We made our way back the way we had come, using the schematic of the ship provided to us before our departure. Damage from the accident filled passageways with debris, girders and other wreckage. One passageway had been purposely barricaded with containers and anything else the crew could get their hands on and weld into place.
"Look, blast marks," Raj remarked as we examined the failed barricade.
"They're not plasma burns," David noted, rolling burned residue from one of the pock marks between his fingers.
"Edra?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
David nodded. "Yeah. The depth is about right. Looks like they were using anti-personnel rounds, so they wouldn't breach the hull."
The Edra, despite being centuries ahead of us technologically, still used projectile weapons. Each tiny bullet was a complex machine that could be modified to meet the needs of the moment. With the touch of a button, an Edra commando could turn his rifle into something that would shred a tank, and then make the very next round incapable of doing little more than inflicting a flesh wound. Fighting on a ship made that sort of flexibility very important, since even a single round punching through the hull could kill everyone in the area, as the air was sucked out into space. Explosive decompression was not fun.
"I guess the crew put a fight before retreating," Raj said.
"No," Kyle replied. "This wasn't a stand-up battle. There isn't enough damage, not enough bullet holes. A quick exchange of fire, maybe, but not a full-on fight. It looks like they set up this barricade and ran."
"Let's keep moving," I insisted.
We continued to move aft, closer to the core. The core itself was a spherical chamber three decks high, starting at deck 6 and rising to deck 4, like a bubble amidships. We were on deck 7, and perhaps twenty meters from the nearest ladder up. The passageways became increasingly cluttered with debris, the closer to the central core we moved. Several passageways were blocked completely. Every time we came close to the core, the radiation counters on our suits started to crackle slightly.
When we had come to our third blocked passageway, we stopped to consult our schematics.
"We might not be able to get there from here," David said, scowling at the map on his wrist display. "We might have more luck the further up we go. There is an access point on deck four, at the top of the core itself."
"Nothing between deck 4 and here?" Kyle asked from behind us, watching our flanks for visitors.
"No," David replied. "The time core is a large sphere, held in place from above on deck 4, and below on deck 6. Those are the only access points. Everything else is shielded."
"Alright," I started, before Kyle cut me off with a sharp snap of his fingers.
We were instantly quiet and on guard. I leveled my rifle, facing the passageway's T intersection. Raj and David stepped away from me, giving them clear shots. I didn't kneel, fighting the instincts of too many months in ground combat. In the field, you knelt behind cover. On a ship, people tended to fire down the middle of passageways, in order to avoid striking the power conduits that stretched along the ceilings. By kneeling, I was asking for a blast to the face. My teeth were not bulletproof.
Kyle signaled that he heard something. It was coming from around the corner, to our left. I slowly moved to him, stopping when I heard it, too. Clicking. Clicking and hissing, like an old steam engine that had sprung a leak. I recognized the sound. Edra.
There was a sudden silence. The low, background hum of the ship seemed to disappear. All I could hear was my own slow, measured breathing. My suit creaked slightly at the elbow joints as I readied myself. I held as still as possible, waiting, listening.
I felt myself tense up, and my right index finger slid down onto the trigger. I looked behind me, and saw that Raj and David were taking up positions for a fight. We were stacked two by two, now. I faced forward, watching for any sign of movement in the darkened passageway, hoping for some shadow from around the corner that would give us the second or two head start we could use to our advantage. I heard Kyle pull one of the stun grenades from his pocket, followed by the slightest clicking sound as he prepared to remove the safety pin.
If the Edra came at us, there would be no negotiation. They wouldn't ask us to lay down our weapons. Edra commandos were not diplomats or bureaucrats. They were the sharpest point of a very far-reaching spear, for a species that made its demands known in no uncertain terms. I had hoped to avoid them, at least until we had a better handle on the situation. No such luck, apparently.
We waited silently, still as statues. Thirty seconds crawled into a full minute, then two, then three. Nothing. No hissing or clicking. The silence was almost worse than the deafening crash of a firefight. Almost. Still, we couldn't stand here forever. I slowly moved my left hand from the rifle, and signaled for my guys to be ready to move.
'Single column, hook right,' I signaled silently.
I didn't listen or look for a reply. There wouldn't be one. We knew the drill without having to say anything. I took a step forward, taking point. I crept past Kyle carefully, slipping in front of him, against the bulkhead. I could hear his breathing grow faster, as the anticipation of a fight welled up inside of him. He took a step back to allow me full cover behind the corner, and took hold of my belt so he could yank me back if I took fire.
