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chapter eight

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Argus Station

SysGov, 2980 CE


Lamont glanced around to be certain he and Klaus-Wilhelm were alone as they headed down the corridor to their next meeting. Then he exhaled a long, weary sigh.

“I’m glad at least one of them can be reasoned with.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure, sir. Honestly, I think he’s the one we need to watch out for.”

“You don’t trust him?”

“I don’t trust any of them.”

“Of course.” Lamont rubbed his brow. “Are you sure you’re not letting personal history affect your judgment?”

Klaus-Wilhelm tensed and a jagged lightning flash of memory ripped through his soul:

A skeletal machine festooned with weapons, tearing through the mansion. Flames and gunfire on all sides. The revolver bucking in his hand as he unloaded shot after shot into the infernal thing. Yulia, so strong and beautiful, her body broken and burned, dying in his arms. And finally their three little girls, blackened and seared—the same faceless, twisted, carbonized pieces of meat he’d dragged from burning tanks, seen left by the hellish kiss of napalm—huddled together, arms wrapped around one another in the storage cabinet where they’d hidden for the final terrified seconds of their young lives.

Tears stung his eyes and he blinked them away.

“No, sir,” he said flatly, marching at Lamont’s side, and the chief of police sighed and shook his head.

“You’re allowed to be human, you know,” he said gently.

“The attack on my family isn’t something I can forget.” Klaus-Wilhelm’s voice was as flat as before. “No one could forget it—or not anyone I’d care to know, anyway. But I’ve had a great deal of experience in working with people I personally loathe. I won’t pretend my feelings don’t affect how I feel about this Admin, even if I know intellectually that these people aren’t the ones who killed my family. But I’m aware of that, and I learned the hard way, a long time ago—a long time even for me—that personal feelings, even hatred, can’t be allowed to affect the discharge of someone’s duty. It’s my duty to be as coldly logical and dispassionate as possible in my consideration of this Admin’s positions or opinions.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. Just keep in mind that our two governments are stuck with each other, whether we like it or not. We should all do what we can to ensure things don’t . . . escalate.”

“I’m well aware of that, sir.”

“And the Admin has, at least outwardly, endorsed peace.”

“I’m aware of that, as well, sir. At the same time, we need to remember that right up until the instant Agent Kaminski made contact with this Admin, the people we’re talking with today were precisely the same people in charge of the Admin he first contacted.” Klaus-Wilhelm shook his head. “The divergence point began there, so these people are exactly who those people were up to that point. The decisions they’re making and the actions they’re taking are different because they were approached under different circumstances, and because they don’t see themselves as fighting for the very survival of their own universe . . . yet. I fully understand that they, just like SysGov, are operating in a completely different matrix from the Admin who killed my family and would have destroyed the entire multiverse just to preserve their own universe for a time. And, as I say, I’m factoring that into my consideration of their proposals and actions. But in the end, sir, we have to judge these people by their actions, not their words.”

“Well.” Lamont frowned. “Therein lies the problem, doesn’t it?”

Prog-steel parted to reveal an intimate conference room with a small round table. Six chairs ringed the table, and there was one empty space where a chair should have been. The seven spots were for the chief of police and the commissioners of SysPol’s six divisions: Argo, Arete, Themis, Panoptics, Hephaestus, and now Gordian, although the latter was so small it rated only a vice-commissioner at the moment. The missing chair was because the commissioner of Arete Division was an abstract citizen and didn’t need one.

“Chief.” Commissioner Jamieson Hawke was the room’s only occupant when they arrived, and he rose to greet them. His muscular synthoid wore the black uniform of Argo, SysPol’s patrol fleet division and the closest thing SysGov had to a standing army. Dark eyes stared out from a bald head, and the two gems of his heavily integrated ACs—one an oval ruby, the other a square emerald—glinted above each shoulder.

“Where’s Peng?” Lamont asked as he rounded the table toward his chair.

“He sent word he’d be late,” Hawke said. “Some mess involving the Mercury Historical Preservation Society.”

“Another protest?”

“He didn’t say.”

The Dyson Realization Project was the largest SysGov initiative ever, slated to convert the planet of Mercury into a solar-collecting megastructure. The project, bolder even than the Alpha Centauri Colonization Initiative, had spent decades in legal purgatory due to its controversial plan to consume Mercury’s mass. As a result, tests of the proposed macrotechnology had only recently commenced, and the Society, as its name implied, still sought to maintain the status quo despite their long string of losses in the courts.

“Should we begin without him?” Klaus-Wilhelm asked.

