chapter six
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Transtemporal Vehicle Kleio
non-congruent
Lieutenant Sarah Schoeffel opened her eyes, then squinted against the sudden brightness. Her eyes watered, and she blinked away involuntary tears as someone spoke in a language she didn’t understand.
“She’s waking up.”
“Everyone, switch over to Russian. We’ll see if that works.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then we’ll improvise.”
“Hello? Who’s there?” Sarah shielded her eyes from the glare and sat up to find herself in a glass casket within a white room. Despite the odd machinery around her, the room possessed the careful sterility of a medical facility. She patted herself down. Her clothes and boots had been removed, replaced with a medical gown.
But she wasn’t in pain. That was a start.
What had happened to her?
She struggled to sort through her muddled memories as she glanced around the room and confirmed she wasn’t alone. She found herself confronting a huge brute with long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, a handsome middle-aged man with shorter hair and piercing gray eyes, and a dark-haired woman who radiated a dangerous toughness. All three of them wore grayish-green uniforms with shoulder flashes showing a golden eye and sword on a black background.
“Who are you? Where am I?”
The strangers looked at one another expectantly.
“Which one of us is supposed to talk to her?” the woman asked after an awkward pause.
“I thought you were going to,” the hulking blond said to the other man.
“Me? Raibert, you’re the one who’s done this before.”
“In ancient Greece!”
“That’s still better than me.”
“Okay—fine! Let’s not argue in front of the guest. I’ll do it.”
The blond cleared his throat and stepped forward.
“Hello, Lieutenant Sarah Schoeffel. My name is Agent Raibert Kaminski. These are Agents Benjamin and Elzbietá Schröder. Can you understand the language I’m speaking?”
Sarah nodded. His outlandish accent presented a challenge, and his word choice made him sound like he’d been plucked from a very old movie, but she could manage.
“How do you know my name?”
“It was written on the front of your flight suit.”
“Of course.”
She glanced down at her medical gown.
“You were in pretty bad shape when we found you. You’d suffered severe blunt trauma. Your neck and quite a few bones were broken, and there was a fair amount of internal bleeding.”
Her heart sank and she reached up to the back of her neck. Then frowned. Where was her neck brace? What kind of drugs did they have her on to make her feel this good?
“Will I live?” she asked.
“What?” the man—Raibert—blurted, clearly surprised by her question. “Uh, I mean, yes! Absolutely! We’ve fixed you up good as new. Or at least really close to new. You’re going to be just fine.”
“But you said—”
She looked around the room again, at the glass casket she sat in, then at their uniforms once more.
“You’re not with the World Union, are you.”
It wasn’t a question.
“That’s right. We’re with the Consolidated System Police, Gordian Division.”
“Never heard of it.”
“That’s because we’re from . . . ” Raibert twirled his hands as if trying to conjure up the right phrase “ . . . out of town.”
“Out of town?” the dark-haired woman echoed, shaking her head at him.
“Hey, it’s not inaccurate,” he protested.
“We’re getting a little sidetracked,” the other man cut in. “The chronoton surge, Raibert.”
“Right. Yeah.” The big man sighed and turned back to her. “Sarah, the truth is we need your help. Can you tell us what happened?”
“I don’t—”
She paused, raking through the scrambled contents of her mind. What happened . . . what happened . . . ?
“Maybe start with how you ended up getting bounced around in your time machine?” the man named Raibert suggested.
“I . . . ”
Her lips trembled and tears filled her eyes as the memory of pain blossomed in her mind like a blood-soaked flower.
And with the pain came the memory of something infinitely worse than mere pain.
The world was vanishing before their eyes. She remembered running into her father’s office as he pored over the Chronoton Detection Array’s raw data. Doctor Kim Schoeffel had been hunched over a monitor, white-haired and pale as a ghost. One look into his eyes had answered all her questions.
This was the end of everything. The past was eating the present. Time had come unhinged, now was falling into the depths of then, and no one had the faintest idea what had caused it. But if they didn’t know the cause, one thing was obvious. There was nothing they could do. No miracle her father’s brilliant mind could conjure. All of reality—their entire universe—was doomed.
“Father?” she’d said softly, reaching out to touch his forearm.
He’d stared at her for an instant, then sucked in a sharp breath and shoved up out of his chair.
“Come with me, Sarah!”
“Where?” she’d asked hopelessly, twitching her head at the monitors.
