“I understand,” Rade said. “And I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll always love you,” Shaw said.

Rade didn’t like the finality he heard in her voice. And he didn’t want to encourage it, so he simply said: “Back at you. I’ll see you soon.”

Shaw smiled sadly, then disconnected.

Rade checked his HUD and confirmed that all of the Argonauts had boarded their war machines.

“Prepare for launch,” Rade said.

“What about Nemesis?” Tahoe asked, referring to Shaw’s preferred Hoplite.

“I want it left behind, in case Shaw needs the mech for whatever reason,” Rade said. He was still somewhat disturbed by her words, which had triggered his protective instincts. He suddenly didn’t want to go, but he knew there was no turning back, not now. “Bax, vent the bay and open up the doors.”

The air evacuated from the bay and the hangar doors opened wide.

“Argonauts, away!” Rade ordered.

The nine mechs leaped out in rapid succession.

Rade thought of his last words to Shaw as the weightlessness and darkness of space took hold.

Back at you. He felt like tapping her in again and telling her more than that. Much more.

But he had a mission to complete.

Unfortunately, though he had not known it then, this might prove to be the last time he would ever see her.

four

Rade glanced at the overhead map. The three shuttles had split up, each one heading toward a different Marauder.

“Electron,” Rade said, “coordinate with Bax to highlight the shuttle that retrieved the lifepod.”

A few moments later a small yellow square appeared in the distance. Rade zoomed in on that area and saw the shuttle towing the lifepod. On his tactical map, the craft was also highlighted in yellow. He set the object as a waypoint, and a dashed yellow line appeared on the map, joining his unit to the target.

“Argonauts, follow the yellow brick road,” Rade said.

He fired his jumpjets on an intercept course and deployed his shield in his left arm. “Maneuver your shields in place to protect against any cobra attacks from the shuttles. Meanwhile, let’s see if we can cause a little damage.” Rade slid his cobra into the notch at the top of the shield. “Electron, target the laser turrets of those shuttles in turn. Coordinate with the other AIs to concentrate our fire. Bring down their weapon systems.”

“Aye, boss,” Electron said. “The Hoplites are already taking cobra impacts from the shuttles, by the way. Shields are holding, for the moment.”

“Good, fire when ready,” Rade said.

A moment later Electron announced: “We’ve eliminated the laser turrets in the shuttles. I am targeting the engines next. They have begun to initiate evasive maneuvers, however, making target acquisition difficult.”

“Do your best,” Rade said.

“Look at those bastards run,” Lui commented. “They don’t want any salvage after all.”

“Salvage was probably never part of the agreement in the first place,” Tahoe said. “They came for the artifact, and nothing more.”

“I wonder if the Phant even told its mercenaries what they were helping it steal,” Fret said. “Or if the mercs even knew who they were really working for?”

“Wait, did we ever decide if there was more than one Phant?” TJ asked. “Or are we leaving Shaw potentially trapped aboard with an alien entity?”

“I think it’s safe to conclude there was indeed only one,” Harlequin replied. “If this is a device capable of time travel, no Phant would want to be left behind when the timeline changed. Assuming it will change, of course.”

“You dudes seriously believe this bug has the matching Acceptor it needs for time travel?” Bender said.

“While the evidence seems to point to that,” Surus said. “None of us really knows.”

“We can only hope it doesn’t,” Manic said.

“You can, maybe,” Fret said. “But me, I already know this Phant has the Acceptor it needs. Once the Phant reaches that ship, our current timeline will cease to exist. Along with myself, you, and all the Argonauts.”

“Bro, I’m going to kick your morale-leaching ass when we’re back aboard,” Bender said.

“There won’t be any ass left to kick,” Fret said.

“Yeah, no doubt,” Bender said. “You’ll probably shoot it off yourself.”

“Oh-oh,” Lui said. “Looks like we’re going to have to issue evasive maneuvers. They’re firing at us.”

“Who, the shuttles?” Rade said. “I thought we disabled their cobras?”

“No, the Marauders,” Lui said.

“But we took out their weapons systems!” Manic said.

“Partially,” Lui said. “Their Vipers and Hellfire tubes, anyway. But they still have mag-rail point defenses.”

Given the immense speeds those mag-rail slugs traveled at, one hit would completely obliterate a Hoplite: shields, armor, and all.

“Evasive maneuvers,” Rade ordered.

Electron began randomly firing left and right lateral thrusters so that the mech zigzagged as it advanced. The other Hoplites moved similarly. Those maneuvers, in conjunction with the evasive actions of the enemy, made it even more difficult for Electron to acquire a target lock on the engines of the enemy shuttles, and in moments the craft were making docking runs with their respective Marauders.

Rade continued following the yellow-highlighted shuttle. The docking bay doors of the destination Marauder were opening.

“We have to dock with that Marauder before the ship fires its mains,” Rade said. “Activate jumpjets, Argonauts. Full burn!”

Rade squeezed the thrust trigger and let loose. Electron continued automatically zigzagging the Hoplite, though the AI minimized the lateral maneuvers as Rade passed inside the sight lines of most of the point defenses. So far all of the Hoplites had avoided those incoming mag-rail slugs, some of which had begun detonating.

“They’re using explosive slugs,” Harlequin said.

“Nice,” Lui said.

“I finally hit the engines of the target,” Electron announced. “When the craft decelerated to dock.”

“Not that it matters now,” Lui said. “They’ll be able to drift inside on momentum alone.”

Rade kept releasing propellant, accelerating, closing with the shuttle. The target passed inside the Marauder, and the hangar bay doors began to close.

Rade entered a few seconds afterward, his mech easily fitting through the doors. He slammed the reverse thrusters and rammed into the deck hard as the artificial gravity pulled him down; momentum carried him across the polished metal until he smashed into the far bulkhead and bounced off.

Bender’s mech plowed into Rade’s, and Tahoe’s came right after. The other Hoplites similarly crash-landed, forming a pile-up around him. Fret came last, smashing into the bay doors, which had closed to a width slightly narrower than his mech. The Hoplite’s impact tore away one of the bay doors before the mech plowed into the remaining pile-up.

Rade clambered to his feet, attempting to get his bearings in the large hangar bay. Since the target shuttle had no way to reduce its impetus with its engines offline, the craft had similarly crashed into the bulkhead; it had apparently impacted a large telemetry drone upon entry, which had dragged the shuttle off course so that it hit a few meters from Rade.

The lifepod, secured underneath the shuttle by a grappling hook, was open. There was no sign of Jackal.

“Electron, see if you can find Jackal,” Rade said.

“Its comm node is still active,” Electron said.

On the overhead map a dot appeared, moving rapidly into the interior of the ship.

“I’ve taken the liberty of downloading the Marauder Model II blueprints, so that a complete map of the interior is already available,” Electron said.

“Good boy,” Rade said.

He was about to approach the hangar bay’s airlock when the rear ramp of the crashed shuttle fell open. Soldiers in jumpsuits emerged, opening fire.

Rade swung his shield into place and aimed his cobra over the topmost notch. He zoomed out to maximum and centered the targeting reticle over one of the tangos and squeezed the trigger, burning a hole clean through the opponent.

The other Hoplites joined in and the team made short work of the shuttle crew.

Rade hurried to the airlock. It could fit his Hoplite, but just barely.

“We’ll have to pass through one at a time,” Rade said. “TJ, hack in.”

TJ approached. “Give me a moment.”

Rade glanced at the overhead map. Jackal’s dot was still moving deeper into the ship.

“The Phant hasn’t shut down the comm node yet,” Lui commented.

“Maybe it’s a diversion,” Tahoe said.

“Or it could be that the Phant isn’t familiar with our model of Centurion,” Manic said. “The combat robots we faced aboard? They were all Sino-Korean. Some of their components are in different places, including the comm nodes.”

“Then how did it know where to remove Ms. Bounty’s comm node?” Rade asked.

“All Artificials have their comm nodes located in the same area,” Harlequin said. “The sternum.”

Rade gazed at the hatch, waiting for it to open. “TJ...”

“Almost there,” TJ said. “Model IIs aren’t all that different from the Model Is, exploit-wise. And I’ve had a lot of practice, as you know.” The Argonaut was a Marauder Model I.

A moment later TJ said: “Got it.”

The airlock opened and Rade stepped inside. The door sealed behind him; atmosphere rushed within, and then the inner hatch opened. He immediately moved into the passageway beyond.

He encountered resistance immediately in the form of four Centurions, but he terminated them momentarily with his cobra, keeping behind his ballistic shield.

Rade waited until Bender appeared behind him, then proceeded forward.

“We’re going ahead,” Rade said. “Bender, watch my six. The rest of you, join us as you’re able.” The others would come as fast as the airlock allowed them, Rade knew.

He advanced down the tight passageway, pursuing Jackal’s dot. The shoulders of his mech occasionally scraped the bulkheads on either side, and his metal head sometimes dinged the overhead, even though he was essentially crouching. It was very claustrophobia inducing. Fortunately he was accustomed to claustrophobia, having spent a career cooped up inside the cockpits of mechs.

Defenders occasionally engaged, either Sino-Korean Centurions, or human crew members, usually in jumpsuits. The enemy took cover behind bends in the passageway, or in scuttles, or side hatches. Rade was occasionally forced to dig in behind his shield, but usually for no longer than ten to twenty seconds. Thus he was quickly able to make his way forward, heading toward Jackal’s dot marked on his overhead map.

Breach seals often blocked his path, and at first Rade had to tap in TJ to open them. TJ’s experience with the Argonaut was paying dividends, because after the third door TJ was able to grant Rade root access to the seal system, and Rade was able to override the doors by transmitting a passcode each time.

The dot representing Jackal came to a halt in a rather expansive chamber the blueprints labeled cargo bay three.

Rade faced the greatest resistance yet as he approached that compartment; ten combat robots forced him backward, and he took cover around the nearest bend. He aimed his scope past and picked off the robots in turn. Bender joined him, crawling his mech underneath Rade’s so that he could fire at the same time.

In about thirty seconds, Rade and Bender had reduced the opposing Centurions to rubble.

“I’m guessing they weren’t expecting us to bring our mechs in here,” Bender said.

“Probably not.” Rade squeezed around the bend and hurried forward.

He reached the compartment and tried the door override code that TJ had sent him. It worked the first time.

Rade hurried inside, cobra and shield at the ready.

“You’re too late,” Jackal taunted. The robot stood on an Acceptor that dominated the middle of the compartment. The Centurion was still wearing a jumpsuit, but the fabric was covered in black and green stains, with several rips and gashes of varying sizes marring it. The faceplate was smashed, and a large, toothlike bone protruded from the rear of the helmet.

Rade immediately fired his cobra at the AI core in the chest region of the robot.

Jackal stumbled backward off the Acceptor and collapsed onto the deck.

From the neck region of the jumpsuit, purple droplets oozed forth, dripping into the metal floor.

Rade rapidly disembarked, swinging down to the storage compartment in the leg region of his mech, and removed the arcing stun rifle. He aimed at Jackal, but there was no further sign of the Phant.

Damn thing does move fast.

Rade fired anyway. No Purple liquid bubbled forth.

He surveyed the room, searching for signs of the entity. Nothing.

He returned his attention to the Acceptor.

It looked like any other: a thick, wide disk engraved with Fibonacci swirls, except the metal was tinted red rather than the usual gray.

In front of the Acceptor, a thick pedestal that reached about a meter high held a pyramidal object that Rade assumed was the Time Selector Surus had spoken of. He had seen it once, four years ago, but the memory was vague; even so, it seemed likely that was the stolen artifact. It had been placed into a square notch on top of the pedestal.

Rade spotted several brick-like charges attached to the Acceptor. There were enough explosives there to carve a big hole into the ship.

He hurried to the device and scraped the explosives off one by one, tossing them in turn to Bender.

“Get rid of these!” Rade told him.

Bender threw the charges down the passageway as he received them.

When Rade had removed the last of the explosive bricks, he slumped. He had been extremely lucky those charges hadn’t gone off. Jackal likely intended to detonate them, and if Rade had hesitated even an instant before shooting down the combat robot, likely the Acceptor, and he himself, would have been lost in the blast.

One of the rare times the universe was on my side.

The other members of the team arrived and formed a long line crowding outside the compartment. The mechs on either flank took up guard positions out there.

“What do you want to do with these charges?” Manic asked.

Rade glanced at the overhead map, and saw that Manic’s mech was standing right above the explosive bricks that Bender had tossed from the compartment.

“We could get TJ to try disabling them via the remote interfaces?” Lui said.

“I’d rather not,” TJ said. “Hacking a door is one thing. But an explosive? I’ll be honest with you, there’s a good chance I’d set it off.”

“I can do it,” Bender said.

“No,” Rade said. “Manic, collect them with Lui, and make your way back to the hangar bay. Dump them into space.”

“Roger that,” Manic said.

“Let me through,” Surus said.

The Hoplites in front of her moved farther down the outside passageway, clearing the entrance for Surus.

Her mech, Sprint, joined Rade and Bender in the compartment shortly.

She disembarked her Hoplite and examined the pedestal. Then her eyes drifted to Jackal.

“Is this how you found him?” Surus said, approaching the fallen Centurion. “With his jumpsuit covered in stains, and the faceplate smashed?” She removed the tooth fragment from Jackal’s helmet.

“Yes,” Rade said.

“Did the robot say anything to you before you shot it down?” Surus asked.

“It said: ‘You’re too late,’” Rade told her.

Surus frowned behind her faceplate, then dropped the tooth.

“The Sino-Koreans mercenaries have surrendered,” Fret announced.

“What?” Rade said. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Fret said. “I’ll ask them.”

“It’s because we’re badass, that’s why,” Bender said.

“It’s likely the AI core of the ship is unshielded,” Harlequin said. “Perhaps the Phant has taken control.”

“And the crew has only now realized the error of their ways?” Tahoe said.

“Exactly,” Harlequin said.

“Then it’s a good thing we’re in control of the hatches,” Rade said, glancing at TJ.

“Yes,” TJ said. “But if the Phant is in control of the AI, eventually we’ll have to get off the ship. It could fly us wherever it wants. Into the corona of a star...”

Rade checked the tactical display, but it had gone dark. He was hoping to remain in contact with the Argonaut and Shaw, but obviously the thick hull occluded his signal. He tried anyway.

“Shaw, do you read? Shaw?”

Nothing.

“Okay, they gave me an explanation for their surrender,” Fret said. “But it’s a weird one. They say we’re no longer in human space.”

“Huh?” Bender said. “Da hell you talking about?”

Fret’s mech held up a hand. “Wait. Okay, they’re telling me the planets and constellations are the same. Yet the vessels and bases in the system have all changed. They’re of a design the Sino-Koreans don’t recognize. They believe the system is now controlled by aliens.”

Bender’s mech doubled over with laughter. “Sino-Koreans! Lui, you guys crack me up. The system is suddenly controlled by bugs. That’s hilarious.”

“They also say we’ve attracted the attention of some of these aliens ships,” Fret continued. “Several are inbound. They’ve received what appear to be communication signals, but the contents are gibberish.”

“Ask the captain if he can tap me in to the Argonaut,” Rade said. “I’ll need Shaw to confirm.”

Fret paused.

“Well?” Rade said after several moments of silence.

“Boss,” Fret said. “This can’t be right.”

“What?” Rade said. “What is it?”

“According to the captain, the ships that were with us aren’t there anymore either,” Fret said. “The Argonaut, and the other Marauders, are gone.”

five

Rade wasn’t sure how to answer that. “What does he mean, they’re gone?”

“Exactly that,” Fret said. “They’ve simply vanished, along with all other human ships and bases in the system.”

“Have the captain feed the data my way,” Surus said. “I would like to take a look for myself.”

“So would I,” Lui said. He had returned with Manic from dumping the explosives out the hangar bay.

“Done,” Fret said.

Surus nodded a moment later. “Interesting.”

She returned to the pyramidal object on the pillar. She removed her glove and touched it with her bare hand. Rade saw the green droplets of her Phant essence form around the artificial skin; some of the liquid appeared to seep into the device and vanish.

The green fluid sweated to the surface of the artifact shortly thereafter and was reabsorbed into Ms. Bounty’s skin.

She withdrew her hand and donned the glove.

“Those aren’t aliens out there,” Surus said.

“What do you mean?” Tahoe said.

“They’re the new inhabitants of Earth, who have expanded to occupy this region of space,” Surus said.

“The new inhabitants of Earth?” Lui said.

“Yes,” Surus said. “The Purple traveled back in time, and somehow its actions resulted in humanity never evolving. I’ve examined the last teleportation point. It was Earth, sixty-five million years ago, near the end of what your scientists call the Cretaceous Period. If I was a betting woman, I would guess the so-called aliens out there are actually the descendants of the dinosaurs.”

“But all the dinosaurs died out at the end of the Cretaceous,” Tahoe said.

“Yes, but evidently not anymore,” Surus said.

Rade stared at the Acceptor. “We have to go back. We have to stop the Phant.” It was the only way to save Shaw and the twins. And the rest of humanity, of course.

“Wait, I thought these teleporters needed destination Acceptors in order to function?” TJ said. “You can’t just teleport willy-nilly somewhere. Wouldn’t that mean a target Acceptor would have to be placed on Earth sixty-five million years ago?”

“That is only partially true,” Surus said. “A target Acceptor needs to be in place, yes, but it can be an ordinary Acceptor. The source Acceptor can also function as the destination Acceptor, but in this case that wouldn’t be of much use, as the Purple would have appeared in deep space.

“Once the target Acceptor is in place on the destination planet, and the number of years to travel backward in time is entered, the system calculates the necessary position in space-time, accounting for the expansion of the universe, the rotation of the galaxy, and the revolution of the sun and the planets around it, and then teleports the contents of the disk to the destination.”

“So you’re saying there is no actual Acceptor at the destination, sixty-five million years in the past, right?” Fret said. “And instead it was placed on Earth in the present time?”

“That’s right,” Surus said.

“Then how does one get back to the present after traveling back in time?” Lui asked.

“The system is programmed to automatically recall the travelers after a chosen interval, for example twenty four hours,” Surus said. “However, the time travelers have to be at the target site when the interval has passed if they hope to return.”

“Earth’s topography would be different after sixty five million years,” Harlequin said. “How would the Phant know where to place the target Acceptor?”

“The Purple would have had to do much research,” Surus said. “The site would likely be underwater in today’s Earth, though in ancient times it would have likely been the basin of a lush valley.”

“Can this time device also bring us into the future?” Lui said. “From this point forward?”

“No,” Surus said. “It can only be used to travel to the past, and to return to the present moment. To an outside observer, it will appear that the time travelers never left. Assuming that they all make it back to the destination site in time for the recall.”

“And if they don’t?” TJ said.

“Then in the present, they will appear to vanish from thin air while standing on the Acceptor,” Surus said. “Their bodies forever snipped from the timeline.”

“One thing I don’t get,” Bender said. “Is why we still exist in this timeline, when the rest of humanity is gone.”

“A small bubble of the previous timeline is preserved around the Acceptor, encompassing a spherical region of space somewhat bigger than this vessel, allowing the users of the device to gauge the effects of the previous journey on the timeline. Ordinarily, a battery of tests would be performed, from sensors placed throughout the galaxy. But in this case, it’s fairly obvious that the past has been horribly changed.”

Outside that bubble, Shaw didn’t exist anymore. Rade had made the biggest mistake in his life by leaving her behind. He remembered the strange finality to her farewell. She must have had a premonition about this moment.

 “As I said, we have to go back in time,” Rade told the team. “Stop the Phant. Prevent it from doing whatever it is that it did.”

“Is that even possible?” Tahoe said, glancing at Surus.

“It is,” Surus said. “That’s the whole point of the time bubble. So that corrections can be made to any errors introduced into the timeline. The Purple has obviously interfered with a key waypoint. It is time for us to go back and correct that interference.”

“How long will the bubble last?” Rade asked.

“Ten minutes,” Surus said. “More than enough time for our needs, given that our trip to the past will seem instantaneous from the perspective of the present.”

“What happens when the bubble fades?” Rade said.

“Since humanity was no longer born, you’ll cease to exist,” Surus said. “Ms. Bounty will vanish. I, however, will remain, floating in deep space with all knowledge of what has transpired. As will the Phant. Presumably he intends to board one of the vessels the dinosaur descendants have dispatched to investigate. I will pursue him, of course, and do my best to stop him. But humanity will be permanently lost by that point.”

“Why would the Phant destroy humanity?” Lui said. “Why replace us with dinosaurs?”

“So that the Phants still have lifeforms to convert into geronium,” Surus said. “By eliminating humanity, and changing the course of history, the Purple has made it easy for his brethren to conquer Earth. That fateful encounter with Tau Ceti that sparked the First Alien War will have never taken place. The Phants can concentrate on taking the unready Earth. The hives will not know of Earth in this updated timeline, of course, but I am sure the Purple is informing them as we speak. Worse, the eight-thousand lightyear Slipstream jump from Phant to human space is still intact, as the Greens have not sealed it in this timeline. So the all-consuming Phant motherships will be able to arrive much sooner: in seven weeks instead of seven hundred years.”

“Now I see why these time travel devices are so rare,” Manic said. “They’re far too dangerous.”

“Yes,” Surus said. “The Greens, the original creators, were supposed to have destroyed every last one of them, along with the blueprints. But apparently they missed one.”

“Probably on purpose,” Fret muttered. “Given what we know of the Greens.”

“It is likely, yes,” Surus said.

Rade stepped toward the red Acceptor.

“Prep the device,” Rade told Surus. “And update the destination time slightly. I want us to arrive ten minutes before Jackal. Argonauts, we’re traveling back sixty five million years to stage an ambush. It’s time to make history.”

six

Set the device to bring us back here in six hours,” Rade continued.

“Are you certain that’s not too much time?” Surus asked.

“Let’s just say, even though we’ll be arriving ten minutes before Jackal, I want to leave a margin for anything bad happening,” Rade said. “Like if Jackal somehow escapes our noose. And if he doesn’t, well, then we have five hours and fifty minutes to kill.”

Surus approached the pedestal, and once more removed her glove to allow her Phant essence to seep into the artifact.

“That’s five hours and fifty minutes surrounded by T-Rexes,” Fret said.

“I’ve always wanted a T-Rex for a pet,” Bender said. “Boss, can I bring one back? Can I?”

“Dude, you can’t make a T-Rex your pet,” Lui said.

“Sure I can,” Bender said. “I’ll find a baby one. Then nurture it through the years. Feed it Manic and Fret along the way.”

“You can’t nurture squat,” Manic said. “I seem to recall you buying a very rare parakeet. How long did it live? Two weeks?”

“No,” Bender said. “Two months. And it died because you gave it a heart attack when you brought your stupid dog over.”

“The parakeet was so undernourished,” Manic said. “It’s no wonder it had a heart attack.”

“Yeah well, at least I had it trained proper,” Bender said.

“Having it greet me with the phrase ‘biggest pussy’ is hardly what I’d call proper training,” Manic said.

“Oh, it’s very proper,” Bender retorted. “And you remember what it called me, don’t you?” He moved his voice up an octave. “‘Big Dick! Big Dick!’”

“You’re a dick all right,” Manic said.

“It’s done,” Surus said. She replaced her glove and returned to the cockpit of her mech.

“All right, everyone squeeze inside this compartment,” Rade said. “Join me on the Acceptor. Stay inside your mechs. By my estimates, it should be able to fit every last one of us, Hoplites and all. And if not, I guess a few of you are staying behind.”

Rade steered Electron into the center of the Acceptor; Surus re-entered Sprint and stood beside him. The other Hoplites came into the compartment and squeezed onto the wide disk one by one. Rade retracted his shield and pressed his arms against his sides, doing his best to reduce his profile. It was a tight fit, and only after some repositioning was everyone able to stand on the device; even so, Rade was hemmed in by mechs on all sides. He began to regret choosing a position in the middle.

“How long until the time travel commences?” Rade asked.

“I’ve programmed it to automatically trigger after ninety seconds,” Surus said. “We have another forty-five to go.”

Rade set a countdown on his HUD.

“Eww,” Bender said. “We’re packed too close together. I can smell you, Manic. Talk about FAN.” Feet Ass Nuts. “It’s called a shower, bro.”

“Uh, that’s you you’re smelling,” Manic said. “I’m not in your cockpit. You are.”

“Oh,” Bender said.

Rade nervously watched the seconds tick down. He and his Argonauts were literally making history today. If they were successful, no one would know how close to annihilation humanity had come. And if they failed, humanity wouldn’t even be born.

Finally the countdown reached zero.

“Uh, it ain’t working,” Bender said.

The compartment winked out, replaced by dense jungle foliage.

The Hoplites stood at the center of a clearing of sorts, set amid some fairly gargantuan trees. The sky was blotted out by the large leaves, which cast the land in perpetual twilight, though Rade guessed it was daylight if the spears of light that occasionally pierced the canopy were any indication. The boles of the trees were at least twice the girth of the mechs. Lianas, some as thick as human waists and as long as anchor lines, hung down from the heights.

“Trippy,” TJ said.

“Why does it feel like we’ve shrunk?” Fret said.

“Nobody move,” Rade said.

He painted a digital circle around the Hoplites on the undergrowth, marking the area they would have to stand on in six hours time if they hoped to return. That circle was visible only to the team members, courtesy of their Implants.

“Now spread out,” Rade said. “Choose your hides carefully, keeping the digital circle in sight. It’s time to give Jackal and the Phant he contains a little surprise.”

The Hoplites began to move apart, crashing loudly through the underbrush.

“Quiet!” Rade sent. “We don’t need to bring all the carnivores in the forest bearing down on us!”

The chastened men moved much more slowly and carefully to their chosen hides.

As soon as the Hoplites pinning Rade’s mech broke away, allowing him to move, Rade crossed the spongy ground and took up a position behind a bole with Tahoe.

Rade had Surus confirm the arrival time of their prey, and updated a countdown timer on his HUD.

“Dismount,” Rade ordered. “And deploy stun rifles.”

Rade exited his Hoplite and climbed down to the storage compartment in the leg region to retrieve the arcing stun rifle. Beside him Tahoe emerged and grabbed a stun rifle from his own mech. Other members of the team had similar rifles stowed aboard, purloined from armories throughout the Argonaut, though only Rade’s was capable of arcing, meaning that it could take down multiple Phants at once.

Rade also grabbed an ordinary laser rifle and slid the strap over his left shoulder, then he leaped onto the ground.

“Electron, guard position,” Rade ordered.

His mech turned about, protecting Rade’s rear from any dinosaurs or other hostiles that might attack from that vector. He noted that the Hoplite was careful to keep itself positioned behind the bole so as to not alert Jackal when the robot arrived. Tahoe’s mech did the same. The hull coloration of the Hoplites had altered to blend with the surrounding jungle, becoming a digital coloration of black and green. The jumpsuit fabrics did the same. 

Confident that he was well hidden, Rade aimed his stun rifle past the right flank of the bole, while Tahoe took the left. Rade adjusted his zoom level so that the entirety of the digital circle he had painted onto the ground remained in view. He glanced at his overhead map and confirmed that the remaining team members had taken cover nearby: behind large ferns, a fallen log, and other large tree trunks. Invariably their mechs were deployed nearby, guarding their flanks and equally hidden from view.

“I feel even smaller than ever out here now,” Fret said. “Small and vulnerable.”

“You would,” Bender said.

As Rade waited, he began to notice the strange chirping sounds that began to fill the silence with increasing regularity. The noises echoed throughout the forest, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere. The forest occupants had apparently fallen silent because of the racket the Hoplites had produced while moving into position, but now that the denizens realized these large machines weren’t hunting them, the hidden creatures of the jungle had begun belting out their tunes with renewed vigor.

“The hell is that?” Manic said.

“Sounds like birds,” Fret said.

“I’d love to see the birds singing those songs,” Lui said. “Especially considering that birds haven’t evolved at this stage in Earth’s history.”

“Not true,” Harlequin said. “Birds evolved during the Jurassic period, which predates the current late Cretaceous by eighty-one million years. Though of course, these ‘birds’ have muscular legs, bony tails, and beaks containing teeth. They’re essentially small dinosaurs.”

“Oh,” Lui said. “My bad.”

“Mr. Know-It-All finally gets something wrong,” Bender commented.

“I do believe that the calls we are hearing do not belong solely to birds,” Harlequin said. “These chirps, squawks, and clatters... what you are hearing is a forest inhabited by thousands of small dinosaurs and birds.”

“Look look,” Bender said. “Check out what I got in my sight lines. Dinner.”

Rade switched to Bender’s viewpoint. He saw several small, winged dinosaurs—birds?—perched on a large upper branch. They were covered in multicolored feathers, and had long tails and toothy beaks. They were about as big as a jumpsuit helmet.

“Leave them,” Rade said, returning to his own point of view. “The last thing we need right now is to fend off an attack from prehistoric birds.”

“Might be fun...” Bender said. “But fine fine, I’m standing down.”

“You know, I’m not sure this is really Earth,” Manic said. “The oxygen content is a bit high, at twenty-eight percent.”

“That’s consistent with Earth in the late Cretaceous period,” Harlequin said. “And it also explains the larger size of our ancient life forms. More oxygen equals a greater level of cellular respiration, equals more cells to go around, equals bigger trees and animals.”

“Should we open up our faceplates to conserve oxygen or something?” Fret asked. “Or is that amount of oxygen even safe?”

“You want to expose yourself to ancient viruses and contagions?” Bender said. “Go right ahead.”

“Twenty-eight percent oxygen is completely safe for humans to breathe,” Harlequin said. “But while it won’t hurt us, like Bender mentioned, there is the contagion risk.”

“Too bad,” Lui said. “I was looking forward to trying some roast T-Rex.”

“You can eat Bender’s pet when he gets one!” Manic quipped.

“No one’s eating my pet, bitch!” Bender said.

“T-Rex might actually be compatible with your digestive systems,” Harlequin said. “Given that chickens are essentially the descendants of T-Rexes.”

“T-Rex tastes like chicken?” Bender said. “Forget having one as a pet, then, and sign me up to the buffet! One T-Rex will be able to make enough chicken chips to last me for years! Visiting prehistoric times isn’t so bad after all.”

The team fell silent thereafter, the individual members concentrating on the site where Jackal would appear.

“You really think this operation will go off without a hitch?” Tahoe said over a private line as Rade waited.

“Nothing is ever easy,” Rade said. “That’s why I gave us six hours of padding.”

“If we fail, Shaw will never exist,” Tahoe said. “Nor will my wife. My kids.”

“I know,” Rade said. “That’s why we can’t fail.”

Rade kept his eye on the timer in the lower right of his vision as the minutes ticked past. He listened to the birds and other dinosaurs. A sense of peace came over him, and he knew it would be all too easy to lower his guard and relax. He intensified his gaze, literally glaring as he peered at the target site through the scope.

Stay focused.

Rade’s faceplate began to steam up as he waited, but the autodefog mechanism activated.

Finally the moment of reckoning arrived.

seven

Look sharp people,” Rade said. “We have twenty seconds until HVT arrival.” High Value Target. “Disable comm nodes in jumpsuits, mechs and Implants. Let’s not alert our prey to our presence when it arrives. Fire as soon as Jackal arrives.”

“What if more than one tango appears?” Fret asked.

“Then take them all out,” Rade said. “Starting with Jackal.”

Rade disabled the three comm nodes installed in his Hoplite, jumpsuit, and Implant, and then waited, keeping his targeting reticle centered on the site.

He counted out twenty seconds in his head. When he reached zero, he waited for Jackal to appear. Nothing.

As the moments ticked past and still no tangos appeared, Rade began to grow anxious.

He was about to order the team to reactivate their comm nodes when, just like that, several targets appeared, all clad in unsullied jumpsuits. Behind the faceplates he saw Centurions. With his comm nodes disabled, he had no idea which one was Jackal. Not that it would have mattered even if he did know, since it was likely the Phant had hopped units pre-jump.

The combat robots were arranged in a circle, their weapons aimed outward.

Rade centered his targeting reticle over one of the tangos, but before he could squeeze the trigger, the robots reacted in a blur of motion. Smoke grenades detonated, clouding the area with thick gray fumes.

Rade immediately switched to echolocation. A squawker activated at the top of his helmet and the white outlines of fleeing tangos overlaid his vision.

Rade didn’t know which one contained the Phant, so he picked a target and fired. The tango fell. As far as he could tell, the beam didn’t arc—that only happened if the plasma channel struck an actual Phant, and at least one other Phant was in the vicinity to spawn an arcing beam. Since the beam hadn’t arced, either there were no other Phants present, or Rade hadn’t hit one. The beam wouldn’t arc toward Surus of course, since she had developed a plasma shield for her jumpsuit that was synced to the trigger, preventing an arcing plasma channel from ever forming between her and any other Phants.

Rade centered his crosshairs over another target, but it went down before he could squeeze the trigger. He aimed at a third tango, and it too dropped before he fired.

He searched the jungle for any remaining tangos, but spotted none in sight.

“Reactivate comm nodes!” Rade said over the external speaker system of his jumpsuit. He reactivated the three comm nodes, and the statuses of his team mates appeared on his HUD, their positions updating once more on his overhead map.

“Did we get them all?” Lui said.

“No,” Harlequin said. “Only five tangos are down. That leaves four out there.”

Rade glanced at his overhead map. “One of them is Jackal.” The Centurion’s dot was moving away from the team, heading west through the jungle.

“We can’t tell how many of the other robots went with it,” Tahoe said.

“No,” Rade said. “Surus, Harlequin, return to your mechs and pursue Jackal. The rest of us will confirm that the Phant isn’t possessing any of the robots we took out.”

Surus and Harlequin loaded into their Hoplites and departed to the west.

The remaining Hoplites moved forward, escorting Rade and the others who remained in their jumpsuits as they approached the fallen units. Rade’s squawker didn’t show the smoke-obscured undergrowth in fine detail around him, but he still could feel the branches and fronds of small shrubs resisting his advance. In moments he emerged from the smoke screen and found himself passing through an area of thick ferns.

He reached one of the downed Centurions. In addition to disabling Phants, the stun beam had the added benefit of causing robots to momentarily lose all motor control upon impact. Struck machines responded sluggishly for up to a minute afterward.

Rade scanned the chest piece for signs of Phant possession, but there were no telltale glowing droplets: the robot hadn’t harbored their prey.

The Centurion was already starting to recover from the effects of the stun blast—it was trying to swing its weapon upward.

Rade secured the stun rifle to his shoulder, lowered the laser rifle instead, and fired a kill shot. “Men, if you don’t find the Phant, terminate the robots.”

Ahead, other Argonauts were making similar executions.

“Update me,” Rade said.

“Got two Centurions here,” Lui said. “No Phants.”

“Another two here,” Bender said. “No bugs. Dropped the bitches.”

“Too bad,” Rade said. “Surus, none of the five stricken tangos harbored Phants. I’m going to split up the team to search the immediate area. I expect we’ll drop out of comm range shortly. This site will be our base camp. Return here as soon as you capture Jackal, or within the next two hours.”

“Understood,” Surus said. “And thank you.”

“For what?” Rade said.

“For ignoring me when I suggested that six hours might be too large a window of time,” Surus replied.

“What do we do about these robots?” Tahoe said. “We can’t just leave them here for future generations to stumble into.”

“The robots won’t have any effect on the timeline,” Surus said. “Feel free to leave them where they dropped.”

Rade was about to question her on why that would be the case, when a distant, spine-tingling roar filled the air, making him lose his train of thought entirely. The team members glanced about the jungle nervously.

“Boss, before we set out, we still have the holographic emitters stowed away in our mechs,” Manic said. “We pop those on, not only do we vanish from view of any dinosaurs, but with the sound-masking tech Surus developed, they won’t be able to hear us coming, either.”

Rade glanced down at his jumpsuit. The digital patterning had updated to match his latest surroundings. While the disguise worked well when he was standing still, it was still obvious when he moved. Manic was right, with the emitters the team would be completely invisible to the dinosaurs. At least while wearing the jumpsuits—unfortunately, the tech wouldn’t work with the mechs.

“That’s certainly an option,” Rade said. “However, we’ll cover more ground in our Hoplites. Also, we don’t hunt the dinosaurs, remember: our true prey will easily see through the disguise on the LIDAR band.”

Rade surveyed the terrain around him one last time, then he turned toward his men.

“To your mechs!” Rade leaped into Electron’s cockpit and the inner actuators cocooned him. “Bender, with me. We head north. TJ, Lui, fan out to the east. Fret, Manic, south. Tahoe, you stay here.” He wanted to cover all of his bases in case this was a diversion.

Rade moved at a fast walk, the feet of his Hoplite sinking into the spongy, moss-covered ground with each step. He scanned the landscape ahead, but didn’t spot any Centurions through the thick forest of trees. He had his LIDAR active, but it didn’t report anything vaguely resembling a robot out there.