As soon as I felt his hand take hold of me, I leaned forward, careful to present as little of a target as possible. Not even my entire head was exposed. The lights in the passageway flickered, buzzing slightly as they kicked back in. The shadows disappeared as the lights came back, exposing the length of the passageway before it ended in another T juncture. It was empty.
I motioned for Kyle to release me, and stepped into the passageway, my rifle still pointed toward the sounds that were no longer there. Kyle stepped out, facing the other way. David stepped out in front of him. Raj took up a position at our rear, so I turned forward and ordered us onward.
The moment we began to move, the clicking and hissing returned. Raj and I turned around, just in time to see the flash from the end of the passageway. The Edra rifle fired three rounds, each accompanied by a terrible shriek. Their weapons did not have the usual loud crack of a projectile weapon. Instead, each round tore at our eardrums, like some fiend screaming in our ears. The rounds whizzed past my head, striking the bulkhead to my left.
"Contact rear!" I yelled, stepping to the left of Raj.
I opened fire a split second before Raj, and Kyle a second after that. The bark of our pulse rifles jabbed at our ears, the sound lower and fiercer than the Edra weapon. Kyle's pistol made its own distinct sound, slightly higher in pitch, but just as loud and deadly. The air warmed quickly as the hot plasma streaked down the passage toward a half-seen target. I popped off two rounds, as did the others, all eight blasts tearing into the wall nearest the shadow.
The Edra returned fire, several more rounds streaking past us, this time from both corners of the far intersection. I could hear their clicking and hissing, their unmistakable chatter. It was louder, faster, and more forceful. I didn't understand the language, but I knew the tone well enough. It was pretty much universal.
"They're about to push," I called out. "We need to move before we get surrounded."
"Jack," David called out from behind, "there's a ladder down one deck, not far from here."
"I thought we needed to go up," I replied, firing off several more rounds.
"We can go under, move up through engineering, and then in from there," he explained.
"Alright," I called out. "Let's do this!"
With David in the lead, we moved quickly away from the firing Edra. Their weapons shrieked at us, one of their rounds deflecting off my rifle harmlessly. At least they were using anti-personnel rounds. If that had been an armor piercing round, it would have gone right through the rifle and me.
We rushed down the passage and rounded a corner, heading aft. The deck plates, warped and dislodged, banged and crashed as we ran. There was no point in being quiet, now. The Edra had our scent, and they wouldn't lose it simply because we were quiet. We switched on our rifle lights, as the overhead lights became less functional the closer to the core we moved. By the time we reached the hatch for the ladder, none of the lights were working at all. We turned on our shoulder lights, as well.
David led us to the hatch we were looking for, set in the deck just off of a passageway. The bulkhead jutted in just enough for the hatch, but that meant there was nowhere to take cover. There was just enough space between the hatch and the bulkhead to allow the hatch to swing open, nothing more.
With no cover for us as we fought to open the damaged hatch. I took up position across from the hatch, against the bulkhead. I aimed down the passage, toward where we had come from. Raj was right behind me, his rifle also ready to tear up the Edra. Kyle and David knelt and fought with the hatch.
"What's the problem?" Raj asked with a rumble. "Open the goddamn hatch. I can hear them coming."
The loud metallic banging of the deck plates was getting closer. By the sounds of it, there must have been ten or more of them. The hissing and clicking mixed in with the banging. There was a world of hurt coming our way. I looked to Kyle, as he and David fought to turn the hatch handle.
"Fuck!" Kyle yelled, trying to turn the valve-handle clockwise to open it. "Fuckin' open!"
"We need leverage," David grumbled through the effort of turning the round handle.
"Trying!" Kyle hissed through clenched teeth.
"Figure it out, guys," I said with an uneasy voice. "They're almost on top of us."
"No shit, Jack," David muttered as he reached behind him.
He reached into his butt-pack; the small pack attached below his backpack, and pulled out his grappling claw. A small, lightweight contraption, they were designed for space walks, and grasped onto to rails and such, tethering the user so he could work with both hands. He jammed it onto the hatch handle and activated it. The claw wrapped itself around the handle with a death-grip. As Kyle continued to pull, David pushed back, and gripping the deck plate, kicked the grapple. The crash-bang drew more loud clicking from the approaching Edra.
"It's working," Kyle grumbled. "Come on, again!"
Just then, a figure dove across my field of vision, taking cover on the far side of the juncture. Its sleek human-like form shone under the harsh light from my rifle and shoulder lamps. As I started to fire, a second figure dove after the first. Very quickly, I had fire coming from both corners, the shrieks ripping at my ears. Rounds struck the deck and bulkheads around us, bits of shrapnel flying everywhere. These shots were more powerful than the last, and they wouldn't simply bounce off my rifle.
