Future Shock

Future Shock I

Christopher G. Nuttall

Cover By Tan Ho Sim
https://www.artstation.com/alientan

http://www.chrishanger.net
http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/
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Contents
Cover Blurb
Dedication
Chapter One: TFS John Birmingham, 3625
Chapter Two: HMS Vendetta, 3625
Chapter Three: TFS John Birmingham, 3625
Chapter Four: USS Grant, 2308
Chapter Five: TFS John Birmingham/ USS Grant, 2308
Chapter Six: TFS John Birmingham, 2308
Chapter Seven: TFS John Birmingham, 2308
Chapter Eight: USS Grant/TFS John Birmingham, 2308

Cover Blurb

	A thousand years in the future, human civilisation has been driven to the brink of extinction by the Killers, a mysterious alien race seemingly intent on exterminating every other form of sentient life. Desperately fleeing utter annihilation, a handful of starships use an experimental stardrive in a bid to escape, only to find themselves thrown back in time to the dawn of the First Interstellar War in 2308, where mankind is making its first stand against an alien foe. And they are not alone.
	
	For the time travellers, it is a chance to rewrite history, to end the war quickly with futuristic technology, speed up the development of a post-scarcity society and prepare the human race for the second inevitable encounter with genocidal aliens. For the contemporary humans, their mere arrival is devastating; future technology threatens to undermine their society, future historical records name heroes and villains alike before they make their mark, future attitudes and values challenge everything they hold dear.
	
	With two alien enemies breathing down their necks, and the fate of humanity itself in the balance, both sides have to cooperate. But as the impact of the sudden change in history spreads, and time itself is changed beyond all recognition, the threat to humanity may come from human nature itself … 

Dedication
To John Birmingham, even though I emailed and got permission for this.

Chapter One: TFS John Birmingham, 3625

“Is this all?”

Commodore Ethan Boswell stared at the holographic display in a dismay so profound that even the regulatory implants naval personnel carried as a matter of course couldn’t keep the emotion under control. Nine starships, all that remained of the Federation Navy, a navy that had once counted its starships in the millions. Nine ships, ten if one counted the Zargana heavy cruiser holding station behind TFS John Birmingham. Nine ships …

“If there are any others,” Doctor Rachel Boswell said quietly, “they didn’t answer the all-ships hypercom call.”

Ethan swallowed hard, refusing to look at the eHuman behind him. His wife had transcribed herself into a datacore, reducing her entire body and soul into a matrix that would – one day – be returned to a cloned human body, assuming anyone remained alive to do it. She had chosen to keep herself awake and aware, running as an independent personality within the starship’s datacore rather than losing herself in a virtual fantasy or simply freezing her thought routines to ensure she had no awareness of the passage of time, something Ethan considered a mixed blessing. He would have preferred to be able to hold his wife, no matter how selfish it would have been when thousands of other naval personnel were unable to hold their own loved ones. They would be reborn one day, he promised himself, if the fleet managed to get clear of the Killers. 

Yes, his thoughts pointed out. If.

“They can’t all be gone,” he said. “They just can’t.”

But he found it all too easy to believe. John Birmingham had been too far from Earth to join the battle, the hopeless engagement between hundreds of thousands of human and allied starships and an alien fleet that was so alien it was hard to get a lock on their hulls, let alone blow them apart. Four years of fighting had taught humanity a few lessons about engaging such alien targets, but even the massed might of the Federation Navy and the colossal industrial power of the Federation hadn’t been enough to do more than slow the Killers. In the end, they’d descended on Earth, unleashing powerful weapons that slid through humanity’s defences and hulls as if they weren’t even there, tearing through a fleet that had once been the unchallenged master of the known universe. They’d been racing to the core system to join the final battle, even though he’d known it was suicide. His orders had been clear – he was to take the handful of remaining ships far from the known galaxy, each ship containing one of the all-important genetic databanks through which the human race might live again – but he’d still felt like a coward, when he’d given the order to retreat. It was the right move and yet … he shook his head. He had watched his home die, and yet he had run, abandoning the rest of the navy to its fate.

“There’s no answer,” his wife pointed out. He looked up at her shimmering face. “We’re on our own.”

“I know,” Ethan said. “If the new stardrive doesn’t work …”

He scowled as he turned back to his display, watching the techs put the final touches into place before the drives were activated. A standard jumpdrive couldn’t hope to get the ragtag fleet away from their merciless enemies – the Killers had proved they could follow human ships through multiple jumps – but humanity’s scientists hadn’t been idle when they’d seen proof they didn’t know everything about the limits of the possible. They hadn’t been able to duplicate the Killer stardrive – it was as alien as the rest of their technology – yet it had given them some ideas. The modified drive might just get the fleet clear long enough to rebuild, to recreate human civilisation and prepare for the next encounter. Or it might get them all killed.

His eyes lingered on the light codes marking the handful of surviving starships. The Zargana heavy cruiser was alone; realistically, Ethan was surprised the starship captain hadn’t set out to his own homeworld, in hopes of saving what he could. The Zargana had been humanity’s enemies, then its rivals, then finally allies … of a sort. Ethan was painfully aware there were still plenty of Zargana who blamed humanity for the troubles their empire had suffered over the last two centuries, the arrival of the Killers only adding to their fury as it became clear the Killers intended to kill everyone, regardless of their race or creed. The Zargana wouldn’t have an easy time of it, when it came to rebuilding. They’d never liked the idea of uploading and storing personalities in datacores and now … he promised himself his fleet would do everything in its power to save their allies from extinction. The human race owed it to them.

“I read the report,” Rachel said. “As long as we have the colonist-carrier, we should be able to rebuild.”

“So they say,” Ethan said. Given time, the colonist-carrier could fabricate almost anything a colony might need, from basic farming equipment to starships and weapons capable of blasting almost anything to atoms … anything, apart from a Killer starship. The ship was designed to operate alone, to set up a colony a very long way from home … creating housing and then inviting settlers or recreating them out of the genetic datacores. “If we don’t get clear …”

His wife elbowed him. The hologram passed right through his skin. “We’re safe for the moment,” she said. “It isn’t over yet.”

“You always were the optimistic one,” Ethan said. 

He knew she was trying to cheer him up, but … his wife, for all her virtues, wasn’t a naval officer. She didn’t understand the sheer scale of the defeat, didn’t realise that the end was nigh … didn’t comprehend that rebuilding even a fraction of the Federation Navy would take time they didn’t have. Sure, all the lost officers and civilians would live again – if they’d backed themselves up in time – but would there be any safety for them? No one knew where the Killers came from, or why there’d been no hint of contact before the first – disastrous – encounter. Some naval analysts speculated they came from the Clouds, or even a more distant galaxy. The fleet might be heading right towards their enemy’s core worlds. There was just no way to be sure. It would take centuries for his fleet to reach Andromeda. How long would it take their enemies?

His heart sank. The human race was doomed, reduced to a handful of starships and a genetic datacore that might never be decanted into a multitude of clone bodies. The other alien races humanity had encountered – some friends and allies, others enemies or simply too alien for contact to be more than perfunctory – had been slaughtered too. It didn’t seem fair. The human race had overcome its problems and built a golden age where everyone had enough to eat and drink and follow their interests … where everyone lived long enough to experiment with a hundred different careers and lifestyles until they found one they liked, or simply keep changing to ensure the universe never grew boring. The Federation Navy had sworn to protect a towering civilisation and failed, leaving billions to be slaughtered … billions who might never live again. If they didn’t get clear …

“Yeah,” Rachel said. “I guess I am.”

The console bleeped. Ethan glanced at it, feeling ice gripping his heart. The fleet was a long way off the beaten track, hundreds of light-years from the nearest settled world … a world that had been blasted to atoms now, the population mercilessly slaughtered by the Killers. There was no reason to think they could be tracked down, but they didn’t understand how the aliens travelled through space or how their sensors worked. For all he knew, one of their weird fleets of strange – utterly alien – starships was bearing down on them now, their eerie technology making them difficult to track before it was too late. The fleet was supposed to be hiding, all drives and weapons stepped down as much as possible to keep from radiating any betraying emissions … but were they nothing more than a child covering their eyes and pretending the adults couldn’t see them? The Killers might already be closing in to finish the slaughter. His fleet was exposed …

He allowed himself a moment of relief. A random energy flicker. Not dangerous. Not yet.

“I think we’re far too exposed,” he said, quietly. “But what else can we do?”

Rachel smiled at him. “Keep going,” she told him. “The Navy wouldn’t have told you to preserve what you could if they didn’t have faith in you.”

Ethan snorted, rudely. He was a starship commander, true, and a de facto commodore through seniority, but he wasn’t one of the dashing young officers who made the holovids through daring commando raids and dramatic engagements against alien threats. His rise in the ranks had been slow because he refused to take risks and put his crew on the line to make a name for himself. It was something he’d always seen as reckless, even with the tech edge the navy had enjoyed until their final enemy arrived. Better to be slow and steady, he’d always thought. His ship represented the navy, and he was damned if he’d act like an imprudent fool, or a trigger-happy warmonger from a distant century. He’d thought there were no alien powers that could seriously threaten his ship.

He shuddered. He’d been wrong. They had all been wrong. And the entire navy had paid the price.

“I’m all that’s left,” he pointed out, quietly. “Nine starships. There’s nothing left.”

He stood, the hatch hissing open as he stepped out of his ready room and walked along the corridor. TFS John Birmingham was a kilometre from bow to stern, tiny compared to the giant planetoids that had been the pride of the Federation Navy, and normally there was plenty of room for her crew to spread out and enjoy luxury even as they fought to defend their civilisation. Now, there were hundreds of refugees lying in makeshift beds or sitting against the bulkheads, their heads in their hands as they waited to die. The fleet had picked up as many as possible, during the desperate flight to the RV point, but there was little they could offer in the way of reassurance. It was a scene from a bygone era, with men, women and children forced to flee their homes for an uncertain fate, all too aware that staying where they were would be far worse. The Killers weren’t interested in conquest; they’d never tried to enslave the human race … they just killed. His heart twisted painfully. The refugees would never see their homes again. Their homes – giant star-spanning rings, smaller colonies, giant starships – were gone.

