The Depths of Time (12 page)

“
Comm. Advise Ship One she is clear to proceed through Nexus D as scheduled without need for course correction. And wish her good luck. She
’
s going to need it.
”

Koffield returned to the nexus control screen. Very well.

Leave Nexus D operational and programmed to open and
close in nine minutes, 14.3 seconds, ship
’
s reference chro
nology. That left Nexi A, B, C, E, F, and G to deal with.
They all had to be destroyed now. He would take out D after Ship One got through. And he had to allow for the
time it would take to enter all the commands by hand and
get the Artint to process them. The system made sure there
was no way simply to hit a repeat button. Everything had
to be entered in full, and with exact correctness. Beyond
that, he had to allow time for the Artint to evaluate each
command as it came in. With each command, and each nexus that was wrecked, the consequences of each following command would be of greater and greater significance, and thus would take the Artint system longer and longer to evaluate.

He keyed in the first command in the kill sequence for Nexus A.

ANTON KOFFIELD COMMANDING UPHOLDER INSTRUCTS NEXUS CONTROL SYSTEM TO DEACTIVATE PORTAL NEXUS
“
A
”
PERMANENTLY.

The system replied after only a moment
’
s hesitation.
nexus control system receives and accepts instruction to deactivate portal nexus “a” permanently, please confirm command.

Koffield keyed in the confirmation, cursing when he
made a mistake and had to back up and correct it. He sent
the confirmation and waited through a slightly longer delay.

ANTON KOFFIELD COMMANDING UPHOLDER CONFIRMS
INSTRUCTION TO NEXUS CONTROL SYSTEM TO DEACTIVATE
PORTAL NEXUS V PERMANENTLY.

Again, a pause as the Artint thought it through.
nexus control system receives and accepts confirmation
of instruction to deactivate portal nexus “a” permanently.
nexus control system advises that this will be the last
chance to countermand the instruction, send second confirmation within sixty seconds, any other action or lack of action will result in cancellation of instruction.

ANTON KOFFIELD COMMANDING UPHOLDER SENDS SECOND CONFIRMATION OF INSTRUCTION TO NEXUS CONTROL SYSTEM TO DEACTIVATE PORTAL NEXUS
“
a
”
PERMANENTLY.

A still-longer pause, and then came the answer.
nexus control system has deactivated portal nexus “a” permanently.

The symbol-logic image of Nexus A flashed red, then vanished. The status displays for A all dropped to zero. It was dead.

Anton Koffield did not know whether to feel relief or horror. The system was accepting and carrying out his commands, allowing him to destroy the nexi. The Artint agreed that the situation was dire enough to require such action, but Koffield had been half-hoping that it would not. If it had refused, his judgment might well have been called into question, and he could have looked forward to eventual court-martial, assuming he survived that long. But court-martial would have been preferable to wrecking the sole doorway to an entire world. What he was about to destroy might well take years, even decades, to repair, if it could even be done at all. Imposing new nexi on a singularity was hideously complex and expensive in time and treasure. Sometimes reimposition was impossible, and it was necessary to create a new singularity at even more spectacular cost, easily enough to bankrupt a small planet like Glister.

And he, Anton Koffield, was the one deciding that Glister would be forced to pay that cost.

But the intruders had to be stopped. If they escaped into the past, the consequences could easily be far worse than merely bankrupting one planet. He set to work on Portal Nexus B, working his way through the same tedious sequence of commands.

He glanced up at the nav screens. Ships Two, Three, Four, and Five were all just barely starting their abort maneuvers, struggling to break out of the wormhole
’
s gravity well. Koffield knew how deep and powerful the gee well was. He doubted any of them were going to escape it. And if they were doomed, Koffield knew who it was who would have killed them.

“
Sir!
”
Sentar called out.
“
Three of the intruders have shifted course. No longer bearing on the wormhole.
”

“
Where the devil are they going?
”
Koffield demanded.

“
Stand by. Still shifting ... Burning stars. Sir, track projections show intruders two, four, and six are on intercept courses with our ship.
”

Koffield felt as if he had been kicked in the side of the head. What the devil else could happen? What the hell was he supposed to do now?

Thought. Logic. Work it through, decide what it meant. Three of the intruders had survived the original run out from the wormhole. Everything about their behavior suggested a repeat of the tactics of sacrificing expendable duplicates in order to saturate and confuse the defenses. If each carried a full copy of whatever information they had gathered, but only one intruder got through, that one would be enough. But
one
had to get through, or all would be for nothing.

Now three intruders were still driving for the wormhole—but three were not. The original intruders had shown little or no capacity for tracking or detection. One of them had nearly flown up the
Upholder’s
main thrusters, apparently by accident. But now at least three of the intruders could and were tracking the
Upholder.

If the only thing that mattered was that at least one ship got through, spending three ships to attack the
Upholder
was a waste of effort—
if
the intercepting ships were capable of getting through the wormhole.

Suddenly Koffield saw it. It all made sense—
if
he assumed that each of the survivors had spawned or built a decoy for itself—a decoy that could track ships and run intercepts, but
wasn’t
capable of surviving a wormhole transit. If the duplicates could make the run, they would have been driving for the wormhole as well.