Raj and I fired back, keeping their heads down. The horizontal rain of plasma sent the Edra back around their corners. One of them poked his rifle out to fire, but it wasn't aimed, and the shots flew right past us. A burst from our rifles sent the rifle back into hiding as well, followed by a sharp set of clicks and hisses from the other corner. I guess their commanders didn't like their troops blind-firing anymore than ours did.
"Now would be a good time," I snapped.
David kicked at the grapple, and with Kyle pulling with all of his strength, they finally freed the damaged handle. The hatch unlocked, and Kyle threw it open. The moment he did, our radiation counters started to crackle loudly.
"Helmets on!" David called out, as my own faceplate swung up and over my head and into place.
Right away, the sounds around me changed. The immediacy of my own hearing was replaced with the sounds around me being filtered through microphones on the outside of the helmet, and into my suit. It gave everything a slight echo.
"Kyle," I pointed toward the hatch, "go!"
Kyle leaped feet first into the hatch, disappearing out of sight. I heard his feet strike the deck below us, and footsteps as he moved out of the way. David dropped down next, and then Raj, and then me. I dropped my rifle down ahead of me, and then stepped into the hole. As soon as I landed, I reached up and closed the hatch.
"It won't close!" I yelled.
Kyle and Raj both reached up and pulled. Between the three of us, we were able to seal the damaged hatch and lock it. Raj handed me my rifle, and grabbing a stun grenade from his pocket, set it and lodged it into a corner. It would go off when the Edra opened it.
"I got something with more kick than that," Kyle noted.
"We're on deck ten, against the outer hull," Raj said, shaking his head. "I don't want to risk a breach."
"Dude, it's an armored ship," Kyle replied with as he gazed down the passageway, looking for more Edra.
"You saw the warped decks. This ship is already messed up. Who knows how bad off the hull is, down here?" Raj finished setting the stun grenade, and backed away. "This should leave a ringing in their ears."
I looked down the passageway. We were right along the keel of the ship, its spine. The passage was long and straight, stretching out fore and aft. I pointed aft, and we started to run. The deck plates, even more warped than above us, rattled and shifted beneath our boots. My own heavy breathing echoed in my helmet, and it mixed with the radiation counter on my left wrist, which cracked loudly. The radiation levels were extremely high. With levels this high, exposure wouldn't give me cancer; I'd grow a goddamn tail in the few hours before I died painfully. Thankfully, our CEVA suits could handle it for a day or so before even they started to break down.
"Careful ahead," David called out from the front of our little column. "Gravity plating is out."
I saw the deck plates gently floating in midair. Beneath it, sparks flew out of the damaged plating. With no time to slow down, David fired ahead of us. The well-aimed blast struck the floating deck plates and sent them flying away from us. The moment they passed over functioning gravity plating they crashed to the ground.
We dove over the damaged area, the momentary zero-g giving me a lurch of vertigo. It was nothing more than a very long jump, five meters or so, but it felt much longer, as though I were moving in slow motion.
"Whoa!" Kyle called out, losing his balance and turning head over heels as he passed over the damaged gravity plates.
I caught his pistol as I floated by. Kyle crashed into the deck messily, and I tripped over him when I reached him. Raj crashed into both of us, sending us all to the deck in a pile. My head struck the deck, but the helmet kept me from harm. Still, there was a moment where I saw two of everything. I shook off the feeling, and pulled myself to my feet. I was relieved when my sense of balance returned to me, but slower than I was comfortable with. I gave my head a shake.
"Where the hell are we?" I demanded as I checked my rifle for damage. There was none, thankfully.
David checked his wrist display. He looked about him, orienting himself.
"Find me a location marker!" he barked.
We all looked on the walls around us. I moved aft, and came across the sign. I pointed.
"Section eight, port," I read back, yelling even though I didn't need to.
"Section eight, port," David repeated in a mutter as he consulted his map. "Great, we're almost there."
"There where?" Kyle demanded as he held his position with Raj, aiming down the passage.
"We've passed all the way underneath the core," David explained. "We are slightly forward of engineering. There should be a ladder just aft of you, Jack."
I gave him the thumbs up as I found it. Thankfully, this one seemed to be in working order. Just then, we heard the stun grenade blow, followed by screaming. The Edra were still coming.
"Up that ladder, and one section aft is engineering," David directed us.