“There may be one hope,” he’d retorted, then grabbed her hand and pulled her out into the corridor.
“Run, Sarah—run!” he’d snapped, and she’d found herself following him. Racing through the complex, passing men and women weeping, praying, reaching for phones to call loved ones to say goodbye. And that was when she’d realized where they were headed.
The prototype: Puteshestvennik Odin.
“The ship’s field,” her father panted behind her as they reached the hangar and she threw the hatch open. “If it can’t protect us, nothing—”
CRACK!
A push from behind, even as her ear identified the gunshot.
She fell into the time machine.
Her father slammed the hatch behind her.
Two more gunshots.
She’d turned to see him smile at her. His lips had moved. She couldn’t hear his last words through the hatch viewport, but she didn’t need to. She knew what he’d said, and her eyes had filled with tears as he slumped out of sight, his fingers leaving bloody streaks down the port.
Oh, yes. She knew.
“I love you, too, Daddy,” she’d whispered.
Then a World Union security guard had slammed the butt of his rifle against the hatch and shouted at her, his face a mask of desperation. She’d spared one instant to snarl at her father’s killer, then turned and raced for the controls. She’d flung herself into the seat, punched the button to power the impeller. The time machine had quivered as it came online; she reached for the control stick—
—and then the world ended.
She’d had no time to strap in. She’d hurtled forward, her forehead had smashed against the controls, and everything had gone dark.
“Oh, God.” She covered her mouth with a shaky hand. “It’s gone. It’s all gone!”
“I’m sorry.” Raibert bowed his head. “Truly, I am.”
“The entire world!” Tears blinded her. “It’s all gone!”
“I know this must be a difficult time for you, but—”
The woman—Elzbietá—put a hand on his shoulder, and he stopped.
“Let me take it from here,” she said softly, and stepped forward.
Sarah wiped her eyes. How could everyone and everything she’d ever known be gone? How was this even possible?
Elzbietá knelt in front of her and captured one unresisting hand.
“Sarah?”
She snuffled but managed to nod.
“You’re not alone,” Elzbietá said, and despite the sympathy in her gentle voice sudden fury sparkled inside Sarah.
“Ha! I’ve n-never been more alone in my entire life! No one has!”
“That’s true.” The other woman nodded. “But I know exactly how you feel.”
“Don’t lie to me!” Sarah spat. “How could you possibly know what this is like?!”
“I know because, just like you, I’m a survivor from a dead universe, Sarah.”
“You—”
Sarah’s lower lip quivered and the word caught in her throat. Facts began beating their way through the grief, and she looked around the medical chamber again. What the hell was going on? If all of space and time was dead . . . then where and when was she? Who were these people, and where did they come from?
“Your universe is dead,” the woman continued, clasping her hand, “and there’s nothing we can do about that. But this isn’t the end of everything. There’s a whole multiverse out there. That’s where this ship, and everyone in it, came from.”
“A . . . m-m-multiverse?”
“That’s right. And I know you just met us, but I hope you believe me when I tell you we’re here to help. Something terrible’s happened here, and even though it’s beyond our power to fix it, we’re going to make damn sure we figure out what caused it. And more importantly, how to prevent it, so other universes never share the same fate. Does that sound like something you’d be willing to help us with?”
Sarah sucked in a ragged breath, then nodded.
“So, Sarah,” the other woman said gently. “Please. Can you help us understand what’s going on here?”
“I can’t.” She shook her head. “I was only a pilot. My father might have been able to help you, but he’s . . . he’s—”
Fresh tears flooded, and she shook her head again, spastically.
“I see.”
The other woman nodded, then patted her hand and stood up.
“Come on,” the darker-haired man said quietly. “Let’s give her some space.”
The big guy grimaced, but he also turned for the door.
“Wait,” Sarah said.
All three of them stopped.
She drew another ragged breath, blotted her tears with the sleeve of her medical gown, and looked up at them.
“I can’t help you,” she said, “but maybe my flight recorder can.”
* * *
“I’ll be fine.” Elzbietá put a hand on Raibert’s back and shoved him out the door. “You just leave Sarah to me.”
“You sure?” he asked, looking doubtfully over his shoulder at her.
“Yes, Raibert.” She patted him on the back. “The last thing she needs right now is your barrage of questions.”
“I’m not that bad. Just one or two, to get a better idea of what happened to T4.”
“I know. But it’ll wait.”