A hand caught his. “When can we go home?”

Ethan looked down. The girl was young. The Federation had unlocked the secret of eternal youth long ago, and simple human vanity ensured that most humans were utterly handsome and beautiful and so striking that the ones who really wanted to stand out made themselves ugly instead, but you could always tell by looking at the eyes. The girl holding him really was young, probably no older than she looked. Old enough to know how she could change her body to suit herself, young enough to be still under parental guidance, disallowed from changing herself too far until she knew precisely what she was doing. And too young to grasp the simple fact existence as they knew it was over.

“I’m sorry, child.” Ethan felt his heart break. The girl was too young. She wasn’t a hundred years old, old enough to live a full life. She would never know the glory of living in a post-scarcity civilisation, never know the security that came with being part of a society advanced enough to defeat any potential threats. “There’s no way to go home.”

He hated himself for saying it, even as he cast his eyes up and down the corridor. Where were her parents? Had they gotten out in time? The evacuation had been a nightmare, most humans hastily downloading themselves into the datacores and transferring their patterns to his ships before it was too late. Were her parents still alive? Isolated and frozen within the datacores? Or gone, gone so completely they’d never be resurrected? Ethan had grown up in a world where death was nothing more than a temporary inconvenience, where you could be reborn from a back-up unless you deliberately chose to go onwards. That world was gone now. Her parents might be gone too.

The girl stared down at the deck. She didn’t get it, he knew. How could she? He was old enough to be her great-grandfather and he didn’t get it either, despite the coldness gripping his heart. He knew the situation was bad, knew the human race teetered on the brink of extinction … he was torn between the part of his mind that knew it was over, that humanity had finally come to an end, and the part of him that refused to accept it. They couldn’t be doomed. They couldn’t …

But they were.

He turned and stumbled away, making his way through the crowded corridor. Some refugees spoke quietly, trying to keep their children’s spirits up: others stared at nothing, unable to comprehend what had happened to their once-great civilisation. They were lucky the ship’s life support was over-engineered, he supposed, although it wouldn’t matter if the Killers found them. Force shields that shrugged off nuclear and antimatter warheads were completely ineffectual against alien weapons that didn’t seem to follow the laws of physics, weapons that seemed to slip through defences and hulls alike to materialise inside the target and rip it to shreds. Five years ago, his ship had been practically indestructible. Now … 

“Captain,” Doctor Caroche said, as Ethan walked past sickbay. He was a tall, dark man, inhumanly thin, with eyes modified to see in ways natural-born humans couldn’t match. It wasn’t a fashion statement. It made him a more effective doctor. “Can I have a word?”

Ethan stepped into the compartment, trying not to shudder at just how many medical beds were loaded with wounded. He wasn’t used to seeing so many people so badly injured, not when they could be loaded into stasis and regeneration tubes or simply uploaded into the datacore and decanted into a new body. The doctors could normally handle anything that wasn’t immediately lethal very quickly, with a wave of their bio-regenerative medical wands. The sight in front of him was a grim reminder his ship and crew were being pushed to the limit, a reminder it was worse on the other ships. He’d thought John Birmingham had more than enough spare capability to handle anything, but …

I was wrong, he reflected. The cruisers had been the workhorse of the fleet, back when the navy had been all-powerful. They’d handled everything from alien threats to natural disasters, and it had been rare for a cruiser to encounter something it couldn’t handle alone. The navy had deployed thousands of them, covering all the bases … they hadn’t known what was coming. If they had … what difference would it have made? None of us knew we were living on borrowed time.

“We’re running low on stasis tubes, and our regenerative capabilities are being pushed well past the limits,” Doctor Caroche said, quietly but firmly. Five years ago, it would have been impossible. Now, it was just another horror piled atop horror. “I request permission to start uploading the wounded to the core.”

Ethan hesitated, cursing under his breath. It was flatly illegal to copy and upload anyone without their consent. The system was carefully designed to prevent abuse – there had been enough horror stories, back when the technology had been devised, to make it very clear there was no such thing as enough safeguards – and even trying could easily cause the system to lock itself down … unless the starship’s commander overrode the safety interlocks and made it happen. It could end very badly indeed, if the Federation Navy was ever resurrected … how would anyone know, he asked himself silently, if the doctor engaged in a little creative editing during the uploading process? It was risky …

“There’s little we can do for most of the patients,” Doctor Caroche said. The frustration and helplessness in his voice was all too clear. A doctor who could normally handle anything was completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of people who needed his attention. “The best we can do, right now, is give them sedatives and hope for the best.”

“Ask them if they’ll upload themselves voluntarily,” Ethan said. Cold logic agreed with the doctor. His heart argued otherwise. He might have the authority to order it, but just because you could do something didn’t mean you should. “And promise they’ll be amongst the first to be decanted when the time comes.”

If it ever does, his treacherous mind added. He didn’t really blame the patients for being reluctant to upload themselves. They would be trapped within the datacore, completely at the mercy of events they couldn’t influence. If the cruiser was caught and destroyed, they’d be dead before they knew it. They know they might be going to their deaths.

“I have,” the doctor said. The quiet desperation in his tone tore at Ethan’s heart. “The ones who agreed have already been uploaded and …”

The alarms started to howl before Ethan could come up with a response. “Captain to the bridge! Captain to the bridge!”

“I think it may be academic now,” Ethan said, turning away. He’d given orders the alarms were only to be sounded if they detected the alien ships. His XO knew better than to break those orders. They all did. “They’ve found us!”

Chapter Two: HMS Vendetta, 3625

Captain Lord His Excellency Y’Opohan, Zargana Navy, stood on his bridge and thought dark thoughts about humans. 

It was a joke, he’d often told himself, that the human race, of all the known intelligent beings in the explored galaxy, had somehow become the unquestioned masters of the galaxy. They were flabby mammals, unlike his own reptilian race, and they lacked the teeth and claws they needed to be truly effective warriors. Their democracy had been a joke, their leaders weaklings, their navy lacking the ruthlessness necessary to protect their people from the harsh realities of the universe … and yet, somehow, they’d managed to beat the Zargana so completely the Empire had become little more than a human satrapy. His people had become slaves, their spirits so broken they couldn’t unite against the human meddling that had cost an Emperor his throne and reshaped their society beyond repair. Y’Opohan had been lucky his career had powerful backers, when he’d dared to say it out loud. He would have been demoted otherwise, an insult to his honour that could only be redeemed through suicide. Instead …

He ground his sharp teeth as he stared at the display. He had no idea what had happened, when the Federation Navy had first met the Killers, but he was sure the humans had blundered and started a war they couldn’t hope to win. Their arrogance was immense, their willingness to meddle wrapped up in kindness and sympathy that was little more than cover for a hypocritical plan to reshape every society until it was exactly like their own. They had bitten off far more than they could chew, he knew, and it would have been delightful if the Zargana hadn’t been targeted for extermination too. The Killers had swept through the Zargana Empire as mercilessly as they’d swept through the Terran Federation, slaughtering the Zargana Navy and then blowing entire worlds into atoms. It was a staggering display of power, all the more so because there was no need to literally turn planets into asteroid fields. They could have wiped out the entire population without needing to destroy the planets.

His claws flexed. Nine human starships, all that remained of their fleet … and his heavy cruiser, a genuine warship. She was crammed with energy weapons and missile batteries, unlike the soft human cruisers that couldn’t hope to meet a Zargana warship on even terms … were it not for their tech advantage. He’d put out an emergency call, hoping and praying that another starship had survived … he’d welcome a ship from a rival clan now, no matter they’d be bitter enemies under other circumstances. No ship had answered, leaving him uneasily aware his vessel was the last naval warship … and his crew the last of his kind. The humans had uploaded themselves into their datacores, a cheap trick they used to cheat death, but his people weren’t soft. They hadn’t availed themselves of the technology, even though the humans had shared it. He understood the logic – there was no point in seeking honour through daring deeds and putting your life at risk if you knew you’d be resurrected – but right now he wished his people had made an exception. The nine hundred warriors on his ship were all that remained of his species. 

Perhaps I should declare myself the Emperor, he reflected, sourly. Technically, he was the Emperor. He was part of the Royal Bloodline, and everyone above him had been slaughtered by the eerie aliens the humans had provoked. But wouldn’t it be rather pointless?

Officer D’Holin turned to face him, dipping her snout into the posture of respect. “My Lord, we have not received any response to our signals.”

Y’Opohan felt a flash of pure anger, directed at the humans and his officer and – in truth – at himself. It was wrong to have a female on the command deck, it was wrong to let her serve on his ship in any capacity. She should be in her home, raising children and teaching them to respect the Empire and the Emperor … oh, the humans had done immense damage when they’d backed the wrong side in the civil war. They’d meddled, telling the would-be ruler that they’d support him if he removed all restrictions on female roles within the empire, ensuring they could do everything a male could … he felt his claws flex and controlled them with an effort, telling himself he should be grateful. There were forty females on his ship, and without them, his race would truly be doomed. The humans could clone bodies from scratch. His ship lacked that capability too.

“Keep trying,” he growled, feeling a flicker of dark pleasure at her flinch. She was good at her job, and very pleasing to look upon, but she shouldn’t be on his bridge. She wouldn’t be, he told himself, once the fleet made it somewhere safe. The females would be ordered to mate with as many males as possible, to ensure their children would be genetically diverse … they wouldn’t be happy, but it didn’t matter. The survival of the species came first. “There has to be someone else out there, there has to be.”