“No.” Lamont settled into his chair. “We’ll wait.”

Klaus-Wilhelm loaded his presentation into the room’s infosystem and sat down. Only the heads of divisions that regularly interacted with the Admin—or might be forced to “interact” with them if a shooting war broke out—were invited to this meeting, so it made sense to wait until all of them were present. In the meantime, he opened his backlog of reports and began reading through them to pass the time.

Nineteen minutes later, Commissioner Peng Fa arrived. His avatar was a slender man in the dark red of Arete Division, SysPol’s First Responders. His skin was the black of midnight, and his eyes glowed electric blue.

“Sorry about that!” He smiled at his colleagues and took a seat in the virtual chair that materialized next to him. “Some people just can’t stand progress, you know?”

“The Society again?” Lamont asked.

“More like its radical fringe,” Peng replied. “Gotta give ’em points for persistence.”

“Trouble?”

“Nothing we couldn’t handle, Chief. Just some idiot’s idea of civil disobedience with a dash of industrial, self-replicating graffiti. Granted, it was graffiti designed to eat kilometer-wide letters into the surface of Luna, but we put a stop to it. You can’t even tell the first letter was supposed to be an F. We’ll be handing the perp over to Panoptics shortly.” He glanced around the room. “So, what did I miss?”

“Nothing,” Hawke said. “We’ve been waiting for your sluggish ass to get over here.”

“Hey, now.” Peng flashed a crooked grin. “If I could increase the speed of light, I would, believe me.”

A comfortable camaraderie permeated the room. Klaus-Wilhelm was by far the youngest person present (despite the fact that he’d been born the better part of a thousand years before any of the others). All three of his colleagues had passed their centennial birthdays, and Lamont had recently celebrated his two hundredth. They were also long-standing fixtures in SysPol, though their roles shifted every few decades. Hawke had spent some time in charge of the First Responders, and Peng had once been a vice-commissioner for Hephaestus, SysPol’s R&D division.

In comparison to his subordinates, Lamont was the bedrock of SysPol leadership. He’d worked his way up the ranks over the first half of the thirtieth century and had outlasted three presidential administrations in his current post as chief of police.

Klaus-Wilhelm deeply respected the enormous well of experience sitting in the room—how could he not?—but he also recognized the arrogance which infused their discussions. It might be fairer to call it confidence, but they’d been so successful for so long, against so many obstacles, that none of them believed they could truly fail. Of course there would be occasional setbacks, but SysPol would always come out on top in the end. That was the way the world was; it was as much a fact as physics or chemistry.

Maybe their level of arrogance—or confidence—was justified. Their track records made fascinating and impressive reading. But overconfidence was a double-edged sword that could cut deep at the worst possible moment.

God knew Klaus-Wilhelm von Schröder had seen enough of that, too!

“I believe we can get started now,” Lamont said. “Klaus? Let’s hear what you have on recent Admin activity.”

“Yes, sir.” He stood. “On the surface, the Admin continues to cooperate with us to prevent another Gordian Knot. The DTI still monitors the near-present timeline in their universe, both for information gathering as well as counterterrorism purposes, but their operational procedures have changed to minimize interactions with the past. In fact, they’re enforcing the Gordian Protocol more strictly than we are. That’s the good news.”

He brought up the first image. A long, sleek, solidly built craft rotated above the table. Wide, flattened sections extended on either side of its bow, and the unmistakable spike of an impeller protruded from the rear.

“And this is the bad news,” Klaus-Wilhelm said. “They’re busy building bigger and nastier ships. This is the Hammerhead-class, which they refer to as a ‘heavy assault chronoport.’ At a hundred and ninety meters and eleven thousand tons, it’s almost sixty percent larger than our standard TTVs.”

“Weaponry?” Lamont asked.

“Primary weapons are two high-yield proton lasers and a pair of two-hundred-and-forty-millimeter railguns situated on the forward wings. Two dorsal and ventral seventy-five-millimeter railguns provide point defense, and the space here, along the dorsal midsection, accommodates a complement of ten missiles.”

“That’s a rather low number compared to the Admin craft we’ve seen so far,” Hawke noted.

“Correct. That’s why they may be secondary weapons intended for strikes against softer, civilian targets.”

“I see,” Lamont said darkly. “Nuclear?”

“We’re not sure, but it seems likely.”

“What about speed and maneuverability?” Hawke asked.