I undid the hatch, and stepped back, rifle aimed into the darkness above. My light illuminated the bulkhead, and it seemed stable enough. I waited for incoming fire from above, or the sound of commotion, but there was none. The rest of the guys reached me just as I started up the ladder. The deck above was in fairly good condition, but there was a lot of smoke in the air. Flashing red hazard lights reflected off the smoke, giving the passageway a haunted look. I moved forward to secure the area. Kyle was up next, positioning himself aft. Once David and Raj were up, they sealed the hatch and set another stun grenade.
"Lead on," I ordered David.
We moved quickly through an open hatch, into a small compartment. There were environmental suits on the walls. The far doors, large automatic sliders, read ENGINEERING. The room was filled with a thick smoke, and my suit's sensors registered a heat source. There was a fire burning nearby, and the smoke was pouring in through a ventilation shaft that had failed to seal automatically, as the fire suppression system should have made it do.
"Fire," David said before I could. "How's that possible?"
"What?" Kyle prompted him.
"There is no way that a fire burns for four months," he explained.
"David, the Edra aren't going to give up following us," I reminded him. "Is it safe?"
"In our suits, yeah," David decided after a moment of thought.
"Alright, go!" I ordered.
David worked the controls to the door, and it slid open. There was a thick haze on the other side of the door, a wall of smoke too thick to see through. Sirens blared at us through the smoke, and red hazard lights pulsed on the bulkheads. I could hear commotion; movement, and a lot of yelling. As soon as David passed through the hatch, just before he disappeared out of sight, something crashed into him, and he was sent flying with a cry of surprise. I rushed in after him, with the other two behind me.
I stepped into a large compartment. Suddenly the haze was very thin. Every square inch of wall was covered in console and screens. Massive pipes rose out of the deck and traveled in all directions. Engineers rushed back and forth, all carrying tools and equipment. Some had fire extinguishers, others repair kits. Some carried heavy duty flashlights. Only a few had breathing masks on. It was utter chaos, as the engineers hurried to sort out what seemed like a thousand different emergencies. Only a few noticed us at all, and nobody stopped to bother with us. One even pushed past me, ignoring the rifle I pointed in his direction when he surprised me.
David was sprawled on the floor, his rifle sliding across the deck into a nearby engineering console. On top of him was a crewman, his uniform blackened. Both seemed dazed. I rushed in and grabbed the crewman, and hauled him off my man. Kyle stepped in and grabbed him, as I went for David.
The crewman was covered in sweat and grease, like he'd been crawling through the innards of the engine. His brown hair was singed in places, and there was some fresh blood around a minor scalp wound, likely from bumping his head on something. He didn't seem to notice or care. He had ensign's bars on his collar.
"What's going on?" the junior officer screamed, fighting against Kyle. "Let me go, you idiot!"
I grabbed David's rifle, and handed it to him as he picked himself up. I wasn't looking at him, though. I was too amazed at what was going on around us. We were in the middle of a full-on emergency.
"What the fuck is going on here?" I muttered, mostly to myself.
I looked to the ensign, held tightly in Kyle's grip. He looked more shocked than anything. I switched on the external speakers of my suit.
"What's happening here?" I demanded.
"What do mean, what's happening?" he yelled over the sirens and chaos. He struggled against Kyle's grip. "The core overloaded when we initiated stage three, and the temporal shock wave is wreaking havoc with the reactors."
I shook my head. The accident was months ago, or so I thought. "I don't understand," I said.
"Who the hell are you?" the ensign demanded. His eyes shifted between us and the engineering station behind me. He nodded toward it. "Never mind. Let me go! I need to shut down that transfer node! Let me go!"
He struggled some more, but Kyle held him firm. The ensign's eyes were wild, and he thrashed wildly. He was desperate, and my gut told me he was telling the truth.
"What the hell is wrong with you people?" he screamed. "I need to get to that station!"
I motioned for Kyle to release him. The furious crewman pushed past me, and started to work the station. Warning lights flashed like crazy, reds and blues, and the console showed diagrams of machinery I could not begin to identify. It all seemed vaguely familiar in a very basic sense, based on a few ship tours I'd been on in my time, but that was about it.
I switched off my external speakers and looked to my men. "What's going on?" I asked.
"I am so fucking confused, right now," Kyle grumbled, looking about him at the dozens of engineers as they hurried about into and out of the smoke.
"No shit," Raj replied with a nod.
"Give me a hand with this!" the engineer hollered as he grabbed at my arm.
