Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework (57 page)

“This is wrong,” he said. “The timing-“

She slipped her foot behind his knee and
pushed his chest. He fell onto the bed and stared up at her in
shock. “This is happening,” she said, falling on top of him. Her
lips were on his, interrupting whatever objection was coming next.
He wasn’t returning her affections, and she could feel grief
threatening to return to the surface, her urges beginning to fade.
“Don’t stop this,” she said, looking into his worried face.

“I don’t want to,” Liam replied. “But this
might not be coming from the right place.”

“I want this, right now, whatever it is,”
she replied. “I won’t regret it, not with you.”

Ayan kissed him again, and let her instincts
guide her, something she rarely did since she woke up for the first
time in Freedom Tower. When he returned her affections, kissing and
moving those wonderful hands across her body, it felt
incredible.

* * *

“Fleet Warden Harrison,” addressed one of
the Operations staff through the sound system in Kimberly
Harrison’s quarters. She rolled out of bed and put her robe on.

“Yes, what is it?” she answered, crossing to
the narrow slit that served as a porthole. She could see the
Carthan Fleet lazily moving in front of the Tamber moon. There were
dozens of ships, all top of the line battleships and destroyers,
fortresses of the stars.

“The surface team is reporting an intrusion
in Port Rush. Something entered the secure area,” reported the
officer of the watch.

“Tell me they captured the intruder,
Officer,” she replied.

“I’m afraid the Victory Machine is gone. Its
operator, Roman, was left behind and is in care.”

“Is he still comatose?” she asked.

“No Ma’am, he’s brain dead. They were
keeping him alive until you were informed.”

Kimberly leaned against the bulkhead in
front of her and sighed. “Maybe it’s better this way,” she
whispered.

“Pardon, Ma’am?” asked the watchman.

“Never mind. Inform the volunteer operators
for the Victory project that they won’t be needed and reduce their
sentences accordingly. If they haven’t bought their freedom with
their offer to volunteer, reassign them to their old units. Tell
the techs on the planet to seal the hospital up, fill the
contaminated rooms with plasticrete and get back up here. They have
an hour to do their duty well, no sloppy work.”

“And the security force?”

Fleet Warden Harrison thought for a moment.
“Petition Judge Lindt to add three years to their sentences.” She
knew that he’d make it five; he was the hardest judge in the
fleet.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Now, do we have any idea where the Victory
Machine went? Or is this the end of that story?” the Fleet Warden
asked.

“None of our ships have picked it up. It
seems it used a-“

“Crush gate,” she interrupted. “A high
powered wormhole.”

“Yes Ma’am, we weren’t able to determine
where it led to, but no damage was done to the lab.”

“Good, that’s the end of our story with the
Victory Machine,” Kimberly Harrisson said, taking her robe off and
heading for the shower. “Thank God. Inform Command, I’m holding a
priority briefing in half an hour.”

“But you’ve only been on rest for three
hours, Ma’am.”

“I can never sleep the night before a
battle,” she said.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

* * *

Transporting himself and the Victory Machine
to the furthest strategic point from Tamber and the Rega Gain
system was easy. Eden Four loomed large from where he drifted in
space. Jason Everin had no weapons, but radiated incredible power.
He knew the silver ships and pillar shaped stations hanging in
orbit around the green-blue gem scanned him. Temporal radiation was
a puzzle, he knew, and they wouldn’t know what to do.

The Victory Machine told him he was in a
place that was distant enough so whatever he did there wouldn’t
effect the future promised to Ayan Rice the Second. It wouldn’t
jeopardise the lives of his other friends, either. It would
accomplish the opposite in some cases. Paradox was the enemy, and
after only a few minutes with the Victory Machine, he knew how to
avoid it. The directive was built in, and that made avoiding
temporal implosions easy.

Jason Everin knew exactly what would happen
if he held on to the Victory Machine for too long. It would begin
changing his past. Peering back along his own timeline, he saw
different versions of his past where he was more and more ill, a
plague on his life with Laura. Temporal radiation could ruin the
days he’d already lived, making him ill in past tense, and he
wouldn’t have that. Most of the years he had with his wife were
wonderful, she was the constant good in his life. There was nothing
he could do to change her death. That was what led him to take the
Victory Machine himself.

