Back | Next
Contents

DOCTOR QUIET

by Jacob Holo



Terrorists with time machines make a deadly combination, and the mastermind calling himself “Doctor Quiet” needed to be taken alive to get information. The newbie time soldier had muffed one opportunity, but nothing expands opportunities—and dangers—like traveling in time. This story is set in the Gordian Division universe created by David Weber and Jacob Holo and so far explored in two novels by them, The Gordian Protocol and The Valkyrie Protocol, both from Baen Books.


stars


“Agent Cantrell?” Captain Jason Elifritz asked, appraising the empty space above Susan Cantrell’s shoulders. A space that should have been occupied by her head.

“Yes, sir,” Susan replied through simulated speech across their shared virtual senses. Her current body—a Type-92 combat frame—took the form of a black skeletal humanoid festooned with maneuvering boosters and weaponry. She squared her shoulders and stood at attention within the captain’s office aboard Chronoport Defender-Two. “You wished to speak with me?”

“I did.” The chronoport captain removed the blue peaked cap of his Admin Peacekeeper uniform as he continued to regard Susan’s headless status with barely a tick on his face. “I know I asked to see you immediately after we returned to the True Present, but perhaps our discussion can wait.”

“Why’s that, sir? Is something wrong?”

“Well . . .” The faintest hint of a grimace leaked through his cool professionalism. “I had assumed you’d switch back into your general purpose synthoid before coming here.”

“Oh, right.” Susan nodded in understanding. Or rather, tried to. Instead, the severed power and data cables of her neck trunk wiggled back and forth. “I’m sorry to report I’m unable to switch bodies at the moment.”

“And why is that?”

“It’s my armor.” She gestured with a thumb over her shoulder. “One of the explosions melted the malmetal plates on my back. Fused them together. The operators need to saw me open before they can retrieve my connectome case. I thought you wouldn’t want to wait that long, so I came to see you straight away.”

“I see.” Elifritz glanced down and dusted off the top of his cap. “I suppose I can’t fault your thought process there, though that still leaves the matter of your head.”

“What about it, sir?”

“It appears to have been shot off.”

“You should see the other guy.”

“Yes . . .” Elifritz ran his fingers through long hair tied back in a ponytail, then refitted his cap with the utmost precision and care. He clasped his hands behind his back before continuing. “Funny you should mention that.”

“Sir?”

“Before I continue, a question for you, Agent. How, precisely, are you still getting around without your head?”

“Oh, that’s easy. I’m using the aux camera in my grenade launcher.” She tapped the shoulder-mounted weapon.

Elifritz glanced to the grenade launcher, which gave him a little up-and-down nod as if to say that, yes, she was using it as a backup head.

“I hate to have to inquire, but did you unload that thing before coming to see me?”

“No need.”

“And why would that be?”

“Because I discharged all my ordnance during the mission.”

“Ah.” Elifritz let out a resigned sigh. “I should have guessed.”

“Sir, is something wrong?” Susan asked, genuinely curious and a bit worried at this point. “Am I in trouble?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Elifritz made eye contact with the grenade launcher’s camera. “Do you recall the state of the guy who shot off your head—the ‘other guy,’ as you put it—last you saw him?”

“You mean besides the crater?”

“Yes.” One of his eyes twitched. “Besides the crater.”

“Well, I’m not too sure.” Susan raised a hand to her chin in an attempt to strike a thoughtful pose, but then fumbled around for her missing head and decided to drop the arm back down. “I think some of him may have ended up smeared across the ceiling before I . . .” She trailed off, now acutely aware of where her description was headed.

“Yes? Please continue.”

“Before I blew up the ceiling.” She paused uncomfortably. “Is that what this is about?”

“No. We had the building tagged as non-vital, so damage to it in service of the mission was acceptable. The occupants, though, were a separate matter.”

“Sir.” Susan tried to stand a little straighter. “Even though I’d suffered damage and was still under fire, I made sure to check my target before retaliating. That terrorist was not listed as a capture priority, and therefore, I was free to respond with lethal force.”

“That may be so, but I think your situational awareness needs some work.”

“Sir?”

“Agent, do you recall our mission parameters?”

“Of course, I do, sir.”

“Then indulge me. What were they?”

