Okay," I called out loudly, struggling to be heard over the laughter. "Quiet down, guys. We have to get through this. We're skids up in an hour."
David, Raj, and Kyle tried to stifle their laughter, though their smirks stuck around. They were as dismissive as I had been two hours earlier. Their grins were only half-seen in the dim light, but I knew they were there. The small officers mess was darkened, the holographic image of the Saturnus slowly turning through the air, hovering above the small palm-projector sitting on the polished metal dining table. Admiral Bishop stood across the table from us, his face flickering with the light of the holographic projection.
We sat in the comfy, leather-bound chairs that surrounded the table. Though I was permitted to eat here, I had never bothered. I never ate in the officers mess, no matter where I was stationed, except on formal occasions where my presence was required. Normally I ate with my team. Whatever we did, we did together. Since arriving here, we had chosen to eat in the main mess hall, and generally during off hours. Being here felt slightly odd. It was as though I were trespassing in enemy territory. I was used to that, but I wasn't weighed down with fifty pounds of combat gear. I felt naked without it.
When Raj and Kyle finally stopped chuckling, David clearing his throat to try and focus himself and his buddies, Admiral Bishop moved to continue. The silence in the room held for a moment, as Bishop examined us, his eyes testing our resolve. He wanted my squad because we were good at what we did, but I wondered if their laughter had given him a reason to reconsider. Had we grown too cocky? Were we too jaded to buy into the mission? I wondered that myself, but just for a moment. It had taken me a few minutes to get the idea straight in my head, and my guys weren't any slower.
"As I was saying," the admiral said with a look that balanced neutral and scolding, "the Saturnus is an experimental ship, top to bottom. To accommodate the central core, which is where the wormhole generator is located, they had to dump the standard jump-capable ship design and start from scratch. There is very little on this ship that is not state of the art."
"Sir?" David called out, raising his hand. He was straddling his chair, left arm draped over the backing. His brow was furrowed, his dark brown eyes looking to the holographic Saturnus, not the admiral. He was too focused to look Bishop in the eye, as he should when addressing an admiral. I didn't call him on it. Protocol was fine. Getting the job done was better.
"Sergeant Forres?" the admiral prompted.
Without looking up from the Saturnus, hovering as it did three feet above the table, David went on. "Sir, if you're serious, if this really is a time machine, how have you compensated for the energy issues? I mean, normal wormhole generation takes enough power on its own. How does the Saturnus generate the kind of power it would take to be that precise?"
"In truth," Admiral Bishop replied, "I do not know all of the engineering details. Even if I did," he said, shaking his head, "I would not pass them on to you. You are not being sent to power the ship up. I need you to shut it down."
David just shook his head. "Sir, I'm not a naval engineer. I'm a combat technician. I did a six month tour on a destroyer, because that's part of the training, but other than some tinkering, I have no expertise with things like this. This is all way over my head."
"You seem pretty clear headed to me, Sergeant," the admiral responded. "You are asking all the right questions."
"David doesn't know something?" Kyle muttered. "Someone write down the date."
David simply waved him off. "Okay, yeah, I get it. I'm a know-it-all, fine. I know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff, as everyone likes to say. That's all true, but sir, that's simply not the same as having the training to deal with something like this. We need to take along someone who knows the ship, or at the very least, a naval engineer who has some basic level of ship operations training. I don't have that, sir."
Bishop shook his head. "I cannot allow it." He pointed to the ship. "The Saturnus is so sensitive, I cannot allow anyone outside the project near it. The only reason the UES Grover is being allowed to tow the Saturnus back to port is because you will already have shut it down. That, and the Grover's commander has Special Operations clearance. Not even the ship delivering you is allowed to approach the Saturnus."
"Fine, so what about one of the engineers who actually worked on the ship?" David asked. "They're obviously cleared."
"To put it bluntly, Sergeant," the admiral said as he leaned in, "those people are way too valuable to risk on this. It is very possible that this will degrade into a shooting mission. I do not want some lab coat getting caught in the crossfire."
That caught everyone's attention.
Bishop carried on. "The Saturnus was deployed for her first full run," he said. "She left here three days ago, on schedule."
"How overdue is she, sir?" Raj asked, his finger errantly tracing a circle on the table. He was calculating in his head. I could almost see the gears turning, just as his finger did on the tabletop.
"She is not overdue at all, Corporal." Bishop tapped the projector. Above the Saturnus, a time line appeared, the graph stretching over the length of the ship. Marks ticked off, one at a time, indicating the ship's itinerary.
"The schedule was as follows," the admiral said. "She was to make her way to her destination, maintain position for forty-eight hours and run diagnostics, and then power up her experimental equipment," he said haltingly, before pausing. "Her time machine."