Closer at hand, small dinosaurs were always running away through the foliage as the mechs approached. Rade was reminded of tiny lizards lying unnoticed on a mountain trail, reptiles that would leap into action and draw the eye as they dashed away, disturbed by one’s passage.

“How did the Phant know we were waiting?” Bender said over the comm.

“It didn’t, obviously,” Rade said. “My guess is he had his robots throw down smoke grenades and then run away only as a precautionary measure.”

“Cunning little bastard,” Bender said.

The two continued in silence for several minutes and soon lost contact with the rest of the team.

“Well, there we go,” Bender said. “We’re all by our lonesome now. Stuck on Earth, sixty-five million years in the past, surrounded by dinosaurs that want us for supper. We’re like walking food cans, inviting the dino can openers to come along to get at the goodies inside.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Rade said. “They’re probably more afraid of us than anything else, I think. At least they should be.”

“So far, sure,” Bender said. “But wait until we encounter the bigger ones. I just wish we’d taken along some HS3s for scouting purposes.”

“We didn’t think we’d be able to use them aboard that starship,” Rade said. “Not with those tight corridors, and enemy fire potentially awaiting around every bend. Plus they wouldn’t have fit on the Acceptor, not with all our mechs squeezed in like that.”

“Excuses excuses,” Bender said. “Maybe the mercs could have lent us some, and we could have shoved them in between our legs. Ah, doesn’t matter anyway. With LIDAR, we got a pretty good view of our surroundings. But you know, I still remember the days when they used to make mechs with HS3s built in. What was that they were called? ASS?”

“That’s right,” Rade said. “The original ATLAS 5s had them. The ATLAS Support System.”

“The good ol’ days,” Bender said. He sighed loudly over the comm. “Ever miss them? The old team?”

“Of course,” Rade said. “But I have no regrets. I still have most of you guys. And I have Shaw now. The kids.”

“I have regrets,” Bender said. “A whole slew of them.”

Rade was quiet a moment, then he said, softly: “If I’m truly honest with myself, I have more than a few myself.”

“We let people die,” Bender said. “Our brothers.”

Rade smiled sadly, though of course Bender wouldn’t have seen it, not while Rade was in the mech. “No. You’re wrong. We didn’t let them die. They chose to give their lives to save us. That’s how I like to look at it, anyway.”

Bender didn’t say anything, not right away. Then: “On a lighter note: we always get stuck saving the world. If it’s not Earth, then it’s some colony world invaded by aliens.”

“That’s our lot in life,” Rade agreed.

Bender started giggling.

“What is it?” Rade asked.

“Usually we’re too late to save the poor bastards,” Bender said. “We repel the aliens, but destroy the colony.”

“And you find that funny?” Rade said.

“Well yeah,” Bender said. “That’s the irony of it all. We’re heroes, and yet we’re not.”

“Let’s just hope,” Rade said, “for all our sakes, that in this case we don’t destroy the colony. Considering that it’s Earth.”

eight

The pair continued north over the next hour. Rade and Bender occasionally spotted some small- to medium-sized dinosaurs, including a pack of five feathery Utahraptors that fled the Hoplites, but otherwise no robots. Rade kept an eye out for any signs the Centurions had come that way, such as dead dinosaurs or robot parts, but found none.

Rade turned back at the one hour mark so that he and Bender would return to base camp at the agreed upon time.

When he arrived, Rade found the mechs of Surus and Harlequin standing above a mangled jumpsuit, while Tahoe watched the rear. Inside the jumpsuit resided a beat-up robot that was obviously offline, judging from the burn hole in its chest.

“We found Jackal’s comm node,” Surus said. “The Phant transferred it to another robot, fooling us into tracking the wrong prey.”

“It was a decoy after all,” Tahoe said.

“That still leaves three tangos out there,” Rade said. “One of them harbors our prey.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We wait for the other Argonauts to return,” Rade said.

Over the next ten minutes the remaining teams arrived.

“We found some dead dinos to the east,” Lui reported. “Small things, about the size of humans. They show signs of laser impacts. I think they must have charged our Centurions.”

“Good job,” Rade said. “We head east.”

“You’re not going to leave anyone behind this time?” TJ said. “In case the Phant returns? We already know it has to come back here eventually. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have encountered Jackal when the robot returned to the future.”

“That’s true,” Rade said. “And there’s a chance the Phant programmed the Time Selector with a shorter recall interval, say three or four hours. So it makes sense to leave a couple of mechs here to potentially intercept and capture the Phant if it evades the rest of us.”

“Wait, you could trap the Phant in the past if you are not careful,” Surus said. “Something I would very much recommend against. It’s better to let our prey return to the recall site on its own after we stop the Phant from doing whatever it is it came to do.”

“Can’t we take the Phant back with us when we return?” Rade asked. “By standing on the designated site at our own recall time?”

“No, it doesn’t work like that,” Surus said. “Only those who made the initial jump are transported at the recall time. If the Phant and whatever host he is using are on the site with us, we will vanish, but the Phant will remain.”

“So it doesn’t really make sense to interfere with the Phant’s return, you’re saying...” Rade told her.

“Unless you want a long-lived Phant to meddle with humanity throughout the entirety of your history and prehistory,” Surus said.

“Not really,” Rade said. “We would return to find the world enslaved.”

“We could set a trap, capture it, interrogate it to find out what it did, and then let it go,” TJ said.

“It will be too late at that point to reverse what the Phant has done,” Surus said. “Better to let it go immediately, than risk the recall interval passing.”

“So that settles it,” Rade said. “No guards. If the Phant is returning here, it will have completed its nefarious task, and we will have already failed. I prefer to stick together anyway. We move east.”

The team set out in an eastward direction, moving at a slow run, essentially wading through the steamy jungle. That was about as fast as they could travel in that thick undergrowth. At least the ground wasn’t as spongy as to the north.

“If we fail, can’t we just time travel back here and try again?” Lui asked during the journey.

“No,” Surus said. “The universe won’t allow two future copies of the same individual to transport into the same time frame. We have just this one chance.”

“That suddenly makes this mission feel more important,” Manic said.

“As if it didn’t feel important in the first place,” Bender said.

“So two future copies of the same individual can’t transport to the same time frame,” Tahoe said. “But what about two copies in general? Let’s say I wanted to travel back five years to visit a younger version of my self. Would that be allowed?”

“That is allowed, since there is only one future copy,” Surus said. “And one past copy. But if you tried to send yourself back again to the same period, perhaps to stop your previous future self from interacting with your past self, the machine will reject the destination.”

“What if, for my second attempt, I sent myself back five minutes before my first visit?” Tahoe said. “With a recall time of one hour, so that I force the machine to create two copies of myself?”

“Then you will be automatically recalled at the five minute mark,” Surus said. “And if you are not on the teleportation site when the recall happens, you simply cease to exist. You’ll instantaneously wink out of existence as the universe cleans up after itself.”

“Time travel is a paradoxical, strange thing,” Tahoe said.

“I never claimed it was anything otherwise,” Surus said.

“But meanwhile if the first copy doesn’t make it back to the Acceptor in time for the recall,” Lui said. “He doesn’t wink out, right? He still continues to exist, but he’s just trapped in the past.”

“That’s right,” Surus said. “An unenviable proposition, to say the least.”

“But it does mean that you could conceivably duplicate yourself, or other objects, that way,” Lui said.

“True,” Surus said.

“Hey Manic, you can finally achieve your dream of having sex with yourself!” Bender said.

“Actually, I’m already thinking of ways we’ll be able to duplicate precious cargo for profit,” Manic said. “Assuming Surus allows us.”

“Likely not,” Surus said.

“Duplicates, and future copies, and only one copy allowed at a time...” Fret said. “Man, all this talk about time travel and its paradoxes is giving me a headache.”

“That’s because you got a tiny brain, bitch,” Bender said. “Sixty-five million years have passed since the current moment. Think about that. You represent sixty-five million years of evolution. Man oh man, I’m not impressed. When I look at you, devolution comes to mind more than anything else.”

“I’m not impressed with what evolution came up with regarding you, either,” Fret said.

“Oh but you should be,” Bender said. “I’m the ultimate specimen of humanity. A lean, mean, lady killing, bug killing, sexy ass fighting machine. With the biggest dick among us.”

“Yeah, keep thinking that,” Fret said. “Maybe one day you’ll actually believe it.”

“He already does,” Manic said. “Not that it helps him.”

“I’m going to mute you fools,” Bender said.

“Question for you, Surus,” Fret said. “How do timeline changes work exactly? If we change something here, does time branch, creating multiple alternate timelines? Meaning that humanity still exists in an alternate future, one that is now inaccessible to us?”

“I hope that’s true,” Tahoe said. “Because it means my family is still alive somewhere.”

“Branching timelines?” Surus said. “No. There is only one timeline I’m afraid, not multiple. The universe doesn’t like complexity.”

“Too bad,” Tahoe said.

“So then how does it work?” Fret persisted. “If there is only one timeline, how can we ever hope to restore the previous course of events? Our presence here has to mess things up. We’ve left behind damaged Centurions for future generations to excavate. I’ve already crushed to death hundreds of worms in the soil just trudging through this jungle. And what happens if I accidentally kill a weasel? Or something bigger, like a Utahraptor, or a T-Rex? Like the Phant’s Centurions already did. Wouldn’t that massively change the future, because of the butterfly effect? You know, from chaos theory? Where a minute localized change can have large effects elsewhere, in this case the future?”

 “No,” Surus said. “The universe doesn’t like change. It resists and absorbs most changes, no matter how big or small. Imagine time as a flowing river. You throw a toothpick into the river and what happens? Essentially nothing. How about a rock? Same thing. You might briefly affect the flow, but downstream there is no effect. A bigger object, like a tree, will have a greater immediate impact of course, floating downstream for several kilometers until it is broken apart, but otherwise on the whole the river is unaffected.”

“So wait a second, if what you’re saying is true,” Lui said. “Then how did the Phant change the course of human history?”

“I said the universe absorbs most changes,” Surus said. “There are exceptions, of course. What I call key waypoints in the timeline. Human telepaths can sense these waypoints, and use them to ‘predict’ the future. We Phants can sense them sometimes as well. If one interferes in one of these waypoints, it changes everything, causing ramifications so big that the universe can’t ignore them. Going back to our river analogy: it’s like causing a mountain to crumble into the river, damming it up and causing it to flow down another branch entirely.”

“So our Phant changed something really big,” Fret said. “That’s what you’re saying.”

“Yes,” Surus said.

“Any ideas what it did, exactly?” Tahoe said.

“I have a few,” Surus said.

“Care to enlighten us?” Tahoe pressed.

“I don’t want to excite you,” Surus said. “Nor frighten.”

“It takes a lot to scare us,” Tahoe said.

“Even so,” Surus said. “I prefer to keep my thoughts to myself for the time being.”

The party continued through the jungle. The undergrowth had begun to thin out, so that for the past twenty minutes it was like the team passed through an almost ordinary forest. The trunks were well-spaced, though the thick canopies overhead still blotted out most of the sunlight. Most of the trees looked like ancient oaks, hickories, or magnolias to Rade.

“Where did all the shrub go?” Manic asked.

“My guess would be small grazing dinosaurs,” Lui said.

The team soon found signs of grazing in the occasional piles of dung that were scattered about. Those big cow pies contained undigested leaves and branches mixed in with the general sludge.

The Hoplites came upon a pack of eight small, bipedal dinosaurs that had been shot down. They looked like cousins of Utahraptors, but smaller, with seemingly longer, deadlier talons. They were covered in black feathers, with distinctive orange quills in the upper back regions. His Implant classified them as Deinonychuses, based on fossil records. Rade saw the burn marks on the bodies that showed where the lasers had struck.

As the group continued, Rade and the others continually scanned their surroundings on both the LIDAR and visual bands, but spotted no signs of their prey.

“Do you still sense the Phant, Surus?” Rade asked.

“I do,” Surus replied.

“It’s at times like these that I really wish you had a directional sense of the prey, Surus my girl,” Bender said.

“My detection ability can be used for directional purposes, in a way,” Surus said.

“Really, how so?” Lui said.

“The fact that I can still sense the prey tells me we are moving in the right direction,” Surus replied.

“Ha!” Bender said. “Good one. Funny girl.”

“I can’t tell if you were sucking up to her or being sarcastic,” Manic said.

“The latter,” Bender told him.

Ten minutes later Rade sighted another pack of dinosaurs through the trees in the distance, but they took off at a run. He could feel the ground vibrate slightly underneath him, as transmitted via the hull to the inner actuators that enveloped his feet.

“Damn, those things are fast,” Lui said.

Rade zoomed in, and with the help of his AI estimated there were roughly a hundred and fifty grazers in that pack, each the size of large wildebeests. His Implant labeled them as Orodromeus specimens—the name meant “Mountain Runner.” Likely the prey for the Deinonychus. They had plumage similar to blue jays, with white on their underbellies, and blue feathers with gray streaks covering the rest of their bodies. They looked a little bit like ostriches with forelimbs and long tails.

“Are you sure these things are dinosaurs?” Bender said. “Feels like I’m surrounded by big, two-legged birds.”

“Get used to it,” Lui said. “You’re going to be seeing a lot more of them. Big, two-legged and four-legged birds of all kinds.”

“Harley boy, if you were a dinosaur, would you have feathers?” Bender asked.

“I don’t know,” Harlequin replied. “But I suppose I would.”

“Ha!” Bender said. “I knew you was gay.”

“Artificial’s don’t have sexual orientation per se,” Harlequin said.

“Yeah sure,” Bender said. “Then how come I always catch you looking at Manic’s ass?”

“I think you’re confused,” Manic said. “It’s your ass he’s looking at.”

Shortly after leaving the herbivore herd behind, Rade felt yet another distinct rumbling underfoot. It was different from the shaking he had felt when the herd fled. Each vibration seemed more pronounced, as if belonging to fewer, larger creatures.

He held up a hand. “You feel that?”

“It’s like the start of an earthquake,” TJ said.

Rade heard a sound in addition to the shaking then. A distant, continual pounding, like several massive objects rolling along the ground. He would have thought it an avalanche or rockslide of some kind, except that the team wasn’t in mountainous terrain.

The din grew in volume.

“Assume defensive positions,” Rade said. “Cigar formation. Deploy shields.”

The team positioned their Hoplites in an ellipsoidal pattern, weapons facing outward. Rade rotated his shield into place, and slid his cobra into the notch on top. He switched his viewpoint to the scope, and scanned the forward area from left to right.

There.

He spotted a massive dinosaur approaching at a run. It was a T-Rex. A huge bull.

Behind it he saw several more of the large bipedal carnivores approaching, their powerful legs smashing the ground at incredible speeds. They were covered in colorful red and orange plumage, like tropical birds. The feathers were almost incongruous, and made the dinosaurs seem almost friendly. But seeing those gaping, powerful jaws, and the rows of deadly-looking teeth harbored within, immediately sobered Rade to that idea.

He counted twenty in total.

Things were about to get interesting.

nine

Men!” Rade said. “Form a defensive line. Interlock shields.”

Rade dropped to one knee to lower his profile, and lessened the zoom magnification, because the creatures had closed significantly since his original sighting.

At his left, Bender moved into place, sliding his shield up against Rade’s. To his right, Tahoe did the same. On either side of them the other Hoplites assumed similar positions.

Rade did a quick calculation of the trajectory of those creatures. According to the estimates provided by his AI, the small herd was headed in the direction of the earlier herbivores, and appeared destined to run right by the Hoplites, passing just forty meters away. A close call, but given that the hulls and shields of the mechs blended in with their surroundings, the team might be able to get through this without killing any dinosaurs.

He considered giving the order to jet into the trees, but he didn’t want to waste any more jumpjet fuel than necessary, considering how much they had already expended while crossing over from the Argonaut to the mercenary vessel. Besides, any motion at this point would only draw the attention of the herd: the carnosaurs might camp out at the base of the trees, forcing Rade and the others to mow them down.

“I knew T-Rexes hunted in packs,” Lui said. “But I never expected those packs to be so large.”

“Feathered T-Rexes,” Bender said. “Hunting in packs. Why does that turn me on? I feel like I should be wearing a feather boa or something.”

“There are only twenty,” Rade said. “Remain calm, and trust in the power of your camouflage. They’ll pass us by.”

“And if we have to attack?” TJ asked.

“Target obvious vulnerabilities, such as the head and heart regions,” Rade said.

“Uh, where are the hearts supposed to be?” Bender asked.

“Crosscheck with your Implant,” Lui said. “Via gene-splicing and genome engineering tools such as CRISPR/Cas9, the Sino-Koreans were able to successfully revert chickens to their ancestral, T-Rex state, as part of their bioweapons program. The dissections were fully recorded. Aim a little to the left of the midpoint of the body.”

“Uh, too complicated,” Bender said. “I’m just going to aim at the heads.”

The herd continued to approach at a rumble.

“Oh I hope they notice us,” Bender said. “I so so hope.”

“Quiet,” Rade said. Though it wasn’t as if the dinosaurs could hear any of them—the team was communicating over a private comm band, after all—Rade wanted to hear himself think.

He tracked the herd with his scope, turning off the zoom because the T-Rexes were so close. He slowly swiveled his shield and upper body, remaining in place. Beside him, the other Hoplites similarly rotated, and the interlocked shields gradually opened up like unfurling blinds as the perpendicular line became a diagonal in relation to the position of the passing enemy.

And then the herd was thundering by. For a moment Rade actually thought the Argonauts were going to get through this without a fight, but then the lead bull came to an abrupt halt, and the rest of the herd followed. The carnivores were about fifty meters away, with about four giant trees scattered randomly between the dinosaurs and the party.

The bull turned toward the Hoplites, its massive nostrils widening to let out a loud huff of air. Rade centered his targeting reticle over the T-Rex’s head, trying to align the crosshairs over one eye.

“Don’t tell me it can smell us,” Fret said.

“Just you,” Bender said.

The massive head huffed again, just as loudly.

“Watch, I bet it’s going to roar,” Lui said.

The bull opened its mouth wide and... squawked.

“The hell?” Bender said. “It sounds like a parakeet. Hey bitch, Poly want a cracker?”

“That was a little disappointing,” Lui said.

“Definitely a case where the bark is much less ferocious than the bite,” TJ said.

Another squawk came from those massive jaws.

“Could it be echolocation?” TJ said.

Another squawk seemed to come from behind the party, but because of the way sound echoed in the forest, Rade wasn’t entirely sure of the direction. All he knew was that it seemed close. Very close.

“Not echolocation,” Surus said. “Communication.”

Rade quickly checked his rear view cameras and watched as three towering forms emerged from behind one of the nearby trees, where a trio of T-Rexes had quietly outflanked the party.

“Behind us!” Rade said.

“So much for all the wonders of LIDAR!” Lui quipped.

Rade spun around and let loose at the closest T-Rex. The other party members similarly unleashed their cobras, and the three intruders dropped to the ground with resounding thuds. One of them plunged down right in front of Rade, it’s massive head landing only half a meter from him, and the reverberation actually caused Rade’s mech to bounce slightly. That head was so big it reached to the Hoplite’s waist; feathers sizzled near the eye region where the beams had struck.

Rade returned his attention to the herd. The lead bull was staring at him with fire in its eyes. Its jaws fell open, and it released an ear-splitting roar.

“Looks like you got your roar after all, Lui,” Manic said.

The bull came at them with renewed speed, along with the others.

Bender opened fire. “Chicken chips!”

The herd members moved incredibly fast, weaving between the few intervening trees, and were on the party in seconds.

Rade had time only to take down the bull, and was launched into the air when another T-Rex swung its head like a club, batting him aside.

He crashed into a thick trunk nearby and slid to the ground. Other Hoplites had been knocked aside like bowling pins as well. Four T-Rex bodies had plowed into the dirt, falling where they had taken laser blows. The other carnosaurs were battling the mechs at close range. Bender’s Hoplite was pinned down by the crushing maw of one of the Rexes. Another had Fret’s mech restrained underfoot.

Rade lifted his scope, targeting the carnivore that had Bender, but before he could fire, a blur of motion alerted him to another T-Rex rounding the tree beside him. Apparently the creature had hidden there, waiting in ambush.

Rade rolled aside, but the thing managed to bite down on his cobra arm, clamping the limb so that the cobra protruded from the far side of the mouth, and was unable to fire.

The T-Rex lifted Rade into the air and swung him about wildly, as if expecting the arm to break off. If he were another dinosaur, that would have probably happened. Instead, his shoulder servomotors groaned in outrage, but continued to function. At least for the time being.

“Servomotors nearing maximum allowable stress tensors,” Electron said.

Rade folded away the shield in his left arm and deployed the grenade launcher in its place. He rammed the tip of the launcher between those teeth and fired a frag.

The T-Rex must have felt the undetonated grenade striking the back of its throat, because it released Rade in surprise and made a loud gulping sound. A moment later its ventral cavity burst open as the grenade detonated, covering Rade’s mech in blood and guts. The stricken dinosaur collapsed, momentarily pinning another T-Rex that had been gunning for Rade.

The newcomer shook off the corpse, but before it could take another step Rade unleashed a shot squarely in the eye and the carnivore instantly collapsed.

More T-Rexes emerged from behind nearby trees.

“We’re surrounded!” Tahoe said. “Damn things can move real quietly when they want to!”

“Too many to face head on!” Rade said. “Into the trees!”

Rade fired his jumpjets, but had risen only two meters when a T-Rex jumped at him, wrapping its jaws around his cockpit and pulling him out of the air.

“Warning, hull integrity critical,” Electron said.

The metal around him moaned, and Rade knew the T-Rex could very well crush him to death in the next few seconds. He also heard scratching sounds coming from his lower body, as the tiny hands on the forelimbs, tipped in razor sharp talons, tore across his mech’s exposed thighs.

His right arm was pinned to his chest by those jaws, but his left arm was free. He swiveled a cobra into that arm and rammed the muzzle over the upper lip of the dinosaur’s maw, taking his best guess at the eye region, and then squeezed the trigger.

The T-Rex keeled over and struck the ground. The lower jaw slammed into the upper, and Rade found himself even more irrevocably pinned. On the bright side, at least his cockpit hadn’t caved.

He retracted the cobra from his free hand and reached up with metal fingers, attempting to pry himself free. It was useless. Though his servomotors whirred in complaint, he couldn’t budge the weight of the upper jaw and head, not with one arm.

Another T-Rex approached him. It looked at him with blazing eyes and let out an angry puff of air from its nostrils.

Rade attempted to rotate his cobra mount into place, but the T-Rex was the faster. It moved in a blur, obviously intending to pound its hard muzzle into Electron.

But the strike never came. Instead the head swung wide and then the T-Rex collapsed. A small pillar of smoke billowed from the top of its head.

Tahoe’s mech stood on its neck. 

Bender landed beside Rade and rammed the metal hands of his Hoplite into those confining jaws. Tahoe joined in.

“I got this!” Bender said.

Tahoe ignored him and together they pried open that mouth.

Rade was only able to partially extricate himself: some of the lower teeth had dug deep into the armor of his Hoplite, and he had trouble sliding out.

Tahoe held the jaw open with one hand and offered Rade his other. Meanwhile Bender covered them, as did the rest of the Hoplites from their positions in the branches of the surrounding trees.

Rade grabbed Tahoe’s hand and pulled. In moments he was free.

The three of them activated their jumpjets as more T-Rexes came in.

Branches and leaves whipped at Rade’s mech, but most were small and easily broke away. He swerved around the bigger branches, passing other members of the team who had taken up residence in that particular giant tree.

He landed on an upper branch that was well out of reach of the dinosaurs, while Bender and Tahoe took nearby boughs. Below, the T-Rexes leaped up in frustration, but didn’t even come close to reaching any of them.

“Well that was fun,” Manic commented.

ten

Rade checked the status of his teammates and confirmed that everyone was in the green, and that all of the Hoplites had made it into the trees.

“I don’t think it’s necessary to kill them all,” Rade said.

“No, but it’s the fastest way,” Surus said. “The other option is to wait them out. Which could take hours, or days.”

“The dinosaurs are going to go extinct anyway,” Bender said. “So it doesn’t really matter.”

“Actually that’s not true anymore,” Lui said. “The dinosaurs didn’t die out in the changed timeline, remember?”

“Very true!” Manic said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “We could be eliminating whole future generations in the dino timeline. Can’t have that!”

“Surus already explained time as a river that will absorb smaller changes,” Fret said.

“I was being sarcastic,” Manic retorted.

Rade stared at the dinosaurs, which had hunkered down around the trees and stared at the Hoplites with their necks craned upward.

“Why do they remind me of obedient little dogs?” Fret said. “Sitting before their master, looking up expectantly, waiting for a treat?”

“That’s because they are dogs, and we are the dog food,” Bender said. “Stored in expensive tin cans, of course.”

Rade sighed. “All right. Take them down.”

He and the others unleashed their cobras on the fifteen carnosaurs that remained. Bender cackled delightedly over the comm, unleashing loud whoops of pleasure whenever he got one.

“You like that, bitch?” Bender said. “Tickle tickle!”

The dinosaur numbers quickly dropped; before the team killed them all, five of the T-Rexes got smart and fled.

“Hold your fire,” Rade said. “Let them go.”

“Aw boss...” Bender said.

“Let them go,” Rade repeated.

The carnosaurs vanished from view, and the sounds of their mad flight faded to nothingness. Birdcalls tentatively began to resume in the jungle.

When Rade was certain that all of the T-Rexes had gone, and no more were coming, he said: “All right, let’s go. Our noise is sure to have drawn attention from other dinosaurs. Likely scavengers. If we want to move, now’s the time.”

The Hoplites used their jumpjets to cushion their fall as they leaped down from the various trees. Manic miscalculated his descent and landed his mech right on top of one of the dead corpses. It had voided its bowels in death, and when Manic’s Hoplite slid off, he landed directly into the fecal pile.

Bender erupted in uproarious laughter. “Someone step in a little doodoo? You moron!”

Manic reached down and scooped up a large handful of the excrement and threw it at Bender’s mech.

“Hey!” Bender said. “Don’t you be throwing no shit at me!”

“No shit?” Manic threw another bolus.

Bender swung his shield into place and angrily deflected the black mass. “That’s it.” He swung his cobra toward Manic.

Rade stepped between them. “Enough. We head east, now! We’ve lost enough time as it is. I want you on drag, Bender. Manic, you’re on point. Go!”

He waited for Manic to emerge from the feces pile and take the lead, and when TJ and Tahoe followed, Rade turned toward Bender.

“On drag,” he reminded his friend.

“Got it, boss,” Bender said.

The group proceeded at a run, heading eastward.

“Well that was fuuuuun,” Bender said, apparently having forgotten the feces incident already. “Killin’ T-Rexes is almost as entertaining as killin’ bugs. Or molesting Manic.”

“You know they weren’t actually T-Rexes, right?” Lui said. “But distant cousins of the creatures.”

“Yeah they were T-Rexes,” Bender said. “You wouldn’t know a T-Rex if it bit you in the face. Which, coincidentally, actually happened.”

“That wasn’t my face,” Lui said.

“Oh,” Bender said. “Your ass is growing teeth? My bad.”

“I’m still amazed by what we’ve learned,” Lui said. “As I said earlier, I knew they hunted in packs, but I never expected those packs to be so large. Doubly so, when counting the ambushers. It’s just crazy that something so large can move so quietly, with such stealth. I don’t think it’s something they developed naturally. I’m convinced they had to learn it, just as humans have to learn how to pad quietly through a forest. And they can communicate. Communicate! I’m just so damn flabbergasted by all of this. Never expected any of it.”

“No one did,” Harlequin said. “We’re time travelers now. Explorers of the last great unknown frontier.”

“Yes,” Lui said. “And what an amazing experience it is. This is why I’m an Argonaut, right here. New worlds. New aliens. And now time travel.”

“Check that off the bucket list, beyotches!” Bender said. “We’re the Argonauts. Your friendly time travelin’ dinosaur hunters. Wait till I tell your kids about this, boss. They’re never going to believe it.”

“Oh they’ll believe it all right,” Rade said. “They believe anything you tell them.”

“Have I ever done them wrong?” Bender asked innocently.

Before Rade could answer, Lui continued his excited recollection of the incident.

“And man,” Lui said. “Did you see the sheer ruthlessness with which those dinos hunted us, the cunning? It takes a strategic mind to plan an outflanking maneuver like that. They have to be at least as intelligent as dolphins. At least. Especially if they can communicate. Those squawks have to be a rudimentary form of language. They’re obviously apex predators. Those at the top of the food chain in the animal kingdom always end up being the most cunning, the most intelligent, and the most ferocious. Like humans.”

“Okay okay,” Fret said. “We get it. You’re enamored with dinosaurs.”

“I truly am,” Lui said. “These are what Chinese Dragons are based on. But I guess I’m gushing a bit too much, huh?”

“Just a little,” Fret said.

“Still,” Lui continued. “It makes you wonder what would have happened if the dinosaurs had survived their extinction level event.”

“We already know the answer to that,” Tahoe said. “All you have to do is return to our present timeline.”

“True enough,” Lui said. “Still, that would be so great if we could stay here and study these creatures.”

“I’d love to stay,” Rade said. “But we only have four hours left. Maybe we’ll plan a longer mission next time.”

The party proceeded eastward. Rade continually scanned his surroundings, searching for signs of Centurions or hostile dinosaurs. At the periphery of his vision he sometimes caught sight of smaller herds of herbivores, which always ran off.

“I’m still amazed at the raw intelligence,” Lui said. “Chalk it up to brain size, I guess.”

“Enough with the dinosaurs, already!” Fret said.

“Pocky-face, if brain size were the marker of intelligence,” Bender said. “Then whales would be flying in space.”

“Have you guys been seeing those herds in the distance?” Lui said, ignoring the comments. “There are so many different types of prey here. Just a profusion of prey. My guess is that these are the prime hunting grounds of these T-Rex cousins.”

“If it’s their prime hunting ground, then why bother attacking us, when other food is readily available?” Manic said.

“If they’re like certain animals that hunt in packs, then I’m guessing they didn’t take kindly to us invading their turf,” Lui said.

“Or maybe they wanted to hunt us for the novelty of it,” Bender said. “To see how we taste. That’s what I’d do if I were a dinosaur, and I saw something new waltzing into my hunting grounds.”

The party continued through the forest for the next twenty minutes until the trees finally opened up.

Rade stood on a cliff overlooking a vast valley. To the north, the land below formed a short savanna before transforming into a series of tree-covered foothills; Rade spotted a group of herbivores next to the tree line. They were huge quadrupeds whose long necks were able to reach the upper branches of the trees rimming the savanna. His Implant labeled them as Titanosauruses. He saw other herbivorous grazers of all shapes and sizes, some feathered, some not, roaming the grassland.

The view to the south was blocked, as the cliff jutted out past the current edge, forming a jagged ridge line covered in tall, sprawling vegetation.

“So what do we do now?” TJ said.

“How about we follow the big ship?” Manic said.

“What big ship?” Tahoe said.

Rade glanced at the overhead map and realized Manic had stepped through the tall trees that covered the jutting portion of the cliff to the south.

Rade moved past those trees, which soon parted. He found himself overlooking a previously hidden portion of the valley. A long plain stretched before him. In the distance, an immense golden vessel hovered right above the land, so huge that it stretched from horizon to horizon.

Silver, pod-like craft slowly moved through the air in front of it, herding a pack of quadrupeds toward a broad ramp that reached down from the ship to the plains. When the dinosaurs reached the ramp, they stampeded up it and into the ship.

“The hell is this bullshit?” Bender said. “Dinosaurs. And now aliens?”

Surus spoke over the comm. “My friends, meet the creators of the vast network of Slipstreams that worm throughout this region of space.”

eleven

What are you saying?” Rade asked Surus. “These are the Elder?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” she replied.

“You know, the ship vaguely reminds me of a giant Möbius strip,” Fret said.

Rade zoomed in. He realized Fret was right. The gold hull seemed to turn in upon itself, forming a continuous surface that twisted through one hundred and eighty degrees. In places that hull seemed translucent, and he thought he saw buildings inside, hinting at an entire alien city residing within.

“Incredible,” Lui said.

“Why are they capturing dinosaurs?” Harlequin asked.

As Rade watched, those small silver craft herded another group of herbivores from the plains toward the ramp.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Surus said. “Perhaps they are populating some interstellar menagerie? Filling it with strange and exotic beasts from planets across the galaxy?”

“Manic would fit right in,” Bender said.

“As would you,” Manic retorted.

“The Phant obviously came to this time period specifically because of that ship,” Rade said. “My guess is it intends to steal some key technological component. The Elder don’t exist in our present day, at least not in our galaxy, so the only way for the Phant to meet them was to travel back to a time when they were still present.”

“Though how did the Phant know the Elder were here visiting Earth, when even we didn’t know this?” TJ said.

“Perhaps the Phant discovered evidence of the Elder presence while it was on Earth placing the target Acceptor?” Surus said.

“Well, whatever technology the Phant acquired, it caused humanity to be wiped out,” Lui said.

“So what do we do?” Tahoe said. “Approach these Elder and identify ourselves? Or try to sneak inside their ship?”

“You’ll never sneak inside,” Surus said. “Even at this early point in time, the Elder are Tech Class IV, while you humans are Tech Class III.”

“But the Phant obviously did it,” Tahoe said. “Because those Elder down there don’t seem alarmed in any way.”

“Yes,” Surus said. “The Phant could have abandoned its robot host, and proceeded the rest of the way in its natural state, staying just below the surface of the planet until it reached the ramp, and then seeping directly into the metal.”

“The Elder wouldn’t have detected it?” Rade asked.

“No,” Surus said. “They will not develop systems to identify Phant intrusions for many millions of years.”

“Maybe Surus could sneak inside in her natural state?” Fret said.

“To what purpose?” Harlequin asked. “What we really need to do at this point is warn the Elder about the intruder, and work with them to help identify and disable that intruder.”

“I have to agree with Harlequin on this one,” Rade said. “We have to warn them they have an invader aboard who wants their technology. We’ll approach them. Slowly and carefully, with weapons firmly folded away.”

“What if they’re not all that receptive to our visit regardless of what we do with our weapons?” Fret said.

“Then we’ll deal with that when the time comes,” Rade said.

Rade swiveled the cobra mount out of his right arm, and retracted the shield in his left, so that he appeared unarmed. The others did likewise. Then they leaped from the cliff, activating their jumpjets to steer away from the rocky wall, and to cushion their landing on the savanna below.

The team members waded through the tall grass. Duck-billed hadrosaurs lifted their long, slender heads from the ground to eye the party warily. These huge herbivores were scaled, not feathered like the other dinosaurs the party had encountered; as the Hoplites passed, the dinosaurs continued chewing the grass that was in their mouths, and when they were sure the mechs meant no harm, they buried their heads in the vegetation once more.

“Hey Lui, grass buffet!” Bender said.

“Yeah, if I was a cow, I’d be in heaven,” Lui said.

“Kind of makes you wonder, with all these herbivores out here, how come the grass is so tall?” Manic said.

“Obviously, there are a few predators out here that interrupt them from time to time,” Tahoe said.

The party’s advance occasionally startled small herds of the dinosaurs, but most of them simply watched cautiously.

About a kilometer from the massive vessel, the team must have been spotted, because two of the silver pods swerved from their positions near the ship and came racing toward the Hoplites.

Rade halted and slowly raised his hands. “Show them we mean no harm.”

The other Hoplites lifted their arms in surrender as well.

The two pods halted twenty meters in front of the party. The pair hovered four meters above the ground, and had several long metal tentacles hanging down underneath that reached all the way to the ground. Some of those tentacles were so thin that they were mere threads that reflected light, while others were thick as human arms. The front part of the pod was covered in a glass hemisphere, revealing a glowing creature of light inside. Rade tried to autogate the photochromatic filter to better make out the occupant, but he still couldn’t discern any features.

“Glow bugs!” Bender said excitedly.

From the left and right sides of the pods, two menacing looking turrets folded outward.

“These pods are looking more and more like gunships,” Manic said.

“Keep your weapons retracted,” Rade said. “Let’s not give them a reason to fire on us. No one make any sudden movements.”

Tense moments passed. Rade had the impression the occupants of the pods were testing him and his team in some way.

Finally, a silvery tentacle on the leftmost pod floated upward toward the immense mothership behind them. Five diaphanous fingers on the tip spread apart, then four of them folded together, forming a fist of sorts, leaving one of the fingers pointing in the direction of the vessel.

“I think it wants us to proceed toward the ship,” Tahoe said.

“That would be a good assumption,” Harlequin said.

“Back talking AI,” Bender muttered.