“We were executing a standard intelligence grab. Go into the past, crash a terrorist party, and retrieve vital intel, be it people or material. This particular mission took us back to August the twenty-third, 2971—negative sixty days back from the True Present—to a Free Luna cell. The targets were operating out of an automated warehouse just south of the capital’s Block F20.” She paused before continuing. “Sir, I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what this is about. As I said, I checked my target before returning fire.”

Elifritz raised his chin ever so slightly. “What about the individual standing next to him?”

“The individual . . . next to him?”

Elifritz held out his palm, and a window opened in their shared virtual vision. Susan recognized the logistical warehouse interior: the nearest wall taken up by multistoried storage racks and robot cranes suspended from the ceiling on rails. A group of terrorists hastily retrieved heavy weapons from a pallet of “food printer cartridges,” and one already had an anti-materiel rail-rifle out.

The image shuddered as her combat frame took incoming fire. Damage indicators flashed in the window periphery, and the view swung toward her assailant and focused in.

Elifritz paused the video, then slowly panned the image to the side until a second terrorist came into view, partially obscured by the logistical scaffold. He was a tall and somewhat lanky man with sunken cheeks and long, dark hair, gray creeping in at the temples and trim salt-and-pepper goatee. Despite the attack, his dark eyes were focused and cold, fixated on the source of the commotion without a hint of fear in them.

Those chilling eyes belonged to Cameron Nist: Capture Target Priority One.

“Oh.” Her shoulders slumped. “Oh, shit.”

Elifritz raised a chastising eyebrow.

“Shoot,” she corrected hastily. “Sorry, sir.”

“As you can see,” the captain began, “not only did you blow up the unlucky idiot shooting at you, you also reduced our mission objective to a form of abstract art on the warehouse ceiling. Do you see the problem, Agent?”

“Yes, sir. I believe I do. But why didn’t we try again? We could have performed a temporal microjump and reset the local timeline.”

“Because the team on Defender-Prime had markedly more success than we did.” He sighed and shook his head. “They managed to retrieve a copy of Nist from negative fifty-six days, and since their version is older than the one we found, our capture attempt became redundant. So, with us looking at both Defender-Prime’s success and the local version of Nist atomized by your grenade barrage—”

Susan tried to lower her head further, but only succeeded in moving her neck trunk.

“—I made the call to abort and return to base.”

“I see, sir. I think I have a clear understanding of the problem.”

“Anything to say for yourself, Agent?”

“I will . . . endeavor to show more restraint in the future.”

“See that you do,” Elifritz said stiffly. “Dismissed.”


Susan opened her eyes, and they really were her eyes this time. Or at least the eyes she thought of as hers, even though her old organic body had long since been recycled. Her mind could inhabit the combat frame as easily as any other compatible vessel, but she didn’t view the stark, robotic weapon with the same sense of self she bestowed upon her synthoid body.

Sharp hazel eyes stared out of a young oval face framed by red hair in a pixie cut.

Her eyes, and her face, and her hair.

They might all have been as artificial as the combat frame, but the synthoid’s cosmetic layer matched her original body in just about every detail, even while the mechanisms underneath granted her enhanced speed and strength. Not on the same level as the combat frame, but far superior to any natural human.

“You back with us?” Specialist Erika Nishi asked from her seat behind Susan. They both sat in a maintenance bay within the main tower for the Department of Temporal Investigation.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Good. Let’s get you buttoned up.” Nishi pressed hard against Susan’s naked spine, her palms tracking downward, forcing the flap in the cosmetic layer to stick firmly against the port for her connectome case, which contained the neural map of her mind.

Susan glanced to the side and took in the inert combat frame next to her, its back armor warped and cut open by Nishi. She still found it odd to see the combat frame from the outside after spending hours—sometimes days—operating it. As a member of the Admin’s Special Training and Nonorganic Deployment command, she could swap bodies the way most people swapped coats, but her transition from organic to synthetic had occurred barely a month ago, and many aspects of this new life jarred with her old flesh-and-blood sensibilities.

“I suppose I’ll get used to it eventually,” she muttered under her breath.

“Used to what?” Nishi asked.

“Seeing one of my bodies from the outside,” Susan said over her shoulder.

“Hell, I still can’t believe you volunteered for this.” Nishi picked up a tool with a pistol grip and used it to apply a bead of fleshlike glue. She traced the tip slowly around a U-shaped seam in Susan’s back.

