Steel’s thought reverberated in Althor’s mindscape. Quaternary Valdoria, check your time. You’re future shifting.
That didn’t sound auspicious. Redstar, check my temporal position relative to the rest of the squad. Am I going into their future?
Checking, Redstar thought. Stats reeled off in Althor’s mind, processed by his node faster than he could think. Yes , you are drifting forward about three seconds relative to them per each minute of travel.
Compensate for temporal drift, Althor thought.
New course plotted, Redstar answered.
The EI displayed its calculations as graphs in his mindscape. If he stayed on his current trajectory, he would drop out of inversion several hours later than the rest of the squad. The problem was due to his Jag having traveled a bit faster than the other ships just before they inverted. When they accelerated close to light speed, their time dilated, or passed more slowly on the Jags than on Diesha. It had only taken a few minutes to invert, but by then the dilation had jumped them about a month into Diesha’s future. His speed had been enough to put him a few minutes farther ahead than the others.
However, at superluminal speeds he could plot a path backward in time. He wished they could reach Onyx Station before they left Diesha, but mo one had ever succeeded in thwarting cause and effect. What happened in their reference frame had to be consistent with events in every frame. It might not be the same event; an electron traveling into the past from A to B would appear to a sublight observer as a positron going forward in time from B to A. Different events, but consistent. Theorists hypothesized that if a ship came out of inversion before it entered, it would end up in another universe. Unfortunately, no one who had tried had returned to tell the story. For now, the best they could do was leave inversion with no more time passing in the real universe than on their ships. It usually took longer, as errors accumulated; the farther they traveled, the bigger the discrepancy.
If someone on Diesha could have recorded their progress, they would have observed some truly bizarre effects. During inversion, Blackstar Squadron would go into the past for a time to compensate for their jump forward due to the time dilation when they inverted. Sometime before they turned pastward, four Jags had appeared in Onyx Sector. Those ships existed right now. They were Blackstar Squadron.
At the same time, four antimatter Jags had appeared, pair-produced from photon annihilations. While the normal ships continued on to Onyx, the antimatter squad flew backward in a time-reversed path, gaining fuel, like a movie run in reverse. The antimatter Jags and the original Jags headed toward each other, meeting in the instant when the originals turned pastward. Then they annihilated, the energy of their mutual destruction balancing the energy used to create the antimatter ships. After that, the four ships already at Onyx would be the only version of Blackstar Squadron left.
The process disconcerted Althor. He was at rest relative to his Jag, so he experienced no strange creations or destructions. He simply traveled to Onyx in an uninterrupted journey, going forward in time and space as he knew it. Yet others would observe Redstar annihilated during inversion and recreated elsewhere—which meant he was annihilated and re-created as well.
The result, however, was consistent for everyone: Blackstar arrived at Onyx Station. They managed it all with an advantage ESComm could never match. Conventional signals traveled no faster than light speed, so inverted ships could communicate only with tachyons, or superluminal particles. Although ISC and ESComm were developing such technologies, neither could yet make tachyons carry reliable information. Too much uncertainty existed in when and where the signals arrived. As a result, ships couldn’t coordinate well at superluminal speeds; the squad suffered both temporal and spatial drift. When they left inversion, the ships would be spread out in space and time. The longer they traveled at superluminal speed, the greater the spread.
But not Jags.
Steel, Belldaughter, Wellmark, and Althor linked through Kyle space. Their Jags were nodes on the Kyle web. It gave them immediate communication among themselves and with any node in the star-spanning ISC network, allowing them to coordinate with a precision that thumbed its nose at light speed itself.
Althor checked his connection to the other squad members. They were all monitoring their systems but otherwise relaxing. Travel during inversion was actually rather boring.
Open gate to Kyle space, Althor thought.
Gate open, Redstar answered.
His mindscape reformed into the red grid with the circular peak circled by concentric ripples. Three similar peaks surrounded him, black, gold, and green, the rest of Blackstar Squadron, their ripples overlapping and blending with his. As he cast his thoughts through Kyle space, the peak of his mind changed, decreasing in height here and growing elsewhere. He thought of Onyx Platform and his consciousness shifted through the grid. It reformed near a cluster of nodes that signified several outposts of the platform.
Clock, Althor thought.
An antique timepiece appeared in his mindscape, matching the decor of his home on Lyshriol. It showed him data about the passage of time far more sophisticated than a real timepiece that old could have managed. He was about six minutes ahead of the rest of the squadron.
Commander Steel, he thought. Request permission to contact Onyx in my future timeline. If he could link with Kyle nodes on the Onyx mesh, he would be at least six minutes ahead of when they expected to drop out of inversion.
Give it a try, Steel answered. But be careful, If you’re still in that timeline when we leave inversion, you won’t come out with us.
Understood, sir. At the moment, Althor had some probability of being in the future relative to the squad and some of being in their time. To contact Onyx six minutes ahead, he had to collapse his wavefunction into that future timeline, severing his link with his squad. It was a risky proposition; he might not be able to rejoin his own timeline. He might just drop out of space six minutes ahead of his squad, but that was by no means guaranteed. The farther into the future he ventured, the more he risked. Ships that played too much with spacetime could lose contact with their own universe. At least, that was what ISC believed. No one knew for certain, since those ships disappeared.