He clacked his claws as he stared at the display. The fleet was holding station within a gas giant’s atmosphere, an old tactic for remaining unnoticed that might – or might not – be any use against technology so alien no one understood how it worked. Human technology was advanced, true, but it wasn’t that different from the Empire’s. Hell, there had been a time when the Zargana had been far more advanced than their human enemies. How had they lost? His people had been fools, so convinced of their own superiority that they hadn’t realised the true nature of their new enemies. The Killers, by contrast, had been utterly merciless. They had torn through the human starships with a brutal efficiency that would have been admirable if they hadn’t been destroying his navy too. They could find the human ships – and his cruiser – at any moment and then … Y’Opohan had no illusions. The Killers would do what they did best.

They’d kill. 

His console chimed, once. “My Lord,” Engineer Y’Goaha said. “The human drive unit has been attached to our hull. The human engineers are returning to their ship.”

Y’Opohan felt another flash of pure rage, mingled with hatred. The humans were mocking him, even as they stared extinction in the face. They’d sent their engineers to assist his engineers to set up the new and experimental drive, the FTL stardrive they swore blind would carry the fleet hundreds of thousands of light-years from their former territory, as if his engineers were children barely out of the egg, children who needed their hands held until they were big enough to stand on their own two feet. He knew he should be grateful and yet … it was impossible to think of humans as anything other than enemies, a force that had weakened everything good about his people and then thrown what was left into the fire. The humans had meddled, and his people had paid the price.

“Good.” Y’Opohan had to fight to keep his voice steady. “Do we have control over the drive coordinates?”

“No.” The engineer knew better than to hide anything from his commander, even though it was technically a confession he’d failed to carry out his orders. “The humans say the drive units have to be triggered in unison, which means we have to remain part of their datanet …”

Y’Opohan growled. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life dependent on human charity … and he would, if he allowed his ship to accompany the human fleet. The Federation Navy had been oddly paranoid, ensuring that even a relatively small colonist-carrier or survey ship had the capability to rebuild their civilisation from scratch, given enough time and raw materials, but the Zargana Navy had designed and built their ships for war. It would be difficult to set up a colony world, using the resources of his ship alone, and harder still to do it without falling back into barbarism … he had no choice. The only alternative was seeing his people stripped of the last of their vitality, to lose everything that made them who and what they were … to become humans, in all but name. His green scales itched at the thought. It was worth any risk to ensure his people remained themselves.

“Get into the datanet and adjust the coordinates,” he ordered, curtly. The humans might notice the tampering or they might not. It didn’t matter. He’d jump away from the human ships and rebuild the empire somewhere a very long way from the Killers. By the time the Zargana encountered the Killers, or the humans, again, they would be ready. “I want to jump as soon as the drive is powered up.”

There was no hesitation in the engineer’s tone. “Yes, My Lord.”

Y’Opohan allowed himself a dark smile as he leaned back in his command throne, eyes darting from console to console … his operators stiffening as they felt his gaze lingering on the back of their necks. None showed the despair he’d seen in some of their human counterparts, none showed the grim awareness that their society had reached the end of the line … he let himself feel a moment of pride in his people, in their determination to survive at all costs. He himself wouldn’t live to see it – the Zargana shunned the physical immortality the humans had crafted for themselves – but he was sure they’d make it back to the top. The Killers wouldn’t stand a chance when they faced the Zargana a second time, and the humans would be exterminated. There would be no second chances, not after everything they’d done. Y’Opohan’s heirs would see to it.

Just you wait, he promised the human ships on the display. Just you wait and see what we do to you.

He forced himself to be patient, all too aware that hacking a datanet was a delicate task. The engineers could easily disconnect his ships from the human datanet, but that would probably deactivate the drive completely. It would be far easier to substitute a different set of coordinates and do it at just the right moment to ensure they jumped, before safety interlocks prevented the drive from going live. The timing would have to be exact. He felt his heart twist painfully as he waited, resisting the urge to call the engineers for an update. They didn’t need to be harassed. They were working as fast as they could. He just hoped it was fast enough.

An alarm sounded. “My Lord,” D’Holin said. “We’re picking up an alert from the remote sensor platforms. Unknown contacts have entered the system!”

“Sound battle stations.” Y’Opohan felt his hearts turning to ice. Unknown contacts … anything other than the Killers would have been identified at once, by human sensor platforms an order of magnitude more capable than anything the Zargana Navy possessed. His people had concentrated on developing newer and better weapons, not sensors … ironically, their more primitive sensor suites had been better at tracking the Killers than their hyper-advanced human counterparts. They were too dumb to fool easily. “Transfer main power to weapons and the drive.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

Y’Opohan leaned forward, watching the live feed from the sensor display as the alien ships glided forward. The display flickered and flared, patches of static covering the alien icons as the sensor arrays fought to make sense of their truly alien nature. It was hard, almost impossible, to describe the alien ships, even when starship crewmen saw the vessels with the naked eye. They were biological nightmares, their forms shifting in a manner that could never be put into words … and they killed. They moved through space like sharks through water, deploying weapons he couldn’t even begin to comprehend. His eyes hurt as he stared at the display. The medics had never managed to explain why, but they did. The sense of looking at something truly wrong was impossible to avoid, even for him.

“How did they find us?”

The question hung in the air. Y’Opohan had no answer. The Killers ignored things that should have led them to their targets, such as betraying radio signals, and somehow tracked down ships that weren’t radiating anything … that should have been taken for nothing more than asteroids floating in space. Y’Opohan guessed they had some sort of sensor system that made human technology look primitive, although he had no idea what. A standard FTL sensor suite should not have been able to locate the fleet …

“Hold station,” he ordered. The alien ships were getting closer … he thought. It was hard to get a solid lock on their position, let alone target their hulls with FTL weapons. The only way to beat the Killers was to get close and engage with basic missiles, and they’d chop his ship to pieces if he tried. The humans had mass-produced remotely-controlled warships once they’d realised what they had to do, but they hadn’t managed to churn out nearly enough to make a difference. His people had been overwhelmed too quickly to start doing it for themselves. “They may not have caught us.”

It was wishful thinking and he knew it. The fleet might be hidden within a gas giant, but … the Killers couldn’t have entered the system by accident. Could they? There were thousands of star systems along the Rim of explored space, thousands upon thousands of rocky worlds, gas giants and asteroid fields that could shelter a hidden colony or a handful of starships preparing for a desperate jump into the unknown. Perhaps it was just a coincidence … no. The odds were staggeringly against it. The Killers knew they were there. It was just a matter of time until the fleet came under fire.

“My Lord,” D’Holin said. “The humans are asking us to join their tactical datanet.”

Y’Opohan wanted to scream in frustration. The handful of starships were outmatched and probably outnumbered. It was hard to get any solid idea of how many utterly alien starships were bearing down on them, probing the rings of dust and rocks surrounding the gas giant with sensors so advanced they could probably see right into the atmosphere, all the way down to the core at the heart of the gaseous world. His passive sensors couldn’t detect what they were using, let alone figure out how to spoof it. They were trapped now, pressed against the gas giant … unable even to activate the normal jumpdrive. He stared at the human ships, suddenly aware they’d led him and his crew – the last of their race – to their deaths. Their hiding place had turned into a lethal trap.

“Link us in,” he ordered, reluctantly. They might as well fight the last battle as a united force … not that it mattered. The Killers were about to butcher them as effortlessly as they’d butchered the rest of the combined navies. “And prepare to engage the enemy.”

He allowed his hand to dance over the console, checking vectors … it went against the grain to plan to retreat, to run for cover and jump out the moment they were clear of the planet’s gravity well, but there was no choice. The humans would be performing the same calculations, of course, trying to determine if there was a way to sacrifice the smaller ships to get the colonist-carrier and the survey ships clear before it was too late. Y’Opohan doubted it, unless the humans had managed to figure out a way to boost their drives beyond all reason. He’d seen the Killers effortlessly running down starships that had been flying at half the speed of light. Whatever they used to power their ships, it was hellishly effective.

The Killers kept sweeping the orbitals, flying in alien formations that looked chaotic to his eyes … not, he supposed, that his naval formations would make any sense to them either. They didn’t have any need to maintain separation, nor did they have to keep their shields up to block FTL missiles … he supposed he should be grateful they’d never bothered to duplicate the technology. They didn’t need it. They’d torn through hundreds of thousands of starships effortlessly …

“Perhaps they’ll miss us,” D’Holin breathed. “They’re not coming into the low orbitals.”

“Be quiet,” Y’Opohan snarled. 

He saw her flinch and felt a moment of cold satisfaction. Females had no place on the bridge, and that was why. They were too flirty, too prone to wishful thinking. The Killers hadn’t missed the fleet; they were taking their time to ensure they had their targets pinned and helpless before they closed in for the kill. The humans were also prone to wishful thinking … no wonder they’d supported female emancipation. They’d assumed the females would be their loyal allies. They had been right, until the Killers arrived. But it was too late now.

Damn you, he thought, his eyes gliding back to the human starships as they prepared for one last engagement, an engagement they already knew was lost. It wasn’t enough to crush us, was it? You had to destroy us and yourselves as well.

His hand lingered on the firing key. It would be so easy to open fire on the human ships, to have the satisfaction of destroying the last humans before the Killers blew his ship into atoms. At this range, there’d be no hope of escape … hatred surged within his hearts, mingled with bitter despair. It would be so easy …

“My Lord.” D’Holin sounded chastened. It wasn’t enough. “The Killers are altering course. They’re heading for the fleet.”

“Of course they are,” Y’Opohan snapped. There was no point in scolding her further. “Inform the crew. If this is to be our last battle, we will not be found wanting.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

Chapter Three: TFS John Birmingham, 3625

Ethan’s head hurt.

He gritted his teeth as he stared through the neural link, watching the Killers altering course. They were so alien his sensors couldn’t get a solid image, couldn’t do more than offer rough ideas of their exact course and speed. There could be ten starships out there or twenty … he couldn’t tell. It was galling beyond words that signatures that had brought so much death and destruction to the human race were just so uncertain, that the navy didn’t have a clear idea of just who – or what – it was fighting. The Killers were a mystery. No one had ever seen a Killer and lived to tell the tale. Ethan knew there were people who argued the Killer starships were the Killers, a biological weapons system that had gained sentience, exterminated its creators, and gone on to lay waste to the rest of the known universe. It was as good a theory as any other.