“Come on.” Benjamin nodded his head down the corridor. “Let’s go take a look at that flight recorder.”
“All right,” Raibert huffed. He glanced back at Sarah, seated now in a chair beside the recovery casket, staring down at her hands in silence.
“And take your time,” Elzbietá added firmly.
“All right.”
Elzbietá finished shooing the two men away, then stepped through the door behind them. She paused on the other side and sent a quick command to keep the door open. She didn’t want their guest to feel locked in.
“I’ll just be a minute,” she said, and Sarah nodded without looking up.
Elzbietá ordered an outsized mug of hot chocolate and had it delivered to the bridge. Microbots transported the sealed mug to the command table, and she picked it up and carried it back to the medical bay.
“Here you go.” She unsealed the top. “By the way, in case you missed it earlier, I’m Elzbietá.”
Sarah looked up at the steaming chocolate, complete with a fat marshmallow bobbing up and down.
“Thanks . . . Elzbietá.”
She took the mug, holding it in both hands, and Elzbietá sat down next to her and waited.
“So,” Sarah said after a while, looking back up at Elzbietá.
“Yes?”
“You’re from a dead universe?”
“That’s right.”
Sarah set the mug down on the closed recovery casket and frowned at her.
“How did that happen?”
“It’s—” Elzbietá began, then stopped as a sudden surge of emotion ambushed her. The memory of watching that universe fall apart, dissipate like sand in the wind, still haunted her. It was completely different from what had happened to T4, and yet it was also completely, hideously the same.
“Sorry,” Sarah said.
“No, it’s all right,” Elzbietá reassured her with a smile. It was a little fragile, but it was a smile, and she patted Sarah’s leg gently. “It’s a long story, though. The short of it is that there was this knot in time centered on the twentieth century. Sixteen universes were tangled up in it. We managed to save almost all of them.”
“But not the one you’re from.”
“No,” Elzbietá agreed with a sigh.
“And the other two?” Sarah gestured at the open doorway. “Are they from dead universes, too?”
“Oh, no. They’re both from Universe-T1. We call it SysGov, though technically Raibert—the big guy—is the only one from SysGov itself.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he’s from the thirtieth century and Benjamin is from 2018.”
“He is?”
“Don’t be so surprised. I’m from that year, too, and we picked up our boss in 1958.”
“Wow.” Sarah shook her head. “Sounds like quite a crew.”
“You can say that again!” Elzbietá agreed wryly.
“So.” Sarah’s brow furrowed. “All of you travel around the multiverse and . . . do what, exactly?”
“We work for SysPol—the Consolidated System Police. Specifically, we’re in the Gordian Division, responsible for enforcing the Gordian Protocol. That’s a law that restricts temporal and transdimensional activities. Time travel turns out to be dangerous stuff—way more dangerous than anyone had thought it was—which is why we not only enforce the Gordian Protocol back home but also keep an eye out for other societies that have developed the same technology. That’s why we came here. To make first contact and educate your society about the dangers.”
“You were a little late,” Sarah said bitterly.
She hung her head, tears welling again, and Elzbietá put an arm around her shoulders. Those shoulders heaved with long, shuddering sobs for several minutes, and Elzbietá sat beside her, holding her close.
“We were playing with fire and didn’t even know it,” Sarah choked out after a while. “We screwed up—screwed up—and killed our entire universe!”
“This may be small comfort, but I don’t think that’s what happened,” Elzbietá said gently.
Sarah sniffed. She leaned back and wiped her nose.
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s just a feeling right now,” Elzbietá admitted. “But we know your time travel tech was in its infancy. If what we’ve seen elsewhere is any indication, there’s no way your society could have caused this. You didn’t have a big enough hammer to do this kind of damage, Sarah. Something else happened. Something we’ve never encountered before.”
“I see.” Sarah rubbed her reddened eyes. “The organization you work for. What did you call it?”
“The Gordian Division.”
“‘Gordian Division.’ It’s a good name.”
“Thanks. We think so.”
Sarah looked up and fixed Elzbietá with an intense, focused gaze.
“Are you hiring?”
Elzbietá blinked.
“Are we what?”
“I’m being serious here.”
“Yeah, I see that. It’s just I didn’t expect that question.”
“But you must see why I asked. Something terrible’s happened to my home. But I’m still here, and if there’s anything I can do, any way I can help you piece together this mystery and keep it from happening again, then I have to help you. I need to help you. There’s no other option for me if I want to be true to myself.”