He had more to say, that was obvious, but he stopped anyway. I looked to the guys. Raj and Kyle were smirking again. I had to admit, it was hard to focus on the mission when the admiral in charge was talking about time machines. He might as well have briefed us for an assault on Santa's Workshop.
Bishop cleared his throat, and looked to his right for a moment. He had that same far off look in his eyes, as though he were looking toward something that might give him strength. In all of the stories, half rumor, half truth, which floated around about Admiral Bishop, I had no doubt that somewhere out there was something he never really lost sight of, even if it was light-years away. I wondered what reserves he was drawing on.
"Okay, look," he said evenly. His eyes seemed to grab at us, demand our attention. He sat down across from us, trying to look relaxed and failing. He had this rigid, always-at-attention look that he obviously couldn't shake, despite the informal way he reputedly worked. "I get it. When I was introduced to this project a year ago, I had a lot of trouble believing it. I wanted to throw the ensign who was briefing me out of my office. I thought it was a prank, but it is nothing of the sort. I have seen this ship, spoken to the scientists who built her, and the crew who mans her. This is all very real."
"We're sorry, sir," Raj started, "it's just that this is all a little hard to take in. You have to understand that in a job like ours..."
Bishop cut him off. "I know all about your job, Corporal. I used to do it, and a lot of uglier things besides. You operate on a combination of instinct and training. Your training gets you through the mission, but it is the instinct that tells you when to shoot, and when to watch and wait. Right now your instincts are telling you that this is nonsense, and I do not blame you in the least. However," he said, standing, glaring at us through the Saturnus' hologram, "whether you buy into this or not, the reality is simple; you are less than one hour away from launching. When you board the Saturnus, you will have slightly less than two days to complete your mission, regardless of how much friendly blood you have to spill. Does that particular detail help wipe the grin away, marine?"
He walked along the length of the table, stopping just short of Raj. The room was silent, each of his steps echoing in the wood-paneled room. I heard the creaking of his bones as he walked, and for the briefest moment, saw the scars on his arm, before his sleeve slid down to cover them.
"So, gentlemen, are you ready to listen to what I have to say?"
As if on cue, we all barked. "Yes sir!"
Bishop nodded his satisfaction, and returned to his place at the other end of the table. He picked up his hand-pad, and tapped away. The hologram of the ship grew before us, showing us details of the hull amidships. The ship was divided into several sections by massive bulkheads, and the notation on the diagram indicated that the bulkheads were part of the experimental gear itself. Every bulkhead extended outward from the central core, like an odd sort of web.
"Put simply, you will board the Saturnus, ascertain the situation, and stop the crew from conducting their experiment. You will halt the stage three experiment at all costs."
"Why?" David muttered, as much to himself as to the admiral.
"The first two stages are, put in simple terms, essentially a revving of the engines." Bishop pointed to the center of the ship, where the bulge held the time machine. "They are going to power up the machine; let it sit at fifty percent power for five minutes, and then power down. A few hours later, they will power up to ninety percent and attempt a burst."
Bursting was a common way to test a wormhole generator's stability. Our ships moved from system to system using wormholes, accessing a series of beacons scattered throughout this area of the galaxy. Before a ship fully opened a wormhole and passed through it, it sent out a burst, what under water would be called sonar 'ping'. Essentially, you sent a pulse out from the generator, and watched to see if the engine was working properly, and more importantly, if the area of space you were in had any anomalies. I didn't know enough about space navigation to understand the details, but I had seen the results of a ship where the captain failed to order a burst before opening a wormhole. The ship was left in pieces.
"Stages one and two have already been completed successfully. However, the Saturnus' third stage experiment is going to fail. That failure will be catastrophic. It will kill almost the entire crew, cripple the ship, and leave it vulnerable."
"Vulnerable to what, sir?" I asked.
"Shortly after the completion of stage two," Bishop continued, working on his hand-pad, "Edra commandos will board the Saturnus."
At that word, Edra, any sense of amusement left in the room was gone. We all leaned in. The Edra were our allies, or more accurately, not our enemies. Mostly humanoid, they could pass for distant cousins, if you didn't look too closely. Their home system was well away from Earth, and they pretty much kept to themselves. They found humans to be a bother, young upstarts, and they didn't have a lot of time or respect for us. Still, when the Edra were annoyed at someone, friend or foe, you knew about it. The presence of Edra commandos was never a good thing.
Bishop could see the concern in our eyes, and answered the question none of us had asked out loud, even if we were all wondering.
"The Edra found out about the Saturnus about a year ago. I have no idea how, but they did. I was brought into the project shortly afterward." He pointed to the Saturnus. "They are very unhappy with this project. They have filed protests with the government, and even sent an envoy directly to the President. They want the entire project scrapped, and the research abandoned. They did not share their reasoning with us, other than vague warnings about disastrous results."
"We ignored them, I assume," I finished for him.