His mind raced through the network, assessing possible escape vectors. There were none. The Killers had the high ground, their near-perfect hiding place becoming a trap now the enemy had actually found them. Perhaps it would have been wiser to hide in interstellar space, no matter the lack of raw materials for the fabbers, or simply set out to their final destination at once, leaving behind the few starships that couldn’t make the RV point in time. He shook his head and cursed his fate one final time, knowing he and his entire fleet were doomed. Humanity’s last battle was about to be one of its shortest.

“Bring up the drives, transfer power to weapons and deflector shields,” he ordered. “Prepare to engage.”

His crew, their minds linked into the ship’s datanet, hurried to obey. There might be issues locating the alien ships, and their heads were hurting too as they tried to localise their targets, but they did their duty. Ethan frowned as he saw Vendetta coming around, the Zargana crew seemingly less troubled by the alien presence … the Zargana had never developed true neural linkages for themselves, even though they had the technology to make it work. There was no physical reason why they couldn’t … in hindsight, it might have worked out in their favour. Their crew wouldn’t be distracted by the Killer’s ships, their minds disrupted by looking too closely at something their eyes weren’t designed to see. But there was no time to redesign his bridge, and that of the other starships, let alone retrain his crew to use more primitive technology. He was going to have to fight the battle without what little edge such systems would give him.

Not that it would matter, he thought, darkly. They wiped out the Zargana Navy with the same brutal efficiency they used to slaughter the Federation Navy.

Ethan took a long breath. The human race couldn’t be doomed. A civilisation that had stretched across thousands of light-years couldn’t be wiped out in five years. There had to be a handful of ships and colonies left, hiding from the Killers. There had been plans to set up concealed settlements, with nothing more advanced than hand-powered tools, to keep the Killers from detecting them … had one of those schemes borne fruit before the navy fought its hopeless final battle? Or had it already been too late? The idea of going back to a primitive era, where men fought wars with swords and gunpowder muskets and women were second-class citizens, was appalling, but if the only other option was extermination …

He shook his head. He’d never know.

“Prepare to launch decoy drones,” he ordered. The fleet might just be able to make it through the gas giant’s atmosphere and out into space on the far side. If they did, there would be a brief window of opportunity to jump out, power up the new stardrive, and make their bid for freedom. It wasn’t much of a plan, but he couldn’t think of anything else. The Killers had found them. “Launch on my command.”

He hesitated, then opened a channel to the fleet. “This is Commodore Boswell,” he said, his words echoing through every corridor and cabin, every nook and cranny that was normally empty and was now crammed with human refugees. “Can I have your attention please?”

The next words caught in his throat. Should he tell them the truth, relying on their maturity to keep panic from spreading, or should he lie to them, let them spend their last moments unaware of the horror about to overwhelm the fleet? He honestly didn’t know. He would prefer to know the worst himself, but he was fairly sure others would disagree. They’d guess the truth, wouldn’t they? He swallowed, hard. If they wanted to spend their last moments in prayer, or preparing themselves for the final death, it was their right.

“The Killers have found us,” he said, grimly. “They will be within engagement range in moments. We have one shot to escape, and we are going to try to do so. Please remain calm and …”

And prepare for death, his thoughts added, silently. He bit his lip, hard. What could he possibly say to make the situation any better? It was an utter disaster! If they were fighting the Zargana, or the Diyang, or one of humanity’s other more reasonable enemies, he would have tried to surrender. But there was no point in trying to surrender to the Killers. They butchered lifepods with the same enthusiasm they showed for blasting starships. What the hell do I tell them?

“We will do everything in our power to get clear of the enemy,” he said. The sheer inadequacy of the words mocked him. “But if we can’t, we will make them pay for their final victory. And know that, somewhere in the universe, the human race survives.”

They do, he told himself. He had faith. It was all he had. They must.

“Sir,” Commander Horace Abad said. “They’re entering engagement range.”

The display flashed, an eerie shimmering energy flickering from the lead alien starship to the gas giant’s atmosphere. Ethan felt his heart twist painfully. Humans used energy weapons and missiles, some equipped with jump drives that ensured they reached their target before any possible warning, but the Killers used something different. The energy pulses they used seemed to flicker in and out of reality itself, perhaps bypassing deflector shields by moving through upper and lower dimensions rather than crashing right into the force fields and evaporating uselessly. No one had managed to come up with a working theory of how they did it, let alone found a way to counter it. Shields designed to stop FTL missiles were useless against the alien weapons.

They’re tormenting us, Ethan thought, numbly. The alien weapons might be some kind of energy, but they didn’t move at the speed of light. They seemed to crawl towards the fleet, flickering vortexes of … something … that appeared to be both matter and energy. They can finish us off at any moment and yet they’re mocking us, playing it slowly to draw the kill out as long as possible.

“Launch decoys,” he ordered. The Killers weren’t often fooled by decoys, but it had happened on occasion. “And commence evasive manoeuvres.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Ethan gritted his teeth as two more alien starships opened fire, pain stabbing into his skull as he looked upon the face of the medusa. The energy was just … alien. He wished for a fleet of drones, a formation he could ram right into the alien fleet, trading hundreds of automated ships for a single Killer starship, but he had only ten ships under his command, all manned. If he sacrificed the fleet … what good would it do?

“Lock FTL missiles on target,” he said, knowing the target coordinates would be dangerously vague. One highly-classified research paper he’d read had speculated the alien starships existed in multiple dimensions at once, ensuring any weapons aimed at them would go right through them as if they didn’t exist. Perhaps they didn’t, in some sense. Perhaps he was looking at the shadow of something far larger, a multidimensional iceberg where the tip was nothing more than a tiny fraction of the whole. Or perhaps the whole theory was nonsense. It was something else he’d never know. “Volley fire, on my command.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Ethan sucked in his breath as the alien weapons crawled past his ships and plunged onwards, deeper and deeper into the gas giant’s atmosphere. They’d missed! A flash of hope shot through him, mingled with the grim awareness the Killers had never shown even a hint of running out of ammunition. They’d fired their eerie weapons thousands of times during the Battle of Earth … all they had to do was keep firing, knowing that – sooner or later – they’d score a hit. And yet, they were holding their fire.

Perhaps they don’t like travelling too far into the gravity well, he thought, although he doubted it. His fleet couldn’t hope to survive if they lost their shields and drive fields, not so deep within the atmosphere, but the Killers had never shown any concern about flying through a planetary atmosphere. Or …

“They’re firing again,” Abad said. “Random spread. It’s as if they don’t know quite where we are.”

“They do,” Ethan said. The Killers had better sensors than the Federation Navy. They knew where the human ships were hiding. They were indulging their sadistic side, now the war was as good as won. “Return fire.”

“Aye, sir.”

John Birmingham shuddered slightly as she unleashed a spread of FTL missiles, the other ships opening fire a second later. The missiles jumped to FTL as soon as they were clear of the drive fields, racing towards the alien ships at a speed most humans found utterly impossible to comprehend. It was practically point-blank range, on an interplanetary scale, and yet the Killers didn’t seem perturbed. The compressed antimatter loaded into the missile warheads did little, if any, damage to their ships. They didn’t seem to have shields, Ethan noted bitterly, but it hardly mattered. He might as well have been shooting spitballs. Their hulls shimmered slightly as the blasts washed over them, but if there was any damage it wasn’t evident. The only way anyone had found to take out a Killer starship was to ram it, and that would be …

“Energy surge, directly below us,” Lieutenant Sadie Hawking snapped. She was young, only in her fifties … the kind of junior officer who needed more seasoning before she was allowed to take the helm. Normally. Now, she was the best Ethan had. The more experienced officers hadn’t survived the Battle of Earth. “They’re targeting the gas giant’s core!”

Ethan swore. The alien weapons triggered some kind of fission process, the researchers had argued, setting off a chain reaction within the target that blew it to dust. Fission beams were hardly unknown, although force fields could deflect them with ease … the Killers, naturally, had something a great deal more powerful than humanity had ever devised. If they were bombarding the solid core at the heart of the gas giant …

His blood ran cold. They were going to turn the gas giant into a tiny supernova!

“Boost the drives,” he snapped. The fleet had to get out of the atmosphere and make a run for it, before it was too late. How long would it take for the gas giant to explode? A standard supernova bomb – a weapon capable of taking out an entire star system, a weapon humanity had considered a last resort – took hours to reshape local gravity to trigger the process, although it was irreversible once it reached the heart of the star and went to work. “Deploy drones … and prepare to activate the new stardrive!”

“Sir,” Sadie said. “The techs said …”

“The techs aren’t here.” Ethan knew the dangers. Jumping too close to a gravity well might send them to a random location, or throw them into the heart of a star, or simply scatter the fleet across millions of light-years. There would be no hope of ever finding their fellows again, forcing them to test the theory that a single starship could rebuild the Federation … if they survived the jump. “We have to get out of here!”

Another shudder ran through the ship. Turbulence on a starship … he would have laughed if it wasn’t so serious. The gas giant’s atmosphere was already destabilising, pockets of gas exploding as the core started to disintegrate, throwing out flares of superhot matter into the upper atmosphere. Hopefully, it would buy the fleet some time by hiding them from their enemies. The Killers might just pull back to watch the show …

“Hold fire,” he ordered. The Killers might trace the missiles back to their firing platforms … impossible, on paper, but so were so many of their other tricks. “And deploy the final set of drones.”

“Aye, sir.” Abad sounded reluctant. There was nothing to be gained by continuing to fire, save for the belief they were accomplishing something. It wasn’t much, but it was all they had. “Weapons safe. I say again, weapons safe.”