“Okay.” Elzbietá held up her hands. “I see you’re serious. And you’ve made your point.”
“If it’s the résumé you’re worried about”—Sarah smiled without humor—“I happen to have experience with both time machines and working in another universe.”
“Just so you know, I don’t actually make those sorts of decisions,” Elzbietá said. She thought for a moment, then added, “But how about this? When we get back home I’ll introduce you to our boss.”
“The one from 1958?”
“That’s right. And”—Elzbietá smiled crookedly—“in addition to my boss, he’s also my grandfather-in-law.” Sarah blinked, and Elzbietá chuckled. “Not only that, he’s another survivor from my original universe.” Sarah shook her head, and Elzbietá patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. The important thing is I’ve got some pull with him and I’ll put in a good word for you. How does that sound?”
Sarah smiled back at her, and this time the smile was genuine.
“That sounds like the best news I’ve had all day.”
“Well then!” Elzbietá gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “How about we head down to the cargo bay and give the boys a hand?”
“That sounds great. Lead the way.”
“Wonderful!” Elzbietá squeezed harder in encouragement.
Something hot and slick spurted over her hand.
Sarah winced, and both women froze, neither able to process what had just happened. Elzbietá’s mouth opened as Sarah turned slowly to gaze at her new wound, only to find that the encouraging squeeze had buried Elzbietá’s fingers knuckle-deep in the flesh and bone of her shoulder.
Blood fountained around the embedded digits, and Sarah screamed.
* * *
“Can you read it yet?”
Raibert leaned back against the side of the cargo bay and tapped his foot. Two spherical remotes, each the size of his head, held up a floor panel in the time machine’s cockpit while the third hovered nearby with a makeshift, microbot-constructed umbilical cord linked to the flight recorder.
“I think Kleio’s almost got it,” Philo said. His Viking avatar—the entire thing, not just his head, now that the ship’s attendant program was back online—stood next to Raibert. “Good to have her back.”
“Yeah,” Raibert agreed with feeling. “Nice to see you hanging around again, too, buddy.”
“Nice to be hanging around again,” Philo replied. “But the good news is that the data’s meant to be read. It’s just a matter of piecing together the interface from nothing. Much as I hate to admit it, Kleio’s better at that than I am.”
“I know she thinks she is, anyway,” Raibert said. “But if she’s so good, why doesn’t she have this licked by now? Kleio, what’s the holdup?”
“Apologies, Agent Kaminski, but my systems are operating at only fifty-seven percent efficiency.”
“Is that with or without the extra twenty-three percent I’m paying sass-tax for?”
“That capability is included in my estimate. Repairs to damaged pathways are ongoing. I should be back over ninety percent within the hour.”
“Well, it was fun while it lasted,” Raibert said with a shrug.
“There,” Philo said. “I think we’re in.”
“All right!” Raibert pushed off the wall and rubbed his hands together.
“Don’t get too excited,” Benjamin cautioned. “This is a very basic time machine were dealing with. I doubt its instruments are anywhere near as good as ours.”
“Better than nothing, though. Right, Philo?”
“Definitely better than nothing. Looks like the recorder was in a powered state even before Lieutenant Schoeffel brought the impellers up. In fact, it looks like her array picked up the whole event, from the very start of T4’s destruction. The data is very basic, but it does give us a roadmap. Take a look.”
A virtual display opened in front of them, showing them a conical projection of the chronometric activity. The time machine must have had a forward-facing dish, Raibert surmised, rather than an omnidirectional array like Kleio’s.
“This is the data from just before the event,” Philo said.
“Hmmm.” Raibert nodded.
“Help me out here,” Benjamin said. “It looks like a big, muddled mess to me.”
“The important takeaway is that it’s normal,” Raibert said. “Very normal. See here? Fifty percent of chronotons moving backward in time and fifty percent pressing forward, building the future. Almost a perfect split. It’s your standard True Present view, just really murky compared to what we’re used to.”
“Right,” Philo said. “And now we reach the event.”
The chaotic readings in the cone shifted violently in a singular direction and Raibert’s eyes went wide.
“Shiiiit.”
“What?” Benjamin asked. “What just happened?”
“Look at that!” Raibert pointed to the flow change. He opened one of the mental pathways that connected him to Philo, and the particulars of chronometric physics crystallized in his mind. “See that shift? The change in chronoton direction was so sudden and violent it induced a phase state on regular matter!”