“Argonauts, let’s advance,” Rade said. “Slowly. In single file. Manic, lead the way.”

Manic took point and slowly walked between the two pods.

Rade and the others followed in single file, and the two pods escorted them across the grass.

When they were closer to the ship, more pods joined the escort, so that there were a total of six alien craft, three on either side, by the time the team was climbing the ramp.

When they reached the ship, they found themselves inside a cavernous, rectangular-shaped, golden-hued compartment. The latest group of herbivores had arrived only moments before, and Rade saw the tail end vanish through a dark field ahead. It was as if the dinosaurs walked into a liquid wall and were veritably swallowed up.

“Who wants to bet that’s the airlock membrane tech we saw in use aboard the Mahasattva vessel in our last mission?” Manic said. “Stolen from the Elder.”

“An earlier version of it, at least,” Rade said.

The pods directed the party to the right, toward a different dark membrane. Manic approached, and paused about a meter before it. The surface seemed to ripple slightly, like a liquid.

“Boss?” Manic asked.

“Go ahead,” Rade said. 

Manic stepped forward, vanishing beyond the membrane.

Rade glanced at his overhead map and saw that Manic’s blue dot remained in existence.

“Boss, do you read?” Manic’s voice came over the line. His words were badly distorted.

“I do,” Rade said.

“It’s safe,” Manic said. “I’m in, well... the best description is a city. I’m in a city. While the atmospheric pressure here is similar to our own, it’s completely unbreathable. We’ll definitely have to stay inside our mechs. Or in our jumpsuits, at minimum.”

“Well duh,” Bender said. “If you thought the possibility of contamination was bad before, it’s through the roof now, because we’re on a goddamn alien ship!”

“There is one little thing, though,” Manic said. “My cobra mounts and grenade launchers have gone offline.”

“What?” Rade said. “How?”

“I don’t know,” Manic said. “According to my AI, the systems failed when I passed through the membrane. But I ran a remote status check on the smaller, backup laser rifle in my storage compartment, and it’s still online.”

“How is that possible?” Rade said. “Given that the Elder have no idea how our weapon systems function.”

“These are some of the things that differentiate a Tech Class IV from a III,” Surus said. “Such as the ability to remotely deactivate weapons. However you are correct in assuming that they should have no knowledge of our weapon systems, considering this is the first time they have ever encountered humans.”

“Well, it’s a bit of a mystery then, isn’t it?” Rade said. He glanced at the waiting pods, which yet kept their gunship-style turrets aimed at the party, and sighed. “All right, let’s go.”

He and the other Argonauts stepped through the membrane.

Rade found himself standing on a street possessing a metallic gray-green hue, surrounded by randomly placed arches of different sizes, most of them massive, made of the same silvery material as the pods, though the surfaces were shot through with glowing white filaments that provided illumination. Black threads interconnected the buildings, like hairy barnacles draped over the rungs on the underside of a sea ship’s hull. Attached below the arches, stretching from the apexes to halfway down either side, sagged gelatinous yellow-orange structures. Rade thought he could see glowing shapes moving within those underlying formations.

“These bugs really need to follow a building code,” Bender said. “Feel like I’m in the Philippines, where the developers build whatever they want wherever they want.”

“I definitely don’t feel like I’m in the Philippines,” Manic said.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Bender said. “We’re missing the tiny versions of Lui.”

“Racist!” Fret mocked.

“Cobra mounts are offline,” Electron reported. “And the grenade launcher seems to have lost power.”

“As expected, weapons are offline across the party,” Lui said. “But as when Manic passed through, the rifles in our storage compartments are still active, strangely enough.”

“That could be useful in a pinch,” Rade said.

Four more of the pods with the dangling tentacles were waiting inside to escort the party members. As usual, they were piloted by the glowing beings.

The pods led the Argonauts between the haphazardly placed arches, taking care to avoid the black threads that connected the buildings.

Rade occasionally saw silver-hulled machines, roughly the same size as the Hoplites, moving through those streets or resting between the arches. The machines appeared distinctly insect-like, reminding Rade of praying mantises from the way their large spiky forelegs appeared to be folded like hands in prayer. The bodies were divided into head, thorax and abdomen. On the head, long, bifurcated mandibles resided underneath golden, glowing eyes. Horned plates lined the abdomen and thorax, reminiscent of some of the dinosaurs Rade had seen outside. In addition to the forelimbs, the machines possessed four segmented legs, two on either flank, with sharp spikes protruding from the joint regions.

“Robot bugs!” Bender said. “My favorite! I want to squash them so bad...”

“Relax, Bender,” Rade said.

“I am relaxed,” Bender said. “I’m the most relaxed I’ve been in my entire life. Like a wound-up torsion spring waiting to have its release pressed.”

“Doesn’t sound relaxed to me,” Manic said.

“Titty lips, you don’t know the meaning of the word relaxed,” Bender said.

“Titty lips,” Manic said. “That’s a new one.”

The machines seemed to demonstrate a human-like curiosity, pausing to study the newcomers as they passed. The escorting pods paid the smaller robots no heed.

The party reached the far side of the vast compartment that contained the street, where the arches abutted against the towering grayish-green bulkhead. The two lead pods of the escort paused before one of those arches.

Rade noticed that the lower portion of the arch seemed to shimmer slightly, as if it wasn’t completely real.

“Hm,” Manic said. “Looks like a false wall, or another airlock membrane. Am I supposed to walk inside?”

“If you can,” Rade said.

Manic raised a tentative hand and touched the surface. His mech’s fingers passed clean through without resistance, vanishing.

Manic glanced at the others, then stepped through entirely, disappearing from view.

“I’m in,” Manic said, his voice breaking with the familiar distortion.

The pods of the escort remained in place, watching, waiting.

Guarding.

“Let’s see what these aliens want with us and our dinosaurs,” Rade said, advancing.

He emerged into the tube-shaped interior of the giant arch.

Behind him, the others stepped through the membrane in turn,

“These walls are too steep to climb,” Tahoe said. “We’ll have to use our jumpjets.”

Rade waited until the whole team had passed inside, and he was about to give the order to jet upward when the floor began to rise.

“Well I’ll be,” Bender said. “A grav elevator. Sweet doggy! How’s that for convenience. These are some courteous glow bugs.” 

“You think they’re courteous now,” Lui said. “Wait until their robot pets bite you.”

“I’m looking forward to it, more than you know,” Bender said.

The circular disk that held the party continued to rise, stopping as it neared the apex of the arch. Ahead, a hole led through the metal and into the yellow-orange cocoon Rade had seen from below.

“Um,” TJ said.

“Harlequin, check it out,” Rade said.

“That’s right, the expendable AI goes first,” Bender said. “As it should be.”

Harlequin ignored the comment and stepped through the hole. His feet seemed to sink slightly, but the gelatinous substance held him. “It seems clear.”

Harlequin continued walking his mech deeper inside.

Rade followed, as did the rest of the party. It felt a little like he was treading on the spongy ground of the jungle, given the way his Hoplite sunk with each step.

The cylindrical structure was slightly translucent, allowing Rade to peer at the city beyond. But it was otherwise empty.

Rade heard a sickening suction sound, then the ceiling directly above spread apart and a dark shape dropped down.

Rade instinctively raised his hands but managed to resist the urge to swivel a cobra into place.

The shape abruptly lit up, becoming blinding. Rade’s photochromatic filter kicked in, reducing the brightness so that he could actually make out the shape. It stood the same height as his Hoplite, and reminded him of the insect-like robots he had seen outside: bifurcated mandible, folded forelimbs, four segmented appendages with spikes on the joints, horned plates lining the head, thorax and abdomen. Unlike the robots, it had a long tail, evidently prehensile, given that it was holding a gray cylinder of some kind in the appendage.

“What is that?” Fret said. “A weapon?”

With its forelimbs, the alien unfolded the device, which had three telescoping limbs on the bottom that allowed it to function as a tripod. The entity carefully balanced the cylinder on the gelatinous floor, and a moment later a holographically generated keyboard appeared. Each key was the size of a human hand, and possessed a unique English letter. 

“The hell is this?” Bender said. “Glow bug gots a hologram keyboard with English characters? Sixty-five million years before English was even invented?”

The alien repeatedly set its bright foot down, touching different holographic keys, “typing” out characters. The entity hit the “back” key when it made a mistake. As Rade watched, a string of characters formed floating words above the device, courtesy of another holographic projector at the top of the cylinder.  

“Uh,” Bender said.

You should not be here, the completed text read.

twelve

And you should not know English,” Rade said. “Nor even have that holographic generator.”

The alien pressed “clear,” causing the text to vanish; then it beckoned toward the remaining holographic keys.

“Harlequin, get out of your mech and type what I just said,” Rade ordered.

Harlequin’s cockpit popped open and the Artificial emerged in his jumpsuit. He proceeded to type the response by leaping rapidly from key to key; he moved so fast his body was a blur. When finished, Harlequin stepped aside.

The Elder typed a reply.

Ordinarily we communicate telepathically, the Elder wrote. But your minds are not compatible with this means of communication. The one you name Surus came to me four of your years ago. She spent twenty-four months teaching me your written language. Surus calls me Bright One. You may, too. I am a scientist.

“Well, I guess I know what I’m doing for the next two years after we return to the present,” Surus said.

“Assuming we return,” Fret said.

“We have to,” Lui said. “Otherwise Surus wouldn’t have been able to deliver the message.”

“No,” Fret said. “It only means that Surus returns. And not necessarily the rest of us.”

“At least now we know who spilled the beans regarding our weapon systems,” Manic said.

“Yes,” Surus said. “But to my credit, I didn’t tell Bright One about the laser rifles we’ve kept hidden in our storage compartments.”

“Bright One?” Bender said. “What were you thinking, Surus my girl? That’s the most ridiculous name you could have come up with.”

“Well, you have to admit,” TJ said. “The alien is kind of bright. Blindingly so.”

“Still ridiculous,” Bender said.

“Harlequin, ask him if his people are truly the Elder,” Rade said. “Those who created the Slipstreams in this region of space.”

Yes, we are the Elder. We created the Slipstreams to make travel between stars more convenient for our kind.

“And how about those machines we saw in the city?” Rade said. “Are they sentient?”

They are more than sentient. We have advanced to such a degree that we have the ability to move our consciousnesses into artificial networks. These networks are stationed in a nexus that forms what you would call the AI core of our starship. Some of us have chosen to inject our consciousnesses into the nexus. These individuals can move in and out of the different robots you have seen aboard, allowing them to experience corporeal form when desired, and to access the higher states of consciousness when physical bodies prove unnecessary.

“Harley boy, ask the dude why they are collecting dinosaurs,” Bender said. “And if I can get a baby T-Rex as a pet.”

You cannot have any of them.

“Harlequin, ask again why they’re collecting dinosaurs,” Rade said. “I’d like to know.”

We have been visiting Earth for hundreds of thousands of years. During our most recent arrival, we determined that a fifteen-kilometer asteroid was on a collision course with the planet. When it arrives, the impact will release the same amount of energy as one hundred teratonnes of TNT, or over a billion times the energy of your early atomic bombs, based on what Surus has related to me. In addition to sparking localized firestorms, the blast will send large parts of the impact zone into space, and as the resultant ejecta reenter the atmosphere, the fragments will emit intense pulses of infrared radiation, cooking exposed lifeforms. A dust cloud will envelope the planet, blocking sunlight for years to come, restricting photosynthesis and killing most plants and the organisms reliant on them. The oceans will acidify, thanks to acid rain caused by vaporized sulfur carbonate; the acid will linger in the atmosphere, further causing global temperatures to plummet. It is an extinction level event.

This is why we collect the dinosaurs. We are the great catalogers and preservers of life. We save as many endangered species as we are able throughout the galaxy. It is our duty. When we see creatures of such great beauty, those created by the randomness of natural selection, the order in the chaos, we cannot help but save a few of them for the sake of posterity.

“This ship is an ark, then,” Lui said.

“That’s exactly what it is,” Rade replied.

“I should have put two and two together,” Lui said. “We’ve traveled sixty-five million years into the past. That’s when the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event occurred, wiping out the dinosaurs.”

“Harlequin, ask him how long we have until the impact?” Rade said.

The asteroid will impact in eight hours.

“Eight hours!” Manic said. “These aliens are sure cutting it close. Collecting dinosaurs down to the wire.”

“I’m suddenly very glad that we decided not to stay here for more than six hours,” Fret said. “Can you imagine what would have happened if we had set the recall time to twenty-four hours or something?”

“I’m sure the Elder have the ability to stop the impact,” TJ said. “That’s something even a few United System battlecruisers could handle. Easily. A few tow ropes and you’re done. Harlequin, ask the alien why the Elder haven’t diverted the asteroid, if they value life so greatly.”

We believe in non-interference. It is our rule that all planets, and the life upon them, must develop naturally. If that means allowing an asteroid to strike a populated world, then so be it.

“It is perhaps a cruel stance,” Surus said. “But if the Elder prevented that asteroid from striking, humanity would have never evolved. So in a sense, the Elder are the progenitors of the human race, merely because they didn’t intervene when they could have.”

“And I’m guessing that somehow the Phant we’re hunting changed that,” Rade said. “Harlequin, ask it if Surus, in her earlier visit, told him about the impending Phant threat?”

Surus did warn us, yes. Using her as our subject, we were able to modify our sensors to detect those of her kind. When the Phant comes again, we will know. We have also shielded the equivalent of our AI core. Your timeline is safe.

Rade tapped his lips. “Your Phant-detection sensors haven’t gone off yet, then?”

No.

Rade glanced at Surus’ mech. “The Phant should have reached the ship by now. You saw how fast it moved earlier in its natural state...”

“Phants are always slowed down when they elect to move stealthily,” Surus said. “If our prey was trying to make its way here just below the surface of the ground, for example, it’s speed would be reduced by half.”

“But it still should have beat us,” Rade said.

“Perhaps.”

Would you like to see what happens to the dinosaurs once they enter our ship?

The glowing alien led the Hoplites to the side of the gelatinous structure. The wall abruptly became clear, showing the bulkhead the building abutted against. A moment later the bulkhead became translucent as well, and the team overlooked a wide savanna. Rade saw dinosaurs roaming the plains all the way to the horizon.

“Is that aboard this ship?” Tahoe asked, the awe evident in his voice.

Yes. We have meticulously recreated their natural environments aboard. We’ve segregated the dinosaurs into five different compartments, the environments of each optimized for the needs of the different species we’ve gathered.

The view switched, and Rade realized he wasn’t looking directly into the next compartment after all, but rather at a video feed. The view had been replaced with the tops of trees. Different winged pterosaurs lounged in nests upon leathery eggs that became visible when the dinosaurs shifted positions. The pterosaurs were covered in what could best be described as proto-feathers—long, stiff bristles. Their wings were made of a thin, leathery membrane that connected the tips of their thin forelimbs to their bodies, more akin to bats than birds.

The view updated once more, and Rade was looking down into a forest. A bloody trail of fresh Utahraptor corpses winded through the tall trees, ending before a rather large T-Rex covered in a dark red and black plumage. The feathers around its lower legs and jaws were stiff—steeped in blood.

It was the biggest T-Rex Rade had ever seen, about twice as big as the bull he had encountered previously. It held a living Utahraptor pinned underneath the talons of its right leg. The thing squirmed wildly, but the T-Rex made no move to end its existence.

“Look at that,” Bender said. “Big Bird has got itself a mouse.”

Bright One typed out a new sentence: This one is a killer.

“They’re all killers,” Rade said.

The T-Rex lifted its leg, releasing the Utahraptor. The wounded dinosaur attempted to limp away as quickly as it could, its feathers ruffled and blood-soaked, but then the T-Rex slammed its foot down on the prey once more.

Rade was reminded of a cat toying with a mouse, like Bender said.

No, she is special, the Elder wrote. You see that trail of Dromaeosaurids behind her? They are uneaten. Decomposing. She kills for sport.

Apparently growing bored, the T-Rex abruptly bent down and bit the head off the Utahraptor. It chewed nonchalantly, its expression momentarily seeming to turn sour as if it tasted something it didn’t like.

“What’s that, is it taking a leak?” Lui said. “Eww.”

Rade saw a long stream of dark liquid coursing down the inside of the T-Rex’s back leg, darkening the feathers there.

“I’m going to call her Betsy,” Bender said.

“Did you know that the largest Tyrannosaurus Rex ever discovered was named Sue?” Harlequin said.

“Harley boy, as usual your comments aren’t welcome, and have nothing to do with what I just said,” Bender replied. “How about you go admire your pussy or something.”

“If she’s a killer, why do you keep her?” Lui said. “Harlequin, ask.”

To study her. She is an important specimen. We believe she represents the next step in tyrannosaur evolution. She shuns the herd mentality of others of her kind, and demonstrates an intelligence leaps and bounds above the rest of her species. Unfortunately, her violent tendencies require us to contain her in a special habitat all to herself.

A ghostly wail sounded, rapidly changing in pitch. It was obviously an alarm of some kind.

The wall of the gelatinous structure became opaque once more, eliminating the window into the onboard dinosaur environment.

“Sounds like an intruder alarm,” Lui commented as the klaxon continued.

“That’s exactly what it is,” Rade said. “Our Phant must have finally arrived.”

thirteen

Rade turned toward the Elder. “Harlequin, translate: what’s going on? Have they detected the Phant?”

The Elder cocked its head, then quickly tapped out a message on the big keyboard.

No. That is the launch warning klaxon. The ramp is closing and our vessel is taking to the air. This is slightly odd. We weren’t supposed to leave for a few more hours.

“What about us?” Rade asked. “We have to get back to the surface or we’ll be stuck here forever.”

There are lifepods you can use. Your mechs will fit.

The deck shifted suddenly and Rade momentarily lost his balance.

“What was that?” Tahoe said.

The ship switched over to artificial gravity.

“We’re in orbit already?” Fret said. “Uh...”

“Take us to these lifepods,” Rade said. “Quickly.”

Bright One escorted the Hoplites through the yellow-orange cocoon to the hole in the far side, and the group entered the metal portion of the building that composed the outer arch. When all of the mechs were on the disk of the grav elevator, it proceeded downward.

At the bottom, the party passed through the shimmering false wall, and emerged into the vast city compartment.

Harlequin had remained outside of his Hoplite; Bright One handed the Artificial the hologram-generating device and then the alien entered a waiting pod. The translucent cockpit sealed, and the pod moved upward, hovering, its different sized tentacles trailing underneath.

Harlequin had tinkered with the hologram device, folding it up: apparently he had managed to reduce the keyboard layout to the size of his arm. He typed a question with the fingers of one hand while he held the device in the other arm. Can you still communicate with us?

Holographic text appeared above the pod. I have the equivalent of a holographic generator installed in my craft. This way.

The pod moved rapidly across those streets, and the mechs followed. Harlequin remained on foot beside his Hoplite so that he could use the generator as needed. The original four pods accompanied the party as well.

The Hoplites wended through the streets that resided between the arches, approaching the far side of the compartment. That was when Rade noticed the pterosaurs flying overhead. Their flight was stilted, as if the beasts were struggling.

“Uh, are those supposed to be there?” Fret said. 

“No,” Rade said.

The pterosaurs abruptly crashed to the ground, obviously succumbing to the unbreathable atmosphere.

Rade heard a squawk, followed by a roar, and saw a large Tyrannosaur standing next to the bulkhead. Another T-Rex emerged straight through the metal: it was obviously one of those airlock membranes.

“Who let the dogs out?” Bender said.

The four escorting pods abruptly swerved to the west, heading directly toward the feathered dinosaurs.

The T-Rexes advanced for half a block, and then collapsed where they stood before the pods even reached them.

A continual trickle of dinosaurs emerged from the bulkhead. They were of all types, from Dromaeosaurs to Orodromeuses.

Text appeared above Bright One’s pod.

The containment fields between the separate environments have failed. The different groups of dinosaurs are intermixing, and something is driving them out... I must take you to our equivalent of your lifepods quickly, and then assist the others before all of the dinosaurs leave their protective habitats and die.

The team arrived at a shimmering area of the bulkhead far to the southeast; Bright One’s pod passed through, vanishing. Rade and the others followed.

They stood on a metal pathway that appeared to lead across a bright countryside. Overhead, the illusion of sun and clouds was very convincing. On either side of the pathway tall grass led away to distant trees.

Rade realized he was in a glass tunnel that passed through one of the dinosaur habitats. He saw that the plains on either side were empty, as if all of the dinosaurs had been chased away. But by what, he couldn’t ascertain.

“Glass?” Tahoe said. “This is interesting. Why not use the membranes?”

Harlequin posed the question while he advanced.

These tunnels require far less energy to maintain than a membrane, Bright One responded. They are intended as viewing facilities for the crew. Not every Elder wishes to observe the world through the confines of the cameras.

“Why not just set up tiny exploratory drones and send them out into the environments?” Lui said.

We have those, too. But these tunnels also serve as maintenance and feeding conduits.

“Wait, aren’t there any closer lifepods?” Fret asked. “Why do we have to go through all this to evac? We don’t need the scenic route.”

I am taking you to lifepods capable of holding your large mechs. There are closer units, yes, but these are designed to interface with Elder and their transport vessels.

“The transport vessel you’re in right now looks about as big as one of our mechs...” Manic said.

Yes, but these will not fit inside the smaller lifepods either—we must dock to the lifepods and enter via an airlock. Unless we use the larger lifepods, which I am taking you to now. I could take you to the smaller units, if you were willing to abandon your mechs...

“No,” Rade said. “We’re keeping our mechs. We’ll never survive down there in our jumpsuits alone. Not if we have to face the likes of tyrannosaurs again.”

Rade sensed motion on the plains and he spotted hundreds of dark objects approaching at a run in the distance. The tunnel began to shake.

As the objects closed, Rade realized it was a herd of a hundred-plus Orodromeuses. The vaguely ostrich-like dinosaurs raced across the plains; some in the forefront occasionally tripped, only to be trampled by those that came after. A herd of Titanosaurs followed closely behind the group, towering over the first herd.

“Hey, Elder dude,” Bender said. “Don’t suppose we can get the weapons on our mechs reactivated early?”

Your weapons will reactivate when you leave the ship.

“Yeah, but it’ll be too late by then,” Bender said.

I’m sorry, but there is nothing I can do.

The shaking increased in intensity as the dual hosts approached. Upon reaching the tunnel, for the most part the dinosaurs cleared the obstacle, readily leaping over—the exterior would have been visible thanks to the reflection of light from the outer layer of glass. But some of the dinos apparently didn’t notice it because they smashed right into the translucent passage, spewing a shower of feathers into the air and cracking the panes. Sometimes their feet caught on the surface as they leaped across, tripping them, and the dinosaurs landed crashing on the other side. Those who fell were often trampled, especially when the Titanosaurs arrived. The latter beasts rarely tripped on the tunnel itself, their tall, massive legs offering easy clearance.

And then the herds were past. Rade watched the tail end move away across the plains to the left for several moments, and then he surveyed the carnage on either side of the tunnel. The glass was cracked in several places where the dinosaurs had struck. Orodromeus corpses littered either side. Some of the feathered beasts were still alive, struggling to get up, but their broken limbs prevented it.

“The hell?” Fret said. He was staring at the plains to the right, where the herds had originated.

Rade followed the gaze of Fret’s Hoplite and spotted several smaller packs of predatory Dromaeosaurs racing over the grass, followed by an extremely large T-Rex. The dark red and black plumage told him it was Betsy.

The giant carnivore occasionally overcame one or two of the Dromaeosaurs and stomped them underfoot. A trail of broken Utahraptors, Deinonychuses and Velociraptors were left in Betsy’s wake.

“Now we know what they’re running from,” Lui said.

“If I was a dinosaur,” TJ said. “I’d run, too.”

Betsy snatched a lagging Utahraptor from in front of her and crunched down on the helpless predator while swinging her head to the side, causing half the body to break away in a spray of gore.

“Wooeee, Betsy is having a field day out there,” Bender said. “I bet her pussy is wet.”

“Just like yours,” Manic said.

The Dromaeosaurs vaulted over the tunnel. The T-Rex swiped the side of her head into one last trailing Utahraptor, sending the body hurtling toward the tunnel. It smashed into the pane next to Rade, and fresh smears of blood appeared as the lifeless dinosaur slid down, making a sound like a squeegee on a windshield.

The T-Rex seemed on course to vault over the tunnel, but then her gaze alighted on the mechs and she dug in her heels, ripping away grass and tearing a short furrow in the ground as she came to a halt.

The massive carnivore bent low and nuzzled aside the feathered corpses that lined the outside of the tunnel. Apparently Betsy wanted to get a better look at the Hoplites within.

“Nobody move,” Rade said.

Betsy paused to tear into one of the broken Orodromeuses that was still struggling nearby, stilling it, and then she ran her gaze across the Hoplites sheltering behind the cracked glass. Her eyes lingered for a moment on Harlequin, who stood on the metal path outside his mech, but then she continued shifting her head, moving from mech to mech, until her eyes fell upon the transport pod that Bright One occupied.

It was at that point her nostrils widened, and she exhaled in a sudden loud, angry huff. Rade heard a drawn out guttural sound emanating from her throat, almost like a low-pitched, serrated growl.

“I don’t think she likes you,” Bender said.

Betsy drew back her head and rammed her thick muzzle into the glass like a wrecking ball. The surface in front of the Elder transport pod spidered severely. The T-Rex withdrew and head-butted the same area again, causing the cracks to expand even more.

“Uh,” TJ said. “Can we please get our weapons reactivated?”

“Bright One, does your transport pod have any weapons?” Rade asked. “If so, now would be a good time to use them. Otherwise, reactivate ours!”

My pod does, but unfortunately as a scientist I do not have the authorization to deploy them. Only a guard unit has this ability. And I can’t re-enable yours. I’m sorry.

“Without weapons, how were you planning on herding the dinosaurs like you mentioned?” TJ asked.

By frightening them.

“Don’t think that’s going to work with Betsy,” Fret said.

The T-Rex slammed into the glass tunnel once more, and this time caused visible breaches as pieces of glass fell away.

“Time to get out of here,” Rade said. “Argonauts, move!”

fourteen

The team erupted into a run and hurried down the translucent passageway. The motion drove Betsy into a frenzy, and she advanced right along with the party, repeatedly ramming into the tunnel beside them, nearly breaking through the glass each time. She targeted whatever moving object was closest to her, regardless of whether it was Bright One’s transport pod or a Hoplite. The strikes slowed her down slightly, so that soon the huge T-Rex was shadowing the mech on drag.

She struck a section of tunnel that was previously weakened by impacts from the fleeing herds, and Betsy’s head abruptly plunged inside.

Lui, on drag, was in the thing’s path; he activated his jumpjets, narrowly avoiding those massive jaws.

“Jeez,” Lui said. “I feel like a worm trying to outrun an angry woodpecker.”

The jaws withdrew and Betsy continued following them outside the tunnel.

“Why isn’t the atmosphere from the tunnel killing it?” Manic said. “Ask Bright One!”

Harlequin typed the question as he ran.

Breach membranes have activated on either side of the tunnel, preventing more of our atmosphere from venting inside. There is more than enough breathable atmosphere in the prepared environment to absorb the harmful air. The dinosaur will notice a bad smell when she rams her head inside, and that’s about it.

“Sort of like the smell that permeates the air when Manic takes off his boots?” Bender said.

Once more Betsy breached the tunnel, and Lui nimbly dodged forward.

“Looks like she brought a friend,” TJ said.

Rade spotted another T-Rex running alongside Betsy. It was about half her size, about the same dimensions as the bull that Rade had encountered in the jungle previously.

Betsy ceased her attack attempts and merely shadowed the party, matching their speed, while the second T-Rex kept pace beside her. The pair exchanged squawks, and then the smaller one pulled ahead with incredible speed.

“What are they doing?” Tahoe said.

“They’re coordinating... planning something,” Lui said. “Can’t be good.”

“Look at the little one run,” TJ said. “Even at our top speed, we’d have trouble matching that.”

“I’d hardly call it a little one,” Lui said. “Considering it’s still three times our size.”

“Hannah,” Bender said. “I’m calling that one Hannah.”

“Cheetah would be a better name,” Fret said.

“How about Cheetos?” Manic quipped.

“Hannah bitches!” Bender said.

“What’s a Cheeto?” Harlequin asked.

Up ahead, when Hannah was roughly fifty meters in front of the party, the dinosaur began madly ramming her large muzzle into the glass panes of the tunnel.

She broke through a moment later and managed to squeeze her body entirely inside. She began to slowly worm her way toward the party in the tight confines, blocking all access forward. There was no way the team could squeeze past, not even in their jumpsuits.

“Interesting...” Tahoe said.

Rade heard a shattering some distance behind him; turning around, he saw that Betsy had broken through the glass a few meters behind Lui and stuffed her colossal head inside. Though her body was too immense to fit, the tunnel readily accommodated her head, and the huge, gaping maw waited there eagerly.

“Uh, I think we’re being herded,” Lui said.

“Surus, it’s time for you to revert to your native form,” Rade said. “Take out this blockage.” In her Phant form, she would be able to incinerate the T-Rex on contact.

Surus didn’t reply.

“Surus?” Rade asked.

“I’m sorry,” came a voice over the comm. It was the voice of Sprint, her Hoplite’s AI. “Surus is temporarily incapacitated. She seems to be struggling against a psychic attack. I have taken control of the mech.”

“What?” Rade said. “Harlequin, ask Bright One why my alien friendly is on the receiving end of a psychic attack.”

Harlequin relayed the question.

Text appeared above Bright One’s transport pod: The attack appears to be sourced from somewhere aboard. One or more of the Elder are responsible. I’m not sure why they are doing this.

“Damn it,” Rade said. “Harlequin, grab your laser rifle.”

Harlequin opened the compartment on the leg region of his Hoplite and swapped the holographic text generator for the aforementioned rifle.

“Is it still active?” Rade asked.

“The rifle remote interface is online,” Harlequin said. “I’m getting a charge.”

“Shoot down Hannah,” Rade said.

Harlequin moved to the front of the group and aimed his rifle at the dinosaur that was worming its way toward them. He fired, apparently striking the eye region, because as Rade watched the yellow orb exploded in a stream of blood and gore.

Hannah wailed in pain, squeezing both eyes shut. She had ceased her advance, but otherwise seemed alive: the weaker laser apparently hadn’t penetrated deep enough into the brain cavity to terminate the creature. If the team still had cobras, on the other hand, Rade had no doubt the blow would have killed the dinosaur.

“The hell!” Bender said. “A shot like that should have taken it down. We’ve killed aliens with similar shots from laser rifles before. Not to mention really big robots.”

“You forget how big the brains of these things are,” Harlequin said. “Robots are far easier to take down, because of the miniaturization in the AI core. For this creature, even if my shot bored through its entire brain, unless I hit a critical ganglia structure, it would hardly make a difference to its huge brain, considering that the spot size of the rifle beam is a little under a millimeter.”

“Take out the other eye,” Rade ordered.

Harlequin fired again. He struck her closed eyelid, and there wasn’t the same eruption of blood and gore, but Hannah cried anew and began trying to backtrack. She was unable to make any headway, however, because her taloned feet continually slipped on the glass behind her, which was covered in some sort of slimy liquid. Rade guessed the dinosaur had voided her bowels when her eyes were hit.

Behind them, Betsy roared in outrage, and forced her head deeper into the tunnel; the surrounding glass broke away bit by bit as Betsy slowly, angrily wormed her jaws inside.

“Harlequin, take down Betsy!” Rade ordered. “Lui, help Harlequin!”

Harlequin hurried to the back as Lui cracked open the cockpit of his mech and swung down to the storage compartment, retrieving his own laser rifle. When Harlequin arrived, the two of them aimed at the open maw before them. The pair didn’t have a clear shot of the eyes, since those jaws obscured the rest of the head, but the throat was laid bare before them.

They fired their rifles together, combining their beams to double the intensity.

Betsy shrieked in anguish and withdrew entirely from the tunnel. She staggered backward outside, wobbly on her feet. 

“Do you want us to finish the job?” Lui asked.

And then Betsy slammed her head inside once more, harder than ever. More pieces of glass broke off around the rim of the hole, and the jaws drove straight toward Lui and Harlequin, who were forced to retreat. Her advance was checked by the jagged rim, though as before, the surrounding glass slowly peeled away as Betsy compelled her head deeper.

A third T-Rex abruptly slammed into the tunnel on the opposite side and began breaking through. Rade spotted movement in the distance behind it; he zoomed in, and realized more T-Rexes were approaching. A herd at least fifteen plus.

“Guess Betsy decided to stop hunting in isolation,” TJ said.

“Maybe the Rexes don’t like to leave anyone behind,” Tahoe said. “Sort of like us.”

“No dino gets left behind!” Manic mocked.

“Inside your mechs,” Rade ordered Harlequin and Lui. “We’re going to vacate the tunnel and make a run for the forward gap Hannah made for us. After a little diversion...”

“Who gets to be the bait?” Bender asked hopefully.

“I do,” Rade said. “Electron, follow my lead.”

He opened up the cockpit and swung down to Electron’s storage compartment, and retrieved the laser rifle. Then he leaped to the ground in his jumpsuit and made his way to the rear of the party; he aimed at Betsy’s open mouth and fired.

The big T-Rex howled in pain and outrage, but nonetheless forced her head deeper into the tunnel.

Rade stood his ground as that head forced its way toward him and he fired three more shots in rapid succession; finally Betsy withdrew, standing to her full height outside and shaking her head drunkenly as if to clear it. 

The third T-Rex repositioned to get inside the large gap in the tunnel that Betsy had created.

Rade took a running leap and activated his jetpack, thrusting through the opening. The third T-Rex tried to snatch Rade out of the air, but Electron slammed into the carnosaur’s neck, causing the Rex to snap at empty space.

Betsy swerved her body toward Rade, who continued jetting away. Electron appeared underneath him and Rade landed in the passenger seat on the upper back.

“Come on, Electron,” Rade said. “As fast as you can...”

Betsy was quickly closing. The third T-Rex had also joined in the fray, moving away from the tunnel to capture this easy prey. Rade glanced at the remaining members of the herd in the distance: they were still relatively far away.

“Now, team!” Rade said. “The coast is clear!”

The others emerged from the broken tunnel in their Hoplites and sprinted toward the forward hole Hannah had drilled.

Rade aimed his rifle scope at Betsy, using the onboard AI to help stabilize his shot. He targeted the leftmost eye and squeezed the trigger.

Betsy pulled up short and howled in pain. The T-Rex spun her body about, slashing her tail at imagined opponents in the air. Both eyelids were closed, though from the left oozed a thick, red-yellow liquid that seemed a mixture of plasma and blood. Like Hannah, the smaller laser apparently didn’t penetrate far enough into the brain tissue to do more than blind the dinosaur in the left eye.

While Betsy was doing that, Rade targeted the other incoming T-Rex and also struck the eye region. It must have been a lucky shot, because that particular T-Rex collapsed instantly, thudding loudly as momentum rolled its limp body across the grass for several meters. When it came to a stop, the tongue lolled lifelessly from its mouth. 

“Take us back!” Rade ordered Electron. The Hoplite began running toward the hole that Hannah had drilled through the glass. The aforementioned dinosaur was still caught in the middle of the tunnel. She had ceased attempting to crawl backward, and instead was slowly shoving herself forward toward the gap left by Betsy.

Meanwhile Betsy finally got the pain under control and resumed the chase. As she moved in behind Electron, she made the mistake of directing her good eye at Rade.

He aimed his targeting reticle over the exposed orb, but Betsy must have realized the danger she was in because she turned her head to the side just as he squeezed the trigger.

The weak laser rifle scored a hit on the head region, but apparently it didn’t even penetrate the thick skull, because the dinosaur continued running, its step not even faltering.

She kept her head tilted to one side, shielding her good eye from that laser while continuing to run toward the mech.

“Faster, Electron,” Rade said urgently.

Betsy surged forward with a sudden burst of speed, those massive jaws opening up and turning toward him.

Rade fired wildly into the throat as the open jaws rapidly grew near. It didn’t help. He was going to be snatched up.

He was about to jet away when Tahoe’s mech plunged into Betsy’s head from the side; the impact swung Betsy off course so that the dinosaur snapped at the empty air to the left of Electron.

Tahoe’s Hoplite was hanging onto the T-Rex’s neck, and pounding away with the other arm.

The T-Rex leaned toward Tahoe, and then purposely hurled herself toward the ground in mid-stride. Tahoe’s mech rammed into the tall grass as the dinosaur fell; momentum carried Betsy forward, scraping Tahoe away.

The T-Rex rapidly came to a halt, leaving a trail of torn grass in her wake. She clambered to her feet and spun toward Tahoe’s broken mech to finish the job.