Ethan nodded, feeling the hull shake again. The Killers had a slight disadvantage now, he supposed. Their ships might be difficult to localise, but there was no way they could keep his ships from getting a rough idea of where they were. They were holding station over the gas giant, firing bolt after bolt of eerie energy into the atmosphere … the space behind the gas giant was clear as far as he could tell. Unless they had their own form of cloaking technology … not impossible, he supposed, but why would they bother to use it here? They already had all the advantages they could possibly ask for.

We won’t die here, he promised himself. We won’t.

The vectors converged sharply. It was a race now, a race to get out of the atmosphere and into clear space before the gas giant exploded. He sent a query into the datanet, accessing the memories and intellects of the finest cosmologists in human history, but their collective brain patterns couldn’t give him a clear answer of just when the gas giant would go supernova. There were just too many variables. One projection suggested they had twenty minutes before the explosion, another hinted that the smaller explosions would prevent the bigger explosion from ever taking place. The irony chilled him. A human-designed supernova bomb would be easy to predict, if it was deployed properly. The alien weapons were dangerously unpredictable.

Perhaps that’s why they’re keeping their distance, he thought. It might just be possible for the ships to jump out before the supernova hit, but the timing would be tight. Dangerously tight. They don’t know when the balloon will go up either.

“Sir, we’re leaving the atmosphere,” Sadie reported. “I …”

“They can see us,” Abad snapped. “They’re coming!”

Ethan gritted his teeth. The Killer starships were picking up speed, their acceleration curves terrifyingly high. They were building speed so rapidly there was no hope of outrunning them. Their ships would run the fleet down within moments …

Alarms howled. He cursed as new icons appeared in his mind. The Killers were in front of the fleet … he couldn’t tell if they’d microjumped or if they’d been lurking there all along … it didn’t matter. They were flying straight into the teeth of enemy fire, fire that would tear the fleet apart effortlessly. Their time had run out.

“Upload the coordinates, link the helm network together, and activate the stardrive,” he snapped. They were dangerously close to an exploding gas giant – the gravity well was already fluctuating as explosions started to build and build to a crescendo – but there was no other choice. They’d be blown away the moment the alien starships opened fire. “Jump us out on my command!”

“Aye, sir,” Sadie said. He could hear the fear in her voice. She knew how badly things could go wrong, if there was the slightest error. “I …”

She paused. “There’s a glitch in the jump matrix!”

Ethan felt despair howling at the back of his mind. If the jump coordinates were wrong … the fleet was going to be scattered or destroyed or … horror ran through him as he realised they might not make the jump at all. The new stardrive was largely untested, the datacores controlling the system barely capable of doing more than triggering it at the right time … he’d heard a rumour, when he’d first learnt about the project, that the stardrive was a piece of alien technology that had been found on a distant world and reverse-engineered into something the navy could use. It wasn’t impossible. Humanity had copied alien technology before. Given time, he was sure, they’d have found a way to reverse-engineer Killer technology too.

And the alien starships were moving in for the kill. The final kill.

“Wipe the coordinates and re-upload them,” he snapped. It might not work, but their doom was approaching rapidly. They had to gamble everything on one final throw of the die. At least they’d die on their feet, rather than on their knees. “And jump!”

“Aye, sir,” Sadie said. Alarms howled, again, as the gas giant went critical. The gravity well fluctuated violently, waves of gravitational force battering his ship. “Datanet engaged, coordinates sent … jumping now …”

The world went dark. Ethan heard his ship scream, the hull twisting in agony … something tightened on his heart, pain shooting through his mind as the neural net threatened to overload before the safeties kicked in … he thought he heard his wife calling to him, thought he saw eerie alien shapes mocking him …

And then the darkness reached up and swallowed him.

Chapter Four: USS Grant, 2308

“Local space is clear, sir,” Lieutenant Henry Georges reported. “There’s nothing on the sensors at all.”

“Noted,” Captain – also Commodore - Hamish Anderson said, without looking up from his reports. It was hard to keep the irritation out of his tone. There was a war on, a new war against an alien threat no one had known existed until they turned up and started shooting, and his task force of outdated ships was stuck at the edge of the solar system, watching for alien starships that – so far – hadn’t shown themselves. “Forward your sensor readings to Titan Base, then continue monitoring the sensors.”

“Aye, sir,” Georges said.

Hamish kicked himself, mentally. It wasn’t the younger man’s fault that they were stuck out on the edge of the solar system, far from any reasonable alien target or the task forces being assembled to give ET’s ass a good kicking. Hamish’s career had slowed and now … he was patrolling the edge of the solar system, rather than serving on the front lines or joining the fleet being assembled to face the new enemy. He should be out there with the rest of his graduation class, putting himself between humanity and their new foe; he should have a chance to prove himself, rather than watching helplessly from the sidelines. The fleet was going to war and he was stuck here, on an outdated ship …

If I had the connections of half my classmates, I’d be out there too, he thought, with a trace of the old resentments. But Daddy Dearest was a fucking pleb …

He gritted his teeth, telling himself he was being silly. USS Grant might be old, one of the first heavy cruiser-carrier designs the USN had put into space, but she could still give a good account of herself. He could make a difference when the aliens showed themselves. He hoped. They knew very little about their enemy, very little about what they could do. The first reports had been vague to the point of uselessness …

But at least we’re ready for them, he thought, grimly. All that military build-up wasn’t wasted after all.

His lips twisted. The old ideals about not militarising space hadn’t lasted past the moment there were colonies on Luna, Mars and thousands of asteroids that needed protecting. The United States and every other spacefaring power had started deploying military technology to space very quickly, developing better and better weapons in an arms race that everyone feared would end in a final war and yet couldn’t figure out a way to stop. There were just too many factions in space now, from national colonies to corporate mining stations and independent asteroid colonies that chafed at the thought of taking orders from Earth. The development of the Hamilton Gravity Warp Stardrive hadn’t calmed the frenzy, as dozens of human-compatible worlds were discovered, claimed, and settled. There was so much military hardware entering service with every passing year that it seemed a colossal waste …

Until now.

Reports were vague, but there was an alien threat out there. Three colonies had been attacked, the fate of their populations unknown. Long-range scouts had been dispatched to fly through the occupied system, but they hadn’t been able to get close enough to determine what had happened to the human settlers or just what ET had in mind for a next target. The panic might have convinced most of the human factions to work together, on the grounds that they had to hang together or be hanged separately, yet so far they hadn’t been able to come up with any solid plans for taking the offensive and driving ET back to his homeworld. There were just too many unknowns. They didn’t even know the face of the enemy.

His heart clenched, painfully. His sister and her family had emigrated to Columbia, taking the offer of a large homestead in exchange for being amongst the first settlers on the newly-discovered world. They were lost now, trapped behind the alien iron curtain … or dead. He wanted to take his task force to the distant star and find out what had happened, even though he knew it would be suicide. He knew his duty to the navy and yet …

He tested his straps automatically, gritting his teeth. The techs swore blind artificial gravity was technically possible, but so far they hadn’t made it work outside the labs. The crew had to cope with spending all their time in zero-g, save for the few short hours of leave as they passed through distant fuelling stations and R&R bases that were little more than tiny bars and VR brothels. He didn’t mind – if he’d been unable to cope in zero-g, he wouldn’t have joined the navy – but it was still irritating. If the techs kept their promises … he shook his head. There was just no way to predict when a given piece of tech would become more than just a simple lab trick.

“Sir,” Ensign Janice said. “I have the latest update from Scharnhorst.”

Hamish took the datapad and gave it a perfunctory glance. The task force was a multinational unit, seven starships from seven different nations … he was starting to think, in all honesty, that the United States and China were the only two taking the task force seriously. The remaining five ships were even more outdated than Grant, with Scharnhorst utterly unprepared for anything more serious than a rock war between two prospectors who’d decided to fight it out instead of reaching some kind of understanding. If ET really did show himself, the task force wouldn’t be anything more than a tripwire. They couldn’t even run. The best they could do would be to fight to the last, trying to buy time for the more modern fleets to get ready to meet the enemy.

“Thanks,” he said, sourly. Scharnhorst had finally managed to get her main armament online. He had no idea what the Europeans were thinking, when they’d sent her on patrol, but … perhaps they hadn’t realised just how exposed the task force would be, if the shit hit the fan. If. When. “I’ll speak to her CO later.”

“Aye, sir,” Janice said.

She turned and swam back to her console. Hamish turned his attention back to the nearspace display. The Joint Chiefs weren’t entirely wrong to dispatch the task force to its current position. Assuming ET’s stardrive worked on the same principle as its human counterpart, which seemed likely, they’d have to send a fleet through threadlines that would bring them out of FTL near the squadron, then check their coordinates before they jumped further into the system. Hamish might just have a chance to send a warning, then attack, before the aliens resumed their advance. On paper, it seemed a brilliant idea. In practice, who knew?

He sighed, leaning back in his chair. They would be carrying out targeting drills later, trying to smooth out the issues that came with seven different nationalities working together, preparing for the first real engagement. No doubt there would be problems, with angry accusations and recriminations going around and around when the senior officers back home learnt what had happened; thankfully, spacers tended to be a more practical breed than desk jockeys who’d forgotten what it was like to …

An alarm pinged. “Sir,” Georges snapped. “I’m picking up an energy pulse, seventy thousand kilometres from our current position!”

“Show me,” Hamish said. An icon pinged into view on the display. Seventy thousand kilometres … nothing, on an interplanetary scale. An enemy ship could pop off a mass driver salvo at his squadron, and there would be very little warning until it arrived. His sensors might just pick up a hint before it was too late … he keyed his console, sending the alert to the rest of the squadron. They might have to alter position in a hurry. “Can you identify?”

“No, sir,” Georges said. “I … I don’t think it was a jumpdrive signature. It might have been a masking field failure …”

Hamish felt his blood run cold. The USN – and every other space navy – had spent years trying to find a way to build a real-life cloaking device. It wasn’t easy. Sure, you could render a ship effectively invisible by stepping down the drives and sensors to the bare minimum, but it was very difficult to actually use the ship for anything beyond passive monitoring, and the slightest mistake could trigger an energy pulse that would draw the enemy to you like flies to honey. Perhaps that was what had happened to the mystery contact, he reflected. A single failure had exposed their presence to his sensors …

Do they know we’re here? Hamish had no answer. His squadron hadn’t been trying to hide. Or are they trying to lure us into a trap?