Benjamin frowned at him.
“And look here! You can see a section of matter transitioning into a non-congruent state without an impeller anywhere in sight!”
Benjamin cleared his throat and Raibert glanced up.
“The quick and dirty summary?”
“That would be nice, yes,” Benjamin agreed.
“Well, looks like you were right, Doc. T4’s present got sucked into its past.”
“Okay.” Benjamin nodded, staring at the data. “Granted, that’s what we thought was happening. But that leads to an important question.”
“Yeah, I know. What’s doing the sucking?”
“I wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but, yes. Where is all this suck coming from?”
“Wish I knew.” Raibert crossed his arms. “Any thoughts, Philo?”
“For starters, this is very different from the Gordian Knot. We’re clearly dealing with a second, undiscovered form of universe-killer.”
“Wonderful.” Raibert shook his head with a sigh. “Just what we needed. Another way to kill a universe.”
“Why do you say this can’t be a knot?” Benjamin asked.
“Two reasons,” Philo replied. “First, the one Gordian Knot on record would’ve taken one thousand three hundred years to destroy the universes it entangled.”
“This, however,” Raibert interposed, pointing at the data cone, “was almost instantaneous.”
“It was,” Philo agreed. “And with no sign of a storm front approaching the True Present. Nor was there an explosive increase in total chronometric energy.”
“Ergo,” Raibert said, “we’re dealing with something new. T4 wasn’t the source of a knot, nor was it entangled in one.”
“In some ways, this is the opposite of the Knot,” Philo added. “It’s almost like T4 is imploding, whereas the Knot would have had an explosive conclusion.”
“Hence all this suckage,” Raibert said.
“On that point,” Philo said slowly, “I might have an idea about where it’s coming from.”
“Oh?” Raibert’s face lit. “Let’s hear it.”
“It’s not the cleanest math, given that I’m dealing with realspace, temporal, and transdimensional coordinate systems all stacked on top of the other. But I think I’ve identified the overall flow vector.”
“And?” Raibert asked.
“T4 is being pulled toward T3.”
“Oh, no,” Benjamin breathed. “You don’t mean—?”
“Fuck!” Raibert kicked the side of the time machine.
“But if things are this bad in T4 . . . ” Benjamin drew a deep breath. “Then what’s it like in T3?”
“However bad it is”—Raibert crossed his arms again—“we need to find out.”
“Absolutely,” Benjamin agreed. “And Fritz and the Aion could be caught up in this mess! If it hasn’t hit T3’s True Present yet, we’ve got to get them the hell out of there! And if it has . . . ”
He eyed the data cone and his voice trailed off.
“Yeah,” Raibert said flatly. “I know.”
“There’s something else I want to bring to everyone’s attention,” Philo said. “Though I’m not sure what to make of it.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s a weird chronometric resonance enveloping Sarah’s time machine.”
“Is it dangerous?” Benjamin asked.
“Not right now, but the resonance is increasing, and I don’t know why.”
“What’ll happen if it keeps increasing?” Raibert asked.
“Hard to say. It has a very strange pattern, but I think it’ll start shifting out of phase with the rest of the ship.”
“Shouldn’t Kleio’s field prevent that from happening?”
“Normally, yes. But this time I’m not so sure. Especially as this resonance gains amplitude.”
“Are you seeing the same pattern in the debris field?” Benjamin asked.
“Yes, though it’s much more severe out there. It’s possible her time machine’s field dampened the phenomenon but didn’t prevent it entirely.”
“Well, keep an eye on it,” Raibert said. “If it gets worse, we can just dump this thing out the front. We’ve already got what we need from the—”
“Wait a second,” Benjamin interrupted. “If the time machine is resonating, what about Sarah?”
Raibert turned to him, and they looked at each other, eyes dark. If the time machine was—
“Ben! Raibert!” Elzbietá shouted over their virtual hearing. “Get back here!”
“Oh, no!” Benjamin broke into a run.
“What’s wrong, Ella?” Raibert demanded, two strides behind him.
“I don’t know! Something’s happening to Sarah! Just get over here!”
“We’re on our way!”
They rode the counter-grav shaft up a level and followed the screams down the corridor before turning into the medical bay. Benjamin reached the open doorway first and froze.
“She’s . . . ” he breathed.
“Let me through!” Raibert shoved him aside and slipped in sideways. “Ella, what’s—?”
He stopped in his tracks.