I still can’t believe STAND accepted my application,” Susan admitted. “I mean, I only transferred to the DTI a year ago, and I’ve only been a Peacekeeper for three.”

“Then why bother applying in the first place?”

“Because there was no harm in trying.”

“Sure, except for the whole fry-your-original-brain part of the process.”

“It wasn’t bad at all. I closed my eyes in my old body and woke up in this.” Susan tapped her collarbone. “Didn’t feel a thing.”

“That you remember,” Nishi pointed out. “Here.” She handed Susan her uniform jacket.

“Thanks.” Susan smiled and slipped her arms into the sleeves. “Honestly, all the interviews and psych evals leading up to it were more of a pain than the actual process. But even then, the approval moved a lot faster than I expected.”

“That’s just the DTI for you.” Nishi put her tools away and stood up. “It’s amazing how fast this place is growing, and I don’t think it’s slowing down. In fact, it might even be accelerating. From what I hear, they’ve already started construction on a third chronoport squadron.”

“You mean instead of the suppression tower network?”

“No. In addition to!” Nishi said brightly.

“Wow. Yeah, that’s fast.” Susan pulled her jacket snug, then joined Nishi at the exit. “Still, back to the whole STAND thing, it can’t be that hard to find people more experienced than me.”

“Maybe they didn’t apply,” Nishi commented.

“Maybe.” Susan let out a slow sigh.

“You still bummed about the mission?”

“A little.”

“Don’t let it bother you. Elifritz is just upset Okunnu and the rest of Defender-Prime showed us up.”

“Somehow,” Susan began with a frown, “I don’t think that’s why he chewed me out. By the way, where are you headed?”

“The mess.” She rubbed her stomach, which let out a faint rumble as if on cue. “I should really stop skipping meals on missions. You?”

“Nowhere I need to be. Mind if I join you?”

“You sure it won’t bother you?”

“Why would it?” Susan asked.

“Oh, you know.” Nishi cracked a half-smile. “Us organics and all our organic drama?”

“I’m sorry.” Susan crinkled her brow. “You lost me.”

“Do I have to spell it out for you?” Nishi leaned in and lowered her voice, even though they were alone. “Eating and pooping.”

“I’d hardly classify those as ‘organic drama.’”

“Listen, Susan.” Nishi placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll admit joining STAND does have a few perks. You’ll never go hungry and, if you so choose, you never have to take a dump ever again. Granted, those are about the only perks that could convince me to join STAND, and even then I’d have to be blackout drunk when they asked.”

“I think I can manage,” Susan replied dryly.

“You sure?” Nishi asked with that same half-smile.

“Look.” Susan sighed and rolled her eyes. “I’ve been eating and pooping my entire life. Besides, I still have all my senses, and some comfort food sounds good right about now.”

“Well, as long as you’re fine with our drama.” Nishi started down the corridor toward the elevators.

“It’s not drama,” Susan insisted.


Susan gazed down at her plate of chicken flautas topped with salsa fresca, sour cream, and guacamole. She breathed in the aroma, and her mouth watered, bringing a smile to her face. Her synthoid’s cosmetic layer, which included everything inside her mouth, truly was an impressive piece of engineering, given how it interacted seamlessly with the biochemical simulation running parallel to her neural runtime. That simulation allowed the smell of delicious food to brighten her mood, for example, by simulating an organic body’s response to stimulus.

She leaned a little closer and breathed in once more.

It had been . . . two days since she last ate? Three, maybe? She wondered if eating on a regular schedule might help restore some of the normalcy to her life, at least until she acclimated to this new, synthetic existence.

“Are you going to do anything besides sniff it?” Nishi asked, already halfway through one of her three flautas.

“I’m savoring the aroma,” Susan defended. “Would you mind passing the hot sauce?”

“Sure.” Nishi leaned over to snag a bottle further down the table. The mess was only about a fifth full with some occupants finishing their meals while others headed to the printers to order up late lunches. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.”

“Mind if I join you?”