A mental flash brought an image of Ayan Rice the
Second in front of a large monument. Lanterns burned around a large
circular pedestal featuring quarter scale statues standing all
around. She directed a toddler to a section of the monument where
Jason and Laura had been immortalized. There were so many statues,
many of them he didn’t recognize, others he did faintly, but most
of them were changing before his eyes. The toddler crossed the
distance and dropped a half-mangled lilac bunch at Laura and
Jason’s feet before running back all smiles to Ayan, who embraced
her girl. “Well done, they’ll love that,” she said.

The visions followed his thoughts, and
eventually led him to one of the only other near-certainties of the
future. He began having a vision featuring the Triton through the
main display aboard the bridge of the Warlord. “Happy hunting,
Warlord,” said the voice of Agameg Price. His tone was respectful,
almost mournful. The Triton began to move away and cloaked.

A look around the bridge of the Warlord
revealed one central figure. Jacob Valent stood in armour Jason had
never seen before: heavy overlapping plates that were sharpened to
lethal edges with fine emitter grooves running down each one that
faintly glowed red. One of Jake’s eyes was a dark coloured
mechanism protected by an armoured lens. Over one shoulder, a
half-shredded blue and red strand of cloth hung, over the other he
wore a fresh white length of cloth that had a gold seal pressed
onto it, a sunrise over sand.

The captain’s seat was gone, and Jake stood
in its place looking twenty years older than he ought to. Behind
him a woman with straight auburn hair and an artificial eye nodded
to herself and left quietly. Jason knew she was on her way off the
ship, and she was leaving Jacob Valent alone. The vision was less
than three years into the future, and Jason couldn’t help but
investigate.

He traced the mystery back to a vision of a
grave on Tamber with Ayan Rice inside and he realized that there
were two Ayans in the future. Jacob Valent knelt before the simple
raised plaque with a white scarf clenched in his fist. “I will
fight,” he said, furious and tearful, gnashing his teeth. “I will
fight until the people who did this to you are remembered only for
how I destroyed them. Until our galaxy is clean again.”

That was the turning point. In his own way,
Jacob Valent would become weak, a being without sympathy and a man
fallen into the trap of perpetual revenge. Strength and
companionship were the solutions and within seconds Jason knew
exactly what to do. Out of all the people he knew, Jacob Valent’s
future was in flux the least; change could be more reliably
predicted. Remote viewing the strands connecting all the people
he’d just seen led him to the components that would save Jacob
Valent.

“His daughter,” Jason said to himself as he
discovered the location of Alice Valent. “She’s coming, he needs
her, but he won’t be able to admit it after what’s coming.” He used
the Victory Machine to propose sending a message to her and let it
perform a simulation, then present a result. To his shock and
dismay the single monument for Ayan became two, and a host of
friends turned warriors stood around the graves instead of Jacob
Valent.

“I’m starting to understand why this Machine
has to be destroyed,” Jason said as he mentally proposed another
course of action to the machine. His mind was flooded with
broadening results until finally, Jacob wasn’t standing alone on
the bridge of the Warlord. He still seemed hardened, ready for
battle, but his daughter stood at his side in similar armour. She
looked younger, and her expression seemed proud instead of
disappointed. Jason settled on the course of action that would lead
to that possibility. “He won’t be alone, and she will survive.”

Roman wasn’t strong enough for remote
encounters with people by the end, but the Victory Machine was glad
to open its systems and let him perform one. Alice Valent had a
neural communications node, it was the key to communicating with
her in the future. He reached out to her on the future battlefield
and, with a gasp, he lived several minutes with her in the space of
seconds. Before he was willing to let go of the future vision he
shared with her, it came to an end. Distracting Alice in the future
could cause more harm than good. “That’s done,” Jason said to
himself. “Thank God I only have to send Jake a short message.”