Sarah had sunk into the floor up to her shins.
“Help me!” she cried, reaching for them. “Help me, please!”
“Raibert, what’s happening to her?!” Elzbietá demanded urgently.
“I don’t know!” he snapped back. “Philo, full power to the impeller! Maximize our field strength!”
“Full power engaged!”
Sarah sank into the floor up to her knees, and a chunky red stain spread out around her legs. Raibert could actually see pieces of flesh and splinters of bone phasing outward from her legs.
“It’s not working!” Elzbietá cried.
“Help me!”
Raibert gripped her outstretched hand and pulled, but her fingers and palm came apart like jelly. Her hand shredded, ripped off in his grasp, leaving only her thumb and a ghastly blood-spouting stump.
She shrieked in pain, sinking downward. The floor was up to her hips.
“More power!” Raibert shouted, dropping her mutilated hand. Bits and pieces of the bloody ruin phased away even as it fell to the floor. “Get her back in phase!”
“We’re maxed out!” Philo said. “There’s nothing I can do!”
“Help me!” Sarah cried as she slipped away from them. The edges of her body lost definition. “Noooooooo! Please, NO!”
She strained to reach them with her good hand, and Raibert reached back toward her.
But then he stopped himself, their fingertips almost touching. He closed his fist and lowered his arm. The floor was already up to her stomach, and there was nothing he could do. He’d only succeed in making her last moments even more unbearable.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Help meeeeeeeee . . . ”
Her scream became a fading, dying whisper as her head disappeared through the floor and chunks of half-real gore spread out from where she’d stood.
* * *
Nothing remained.
Not her flight suit, not her time machine.
Not even a drop of blood.
Benjamin and Elzbietá had retired to the bridge. They sat with their arms wrapped around each other, her face pressed into his shoulder, but Raibert sat on the medical bay floor where Sarah had vanished. He stared at the perfectly clean spot that had consumed her.
All the sickening pieces of flesh and bone had melted away like ice under a flame.
Only the cold reality of the deck remained.
Philo materialized next to him.
“There was nothing any of us could have done,” the Viking said softly.
“Is that really true?” Raibert looked up, eyes bitter. “Or were we just too slow? If we’d realized in time, maybe—”
“It’s the truth,” Philo interrupted, and sat down next to him. “Kleio and I ran the numbers. That resonance pattern had already reached a critical stage before we ever picked her up. She was doomed from the outset, Raibert. Our field delayed it, bought her a little more time, but that’s about it.”
“But we survived the Knot unraveling. We should have been able to save her!”
“Cutting the Knot was completely different. That universe just . . . dispersed, like so much sand in the wind, and our field effortlessly protected us back then. Her universe imploded. Violently, as the past gorged itself on the present. If the Knot had been that sort of event, that could have been Ella, Raibert.”
Their gazes met, dark with the shared memory of another universe’s death . . . and the horrifying thought of watching Elzbietá, Klaus-Wilhelm, and his handful of surviving men shred into mists of blood and bone and then just . . . disappear before their eyes.
“If her impeller had been stronger or active earlier, before the event started, then maybe. But as it was . . . ” The avatar sighed heavily before continuing.
“But Sarah’s impeller couldn’t stop the resonance from passing the tipping point. And after that it was too late. We were just too late to make a difference.”
“I see . . . ”
“Come on.” Philo bobbed his head toward the bridge. “We need to decide our next move.”
His avatar vanished.
Raibert sat for another minute, staring at the spotless floor, then inhaled and rose. He smoothed his uniform, raised his head, and strode onto the bridge.
Benjamin and Elzbietá looked up as he entered, and Philo materialized beside them.
Raibert walked to the table and laid his hands flat on its surface. He swept his gaze across the team.
“We press on,” he said.
Benjamin nodded, and Elzbietá sat a little straighter.
“I know it’s risky,” he continued, “but we need to figure out what happened here. And more importantly, why it happened. The only way I see to do that is to head into the heart of this mess. And if Aion’s caught in something like this—”
“Exactly,” Benjamin said.
“Just give me a heading,” Elzbietá told him, and Raibert gave them a halfhearted smile.
“You two are way too calm about this,” he said. “It’s almost like you’d faced a universe-ending catastrophe before.”
The other two laughed, despite themselves.
“All right. Any objections or alternative suggestions?” He paused. No one spoke. “In that case, let’s get to it. Ella, set course for Universe-T3.”