Susan looked up to find the imposing frame of a gray-skinned, yellow-eyed synthoid made somewhat less intimidating by the tray of beef enchiladas in his big hands. Like Susan, Special Agent Miguel Pérez was a part of the STAND force assigned to the DTI, but unlike her, he’d joined STAND back when synthoid technology had been relatively new and it had been illegal for them to resemble organic humans too closely, hence his unnatural skin and eye coloration.

Susan wasn’t sure how old Pérez was; she could have looked it up in his service record, but that just seemed rude and unnecessary to her. However old he was, he was old old. Not exactly as old as dirt, but maybe old enough to be one of dirt’s grandkids.

“Sure, Miguel,” Susan responded.

“Thank you.” The big STAND set his tray down and sat next to Nishi, whose fork had frozen halfway to her mouth.

“Umm.” Susan’s brow creased as she took in the awkward scene.

Pérez had what might best be described as a reputation for violence. Very discriminating violence, always directed at enemies of the Admin, but violence nonetheless. Couple that with his imposing appearance and how he could snap Nishi’s neck with ease, and Susan could understand her friend’s . . . discomfort at sitting next to him.

Granted, Susan was physically capable of the same acts—if she disengaged her safety limiters—but she didn’t look the part. And besides, Nishi knew her from before her transition. Susan doubted anyone knew Pérez from his meat-and-bone days, except perhaps other old STANDs.

“Specialist Nishi, you’re welcome to stay with us,” Pérez remarked in what was almost a soothing tone. “There’s just a little bit of business I need to discuss with Agent Cantrell.”

“I . . .” She set her fork down and picked up her tray. “You know, maybe I should make this a working lunch. Gotta replace your frame’s armor. Later!”

Nishi rose abruptly and left without another word. Susan and Pérez watched her exit the mess hall with the haste of someone eager to enjoy her meal somewhere else.

Susan turned back to her fellow STAND. “You scared her off on purpose.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“Susan, I didn’t say anything . . . unnecessarily hostile, as you like to put it. Look.” He gestured to his meal. “I even grabbed a tray of food I’m not going to eat, all in an effort to look normal and nonthreatening.”

“Uh huh.” Susan rested her cheek on a fist.

Pérez was Susan’s mentor in STAND, and she’d come to believe he was a big softy on the inside, once one pushed past the badass synthoid act. It was penetrating the act that gave most people problems.

“Did I say something wrong?” he asked, perhaps more amused by the situation than distressed.

“I think it’s more how you hovered menacingly behind her.”

“Hovered? With menace?” He placed a splayed hand on his chest. “Me? Why, I’m as unthreatening as they come.”

“Whatever.” Susan rolled her eyes. “You said you had some business to discuss?”

“I do, though it’s not quite business. More like”—he paused ever so slightly—“news.”

“Why do I sense you left out a word there?”

“It’s not bad news.” He paused again, his face contemplative for a moment. “Well, maybe it is.”

Susan sighed and shook her head. “Just hit me with it.”

“As you wish.” He leaned forward. “I’ve been transferred to Defender-Two’s ground team.”

“Shit!” Susan put a hand to her forehead and rubbed.

“Temporarily,” Pérez added, holding up a hand.

“Yeah. I’ll bet.” She looked up. “This come from the captain?”

Pérez nodded. “Elifritz thought it might be beneficial to have a more experienced STAND on the team. Temporarily,” he stressed again.

“Thank you for the vote of confidence, everyone.” She shook her head and grabbed the hot sauce.

“It’s not that, Susan. He’s doing what he thinks is best. Both for the DTI and for your development. That’s all this is. You still have his confidence, and mine. He just wants to see . . . fewer hasty mistakes from you.”

“I had my head shot off!” Susan unscrewed the bottle and began drenching her meal in hot sauce. “So, okay, yeah, I responded with a bit too much firepower. I freely admit that, but those weren’t peashooters I was up against!” She set the bottle down. “I sure as hell needed to neutralize the threat somehow.”

“Of course. Just not with all of your grenades.”

“I know that now!” She stabbed a fork into a flauta and lifted the whole thing to her mouth.

“U***, Susan?” Pérez asked, sounding worried all of a sudden.

“What?”

“Do you plan to eat that?”

“Sure do. Why?”

“Well, it’s just . . .” He tilted his head to the side. “Maybe they fixed that problem with the newer synthoid versions.”

“What problem?”