“Stop!” Rade ordered Electron.

The Hoplite complied and Rade was slammed against the passenger seat. He started to bring his rifle to bear on the dinosaur, but then Bender leaped at the T-Rex and mounted her with his Hoplite, Juggernaut.

“Here kitty kitty kitty!” Bender said via his external speakers. “Poly want a cracker?”

The cockpit fell open and Bender emerged in his jumpsuit, swinging down to grab the rifle from his storage compartment.

“That’s a good pussy tat.” Bender aimed his rifle at Betsy’s head, but before he could fire the T-Rex rolled to the side once more, forcing Juggernaut and Bender to jet away. The two were nearly crushed by the surprise movement.

As Betsy got up once more, her good eye momentarily came into view: Rade had kept his scope aimed at the huge dinosaur the whole time. He quickly centered the targeting reticle over the eye region and squeezed the trigger.

Betsy’s remaining eye exploded and she shrieked in sheer agony. Rade felt a sudden remorse. Seeing an animal in pain, even one as ferocious as this dinosaur, was never an easy thing, at least for him. But the creature had forced his hand.

No one threatens my brothers.

Tahoe’s mech arose and limped toward Rade. The Hoplite wasn’t as badly damaged as Rade had originally supposed, though the cockpit region was certainly badly dented.

“Tahoe, you alright?” Rade asked. He glanced at the status indicator on his HUD as he spoke. It was green.

“Fine,” Tahoe said.

Bender joined him, storing his weapon in the mech’s leg compartment before swinging inside Juggernaut.

Meanwhile Betsy lashed out at the empty air around her, howling and roaring madly; she was well away from the three Hoplites.

“Should we put her out of her misery?” Tahoe asked.

“Why?” Bender said. “She’s a worthy opponent. Let her live. I’m sure the Elder can heal her eyes.”

“Never expected to see the day you’d grant a bug mercy,” Tahoe said.

“She’s not a bug,” Bender said. “She’s a bird.”

“Let her be,” Rade said, looking away from the howling beast. “We’ve caused enough pain.” He glanced at the incoming T-Rex herd; they were about fifty meters from the opposite side of the conduit. His gaze alighted next on the Argonauts, who had gathered near the forward hole in the glass. The team members had emerged from their cockpits and were firing at the Rexes with their laser rifles while Bright One watched from his transport craft.

“Quickly,” Rade said. “To the opening!”

He clambered down to Electron’s hip and tossed the rifle into the storage compartment in the moving thigh. The panel shut before the weapon could bounce out again.

Rade swung back into the cockpit as Electron ran, and the inner actuators enveloped him. He kept Electron in control of the mech for the time being, as switching over at a run could be disorienting, and he’d probably end up tripping.

“Argonauts, into your cockpits!” Rade said. “It’s time to fly!”

The Argonauts near the entrance promptly stowed their rifles in the storage compartments of their mechs and then entered their cockpits. As the Hoplites sealed up, they dove into the opening in the tunnel and followed Bright One as he took the lead.

After Rade entered the glass tunnel, he resumed full control of the mech and raced away from the jagged gap.

The T-Rex herd arrived. The surviving beasts shadowed the party’s advance, plowing their heads into the glass and cracking the panes. Feathers flew into the air and streaks of blood remained behind on the translucent surface. Sometimes the carnivores hit so hard that the glass shattered and the team had to avoid the incoming jaws.

“Keep running!” Rade said. “Don’t slow down!”

“It’s the attack of the crazy birds!” Bender said.

“The really, really big birds,” Manic said.

“With large teeth,” Fret said.

“Imagine how big their pussies are,” Bender said.

“No, you imagine,” Fret said.

“I already am,” Bender said.

The herd continued following them for at least a kilometer; the carnosaurs bashed the glass less and less, and soon lost interest entirely when a group of herbivores made the mistake of coming too close; the T-Rexes abandoned the mechs for the perceived easier prey.

“I’m back,” Surus announced.

“Took you long enough,” Bender said. “We were busy protecting your fine ass all this time. That deserves a dinner, I think.”

“I managed to throw up a set of walls around my psyche,” Surus said, ignoring the comment. “Hopefully, I won’t be unceremoniously pulled from the battle by another psi attack again.”

“Was it the Phant?” Rade asked. “Or some of the Elders, like Bright One claims?”

“Not the Phant,” Surus said. “The psi-shielding I developed for the jumpsuits would have protected me from a Phant. And our foe is not a Black, remember. Psychic blasts are weak among most other Phant types, having little effect save for against human telepaths. It was definitely an Elder with malevolent intent. Though the psi-shielding helped somewhat, it was not enough.”

“Why didn’t any of us experience the attack?” Rade said.

“Your minds are not compatible,” Surus said. “Even if we encounter an Elder with an immensely powerful mind, the effects of any psi attacks against you will be minimal.”

In a few minutes the team passed through a metallic membrane, leaving behind the dinosaur environment for another cityscape. Haphazardly-placed metal arches with yellow-orange gelatinous substances hanging from the apexes filled the streets.

Text appeared above Bright One’s transport craft. The lifepod area is just ahead.

The transport craft led the party along the perimeter of the city, keeping close to the bulkheads.

Unfortunately, the Argonauts didn’t realize it, but they were about to face yet another attack.

One that would see their future perhaps irreparably altered.

fifteen

There were a lot of the insect-like robots here, Rade noticed: the machines responsible for allowing the consciousnesses of those Elder who had given up their bodies to achieve corporeal form.

The silver-hulled robots roved between the buildings in small bands, as if searching for something.

Three of those groups abruptly abandoned what they were doing to converge upon Rade and his companions.

Words appeared above the transport craft. Don’t be alarmed.

Small weapons turrets unfolded from the heads of the robots as they advanced.

“Um, I think we should be alarmed, boss,” TJ said. “Look.”

Highlighted shapes overlaid Rade’s vision, located near the center of the city, where the roving gangs of robots had originated. He zoomed in and realized those shapes were the wreckages of transport pods similar to what Bright One piloted. Rade could see the blackened bodies of dead Elder within.

“Argonauts, shields in place!” Rade said. “Surus, Harlequin, protect Bright One!”

Surus and Harlequin positioned themselves between the robots and Bright One’s craft, and swiveled their shields into place.

Rade and the remaining Argonauts deployed their shields and also swung them toward the incoming robots.

“Keep advancing!” Rade said. “Let’s get to the lifepods!” He wasn’t sure how to convey the message to Bright One, given that Harlequin had returned to his cockpit, but the Elder must have understood the urgency because he continued advancing along the perimeter, leading the rest of the party along the outer bulkhead as the robots continued to close.

“We’re taking laser fire!” TJ said.

“Status on shields, Electron,” Rade said.

“Shields are holding across the unit...” the Hoplite’s AI said.

“Do we return fire?” Tahoe asked.

“Hold,” Rade said. He didn’t want to shoot back unless he really had to.

“Laser fire,” Lui said. “That’s actually a relief. I was expecting some sort of particle beam attack, given the tech the Mahasattva used against us during their invasion of Earth. Tech they supposedly stole from the Elder.”

“They did steal it,” Surus said. “But at this point in their history, it seems the Elder haven’t invested much time and energy into weapons technology. That will obviously change in the future.”

“Give them a few million years,” Tahoe said.

Text appeared above Bright One’s craft. This is not possible. These robots are the direct reflection of those of my people who have chosen to inject their consciousness into the nexus. They should not be attacking us.

“Bright Dude, I think your detection tech doesn’t work worth squat,” Bender said. “Obviously the Phant got in.”

“He can’t hear you,” Fret said. “Harlequin’s stopped typing out messages.”

“I know that!” Bender said. “Doofus.”

“Then why say it?” Fret said.

“‘Cuz you’re my bitch?” Bender said.

“Shields are down to fifty percent integrity across the unit,” Electron announced.

“Okay, we’re going to have to return fire,” Rade said. “Argonauts, you know what to do.” Rade held the shield some distance away from his cockpit, to give the hatch room to open. “Electron, you’re in control.”

“Got it,” Electron said. “Good luck out there.”

“I don’t believe in luck,” Rade said as he emerged from the opening cockpit.

He grabbed the laser rifle from the storage compartment and clambered around to the back of the mech via the rungs on the torso. He swung up into the passenger seat above the jumpjets and, staying low, he aimed his rifle over the metal head, past the notch in the top center of the shield.

He scanned the targeting reticle over the street beyond, and one of the robots passed into his line of sight. He knew none of the other Argonauts had acquired the same target because otherwise it would have been highlighted by a dashed blue outline.

He ran the crosshairs over the horned plates of the metal abdomen and thorax, and across the sharp spikes protruding from the joints on the legs, until the reticle was over the head. He aligned it with one of the golden eyes and squeezed the trigger.

The robot dropped.

All too easy.

Other silver-hulled machines in the three approaching groups fell as more Argonauts emerged and opened fire with their rifles.

Bender was humming something. “Robot bugs,” he said over the comm. “Squashing me some robot buggies! Shooting my cum into those golden pussahs!”

The robots continued to return fire, but they became smart and started taking cover. Meanwhile Rade and his Argonauts did likewise, moving their Hoplites behind the closest arch.

One of the robots stepped out into the open.

“Rade Galaal,” the robot announced via hidden speakers.

“I think that one’s trying to talk to you, boss,” Manic said.

“It has to be the Phant,” Rade said. How else would it know his name? “Nobody fire, I got this one.” Rade swiveled down to the storage compartment, retrieved the arcing stun weapon, and hauled himself back into the passenger seat. “Electron, lean past the edge of the building.”

The Hoplite complied, and Rade aimed into the notch on the shield and fired the stun weapon at the robot.

The plasma hit, but did not arc. The robot collapsed. Rade zoomed in, but he saw no sign of Phant possession: the telltale glowing condensation wasn’t present.

Another robot emerged from cover.

“You can’t stop me,” it said.

Rade fired the arcing weapon again, dropping that robot as well.

A third robot stepped from cover. “I have possessed the equivalent of the AI core. Stunning these minions will not harm me. I am inside all of them and none of them.”

“We have to get to that core or nexus or whatever it’s called,” Rade said over the comm to his Argonauts. “Then stun it, and maybe let Surus take over.”

“If we knew where the core was, then yes, we could,” Surus said.

Rade glanced at Harlequin, who was outside his mech like the rest of the party.

“Harlequin, have Bright One share the location of the core with Surus,” Rade said.

Harlequin retrieved the holographic device from the storage compartment of his mech and typed out a quick message.

The response came: I can lead you there. But it will require fighting our way through these robots. But I’m not sure it’s a good idea to stun the nexus. You may damage those of my kind who have uploaded their consciousnesses.

“Once we arrive, I could try wresting control of the nexus away from the Phant directly,” Surus said. “But it won’t be easy.”

“We’re probably going to have to stun the so-called nexus,” Rade said. “But don’t tell Bright One, Harlequin.” Rade saw that the two robots he had hit with the arcing weapon were beginning to recover.

“Terminate the two robots I stunned,” Rade ordered his Argonauts.

He realized that the remaining robots still in cover out there had ceased firing. He decided it might be worth it to engage the Phant, if only to stall the thing while his team moved into position to outflank the robots.

“Harlequin, you’re with me,” Rade said. “Watch my back and protect Bright One. Tahoe, split the rest of the team into two groups. Low-crawl out there and outflank those robots.”

“Will do,” Tahoe said. “But what are you going to do?”

“Talk to it,” Rade said. “Or rather, stall it.”

“Are you sure the Phant isn’t the one that’s stalling you?” Lui asked.

“I guess we’ll find out,” Rade said.

The Hoplites dropped and spread out, the Argonauts secured in the passenger seats. On the overhead map, Rade saw that several more red dots indicating enemy robots were converging on the area, as spotted by his team members. They were all taking cover behind the three areas where the existing robot groups were dug in. The robots were making outflanking them almost too easy. This Phant didn’t appear to have much experience with small unit tactics. Then again, it may have been a ruse to get the Argonauts to separate. 

Rade glanced at Harlequin. “Transcribe everything for Bright One. I want him to hear every word.” Then he activated his external speakers and boosted the volume so that his next words sounded like they were spoken over a megaphone. “What do you want?”

“Nothing, and everything,” the robot said. “You probably don’t remember me, but we’ve met before.”

“Oh really?” Rade said. “And when was that?”

“During what you call the First Alien War,” the robot said.

“I faced a lot of Phants during that war,” Rade said. “They were all faceless, disembodied things. Of course I’m not going to remember you.”

“Oh, but I had a face,” the robot said. “I was the one named ‘The Guide.’ Zhidao.”

“Zhidao,” Rade echoed. The name took a moment to tug at his memory. And then he had it: during the First Alien War, Rade was held captive aboard a Sino-Korean frigate the Phant had commandeered. Zhidao had summoned Rade to his presence on the bridge, and given him a message to share with the rest of humanity: in exchange for the surrender of Earth and all human colonies, Zhidao promised that twenty percent of humankind would be spared if they yielded, while the rest would perish, reduced to geronium feed.

It was not a surrender humanity accepted.

“I remember you well enough,” Rade said. “Tell me, why are you here? How did you know you would find the Elder, sixty-five million years in Earth’s past?”

“Since you will never return to your time period, I suppose it doesn’t matter if I reveal this to you,” Zhidao said. “I spent many years hidden on Earth after the First Alien War. I found myself fascinated by the Chicxulub impact crater in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, and spent much time organizing digs there. Unfortunately, I never really found anything. But I had certain informants placed throughout the archeology world, and was one of the first to hear of a potentially exciting new find by a team in Texas, roughly three thousand kilometers away from the impact crater.

“I assumed control of the dig by becoming the biggest financial backer. The archeologists had been digging through the thin layer of clay present in the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, a sedimentary layer rich in Iridium deposited by the asteroid that created the Chicxulub impact crater. That boundary also marks the extinction of the ancient organics that walked your planet—the dinosaurs—in what you humans call the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. The archeologists had discovered fossil evidence of a strange creature beneath that layer, unlike any dinosaur they had ever seen before. It was an Elder, of course. The team also exhumed the small transport craft the Elder had been piloting when he died.

“I suppressed the news of this discovery by silencing all of those involved. I realized, based upon what I knew of the ancient Elder, that they must have come to Earth with the intention of studying the dinosaurs, perhaps seeking to preserve some specimens before the extinction event. I used advanced radiometric dating to gauge the age of the Elder transport craft, and used that information to inform my first trips back through time.”

“First trips?” Rade said. “How many trips have you made since taking the Time Selector from us?”

“I have made nine trips back in time, including the current one where you ambushed me the moment I arrived,” Zhidao said. “I used the first six to confirm the exact date of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. The seventh trip, I traveled back to five years before the current time, to explore the Elder vessel. Yes, they have been here for at least five years. I suppose it isn’t easy to load all those countless dinosaur species aboard a starship.”

“Nine trips?” Rade said. “But you were only a few minutes ahead of us.”

“Time travel is instantaneous, as far as the present is concerned,” Zhidao said. “Each trip took less than a microsecond in the present. I was able to reset the Selector and engage in my nine trips under a span of two minutes.”

“Flanking teams are in place,” Tahoe sent over the comm.

Rade glanced at his overhead map. The blue dots of the two teams Tahoe had dispatched were hidden on either side of the three arches that sheltered the robots. 

“Hold,” Rade told his friend. Then he reactivated his external speakers to address Zhidao: “Where did you find an Acceptor compatible with the Time Selector?”

“Our hive had a time-travel capable Acceptor in its possession,” Zhidao said. “I had it transported off the mothership before humanity destroyed the vessel, along with an ordinary Acceptor, and hid them in a storage facility on a Sino-Korean colony. I couldn’t use them, of course... I needed an appropriate Time Selector. The years passed, and I waited patiently for something—anything—to turn up. And then, fifteen years later, imagine my delight when I infiltrated the base of the Green who calls herself Surus, and discovered she had a Time Selector in her possession. I placed the ordinary Acceptor on Earth, near the dig in Texas where the Elder fossil was discovered. I hired mercenaries to transport the time-travel capable Acceptor, instructing them to track your vessel until I ordered them to engage. Finally, I arranged transportation on your starship itself, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

“When you got here,” Rade said, “how did you defeat the defenses the Elder had in place throughout their ship?”

“So many questions!” Zhidao replied. “The short answer is, they didn’t have any defenses, at least not at first. During my seventh trip, to five years before now, I spent two years hidden among the Elder, learning their systems, and familiarizing myself with their technology as much as I was able. In that visit, I discovered the Elder had none of the protective measures they had developed in later ages to prevent a Phant from assuming control of their vessel. Imagine my delight.

“My eighth trip was another exploratory mission, to two years ago. But while investigating the Elder vessel to confirm that all of the fail safes I had incorporated remained undetected, I became aware that the Elder were in the process of installing sensors capable of sensing my presence. I surmised that you must have managed to warn them. I went about disabling those sensors before the Elder finished them, using everything I had learned about these aliens from my previous visit, and I set up a spoofing system. I also made a hole in the shielding they were developing to protect their equivalent of your AI core, and I programmed said core to conceal that vulnerability.”

“Tell me how you’re going to stop the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event?” Rade said. “And prevent the dinosaurs from dying out?”

“Ahh,” Zhidao said. “Well that, my old friend, is something you will simply have to wait and see. I can’t reveal all my deceits. Rest assured, you won’t have long to wait. I’ll give you a hint: it involves using the Elder ship to destroy the asteroid that created the Chicxulub impact crater. Oops! I’ve just revealed it. I can’t help but gloat, I suppose. I wanted you to know who bested you; who destroyed humankind. But most of all, I wanted to stall you. Because you see, while we’ve been talking, the ship has been closing with that very same asteroid. I’m charging the ship’s weapon systems as we speak. Once I’ve destroyed it, the dinosaurs will never die out. And humanity will never come into existence.”

“The Elder won’t let you do this,” Rade said.

“But they will,” Zhidao said. “For you see, the Elder have lost all control of their ship.”

Rade glanced at Harlequin, who yet perched on the mech beside him. “Ask Bright One. Confirm this.”

Text appeared above Bright One’s craft. It’s true. We’ve lost control of the nexus, and hence our ship. We still have read-only access to several of our external sensing components. The entity is indeed heading toward the asteroid, and our weapons are charging.

“Enjoy staying here in the past for the rest of your days, short as they will be,” Zhidao said.

“Even if you succeed, the Elder will help us fix this,” Rade said.

“They won’t,” Zhidao said. “If you think the Elder will help you populate the planet with humans, you are sadly mistaken. They have a strict non-interference policy with the worlds they visit. They’ll never allow you to populate the Earth, not even with clones. The very fact that you are here, trying to stop me, proves that. The dinosaurs will rule the Earth for the next sixty-five million years. Perhaps they will evolve into a space faring Tech Class III race. Perhaps not. I suppose I will find out when I return. Either way, the Phants will arrive shortly thereafter and kill them all.”

“And what if they end up becoming Tech Class V?” Rade asked. “A race to contend with?”

“We have beaten Tech Class Vs,” Zhidao said. “So that does not worry me. Besides, such a small percentage of races ever reach that technological level. It requires a favorable allocation of resources, galactic positioning, and time. Given the location of Earth, and the fact that the dinosaurs only have sixty-five million years to mature to Tech Class V, the odds are infinitesimal.”

The insectile robot began retreating toward cover. “Farewell, Rade Galaal. We will not meet again. If my robots don’t destroy you, the Elder crew will. I’ve arranged it so that you look like the guilty party in regards to the loss of the nexus. Consider it a last, sweet parting gift. Humanity should have accepted the offer of surrender while they had the chance in the First Alien War. Now, your species will never even exist.”

sixteen

Rade centered the targeting reticle of his rifle over the retreating robot Zhidao used as his puppet. He aimed at the head.

“Flanking teams, open fire,” Rade ordered.

Rade squeezed the trigger and Zhidao’s robot collapsed.

The other Argonauts attacked from their outflanking positions, and after ten minutes the team had eliminated them all.

“Harlequin, tell Bright One he has to lead us to the AI core,” Rade said.

The reply came instantaneously. This way.

The tentacled transport craft cut rapidly between the arches, heading toward the bulkhead on the far side. The Argonauts formed a protective escort around the vehicle.

“So much for all the sensors Bright One put in place to detect the Phant,” Tahoe said. “Harlequin, ask him if Surus told him Zhidao would sneak aboard undetected anyway.”

She warned me this would happen, yes, but I saw no evidence of any tampering. I ran the simulated tests regularly, and they seemed to be working perfectly. I even installed new detectors every few of your weeks. I realize now none of my hard work mattered. If Zhidao was able to effect change in the nexus itself, as he claims, there would be nothing I could do. Perhaps not any of us. I realize that now. The nexus runs this ship, and our lives. If it was compromised...

“Convenient of you to realize that now,” Fret said. “Surus, when you go back, you really have to warn him to keep an eye on the nexus next time.”

“I’ll do my best,” Surus said.

More robots intercepted them, pinning down the team until dealt with. The Argonauts were caught in the open once, and Bright One dropped his vessel to the deck, allowing the Hoplite shields to protect him.

Elder transport pods also joined in the fray, as Zhidao predicted. Those particular tangos fired lasers that protruded from the gunship-like turrets on either side of their pods. The key in those situations was to fire at a spot just underneath the cockpit, which Bright One had revealed harbored the local equivalent of an AI core. A hit there would bring the pod crashing down. Also, the Argonauts used to their advantage the fact that the insectile robots and transport pods engaged one another whenever they made contact: the men would sometimes lead the two disparate groups of enemies together so that they would fight, and then either pick off the enemies while they were distracted, or go around them.

Rade remained in the passenger seat of Electron for the duration of the fighting, keeping his rifle aimed through the top notch in the shield. The ballistic metals were rapidly being eaten away by the enemy attacks, so that across the team, shield integrity had fallen to a low of twenty percent.

During a lull in the fighting, Rade, growing frustrated by the frequency of the attacks, said: “Harlequin, get Bright One to talk to the crew. He has to convince them we haven’t caused this. He has to tell them we’re trying to stop the Phant.”

Text appeared above the transport craft. I have already tried. Apparently, as I worked closely with Surus when she was last here, my word holds little credence with the rest of the crew. They have branded me a traitor and collaborator.

Eventually, the team fought their way to the destination bulkhead past the buildings. By then the fighting had ceased, but the Argonauts still assumed a defensive half-circle around Bright One while his craft approached the shimmering wall. Half the Argonauts in that half-circle aimed their weapons outward, while the other half targeted the bulkhead itself.

“Harlequin, tell him to be careful,” Rade said. “In case an ambush awaits on the other side.”

Harlequin relayed the appropriate text.

The tentacles of the Elder craft extended, and when they touched the surface, the metal limbs unexpectedly rebounded.

Text appeared above the airborne vehicle: The membrane will not let me pass.

“I can help,” Surus sent over the comm. She huddled with Harlequin and the Elder. Rade watched their exchange, and Bright One seemed to be describing the inner workings of a hidden panel next to the door.

The team was attacked by more Elder, these ones emerging from the shimmering wall itself, and the Argonauts were forced to retreat to a nearby arch. While the two sides fought, Surus emerged from her host, Ms. Bounty, in liquid form, and flowed across the floor toward the bulkhead.

The opposing transport craft had taken cover behind the fallen vehicles of their comrades. They fired at Surus as she approached, but the lasers caused no damage to the Phant of course. She reached the bulkhead and seeped inside, ostensibly into the hidden panel.

Rade and the others defeated the last of the tangos as Surus re-emerged.

“Forward!” Rade ordered.

The team dashed from cover and met Surus along the way. She promptly flowed into the jumpsuit of Ms. Bounty.

“We should be able to pass through,” Surus said after returning to her host. “I followed Bright One’s instructions to the letter.”

Bright One approached the entrance and once more the team assumed defensive positions.

He extended the tentacles of his craft toward the shimmering bulkhead. This time, instead of bouncing away, the metal limbs passed through.

Holographic text appeared above the craft. It is clear on the other side.

“Let’s move!” Rade said.

The team rushed forward, three of them entering the shimmering portion at the same time as Bright One. Rade was among that vanguard.

His mech stood in a long silver tunnel. Blue streaks of light ran along the overhead and both bulkheads. Those lights pulsed at repeated intervals, giving the illusion the blue streaks were accelerating to infinity in the distance. 

The rest of the team emerged into the passageway behind, and the Hoplites quickly formed a protective envelope around the Elder craft. 

This is a gravity elevator, Bright One announced. It will take us directly to the nexus.

The silver tunnel became a blur around Rade as the world accelerated. His stomach got that queasy sensation of zero G, and he realized the feet of his Hoplite, and the others, had hovered off of the deck. He himself began to float upward in the mech’s passenger seat, and quickly secured himself with the straps.

“Whoa, is it just me, or are we moving really really fast?” Manic said.

The tunnel seemed to jerk away to the left or right, or up and down, every now and again, and Rade had the sensation of traveling through a labyrinth full of right-angle turns at extremely high speeds.

“It’s not you,” Bender said. “This is great.”

The blurry motion of the walls and the rapid turns continued unabated, so that soon the novelty wore off. At least for Rade.

“Keep watch for tangos,” Rade said. “Both ahead and behind.”

Aiming in the forward direction, Rade scanned the blurry passageway through the scope of his rifle, but saw nothing out there; glancing at his companions, he noticed half the Argonauts were observing in the same direction as him, while the remainder directed their rifles toward the rear.

Have to love a well-oiled team.

He returned his attention to his scope.

“Do you really think we’ll make it in time?” Fret asked.

“We’ll make it,” Rade said.

As the moments ticked past and the passageways continued to flow ceaselessly around them, Rade was beginning to realize just how big the ship was. Indeed, it was proving immense, especially if they were moving as fast as he thought they were.

“I’d almost give up pussy to ride this everyday,” Bender said as the wild ride continued. “Or chicken chips.”

“Pussy I can see,” Manic said. “But chicken chips? Come on, no way. That’s entirely unlike you.”

“You’re right,” Bender said. “I can go without pussy, but not chicken. Harley boy, when this is done, you and I are going Rex hunting.”

“What does that have to do with chicken?” Harlequin asked.

“They’re the distant ancestors of chickens, remember?” Bender said. “For an AI, you sure are dense. Like, moron level dense. Meet Harlequin, boys and girls, the AI designed by a two-year old.”

“If you’re going Rex hunting, at least make it a challenge,” Fret said. “Abandon the Hoplite. Go in your jumpsuit.”

“I’ll one up you on your challenge,” Bender said. “I’ll go hunting in my birthday suit.”

“Hey Manic, this is great,” Fret said. “It sounds like Bender is actually going to take us up on this challenge. We won’t have to worry about him and his foul, cussing mouth anymore! Soon, his chewed up body will be inside a T-Rex’s stomach, busy being digested!”

“Ha!” Bender said. “Like anyone cares whether I swear!”

“You do have to cut him some slack,” Manic said. “Bender’s pretty mellow compared to four years ago. It used to be all you’d hear from him was bitch bitch bitch pussy pussy pussy. Now it’s more like blah blah blah bitch blah blah blah pussy. He must be trying to behave himself in front of the kids. Except, there are no kids around—present company excluded. So I’m not sure why he’s mellowed out. But I admit, it’ll be nice to see him go out in style. That’s certainly a warriors death, facing a T-Rex in one’s birthday suit. I’ll light a candle in your memory or something bro.”

“Never happen, bitch,” Bender said. “I could kill a T-Rex with my bare hands if I wanted to.”

“You won’t have to,” TJ said. “As soon as the T-Rex sees the size of your schlong, it’s going to head for the hills in fright.”

“Damn right,” Bender said. “Someone who understands the power I’m packing between my legs.”

“Assuming the smell doesn’t kill the T-Rex first,” Fret quipped.

“You know, there’s something I’ve been wondering,” Manic said as the grav elevator continued to transport them through the twisting corridor. “Even if Zhidao succeeds in destroying the asteroid, I thought the universe absorbs changes? Like pebbles thrown into a river, as Surus told us.”

“Yes, but you forget the key waypoints I mentioned,” Surus said. “The asteroid impact is one of these. An event so huge, that changing it is the equivalent of sending down a rockslide to dam the river and redirect the flow of time.”

“Tangos ahead!” Lui announced.

seventeen

Rade had spotted them the same time Lui made the announcement: three Elder transport pods were floating in the tunnel toward them, about five hundred meters distant. The corridor abruptly swerved to the left, and then moved upward, before switching to the forward direction again.

The three tangos were still there, slightly closer, obviously on an intercept course. Why they were moving toward Rade and the others at such a slow speed, he wasn’t sure; he had the impression the enemy group was traveling in the same direction, and along the same path, as the Argonauts, though at a slightly slower speed. That was the only explanation. And it made some sense, since otherwise if the group was headed in the opposite direction, they would have passed by in a microsecond, perhaps smashing into the team and obliterating themselves and the Hoplites. Built-in safeties that were part of the grav elevator would have likely prevented such a scenario.

“Can we use our jumpjets?” Rade asked.

Bender’s mech, Juggernaut, jetted to the side while the tunnel continued to move past in a blur around them.

“Looks like it,” Bender said from the passenger seat.

“Then shield Bright One!” Rade said. “Electron, jet us into place.”

Since the high-speed journey through the passageways had first begun, the Hoplites had drifted apart, leaving Bright One’s vessel exposed; the mechs activated their jumpjets and returned to appropriate defensive positions.

Rade aimed through the top notch of his shield and fired at the three approaching transport pods.

He and the Argonauts quickly disabled the incoming vehicles, and soon the inactive machines floated by, bouncing off of the blurry walls.

In a surprise move, one of the glass cockpits opened up as it passed and a glowing Elder hurled itself at Rade, who was unready in the passenger seat of Electron.

An uncharacteristic sense of terror overcame Rade. He ducked as those bifurcated mandibles attempted to chomp into his helmet, and he rammed the butt of his rifle into the alien’s center of mass, landing a kick at the same instant. The Elder flew backward and Rade leveled his rifle at the thing and squeezed the trigger.

Glowing blood spurted into the air behind the alien like a long spear. The lifeless Elder drifted away down the tunnel, its arms and legs limply trailing along behind it. 

Rade sat back, his hands shaking badly.

“I believe you just experienced a psychic attack,” Surus said. “Though on a lesser scale to what I received earlier, since your mind is less compatible with these beings.”

“I was wondering why I felt so afraid,” Rade said.

“The Elder in question would have had to have an extremely powerful mind to achieve any influence over you,” Surus said. “The psi-shielding I developed to protect us against the Black Phants likely spared you from the full force of the assault.”

“There she goes, taking credit for something she can’t be sure of again,” Bender said.

“I take credit only for what I deserve,” Surus said.

“Well what you deserve is dinner when this is done,” Bender said. “My treat. We can dine on some roast T-Rex.”

“I’ll pass,” Surus said.

“What if we went out for French fries instead?” Bender pressed.

“No thanks,” Surus said.

“Milkshake?” Bender asked.

“Nope.”

“Hey Bender, your long game isn’t working out so well with her, is it?” Manic taunted.

“Yeah, shut it,” Bender said. “What do you know about game? You rub your clit in the corner all day.”

“Ha, that’s you you’re talking about,” Manic said.

“Harlequin, ask Bright One how many crew there are,” Lui said. “It feels like the resistance we’ve faced so far is a little weak for a ship this size.”

Despite the massive size of the ship, Bright One wrote, most of the vessel is automated. The organic Elder aboard number only two hundred. Including passengers and crew. With another three hundred machines ready to accept consciousnesses.

“So five hundred in total,” Lui said. “I would have expected at least four or five thousand.”

The walls abruptly solidified, their blur subsiding. Artificial gravity took hold once more and the Hoplites became planted firmly to the deck.

We’ve arrived, appeared the text above Bright One’s pod.

Rade and the others stood before yet another shimmering bulkhead. The surface seemed to flow, as if a thin layer of liquid continuously passed over the metal.

Bright One tentatively extended the hanging tendrils of his transport pod toward the wall; the appendages passed through without issue this time.

It’s clear inside, Bright One wrote. Which is odd. Ordinarily the captain would be present, along with the bridge crew. As well as a security team.

“Except the alien they faced was far from ordinary,” Rade said. “Did Surus ever show you she could incinerate organic matter with a touch?”

She did. We developed some defenses against that: these transport pods are protected, for example, using similar technology to what was supposed to shield the nexus. But the bridge crew would not have inhabited such vehicles, since they did not have the advance warning we expected.

“Despite that Surus specifically told you two years ago that this would happen...” Rade said.

As I mentioned, everything was in order. I checked and rechecked all systems. But with the nexus compromised, there was nothing we could do.

“Wait, if Zhidao is in control, shouldn’t there be guard troops or something here?” Fret said. “More of those machines? Or if he’s run out of those metal minions, I’m sure he could have used subterfuge to trick more of the ordinary Elder into surrounding the place. Zhidao knew we were coming. Why would he let us reach the AI core?”

“At the very least he should have locked us out,” Lui said. “Just like at the last membrane.”

“But he’s seen how easily we can bypass his locks,” TJ said.

“Not to mention how fast we can mow down his minion bitches,” Bender said.

“But still, it would slow us down,” Lui insisted.

“Stinks of a trap,” Tahoe agreed.

“Bender, Manic, enter on the backs of your mechs and clear the place,” Rade said.

A moment later Bender’s distorted voice came over the comm. “It’s clear. Place is dead on all bands, including LIDAR.”

Rade and the others entered with Bright One.

The team resided in a massive compartment. Giant red, floating cages bobbed up and down throughout, reminiscent of buckyballs in the way they formed three-dimensional polygons with several hexagonal and pentagonal faces. The joints were small circles, and the faces themselves were translucent, revealing insides filled with what seemed a yellow liquid. Various shapes floated in that liquid, including collections of tubules and spheres. At the center of each was a large translucent sphere containing a smaller globe nested within.

“Those almost look like animal cells,” Harlequin said. “Disregarding the outer shape, they’re filled with organelles, and even have nuclei.”

“They remind me more of buckyballs,” Manic said.

“You’re both fools,” Bender said. “They’re obviously soap bubbles.”

This is the nexus, Bright One wrote. Our AI core.

“So what do we do?” Rade said. “Randomly fire at these buckyballs?”

Rade aimed his arcing stun rifle at one of the three-dimensional objects and squeezed the trigger. It seemed to have no effect. There was certainly no purple condensation that appeared. And the produced plasma channel didn’t arc. He tried firing at another buckyball, but again nothing happened.

Text appeared above Bright One’s vehicle: Careful. You may damage those who have uploaded their consciousnesses to the nexus.

Rade glanced at the Elder’s pod. “My friend, Zhidao has damaged them already.”

Rade fired one more shot at a random buckyball and then slowly walked forward, scanning the different floating three-dimensional structures.

“I’m not sure it will be obvious which structure Zhidao inhabits,” Surus said. “The buckyballs are big enough to hide the essence of a Phant.”

“If you were a Phant, which one would you possess?” Rade asked her.

“If my understanding of this nexus is correct,” Surus said. “It shouldn’t matter. Possessing one would give access to all.”

“Maybe it’s time for you to interface, then,” Rade said. “If anything, you can tell us where Zhidao is hiding.”

“Let me converse with Bright One for a moment,” Surus said. She dismounted her passenger seat and grabbed the holographic communication device from Harlequin.

“Be quick about it,” Rade said. “We have an asteroid to save.”

The two exchanged a rapid series of messages, and then Surus returned the holographic device to Harlequin and activated her jetpack. She flew between the floating buckyballs.

“The plan is to give Bright One access to the nexus so that I don’t have to learn everything from scratch,” Surus said. “He has taught me enough to escalate his privileges. In theory.”

She landed on a centrally located buckyball and sat down on top of it.

Rade zoomed in and could see the green drops of the Phant’s native form seeping out of her jumpsuit, leaving behind Ms. Bounty. In moments the liquid intermingled with the yellow fluid inside the buckyball, and then proceeded toward the nucleus, where it vanished.

A message appeared above Bright One’s vehicle a moment later. Surus has obtained control of the nexus, and has upgraded my access privileges. He paused. It appears Zhidao is gone.

He paused again, longer.

Then: We are too late.

“What do you mean?” Rade asked, and Harlequin typed out the question.

Bright One’s reply stunned Rade to the core.

The asteroid has been destroyed by our weapons. There will be no extinction level event.

eighteen

Rade simply stared at Bright One’s pod.

“It was all for nothing,” Fret said. “Zhidao was right. We’re going to have to live out the rest of our days in the past. We can’t return, not now. If we do, as soon as that protective time bubble around the Acceptor vanishes, we’ll cease to exist. He won. Zhidao won.”