“We haven’t spotted one in flight yet, but we can make some educated guesses. It has a quad of fusion thrusters here where the hull meets the impeller, plus two more on the wing tips. The size of the impeller suggests a negative five-hundred-fifty-ton mass. Based on all that, we expect the craft will perform similarly to the Pioneer-class light chronoports we’ve encountered before. And speaking of which—”

He brought up his second image. The smaller chronoport resembled a manta ray in overall shape, and the underside of its wide delta wing was loaded with modular weapon pods.

“We don’t know what the Admin calls these, so we’re referring to them as Pioneer refits for now. The DTI has been going through its standing chronoport force, taking some back to the shipyards and upgrading them with heavier armor and more powerful engines. We’ve also seen some new weapon modules in circulation, especially lasers. And here.”

He brought up the third image, which showed what looked like the rear halves of two bulky time machines spliced together so that one impeller faced forward and the other to the rear.

“What the heck is that thing?” Peng asked.

“That, gentlemen, is a mobile suppression tower. Portcullis-class. The impeller-like mechanism on the bow is actually the suppression antenna. It’s a support craft that interferes with the impellers of enemy time machines, locking them down for other craft to destroy. Weapons are mostly defensive, with two seventy-five-millimeter railguns and two point-defense lasers. The hull is heavily armored.”

He shrank the mobile suppressor and pulled the other two images into a triangle with it over the table.

“Other than that, we’ve seen numerous signs the Admin is expanding its exotic matter production. That will, in turn, allow it to construct chronoport impellers at a faster rate in the future, though I don’t have much in the way of details yet. We’ve focused our efforts toward keeping an eye on DTI activities, and I only have so many TTVs.”

“That’s quite all right, Klaus,” Lamont said. “You’ve given us plenty to think about already.”

“If you ask me, the Admin’s bark is worse than its bite.” Hawke waved a dismissive hand. “They can’t build transdimensional drives, and their suppression technology, while great at stopping regular time travel, is useless against our transdimensional tech. These ships are impressive, but they’re stuck in their universe.”

“That may be so . . . for now,” Klaus-Wilhelm cautioned. “But we know the DTI is researching how to build transdimensional drives. It’s hard to say for certain, but we think they’ll crack the problem within the year. Before we contacted them, they didn’t even suspect it was possible. Now they know it is, and that represents a huge leg up in any research effort. And they’re building a fleet capable of using it. Modifying a standard impeller for transdimensional flight is neither difficult nor time-consuming, once you know how it’s done. We know. We’ve gone through the exercise with our entire fleet. It took us about six weeks, and I have no reason to believe the Admin would prove any less competent.”

“What about their suppressors?” Lamont asked.

“We’re less sure there because it’s tech we don’t have. That said, we think the same rule applies. Once they know how to build a transdimensional drive, they’re one step away from figuring out how to shut it down with a suppressor.”

“And let’s not forget who we’re dealing with here,” Peng added. “The Admin doesn’t consider ACs to be citizens. Under their laws, I wouldn’t get to vote because I’m not a real person. And even worse, they enslave synthetic ACs! Can you believe that? They’d imprison President Byakko in a heartbeat, just for the crime of existing! We’re not dealing with a civilized culture, and we shouldn’t assume our way of thinking applies over there.”

“But we absolutely creamed them at the Gordian Knot,” Hawke pointed out. “One ART TTV versus eight of their Pioneer-class chronoports, and Kleio shot down every last one of them.”

“I’d like to remind everyone here that we shouldn’t draw too many conclusions from that battle,” Klaus-Wilhelm warned. “That was the first time in either universe when multiple time machines engaged each other in combat while time traveling. Neither side had a clue what it was doing, and Kleio’s pilot was an extraordinarily competent and veteran combat pilot. So far as we know, none of the pilots on the other side had a tenth of the experience she did. Indeed, I think it’s virtually certain they didn’t. Who would they have gained it against?”

“A fair point, Klaus,” Hawke conceded, “but we’re the ones with the lessons learned. In contrast, they’re still in the dark about how to fight us.”

“I think the briefings our diplomatic people put together to convince this Admin not to go the route of the other Admin have to have given them at least some hints,” Klaus-Wilhelm replied. “No, we didn’t give them tactical details on Kleio or on Agent Schröder’s tactics. They do know she took on eight of their chronoports, however, and they’ve got imagery of at least three of them going down. So they aren’t coming at this completely blind.”

“There’s a lot of difference between ‘not completely blind’ and competent,” Hawke replied, and Klaus-Wilhelm nodded.