“The spicy problem. Didn’t anyone mention food restrictions to you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She stuffed the whole flauta into her mouth, chewed and swallowed.

“Well, I guess we’ll know soon enough.”

“Know wha—”

A sudden, searing heat assaulted Susan’s senses. It started on her tongue, then spread insidiously from there, sending tendrils of unpleasantness across the inside of her mouth and down her throat. Her artificial eyes watered, and her face twisted up as if she’d sucked on a lemon.

“Yeah, there’s the look,” Pérez remarked hopelessly.

Susan grabbed her glass of water and chugged it, but the cool fluid provided scant relief. She stole the glass from Pérez’s tray and chugged that, too, but the additional water only seemed to smear the pain across a wider area.

“More!” she said desperately, and bolted up from her seat.

“I think there’re drink machines that—”

Pérez had only begun to point when Susan started sprinting.


Pérez found Susan alone in a side room lined with drink machines, her head stuck underneath one of the dispensers with a finger jammed against the drink select. The machine poured a continuous stream of water, while she alternated between swallowing, swishing, and spitting it out.

“Feel any better?” he asked with genuine empathy.

“What the hell was that?!” Susan spat before starting another gurgling cycle.

“Pain, which I think you haven’t felt in a month or so.” Pérez shrugged. “Spicy food is one of the few ways we can still feel pain. I suppose someone thinks it’s a good idea. I’m not a fan, but some STANDs apparently love it.”

She pulled her head out. “But I like spicy food!”

“Not anymore, I think.”

“Oh, fuck this!” she exclaimed before sticking her head back under the dispenser.

“You going to be okay?”

Glugfergurgglgup.”

“What?”

Susan contorted under the drink machine and gave him a thumbs up with her free hand.

“That’s the spirit.”

An alert pinged across both their virtual senses.

“Hmm.” Pérez eyed the message header hovering in his virtual vision. “Wonder what that could be?”

Susan extracted herself from the dispenser and stood up straight. She grabbed a paper towel and wiped her face off. In the absence of moisture, her uniform’s smart fabric morphed out of its waterproof mode.

“How do you feel?” Pérez asked.

“Like I suddenly hate spicy food.” She pointed to the alert. “What’s that?”

“Haven’t checked it yet.”

Susan raised an open palm, and the alert expanded. “Emergency mission brief for Defender-Two’s command staff and ground team,” she read.

“Then let’s not keep the rest of them waiting.”

“One second.” Susan entered an order into the drink machine. “I’m taking one to go, just in case.”


Susan and Pérez filed into the briefing room and took a pair of empty desks near the back. The automatic door locked shut behind them.

“Good. I believe that’s everyone,” Elifritz said, surveying the room. “Let’s get started.”

He placed a hand on the podium, linking his Personal Implant Network with the surrounding closed-circuit infostructure. Susan planted her own hand on the desk, and the classified briefing appeared in her virtual vision. An image of Cameron Nist popped up first, his dark eyes glaring straight ahead in the cramped interrogation room while two agents from the DTI’s espionage ops sat across from him.

“The good news,” Elifritz began, “is the interrogation of the past version of Cameron Nist, a.k.a. Doctor Quiet, is substantively complete.”

Susan let out a little snort.

Doctor Quiet, she thought. What a stupid, pretentious name. Like some video game supervillain.

“The bad news is it proved less productive than we’d hoped. We’ve been able to confirm the relatively small size of this terrorist cell, less than ten members, and that Nist serves as their leader, but he didn’t reveal much else of value. It seems that under Nist’s command, this Free Luna cell has adapted their operating parameters to mitigate the intelligence we can gather by raiding their old hangouts.”

“How’d they pull that off, Captain?” asked a member of the chronoport’s bridge crew.

“By leaving a portion of their plan up to random chance. Quite literally in this case. They’re taking a list of about a thousand potential targets—most of them officials at various levels of our government—and using random number generation to pick their next target. While this method has clear disadvantages, it also means that past-Nist doesn’t know who they’ll hit next. At least, not that far back in the timeline.”

“Sir, do we have the breakdown on their new weapon?”