He sent his short transmission to Jacob
Valent then began closing the wormholes the Victory Machine used to
view the future, the present, and the past. As the Victory Machine
slowly stopped expending energy, he could feel the power levels
rise.

Jason left one wormhole open and watched as
Laura stepped into the Pilot’s Ball aboard the First Light. Seeing
her again brought sadness and relief. She was so beautiful in her
black dress, an obvious contrast to Ayan, but he only had eyes for
his Laura. As her eyes found him standing near the dance floor, he
was speechless, grinning like a fool, but unable to stop. “How did
it get so complicated?” Jason asked as he watched himself cross the
room to meet her in the past. He let the wormhole close slowly and
set the replay of her entering the room to fill a corner of his
mind.

He couldn’t feel the effects of the temporal
radiation yet, but he knew it would be a matter of days before he
did, and his past would change. That first encounter would never
happen. “No, I want the life I had, flaws and all, it’s better than
any I thought I’d get.”

He watched the silver ships in the distance,
darting about, perhaps wondering what to do about the strange man
holding a powerful device in the distance and smiled. “This is a
change they’ll notice, and someone will know it was me.”

Energy continued to build up inside the
Victory Machine, and he followed the directions he was given as he
stole it. At its centre he forced a microscopic wormhole to open
that led back into itself, and the energy began to multiply. It
would grow exponentially in seconds, and when it went critical, it
would only effect the present in one place.

Jason found himself recalling the picture Oz
had hanging in his quarters aboard the Sunspire when he was in
command: the original crew of the First Light in their youthful and
optimistic days. “I love you all,” he said. The replaying image of
Laura from the Victory Machine persisted, and he watched her smile
at him just like she did at the Pilot’s Ball.

* * *

The spectacle from Eden IV as the mysterious
power source exploded was nothing short of awesome. After a bright
light, a shockwave burst outward. The readings of temporal
radiation were drawn into the forming black hole and
disappeared.

Millions of ships, hundreds of manufacturing
facilities, and smaller metallic entities panicked as gravitational
sensors read well beyond tolerance. Nothing in the Eden system
stood a chance of surviving the hours that followed.

“This port maneuvering chart is insane,”
Ashley said as she looked at the visi version of navnet. It was
mapped along the curvature of the planet, Hodria, instead of into
small sectors. She had taken the navigator’s post, while Jacob
piloted the ship himself. “Now I understand why you’re at the
controls.”

“I know you can pilot this,” Captain Valent
said as he chose a broad holding pattern and set the ship’s
autopilot to follow it. He still held the main pilot controls in
his hands, however. “I just wanted you and Clara to get a good look
at their navnet system. It’s called Gudouk, don’t ask me why. The
name doesn’t translate.”

“That’s because it’s an acronym,” Agameg
offered from behind them.

“What does it stand for?” Clara asked.

“That doesn’t translate either,” Agameg
said.

“Oh, look, a pretty ship,” Ashley said as
she flicked a larger ship’s holographic image with her finger. The
image copied into a secondary projector and increased in size so
she could get a better look. It was a sleek, six hundred metre long
vessel that looked almost windswept. “It’s a luxury liner.”

“For jurriks. It must smell terrible
inside,” Kadri commented from the communications station. “One of
them opening their helmet is enough to clear a room.”

“I’ve never met one,” Captain Valent
said.

“They are quite pleasant in general,” Agameg
said. “They have such a strong fragrance because their mating
materials are airborne. One of the most difficult races for shape
shifters to imitate, mostly for that reason.”

“Ew, ‘mating materials,’ thanks for sparing
us the details, moving on,” Ashley said with a shudder. “I’m not
seeing any offered landing patterns.”

“Godouk routes are set by visi pilot ships,”
Kadri explained. “I’m trying to contact several now.”

“So we’ll be releasing our helm to another
ship?” Clara asked.

“Exactly,” Captain Valent said. “We take
over for a few seconds while we’re passing through the atmosphere,
then the ground stations pick us up and navigate us to our landing
site.”