To Redstar, he thought, Drop the Blackstar link and submerge into the Onyx timeline.
Disassociating with Blackstar, it answered.
Althor’s link with the other Jags faded. He was still under the security cloak, so he was hidden from all telops except those rare few with a clearance high enough to contact a J-Force unit. Althor had an even higher clearance, enough to make contact with just about any ISC base. He sent his ID codes to one of the Onyx outposts, which showed as a blurry peak in his grid. Then he thought, Requesting time check.
Static came from the Onyx Station. In his mindscape, it manifested as ragged, indistinct peaks. Time ch**) …—lete?
Repeat, Althor thought. I’m having trouble focusing your timeline.
Time check *** incomplete, the Onyx telop answered.
That came through better.
How fa—** futureward?
I’m from about six minutes in your past, Althor answered.
Six minute** … ooner?**
Can you repeat? He was growing uneasy. The longer he spent in this link, the greater the danger he would lose his squad.
***—sooner? The Onyx telop repeated.
You want us to arrive sooner than scheduled?
Yes!
Warning, Redstar thought. I’m losing coherence with your previous timeline.
Damn! Onyx, I’ll see what we can do. To Redstar, he thought, Drop me back to Blackstar.
Synchronizing with previous timeline. Then: I can’t find them.
Althor gritted his teeth. Can you extrapolate from where they were in space and time and calculate their probable position?
Yes. But I can’t guarantee you will be in the same universe.
Perspiration gathered on his forehead. Do your best.
Work
ing. Then: Temporal correction complete.
And?
I find no trace of Blackstar Squadron.
A bead of sweat ran down Althor’s temple. Are you Sure about your calculations?
Some uncertainty exists in them.
Is it possible that—
Contact !
Althor’s pulse surged. He wondered if the Jag had simulated its own excitement.
Steel’s thought came into his mind. Althor? Is that you?
Althor sent him an image of his warrior in armor and disk mail. Greetings, sir.
Steel sent back his psicon, a steel girder. You all right?
Fine. At least now that he had regained his place in spacetime. I contacted a telop at Onyx.
Anything interesting?
He badly wants us to arrive early.
Think they’re in trouble?
It’s possible. Althor thought back to the exchange. Very possible.
Steel directed his thought to the rest of the link. Jags, recalculate our route so we drop out of inversion closer in to Onyx.
Won’t it be risky to reinvert so close to space habitats? Belldaughter asked.
Do what you can to minimize the danger, Steel thought. But get in as close as you can. The shorter our sublight travel, the sooner we reach Onyx.
Preparing to reinvert, Redstar thought.
Engage shrouds, Steel thought.
Engaged. The responses came from all four Jags in a light speed pulse of thought. They were in the most accelerated mode possible for the human brain now.
In superluminal space, they didn’t need shrouds, but in subluminal space, the squad would partially disappear. Blackbody shielding shrouded the hulls and they stopped reflecting light. Holographic surfacing on the ship projected images of the stars as if nothing occupied that space. Other systems hid them from radio waves, microwaves, and ultraviolet probes. They even created false echoes to fool neutrinos, which passed through just about anything.
Invert, Steel thought.
Althor fired the photon thrusters. The only way he knew Redstar went in and out of quasis was by the discontinuous change in speed on his displays. The Jag decelerated in a series of jumps he perceived as a continuous process. The stars jerked forward, converging on a point in front of the ship. Their colors shifted into ultraviolet and disappeared. Blackstar Squadron roared out of inversion in perfect formation—
Straight into a swarm of ESComm warships.
Their shrouds provided a disguise, but every time the Jags accelerated, their exhaust gave away their position. The Traders knew they had arrived. The attack chilled Althor; Onyx was a major Skolian complex, eight space habitats with millions of people. This was no minor skirmish.
It was an act of war.
Redstar identified the attacking ships: three Wasp corvettes and eight Solos. Although Solos were the closest ESComm equivalent to a Jag, they had no access to Kyle space because they carried no psions. The Traders had only one use for empaths and telepaths: as providers. They used the pain of such slaves to transcend. They considered psions unstable and found the concept of their serving on war craft ludicrous. Even if they had been willing to put them on the ships, they had too few psions to risk any significant number of them that way.
Althor readily admitted psions had a disadvantage; they felt the emotions of their enemies and compatriots alike. Applicants to the academy underwent extensive analysis in their entrance exams to see if they could endure that empathic onslaught. Even so, the suicide rate of Jagernauts was the highest of any ISC personnel. But every loss the J-Force suffered only hardened the resolve of its remaining Jagernauts to protect their people from the Aristos.
Taus incoming, Redstar thought.
Evade! Althor answered. Release dust. Tau missiles carried inversion drives, which made them notoriously hard to catch or destroy. If another missile came too close, the tau jumped out of spacetime. Redstar’s dust consisted of microscopic bomblets that could protect Redstar and beleaguer the taus enough to slow them down.