He stared at the icon for a long moment. It was too close for him to ignore and too far away for him to investigate without altering course, which might mean taking the squadron into an ambush if the energy pulse was the bait in a trap. He had no intention of taking the risk. He didn’t fear death, not when he had no wife or children to leave behind, but he disliked the idea of dying for nothing. The last thing he wanted was to repeat the Battle of Little Big Horn. If the enemy lured him into a trap, they could shoot him to pieces before he had a chance to run.

We think, he reminded himself. For all the millions of tonnes of military hardware humanity had launched into space, actual warfighting experience – at least in space – was very thin on the ground. The computer simulations could only go so far. For all we know, ET already has a lock on us and is preparing to blow us away.

Thankfully, there was another option. “Send a laser message to Titan Base, inform them of the unknown contact,” he ordered. The base would pass the warning on to the rest of the multinational force. “And then launch the ready fighters to investigate.”

“Aye, sir.”

***

Lieutenant-Commander Tara Mayberry had been half-asleep when the alarm sounded, dreaming of her planned shore leave … a shore leave that had probably been cancelled, now the USN was going to war. She unstrapped herself from her bunk the moment she jerked awake, pulling herself through the tubes to the launch bay with one hand as she did up her uniform with the other. The deck crew waved to her as she scrambled into the fighter pod and ran through the basic checks, then evacuated the chamber as she buckled herself into the flight seat. The alert sounded a moment later, the fighter lifted and slotted into the launch tubes … she gritted her teeth as the boosters fired, launching her craft into open space. Her wingman joined her a moment later, as she ran her eye down the alert messages. There was an unknown contact, perhaps more than one, nearly seventy thousand kilometres away. Could be nothing. Could be an alien threat.

“Follow me in, but keep your distance,” she said. There was no way to know what they might be facing. A fighter wasn’t difficult to track, even with passive sensors. They could be plotting her course even now, carefully drawing a bead to ensure they picked her off with a single shot. The squadron would avenge her death, she was sure, but it would be no consolation if she’d been blown to atoms. “Don’t let them get a lock on you.”

“Got it,” Lieutenant-Commander Rico Tasman said. “Give them hell if they are ET.”

ET, Tara thought, wryly. Their enemy had no name. The idea of alien life had seemed implausible only a few short months ago, when human survey teams hadn’t located anything larger than a small dog-analogue on even the most human-compatible worlds. She found it difficult to believe an alien race could find a reason to go to war with humanity – space was big enough for two or more intelligent races – although she had to admit humans had never had trouble finding an excuse for war. They might be religious nuts, or they might think there’s a shortage of decent colonies … they might even want our women.

She shook her head, keeping a wary eye on her sensors. Groundhogs didn’t understand the sheer distances of interstellar warfare, didn’t realise the simple truth that she wouldn’t see anything with her naked eye until she was right on top of it. If she saw it at all … at this distance, the sun was just another pinprick of light, set against the inky darkness of space, and there were no worlds reflecting what little light there was into interplanetary space. Even Pluto – planet or oversized asteroid – was millions of kilometres away. The task force was so far from the inner worlds that they might as well be alone. There was no way they could scream for help and have it arrive in time.

“I’m activating the sensor suite,” she said. There was little point in relying on passive sensors. Her drive signature was more than enough to let the enemy track her. “Stand ready …”

Her heart beat rapidly, her hands sweaty against the stick. If the enemy opened fire, she’d have to react instantly or die. She wasn’t sure she’d have anything like enough time to dodge. Her reflexes were good – no fighter pilot was allowed to graduate without training their reflexes to the limit – but they’d do her no good if the enemy weapons arrived before she had any warning. A light-speed weapon would kill her before she even knew she was under attack …

The display lit up like a Christmas tree. Her heart skipped a beat. Ten starships, drifting in space … completely unknown designs. Nine looked to have come from the same shipyard – it was clear their designers shared an aesthetic – while the tenth looked ugly, almost ominous. She felt a wave of admiration as her gaze drifted over the nearest ship, a kilometre-long piece of artwork pretending to be a starship. She was no blocky carrier or battleship, no ruthlessly practical ship designed for efficiency rather than appearance. She was …

“My God,” she breathed. ET? She hoped not. The sheer sophistication of the starships in front of her spoke of a far older and more mature – and more advanced – technology than anything humanity had developed. “Who are these people?”

She slowed her fighter, staring at the display. The lead ship was a flattened cylinder, a triangular section at the front and four glowing nacelles at the rear … she knew, without knowing how she knew, that the mystery ship could outpace Grant with ease. Another ship was much larger, but clung to the same basic aesthetic … she sucked in her breath as her instincts suggested the giant ship could actually land. Three more were smaller, but still much bigger than Grant …

“Relay the sensor records to the ship,” she said, catching herself. She wasn’t thinking clearly. The range was closing rapidly, every passing second revealing more and more to her sensors … and telling her how little she really knew about the mystery ships. “And keep your distance.”

“Yes, boss,” Tasman said, with heavy sarcasm. “Why are they letting us get so close?”

Tara nodded, slowly. No one in their right mind should have allowed the two fighters into weapons range, at least without making damn sure they were friendly. The USN was still scrambling to arm fighters with nuclear torpedoes – and the task force was way down the list for such weapons, when there weren’t enough to go around – but there was no way the mystery ships could know it. It was hard to imagine their pretty hulls being capable of standing up to a laser-tipped warhead, channelling the sheer power of a nuclear explosion into a ravening beam that tore through starship hulls as if they were made of paper. And yet …

“I think they’re in trouble,” she said. They hadn’t made any attempt to contact the fighters and warn them off. The formation was scattered, as if the starships had risked a long-range emergency jump. They certainly didn’t seem to be trying to pull their formation together. “I think …”

Alarms howled. Light flared around the cockpit. The entire fighter shuddered violently. Tara swore and reached for the emergency booster, too late. She was trapped.

***
“Report!”

“We just lost contact with both fighters,” Georges snapped. The display showed the final image from the stricken fighters. “Their IFF beacons are still active, but … we don’t have contact!”

Hamish blinked, confused. Anything powerful enough to take out a fighter would almost certainly take out the IFF beacon too. The USN had spent a great deal of time and effort trying to devise a black box that would survive disaster, but so far the results had been minimal. If the fighters were gone …

“Signal the task force,” he ordered, sharply. If the mystery ships had fired on the fighters, they were hostile. And yet … how had they done it without taking out the IFF beacons too? Some kind of focused EMP? Military gear was supposed to be hardened against such weapons, according to the techs, but the concept had never truly been tested in the field. “All units are to advance on my command.”

“Aye, sir.”

“And update Titan,” Hamish added, although their first signal wouldn’t have reached the base yet. By the time Titan got the complete report, the matter would be over one way or the other. “Inform them of our encounter and my intentions.”

He scowled at the display. They were too close to the mystery ships to retreat and too far away for his weapons to strike home, unless the mystery ships chose to let him hit them. Common sense told him he needed to withdraw, to regroup somewhere and await orders, but he didn’t have time to finish powering up the jumpdrive, and he was sure he couldn’t outrun the newcomers in realspace. His only hope was to close the range as fast as possible and hope for the best. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had.

“All ships have checked in, sir,” Georges said. There was no fear in his voice, even though he had to be nervous. “They’re ready to advance.”

“Signal all ships,” Hamish ordered, his mind racing. The task force hadn’t been designed to serve as proper carriers, but they had enough fighters to give any conventional enemy a very hard time. God alone knew how well they’d do against the mystery ships. “Launch all remaining fighters, then begin the advance.”

“Aye, sir.”

Chapter Five: TFS John Birmingham/ USS Grant, 2308

Ethan opened his eyes.

He was lying on the deck, his head pounding like a drum and his body aching as if he’d been in a fight without the enhancements all naval personnel used as a matter of course. The alarms were howling, the notes blending together into a horrendous cacophony … he tried to open his mouth, to issue the order to shut the racket down, but the words refused to come. Emergency displays were flashing alerts of their own, displays he’d rarely needed to use outside training exercises. He stared at them numbly, his head spinning too badly for him to be sure of anything. There were old stories of starships being trapped mid-jump, caught forever in a twisted region of space … were they trapped? Or were they dead and in hell? He’d never been particularly religious – most modern humans had left religion behind a long time ago – but right now …

Someone groaned. He pulled himself upright, feeling his enhancements go to work flushing the toxins from his body and directing the nanites to fix what they could. His head cleared as he forced himself to look around the bridge, silently relieved the rest of his crew were staggering to their feet. They’d all been linked into the neural network … he guessed the safety interlocks had kicked them out before they suffered permanent brain damage, something even modern medical technology could not fix. The displays were still blinking an alert … someone, something, was flying towards the fleet. The Killers? A flash of panic shot through him as he scrambled into the command chair and brought up the emergency subroutines. If the Killers had followed him through the jump, his fleet was in no state for a fight.

“Status report,” he managed. A twang of pain shot through him as he linked his mind back into the combat datanet. All ten starships had jumped … jumped where? There was no sign of the gas giant or the remnants of a supernova … he sent a mental command into the network, bringing up the positioning-establishing routines. They were rarely used, after a starship was launched for the first time … the days in which starships had jumped blind were long gone. “Report …”

“Unknown starships, approaching from …” Abad broke off. “Sir, we caught two primitive fighters in our tractor web.”