He nodded. "Correct, Captain. I am uncertain what exactly the Edra's problem is with the Saturnus, but it seems that they did not take 'no' for an answer. According to my intelligence sources, Edra commandos will be aboard the Saturnus when the crew initiates stage three. We can only assume that they intend to seize her."
"Hold on," David said, his eyes shut tight, as he tried to wrap his head around the problem. He took a moment to sort out his thoughts. "You said that stage three will be a failure. Will fail. You're speaking in future tense, things that will happen."
Bishop nodded. Instead of explaining, he tapped his hand-pad. The small speaker inside started spewing static. After a few seconds, I began to make out a voice.
"Echo-two, Echo-two," the tired, male voice called out. "This is Zulu-two-three, on the ball and requesting assistance." I sat up a little straighter in my chair. I felt a chill run up my spine.
"That's you, man," Kyle whispered to me, astonished.
"Shhh!" I hissed, trying to hear my own desperate voice through the static.
The recording continued, but the static made it hard to follow. "... Saturnus is compromised. Edra commandos are pushing... bridge is secure. Captain... won't cease experiment... temp... psychosis. Entire crew affected."
Admiral Bishop stopped the recording. There was a deathly silence in the room. I could feel the blood in my face drain away, and I realized I was holding my breath. I let it out with a loud puff. Everyone was looking at me, with glares that ranged from surprised to horrified. David eyed me keenly, as though examining me, considering every possibility.
"There are more recordings," Bishop said evenly, "but I cannot share them with you. Suffice it to say, things will go very wrong on the Saturnus. I am hoping you can sort that out before it happens."
"That recording," David said, looking to Bishop's hand-pad. "It hasn't been sent yet."
Bishop nodded. "Correct. So far as my people can figure out, the stage two burst, which our listening posts detected on schedule, destabilized the area of space around the Saturnus. Obviously the crew did not realize this, though we are not sure why. When they enacted stage three, something occurred," he stopped himself, "occurs, which creates some serious problems with space-time. I wish I understood more of it, but I am not a temporal physicist. In short, the experiment will not only fail, it will create a situation in which we are able to receive Captain Mallory's transmissions, despite them not having been sent yet."
"I guess we know why the Edra objected," Kyle commented.
Bishop grimaced, nodded. "That is as good a guess as any."
"So this is why we were brought here," I reasoned aloud. "You received this transmission, realized that we are going to be sent on this mission, and order us brought here."
"No," the Admiral replied. "You had already been here for several days when the Saturnus left. You were sent here pending the investigation into your actions in the field. The Saturnus was so highly classified, most of Fleet Command had no idea it was here. If they had, they certainly would not have sent you here." He shook his head. "No, you being here is a lucky stroke for us. We did not receive this particular transmission until this morning. Others had been streaming in during the night, though we could not identify the voice. I had already decided to deploy you, when this particular transmission came to me."
"Am I the only one getting a headache?" Kyle muttered.
"Let me keep it simple, then," the admiral raised his voice slightly. "What we know is this; the Saturnus will shortly begin the third stage of her experiments. That is scheduled to happen in less than three days. Your squad will be deployed via needle-jumper. You will board the vessel and stop stage three from going online. You have full discretionary authority during this mission. If that means weapons, so be it. All of the details we can give you, we will put into your hand-pads. You can read them on the way. In the meantime, I want you geared up and ready to board your ship right away."
There was a silence in the room, the disconcerted scowls of four men who were being asked to walk into the bizarre and unknown. It felt like an ambush, with that creepy transmission as a sort of warning, like when the enemy accidentally snaps a twig while he lies in wait for you. When you heard that tell-tale snap, you stopped, reassessed, and generally either backed away or started shooting. You certainly didn't keep walking forward. In this case, we were doing just that.
"Any questions?" the admiral asked.
I shook my head, trying to keep my own fears from showing through. This whole situation smelled like shit, and we were about to be eye-balls deep in it.
Where was a simple board of inquiry when you needed one?
Goddammit.
***
Less than an hour later, laden down with as much gear as we could carry, we were strapping into the troop hold of our needle-jumper, and waiting for launch clearance. Needle-jumpers are small military transports. They can't generate their own wormholes, so they are loaded onto larger, specially-built ships, which move into position, generate the wormholes themselves, and then fire the needle-jumper like a bullet from a gun. They arrive at their destination unseen, move in under the best stealth tech humans could develop, and if necessary, literally jab their way into enemy ships like a hypodermic needle. Needle-jumpers were shaped just like the name suggested. They were one-way ships, but did have slow escape capability, mostly the drift-away-and-hope-you're-found kind.