“Well that explains why we faced so little resistance getting here,” Lui said. “Zhidao expended most of his units trying to prevent us from reaching the grav elevator in the first place, and once he destroyed the asteroid, he no longer had any need to stay inside the nexus, or to defend it. He’s probably already on his way back to Earth.”

“There has to be something we can do,” Rade said. “Maybe we can lasso in another asteroid and throw it at Earth.”

“From the memories Surus has shared with me,” Ms. Bounty said over the comm from her position on top of the buckyball. “That won’t work. At least, not in the way you expect. There is only a short window of time in place before the universe resets. For the previous timeline to unfold exactly as before, the impact event has to take place within the next three hours, striking the same spot as the original asteroid, with the same energy. Otherwise the universe will reset, and an entirely different future will unfold. There will be no dinosaurs, yes. But there also will be no humans.”

Harlequin transcribed her words for Bright One.

“More paradoxical rules!” TJ said. “Why three hours and not three minutes, or three days, or three years?”

“I didn’t make up the rules,” Ms. Bounty said. “The universe did.”

“Harlequin, ask Bright One if we can lasso an asteroid in time,” Rade said.

I’m sorry, we won’t make the window. The closest suitable asteroid is ten hours away.

“So that’s it,” Fret said. “We’ve truly lost. Humankind will never exist. Love, hate, wars, peace, culture, our expansion to the stars, none of it will ever occur. The future is gone. History is a blank slate.”

“Shut up, you stupid bitch!” Bender said. “We’ll find a way. We always do. Right boss?”

Rade didn’t answer.

“Boss?” Bender pressed.

Rade stared at Bright One. “How long would your vessel take to return to Earth from its current position in the solar system?”

Less than an hour, Bright One wrote. But our weapon systems can’t duplicate the effects of an asteroid impact. Potentially we could attempt to aggravate a few volcanoes, spewing the skies with fumes to simulate the aftermath of the impact, but given what Surus just said, that won’t make history repeat itself.

“No, it won’t,” Rade said. “But I’m talking about something different. Something more drastic. What if we crashed the ship into the planet?”

There was silence across the team as the Argonauts digested Rade’s words.

“Think about it,” Rade said. “The mothership has got to be at least as big as the original asteroid, if not bigger. We’ll have to play with the speed until we match the impact energy, but otherwise, it should work.”

But what of the repercussions to my own kind? Bright one wrote. This could change my people’s future.

Rade glanced at Surus’ host, Ms. Bounty.

“Don’t the Elder have many ships in this region of the galaxy?” Ms. Bounty asked.

Yes.

“Then I believe this won’t have a big impact on the future of the Elder,” Ms. Bounty said. “This is not a key waypoint in your timeline. The universe will absorb the event. It might seem like a big change, but it is equivalent to dropping a boulder into the river of time: there will be perhaps large ramifications in the short term, but far downstream the effects will be negligible, if even noticed at all. Especially if you’re able to evacuate most of your crew.”

I am hesitant to agree to this. I am not certain the repercussions to my kind will be as small as you say: some of us can see these key waypoints you speak of, but I do not possess such power. Even so, you are right, if we can target the same spot on Earth as the asteroid, and alter our speed to mimic the impact energy of the original asteroid as closely as possible, then it could work. I will have Surus begin the necessary calculations in the nexus.

“Wait, such an impact could have ramifications for our own timeline, much farther down the road,” Harlequin said. “I’m not sure I agree with Ms. Bounty. We can’t be absolutely certain the universe will absorb everything. For example, we could be leaving remnants of alien tech on Earth for future archeological digs to uncover.”

Most of the ship will be incinerated, so little technology will survive.

“We already know an Elder transport pod survives,” Lui said. “Otherwise Zhidao would have never learned the Elder were here in the first place.”

This is true. And that cannot be changed, of course.

“What about the layer of Iridium that was cast into the atmosphere from the asteroid impact, forming the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, a geological signature present as a thin band of rock across the Earth?” Harlequin said. “It will no longer be present. Instead, we’ll have a layer of whatever substance the Elder mothership is composed of.”

I plan to send out a distress signal before impact. Within the next two hundred years, a salvage ship will arrive to collect the survivors, along with whatever wreckage remains of our ship and the technology it contains. I cannot promise we will recover everything, but hopefully it will be enough. When the vessel arrives, we can coat the surface of your world with Iridium via smaller, selective asteroid impacts spread out over many years. It should be enough to disguise those elements dispersed by the impact of the mothership.

My only regret is the loss of so much life aboard this ship. Not of the crew, but of the dinosaurs we have spent so many years collecting. The ark will be ruined. I will try to save as many of the eggs and embryos as possible before impact, by having some of my colleagues load them into free lifepods. But all of the adult specimens will be lost.

“Two hundred years until your salvage ship arrives,” TJ said. “That’s a long time to wait. What will you do in the meantime?”

The lifepods are equipped with hibernation chambers. So, like the eggs and embryos, we will hibernate.

“All right, if we’re going to do this, let’s do it,” Rade said. “Bright One, set a course for Earth and engage when ready.”

There is one small problem. Something I cannot handle from here.

“Oh?” Rade said.

The safety mechanisms of the engines prevent the ship from approaching a planet at too high a speed. You will have to make your way to our equivalent of engineering and disable the safeties. I will teach Surus how to do this.

“Will she be able to come with us?” Rade asked. “Or will you need Surus inside the nexus the whole time?”

No, now that I have control, she can leave as soon as I teach her what she needs to know. I am engaging with her now via my interface to the nexus.

“Good,” Rade said. “As soon as you teach her everything she needs to know, tell her to return to her host.”

Several moments passed. Finally a green liquid floated from the nucleus of the buckyball far above, traveled through the interstitial fluid to the outer layer, and then began seeping into the jumpsuit of Ms. Bounty, who still resided on top of the structure.

A moment later Ms. Bounty stood up. “I’m back.” Surus activated her jetpack and thrust down to the passenger seat of her mech, Sprint, who was waiting with the team below.

I just detected a lifepod jettisoning. Given its current trajectory, it will land close to our original launch site. It has to be Zhidao.

“Can you destroy it?” Rade asked.

Done.

“That won’t stop Zhidao,” Surus said. “With the lifepod gone, he’ll still proceed on the same heading and speed toward Earth, and when he impacts, he’ll make his way back to the recall site. He will no doubt repossess Jackal along the way, and use the Centurion to expedite his return to the site. We know that the other two Centurions with him do not make it back, likely succumbing to dinosaur attacks.”

“That’s out of our hands now,” Rade said. “We have a ship to crash.”

I have already set the necessary course and speed, based on Surus’ calculations, Bright One wrote. I have also ordered the surviving Elder aboard to evacuate in the lifepods. Those who have transferred their consciousnesses to the nexus are to proceed to robot bodies and evacuate as well. Hopefully that will mean less resistance for your team on the way to the engineering section.

I have also attempted to ease the restrictions on any membrane hatches along the way. The grav elevator is malfunctioning in the area near engineering—Zhidao’s doing, no doubt. You will have to cross one of the dinosaur environments. The glass passageway leading through said environment has been trampled to a pulp, and my readings tell me there are many carnivores within. So it will be dangerous. Afterwards, Surus will lead your team to the closest evac area outside engineering. I have marked that area as inaccessible to the rest of the crew, so there should be enough lifepods for your team when you arrive.

You have fifty minutes before the engine safeties kick in. And another hour after that before we impact the planet. Using the displacement coordinates Surus provided me with, I have programmed the lifepods closest to the engineering section to land near your recall site. The lifepods will travel much faster than our ship, whose momentum has been tuned to provide an impact energy equivalent to the asteroid, so you will arrive some time before the impact.

“What was that about displacement coordinates?” Manic asked Surus.

“I recorded the trek from the recall site to the Elder vessel, and memorized that data before entering the nexus,” she replied. “Bright One was able to correlate the recall point based on that.”

“So we have about an hour and fifty minutes before impact,” Tahoe said. “Assuming we successfully disengage the safeties.”

“Less,” Rade said. “Check your countdown. We have only an hour and twenty minutes to return to the Acceptor site, at least if we hope to make the-six hour recall window.”

“Told you we should have programmed the Time Selector to give us more time,” Fret said.

“Yeah, and if we did that,” Bender said, “then we’d be stuck on the planet while the damn ship impacted, fool!”

“Oh yeah...” Fret said.

“Wait, this Bright One isn’t going to give the other Elder a say in this?” TJ asked. “He’s just going to crash and incinerate his own ship? Can we be sure Bright One will follow through? What if he’s lying?”

Rade glanced at Harlequin. “Ask him how we know we can trust him. He did say he was hesitant to agree, after all.”

I have made up my mind, and I will follow through. You have my word. I have realized it is essentially our fault that humanity’s future has been lost. We must set this right. The rest of the crew has been begging me to abort, but I have refused, and locked down the incoming grav elevators to prevent any of them from reaching the nexus. Their only recourse is to evacuate. I will stay here and fly the ship all the way down, ensuring that none attempt to alter our flight path.

“Stay here?” TJ said. “He’s going to die for us? I’m not sure I believe it. What would you do, boss, if an alien boarded the Argonaut, and told you everything we just told this Elder? Would you really destroy your own ship, and go down with it?”

“It depends,” Rade said. “If one of them appeared two years earlier and warned me of what would happen, I would be more inclined to believe them. And if two years later another alien arrived, took control of my ship, and destroyed an asteroid on a collision course with their homeworld, preventing the first aliens from ever developing, I’d probably do it, yes. I’d hate to be responsible for the loss of an entire species.” He turned toward Harlequin. “Ask Bright One if there is any way he can eject before impact.”

Bright One’s reply came a moment later. No. As I said, I must fly the ship all the way down. A few of the crew will no doubt remain aboard and attempt to stop me. I must stay in the nexus and keep it secure.

“All right,” Rade said. “Then I thank you for doing this.”

Go! Bright One wrote. Deactivate the engine safeties while there is still time!

Rade and the Argonauts retreated to the shimmering bulkhead and stepped through into the grav elevator tunnel beyond, where the blue lights continually pulsed in streaks down the cylindrical bulkheads.

“What now?” Lui said when nothing happened after several moments.

“I presume Bright One will activate the elevator and bring us as close to the engineering section as he is able?” Rade said.

Sure enough, the mechs floated off the deck and the walls became a blur. Rade was once more forced to secure himself to the passenger seat with the straps.

He was in awe yet again at how big the ship really was as the passageway continued to twist and turn around them. Those walls blurred past to the left and right, occasionally swerving up and down as the group switched direction. He wondered what could power such an immense system, but he realized if the Elder were capable of creating the wormholes called Slipstreams, they probably weren’t lacking for power.

The walls abruptly came to a halt, the blurs turning into solid masses, and the party dropped down to the deck as the artificial gravity reasserted itself. The team stood before a shimmering bulkhead, while the tunnel extended seemingly to infinity behind them.

“Are we where we should be?” Rade asked Surus.

“I believe so,” Surus said. “There should be a dinosaur environment on the other side, and beyond it, the engineering section.”

“Harlequin, Bender, your mechs go first,” Rade said. “Clear it.”

The designated pair remained in the passenger seats of their respective Hoplites as the AIs conveyed the mechs through the shimmering bulkhead.

Harlequin’s voice came distorted over the comm a moment later: “It’s clear. There’s definitely a dinosaur environment here.”

“Team, forward!” Rade said.

nineteen

Rade and the others passed through the membrane and joined Harlequin and Bender.

Rade stood within one of the prepared dinosaur environments. The vast compartment had been designed to resemble a rainforest, with well-spaced trees whose expansive boughs created a canopy that shielded the sky above, cloaking the view in perpetual twilight. Rade was reminded of the starting point of his team on Earth, except the ground here was far mossier, and he could see several swamps and marshes ahead.

There was a glass tunnel around them that originally had been meant to shield Elder watchers and scientists, but it ended in a series of jagged edges after only a few meters. The broken rim was covered in red blood. He could see several trampled, shattered fragments ahead, where the remainder of the conduit formed a path of crushed glass through the jungle, the trail occasionally submerging beneath the different marshlands. He zoomed in on that trail in the distance, but couldn’t see the far bulkhead beyond the jungle trees. That meant the compartment was probably big. Very big.

“We follow the trail of broken glass,” Surus said.

“Activate LIDAR,” Rade said.

The team advanced, stepping over the mossy ground, circumventing most swamps but wading through them with the mechs when necessary. The glass tunnel proved intact in places, sometimes extending for several hundred meters, before inevitably falling into disrepair once more, the large fragments sprinkling the terrain.

Rade sometimes saw the wreckages of insect-like Elder robots scattered next to the tubes, along with crashed transport craft, and he realized that these Elder had been attempting to herd the dinosaurs, but failed, probably when Zhidao intervened; the Phant probably turned them into bait—especially the robots, which he could easily take over. Either that, or he simply had the machines attack the organic Elders. Without anyone to herd them, hundreds of dinosaurs had probably been driven out through the membranes and into the uninhabitable portions of the ship by the onrush of predators. Hundreds more had likely succumbed to those same predators while still inside the breathable environments.  

Sure enough, Rade spotted the sporadic decomposing, half-eaten Titanosaur body in the distance. Usually carnivores such as Utahraptors or Velociraptors were dining upon any such corpses, the unhappy result of the membranes between environments failing, thanks to Zhidao. Then again, maybe the Elder had purposely allowed some herbivores into this environment, so that the carnivores could feed on their natural food, because somehow Rade couldn’t imagine Utahraptors or T-Rexes eating out of tin cans.

Then again, the Hoplites were essentially big walking tin cans to some of these creatures anyway.

The Argonauts always gave any sighted carnivores a wide berth. While it was doubtful the dinos would attack while feeding, Rade thought it best not to provoke them in any manner. According to his embedded database, these types of dinosaurs were theorized to be extremely territorial.

“Remember the time we went to that pride parade, Bender?” Manic said at one point during the march. “Dressed in drag? Wearing lipstick, wigs, and dresses?”

“Ooo Bender,” TJ said. “I didn’t know you swung that way!”

“Oh yeah, baby, you’re missing out on the wild side,” Bender said. “I’m massaging my nipples right now just thinking about it.”

“Actually,” Manic said. “We went because we were trying to pick up lesbian chicks.”

“Sounds like a wasted effort to me!” Fret said.

“Dude, you got no comprehension of how things work in the real world,” Bender said. “None at all. See, lesbian chicks, they dig me. Why? We have an understanding. They like women. I like women. And guess what? I got myself a threesome out of that parade, with two girls I could have sworn looked like twins, all dressed in matching white, with bright green eyes and dark hair worn in sweet-ass pony-tails. Mmm-hmm, those were the days.”

“And here you are now, mech-deep in dinosaur feces, sixty-five million years before humankind even evolved,” Fret said.

“It is a bit of doozy, ain’t it?” Bender said. “But that’s why we’re here. Doing our part to re-invent pussy. If I had a choice about it, I’d try to add in more features. Little textures to make the pussy experience more pleasurable. And tight. They all gots to be tight.”

“Sounds like you’re an ass man,” Fret said.

“Why, you offerin’?” Bender quipped.

Eventually the rainforest gave way to a wide plain. Rade suspected he was seeing the breakdown between environments directly, and that there was supposed to be a membrane separating forest from plain. On the far side, he could see the eave of another thick rainforest stretching from horizon to horizon. Likely yet a third environment that had been mixed with the others.

The glass fragments continued across those plains, though the tunnel proved intact in several places. Dead robots and Elder craft were once more scattered along the perimeter.

Hundreds of humps dotted the grass on either flank of the broken tunnel. Rade realized those humps belonged to reposing T-Rexes, whose individual members composed the biggest herd he had ever seen.

“That’s one big-ass herd of chickens,” Bender said.

“It’s like all the Rexes the Elder stored across environments have gathered, forming a single, large herd,” TJ said.

“That’s what happens when environmental separators go down,” Lui said.

“I thought the Elder were only collecting one or two pairs of each species,” Manic said. “This looks like a whole lot more than one or two pairs.”

“Actually,” Harlequin said. “There were likely more than a thousand T-Rex species near the end of the Cretaceous period. If you take a look at the members of this herd, you can see that none of them are precisely alike, as far as physical characteristics go. The plumages vary across the board. As does the size and shape of their heads. Some don’t even have any feathers. These Rexes are all cousins, no doubt. And can probably interbreed, producing fertile offspring.”

“That’s fascinating and all,” Fret said. “But how are we going to get across?”

“It looks like they’re sleeping,” Manic said. “So we can sneak across.”

“Not all of them are sleeping,” Lui said.

Rade saw that a few were indeed awake, licking at their feathers, scratching under their necks with their taloned feet, and so forth. He was reminded of large birds preening themselves.

“Maybe our future selves could lend a hand?” Fret said. “And teleport a couple of Hellfires here for our detonating pleasure? We just have to make a note to remind ourselves.”

“Impossible,” Lui said. “Considering that the destination Acceptor is on Earth, remember?”

“Well when we get back to the future, we could go back to Earth and move the Acceptor into deep space, placing it at this exact position!” Fret said. “Then we can send back whatever we want.”

“Ha,” Lui said. “Good luck with that.”

Rade studied the plains, but the herd seemed to cover the land all the way to either horizon. He zoomed in and realized that wasn’t true, as the humps seemed to end about two klicks in either direction.

“We could loop around their perimeter?” Tahoe said.

“That’s a fairly wide perimeter,” Lui said.

Rade glanced at the countdown he had set earlier. “There isn’t time. We only have twenty minutes before the safeties kick in and begin to decelerate the Elder ship. And another forty minutes after that before we have to be back at the recall site on Earth.”

“Jumpjet across them, then?” Manic said.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Bender said.

Rade checked the fuel levels. “Electron, do we have enough fuel across the unit to jet across the plains to those trees? At a height of say... twenty meters? Given current levels?”

“Not directly,” Electron said. “I would recommend planning a series of large, arcing hops over the plains. I have calculated seven different waypoints for those hops, based on herd density.”

On Rade’s HUD, several green arcs appeared in sequence, indicating the path the team would take across the plains, given the current distribution of tyrannosaurs. A distribution that was likely to change once the group began the crossing.

“You’ll have to update those waypoints in realtime,” Rade said. “As we jet over.”

“Of course,” Electron said.

“All right, Argonauts,” Rade said. “It looks like we have a plan.” He relayed the waypoints to his team. “Use your jumpjets, and follow the arcs to each waypoint. Bender, lead the way. Tahoe, arrange the marching order.”

“Yes boss!” Bender said. “Thank you boss.”

Juggernaut launched. A moment later a number appeared on Rade’s HUD, courtesy of Tahoe, indicating which order he was to follow the others.

The mechs of Lui and TJ arced into the air ahead of Rade, and then Electron took a running leap forward and activated jumpjets. Rade instinctively held on in the passenger seat, though he was already strapped into place.

Behind him, the remaining Hoplites followed.

Rade peered over the edge of the passenger area and noticed the T-Rexes were stirring below. Some had begun to mirror the flight of the Hoplites, and a few leaped up, snapping their jaws at the air in an attempt to snatch the mechs out of the sky.

Rade removed his seat strap so that he had freedom of motion and aimed his scope down at the T-Rexes. He targeted the eye region of one of them and squeezed the trigger. He repeated the act several times, blinding as many as he could. The other Argonauts did the same from their passenger seats, and the injuries caused the afflicted dinosaurs to howl madly, dropping out of the chase even though they all still had one eye remaining.

As the Hoplites began the descent phase of their arcs, Rade saw that some of the dinosaurs had already anticipated their landing, and were gathering in the formerly clear area of the first waypoint to await their meals.

“Don’t descend yet, don’t descend!” Rade instructed Electron as he swung his rifle around to bear on the T-Rexes ahead.

“I don’t intend to,” Electron replied.

Juggernaut maintained its altitude, and altered course, swinging to the left, heading toward a new waypoint. The targeted area was clear of dinosaurs for the time being. The closest herd members noticed the directional change, and were racing to intercept.

“Crafty bastards,” Lui said.

Rade’s mech touched down behind Lui’s and launched once more, heading for the next waypoint. Behind him, the trailing mechs narrowly avoided being chomped on by the T-Rexes, with Fret’s mech, on drag, forced to land farther ahead of the waypoint than the others. Other T-Rexes approaching from the opposite direction nearly cut him off, and Fret’s Hoplite barely jetted above those snapping jaws. Fret was firing his rifle the whole time, sometimes at almost point-blank range.

“Who the hell said this was a good idea again?” Fret exclaimed.

The party continued in that manner, hopping and arcing from waypoint to waypoint, slowly crossing the plains while the Argonaut passengers fired at the deadly carnosaurs. The Hoplite AIs avoided several more close calls, and soon the forest eaves were fast coming up. Rade spotted the nests of several pterosaurs on those canopies, and some of the winged dinosaurs were circling overhead. It was probably a good thing that Rade and the others wouldn’t be flying over that forest.

As the party members came arcing down at the final waypoint, which ended in front of the forest, Rade glanced at fuel levels across the party. There was enough for the Hoplites to make a few final short jumps. Perfect for fighting purposes, if it came to it.

“Keep LIDAR active,” Rade said as Electron followed Lui and Bender underneath the eaves of the forest, whose undergrowth proved thicker than the last jungle environment. “Let’s make sure no unexpected surprises are waiting for us in there.”

White three-dimensional outlines generated by the LIDAR overlaid his vision, appearing past the screen of shrubs and trunks ahead as photons from the different LIDAR beams scattered across all nearby surfaces, penetrating the thick forest. He saw the silhouettes of trees and smaller dinosaurs, including what appeared to be a herd of feathery, quadrupedal herbivores cautiously foraging half a klick ahead.

Rade returned his attention to the pursuing T-Rexes, and with the others he targeted the predators through the trees behind him, hitting them in the eyes and forcing them to drop out in agony.

“We’re dining on fricasseed eyeballs tonight, baby!” Bender said.

Despite the penetrative vision, the Hoplites occasionally tripped on various shrubs or logs embedded in the clinging foliage as they made their mad dash forward, causing enough noise to alert the entire forest to their presence. Rade heard a rumbling from ahead, and he knew the din had triggered the herbivore herd into stampeding.

Rade kept firing at the predators behind him, but unfortunately, because of the thick undergrowth, the T-Rexes were slowly gaining on the party.

“We’re going to have to stand and fight,” Tahoe said.

“We don’t have time!” Rade said.

“We got tangos ahead,” Lui said. “Airborne.”

Rade swung his rifle around in time to spot the blurs of motion falling from the branches overhead. Winged pterosaurs swooped past, colliding with several of the mechs. One of them struck Electron; the mech was sent reeling into a tree and Rade, because he had opened his strap, rolled free. He quickly activated his jetpack and returned to the passenger seat as Electron righted itself. Rade strapped himself in this time.

“Keep going!” Rade said. He aimed his rifle at the pterosaurs, trying to follow them as they swooped back up into the trees. One of them had snatched up Fret. Rade aimed at that particular winged reptile, but Fret dropped free a moment later when he fired his laser rifle at point blank range, and he jetted back to the party in his jumpsuit.

“More airborne tangos!” Lui said.

Rade opened his securing straps once more and swung his torso around to bring his rifle to bear. He tried to target the next wave, but they moved too fast.

However Electron and the other AIs were ready this time, and they sidestepped, bashing the creatures aside.

Unfortunately, more of the winged reptiles began dropping down from all sides, and soon the Hoplites were constantly bashing the airborne tangos while the human passengers struggled to fire their laser rifles at the things. 

“Why the hell are they bothering us, when they left the herbivores alone!” Fret said.

“Dunno!” Bender said. “Maybe they’re enamored with your sexy ass!”

Meanwhile, the massive herd of T-Rexes was rapidly closing with the party.

And time was quickly running out if the team wanted to disengage the safeties...

twenty

Rade made a choice.

“We only have a few more minutes to disable the safeties,” Rade said. “Surus, Bender, you’re with me. We’ll dismount our Hoplites, grab the holographic emitters from storage, and proceed on foot, invisible to the carnivores. The rest of you, activate your emitters as well, but remain here, invisible, with the mechs. Hoplites and men, stand your ground. Delay these dinosaurs while the three of us get away. Give us a five minute head start, then continue as fast as you can to the engineering section. The three of us will stop the engine’s safety mechanism from kicking in and wait for you. But don’t take too long, because we still have to make our way to the lifepods, reenter the atmosphere, and land. And we’ll only have about half an hour to do so. We’ll stay in contact for as long as we can. Surus, Bender, go!” He spoke his next words to his mech’s AI: “Fight well, Electron.”

“I always do,” Electron said.

Rade climbed down the rungs on the torso to the leg region as Electron drove away the next winged reptile attack. He opened up the storage compartment and removed the bulky holographic emitter from its rack. Electron leaped to the side suddenly, tearing Rade away, along with the emitter.

Rade landed next to a tree, underneath some foliage.

One of the winged reptiles spotted him. It landed on the ground nearby and waddled toward him.

Rade clambered to his feet and dodged behind the tree.

The emitter was like a metal knapsack. Rade hastily threw it over the harness of his jumpsuit and snapped it into place across his chest. It automatically drew power from the suit, and the remote interface icon appeared on his HUD. Rade accessed it and activated the emitter. Instantly he vanished from the visual spectrum.

The winged reptile darted around the tree trunk, and seemed both confused and disappointed to find nothing there. It turned around to return to the fighting when a sizzle of smoke erupted from its right eye, and it dropped dead to the ground.

Rade lowered his rifle and proceeded through the trees, following the ruined glass tunnel. He could see Surus and Bender ahead of him, visible thanks to the blue outline of their jumpsuits as transmitted by their Implants. The noise cancelers built into the emitters blocked most of the sounds the three made as they trampled the undergrowth.

The trio moved at a gait just below a run. Any faster and the occlusion calculators in the holographic emitters would suffer from a buildup of computation errors, causing the jumpsuits to flash into existence every few paces—the underlying camouflage of the jumpsuits would still be active of course, but the movements would draw the eye. The noise-masking would intermittently fail at high speeds as well, making running a bad idea.

Rade glanced at his overhead map.

The blue dots of the Argonauts behind him were surrounded by the red indicators of the pterosaurs; the swarm of dots representing the T-Rex herd arrived momentarily, further entrenching the team. Rade could only imagine what the fighting must be like back there. The team members had retreated into the trees, where they could better defend at least. And while the men would be hidden from view once they equipped the holographic emitters, still some of the Argonauts could die back there.

Rade put that thought out of his mind.

I have a world to save.

Rade, Bender and Surus continued forward, oblivious to the eyes and ears of the surrounding wildlife. Utahraptors crouched behind trees, watching the fighting from afar, waiting to dine on whatever carcasses or easy prey were left behind by the T-Rexes and pterosaurs. If any of the nearby dinosaurs had watched carefully, they would have spotted the footsteps in the moss, or the bending of foliage as the invisible trio passed. In fact, one Utahraptor’s head shot toward Rade when he broke off a branch close to where the carnosaur was hiding. Rade momentarily froze; the dinosaur looked around, searching for the source of the disturbance, but quickly concluded that it was nothing and returned its attention to the fighting.  

Rade took another step, disturbing a big centipede; the large insect wriggled right in front of the Utahraptor. The predator immediately pounced on it and in seconds the squirming, multi-legged worm was in its mouth: the carnosaur chomped it down in two quick bites.

Rade quickly moved on. He routinely glanced at the overhead map as he ran, eager for updates on the fight, but the dots froze as he reached the extreme range of the adhoc network formed by the comm nodes.

“We just lost communication with our brothers,” Bender said.

“I know,” Rade said.

“It’s just you and I, and Surus now,” Bender said. “As it was meant to be. Threesome time!”

The trio reached the edge of a large swamp at least a kilometer wide. It must have been a temporary marsh or floodplain, because the canopy remained relatively unbroken above, with tall tree trunks protruding from the water’s surface.

The broken glass fragments ended at the edge, with a partially intact portion of the tunnel emerging on the far side. A huge log provided a limited path across the clouded waters, ending near the middle of the marsh.

“We take the log,” Rade said over the comm. “And when we reach the middle, we jet the rest of the way across.”

Several nasty looking alligators basked on the shoreline, though there was little light that penetrated through the dense canopy above. They were about five times as big as modern alligators, and easily dwarfed Rade and his two companions.

“The crocs look docile enough...” Bender said as they picked their way between the gators.

“Not to me,” Surus said.

“Nice crocs!” Bender mocked the oblivious creatures as he snuck past them. “That’s a good croc.”

Some of the reptiles lay with their mouths open, and smaller, cat-sized dinos slinked within the massive jaws, picking away meat that had lodged between the teeth.

“Anyone interested in some live floss?” Bender quipped.

Bender took the lead, jetting onto the log. Rade followed him and hurried across with Surus just behind.

Insects flitted to and fro above the swamp on either side. They looked like big mosquitoes. Larger dragonflies occasionally swooped past, ripping the mosquitoes out of the sky with their long legs. Those dragonflies in turn were eaten by birds.

“When life feels like a video game...” Bender said. “Though I admit I was expecting the dragonflies to be bigger.”

“Go back another two hundred and fifty million years and you’ll get your wish,” Surus said.

The power output of the jumpsuits didn’t allow for LIDAR that was strong enough to penetrate very deep into the murky liquid, but it did allow Rade to spot various smaller salamander-shaped dinosaurs swimming about close to the surface.

Though the gently-sloping log was relatively wide, the moss-covered surface proved slippery in areas, and it took all of Rade’s concentration not to lose his balance and fall off.

As the trio neared the log’s terminus, where the surface descended into the water, Bender lost his balance. He slipped, striking the log before falling into the swamp. The noise cancellers weren’t able to mask the sound entirely, and Rade heard the splash clearly.

But Rade had no time to consider the consequences, because the resulting vibration passed through the log and caused him to lose his own balance and plunge over the edge as well. He fired his jetpack too late, and found himself surfacing from the dark liquid a moment later. The jetpack was able to withstand flood conditions, of course, and he quickly pulled himself back onto the log with a few rapid spurts.

Bender had already crawled onto the log beside him.

“Damn it,” Bender said. “That hurt.”

Rade saw that Surus had acted faster than he did, because she was safely descending from where she had jetted upward to escape the vibration.

Rade heard splashes coming from the shoreline behind him, and he realized that all of the alligators had vanished into the marsh. No doubt the disturbances caused by he and Bender had attracted them. Rade heard more sloshing coming from up ahead, and he knew previously unnoticed alligators had entered the waters from the far shore as well.

“I should warn you,” Surus said. “I didn’t design the emitters to be waterproof.”

“Now you tell us!” Bender said.

Rade scrambled to his feet; he noticed Bender’s jumpsuit was flashing into and out of existence. Rade glanced down and realized his own jumpsuit was doing the same. In moments the winking ceased and the two became permanently visible.

“Uh,” Bender said. “We’re in deep doo-doo now, boss.”

twenty-one

We cross now, via jetpacks!” Rade said. “Surus, take the lead! Bender and I will draw off any pursuers if we have to.” 

Surus jetted forward high above the swamp, and Rade and Bender followed.

Rade occasionally had to apply ventral and dorsal thrust to avoid the branches that protruded from nearby boles. In the swamp below, the LIDAR band gave him glimpses of the approaching gators as they passed through the clouded waters, their white, wireframe outlines sliding into and out of view.

Several of the beasts surfaced, allowing their eyes to scan the swamp for their prey.

Without warning an alligator emerged, leaping upward to snap at Rade. He frantically jetted upward, narrowly avoiding the deadly jaws. He did crash into and break away a large branch, which he threw down at the descending gator.

“The water has to be shallow,” Bender said. “No way the bitches could leap that high otherwise.”

“Bender, fly at my height,” Rade said.

Bender joined him. The two repeatedly crashed into small branches from the trees, but at least they were out of reach of the alligators.

Ahead, Surus landed and began racing away through the foliage, following the glass tube that had emerged from the swamp. Rade and Bender touched down on the far shore shortly thereafter and raced after her.

The conduit quickly became rubble as they proceeded further, and Rade spotted the wreckages of downed Elder transport craft. Small Velociraptors were dining on the slain occupants: Elder who no longer glowed.

Rade heard crashing in the undergrowth behind him: several of the giant alligators had slithered ashore and were pursuing.

“Damn gators are fast!” Bender said.

“If they’re anything like modern alligators, they’ll soon lose interest,” Surus said. “They don’t stray far from their feeding grounds.”

Rade continued to run, barreling over the undergrowth and logs and any other obstacles that got in his way. He disturbed a nest of small mammals—opossums, he thought—and the small creatures scattered. His Implant labeled them as Didelphodons.

Rade glanced over his shoulder. Only one of the alligators diverted to chase the mammals while the remainder didn’t let up the main pursuit. They seemed to be gaining on the party. “Guess they’re not like modern alligators!”

“Do we stay and fight?” Bender asked. “Delay them for Surus?”

“We can’t,” Rade said. “That means death. Keep running. Use your jetpack to boost your speed.”

Rade began selectively activating his jetpack so that he bounded forward with each step. Bender copied him, as did Surus, who kept her twenty meter lead.

A towering T-Rex appeared ahead, blocking the way. Three others were behind it. Apparently some members of the T-Rex herd had already looped around to outflank the Hoplites. Or perhaps they had never joined the main herd in the first place. Either way, they were obviously delighted to find these unexpected treats racing their way.

“I got this,” Surus said.

She faded into existence as she deactivated the emitters. A green glow appeared on the gloves of her jumpsuit, and she jetted directly at the closest T-Rex. When she touched it, the dinosaur winked out of existence with a loud poof. She swerved left, right, and then left again, incinerating the remaining three carnosaurs in turn.

The glow on the gloves receded as the alien returned to her host.

“That’s my girl!” Bender said. “Wait a sec, why weren’t you doing that shit all this time? Like back there on those plains?”

“I wouldn’t want to deprive you boys of all your fun,” Surus replied.

“Damn it,” Bender said. “If you didn’t have such a fine ass, I’d knock you up. Er, I mean knock you out. Well, I’d knock you up, too...”

“I was actually about to help back there,” Surus said. “But then Rade gave the order to abandon the mechs. And if you want the truth, communications, or the lack thereof, is one of the main reasons I haven’t been doing this more often—since I can’t speak with the rest of you when I revert to Phant form, I consider incineration a last resort.”

She reactivated the holographic emitter, vanishing from the visual band, replaced by the blue outline only the Argonauts could see. 

“Maybe we should send Surus back to clean up the twenty alligators pursuing us,” Bender said.

Rade glanced at the countdown in the lower right of his HUD.

“No time,” Rade said. “Every second counts now. We have five minutes to disable the engine safeties.”

With the extra speed boost the jetpacks were able to lend to their step, the trio slowly pulled ahead of the alligators.

“I’ve reached the membrane!” Surus announced. “Unfortunately, it’s going to take me a minute to authorize our passage. Bright One was supposed to ease our passage through these airlocks, but he missed this one it seems.”

“All right,” Rade said. “Bender, jet up into the trees. Time for some target practice.”

Rade fired his jetpack and headed upward, steering toward a large bole. He landed in the upper branches and then aimed down at the alligators that quickly crowded around the base. The gators were ramming into the tree, trying to knock Rade from the branches. More of them had gathered around another trunk nearby, where Bender had taken up residence in the canopy. All of the attention was on the two of them, as Surus remained hidden on the visual light band.

Rade aimed at the alligators. Targeting an eye, he squeezed the trigger. Like the T-Rexes, either the laser intensity wasn’t enough to penetrate far enough into the brain, or the brain was too big for the tiny beam to cause a killing blow, because while the gator turned away, writhing in pain, it didn’t die, and a moment later rejoined the attack with renewed vigor. Plasma and gore oozed sickly from the closed eyelid.

Rade shot out the alligator’s second eye; once more it went into a dance of pain, and after a moment began blindly fumbling about, moving away from the tree.

“Whoops!” Bender said. “That’s one less croc to deal with!”

Rade and Bender continued to fire, and soon the alligators realized this was a battle they weren’t going to win. All it took was a few of them to retreat, causing an all out rout as the remainder stampeded off.

“That’s right, bitches!” Bender said. “You don’t mess with the Argonauts!”

Rade glanced at his overhead map, hoping that the Hoplites had moved within signal range by then, but the blue dots of the others were still stuck out there in the rainforest, frozen and not updating.

Come on, guys.

“I’m through,” Surus said. “Let’s go!”

Rade jetted down, landing outside the jagged edges of the glass tube that was still intact around the airlock. The selective membrane—a black, shimmering bulkhead—was visible at the far end of the tube. That same bulkhead extended left, right, and directly upward, marking the end of this portion of the environmental compartment. It didn’t shimmer like the area inside the glass tube, though. 