“
Weapons, you have conn control. I want evasive maneuvers to avoid the intruders targeted to intercept us,
”
Koffield ordered.
“
Do
not
waste ammunition or laser power on the interceptors. They are meant to decoy us from our prime targets. Don
’
t take the bait. Fire only on the three intruders that are targeting the wormhole.
”

“
Aye sir,
”
the weapons officer replied.

Koffield checked the nav plots again. Three minutes, nine seconds until Ship One entered the timeshaft—if she made it that far. Ship Two appeared to be using full thrust, trying to break free of the singularity
’
s gravity well, but it was plain to see she wasn
’
t going to make it. He felt a cold stab of guilt deep in his gut. That dot on his display represented a multimegaton ship, a ship whose name he did not even know. She carried some unknown number of human lives, some unknown but vitally needed cargo carried at great risk and great cost—and now that dot, that ship, was going to die.

And she was not going to die alone. Ships Three and Four were making barely better progress. Five looked to be the only one of the ships to have any hope of escape.

Murder. Cold-blooded murder. And he had no choice in the matter.

He turned back to keying in his commands to the portal nexus Artlnt. He made his way through the commands for Nexus B, and watched as the nexus died. He started on C, with the Artlnt delaying more and more after each command, as the consequences of each command grew more and more significant. It was nerve-wracking* in the extreme—but he knew that it had to be far worse for those aboard Ship One, watching on their display boards as the nexi popped out of existence, one after the other. Well, they only had just under two minutes more before they hit Nexus D.

What about the intruders and the interceptors? He reluctantly expended some small fraction of the time he had carefully examining their nav plots. They had all completed their hellishly rapid deceleration, and were moving at high velocities, though no longer at impossible speeds.

Just then, his command chair slammed up into him as the
Upholder
jolted abruptly, making its first evasive action maneuver. He watched for the reaction, but the three intercepting intruders did not respond or shift course in any way, long after they should have been able to track the
Upholder’s
changed course. The other three intruders were still bearing down on the wormhole. It was going to be close. Horrifically close.

Koffield sent the last confirmation of the order to kill
Nexus C, and waited for a half-minute that seemed like half a lifetime before the Artlnt accepted and executed the
order. He set to work at once on E, watching on the re
peaters as the last act of the drama played out around him.

“
Ship One entering the timeshaft wormhole via Nexus
D in thirty seconds,
”
the detection officer announced, as if
there were anyone on the bridge who wasn
’
t watching a repeater with the same data on it.
“
Twenty-five seconds.
”

He
’
d leave D until last, until at least Ship One was
through.
  
Koffield
  
typed
  
the
  
next
 
command,
  
anton

KOFFIELD COMMANDING UPHOLDER INSTRUCTS NEXUS
CONTROL SYSTEM TO DEACTIVATE PORTAL NEXUS
“
e
”
PER
MANENTLY.

The Artlnt took so long to reply Koffield began to think
there had been a system lockup. Then came the reply.
nexus control system receives and accepts instruction to
deactivate portal nexus “e” permanently, please confirm
command.

“
Twenty seconds for Ship One. Ship Two is—oh, damn
it! Ship Two off-screen. We
’
re getting a debris-field bloom.
Debris impacting event horizon. Hell and damnation! De
tecting flare-out on port main engine for Ship Three.
Thrusters overloaded and blown. She
’
s pinwheeling. Ship
Three—oh, my God, Ship Three off-screen with debris-
field bloom.
”

Ships Two and Three were dead. There was nothing he could do. Nothing but press on.

ANTON KOFFIELD COMMANDING UPHOLDER CONFIRMS
INSTRUCTION TO NEXUS CONTROL SYSTEM TO DEACTIVATE
PORTAL NEXUS
“
e
”
PERMANENTLY.

No response from the Artlnt.

“
Intercepting intruders have just changed course!
”
Amerstad, the weapons officer, called.
“
All three now bear
ing to intercept with
Upholder
if all craft hold present course. Commencing new evasive.
”

With response times that long, the
Upholder
would be able to dodge the interceptors for days. But this game was going to be over, one way or the other, in a matter of min
utes.

“
Ship One now ten seconds from timeshaft entrance,
”
Sentar called from the detection station.
“
Nexus D showing nominal start to portal activation.
”
nexus control system receives and accepts confirmation of instruction to deactivate portal nexus “e “ permanently. nexus control system advises that this will be the last chance to countermand the instruction, send second confirmation within sixty seconds, any other action or lack of action will result in cancellation of instruction.

At last. Koffield typed in the final kill command for Nexus E and waited for the Artlnt to respond.

“
Ship One entering in five, four, three, two, one, zero— Ship One, nominal entry to timeshaft wormhole. All reading normal. Nexus D closing.
”

“
Ship One into the timeshaft,
”
Koffield said, half to himself.
“
At least one thing worked right today.
”
In theory, it was already safe to kill Nexus D. Ship One ought to be through already, emerging into the past and taking her chances with the downtime relief ship. But that was theory. The ship was dropping back in time. How did you measure- time while you were moving through it? Duration of transit through the wormhole could be zero or infinity, depending on how you computed it. He could not know for sure that blowing D at once could have no effect on Ship One. No one had ever blown a portal nexus shut with a ship in transit. Koffield pressed on to Nexus F.