Ethan blinked in astonishment. Primitive fighters? Where the hell were they? There were few primitive civilisations within the limits of explored space, and the handful that had existed had been slaughtered by the Killers. Normally, once a species developed FTL, the Federation made contact and welcomed them into the greater galactic community. Now … how far had they jumped? Far enough to escape the Killers? If the datanet hadn’t already figured out their location, they had to be a very long way from the exploding gas giant. Could they have jumped so far that even the Milky Way was not easily recognisable? It struck him as unlikely. No human had ever reached Andromeda or M33, two neighbouring galaxies, but the Federation Navy had catalogued the unique signature of thousands of stars … assuming they still existed. It was quite possible some had died before the first humans looked up and saw the stars.

An icon flickered up in his mind. The datanet had finally produced a location, after checking and rechecking … Sol.

“What?” Ethan felt a flash of panic. The Killers had torn the Sol System apart, blasting Earth and every major human colony to atoms. They’d swept the system thoroughly, exterminating every last colony … even ones that had tried to hide in the inky darkness of space, shutting down everything that might radiate a betraying emission. If the fleet had materialised so close to the dead system, the Killers would already be swarming towards them. “How are we …?”

Another icon popped up in his mind: 2308.

Ethan’s mind stopped. Impossible. It was impossible. The datanet had to be damaged. The system had taken far too long to produce a location … it had been damaged, or corrupted, or infiltrated in some way. And yet, self-checking systems were sweeping through the network, confirming the datanet was undamaged. The other ships were reporting in too, their systems producing the same result. They’d fallen back in time … impossible. There were all kinds of reports of time travellers being spotted, of course there were, but no one had ever produced any kind of solid proof time travel was even possible. You could travel into the future, with the right equipment, yet it wasn’t real time travel. There was certainly no way to get back home.

His mind skipped a beat. If they were nearly three hundred years in the past …

“Sir,” Abad said. “We have a small fleet approaching, weapons hot. I say again … weapons hot.”

Ethan gritted his teeth and brought up the live feed from the hull-mounted sensors. Two fighters – achingly familiar, craft he’d studied in history class – were trapped within the tractor web, unable to free themselves or open fire on his ships. They were lucky the Federation Navy was so advanced it didn’t need to kill possible threats, certainly not from such primitive spacecraft, and that the automatics had defaulted to the non-lethal option in the absence of human supervision. And that they hadn’t tried to approach Vendetta. The Zargana might not be the imperialists they’d been when humanity had first warred against them, not any longer, but they still demanded respect from beings they considered lesser. They would have blown away the primitive fighters without hesitation.

He turned his attention to the starships approaching his fleet, crawling towards him even though they were pushing their drives to the limit. They were boxy and ugly, lacking any of the elegance the navy now worked into its designs … lacking, also, the technology to turn their starships into works of art. They looked faintly comical to his eyes, warships designed and produced in the absence of any real experience of interstellar war. Humanity had yet to encounter its first alien enemy or …

Ethan cursed. “Can you get an exact date?”

There was a long pause. “Captain,” Abad said. “We have arrived one day before the Battle of Earth began.”

“Shit.” Ethan stared at the display, half-forgotten history lessons echoing through his mind. He was wrong. The First Interstellar War had already begun. The squadron charging his ships would encounter the Diyang fleet as it launched a sneak attack on Earth, harrying it badly enough to buy time for the combined human navies to muster and defeat the aliens. If they stayed, they’d change history … they had already changed history. There was no record of an encounter with time travellers, as far as he knew … he checked, just to be sure, and drew a blank. “We …”

An alien face popped up in front of him. “We should engage the enemy at once,” Captain Y’Opohan snapped. “They are attacking us …”

“They’re not going to do any damage with those ships,” Ethan said. The fleet might be damaged – the damage control teams were doing everything in their power to repair his ships as quickly as possible – but they still had their defensive shields. He had no idea if the ships advancing towards him carried nukes, yet … they weren’t enough to damage the future starships. “Hold your position and wait!”

He forced himself to think as he closed the channel. They’d already changed history … and they could change it again. Three hundred years to rebuild and prepare for the Killers …? It was an opportunity he couldn’t let go. He wasn’t sure he could do anything else, either. Hyperion, Hamilton and Explorer had lost their jumpdrives. Given time, they could be repaired – and would be – but until then it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get them away from the locals. His fleet couldn’t avoid contact, and in truth, he didn’t want to. Even if they managed to break contact and escape, the locals would be so busy looking for the first fleet that they’d miss the real threat. If the new enemy got close enough to Earth without being detected …

“Open a channel,” he ordered. If there was one advantage to the whole mess, it was that they had the old-style protocols loaded into the databanks … along with thousands upon thousands of other details they could use to prove their bona fides. It wasn’t a real First Contact scenario, where the slightest mistake could cause all sorts of problems, even starting a war. “Raise the incoming ships.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Jonathan Yu said. “Channel open.”

Ethan hesitated. What the hell was he supposed to say? There were no protocols for communicating with starships from the past, certainly nothing beyond a handful of regulations for opening contact with slowboats that had left Earth centuries ago and arrived at their destination – after years in transit – to discover the systems had already been settled. It wasn’t as if they were in their own time either, where they held all the cards and could keep their distance until the slowboaters got over the culture shock and started talking like reasonable people. Here …

“This is Commodore Ethan Boswell, commanding officer of TFS John Birmingham,” he said, quietly. Would the locals listen? They had just discovered the existence of alien life … hostile alien life. The fleet looked nothing like the primitive starships crawling towards them, practically alien … he swallowed hard, recalling how many strange designs had grown out of science-fantasy holovids. Some had become real, as technology advanced; others were too advanced, too alien, to be brought into the real world. “We are not hostile and … we need to talk.”

The words seemed pitifully inadequate. But would they be enough?

***

Captain Hamish Anderson felt ice gripping his heart as the range narrowed, the alien starships growing clearer and clearer on the display. They were surrounded by some kind of protective shield that confused his sensors, making it hard to get any kind of solid lock on their position … and his fighters, the two pilots he’d launched at the alien ships, were trapped in a force field like flies in amber. He couldn’t tell if they were alive or dead … they certainly weren’t answering his hails. The alien ships weren’t making any hostile moves, but he had the nasty feeling it was meaningless. The sheer power and technical sophistication in front of him was utterly terrifying. He might have bitten off far more than he could chew. 

And retreat isn’t an option either, he told himself. The alien ships were holding position, but he was certain they could outrun his squadron easily. There was still no reply from Titan … not that there would be. He checked his drives, already heating up, and cursed under his breath. They were caught like rats in a trap. If they have weapons as advanced as the rest of their ships …

“Sir,” Lieutenant Henry Georges said. “We are entering weapons range.”

Hamish gritted his teeth. His ships and crews hadn’t hesitated to follow him to their deaths, even though they had to know the odds were stacked against them. It spoke well of humanity’s willingness to unite against a common foe, but they were so horrendously outmatched he almost wished they’d broken ranks and fled. Some might survive long enough to bring word of their defeat – and accurate sensor records – to Titan, although it probably wouldn’t make any difference to the final outcome. Civilians thought scientists could wave a magic wand, determine how alien technology worked, and put it into mass production within a day. The real world was rarely so obliging. Closing the technological gap could take years, at best, and humanity didn’t have years. The simple fact the alien fleet was so close to the homeworld was clear proof they’d scouted out the system before starting the war. Humanity’s time was about to run out.

“Signal the attack wings,” he ordered. “Attack pattern delta …”

His heart sank. The fighters would go to their deaths, buying time for the bigger ships to land a few blows before they were slaughtered too … he told himself, firmly, their sacrifice would not be in vain. They might just buy time for the rest of the human race. If they got hard data on the alien weapons and defences …

“Sir,” Georges said. “We’re being hailed!”

“The aliens?” Hamish blinked in surprise, although he supposed it shouldn’t really be a surprise. Military databases were designed to self-destruct if they fell into enemy hands, but civilian databases lacked anything beyond the most basic security protocols. A simple library database could tell the aliens everything from how to speak the most popular human languages to the names and faces of humanity’s leaders … and much else besides. They might even have gotten their hands on a starchart, one showing the location of every settled world. “Put them through.”

The voice was very human. “This is Commodore Ethan Boswell, commanding officer of TFS John Birmingham,” it said. “We are not hostile and … we need to talk.”

Hamish stared in disbelief. John Birmingham? There was no John Birmingham in the USN or any other space navy. And yet, he found it hard to believe an alien race would give their starship a very human name. He tapped his console, ordering the tactical computers to carry out a voice analysis. Grant was too small for a proper tactical department … he blinked in honest surprise as the analysis indicated the voice was real, rather than something put together to mimic a speaking human. Perhaps the program was advanced enough to fool him or …

Georges spoke to no one in particular. “TFS? What’s a TFS?”

“Good question,” Hamish said. He cursed the speed of light delay under his breath. He was alone. The buck stopped with him. “Signal the fleet to hold position” – they were already in weapons range of the mystery ships, and he had a nasty feeling his ships were well within their weapons range – “and recall the fighters. They are to take up flanking position around the squadron.”

He hesitated, then keyed his console. “This is Captain Hamish Anderson, USS Grant,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “If you want to talk, release my fighters.”

There was a long pause. The force field holding the fighters simply snapped out of existence, as if someone had flipped a switch. The two fighters darted clear, spinning around and returning to the squadron. Hamish felt ice pooling in his stomach. The sheer power the newcomers had casually displayed was terrifying, the fact they’d rendered the fighters harmless without having to kill the pilots was somehow worse. It was …

“Identify yourselves.” Hamish spoke with a harshness he didn’t quite intend. He was fairly sure his entire squadron was badly outgunned. “Who the hell are you?”

“That is something of a difficult question to answer,” the alien said. No, not an alien. The voice was human. “Suffice it to say it might be easier to explain if you come onboard my vessel. We have a lot to talk about.”

Hamish blinked. “You’re inviting me to board your ship?”

“Yes,” the voice said. “It’ll be easier if we show you.”

“You’re human, aren’t you?” Hamish already knew the answer. He just wanted to hear it from them. Who the hell were they? There were stories of humans being kidnapped by aliens in the distant past, humans who had overthrown their masters, seized their starships and vanished into deep space, but he’d thought them the stuff of cheap thrillers and science-fantasy. “Where do you come from?”