“We do.” Elifritz pulled up a picture of a complex microscopic machine that resembled a fat, metallic beetle. “Here’s the culprit. It’s a modified version of a common surgical microbot, adapted for assault on the victim’s nervous system, which is where Doctor Nist’s previous career as a neurosurgeon comes into play. Upon introduction to the body, the microbots travel to the brain’s speech center and cause significant damage, resulting in global aphasia for most victims.” He turned to his team. “During his interview, Doctor Nist insisted this approach was more ‘humane’ since it doesn’t kill anyone.”

Murmurs of disgust circulated the briefing room.

“Can the weapon self-replicate?” Susan asked.

“A good question, and fortunately not,” Elifritz answered. “The modifications are entirely software-based, so the technical capabilities of the original remain unchanged. Unfortunately, this also means the terrorists will have no issues creating more, as these microbots are commonly used in medical facilities all across the globe.”

“What’s the threat level to the ground team?” Pérez asked.

“Low, since the weapon has to be injected into the victim.” He pointed to the microbot schematic.

Susan felt her concentration waver due to the agony in her mouth, and she raised the drink straw as stealthily as she could.

“Our organic operators should be safe—”

Schlooorp.

Elifritz paused and frowned. “Should be safe—”

Shlurp.

“Should be—”

Shlrp.

The captain turned and swept his gaze over the room, but Susan moved her drink under the desk with superhuman speed.

“Did anyone else hear that?” the captain asked.

“Hear what, sir?” Pérez asked innocently.

“I . . . never mind.” Elifritz cleared his throat and pointed once more to the microbot picture. “As I was saying, the risk to our ground team should be minimal. The weapon is intended for civilian targets, not armored operators or STANDs in combat frames. We expect conventional weapons to be the main threat to the ground team.”

“What are we hitting, sir?”

“A public infostructure tower seven days ago, which if you recall, will place us one day after the initial attack on our government. Our goal is to infiltrate the tower in the past and record the Free Luna software making its next target selection before distributing its orders to the cell.”

“Sounds like we don’t expect to meet resistance,” Pérez noted.

“Yes and no.” Elifritz brought up a new image. It took Susan a few moments to realize the abstract graph represented chronometric activity as detected by a chronoport’s dish. “On its way back to the True Present, Defender-Prime detected what might be the wake of an illegal time machine. Furthermore, Doctor Nist revealed his Free Luna cell somehow got its hands on a makeshift chronoton impeller. That was fifty-six days ago, which is conceivably enough time for them to attach a basic power plant and crew cabin to the impeller.”

“Free Luna has a time machine?” Nishi exclaimed.

“That’s one possibility,” Elifritz said. “And given how savvy this cell is to our methods, I think it’s possible they’re using it to guard key events in the past, in case we come snooping around.”

“What if their junker time machine shows itself?” Pérez asked.

“Your orders are to destroy it, if possible,” Elifritz stated firmly. “If not, Defender-Two will engage the craft directly.”

“Understood, sir,” Pérez said with a nod.


Chronoport Defender-Two hovered out of the DTI tower hangar, held aloft by directional exhaust from its twin fusion thrusters. The craft’s ninety-meter length resembled the silhouette of a manta ray with a thick delta wing expanding outward from the main body and the long, narrow spike of its chronoton impeller protruding from the rear. External racks under its wing were heavy with cannon and missile pods.

Power diverted from the fusion plants to the impeller, which spun up. Chronotons—elementary particles that looped constantly back and forth through time in closed temporal loops—permeated the impeller with ease up until the moment it fully energized.

The exotic matter of the impeller began to block chronotons moving backward in time, and this created intense chronometric pressure along the impeller. The pressure built until the force overcame the chronoport’s natural momentum through time, shifting the entire vessel out of phase with the True Present, the newest point in time in the universe, a point past which the future had yet to be charted.

The chronoport vanished from the present and sped into the past at ninety-five thousand seconds per second.


“I’m in.” Nishi crouched near the server tower’s roof access, her armor’s variskin reducing her and the other three operators to watery blurs, though the squad’s short-ranged infostructure highlighted each friendly with a blue border.

Susan and Pérez stood behind them, flush against the wall, their synthoids swapped out for Type-92 and Type-86 combat frames respectively. Pérez’s combat frame might have been older than her model, but that didn’t make it any less deadly in a fight. Quite the contrary, since the Type-86 sported heavier armor and weaponry than her Type-92, at the cost of a modest loss in speed and maneuverability.

“The door?” Pérez asked.