Surus’ blue outline stood waiting in front of the membrane, and she passed beyond as Rade and Bender approached. Rade grabbed the PASS device from his utility belt and dropped it on the ground. The signal from the Personal Alert Safety System was his way of letting the team know he had safely reached this portion of the compartment.

He stepped through with Bender and emerged in a passage whose walls were made of a gray-green metal. Long, horizontal blue lights were embedded in the bulkheads, providing illumination.

“Good job,” Rade said.

“Thank you,” Surus said. She had disabled her holographic emitter, and showed up once more on the visible band. “Though unfortunately, now the dinosaurs will be able to pass through as well.”

Bender glanced back. “Good thing there was no one on our tail.”

“But the same won’t be true of the other Hoplites,” Surus said. “Who will no doubt be coming in ‘hot,’ as you call it.”

“Not as hot as you,” Bender said.

They proceeded forward at a run, passing several shimmering bulkhead sections. Surus finally stopped in front of one of them, and extended a testing hand, but her glove would not penetrate.

“Bright One missed this one, too, it seems,” she said.

“The bright bastard has missed a lot of them, hasn’t he?” Bender said.

Surus held up her hand to a solid portion of the bulkhead and allowed the green liquid of her alien form to seep into a hidden panel.

A moment later the glowing droplets reemerged and were absorbed into her glove.

“I’m through,” Surus said.

“That was quick,” Rade said.

“Yes,” Surus replied. “Bright One helped me this time.”

Beyond, the engineering section was a long, narrow compartment filled with several smaller quadrilateral structures limned with blue lights. These structures protruded from the deck and overhead at overlapping angles, slightly offset from one another, so that when Rade gazed into the room, he was reminded almost of a sideways jaw fitted with blunt teeth.

Surus wended between the blunt structures, making her way to the center of the room. She appeared to be counting the structures, and stopped when she reached the number she was looking for.

She extended her glove toward the blunt quadrilateral that descended from the overhead there, and when she touched it, her green essence flowed into the object.

Rade watched the countdown on his overhead display reach zero. “Come on, Surus, where are you?”

Rade waited several more seconds. A minute. Finally green condensation appeared on the surface and flowed into Ms. Bounty’s glove.

“It’s done,” Surus said. “I have disengaged the safeties.”

“You were a minute late,” Rade said.

“While I was inside, I conferred with Bright One via the nexus,” Surus said. “He has already countered the effects of the momentary deceleration. The Elder ship will collide with the same energy as the asteroid in precisely one hour, the same time as the original was scheduled to arrive. Our original timeline will revert.”

“That’s great, but we only have half an hour to reach the recall site,” Rade said. “You said you could take us to those lifepods? How far are they from the engine section?”

“Not far,” Surus said. “If we wait by the earlier membrane for the Hoplites, we should be able to reach it in five minutes.”

“Now we just have to hope the Hoplites arrive in a timely manner,” Bender said.

“We might have to go look for them,” Rade said.

They returned to the gray-green metal passageway and retreated to the shimmering membrane that led to the swamp environment. They waited just outside.

Rade glanced at his overhead map but the Hoplites still weren’t in range, and hadn’t moved from their original positions.

“I’m going in,” Rade said. “The signal will be slightly weaker here because of the membrane.”

“No,” Surus said. “It should be me. I can keep you updated.”

She vanished from view as she activated her emitter and was replaced by the blue outline.

“All right, go ahead,” Rade told her.

She stepped through the shimmering bulkhead.

“Do you read?” Rade asked. He could still see her indicator on the overhead map, as shown on the other side of the airlock.

“I’m here,” her distorted voice said. “Their locations haven’t updated yet.”

Rade glanced at the timer as the seconds ticked down. They had twenty-five minutes left until the recall took place.

Rade kept his laser rifle aimed down the alien passageway, while Bender watched the membrane behind them.

“You know,” Bender said over a private channel. “Between you and me, I’m fine if we don’t make it and have to live out the rest of our days in Dino Land.”

“Those days won’t be very long,” Rade said. “Assuming we actually get out of here. If we make it to the Acceptor site but miss the actual recall, well, I’m fairly sure we won’t be far enough away to survive, even if we’re three thousand kilometers distant, as Zhidao hinted. Like Bright One told us earlier, debris from the impact will be superheated to incandescence when it falls back down, literally broiling the surface below. The tectonic shockwaves from the impact will also trigger massive earthquakes. And we’ll have a megatsunami to deal with. None of that will be very fun.”

“Maybe I can convince Surus to give me a quick one before impact?” Bender said hopefully.

“Probably not,” Rade said.

“Well if we don’t make it in time,” Bender said, “we can look for a cave or something to hide in.”

“Sure,” Rade said.

“Either way it doesn’t matter,” Bender said, “Because I guess what I’m trying to say is: even if we don’t make it, I’m glad we saved humanity. The cost was worth it, to me. More than worth it. What’s my life compared to the lives of billions? Even if we had to trade the lives of an equal number of dinosaurs to save humanity.”

“I’m glad, too,” Rade said. “Though we came within a hair of losing.”

“A red cunt hair?” Bender said.

“Of course,” Rade told him.

“I admit to being a little disappointed I couldn’t try out some T-Rex meat,” Bender said. “I was hoping to cut myself a slab and sell it online when we got back.” He let his voice move into his high pitched Mr. Quiggles persona that always solicited giggles from the twins. “‘And you thought chicken chips were good? Wait till you try T-Rex chips boys and girls!’ Finest delicacy around. They’re Mr. Quiggles approved!”

“You really miss the twins, don’t you?” Rade said.

“You got me,” Bender said.

“Maybe you should settle down,” Rade said. “Find a good woman.”

“Ha? Me?” Bender said. “You got the wrong guy. Sure, I’ve met a few good women, and they’ve almost converted me from bachelorhood. Almost. In fact, if Surus would ever let me in, I’d probably choose her. And on the plus side, I’d never have to worry about her not taking her contraceptive meds. But as for having kids of my own? Why bother when I got yours? You handle all the crappy parts that come with having kids, the whining when they don’t get what they want, the worrying when they get sick or hurt, and so on, while I get to have them for all the good parts: teaching them how to fight. Telling them crude jokes. And generally corrupting them.”

Rade was staring at the overhead map as Bender spoke, so that when the blue dots of the Hoplites reappeared, he noticed immediately. Unfortunately, several red dots also materialized in pursuit.

“You might get to cut away your slab of T-Rex meat yet,” Rade said.

“The Argonauts have arrived,” Surus announced over the comm. “They’re coming in hot, as suspected.”

“We see them,” Rade said. “Mark off the location of the lifepods, if you don’t mind?”

A new waypoint appeared on his map, a short ways past engineering behind him. Since he hadn’t explored that area yet, the map depicted the surrounding region in black.

Rade confirmed that there were no red dots near Surus, which meant it was clear inside—her Implant would have marked any nearby tangos she spotted.

Rade glanced at Bender. “Let’s get inside.”

He traversed the membrane and aimed his rifle into the rainforest beyond. Bender joined him. They stood beside the outline of Surus, who had similarly assumed a defensive stance.

He scanned the distant trees through his scope, and heard the Hoplites before he spotted them: the sound of big objects crashing through the undergrowth. And then he caught a glimpse of metal, and finally the welcome sight of a Hoplite war machine plowing through the branches.

Rade counted all the Hoplites and confirmed that the expected Argonauts were in the passenger seats, their holographic emitters still active. A glance at the status indicators of his HUD told him the health of the team members were all in the green. Several of the mechs had taken damage, however: there were dented cockpits and limp arms throughout the unit. Fret’s mech was missing its shield arm entirely. Tahoe’s walked with an obvious limp.

Even so, they were definitely a sight for sore eyes.

twenty-two

Welcome back, Argonauts,” Rade sent.

“It’s good to be here,” Tahoe said. “Though I can’t say the journey has been pleasant.”

“Yeah well, you’re not a moment too soon.” Rade glanced at the countdown. Twenty minutes left. “We’ve shut down the safeties. The Elder mothership will impact on schedule.”

“Glad to hear that all of this wasn’t for nothing,” Lui said.

A distant rumbling rose in volume, slowly consuming the crashing sounds made by the Hoplites. It was as if a herd of ten thousand oxen pursued. Or five hundred T-Rexes. 

Rade could see the forerunners then. Different species of T-Rexes plowed across the trail created by the Hoplites, racing after the mechs in outrage. Occasionally one of them was hit in the eye when an Argonaut fired from a passenger seat; sometimes the victim dropped out of the pursuit, but more often than not it continued running forward in a blind rage—literally, for those that had lost both eyes. Sometimes the fully blind T-Rexes plowed headfirst into a tree and knocked themselves unconscious. The others from the herd merely leaped over or trampled them.

“Why would they pursue all the way through the rainforest?” Bender said.

“Dunno,” Rade said. “My guess is wild game must be becoming fairly thin on the ground. After the compartments mixed, they would have had one big hunt. And after that, slim pickings.”

“Yeah but they should be nowhere near starving at this point,” Bender said. “That mixing wouldn’t have happened too long ago.”

“Then maybe instincts are driving them,” Rade said. “Maybe they’ll chase anything that runs.”

“Like lions in Africa?” Bender said.

“Exactly like that,” Rade said.

“Go and bring up your mother country, huh, Bender?” Manic said over the comm.

“Dude, I’ve only been to Africa once,” Bender said. “But come here and I’ll let you experience my mother country first hand.”

Rade scooped up his PASS device and reattached it to his utility belt—that was one less futuristic item with the potential to be rediscovered by archeologists sixty-five million years from now. Then again, why was he worried about a small thing like a PASS when there was an entire starship filled with alien technology about to impact? He just had to hope the Elder salvage ship did as thorough a cleanup job as Bright One promised.

“Let’s go!” Rade dove through the membrane when the team arrived. The Hoplites were able to fit two-by-two in the gray-green passageway. Rade quickly jetted up into the unoccupied passenger seat of Electron and resumed his place, strapping himself in. Bender and Surus clambered into the passenger seats of their own mechs.

“Welcome back, boss,” Electron said.

“Did you miss me in the long time we were parted?” Rade asked.

“Of course,” Electron replied. “Like a nail misses a hammer.”

“That little, huh?” Rade gazed down his laser rifle and aimed past the Hoplites that succeeded his own.

“The membrane is going to stop these tyrant lizards from pursuing us, right?” Fret said from the drag position.

“Nope,” Rade said. “But most of them won’t fit in here.”

He had his scope aimed at the shimmering wall beyond Fret’s mech, and was the first to spot a T-Rex as it emerged. This was a smaller carnosaur and it readily squeezed into the passageway.

“I thought you said they wouldn’t fit!” Fret said.

“I said most of them,” Rade retorted.

The T-Rex already had one eye closed and exuding plasma. Rade aimed at the opposite eye and fired. It must have been a lucky shot, because the T-Rex immediately toppled dead to the deck. Either that, or the creature was small enough for the second laser beam to cause enough damage to incapacitate it.

More carnosaurs emerged. These ones were larger, and they struggled to fit the relatively tight passageway, long legs folded up against their bodies. When the foremost reached the body of the fallen T-Rex, it was unable to squeeze past. The one just behind was shoving against it, slowly forcing the pinned T-Rex and the corpse forward.

Fret blinded the living T-Rex. The trapped dinosaur howled in agony, but otherwise remained pinned. It slowly slid forward as apparently more T-Rexes combined their efforts to push from behind, but moved too slowly to be of any consequence.

That T-Rex began to hack horribly, and then its head dropped. It stopped moving forward as the dinosaurs concealed behind it obviously suffered the same fate.

“Guess they forgot to check whether the air was breathable!” Bender said. “Ha! Morons. They’re not so smart after all, huh Lui?”

“Smarter than you,” Manic said.

“I wasn’t even talking to you!” Bender said. “Boss, I’ll be right back. I want to carve a piece of meat from that T-Rex for my—”

“No time,” Rade said. “Argonauts, stow your emitters and load into your cockpits!”

Rade swung down from the passenger seat, removed his holographic emitter, and threw it into the storage compartment—the added bulk would interfere with the operation of the internal actuators in the cockpit. The device was shorted out anyway.

He leaped into the open hatch of the cockpit and the inner cocoon enveloped him, allowing him to resume control.

“Nice to have you behind the wheel once again,” Electron said.

“Is it?” Rade said. “I thought you’d be a little disappointed about giving up the reins, control freak that you are. Especially given the earlier hammer and nail comment.”

“Only a little,” Electron said.

The team grew closer to the evacuation area Surus had marked on the map.

A high-pitched klaxon began to sound repeatedly in the background. If this were the Argonaut, Rade had no doubt what Bax would be saying right now: “Warning. Planetary impact imminent. Warning. Please proceed to the nearest lifepod.”

A large Utahraptor burst from a small membrane on the left side of the passage and leaped onto the torso of the lead mech. Lui shrugged off the feathered creature and trampled its head underfoot. Gray matter splattered the wall.

“You bird brain!” Bender commented.

The team reached the digitally marked membrane, and the cockpit on Surus’ mech swung open so that she could hack the unit. But Lui walked right through the shimmering bulkhead before she could get to work.

“Looks like Bright One came through for us,” Rade sent.

“Indeed.” Surus retreated into her cockpit.

Rade entered the membrane and found himself in a corridor that barely fit his mech. Long bars of blue light spanned the overhead. Alcoves opened off on either side, and within Rade could see claustrophobic pods. Bright One had mentioned that various types of lifepods were available, some of which were capable of holding their mechs, some not. Apparently, these particular pods belonged to the latter group, because the Hoplites were too big to enter any of them.

So much for not leaving any of our tech behind in the past.

Again he scolded himself for even worrying about it.

“The hell!” Fret said. “That alien tricked us! These pods aren’t big enough to hold our Hoplites!”

“He never said the lifepods near engineering would fit them,” Surus said. “We’ll just have to make do.”

“Abandon your mechs,” Rade said. “And collect the AI cores. That’s all we can do.”

“See you on the other side,” Electron told Rade.

“You can count on it,” Rade replied.

The hatch fell open and Rade hurried outside. He knelt, wrapping his fingers around the handle of the AI core as Electron shut down, and then he twisted it to the left and carefully withdrew the long cylinder that contained the neural network of the AI. He secured it to his harness with the free straps, and then leaped down to the deck.

“Bring your holographic emitters,” Rade said. “If they’re still working.”

The team members grabbed the holographic emitters from the compartments and attached them, since their jumpsuits would still fit in the pods with the slightly added bulk.

Rade left his emitter in the mech, since the device wasn’t working, and stared into the nearest alcove.

“Is there anything special we need to do to launch these?” Rade asked Surus.

“No,” Surus replied. “Once you’re inside, the lifepod should automatically launch, heading to the preprogrammed coordinates. When it lands, the door will open on its own.”

“Good,” Rade said. “Argonauts, evac!”

He waited for the others to enter their pods. As the klaxon continued to sound, one by one the team members entered, and double doors sealed them into the pods—inner and outer hatches. Through the translucent portals of those outer hatches, Rade watched as the small vehicles jettisoned in turn. The Elder could have used their membrane tech here to prevent the compartment from depressurizing, but it was probably safer to employ an actual physical hatch. Then again, with their selective membrane tech, maybe it didn’t matter. He couldn’t say why the alien designers did what they did.

Everyone evacuated except for Tahoe and Bender, who remained standing near the far side of the compartment.

“What are you waiting for?” Rade said.

“For you,” Tahoe said.

Rade shook his head, then dove into the pod he had selected for himself.

The double door sealed behind him. He stared through the portal and into the passageway. A moment later a Utahraptor came into view, passing through the compartment’s entrance membrane. It appeared to be struggling for air, and smashed against the glass portal of Rade’s outer hatch, causing cracks to appear.

And then Rade was sent reeling away from the ship as his pod jettisoned. Through his local window, Rade watched as the stranded Utahraptor continued to pound against the receding glass until it became too small to discern against the backdrop of the mothership. 

Rade glanced at his overhead map and confirmed, to his relief, that Tahoe and Bender had entered their respective pods and jettisoned. He was worried that there might not have been enough lifepods for them or something.

Rade stared out through the portal: the lifepod slowly rotated to face away from the mothership, so that soon he saw only deep space. The spiraling stars made him feel slightly dizzy. He looked away, taking a moment to examine his immediate surroundings.

The pod interior was made of the same smooth, gray-green metal as the passageways of the Elder mothership, though it also contained a hint of gold, like the hull of that mothership. There was no place to sit, which didn’t matter anyway in the zero gravity of space. There were no obvious features, though he saw the outline of a panel to his right. It wasn’t obvious how to open the panel—not that he wanted to touch anything and risk throwing the lifepod off course.

“Yo yo yo,” Bender said. “Any of you beyotches read me?”

“We read you,” Lui said. “We’ve got good reception out here. It is space, after all.”

“So we’re almost done this thing,” Bender said. “We’ve saved humanity. Now all we got to do is save ourselves.”

“What if the mothership doesn’t hit the Earth?” Fret said. “Or what if the impact doesn’t change anything, and we return to find the timeline still messed up?”

“The timeline will revert,” Rade said. “Like Bender mentioned, we’ve saved humanity.”

“That’ll be one small consolation, if we don’t make it,” Fret said.

“How are we doing for time?” Manic said.

“Bro, haven’t you set up your own countdown?” Bender said.

“Yeah, but I want to make sure it matches everyone else,” Manic said.

“Ten minutes until recall,” Rade said.

“We’re going to be cutting it close,” Tahoe said.

“I’ll say,” Manic commented.

“Since there’s a chance we’re not going to make it, isn’t this one of those times where we’re all supposed to reveal our deepest, darkest secrets?” TJ said.

“Yeah I got one,” Bender said. “Manic, ever since I saw your naked butt in bootcamp, I’ve dreamed of being with you.”

“I think he meant serious secrets,” Manic said.

“That is serious,” Bender said. “Okay, fine, I’m not gay.”

“Yeah you are,” Manic said.

“Only for you,” Bender said.

“I have a secret,” Surus said.

The comm line went dead silent in anticipation.

“I’ve been helping humanity for selfish reasons,” Surus continued. “Because I don’t want to lose any of you. I can’t imagine living my life the way it was before. Alone. A living entity, shunned by its own race, belonging to no cause. But with you, I’ve found my purpose.”

“You’ll never be alone,” Harlequin said over the comm. “Not ever again. And neither will I. The Argonauts are the best thing that ever happened to us.”

“Wait a second, you’re saying, you’re only saving humanity because you don’t want to lose us?” Bender said. “I’m touched, Surus my girl. Does that mean you’re finally ready to have slipping and sliding, hot and passionate alien sex with me?”

“No,” Surus said.

twenty-three

Rade’s pod continued to revolve, so that soon it was facing the Earth, which ate up the stars underneath him. The curvature of the planet was obvious, though the roundness became less pronounced as the craft neared the point of atmospheric reentry. And then the window turned orange as the flames of reentry engulfed the pod.

The fire subsided and the craft pierced the cloud cover below. The land came up fast.

“Now this is my kind of ride, baby!” Bender said.

“Uh!” Fret said. “Please tell me these things have some kind of airbrakes!”

The pod zoomed over a forest canopy that extended for kilometers in all directions, eating up the horizon. It began to rapidly decelerate, then plunged through the canopy. The craft struck several trees on the way down, rebounding from half of them, but Rade felt nothing. The thing obviously had strong inertial dampeners, otherwise he would have probably been liquefied by now, considering the earlier extreme deceleration.

And then the lifepod was on the ground, nestled amid fronds that reminded him of bracken. He lay prostrate, staring up through the window at the ferns waving in the breeze.

We’ve survived.

While he waited for the hatch to open, Rade glanced at his overhead map, which showed his location in relation to the recall site. There were no positional satellites in orbit to give him his precise coordinates, of course; the map had calculated his location via the built-in accelerometers and gyroscopes in his suit, which kept track of the spatial displacement since his arrival. The internal sensors would compare topography features captured from his surroundings to corroborate his position, but that would only happen once he returned to terrain he had passed over before. Thankfully, most of the surroundings were mapped already, since the team had made a thorough search of the immediate area surrounding the recall site shortly after their arrival in the past. Most of the men had landed in mapped areas, and their Implants shared any updated positional information, therefore Rade was confident his location was accurate. Based on that information, he was reportedly seven hundred meters from his destination.

The blue dots of the others showed that they too had mostly fallen within a five hundred meter radius of the recall site, which resided roughly at the center of the scattered team.

Rade returned his attention to the hatch above him. It still hadn’t opened.

“Anyone else stuck in their pods?” Lui said.

“Mine opened,” Surus said.

“As did mine,” TJ said.

“Mine didn’t either, Lui,” Rade said. “I’ll be remedying that shortly.”

Rade dialed up his strength settings and began punching at the translucent window above him. The material spidered, and after several blows he managed to break it. Glass shards landed on his chest piece. He cleared the jagged edges along the frame with a few follow-up punches and hand motions, taking care not to puncture his gloves, and then he pulled himself through the opening.

“We only got seven minutes,” Tahoe said.

“We used to run three-minute klicks in training,” Lui said.

“That was on a clear beach,” Tahoe said. “Not a jungle crowded with thick foliage.”

“But you forget we have strength-enhancing jumpsuits,” Rade said. “Let’s go! Oh and, if your holographic emitters are working, it’s probably a good idea to activate them.”

“The noise maskers from those emitters won’t cancel out the racket of our passage,” Lui said.

“And at the speeds we’ll be running,” Tahoe said. “We’ll fade in and out of view anyway.”

“Even so, if you need stealth, all you have to do is stop,” Rade said.

Though it was too bad the team didn’t have time to stop.

The cylinder of Electron’s AI core, hanging from his harness, bounced against Rade’s jumpsuit as he ran. He pressed an arm against his chest to steady the motion.

The Argonauts began to converge as they approached the recall site from all sides. Bender and Lui joined Rade momentarily. Lui appeared as a blue outline, since his holographic emitter was active, but as Tahoe had predicted the emitter failed intermittently because of the high speed Lui was running at, causing his jumpsuit to flicker into and out of existence. Bender, like Rade, didn’t have a working emitter, so he remained visible at all times.

On the overhead map, Rade saw that similar small fire teams had formed as the Argonauts continued on multiple approach vectors toward the target.

“I thought the pods were supposed to drop us off directly at the recall site!” Fret complained over the comm.

“We are fairly close, you have to admit,” Lui said.

“There are cumulative margins of errors to account for,” Harlequin said. “The margin of error in Surus’ calculated displacement from the recall site. The margin of error in the pod navigation system. The margin of error introduced by the trees we hit during our landing.”

“You and your margins of error,” Bender said. “When we get back, I’ll show you a margin of error. My fist is going to hit you in the nose. Plus or minus five centimeters.”

The going was slower than Rade would have liked, given the terrain. Occasionally the ground became so spongy that it swallowed his boots to the ankles. And the undergrowth was extremely thick in places, especially close to the tree trunks, where he had to brush aside cable-sized lianas that drooped from the branches above in addition to the fronds and other foliage below. His Hoplite would have plowed through all that easily, of course; it was too bad the Argonauts had to leave their mechs behind. As it was, they would be lucky to reach the recall site with time to spare.

He had to give his jumpsuit some credit, though—it did protect him from the welts and cuts he would have otherwise acquired from all the branches and shrubs that whipped at his faceplate.

Unfortunately, the racket the team made while crashing through the jungle attracted some unwanted visitors.

When Rade was two hundred meters from the recall site, he spotted a blur of color through the undergrowth to his right.

“Tangos!” Rade dropped just in time: a brightly plumaged Utahraptor hurtled through the air where he had been standing, its claws tearing through the foliage.

Rade swung his rifle toward the raptor and squeezed the trigger, downing the creature. He started scrambling to his feet, but noticed more of the man-sized predators racing toward his position. Bender and Lui opened fire, taking down the forerunners. Rade joined in, and between them they downed all six.

Rade heard squawks in the distance, along with a clicking sound, as of vocal cords clapping together. Or perhaps talons.

“Move!” Rade said. “We don’t have time to dig in and fight!”

He raced through the jungle as fast as he was able, almost tripping on the undergrowth a few times. He kept the rear and side camera views active in the upper right of his vision, and constantly glanced at his overhead map for signs of detected tangos.

Eight red dots appeared on the map, closing in about fifty meters behind them. They were following the path that Rade and his companions trampled through the jungle.

“Pick it up!” Rade said. Over the general comm, he announced: “We got Utahraptors on our tail.”

“We’ll be ready for them,” TJ said. His group had already reached the target. “It’s clear over here.”

The remaining fire teams arrived almost simultaneously to Rade’s, and the Argonauts all hurried onto the recall site, which Rade had painted as a digital blue disk on the ground six hours earlier. They didn’t have to crowd as close together to cover the digitally marked area as when they had first arrived, since they were no longer inside mechs.

The other team members beside him winked out of view entirely, now that they were motionless, and were only visible to Rade as blue outlines. To the incoming carnosaurs, it would appear as if only Bender and Rade faced them.

Rade glanced at his countdown. The team had arrived with only moments to spare.

“Twenty seconds, people,” Rade said.

He aimed at the incoming Utahraptors, careful to keep his rifle within the volumetric confines of the digital disk. He wasn’t sure it mattered if the weapon was outside the area when the timer hit zero, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

He shot down one of the carnivores, while the other Argonauts got the remainder. But then more emerged from the foliage, coming in from all sides.

“Bitches think they’ve outflanked us,” Bender said. “They think there’s only us two.”

“Guess we’ll have to surprise them,” Rade said.

The team members opened fire, taking down the next wave, but then another group rushed them.

“Where the hell are they coming from!” Manic said. “It’s like an endless stream of fodder. Don’t they get it?” 

“For fodder, some of them are getting awfully close to striking us down!” Fret said.

Rade barely terminated his latest attacker, and the fallen carnivore partially slid onto the digital disk underneath him.

“Come on, come on, recall already,” TJ said.

Rade watched the timer tick down.

Three...

Two...

One...

The jungle remained intact around them.

“It didn’t work,” Fret said.

Momentarily distracted by the count, Rade was completely unprepared when a Utahraptor emerged from behind a nearby bole and leaped at him with its jaws gaping...

And then Rade was standing aboard the steel-walled cargo bay of the Sino-Korean mercenary ship.

He slumped slightly, relieved.

“We did it,” Bender said, laughing. “My bitches, my lovely goddamn bitches, we did it!”

Rade thought he heard a sob come from his friend.

Rade himself felt like crying in relief, but there was no time to celebrate, not yet.

“Fret, get in touch with the captain,” Rade said. “Tell me the timeline has reset.”

“He’s detecting human vessels out there, system-wide, in the same positions they were in before the time bubble formed,” Fret said. “The Argonaut is back. As are the Marauders. It looks like the timeline has been restored. We really have won!”

Rade slumped entirely then, and took three wobbly steps to the nearby bulkhead. He collapsed against the bulkhead, sitting back.

The others appeared on the visual band one by one as they deactivated their holographic emitters.

“Fret, ask the captain how much time has passed since we stepped onto the Acceptor?” Rade said.

“According to the captain, no time at all,” Fret replied. “He was watching us via the cargo bay cameras. He saw our Hoplites move onto the Acceptor after Surus finished with the pedestal, and a moment later only you and Bender remained, standing in your jumpsuits. Then the rest of us came into view, he says, also in our jumpsuits. He wants to know what happened to our Hoplites.”

“Tell him we got them right here.” Rade tapped the AI core hanging from his harness. “Ask him to tap in Shaw for me, please.”

A moment later Fret said: “I got Shaw here. I’m routing her to you.”

“So how did it go?” Shaw said. Her video image appeared in the upper right of his HUD. She was dressed in fatigues, and had her hair in a ponytail, exactly as before he left her.

Rade ignored the question. He felt an immense relief, but then he had a sudden fear that the timeline had been altered, despite her appearance, and despite Surus’ reassurances that the universe would absorb the profusion of minor changes the team had caused sixty-five million years ago.

“How are the twins?” he asked, his voice trembling.

“They’re fine, my love,” Shaw said. “It’s all right now.”

That meant they still had twins. So far so good. But what if he didn’t know them anymore? What if they were... different?

“Alex and Sil are okay?” Rade pressed. Would their names even be the same?

“Yes yes,” Shaw said. “Nothing happened the few minutes while you were gone.”

“Few minutes...” Rade said. He was completely out of it, just filled with joy. He still had two children named Alex and Sil. He couldn’t find the words to express his happiness. He didn’t even know where to begin with Shaw, in regards to telling her what had happened. Not that he even felt like telling her, right then. All he did was smile, his eyes glistening.

“Are you all right?” Shaw said.

“Never been better,” Rade said. “I’ll tell you what happened in a bit. I just need a moment. By the way, I love you. And I always will. I just wanted you to know that. You told me something similar before I left, and I didn’t answer properly.”

“Thank you,” Shaw said. “It’s good to hear those words. More than you know. And I’m glad you made it back with the team intact.”

“So am I,” Rade told her. “Gotta go.”

He disconnected and then removed his helmet, setting it down on the deck beside him. The relatively cold air of the compartment swept over his face, reviving him slightly. He shook his head, letting the sweat drizzle from his matted hair.

Tahoe sat down beside him, also taking off his helmet. “Whoa, talk about a mission, huh?”

“Probably not a good idea to remove your helmets,” Harlequin said. “Considering that there is still a Phant on the loose aboard.”

“Oh yeah.” Rade replaced his helmet, and then shut his eyes.

A Phant on the loose.

He couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment.

We’ve won. My family is safe.

twenty-four

Rade opened his eyes when he felt a pressure on his jumpsuit. It was Surus, standing above him. She was pressing her glove into his shoulder.

“We’re not done, yet,” she said.

“No, I suppose we still have some cleaning up to do,” Rade said.

“That we do,” Surus said. “First of all, I have a quick jump to the past to make, in order to teach a certain Elder written English. I’ll need a holographic display and keyboard generator.”

“Fret, get in touch with the captain, and see if he can arrange something,” Rade said. “Oh and, can you get him to call off the other Marauders? We don’t need them attempting to use their point defenses as weapons against the Argonaut.”

“The captain has already instructed the other Marauders to stand down,” Fret said. “Since he’s the one paying them, they’ve obeyed without question. Surus is probably going to have to cough up some extra funds later though, to ensure they remain friendly.”

“That’s not a problem,” Surus said. “But ask the captain if he can send a couple of extra grenades along with that generator. I may need them where I am going.” She caressed the rifles that hung from her shoulder.

“What’s the matter, don’t trust your own holographic emitter?” Bender taunted.

“I do trust it,” Surus said. “But I also trust in the marvelous cleansing power of frags.”

“Are you still detecting the Phant aboard?” Rade asked Surus.

She nodded. “The Purple is still aboard. We’ll go hunting when I get back.”

A Sino-Korean Centurion arrived shortly thereafter, carrying a small cylinder whose ends could be unfolded to form a tripod. It was a holographic display and keyboard generator, identical to the device Bright One had used.

“The gloriously paradoxical nature of time...” Manic commented.

The Centurion approached.

“Wait,” Rade said. He examined the chest section of the Centurion, searching for signs of Phant possession.

“See anything?” Tahoe asked.

“No,” Rade said. He stepped back and lowered the arcing stun rifle from his shoulder.

“Wait—” the Centurion began.

Rade fired, and the stunned robot collapsed. The Phant would have bubbled to the surface of the unit if present, but nothing of the sort transpired.

Surus retrieved the generator from the stunned Centurion, and then removed Sprint’s AI core from her harness and presented it to Harlequin. “Take care of this for me, would you?”

“It would be an honor.” Harlequin accepted the precious core.

Surus grabbed several grenades from the Centurion’s harness and secured them to her jumpsuit. Then she approached the pedestal. Her glove touched the pyramidal artifact, and green liquid emerged seconds later, seeping inside, only to return to the surface and reabsorb into the glove.

“I’ve set the date three years before our previous arrival,” Surus said. “I’ll do my best to warn Bright One of the threat posed by the Phant, and insist that everything he does will likely fail, but it probably won’t change the outcome of events. In fact, we already know it won’t.”

She stepped onto the Acceptor.

“Are you sure you don’t want any of us to go with you?” Rade asked.

She shook her head. “For a mission of this nature, it’s better if I go alone. I’ll be gone for two years, remember.”

Rade nodded. “How long until you teleport?”

“Another thirty-five seconds,” she replied.

The required time passed.

Surus momentarily blinked out of existence. Her jumpsuit had changed positions, and her arms and legs had moved slightly. That jumpsuit appeared faded and aged. She had used up all her grenades. The holographic generator she had held was gone, of course.

“My Argonauts,” she said. “It is good to be back. While interesting, those are two years I wouldn’t want to repeat again. But now I’m ready to hunt the Phant.”

“No rest for the weary, huh?” Rade said.

“No,” Surus agreed.

RADE RETRIEVED THE Time Selector from the pedestal and gave it to Surus for safe keeping. He had the captain corral all the Centurions and Artificials aboard the mercenary ship into one of the cargo bays, and then he fired at them one by one with the stun rifle, but found no Phants. He placed Lui there to stand guard with one of the non-arcing stun rifles, just in case the Phant decided to possess one of the robots thereafter.

Next they tried the main AI core of the ship, but once again found nothing. After that Rade and the remaining Argonauts performed a deck-by-deck sweep. They would almost continually fire their stun rifles into the bulkhead, overhead, and deck of the passageways and compartments they searched, pausing occasionally to let the weapons cool down.

Rade tapped in Shaw during the sweeping operation and updated her on everything that had happened. When he got to the part about the Elder ship, she interrupted.

“The Elder,” Shaw said. “What the hell were they doing on ancient Earth?”

“Trying to preserve the dinosaurs, apparently,” Rade said.

“Given what almost happened to the timeline, I’m starting to think it was a bad idea for them to ever come,” Shaw said.

“Can’t disagree with you there,” Rade said.

He continued his tale without any further interruptions.

When he finished, Shaw said: “You certainly had quite the adventure. I’m almost jealous.”

“Don’t be,” Rade said. “I nearly lost you forever.”

THE SWEEP TOOK five hours, but Rade and the Argonauts didn’t find anything.

“You know, we spent almost as long clearing this ship as we did frolicking in the past,” Manic complained.

“I’d take ship clearing over time travel any day,” Fret said.

“You would,” Bender said.

“You’re still detecting the Phant?” Rade asked Surus.

“I am,” she replied.

“Then we’ll have to print up a Phant shield for the AI core of their ship,” Rade said. “Because if we can’t find the thing, we’re going to have to launch this entire ship into a star. And I don’t want the Phant interfering with ship systems when we do so.”

“We probably should leave someone behind to guard the AI core while the shield prints,” Tahoe said. “Or lend the mercenaries a stun rifle and jumpsuit combo.”

“We’ll lend them a stun rifle,” Rade said. “We put a dissolver on it, though. And the jumpsuit, too. Set the timer to, say, a day.”

A dissolver was a device that, when activated, would destroy the item it was attached to. It was essentially a tiny explosive tied to a corrosive material. It would prevent the mercenaries from keeping or selling the stun weapon and jumpsuit, both of which contained proprietary technology developed by Surus. 

“Sounds good,” Tahoe said.

“All right, then,” Rade said. “Fret, ask the captain what kind of raw printing materials he has aboard.”

A moment later Fret said: “Apparently there isn’t much. We’ll probably have to return to the Argonaut and use our own 3D printers.”

“If we do that, we’ll have to print the core shield in smaller pieces,” TJ said, “And assemble them aboard.”

“That’s fine,” Rade said.

“It’s going to take some time,” TJ said. “Maybe four or five days.”

“Again, fine,” Rade said. “We’ve traveled sixty-five million years to destroy this Zhidao. We can wait a few days longer.”

Rade had Bax dispatch a shuttle from the Argonaut to retrieve them. It arrived with two Phant-blocking jumpsuits and a pair of stun rifles. He brought the gear to the nearby cargo bay and equipped two of the Sino-Korean Centurions. He instructed the first to watch over the remaining robots, and the second to proceed to the bridge to guard the mercenary ship’s AI core.

Rade and the others carefully attached the wide Acceptor to the top of the shuttle, securing it with the craft’s magnetic mounts; Surus kept the Time Selector attached to her harness.

The team then performed one last sweep of the hangar bay and shuttle, firing their stun rifles into the different materials. They removed the AI core of the shuttle before firing the stun rifles into it, to speed the core’s recovery time. When there was no sign of the Phant, they replaced the core, quickly loaded into the shuttle, and launched.

“Another mission in the bag, for the most part,” Tahoe said when they had flown into deep space, and were on their way back to the Argonaut.

“You keep saying that,” Rade said. “Like you just want it to end.”

“Maybe I do,” Tahoe said.