He was trying to work two sets of controls that were spaced too far apart for one man. I looked back to David, hoping he had more of a clue than I did as to what was going on. David didn't wait for me. He slung his rifle and hurried to help. As he did, I motioned for Kyle and Raj to lower their weapons. David and the crewman worked the controls, with the ensign instructing him on what to do. David, a combat tech with only basic knowledge in ship operations, seemed to keep up with the ensign's rapid-fire instructions. A few minutes of work and most of the warning lights on the console seemed to calm down, settling on solid reds and blues. A few even went green.
The ensign turned to us. He still looked rushed, but now he mixed annoyance with that. He pointed to my helmet.
"Save your oxygen," he said. "The smoke isn't that bad."
I shook my head. "The radiation here is too high," I explained.
The engineer looked at me quizzically. He grabbed a small circular device hanging from his belt, and turned it on. He gazed at it for a moment, then turned it off and let it hang. He shook his head at me, and the look in his eyes was something approaching contempt.
"What are you talking about?" he asked. "The radiation here is barely above normal. Look!"
He grabbed at my wrist, and pointed at my radiation counter. It was silent, and showed mostly normal levels. I pulled my hand away from the angry engineer, and looked at it myself. David and the others were doing the same. David just shrugged. We all pulled back our helmets.
"Goddamn security," the engineer mumbled. "Learn to use your equipment. Nobody here has time to hold your hand. And put away those weapons! We have enough going on here without you accidentally blowing a hole in something."
He glared at the open hatch behind us, and pushing Raj out of the way, slammed a large red button beside the door. It automatically started to close. Before it closed, I noticed that just like when I had looked into this room from the other side of the door, I could not see back through it. The smoke was like a wall. Before I could really be sure what I was looking at, the door sealed. David and I shared a confused glance.
The ensign was about to stalk away, likely on his way to some other emergency. We were obviously not his priority, just like the rest of the engineers who raced past us. Then he stopped in his tracks and looked back at us, standing in confused, suspicious silence. He examined us closely, and pointed at our suits.
"Where did you get combat EVA suits?" he demanded. "Who are you people?"
Kyle was just shaking his head in disbelief. David was watching all of this, deep in thought. He was calculating. The engineer asked again.
"What exactly is happening here?" I demanded.
He shook his head. "No no, who are you?"
"I'm a captain of marines" I replied sternly, leaning in over the shorter, junior officer. "Now answer the question. What is the situation, exactly?"
He looked back and forth between my men and me, obviously confused. "Where did you come from?" When I answered with a fierce glare, he continued. "Stage three did not go according to plan. Something in the central core blew. The temporal shock wave blew out a lot of power conduits, and sent a feedback pulse back into the reactors. We've been fighting to stop an overload and shut them down for the last hour."
"For the last hour?" I repeated.
He shook his head. "Are you not listening? The overload started when the central core blew, or overloaded, or whatever happened. That was a little over an hour ago."
I reached in and took hold of his arm, pulling him close to be sure I heard him correctly over the sirens and chaos.
"Stage three was carried out an hour ago?" I asked, squinting to hear his reply clearly.
"Yes!" He yelled into my right ear. "How the hell do you not know that?"
I released him, and looked to David. He seemed as shocked as I was. I backed away, looking about me, trying to get a handle on exactly what was going on. Kyle and Raj seemed just as utterly confused as I was.
David stepped in. "Ensign, what is the date?"
The junior engineering officer's jaw dropped. At first he didn't answer. David had to ask a second time.
"It's July tenth," he said, his words as much a question to us as a statement. "What date do you think it is?"
David looked to me, and I nodded for him to continue. Obviously, we needed more information, and hiding what we knew wasn't going to help.
"Good question," David replied. "It's either July ninth, or November something. We've seen both dates in the last half hour."
The ensign nodded knowingly. He closed his eyes for a second and shook his head, as though we had just given him some very bad news. It's not that we thought our calendar issues were great news, but it was hard to tell exactly what was happening one way or the other. At least he seemed to understand the information.
"It's happened, then," he said. He shook his head again. "You had better come with me, captain. All of you."
"Wait," I said. "Where are you going? What's going on?"
The ensign ran his blackened hands through his singed hair, trying to focus himself. He was obviously frustrated with us.
"You ask that question a lot, sir," he said with a typical engineer's dismissive tone. "I don't have all of the answers, nor the time to explain everything I do know. Come with me."
He pointed across the compartment, toward massive open bay doors. It likely led toward Main Engineering, closer to the engines. I could see more engineers rushing around through the haze.
"I'll take you to the Chief Engineer," he said. "Commander Hall can explain everything."