“I’ll have it disabled in a moment,” Nishi replied. “Just double-checking my work so I don’t set off any alarms.”

Susan scanned their surroundings. The chronoport had dropped them off atop the infostructure tower situated in the outskirts of the sprawling metropolis built over the old Yanluo Blight. The orange glow of dusk melted into the dark of night overhead, and the cityscape glowed with running lights of commuter shuttles. A blue triangle pulsed in the distance, representing Defender-Two holding position with all stealth systems engaged.

The ground team could have blown the door open or entered the building with any number of loud, forceful methods. They might have been in the past, but any “changes” they made would vanish as soon as they left, melting back into the immutable march of time. Still, it benefited their work to be discrete, since they were an outside factor on the local timeline. Not only could their presence influence past events, potentially corrupting whatever intelligence they sought, but misunderstandings with other Peacekeeper forces could—and in one case had—ended badly.

Notifying the past version of local Peacekeepers was always an option, but even a small change like that could have large and unpredictable consequences. And so, the DTI operated quietly whenever possible.

“Door’s power is cut,” Nishi reported. “And no building alarms so far.”

“Good work.”

Pérez nodded to Susan, who nodded back and grabbed the handle. She shoved the heavy door aside, then stepped in, heavy rail-rifle tracking across the interior. The interior was unlit except for the blinking lights of rack-mounted infostructure nodes, but the gloom provided little challenge to her enhanced senses. Pérez followed her in and together they performed a sweep of the level.

“Clear,” Susan reported.

“Clear,” Pérez echoed.

“Moving in.” Nishi and the other operators entered the floor and closed the door behind them. She hurried over to Susan’s position.

“This one should work.” Susan tapped the master node on the central rack. If it was configured like most, the master node would have administrative functions Nishi could use to her advantage.

“Yeah, that’ll do.” She crouched down and plugged into the master node. Virtual interfaces materialized around her. “This could take a while.”

“I’ve got your back.”

Susan kept watch as Nishi worked. Nothing stirred except for the constant sound of coolant flowing through the racked nodes. Pérez and the other operators spread out, keeping watch over each of the floor’s entrances.

“How’s it going?” Susan asked ten minutes later.

“Slow,” Nishi admitted. “Whoever coded this put in some false leads. I’m having to eliminate them one by one.”

“Well, keep at it. The good thing is we should have all the time in the—”

The ceiling exploded directly above the two women, and hot shrapnel rained down on them. Susan raised her arm in an instant and energized its malmetal armor plates. The hexagonal segments shifted into a wide shield, and shrapnel bounced off before it could cut through Nishi.

“Damn!” the specialist exclaimed as the force of the explosion knocked her to the ground. She yanked out her cable, grabbed her rail-rifle, and scrambled to her feet.

Susan retracted her armor and peered through the clearing smoke. She overlaid the view with infrared, and the profile of a hovering craft came into focus. It looked like someone had grafted the long spike of a chronoton impeller onto a passenger airliner, though the heavy cannon hanging from its chin-mounted turret was most definitely an “aftermarket” addition. She could make out the thermal silhouettes of two people sitting side by side in the cockpit.

“Hostile craft above us!” Susan shouted moments before the enemy fired again.

Its second shot tore through the racks in a swift line of exploding, sparking hardware. Susan grabbed Nishi and pulled her away, and bits of ruined equipment pattered off her back.

“Engage!” Pérez called out as he opened fire. His three-shot burst punched through the cockpit canopy and splattered the thermal signature of one of the pilots. The craft swerved to the side, and its cannon raked through the ceiling.

A twisted metal girder fell, but Susan caught it and tossed it aside. She lit her shoulder boosters and flew up through the smoke, climbing rapidly above the terrorist time machine. She leveled off and fired several shots down into the craft’s passenger cabin, but only one of her shots penetrated the hull. Someone had added some “aftermarket” armor, and all the side windows were plated over.

She engaged her boosters again and swung around toward the front of the craft, which finished tearing a ragged groove through the tower’s roof and began a lazy spin as it slowly lost altitude, descending into the nearby urban canyon. Her thermal readings brightened where the airliner’s main fuselage met the impeller spike.

“Power-up detected!” Susan reported. “I think they’re trying to phase out!”