The craft docked a few minutes later, landing next to the second shuttle the Argonaut carried.

“This is odd,” Surus said immediately after touching down. “I’m still detecting the Phant with the same intensity as aboard the mercenary vessel.”

Rade exchanged a wide-eyed look with Tahoe. Rade opened the ramp and raced out while the hangar bay was still pressurizing.

He spotted the Purple Phant misting into the deck. It had obviously hitched a ride on the shuttle, sneaking aboard after they had swept it clean with their stun rifles. The alien would have had to have moved extremely fast, given the short time frame between sweep and launch. 

Rade fired at it with the stun rifle, but the alien entity was too quick and vanished into the metal. He fired again and again, trying to guess its course through the deck, but the glowing liquid didn’t bubble forth.

Now we have a Phant aboard the Argonaut once again.

twenty-five

Rade tapped in Shaw. “The Phant journeyed back with us. Where are you?” He glanced at his overhead map as he spoke, and saw that she was in sickbay. He was slightly relieved at that, because the Phant was more likely to attempt to head to engineering, where it could more readily seize control of the ship.

“I’m still in sickbay,” Shaw replied. “I wanted to come down there to greet you, but I’ve been having problems with Alex.”

“Problems, what do you mean?” Rade asked in alarm.

“Nothing to worry about,” Shaw said. “He’s having a temper tantrum. He insists on coming with me to greet you. But I’ve been trying to explain to him that it’s not safe. Given what just happened in the bay, it looks like I was right.”

Temper tantrum? Rade thought. So much for all your strict disciplining.

But he wasn’t going to say anything, at least not at the moment. He also already knew the real reason why Shaw didn’t want to bring Alex down there, and it wasn’t because the hangar bay wasn’t “safe.” Well, it was unsafe now of course, with the Phant on the loose, but the main reason was that Shaw didn’t want Alex to see the Argonauts and his father in full gear, armed to the teeth. She was afraid of letting the twins see anything that was too military, lest they get ideas she didn’t approve of. He was surprised she had armed herself with a rifle in front of the kids, earlier.

“I assume the three of you are still suited up?” Rade asked.

“Actually, we’re not,” Shaw said. “Life support came online two hours ago, and Bax advised us to remove our suits to conserve oxygen. He also told the Centurions to do the same.”

“He what?” Rade said. “Bax, I never authorized this.”

The Argonaut’s AI didn’t answer.

“He assured us it was impossible that any Phants were aboard,” Shaw said. “And truthfully, the kids were getting a bit antsy in those suits. Besides, their oxygen tanks are fairly small compared to the bigger jumpsuits, and they only had a few hours remaining, so I thought it prudent to listen to the AI.”

“Damn it,” Rade said. “You could have opened the faceplates, then, instead of taking off the entire suits.”

“I’m sorry, I made a mistake,” Shaw said.

“You’re damn right you did,” Rade said. “I want you to head to the armory outside sickbay and get yourself and the kids suited up again as soon as possible. You guys can’t go around unprotected while the Phant is aboard.”

“Oh no,” Shaw said.

Her connection cut out.

“Shaw?” Rade said. “Shaw?”

He tried to reconnect, but wasn’t able. According to the map, Cora and Dora were in sickbay as well. He tried contacting the two babysitting Centurions in turn, but neither responded.

It might have been nothing. Maybe Alex had done something to the sickbay comm node. But then again...

Rade was seized by a sudden worry.

“Bax, pipe me a camera feed from sickbay,” Rade ordered as he hurried to the airlock.

“I am sorry, but all sickbay cameras appear to be offline at the moment,” the Argonaut’s AI replied.

“All of them?” Rade said. “Unbelievable.” He accessed the airlock interface; the hangar bay had pressurized, so he was able to readily retract the inner and outer doors. “What the hell is going on? Is Shaw all right?”

“Unfortunately I cannot confirm at the moment,” Bax said.

“Why did you order Shaw, the twins, and the Centurions to remove their suits?” Rade asked.

“It seemed like the most prudent course of action at the time,” Bax said. “I apologize if I overstepped my bounds.”

“You did. We’ll talk about this later.” Rade glanced over his shoulder at the Argonauts, who had all exited the shuttle by then. “Surus, Bender, stay here and guard the Acceptor. The rest of you, with me.” He burst into the passageway outside the airlock. “Bax, I want you to send six Centurions to sickbay on the double. Have them suit up and meet me there. Send the remainder to engineering, also suited up. Do we have an update on the intruder’s position yet?”

“The Phant was spotted on D deck, near storage compartment 7C,” Bax replied. “Two minutes ago.”

Rade checked his overhead map. That was halfway between the hangar bay and engineering. It was also close to sickbay.

He glanced at Shaw’s blue dot on that same map. It told him she was still in sickbay, along with Cora, Dora and the twins.

The Argonauts raced to sickbay and arrived ahead of the Centurions Bax was supposed to have already dispatched.

The hatch opened and Rade rushed inside ahead of his men.

His stomach dropped. Sheer dread filled him.

Sil sat on the edge of her bed, blubbering loudly. The little girl wasn’t wearing a jumpsuit. Dora was on the floor, broken. There was no sign of Shaw, Alex, or Cora anywhere, despite the indicators on the overhead map.

Sil looked up. The anguish he saw written on his daughter’s face was heartbreaking. She had seen him wearing a jumpsuit before, without the grenade harness and rifle, but just in case she didn’t recognize him, he retracted his faceplate.

“Daddy, Daddy!” Sil rushed toward him and wrapped her arms around his leg assembly.

“Hey honey,” Rade said. “What happened?”

“Cora was bad to mommy!” Sil said between sobs. “She killed Dora, and took mommy. She took Aly, too.” That was Sil’s nickname for Alex.

“Bax, where are they?” Rade asked.

“Who?” the Argonaut’s AI replied.

Rade gritted his teeth. “Shaw, Alex, and Cora.”

“They are in sickbay,” Bax replied. “As indicated on the overhead map.”

“The map is wrong,” Rade said.

Bax paused. “There has been a Trojan introduced into my tracking system. From an external source.”

Rade glanced at TJ, whose eyes were defocused behind his faceplate. 

“It looks like the Phant managed to hack into the system remotely from the mercenary vessel while we were busy searching deck to deck,” TJ said.

“Wonderful,” Rade said. “I want you to patch our systems. I don’t want this ever happening again.”

“Will do,” TJ said. “I’ll head to engineering... I’ll be able to rollback to an earlier system state far easier from there.”

“Do it,” Rade said.

TJ hurried from the compartment.

“Boss, you might want to come back to the hangar bay,” Bender said over the comm from his guard position in the hangar bay. “As fast as you can.”

“What happened?” Rade said.

“Just come,” Bender said.

Rade sealed his faceplate. The requested Centurions arrived a moment later, wearing jumpsuits. “Algorithm, take Sil and get her suited up. Then watch her with your life.”

“Yes, boss,” Algorithm said.

“Daddy please I want to stay with you!” Sil wailed.

It broke his heart to see Algorithm carry her away like that, but it had to be done.

“The rest of you, we head to the hangar bay, now!” Rade roared.

Rade shoved his way through the men and robots, and took the lead in the passageway beyond. He raced toward the hangar bay faster than he had ever navigated those narrow corridors in his life. He knew that the possessed Cora had taken Shaw and Alex to the hanger bay. Zhidao had likely used the pair as hostages to gain access to the Acceptor. The question was whether Shaw and Alex were still living, or dead.

If it was the latter, Rade doubted life would hold much meaning for him, not anymore. The Argonauts would be done. As would he.

Rade reached the hangar bay. The airlock was still open. He hurried inside.

Bender stood near the shuttle’s open ramp. He had his stun rifle pointed inside. The Acceptor on top seemed clear.

Rade approached as quickly as he dared. As he rounded the side of the shuttle, the interior came into view. He saw Surus, standing next to the Acceptor’s pedestal, which the team had stowed in the cabin. She had placed the Time Selector into the square notch on top. She was slowly backing away.

Cora came into view. And Shaw. Cora was pressing a blaster to Shaw’s head. Shaw in turn held Alex, whose arms were wrapped tightly around her neck.

Though she was a hostage, Rade was relieved to see her alive.

“Hello again, Rade Galaal,” Cora said in her sweet, high-pitched voice. The glowing purple condensation on the Centurion’s chest piece told Rade everything he needed to know. That deadly liquid was far too close to Shaw for his comfort. “I suggest you and your mercenary friends lower your weapons. This one has refused to obey me, saying he would not do so until you arrived.” The robot nodded toward Bender.

“Lower your weapons!” Rade said, obeying the order himself. The other team members complied.

Bender glanced at Rade uncertainly, then the man let his weapon fall, too.

twenty-six

Zhidao?” Rade said.

“In the flesh, so to speak,” Cora replied.

“What do you want?” Rade asked.

In answer, the ramp began to seal.

Rade started to raise his weapon again.

“Don’t be alarmed,” Cora said. “I need to access the Time Selector without worrying about any interference from you or your men.”

The ramp closed with a resounding thud, sealing Shaw and Alex inside the shuttle with Cora.

The moments seemed to pass very slowly. Too slowly.

Rade was ready to override the ramp and storm the shuttle when the ramp began to open once more.

“Thank you for your patience,” Cora said, dragging Shaw outside with her. “Now please, back away.”

The team members drew back.

“You, bring that ladder here,” Cora told Lui. “Rest it on the Acceptor.”

Lui grabbed a ladder that was racked against the far bulkhead, and leaned it against the broad Acceptor, which was still attached to the top of the shuttle.

“Shaw, use the ladder,” Cora said. “Climb onto the Acceptor.”

Cora escorted Shaw to the ladder. Shaw started to put Alex down.

“No, bring Alex,” Cora said.

Shaw glanced at Rade. He didn’t nod, didn’t give her any indication that she should obey. Nor did he shake his head, or imply that she should refuse in any way. The choice had to be hers.

Finally Shaw’s gaze returned to Cora, who had kept the blaster aimed at Shaw the whole time. Shaw reluctantly reached up and began climbing the ladder with one arm while holding Alex in the other. Cora stayed well away from the other Argonauts, keeping them in view while the robot followed Shaw with the blaster.

When Shaw reached the top and pulled herself onto the Acceptor, Cora leaped upward with a sudden spurt, arcing over the shuttle and landing on the Acceptor beside her. Then Cora went to Shaw and dragged her away from the edge. Rade could only see their upper bodies because of the angle.

“Where are you taking her?” Rade asked.

Shaw gazed down at him with tears in her eyes. She seemed afraid, but there was something else... complete and utter sadness. She rocked Alex slowly in her arms. The boy shouldn’t have been involved. Shaw’s eyes seemed to plead with him, saying: “Rade my love, my heart, if you can’t save me, please, save Alex. Please.”

Rade resolved in that moment to stun Cora. If it meant Shaw must die when the robot squeezed the trigger, then so be it. Alex would live. That would be the trade.

Before he could act on his decision, Shaw and Alex vanished; apparently the delay that Zhidao had programmed into the Acceptor had passed, and the device activated. Cora’s arms had switched positions so that the blaster pointed directly at Rade.

He dove to the side, but took a glancing blow to his shoulder. The suit armor absorbed the impact.

Rade didn’t have to give the order to fire: the rest of the team let Cora have it. Plasma channels erupted from stun weapons, striking the robot, and sending it into spasms before it dropped to the Acceptor, falling out of view, at least from Rade’s current angle on the deck.

Rade leaped onto the Acceptor at the same time as Surus. He turned the body over to examine the chest piece, but there was no longer any sign of Phant possession.

“Where is it?” Rade said.

“Zhidao must have seeped out after firing the blaster,” Surus said. “These Purples are fast.”

“Argonauts, fire stun rifles at the shuttle!” Rade said.

He hurried to the edge of the Acceptor. While the Argonauts concentrated their fire on the shuttle, Rade shot randomly at the deck, in case the Phant was headed somewhere else.

Without warning the hangar bay doors opened. Since the atmosphere hadn’t first vented, as per protocol, Rade and the others were forced to activate their magnetic mounts to avoid getting sucked out. Fret didn’t mount in time and was pulled into space.

Weapons were lost throughout the party. Rade barely held onto his rifle, gripping it by the strap.

The second shuttle in the hangar bay activated of its own accord and took flight, accelerating into deep space.

The airlock leading back to the outer corridor finally sealed off, thereby containing the breach. Rade landed on the deck as the atmospheric outflow ended. Fret jetted inside a moment later.

“We shot the wrong shuttle,” Tahoe commented, staring out at the open hangar doors.

“Close these doors!” Rade said.

The bay doors closed and the interior began to pressurize.

“Bax, did you detect the Phant aboard the second shuttle?” Rade asked.

“I have analyzed the departing shuttle’s interior camera systems,” Bax said. “I indeed spotted the Phant flowing toward the AI core before it seeped inside and vanished.”

“Bax, fire our undamaged point defenses,” Rade ordered. “Take that shuttle down.”

“I am firing,” Bax said. “But the shuttle is issuing evasive maneuvers.”

“Then we’ll have the mercenaries run it down,” Rade said.

“Unfortunately, the shuttle was jury-rigged to carry some sort of missile launcher,” Bax said. “And it just launched a Hellfire. At high speed. I suspect the Phant is inside.”

“And how did this missile launcher get aboard?” Rade asked suspiciously.

“Unfortunately, it appears while I was hacked, I authorized the transfer of a Hellfire from our inventory to the shuttle,” Bax said. “And had the warhead removed, and the propulsion systems upgraded. Plus I apparently 3D-printed a custom launcher.”

Rade shook his head. “And you did all of this under Shaw’s nose?”

“Yes,” Bax said. “Over the past five hours.”

“Can we catch that missile once we get our engines back online?” Rade asked.

“No,” Bax said. “Nor can any of the Mauraders. It’s too fast.”

“What’s the destination?” Rade asked.

“The inner system,” Bax replied. “I don’t have a precise fix on a destination yet. It’s too early.”

Rade leaped down from the Acceptor and approached the pedestal inside the shuttle. The Time Selector was still in place.

Surus joined him.

“Where are Shaw and Alex?” Rade demanded. “Why didn’t they return?”

“It appears they didn’t make it to the recall site,” Surus said. “They would be dead sixty-five million years now.”

“Then we’ll go back and make sure they make the recall!” Rade said.

“That won’t work,” Surus said. “Because the two of them already missed the recall, even if we intervene and take them to the necessary site in time, the universe won’t allow them to return. Their removal from this timeline has already become a permanent part of history.”

“No,” Rade said softly. “I can’t believe it. Not after all we’ve been through, for their lives to end, like this. It can’t be possible. Why would Zhidao do this? Instead of killing them outright? Why go through all the trouble?”

“I don’t know,” Surus said. “To divert our attention while it fled in the second shuttle? Or to enact some form of elaborate revenge? The motivations of individual Phants can be hard to fathom, as you may have realized by now.”

The ramifications of what had happened finally hit Rade full force. Shaw. Alex. Gone. He felt an immense, soul-destroying guilt. First for deciding that he would allow Shaw to die in order to save Alex. Second for not acting fast enough on that decision.

Rade collapsed on the deck of the shuttle and let his arms fall between his leg assemblies. “It’s over. Done.”

Surus began to pace back and forth while the other Argonauts watched in silence from the bottom of the ramp. Rade hardly noticed any of them. Tahoe and Bender said something over the comm, but Rade didn’t hear.

Surus knelt in front of him and then gripped him by the shoulders, apparently wanting to ensure that she had his full attention.

“There might yet be a way to save her,” Surus told him.

Rade felt the hope welling inside him. “Tell me.”

“There is a potential loophole in the paradox,” Surus said. “I hesitate to say this, because I’m not sure it will work, but...” And then she explained.

When she finished, Rade nodded slowly. “It makes some sense, and it’s the only hope we have. Prep the device to send us back in time.”

She wrapped her glove around the Time Selector and did her usual Phant interfacing. When done, she looked up, defeat etching her features. “We can’t.”

“What do you mean, we can’t?” Rade said.

“I just checked the destination time,” Surus said. “It overlaps with our own. Shaw, Alex and Cora arrived about two and a half hours after we did, which explains why we didn’t encounter her. The universe won’t allow two copies from the future to exist at the same time, remember?”

“But wait,” Rade said. “The Phant went back to the same time period.”

“Yes,” Surus said. “But in a different host. As inter-dimensional beings, Phants can bend the rules slightly, since we don’t fully exist in this reality. As long as Zhidao stays inside his new host, he will be treated as a single copy by the universe. However, if he attempts to leave the host, he will cease to exist.”

“Well, he returned,” Rade said. “So it looks like he obeyed that rule to the letter.” Rade shook his head. “These time travel laws can get pretty tangled up... all right, so we can’t personally go back. Then we’ll send someone else who hasn’t traveled back before. Or something: the Centurions. Algorithm, Brat, organize a team and get down here now.”

“Roger that,” Algorithm said. “Who would you like to watch over Sil in my absence?”

“Choose one of the remaining Centurions,” Rade ordered the robot.

“The Selector indicates the recall period was set to only an hour,” Surus said. “Which explains why she had trouble making the return trip. When the robots arrive, they won’t have much time to do what they need to do.”

“They’ll succeed,” Rade said. “They have to.”

“I’ve finished patching the system,” TJ announced over the comm. “Zhidao will never be able to use the exploits to bypass our systems ever again. On the plus side, it’s been a learning experience for me. I’ve added the cyberattack to my arsenal. I’ll be able to use it against other vulnerable starships.”

“That’s great,” Rade said.

“You don’t sound too happy,” TJ said.

He realized TJ probably didn’t know what had happened. “There’s been a... hiccup. I’ll update you shortly. Rade out.”

Rade walked down the ramp and joined the rest of the Argonauts while waiting for the team of Centurions to arrive. He stared up at the Acceptor.

The Centurions will succeed.

And if not, he would have to come to terms with the fact that Shaw and Alex were lost to him forever.

twenty-seven

Shaw held Alex in her arms, trying to shield him from the cruelty of this world. Alex was getting heavier as lactic acid built up in her muscles, and her neck was developing a crick from his tight grip, but she forced herself to hang on.

Alex was weeping the whole time. Zhidao had told him in no uncertain terms that Alex must remain silent or the robot would shoot mommy. The dutiful boy had obeyed as best as he was able, and other than the occasional whimper, he had kept his mouth shut.

She gazed down at Rade imploringly through the tears, feeling so helpless. She begged him with her eyes to stun the Centurion, if only to save Alex. The possessed robot would likely get off a shot, and Shaw would probably die. But Alex would live. That was all that mattered at the moment.

Rade, standing on the deck below, seemed to understand, because his features suddenly hardened and his knuckles turned white on the rifle he held to one side.

But then the compartment was gone, replaced by thick vegetation.

She felt the oppressive heat immediately, and glanced around in confusion. She was in a jungle of some kind. A lush canopy of leaves shrouded the sky, growing from trees whose trunks were coated in suffocating vines. Lianas hung from those branches, thick cable cords that almost reached to the ground.

The air felt oppressive on her tongue, and smelled of dew and rotting vegetation. She heard the flutter of wings as some disturbed creature—a bird?—flew away from the branches overhead. Birdcalls and squawks echoed through the rainforest, punctuated by the occasional distant roar or cackle.

The increasing burn of lactic acid in her right arm brought her mind back into her body. She shifted her grip on Alex, transferring more of her son’s weight to her left arm to give the right side a rest. Alex also adjusted his own grip so that he wasn’t pulling as tightly at her neck, thankfully, and braced his legs against her sides.

Blue dots drew her attention to her overhead map, showing the location of several Centurions from the Argonaut that were deployed out there, hidden behind different trees and shrubs nearby. She felt an immense relief: no doubt Rade had sent the robots back some time before now, attempting to employ the same strategy he had used the last time he ambushed the Phant.

Cora immediately stepped behind her and dragged her backward by the utility belt, forcing her to retreat. Her feet sunk slightly with each step.

Zhidao. That was what the robot called itself now that its chest piece shone with purple condensation. Zhidao, not Cora. A Phant who had apparently known Rade from the First Alien War.

Zhidao planted his back against the thick bole of a tree, and placed her and Alex squarely in front of him. Though she couldn’t see it, Shaw felt the blaster press into the hinge of her jaw, forcing her to raise her head slightly.

“I know you’re out there, watching,” Zhidao said loudly in that sweet voice Cora had chosen for herself. “Waiting for me to make a mistake and lower my guard. But it’s not going to happen. Drop your weapons and show yourselves. Unless you want me to kill her and the child where they stand. Because you do know that stunning this body with those plasma channels of yours will not prevent me from unleashing two final shots. Do you really want to risk firing? You truly believe I won’t be able to mow down the two of them after you strike?”

Shaw hadn’t considered that Zhidao might be fast enough to shoot her and Alex both. Maybe it was for the best that Rade hadn’t fired earlier.

Centurions leaped down from the trees, and others walked around the boles, coming into view. Shaw checked her overhead map, and saw that some had remained in cover.

“All of you,” Zhidao said.

The remaining blue dots moved out into the open.

“Now toss your weapons away,” Zhidao said, “and turn around, placing your hands behind your heads.”

“Do it,” the lead Centurion, Algorithm, said.

The robots threw their stun and laser rifles away and swiveled, resting their polycarbonate hands on their heads.

The pressure of the blaster on her jaw ceased, and from the periphery of her vision she was aware as Zhidao stepped out from behind her. He fired in rapid succession, taking out three of the robots almost instantaneously. The remaining six reacted before they, too, were shot down, diving away into the undergrowth.

Zhidao continued firing, stepping forward as he did so until he was parallel with Shaw.

A smoke grenade landed in their midst and cloaked Shaw’s vision in darkness.

She turned around and ran across the spongy ground.

Still carrying Alex in her arms, she emerged from the smoke. Branches whipped at face and neck, cutting open her exposed flesh. She kept Alex held closely to her chest as she ran, and shielded his head with one hand. She had forgotten any exhaustion in her muscles, the adrenalin coursing through her veins giving her renewed strength.

Shaw saw flashes of polycarbonate in the trees on either side, mirroring her advance, providing escort. Centurions. She counted four in total, two per side.

She glanced at her overhead map, but when she realized the robots weren’t showing up, she felt a surge of hope: these escorting Centurions had smartly deactivated their comm nodes to remain hidden. The first group was merely a distraction.

Speaking of that first group, only two blue dots remained. As she watched, those final two turned dark.

The conclusion was obvious: Zhidao had gotten them.

Shaw prudently deactivated the comm node in her own Implant and continued running.

But then two of her robot escorts dropped out of the race, vanishing in the underbrush. The other two spun about a moment later, bringing their rifles to bear as they halted.

Shaw heard two loud clangs as something struck the robots, and then silence.

Shaw kept running through the foliage. Her face throbbed in pain as fronds continued to smack her skin. Her cheeks and forehead felt wet from the blood and sweat.

She wasn’t sure how long she ran like that. Ten seconds. A minute.

She tripped on something, but swung about as she fell so that her body would take the brunt of the impact, not Alex’s. She hit the ground hard.

“Oof.”

Alex had let go of her. She put one scraped arm down on the mossy ground and pushed herself up, dragging her son up with her.

“Are you all right, baby?” Shaw asked quietly.

Alex nodded hurriedly. His face had become soiled, thanks to the fall, but otherwise he seemed uninjured.

Shaw heard the snap of branches and fronds as something approached through the foliage behind her. She spun about, and spotted the ferns quailing in a moving line as the passage of something hidden in the undergrowth disturbed them. She immediately ducked out of sight behind a large tree trunk, crouching to avoid stirring the hanging lianas.

She glanced at Alex and held a figure to her lips. The disciplined child nodded, his eyes wide saucers.

Staying low, and keeping Alex close, Shaw slowly peered past as the rustling grew in volume, and what she saw emerging from the vegetation scared the living daylights out of her. It looked like a giant bird, because of the feathers and the tiny wings it seemed to have. Except no bird had a reptilian jaw filled with sharp, serrated teeth like that. And then there were the claws that were large half-moons attached to the tips of its tiny “wings,” with more razor-sharp talons on its hooves. The thing was obviously a killing machine.

Her military-grade Implant instantly analyzed the structural core and computed a skeleton, based on the creature’s shape, and used the internal database to label the creature a “Utahraptor.”

The human-sized creature was on course to pass a few meters to the right side of the tree she hid behind; when the Utahraptor started swinging its head toward her, she immediately ducked from sight and shrunk her body even lower, hoping to vanish into the undergrowth. There was a large fern beside her, which offered a screen of sorts. She wrapped both arms around Alex and pulled him into her chest, keeping his head well away from the creature as she tried to shield her son with her body.

She prayed he remained quiet now of all times. She prayed he didn’t whimper. Sweat trickled down her ribs as the tense moments dragged out.

The carnosaur’s head rounded the vine-choked trunk, rudely disturbing the lianas overhead. A loud huff came from its nostrils as it inhaled sharply. Again.

Shaw knew it was sniffing the air. It probably smelled her, but the strange scent confused the dinosaur, and it wasn’t sure if there was actually prey present, or just some exotic plant that it didn’t care about.

Large biting flies, about the size of moths, descended on her position. Shaw was suddenly worried that the flies would reveal her to the creature, but instead the large insects focused on the Utahraptor—obviously their preferred meal. The carnosaur’s features twitched about as it tried to stave them off, and it swatted them with its head. It chomped at one or two of the insects, catching them between its jaws and swallowing.

Then the carnosaur stood up straighter and made a half squawk, half clattering sound. A moment later a similar sound came in answer from somewhere in the jungle. The Utahraptor cocked its head, then turned around and set off at a run, vanishing into the undergrowth.

Shaw exhaled in relief.

“I suggest you don’t run off again,” Zhidao said.

twenty-eight

Shaw jumped, and when she turned, she found the robot resting against the tree beside her. The blaster the Centurion carried was pointed in the direction of the retreating dinosaur, but now that Shaw was facing the robot, Zhidao turned the blaster on her. Several new rifles hung from its shoulders.

“Unless you want to get yourself killed, of course,” Zhidao continued. The robot arose and stepped back a pace, keeping the blaster trained on her. “Walk in front of me.”

And so she stood up, bringing Alex with her. Her son wrapped his arms around her neck, and his legs around her waist, and she gripped him tight. Then she walked, prisoner once more.

She reactivated the comm node in her Implant. There were no friendlies on the overhead map. None at all. She could only hope that some other Centurions still remained out there with comm nodes deactivated, clandestinely tracking her, but somehow she doubted it. They had failed in whatever mission Rade had sent them on, that much was obvious.

There was nothing she could do but march at the moment. March and obey.

She tried to move quietly, not wanting to attract the attention of any raptors again. Branches and fronds slid across her like groping tentacles trying to wrench Alex away. Occasionally moth-sized flies flitted past, but thankfully they didn’t bother her. She guessed that her perspiration didn’t “smell” right to them.

She continued sweating profusely thanks to the oppressive heat, and her fatigues were glued to her back by then. Carrying Alex only made matters worse in that regard, but she wasn’t about to put him down, not in this place, with those giant birds—or rather, dinosaurs—on the loose.

Alex whimpered softly. His face was pressed against her neck.

“It’s okay baby,” Shaw said. “Shh. Everything will be all right.”

Her son didn’t dare answer. Not after the dire warning Zhidao had given him earlier.

Shaw glanced askance at her captor. “Will you at least tell me why are you doing this? I begged you to let my child go. Begged. And yet you have done this to us. Why?”

“No reason,” Zhidao said.

Shaw felt like unleashing a stream of expletives at the Phant, but she bit back her tongue because she knew it wouldn’t help, and it might even provoke the evil entity. She had to remain calm, focused, and do whatever she could to protect her child.

A few moments later Zhidao finally spoke again. Apparently it couldn’t resist gloating.

“This is a lesson to your friend, Rade Galaal,” Zhidao said. “When he foiled my plans, I swore that he would pay for what he had done. After I gained access to the database of the starship AI you call Bax, I learned all about you and his children. I decided that you would bear the brunt of my wrath, along with a single child. I chose only one because I want him to remember that he still has something to lose if he decides to cross me again.”

“He’ll save us,” Shaw said.

“Unfortunately, he can’t,” Zhidao said. “The universe won’t allow him to return to this time period again. Why do you think he sent the robots?”

If true, that meant Zhidao had elected to send Shaw and Alex back to a time period that coincided with the original mission. Shaw hadn’t known that. She wasn’t sure how it helped her, though. That none of the Argonauts had been there when she arrived told her Rade and his team were far away, probably aboard the Elder ship by then.

“If we die, he’ll hunt you down to the ends of time to enact his revenge,” Shaw said.

“As I told you, he still has something to lose,” Zhidao said. “So he will not. But if he does, then I assure you, I will take away his other child as well. The one you name Sil.”

Shaw felt fresh tears welling. “You’re the embodiment of everything evil in this universe. A killer of worlds.”

“Thank you,” Zhidao said.

“Kill us and be done with it,” Shaw said.

“Oh, I am not going to kill you,” Zhidao said. “At least, not directly. I am not so cruel as you paint me. I believe in giving every animal a chance, even a member of a species as disgusting and lowly as your own. Besides, there would be no sport in merely killing you. Not for you, not for me.”

Shaw continued walking for many more minutes, and finally Zhidao called for a halt.

“This will do,” Zhidao said.

Shaw stood in front of two large tree trunks spaced relatively close together. Around both trees, the foliage was relatively clear, making the bare trunks visible to any passing predators for several meters around.

“Lower the boy,” Zhidao said.

Alex sniveled.

“It’s okay,” she told her son as she lowered him to the ground. Shaw tried to stand, but Alex refused to let go of her neck.

“It’s going to be okay,” Shaw said. “I promise.” A part of her shriveled inside as she said those words, knowing them for the lie that they were.

Alex reluctantly released Shaw. She still felt the phantom pressure of his hands against her neck even as she stood up, and she rubbed the area.

“Stand against the rightmost tree, boy,” Zhidao said. “Mother, remain where you are.”

Alex looked to Shaw for confirmation.

She flashed what she hoped was a comforting smile. “Go ahead, sweetie.”

Alex walked hesitantly to the vine covered trunk.

Giving Shaw a wide berth, Zhidao finally stepped into view from behind her. He approached Alex, pausing to tug at a thin liana that hung down from the tree above. It broke away, plunging to the ground, forming a lengthy coil of rope.

“Arms to your sides,” Zhidao ordered the boy. The robot holstered the blaster, then scooped up the liana and proceeded to wrap it around the trunk and boy. Zhidao moved in a blur, his servomotors humming loudly. When the robot finished, Alex had a thick band stretching from wrists to elbows that encompassed his entire waist region. His hands were free to wiggle underneath, but her son was otherwise held fast.  

Blaster in hand, Zhidao turned toward Shaw. “Please approach the other tree.”

Shaw walked to the bare trunk opposite Alex and pressed her back against the coarse surface.

Zhidao broke away a larger liana for her, essentially a thick cable, and proceeded to similarly secure her. As the robot worked, Shaw inhaled deeply, attempting to expand her chest more than usual. She opened her hands wide and flexed her muscles, trying to make her forearms as thick as possible.

The thick cord pinned her arms to her side and dug into her abdomen. She could feel the rough material pressing into her bare skin, and then in moments it was done. Like Alex, she was bound from wrist to elbow.

She released the air in her lungs and breathed normally. She carefully tested her restraints, not wanting to draw Zhidao’s attention. There was some give, but she doubted it would be enough.

When Zhidao paused to survey his handiwork, Shaw pretended to strain against her binds, putting on a show for the robot.

Apparently satisfied, the possessed Centurion stepped back to admire the two prisoners.

“A mother and her son,” Zhidao said. “Trapped in a forest filled with carnosaurs. Touching.” The Centurion tapped its polycarbonate chin. “Did Galaal explain to you how time travel works? You must return to the site where we first arrived if you hope to return. The ‘recall’ site. You must be there when the expiry time comes to pass. In our case, I set the recall time to one hour. If you are not there with me at the designated time, you and your son will be trapped here forever.”

“An hour,” Shaw said. “But what about the time that has passed already?”

“Very astute of you to ask,” Zhidao said. “Forty-five minutes have already elapsed. That leaves you fifteen minutes to escape these binds and return to the site.”

She glanced at the time on her Implant, confirming that forty-five minutes had indeed transpired since her arrival.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Shaw said. “Even if we escape, you’ll never let Alex and I onto the site. You’ll shoot us down before we ever reach it.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Zhidao stepped back, approaching the thick shrubs that bordered the small clearing. An ominous squawking sound echoed in the distance. “Though I somehow doubt you’ll ever present me with that choice. But rest assured, if you survive long enough to escape, your life in this age will not be very long. It will be a small mercy when the starship impacts, ending your wretched existence. Though perhaps your friend Rade Galaal will find a way to prevent that strike, if only to save you.”

“And doom the rest of humanity?” Shaw said. “He wouldn’t do it.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Zhidao said.

The squawk came again, somewhat louder.

The Centurion placed a hand to its lips and then departed through the foliage. Zhidao moved quietly, disturbing the foliage very little, until Shaw lost sight of the robot entirely.

She exhaled, shrinking her chest cavity, clenching her fists, and then tried to wiggle free. She attempted to slide downward first, but she only managed to move maybe a few centimeters, roughly scraping her backside against the bark in the process.

Next she tried forcing herself upward, and slid twice the distance in the opposite direction, but once again her motion stayed. She would just have to keep wiggling up and down like that. Maybe friction would cause some part of the liana that bound her to wear away against the sharp tree, eventually granting her freedom in a few hours.

Too bad she didn’t have a few hours.

She gazed into the living jungle, distracted by the distant birdcalls and other strange sounds. Her frightened eyes shot toward every sound, or rather where she thought those sounds were coming from, as the tall trees and shrubs provided ample surfaces for echoes.

Biting flies hovered nearby, but they left her and her child alone, so far. She was glad for that, because she was essentially defenseless against them at the moment.

She kept wiggling up and down, trying to break free. She glanced at Alex, who was staring at her with a strangely calm demeanor. There was still fear in his eyes, yes, but he was facing his demise far better than she expected. Maybe he thought it was all a game. She could only hope.

She tried to give him her most reassuring smile.

“Can I talk now, mommy?” Alex asked softly.

Shaw shook her head, and she flinched when she heard the crash of foliage nearby, followed by the scamper of tiny feet. She held her breath, and several tense seconds passed. Thankfully nothing emerged from the undergrowth.

She still harbored a small hope that maybe one of the Centurions had survived. Any time now, it would track her down via her comm node, and give Alex a high-speed piggyback ride back to the recall site so that at least her son could escape in time.

Any time now...

But she knew it was hopeless. She couldn’t even call for help, not unless she wanted to attract the attention of the deadly carnivores inhabiting that time period.

“Are we going to die, mommy?” Alex asked.

Shaw looked at her son. Her precious, apple of her eye son. And she couldn’t bring herself to answer him. Couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth.

She glanced at the countdown.

Only nine minutes left, and she wasn’t even close to getting free.

Yes, Alex. We’re going to die.

twenty-nine

Shaw continued to wiggle up and down. She noticed Alex was doing it, too. She would have thought it cute that he was imitating her if their lives weren’t at stake.

She ignored him, focusing on her own binds. She had managed to slide her upper body down by ten centimeters by then. And though she sucked in her chest, her breasts kept catching on the upper portion of the tight liana, and she was unable to squeeze much lower.

She heard a soft thud from Alex’s tree. Glancing his way, she realized Alex had slid himself out of his binds entirely so that he was sprawled against the base of the trunk.

Shaw stood up, freeing her upper body from the clutches of the restraints so that she could breathe properly, and said: “How?”

Her son touched the top of his left ear and flinched. When he withdrew his hand, there was blood. Apparently he had cut himself on the bark while freeing himself. But he didn’t cry.

Instead Alex clambered to his feet and went to her. “It’s a trick Uncle Bender showed me. He told me: one day when someone tries to tie you up, hold your breath and open your hands as wide as possible.”

“Very prescient of him,” Shaw said. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It made her wonder what other “tricks” Bender had taught her son. Then again, Bender might have just saved both of their lives.

“Press scent?” Alex asked.

“Never mind, baby,” Shaw said quietly, scanning the jungle uncertainly. She half expected a dinosaur to leap out of the undergrowth and attack them at any moment. “Go to the back of the tree. See if you can untie me.”

Alex vanished from view around the bole.

Shaw eyed the countdown on her display. Seven minutes. They weren’t going to make it.

But they had to try.

She heard Alex’s hushed voice coming from behind the tree, and she had to strain to hear him.

“Can’t reach...” Alex said. “Wait, I found a toadstool.” That was what he called anything he could stand on to make himself taller. A moment passed. Then: “It’s knotted like a shoe.” More seconds ticked by. “I got it, mommy.”