The troop hold was small. It was designed for twelve troops, but the four of us had so much gear, we pretty much filled the small, cylindrical compartment. The curved ceiling forced us to duck as we strapped our duffel bags full of equipment into the unused seats. The troop hold had compartments for gear bags, much like any civilian airliner or spaceliner, but soldiers never used them. The compartment doors tended to jam when the ship rammed its target. If we went in hot, I didn't want us to have to pry open the compartments to get our gear. So, we strapped them to the deck. Only our rifles stayed with us, strapped to our bodies. Marines didn't give up their rifles. Ever.
In addition to our own personal combat gear, blast armor, power packs, medical kit, rations and water, a dozen tools that did everything we might need, and of course our plasma rifles, we each had a duffel bag full of extra goodies. Raj was carrying enough remotely detonated explosives to cut a battleship in two, let alone the Saturnus, which was maybe a quarter the size. Raj took a particular joy in blowing things up. It wasn't the technical challenge that excited him, but the idea that he could take all of the power inherent in large hardware, and with the push of a button, reduce it to wreckage and rubble.
David was carrying all sorts of engineering diagnostic equipment, handed to him by a nervous physicist who insisted that we take all sorts of readings before we shut the Saturnus down. David could probably take control of the ship and fly it home, and do it all from a closet, considering the sorts of gear he was carrying. He also carried a small, sealed water cooler that sloshed as he carried it. We always brought it along for needle-jumper insertions. We should have brought two of them, but we couldn't find a second cooler in the rush.
I was carrying a bag full of emergency beacons, meter long tubes on retractable tripod legs which put out a signal powerful enough to be detected in the next star system. I also had a small tank with enough trizene gas to put the entire crew to sleep for a year, and the gear to hook it into the Saturnus' environmental system. I also carried a specially-issued Captain's Pad, a small hand-pad usually issued exclusively to ship captains. I could do anything to that ship, once I interfaced it with the Saturnus' system. I could even blow the engines, or direct it to fly into a star, if it came to it.
Kyle had his favorite toy, an autonomous gun drone. David had once commented that Kyle's gun drone, the heaviest that could be carried by a man in the field, could have held back Xerxes' legions at Thermopylae. That's probably why David called the drone 'Leo' after Leonidas, the Spartan king who held back Xerxes' millions.
Kyle, ever the minimalist, simply shrugged and said 'whatever, man. It kills shit."
As we strapped ourselves in, David read through his hand-pad.
"Anything interesting, so far?" I asked.
He nodded. "Yeah. Apparently, the scientists who developed this thing are worried about something called Temporal Psychosis. Their medical people think it might happen if the wormhole they open isn't stable enough. Of course, that's pretty much what happened, so," his voice trailed off.
"So the Saturnus' crew is gonna be all crazy?" Kyle asked.
David nodded. "I don't know psychology, but yeah, possibly. The file here says we need to watch each other for signs of it."
"Like talking to people who aren't there?" Kyle said with a smirk. "Stuff like that?"
David shrugged. "It says here they think early signs might be having a distracted look, trouble focusing. On the other hand, being overly focused might also be a sign." He read through the file, holding the hand-pad closer, as he did when he was fully concentrated on something. "After that, you might see a slight trembling in the fingers, or uneven pupil dilation."
"Like from a stroke, or head trauma?" Raj piped up.
David shrugged again. "I guess so. This is all theory. Whoever wrote this file was guessing, since we have never played with this sort of tech before."
"Great," Kyle muttered. "Now all we have to do is start staring everyone in the eye, looking at their fingers, and asking them if they're listening. Cool. That should work."
I waved him off. "Look, we'll figure it out when we get there. We'll just keep our eyes open. Let's focus on the rest of the briefing materials, and see if we can learn something that isn't a theory."
"Hey, Jack," Kyle said, smirking at me. "When you snap, and go all silly and shit, I'll call your mom."
Just then, the pilot of the tug assigned to move our needle-jumper spoke up, coming in over the speakers. "Alright gentlemen, you're ready to go. We will be meeting up with our launch ship, the Nautilus, in twenty minutes. Please hit your go-buttons once the airlock is sealed and you're all strapped in. Enjoy your flight, and thanks for flying Scare Air."
I smirked at the in-joke. There was nothing quite like inserting into a combat situation using a needle-jumper. Using a sharp object on the enemy was great, but who wanted to be the sharp object?
"Anything else," I asked, shaking my head, "before we get this mission off the ground?"
"Yeah man!" Kyle called out, raising his hand as much as the seat straps would allow.
"What is it?"
"Your sister is totally hot!" he yelled.
Everyone laughed. Hearing everyone's laughter, including my own, over the rumble of the engines, helped settle my nerves just a bit. Everyone was smiling. The stress of the last three weeks, the debriefings, the doubts, the odd looks, all of it went away. It was our small ritual, our way of clearing the air and leaving behind all of the unimportant things. As bizarre as this mission sounded and felt, this was just another op. Get in, do our jobs, and get out. It's what we did, and we were very good at it.
It was time to put our game faces on.