“Stop them!” Pérez ordered, boosting toward the edge of the building. “Take it down!”

Susan followed the time machine’s spin and lined up a shot on the cockpit. Her optics focused in on the pilot, but then she hesitated. Her variskin must have been damaged by the shrapnel, because the lanky man glared at her with fierce eyes and a hateful scowl.

She immediately recognized those intense eyes, even if the man had changed his hair color and style.

The second pilot was Cameron Nist! Their top capture target was meters away from her! And this version wasn’t fifty or sixty days out of date, but from the True Present! He’d know every one of Free Luna’s dirty little secrets!

“Hold your fire!” Susan called out.

“Wait, what?” Pérez shouted from the edge of the tower roof. “Susan, what’s wrong?”

She lit her shoulder boosters and crashed feetfirst onto the time machine’s roof moments before its impeller activated. Everything but her combat frame and the Free Luna time machine blurred, and the city’s day and night cycle played out once every ten seconds, even as the time machine continued its barely controlled descent down the urban canyon.

Susan clambered along the roof toward the back of the craft. She stopped by one of the dents she’d shot into it, found a seam, and punched it with all the might her combat frame could muster. Then again and again.

The armor bowed inward, and she poked her rail-rifle into the gash and pumped shot after shot into where her thermal vision said the power plant should be. A gout of plasma scorched her armor through the gash, and she backed away as the impeller faltered.

Their surroundings snapped back into sharp clarity, and a bright noon sun shone down upon the urban canyon. The time machine’s nose tipped upward, and the impeller spike dragged across the building roofs at the bottom of the canyon. Side thrusters strained to keep the craft aloft, but then they puttered out, and the whole craft levered down onto its belly.

Susan held on until the craft came to rest, then she hurried back to the cockpit. Nist had retreated into the vessel’s interior, but that wouldn’t stop her.

“Cameron Nist, you are under arrest!” She shot up the window and shattered it with a swift kick, then jumped into the cockpit and glanced over the gooey remains of the doctor’s copilot. “Come out with your hands up!”

“Go to hell!” Nist swung into the open at the rear of the cockpit, pistol leveled at her. She engaged her boosters. Nist fired, but her armor deflected the shot moments before she tackled him. The gun flew out of his hand, and she pinned him to the floor.

He scrambled under her grip and kicked her in the leg, but then winced in pain, as he discovered how little protection the soft toe of his shoe provided for his foot.

“Ouch! Damn it!”

“Really?” she asked. “You tried to kick a STAND? Were you really a neurosurgeon?”

“Fuck you!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

She turned him over and forced his arms behind his back, then retrieved a malmetal strip from her waist. Once in place, the strip constricted around his wrists.

“Agent Cantrell, do you read me?” Captain Elifritz radioed in from Defender-Two.

“Loud and clear, sir.”

“We tracked the rogue time machine’s movements and are now in phase with your temporal position. What’s your status?”

“I managed to disable the enemy time machine and capture one of the pilots.”

“Good work. We’re heading your way now. We should be in position to pick you up in about three minutes.”

“Understood, sir. Also, I have something else to report, and I think you’re going to like it.”

“And what would that be?”

“The pilot I captured? It’s Nist, sir.”

Really.” She could almost see the wide grin on Elifritz’s face. “Well, well, well. Isn’t this a fortunate turn of events? Fine work out there, Agent. Prep the prisoner for extraction.”

“Yes, sir!” She stood up and lifted Nist to his feet. “We’ll be waiting outside the time machine.”

“This is all so pointless,” the doctor snarled at her. “You might have caught me, but others will rise to take my place! The Admin will fall, and Luna will be independent once more! It’s only a matter of time!”

“Save it, Nist.” She hauled him toward the busted window.

“Try to ignore me all you want, but it’ll do you no good! You’re nothing but a soulless machine! A windup caricature of a corrupt thug, built to serve a corrupt government! I’d spit in your eyes if you still had them! You and the rest of your ill-conceived kind are a sickening perversion of humanity! The universe would be a better place if you were all deleted!”

She paused at the threshold, then chuckled.

“What the hell is so funny?” he snapped at her.

“Nothing.” She chuckled again. “It’s just, for someone calling himself ‘Doctor Quiet,’ you sure do run your mouth a lot.”


Back | Next
Framed