Alex appeared, struggling with the thick liana over one shoulder as if it were a heavy log.

“That’s a good boy,” Shaw said. Her eyes felt suddenly moist. She was so very proud of her little boy.

Alex continued to unwind the liana, circling the tree, and after a minute Shaw was able to wriggle the rest of the way free.

She promptly scooped up Alex; he instinctively wrapped his arms around her neck and his legs around her hips.

“Love you,” Shaw said.

“Love you mommy,” Alex said.

But there was no time to get sentimental. She hurried back toward the recall site, using her overhead map to guide her.

Though she had deactivated the weak comm node in her Implant for part of her journey through the jungle, the internal gyroscope and accelerometer remained functioning the whole time, logging her position. The location history formed a trail of “breadcrumbs” on her map, showing the route she had taken since her arrival.

The undergrowth whipped at her face and bare arms, giving her more welts and cuts. She did her best to shield Alex. She had wilderness training, so she knew how to move quietly through underbrush, but she abandoned all stealth now for speed. The back portion of her fatigues was ripped where she had rubbed against the bark, and she could feel the air against her bare skin there.

She heard distant squawks during the quieter moments of her journey through the underbrush. She wasn’t sure if those were random calls, or an exchange affected by dinosaurs hunting her. Most likely the latter.

She struggled to stave off the lingering fear that waited beyond the horizon of her mind, a fear that threatened to spill over into her core and reduce her to a quivering, helpless mass incapable of functioning.

She wasn’t a bad ass. Not like Rade and the men. She never was. She was a normal human female, with some combat training, like most women who entered the Navy. She really wished she at least had a jumpsuit, something to enhance her strength, but she knew it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, not against dinosaurs. She had to rely on cunning and sheer wit alone if she wanted to survive out here.

And that cunning shouted at her to slow down.

But she couldn’t. She glanced at the time on her HUD.

Four minutes left.

I can make it. I can!

No. A glance at the map told her she was deluding herself. It was impossible. She was simply too far away.

She still harbored a small hope that one of the Centurions would arrive to spirit her child away, but as the final minutes ticked past, it soon became clear that no help would come. Rade had likely done his best to get to her, but failed.

Those squawks had become louder, and Shaw realized that if she kept running, not only would she not reach the site in time, she would draw her carnivorous pursuers right down on her.

She slowed, and began stepping quietly through the trees. After several moments she huddled underneath a thick shrub to catch her breath, and to watch the trees for signs of her hunters. Alex released her, and she set him down beside her.

As she lay there, breathing hard, the timer hit zero. When it did so, unbidden despair overcame her.

She lay there, cradling her child hard to her chest. She was finished. She had done her best, but she hadn’t been able to save him.

Alex and she were trapped here forever, and could never return.

But what if Zhidao had lied?

What if the recall interval was longer than an hour? She had no way of knowing, not unless she returned to the site and waited.

Perhaps she would find Zhidao himself there, waiting to return.

And if not, well, she would simply have to find a way to survive the extinction event. Perhaps she could escape the shockwave in a cave or something.

Well, either way, she resolved to make her way back to the recall site. At least she could say farewell to Rade one last time, when he arrived at the completion of his own mission.

And yet, Rade hadn’t told her he had seen her here in the past. That meant she wouldn’t be there at the recall site when he finally returned.

Then again, maybe she had been, but Rade had kept quiet about it for some reason.

So many doubts.

She waited fifteen more minutes, and when she was satisfied that she was no longer being hunted, she scooped up Alex and slowly clambered to her feet to begin retracing her steps through the jungle again. She intended to stop by the fallen Centurions along the way, and collect any weapons Zhidao had missed. According to the map, at her current speed those fallen combat robots were roughly half an hour away. If she could find a way to make a weapon before then, it would put her mind somewhat at ease.

Shaw utilized her stealth training to move quietly, yet steadily, across the spongy terrain. She bent her knees and moved forward one leg at a time. She would lift her foot, coming down on the outer ball. She would roll the foot inward until the entire ball was flat on the ground, and then she would lower her heels and toes to apply weight. The Fox Walk, it was called. Because the ground was so spongy, it was hard at times to maintain her balance. Her thin, sole-conforming boots helped a little; if she wanted to move even quieter, she would have to go barefoot, but she wasn’t about to do that in this environment.

Shaw did her best to pick a path that was free of dry leaves and twigs, and she made her way through the forest at what she called a moderate gait, barely making any sound. She used the distant bird calls—or dinosaur calls, she didn’t know which—and the occasional rustling of leaves by the breeze to further disguise her movements. The upper thighs of her bent legs began to burn because of Alex’s weight, but the discomfort was manageable.

As she made her way like that through the undergrowth, she spotted a carcass in a partial clearing to her right. She approached. It wasn’t so much a carcass as a skeleton, roughly the size of a human, picked clean of any meat. She guessed it belonged to a Utahraptor. Her eyes focused on the sharp talons at the end of its small forelimbs.

“What is it, mommy?” Alex asked quietly.

“Hope,” Shaw said.

She lowered Alex to the ground and knelt to lift the limb. “By the way, never do this. Touching dead things... it’s bad, in general.”

Alex merely gazed at her in silence.

Careful not to cut herself, she wrapped her fingers around the long, sickle-shaped talon and pulled. It finally came free after some prying. Next she twisted loose a shorter, straighter talon. Gingerly holding the sharp implements, she grabbed Alex by her other hand and led him forward until she found what she was looking for: around the base of a younger tree, suckers formed a shield of thick woody stems.

She knelt, using the sickle claw to cut away an appropriately sized sucker. She tore loose some small vines sheathing the bole of the tree, and used them to secure the smaller, straight claw to the sucker, forming a makeshift spear.

When she was done, she pocketed the sickle talon, and lifted Alex onto her chest once more so that he was looking over her shoulder. After he wrapped his arms and legs around her, she scooped up the spear. The long stabbing implement wasn’t much, but it was better than traversing that rainforest with no weapon at all. It would suffice until she could reach the fallen robots and collect a laser rifle.

Before she could continue picking her way through the jungle, Alex spoke up.

“Mommy.” Her son’s voice was barely above a whisper. He sounded so very dehydrated.

“What is it, honey?” Shaw said softly. “You have to use the bathroom?”

When Alex answered again, Shaw could hear the tremble clearly in his voice.

“A monster,” her precious son said. 

thirty

Shaw’s grip tightened around the shaft of her spear and she slowly turned around.

A feathered head, roughly the same size as her own, peered through the undergrowth three meters in front of her. It was a Utahraptor.

The deadly predator made no movements. It didn’t even blink.

“Don’t move.” Slowly, very slowly, Shaw lowered Alex. Then she raised the spear over one shoulder and aimed at that toothy maw.

The Utahraptor’s mouth opened, and it emitted a loud clattering sound. She heard an answering clatter directly behind her.

Looking over her shoulder, she saw another carnivore standing behind her, only two meters away.

Likely the only reason the predators hadn’t attacked her yet was because they were unfamiliar with her scent, and therefore had no idea how dangerous she was.

It was time to show them.

She threw the spear at the first dinosaur, striking it. The weapon bounced off the raptor’s muzzle and the frightened creature dashed into the undergrowth.

She turned around at the same time and ran toward the remaining carnosaur, raising her arms and shouting as loud as she was able.

The creature bolted.

Shaw hurried back to Alex, scooped him up, and then retrieved the spear. She doubted that throw had caused any damage—she had watched it bounce off the dinosaur’s nose after all.

So much for showing them how dangerous I am.

Still, at least she had frightened the creatures for the time being. If she really wanted to penetrate that thick feathery hide, she would probably have to brace the spear against a tree or some other hard object.

She sprinted through the foliage, running perpendicular to the direction the two creatures had run off.

She had been lucky. The predators’ unfamiliarity with her had caused them to be extra cautious, allowing her to momentarily spook them. No doubt curiosity, and hunger, would compel them to overcome their misgivings soon enough. In fact, they were probably already tracking her.

Sure enough, she heard squawks echoing from two directions behind her. This time when the creatures approached, she doubted either of them would show any hesitation.

She dove behind a thick wall of ferns in an area of heavy underbrush. She lowered Alex once more, pressing him into the spongy ground.

“Stay down,” she mouthed.

She began rubbing dirt and moss on Alex, hoping to mask his scent. Then she did the same for herself, working quietly.

She heard something scampering through the foliage on her right. A moment later she heard a similar sound to her left. She glanced in either direction, but saw nothing through the thick undergrowth. She hoped the creatures had passed her by.

But then the scurrying sounds came again, closer. The scampering didn’t cease this time, but continued moving around her, rotating.

She realized the Utahraptors were circling her position, just out of view. Slowly tightening the noose. That they weren’t being completely quiet told her they were trying to flush her out.

Ordinarily she would have admired the cunning of those dinosaurs, if she and her son weren’t the prey, that is.

Staying low, Shaw scanned her surroundings, searching for any advantageous terrain. She spied thick lianas hanging next to the bole of a tree about twenty meters from her. Those heavy vines just might buy her the time she needed to set up.

Assuming she could get there in time.

She glanced down at Alex.

Her son was looking up at her with frightened eyes. He seemed to sense that she was about to leave him.

If she failed, at least she would be the diversion that saved Alex’s life. Though what he would do without her, she didn’t know. Did she really want to curse him to fend for himself in a land like this? And what did it matter if the extinction event was going to occur shortly thereafter anyway?

She held a finger to her lips and removed the PASS device from her belt. It was smaller than the device jumpsuits possessed, with a reduced range, but hopefully it would be enough for any rescue party to track him down. Or for Shaw herself to find him again if the two became unduly separated.

He seemed confused as she wrapped the device around his bicep. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but she pressed a finger to his lips, cocking her head toward the scampering sounds that surrounded them.

Then she hefted her spear and slowly moved away, creeping carefully through the undergrowth, putting all of her stealth training to use. She cringed when the ground made a slight suctioning sound underneath her, but the carnosaurs didn’t seem to notice. She still couldn’t see them, but she knew they were out there because of the continual rustling.

She made for the lianas, and when the scampering sounds were at their quietest behind her, telling her that her pursuers were at the farthest point from her in their circling, she broke into a run.

She reached the thick lianas and batted them aside. She grabbed one of the thicker ones and turned around in time to smack it into the face of one of the Utahraptors, which had closed to within a meter of her.

The cord hit the raptor in the nose, and it halted a moment to shake off the blow before continuing.

That gave Shaw the time she needed to reach the bole and plant the butt of the spear squarely against the bark. She left the point lowered and out of sight for the moment.

The Utahraptor raced at her, not bothering to slow down. It leaped.

Shaw levered the spear upward and threw herself to the ground at the last moment. She landed on her back next to the bole. 

She looked up in time to see the raptor roll onto the ground beside her, the spear protruding from its neck. Its long tongue lolled from its mouth.

Shaw rose and backed away at a crouch. There was no time to withdraw that spear, which was embedded deeply. Instead she produced the sharp half-crescent talon she had salvaged, and held it in front of her as a makeshift dagger.

As she continued backing away the second Utahraptor arrived. It looked down at the first and cooed softly, sadly. It nuzzled the neck of its companion, trying to waken it, but when it could not, the Utahraptor turned toward Shaw. The feathers on its back had raised, almost like a porcupine, and its eyes were wide with rage.

Shaw realized, to her misfortune, that she had killed the carnosaur’s mate.

She held the claw steadily in front of her, and kept retreating.

The carnosaur took a step toward her.

She cut her makeshift dagger to the right, making a distinct hissing sound through the air. Again. Again.

The carnosaur’s lip curled in apparent contempt, and it took another step toward her. She expected it to switch to a run at any moment. If she could duck underneath when it came at her, and swipe the claw upward, perhaps she might have a chance at disemboweling the thing. 

It bent its hind legs, evidently preparing to leap at her...

From nowhere a massive head shoved through the boughs above and chomped down on the smaller prey. It pinned the creature to the ground, and the Utahraptor’s tail flailed about as it tried to break free. Shaw heard an audible crunch, and then the tail ceased all motion.

The attacker raised its head and emerged entirely from the undergrowth. The thing towered above her: it was a T-Rex. Covered in red plumage, similar to the raptor it looked like a wingless bird. A very big bird, at that, with a huge, toothy maw and long, sharp claws. She wasn’t sure if red was the natural color of its plumage, or whether the blood of previous prey had permanently stained the feathers. 

The T-Rex placed one colossal leg on the dead Utahraptor to hold it down while it took a large bite out of the body. 

Shaw was too stunned for several moments to do anything but stare in awe. She hadn’t noticed its approach at all. The dinosaur had used the sounds made by the Utahraptors as cover for its advance. She didn’t know how something that large could move through a forest so quietly.

She spotted movement near the tree she had left behind and realized another T-Rex had arrived. It began to dine on the first raptor she had felled next to the tree.

Shaw began to worry that there were more of them out there. She gazed upon the surrounding jungle uncertainly, and started slowly backing away once more.

That was when she spotted the large eye looking down on her through the branches above.

thirty-one

Shaw froze but it was too late. The head belonging to that eye darted toward her in a blur...

Shaw dove to the side, barely ducking behind a nearby bole. The massive jaws chomped on the empty air behind her.

She searched her surroundings for something, anything, she could hide behind, and spotted a giant hollow log nearby. She sprinted to it and hastily crawled inside.

The T-Rex pursued, angrily ramming its head into the opening behind her.

The log shook violently, and Shaw scrambled forward into the murky insides on hands and knees. Underneath her she squished finger-thick centipedes and larvae, some of which crawled onto the bare flesh of her arms. She couldn’t help but yell in horror, but she continued into the writhing tunnel anyway, suppressing the urge to run the hell out of there and into the waiting jaws. She startled two smaller, cat-sized dinosaurs that were feeding on the insects, and the creatures hopped deeper into the interior to get away from her.

Shaw glanced behind her, expecting to find the big maw of the T-Rex closing on her, but the hollow tunnel proved too narrow, and the huge predator’s motion was checked. For the moment.

And then the head withdrew.

She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved, or terrified. All Shaw could think about was the insects; that, and leading the T-Rexes away from Alex. If she had to die, then it would be so that her son could live.

She glanced at her overhead map. The PASS device showed that Alex was about thirty meters away to the north, still hiding in the same place she had left him. Far too close for comfort. She prayed the T-Rexes wouldn’t find him. Likely he had seen them from his current position.

She waited there in the grotesque tunnel as the larvae slithered over her hands and calves, the insects making a soft crinkling sound with their mandibles and legs. She cringed as some of the bugs dropped down onto her head from above. It felt like some of them were getting tangled in her hair.

She screamed involuntarily again, lifting an insect-covered hand. She shook it until there were none of the bugs hanging on, and then frantically swiped at her hair. She felt some of the insects squish under her frantic touch, and the thought of all those insides coating her hair made her skin crawl. Actually no, her skin really was crawling, thanks to the larvae clambering up her arm.

If there was a hell, this was it.

The log shook violently and more clumps of insects fell down on her. Shaw screamed, cringing.

The log trembled again and the sound of breaking wood echoed around her. The top portion of the log caved beside her and the massive head of the T-Rex rammed inside.

Shaw started in fright, and forced herself to crawl deeper into the seething interior.

“They’re just bugs,” she told herself. “Just harmless bugs.”

She felt the air pressing against her as the T-Rex roared in frustration behind her, and then it withdrew once more.

She crawled quietly for a few moments, doing her best to ignore the living floor. She was worried there might be some other predator lurking deeper inside that she couldn’t see in the dim light.

The log abruptly convulsed right above her, and more clumps of insects dropped onto her back. She could feel them squirming all along her ripped fatigues.

She bit back a scream and increased her pace, wanting to get out from under that area. She could hardly see in the murk.

A moment later the T-Rex’s head burst through. Shaw was out of reach; the massive predator realized it had missed once again and withdrew.

The two cat-sized dinosaurs lurking inside bounded past, heading toward the far opening, and a moment later she realized why: she had reached a dead end. The source tree had apparently crashed against a boulder when it fell, which had cut it in half and sealed it off somewhere in the middle. She searched the moss-covered boulder, looking for an opening in the murk. She suddenly realized that wasn’t moss she was touching, but more centipedes...

The wood shivered just behind her.

Shaw flattened herself against the larvae-covered boulder as the T-Rex forced its head inside yet again.

She was trapped.

One of those big eyes was looking right at her. The dinosaur growled in triumph and turned its jaws toward her.

This was it.

Shaw closed her eyes.

Forgive me, Rade.

The killing blow never came.

Instead she heard a loud thud.

Her eyes shot open and she caught a glimpse of the feathery head as it was ripped from the gaping hole and out of view.

A scream of pain vibrated her eardrums.

What...

Another impressive thud came, and the log shook violently.

She glanced at her overhead map.

A new blue dot had appeared.

It was labeled “Nemesis.”

Excitedly, Shaw crawled toward the rent in the log. She heard massive footsteps outside, followed by a squawk and the sounds of titans scuffling.

She reached the rent and stood up so that her head and shoulders were poking through.

She saw the original T-Rex lying lifelessly on the ground before her. Behind it, her Hoplite Nemesis was clinging to the neck of another T-Rex. The mech had its right arm jammed down the carnosaur’s throat. Shaw heard the kickback of a grenade launcher, and then Nemesis broke away, landing on the ground below.

The dinosaur’s neck exploded in a shower of gore and the massive creature collapsed dead.

Shaw heard more squawks and thundering footsteps, and then two more T-Rexes came running into view, the foliage breaking before them. The deadly pair spotted their fallen companions and roared in outrage.

Nemesis aimed its dual grenade launchers at the newcomers and fired once more. Two frags dropped into the open jaws of the still roaring carnosaurs; the first made a choking sound, and the second reflexively slammed its jaws shut.

The grenades detonated.

The throat area of the first burst open in a spray of muscle and lung tissue. The lower jaw of the second came flying right off. Both T-Rexes dropped to the ground and didn’t get up again.

Nemesis swiveled towards Shaw and activated its jumpjets, landing next to the log. The hatch in its torso dropped open expectantly, providing a bridge between the log and the cockpit.

Shaw pulled herself through the jagged hole in the log and paused to shake off the insects. Then she dashed into the waiting cockpit.

The inner actuators closed around her and the video camera on the head linked with her Implant so that she viewed the world from the height of the mech.

“It’s nice to see you, Shaw,” Nemesis said.

“And you, my friend,” Shaw said breathlessly. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you, Nemesis.”

“It’s actually me, Surus,” the AI replied.

“Nice,” Shaw said. “Didn’t Rade tell me something about the universe not allowing copies? And so did Zhidao, come to think of it. But then again, Zhidao was able to come back to the same time period. Assuming he didn’t lie about when he sent me.”

“Phants are treated slightly different by the universe,” Surus said. “I may return to the same time period I’ve visited previously, as long as I’m inside a different host. But I must stay inside the AI core of Nemesis. If I emerge, I will cease to exist.”

“Weird,” Shaw said.

“Where is Alex?” Surus said.

“Glad you asked,” Shaw said. “I’ll take you there.”

She took one step forward, then another, and the inner actuators caused the Hoplite to mirror her movements. It had been a while since she had last ridden, but she remembered the controls as if it were yesterday.

On the overhead map, she saw that Alex hadn’t moved from his spot thirty meters away.

A proximity alert sounded.

Shaw was abruptly flung to the ground. She realized there was still a T-Rex out there she hadn’t noticed, and it had come upon her completely unawares and pinned her to the earth with its jaws.

She rammed her grenade launcher down its throat and squeezed the trigger.

The T-Rex released her and staggered backward, apparently stunned by the sensation of the bomb hitting its throat and passing down its gullet.

The dinosaur’s belly split open as the grenade exploded a moment later. It lay down to die.

She saw another one racing toward her, slightly smaller than the last. She folded her shield into her left arm, and a cobra into the right. She targeted the eye region but before she could fire the T-Rex reached her; she bashed away its head with the shield, stepping to the side. Then she triggered her jumpjets and broke through the branches above her as she arced above the T-Rex.

She thrust downward full force and rammed her shield into the neck as hard as she could, cutting a quarter of the way through with the bottom edge. She lifted the shield and rammed again and again in a rage. It took four strikes until she had severed the head entirely.

She leaped away as the headless body collapsed.

“Brutal strategy,” Surus said.

“I know,” Shaw said. “But these things piss me off.”

She felt a sudden guilt as she gazed down at what she had done. Surus was right, she didn’t have to treat the dinosaur so cruelly. She could have fired her cobra and given it a quick death.

Her shield dripped blood as she hurried through the foliage toward Alex’s position. She reached the thick wall of ferns and slowed to a walk. She reached down, parting the plants, and saw Alex cowering there, looking up at her with fearful eyes.

She activated her external speakers. “Alex, it’s—”

But Alex instantly stood up and ran away.

thirty-two

She realized it had been a mistake not to show her children the Hoplites before. She had been trying to shelter and protect the twins from anything having to do with the navy. To her, the war machines were the embodiment of everything military, and she had wanted to hide them from the kids for as long as she could.

As Alex vanished into the undergrowth, she realized that yes, it was definitely a big mistake.

Shaw opened up the cockpit and leaped down.

“Alex!” she said. “Alex stop. It’s me!” She glanced at the Hoplite. “Follow twenty meters behind. Stay out of sight until I call you.”

Shaw dashed through the underbrush after her son.

“Alex!” she said. “Alex!”

She glanced at the map; she was quickly closing the distance.

And then Alex just stopped.

Good, he had finally come to his senses.

Shaw emerged from the foliage and into a small clearing. She smiled when she saw Alex standing just ahead of her with his back to her, his attention apparently rapt by something overhead

Shaw followed his gaze and the smile immediately fled her lips.

Alex stood before three towering T-Rexes. Their jaws were steeped in the blood of a freshly killed Orodromeus, according to the label her Implant gave the feathered carcass. All three dinosaurs had paused in their feeding to glare at Shaw and her son.

Shaw closed the distance to Alex and protectively wrapped her arms around him, scooping him up. Then she slowly backed away.

She hit something hard. For a moment she feared she had backed into the tree trunk leg of yet another T-Rex, but when she looked up she realized it was Nemesis. Both of its cobras were aimed at the T-Rexes.

“Wait, Surus,” Shaw said. “We’ve killed enough for today.”

Several tense moments passed.

The T-Rexes finally returned their attention to the Orodromeus and continued feeding.

Shaw slowly repositioned Alex so that he could properly wrap his arms and legs around her, then she pulled herself onto the rungs of the mech’s right leg. She kept her eyes on the carnosaurs as she climbed, and when she reached the open hatch she turned around to back into the cockpit.

“Mommy, the iron monster is our friend?” Alex asked.

“Yes,” Shaw said. “Don’t be afraid when the door closes. It’s going to get dark.”

The hatch sealed with a thud, plunging the interior into darkness. The inner actuators would only partially deploy while Shaw had Alex with her, so she had to rely on Surus to control the mech. Shaw didn’t have a light of any kind on her person, and there weren’t any glow bars built into the cockpit, so the inside was pitch black.

“Mommy I’m scared,” Alex said.

She bobbed him up and down slightly. “You’re safer now than ever before.”

Apparently her voice portrayed the calm she sought, because Alex became suppler in her arms.

She knew that the Hoplite was moving because of the way she was jerked about, so she piped in the feed from the head camera into her Implant. Alex wouldn’t have access to that, unfortunately, but at least Shaw could watch as Surus piloted the Hoplite back toward the recall site.

“I’m going to talk with our rescuer now, okay honey?” Shaw said.

“Okay mommy,” Alex said.

“Surus, we have to retrieve the AI cores of the Centurions,” Shaw said. “I’m relaying the last known positions from my map.”

“I already have their positions,” Surus said via the AI core. “Or some of them... those robots that were wearing PASS devices, in any case.”

“Well here’s all the data I have.” Shaw dispatched the location information.

“Got it,” Surus said a moment later.

“So what’s the story?” Shaw asked. “Why did Rade send you so late?”

“When the Centurions failed to return,” Surus replied, “Rade feared an ambush of some kind, so he sent me to arrive at a later time. Nemesis was the only Hoplite left he could send back, first of all because none of the other Hoplites had returned, and second of all, because Nemesis hadn’t come back to this time period yet. In any case, you were out of signal range, so I had to use the Hoplite’s tracking abilities to find you. I’m glad I reached you in time: I have to be back at the site in half an hour.”

“All right, that’s all well and good that you found me in time for your own recall,” Shaw said. “But you do know Alex and I can’t go back, right? Zhidao apparently set the recall interval to an hour. And I missed my own recall already.”

“Yes, I noticed your recall time on the Selector,” Surus said. “But I believe there is another way to bring you and your son back.”

Shaw was cautiously optimistic. “How?”

“There is a loophole in the recall procedure that Zhidao doesn’t know about,” Surus said. “The Greens were the last in possession of the Time Acceptors, and had ample opportunity to study them and document their features. Normally, a traveler can’t take anyone or anything back to the future with them. But according to my vague recollections on the matter, if another individual from the future resides with the traveler and is stowed inside a container also from that same future, then the return is made possible.

“Since a mech is, by definition, a container, I can take you and Alex with me as long as you both remain inside my cockpit at the recall time. All the other rules still apply: I have to be standing on the recall site and so forth. The loophole is similar to the rule that allows a Phant to return multiple times, as long as the Phant does so while in possession of a different host.”

“All these strange rules,” Shaw said.

“Yes,” Surus said. “This is somewhat theoretical, by the way. The Greens tested it on inanimate objects such as robots, but never on an organic, so it might not actually work. But we have to try.”

“We do,” Shaw said. “Thank you for doing this for us.” She squeezed Alex in her arms.

“I’m not sure if you noticed,” Surus said. “But the Centurions sent back before me had a container with them. It was meant to hold you and Alex.”

“No, I didn’t,” Shaw said. “So you say we have about half an hour to get back to the recall site?”

“That’s correct,” Surus said.

“Too bad,” Shaw said. “I was kind of looking forward to surprising Rade in the past here. What about Zhidao? Did you encounter him inside Cora along the way?”

“Briefly,” Surus said. “I camped out at the recall site, hidden in the branches of a nearby tree, intending to capture and interrogate him about your location when he returned. But he timed his arrival so perfectly, that the moment he dashed into view and appeared on the Acceptor site, he vanished. I proceeded outward in a sweeping pattern, and soon detected the PASS devices transmitting from the fallen Centurions, and when I got to them I spotted the route you had taken through the undergrowth. I followed it, and shortly after, your PASS signal appeared, along with your comm node beacon. I realized you had probably given your PASS device to Alex, and I wasn’t sure whether to approach him first, or you. But when I noticed you were under attack, the decision to go to you became easy. Especially considering I was uncertain if I would frighten the child.”

Surus returned to the disabled Centurions in turn, and Shaw dismounted to quickly gather up the AI cores, placing them in Nemesis’ storage compartment after confirming with Surus that it would still qualify as “inside a container” for the strange rules of the return trip. Alex watched curiously from the open cockpit, sometimes asking questions that Shaw tried to answer as reassuringly as she could.

After collecting the last of the AIs, Shaw loaded into Nemesis for the trip back. Surus piloted the mech to the recall site to wait out the remaining few minutes.

“What if this doesn’t work?” Shaw asked.

“Then the mech will simply disappear,” Surus said. “And you’ll fall to the ground.”

“Well, if that happens, on the bright side we get to see Rade one last time,” Shaw said. Assuming she and Alex survived that long...

Hoping to soothe Alex, she sung a gentle lullaby as she waited for the recall to take place. She alternately cycled between the front, left, right and rear cameras as she sang, keeping an eye on the jungle, wary of more dinosaurs coming to attack. Nemesis would alert her if any tangos appeared of course, but still it felt comforting to watch the feeds on her own.

“Ten seconds until recall,” Surus announced.

Shaw continued to hum her lullaby, caressing the hair of her child.

“Five seconds.”

“Three.”

“Two.”

“One.”

The steel bulkheads of the hangar bay replaced the jungle.

“We have arrived,” Surus said.

Shaw slumped in relief.

The Acceptor was still located on top of the shuttle, with the Argonauts assembled on the deck below.

The video feed abruptly clicked off and the cockpit fell open. Shaw, carrying Alex, stumbled outside onto the hatch.

Rade jetted up onto the Acceptor in his jumpsuit. He had removed his helmet so that his face was readily visible.

“Daddy, Daddy!” Alex said. He pulled away from Shaw and reached toward his father.

Rade held out his gloved hands and took Alex from her.

“We saw monsters daddy!” Alex said as Rade held him aloft.

“They’re gone now,” Rade said, lowering the boy to shoulder level. Alex wrapped his arms reassuringly around Rade’s neck.

“Not the iron monster!” Alex said excitedly. “It helped us!”

Shaw was smiling so wide as she watched, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks.

Rade reached toward Shaw with his free arm and she eagerly embraced him. She rested her head on his chest assembly, next to Alex.

“I love you,” she told Rade.

“And I you,” Rade replied.

She just wanted to hold him forever and never let go. The joy was gone, replaced once more by relief. Sheer and utter.

She had survived.

And she had protected her little boy.

That was all that mattered.

She couldn’t help but sob as a fresh burst of tears came to her.

“It’s over,” Rade said. “It’s done.”

He was crying, too.

DRESSED IN FATIGUES, Rade resided in the cargo bay with Alex and Shaw, where Surus had raised a temporary glass-walled container to serve as a decontamination ward. Since Rade had openly come into contact with Alex and Shaw after their return, he had elected to quarantine himself along with his family until Bax cleared them all for duty. Black curtains situated around the container provided them with a modicum of privacy.

The Argonauts visited at least once a day, usually in pairs. Dora, repaired after the attack, brought Sil to visit daily as well. Cora had also been fixed, but she was kept away from the children for now, who were yet traumatized by the Centurion’s perceived betrayal.

Lui tapped in. “I have an update on the destination of the custom Hellfire Zhidao is hitching a ride on.”

Hearing that name made a fire burn inside Rade. Shaw had told him everything Zhidao had said and done to her and Alex. Needless to say, Rade wasn’t happy with what he heard.

“Do tell,” Rade said.

“It appears to be heading toward Ceres V,” Lui said.

“What do we know about the planet?” Rade asked.

“Well, for starters, it has a population of over three billion,” Lui said. “We’ll never find the Phant once it gets there.”

The blazing fire diminished to a lingering smolder inside Rade, and he sighed. “Probably not. But we have to try.”

“You know the orbital defense platforms will destroy that Hellfire before it even comes close to the planet, right?” Lui said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Rade said. “The Phant will continue toward the planet at the same momentum, eventually landing, none the worse for wear. What’s the status on our engines?”

“Still offline,” Lui said. “But TJ tells me we should have one or two online within the next four hours.”

“Give me an update on Surus and Bender,” Rade said.

“They’ve been in contact from the Mayflower,” Lui said. “The mercenary crew seems to be following Surus’ orders.”

“After the money Surus promised them, I’m not surprised,” Rade said. “How far behind are they?”

“Their Marauder will reach Ceres V about two days behind the Phant,” Lui said. 

“All right,” Rade said. “Set a course to join them as soon as our engines come back online.”

“You got it,” Lui said, disconnecting.

Rade stared at Shaw and Alex. Shaw was lounging near the child, who slept. Her eyes were defocused—she was inside her Implant, engaged in a VR experience.

He had come so close to losing those two. So damn close. Maybe it was time to hang up his fighting hat and leave the security consulting business behind for good. Dragging one’s family around the universe while working for an alien client probably wasn’t the greatest idea in the galaxy. Then again, he couldn’t see himself doing anything else. It was certainly a conundrum: he loved his work, and he loved his family.

Just a few more missions, he told himself. Then I’ll hang up my hat.

Unfortunately, that was what he always told himself. He was beginning to resign himself to the fact that he would be doing this for the rest of his days, however short or long they were.

Rade cycled between the ship’s different internal cameras, something he did often throughout the day. He lingered on the feed from cargo bay seven. There, a storage rack held the cylinders of the recovered AI cores. On Ceres V, the team would have to purchase new Hoplite and Centurion frames for the AIs. An expensive proposition, but Surus would bankroll it.

He knew the Argonauts had been incredibly lucky in their last mission, as had Shaw and Alex. That the team had suffered no losses other than a few mech and robot frames seemed almost impossible to believe. Rade was worried that in the next mission, the universe would resort to extreme measures to balance itself out. He reminded himself that the laws of nature didn’t work that way. The gambler’s fallacy: just because you were having a string of bad runs, didn’t mean that your luck was about to take a turn for the better. And vice versa. Yes, the Argonauts would continue to surmount anything that was thrown at them. He would see to it.

Besides, he didn’t believe in luck.

Rade dismissed the video feed and stared at the distant planet on his tactical display. Seeing that small, digital sphere made his anger blaze anew.

Ceres V.

We’re coming for you, Zhidao. I swear we are. You thought you could stop me by attempting to kill my girl, and my kid? Well you miscalculated big time.

No one harms my family.

And so the bug hunt continued.

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postscript

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about the author

USA Today bestselling author Isaac Hooke holds a degree in engineering physics, though his more unusual inventions remain fictive at this time. He is an avid hiker, cyclist, and photographer who sometimes resides in Edmonton, Alberta.

acknowledgments

THANK YOU to my knowledgeable beta readers and advanced reviewers who helped smooth out the rough edges of the prerelease manuscript: Nicole P., Gary F., Sandy G., Amy B., Lance W., Myles C., Lisa A. G., Gregg C., Jeff K., Mark C., Jeremy G., Doug B., Jenny O., Bryan O., Lezza M., Gene A., Larry J., Allen M., Norman H., Eric, Robine, Noel, Anton, Spencer, Trudi, Corey, Erol, David, Charles, Walter, Lisa, Ramon, Chris, Scott, Michael, Chris, Bob, Jim, Maureen, Zane, Chuck, Shayne, Anna, Dave, Roger, Nick, Gerry, Charles, Annie, Patrick, Mike, Jeff, Lisa, Jason, Bryant, Janna, Tom, Jerry, Chris, Jim, Brandon, Kathy, Norm, Jonathan, Derek, Shawn, Judi, Eric, Rick, Bryan, Barry, Sherman, Jim, Bob, Ralph, Darren, Michael, Chris, Michael, Julie, Glenn, Rickie, Rhonda, Neil, Claude, Ski, Joe, Paul, Larry, John, Norma, Jeff, David, Brennan, Phyllis, Robert, Darren, Daniel, Montzalee, Robert, Dave, Diane, Peter, Skip, Louise, Dave, Brent, Erin, Paul, Jeremy, Dan, Garland, Sharon, Dave, Pat, Nathan, Max, Martin, Greg, David, Nancy, Ed, David, Karen, Becky, Jacob, Ben, Don, Carl, Gene, Bob, Luke, Teri, Gerald, Lee, Rich, Ken, Daniel, Chris, Al, Andy, Tim, Robert, Fred, David, Mitch, Don, Tony, Dian, Tony, John, James, David, Pat, Jean, Bryan, William, Roy, Dave, Vincent, Tim, Richard, Kevin, George, Andrew, John, Richard, Robin, Sue, Mark, Jerry, Rodger, Rob, Byron, Ty, Mike, Gerry, Steve, Benjamin, Anna, Keith, Jeff, Josh, Herb, Bev, Simon, John, David, Greg, Larry, Timothy, Tony, Ian, Niraj, Maureen, Jim, Len, Bryan, Todd, Maria, Angela, Gerhard, Renee, Pete, Hemantkumar, Tim, Joseph, Will, David, Suzanne, Steve, Derek, Valerie, Laurence, James, Andy, Mark, Tarzy, Christina, Rick, Mike, Paula, Tim, Jim, Gal, Anthony, Ron, Dietrich, Mindy, Ben, Steve, Paddy & Penny, Troy, Marti, Herb, Jim, David, Alan, Leslie, Chuck, Dan, Perry, Chris, Rich, Rod, Trevor, Rick, Michael, Tim, Mark, Alex, John, William, Doug, Tony, David, Sam, Derek, John, Jay, Tom, Bryant, Larry, Anjanette, Gary, Travis, Jennifer, Henry, Drew, Michelle, Bob, Gregg, Billy, Jack, Sandra, Libby, Jonathan, Karl, Bruce, Clay, Gary, Sarge, Andrew, Deborah, Steve, and Curtis.

Without you all, this novel would have typos, continuity errors, and excessive lapses in realism. Thank you for helping me make this the best military science fiction novel it could possibly be, and thank you for leaving the early reviews that help new readers find my books.

And of course I’d be remiss if I didn't thank my mother, father, and brothers, whose untiring wisdom and thought-provoking insights have always guided me through the untamed warrens of life.

— Isaac Hooke

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