“There is. And the Admin knows it as well as we do. Obviously, they’re working to correct that deficiency. We know their chronoport squadrons have engaged in wargames. Don’t assume for a moment that they won’t figure out the best way to take down our TTVs in battle as they game out their own possible tactics. In fact, the Hammerhead-class indicates they’re already considering exactly that.”

“How so, Klaus?” Lamont asked.

“The chronoports we faced were primarily missile platforms, which Kleio’s defensive cannons and greater realspace maneuverability were able to counter over and over again. But these new Hammerheads show a swing to heavy energy and kinetic loadouts, which would prove much more effective in a time machine battle. As a response, we’ve retrofitted meta-armor to all our TTVs. ART never needed it for its missions into earlier eras. For us, however, it’s become a rather more . . . pressing issue.”

His tone was dry, and the others all nodded in understanding. Meta-armor worked under the same light-bending principles as a metamaterial shroud, except that it was designed for defense against energy-based weaponry rather than stealth. Meta-armor could hold its form under high acceleration, survive extreme thermal conditions, and actually divert laser energy—within limits—under combat conditions, but it didn’t make the ship invisible the way the metamaterial shrouds did.

“I see,” Lamont said aloud after a moment, then swept his gaze across all three of his commissioners. “And our contingency plans in the event the worst happens?”

“Argo has both counterattack and first-strike missions in the works,” Hawke said. “Our plan involves using Gordian’s TTVs to transport some of my cruisers to the Admin. There are certain material preparations that need to come first, though.”

“What sort of preparations?” Lamont asked.

“We’re up against the limit of what a TTV’s phase field can do,” Hawke said. “They’re not designed to expand over a craft that large, so we’re constructing exotic matter scaffolds to bracket the cruisers and allow the field lines to conduct better. We’ve built the first three scaffolds, but we’re still working out the kinks.”

“Gordian is assisting Argo in adapting the scaffolds,” Klaus-Wilhelm said. “But I have significant reservations about the Argo proposal. Any realspace craft, no matter how powerful, is at a disadvantage against time machines.”

Hawke leaned forward with a smile that might have been a little condescending.

“But they have to phase-lock with us to do any damage,” he pointed out. “And when they do, they’re dead. Those chronoports may be a danger to your TTVs, but against my cruisers they’re nothing but toys.”

“You’re underestimating the DTI.”

“And you underestimate my cruisers. Their chronoports can flit about in the past all they want. The fight will be in the True Present, and that’s where we’ll dominate.”

“And if they take advantage of their ability to timeshift while you’re shooting at them?” Klaus-Wilhelm’s tone was acerbic. “That’s precisely what Elzbietá and Kleio did whenever the Admin tried to phase-lock with them. Is there a reason their chronoports can’t do that while your cruisers are stuck in one timeframe?”

“Avoiding lethargic cannon fire is one thing,” Hawke countered, his confidence unshaken. “Dodging my cruisers’ capital lasers is something else entirely.”

“Perhaps so.” Klaus-Wilhelm’s tone made it perfectly clear he disagreed, but arguing the point would have been less than productive. “However that may be, I’d also like to point out the secondary effects of that engagement.” His expression was grim. “It’s what created the Knot, as well as what resolved it, and as you just pointed out, there were only nine time machines involved. What do you think would happen if we had scores of chronoports and TTVs phasing in and out on both sides?”

“Gentlemen, thank you,” Lamont interrupted, then let out a faint sigh and looked at Peng. “And what about the First Responders?”

“Gotta admit, this one’s really outside the box for us,” the AC said. “For one, there’s no existing infostructure for us to transmit into. A ground war in the Admin would be completely different from anything we’ve ever experienced. Or even run simulations on, for that matter. We’ve made tentative plans based on Agent Philosophus’ experiences in the Admin infostructure, but I think it’s a safe bet the Admin is taking a hard look at its network security.

“One option we’ve considered is a ‘suicide’ infiltration into their systems where our officers do as much damage as possible before they self-delete. It would be volunteers only, and their connectome backups would be activated afterwards, of course.” Peng held up a hand. “I know, I know. It’s far from ideal. Call it a work in progress.”

“All planning aside, we have the advantage,” Hawke said. “Our industry is bigger, and our tech is better. If a shooting war breaks out, we’re the ones who will come out on top.”

“Don’t take this so casually.” Klaus-Wilhelm fixed Hawke with a fierce glare. “The best thing any of us can do is make sure these plans never have to be used. Because if a true transdimensional war breaks out—with time-shattering weapons going off on both sides—the resulting catastrophe could make the Gordian Knot look benign by comparison.”


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