Quasis jump, Redstar thought.
Nausea surged in Althor from the Jag throwing him into quasis too fast. A tau had detonated against their hull. The ship couldn’t change state during quasis, so nothing could blow it up, but no quasis was perfect. The explosion weakened the Jag. A few more hits and the quasis would fail, leaving him defenseless.
Fire MIRVS, Althor thought. MIRVs, or multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles, were small ships as well as bombs. They used only conventional rockets, so they couldn’t invert, but that made them smaller and lighter. He could carry many more MIRVs than taus.
Hurtling through space at relativistic speeds, Redstar released a swarm of MIRVs. They spread outward in a cone at 92 percent of light speed, giving them the energy equivalent of megaton bombs. Stats poured into Althor’s node far faster than his unaugmented brain could have absorbed. ESComm taus were catching Blackstar MIRVs. The taus inverted with their captured missiles, reinverted as they closed on the Jags—and exploded both themselves and their MIRV captives in violent bursts of energy.
It could have done serious damage to the squad. However, the jump through superluminal space had thrown off the taus. If ESComm could have controlled their taus while the missiles were going through inversion, the evasive tactics of the Jags might have failed. But the taus came out a fraction of a second too late, after the Jags had shot through that volume of space.
Quasis jump, Redstar thought.
Althor swallowed the bile in his throat. Redstar had veered into such an abrupt course change to evade a tau, the quasis had kicked in to protect him from the lethal acceleration.
ESComm tau detonated to port, Redstar thought.
It missed! He had another few seconds of life. They had already shot past the Onyx stations. Althor brought Redstar around for another go at the ESComm ships. Fighting in space was like jousting in three dimensions, with beams and smart missiles. He hurtled past a Solo at almost the speed of light, their times dilated relative to each other. The Solo registered as a rotating, flattened coin on Althor’s holoscreens. It released a tau—
His stomach wrenched as Redstar jumped into superluminal space. He thought, This is for you. Father, and dropped out of inversion, his MIRVs blasting ahead of his Jag.
Althor felt his opponent die.
The pilot’s terror blasted Althor’s mind—and cut off with chilling finality.
Solo destroyed, Redstar thought.
Althor groaned and lost his grasp on his mindscape. In a rush of memory, he was sixteen again, above the Plains of Tyroll, that day he had slaughtered an army with one carbine. He had suffered every shattering death. He had been so frightened, so desperate. His father’s cousin, Avaril Valdoria, would never give up until he killed his enemy, the Dalvador Bard, Althor’s father. So Althor had ended it all. He had ensured that neither his father nor his brothers would ever have to ride in that barbaric war again.
—doria, respond! Are you all right? Steel’s voice echoed through the psilink.
Althor swallowed. Fine, sir.
Relief came from Steel’s mind. Good work.
Not good enough, though. Stats about the battle flowed through his mindscape: ESComm had done great damage to Onyx, neutralizing its defenses. To stop the destruction of the stations, Blackstar still had to take on seven Solos and three Wasps.
Redstar had exhausted its supply of MIRVs. Time to joust.
Prime Annihilators, Althor thought. They accelerated antiprotons, focusing the beam through foils where it picked up positrons. Beams were easier to evade than missiles, since they couldn’t chase their target, but they offered a better offense against quasis shields; annihilating matter in quasis was easier than deforming it with missile strikes. Althor headed toward a Solo like a knight with his lance ready.
Warning. Redstar highlighted part of his mindscape to show an unmanned drone on intercept course.
Fire, Althor thought.
His Annihilator blasted
the drone. Its mag-shields deflected some of the antiprotons, but many hit their target. The resulting annihilations created brutally energetic photons, pion showers, and high-energy processes. Particles and radiation tore through the drone. They hit the antimatter fuel bottles, and the drone detonated in a burst of plasma. Part of it vanished with the eerie sucked away effect created when real matter collapsed into the complex space within a Klein fuel bottle.
Warning! Blackstar’s EI thought. Greenstar has been detected.
No problem, Wellmark answered. As a Wasp raced toward her Jag, she saturated the volume of space around Greenstar with smart dust. Although a Wasp was small compared to most ships, it dwarfed a Jag. Its crew rode in the head and thorax. A stalk separated those compartments from its detachable abdomen, which carried antimatter plasma. Usually a Wasp attacked planets or other large bodies. When jettisoned, its abdomen plunged into its target, drilling its “stinger” in to bury itself. Then it released its plasma and blew its target into smithereens. It could obliterate a Jag a hundred times over, but ESComm wouldn’t waste an entire Wasp on one ship. They probably intended these for the Onyx stations.
Solos on approach, Redstar thought. Three ESComm fighters were moving in to defend the Wasp.
Althor and Belldaughter, cover Wellmark, Steel thought.
I’m on the Beta Solo, Belldaughter thought. One of the Solos turned gold.
On Gamma, Althor thought. His Solo turned red.
On Alpha, Steel thought. The third Solo turned black.
As Althor went at the Solo, it changed course, cutting him off from the Wasp. Another section of his mindscape registered Wellmark’s tau hurtling toward the Wasp.