“That might be difficult to explain,” the voice said. “Please. We need to talk.”

“I’m on my way,” Hamish said. He closed the channel and looked at his officers. “Forward all our records to Titan, then inform Captain Zongying that he is to assume command of the squadron. If I do not return or communicate in one hour, he is to do as he sees fit …”

“Sir.” Georges hesitated, visibly. It was a rare officer who’d challenge his CO so openly. “You shouldn’t put your life in danger. There’s no way to know what’s waiting for you.”

Hamish shook his head. “They already have us bang to rights,” he said. The unknown ships – human or not – were surrounded by force shields. They could simply batter his ships into space dust, a crude but effective tactic. “If talking to them personally will defuse the situation, I can talk.”

“Yes, sir.” Georges didn’t seem very happy. He had to be worried. Most junior officers would be delighted at having a chance to take the command chair. “I …”

“Keep Titan updated at all times,” Hamish said. “If they send us orders, relay them to me at once.”

“Aye, sir,” Georges said. They both knew it would be hours, at best, before Titan reacted to the first message. Commanding officers had wide latitude because they were often a long way from Washington, unable to wait for orders that might never come. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Hamish disconnected himself from his chair and glided towards the hatch, his stomach churning unpleasantly. He knew himself to be a brave man, but nothing in his training had ever prepared him for First Contact. The USN had considered the whole concept theoretical until the alien enemy had shown itself, and then it had been too late. ET wasn’t interested in talking, as far as anyone could tell. They’d just shown up and opened fire. It made no sense.

And whoever these guys are, we have to get them on our side, he thought. The prize was worth almost any risk. Their technology was far more advanced than anything they’d seen from ET. If I can do it, the human race will have a future once again …

Chapter Six: TFS John Birmingham, 2308

“They’ve activated a landing beacon,” Ensign Yvonne Rainmaker reported, as the shuttle neared the alien-looking ship. “Sir …they’re using our protocols.”

Hamish gritted his teeth. Either the advanced starships were a hyper-advanced USN project no one had bothered to tell him about or … a handful of theories were racing through his mind, from the reasonable to the utterly absurd. If the ships had been stolen from an alien power, their new owners couldn’t know the USN protocols … could they? He felt isolated and alone, despite the pilot, as they glided through a force shield and headed towards what was clearly a shuttlebay hatch. He’d thought himself beyond surprise, but the simple fact they had an internal shuttlebay was proof they also had artificial gravity. The affair was growing more and more bizarre by the second.

He forced himself to study the massive starship as the pilot took them into the shuttlebay. The USN used modular technology to assemble its starships, ensuring that components – and entire compartments – from one ship could easily be taken out and replaced, or swapped into another starship. This ship didn’t look remotely modular, as if it had been put together as a single unit in a manner that struck him as dangerously impractical. Somehow, he was sure it was nothing of the sort. The starship was just too … he grunted in surprise as the gravity field caught hold, the pilot swearing under her breath as she struggled to arrest their sudden fall before they crashed into the alien deck. It was hardly her first time flying her craft into a gravity well, but normally there was plenty of time to prepare for it beforehand. This time …

“Put us down gently,” he ordered. “And then wait here.”

“Aye, sir.”

Hamish felt a twinge of guilt – Yvonne was too young, an officer who wouldn’t have been assigned to his ship if there wasn’t a war on – then gathered himself as she lowered the shuttle to the deck. He had brought a recorder and a sensor pouch but nothing else. Not even a firearm … technically, that was against regulations, yet he was pretty sure a single pistol wouldn’t make any difference if the newcomers turned nasty. The action holovids might feature daring men taking control of entire starships completely on their own, but he doubted it was possible even for a Navy SEAL. He certainly couldn’t. He checked the exterior sensors – the air outside was breathable, a perfect mix – then stepped through the airlock. The sheer immensity of the shuttlebay rose up around him.

He paused, trying to centre himself. It was a simple shuttlebay, and yet it was proof of immense technical superiority. The gravity field alone was staggering. The handful of small craft at the far end of the shuttlebay made his shuttle look like a piece of junk. The force field behind him, keeping the atmosphere inside the starship … his mind reeled. It was just too much. He had to take a long breath as he saw an inner hatch opening, revealing an older man in a simple white uniform. He didn’t recognise it. The golden emblem on his shoulder was utterly unfamiliar. He was …

Hamish stared. The man was clearly human, but there was something about him that was slightly off. He looked to be in his mid-forties, with a pleasant yet bland face, tinted skin and dark hair, but his eyes were the eyes of a man who had seen terrible things. Hamish couldn’t put the feeling into words, not really, yet he was sure the man was far older than he looked. The best rejuvenation treatments the human race had developed, treatments so expensive few could afford them, couldn’t do more than prolong life for a few decades. This man … this man looked middle-aged and old at the same time.

“Welcome aboard,” the man said. “I am Commodore Boswell. Ethan Boswell. Terran Federation Navy.”

“Anderson. Hamish Anderson.” Hamish took a breath. “The Terran Federation?”

“There’s no way to sugarcoat this,” Boswell said. His accent was a melange, a jumble that made it hard to place his origins. “We’re from the future. 2625, to be precise.”

Hamish wasn’t as surprised as he suspected he should be. It fitted the evidence. The idea of a top-secret project producing such technology was absurd; so was the idea of human slaves stealing alien ships and setting out to return home. Starships from the future …

“If you’re from the future,” he said slowly, “does that mean you know me?”

“Yes.” Boswell looked oddly worried. “Just by being here, we’ve changed time. This meeting was never meant to occur.”

He paused. “But it might be a blessing in disguise.”

“We’ll see,” Hamish said. He’d read a few time travel novels when he’d been a teenager, including several featuring future wet-navy ships sent back in time, but he’d always thought time travel impossible. The mere presence of a starship from the future would create a paradox … right? He didn’t know. “Why … how did you even get here?”

“That is something of a long story,” Boswell said. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll show you the future.”

Hamish felt numb as Boswell led him through the hatch and down a long corridor. It was lined with refugees, men and women who stared at him as they walked past … their faces betraying a deep and profound despair. Ice prickled down his spine. The newcomers – the time travellers – were refugees, fleeing into the past to escape … what? He swallowed hard. The ship around him was powerful enough to take on the entire USN and win easily … what could they be running from? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

Boswell led him into a surprisingly typical briefing room, complete with a table, a handful of chairs and a holographic projector showing both fleets. “Would you like refreshment?”

“Yes, please,” Hamish said. “Coffee, if you have it.”

“Here.” Boswell pointed to a small slot in the bulkhead. Hamish stared as the slot flared with light, the glow rapidly coalescing into a simple mug of steaming coffee. It was … Boswell picked up the cup and held it out. Hamish took it and sipped gingerly. It tasted real. “That’s one thing that gets invented a hundred years from now.”

“A matter reformer,” Hamish breathed. “Right?”

“Something like that,” Boswell said. He ordered a mug for himself. “Please. Take a seat.”

“Let’s cut to the chase,” Hamish said, as he sat. “Who are you people running from and why … how … did you get here?”

“We call them the Killers.” Boswell’s voice was steady, but his eyes were haunted. “They came out of nowhere and started to kill. Starships. Planets. Rings. Asteroid colonies. They tore them all to atoms. We made a stand at Earth, and they slaughtered us. Thousands of starships, all wiped out in less than an hour. This squadron … we were developing a new stardrive, something that might let us get clear and rebuild somewhere a very long way away. They caught us, we triggered the drive, and … we wound up here.”

Hamish sucked in his breath. He believed every word.

“And what now?” His voice sounded weak even to himself. “If you’re here …”

“We’ve already changed history,” Boswell said. “And it is about to get worse.”

***

Ethan hadn’t been sure what to expect when he’d come face to face with Captain Anderson.

The man was a war hero, if an accidental one. His career hadn’t been that impressive, and his advancement had been slow, until he’d led his squadron into a desperate battle that had won time for the combined navies to assemble and drive the Diyang out of the Sol System before it was too late. Afterwards … Ethan studied him thoughtfully. Anderson had had shock after shock, from the encounter with the future starships to coming onboard and seeing technology he’d believed impossible, and yet he was still coherent, still thinking. It was almost a shame Ethan had to level with him completely. There was no way to know how he’d react to the next bit of news.

He tapped the console, displaying a historical record. “You weren’t supposed to intercept us,” he said, quietly. “You were supposed to continue on your patrol. One day from now, you were supposed to detect an alien fleet entering the system” – he felt his head ache as he tried to sort out the tenses – “and fight a delaying battle long enough for the rest of the space navies to mount a counterattack. That fleet is already on its way.”

And we haven’t had time to confirm it has arrived, he thought, grimly. Had history changed more than they’d thought? Or had they fallen into an alternate universe? Everything matched the history records so far, but they were too far from Earth to check the fine details. I’ll have to send one of the destroyers to check once we sort this mess out.

Anderson was staring at the historical record. “If that fleet really is coming, we’re already out of position.”

Ethan winced, inwardly. Anderson’s fleet was nowhere near as mobile as the future starships. If they pushed their drives to the limit … no, they weren’t going to make their historical meeting with the incoming aliens and engage them. History had definitely changed … he grimaced as he realised they would have to stop the incoming fleet. It wouldn’t be much of a battle – the tech gap was just too wide – but it would scare hell out of the locals. The human race had yet to mature, yet to put the past in the past and stride onwards into a bold new future. If they were scared of the future fleet …

And the Killers are waiting for them, Ethan thought, grimly. The Killers were hardly the only threat – the Zargana and several other races were in the past, or the future – but they were the one that had won, that had crushed the human race. How will the locals react when they hear about the Killers?

Anderson looked at him. “Can you stop the incoming fleet?”

“Yes.” Ethan knew there was no choice. The idea of vanishing into deep space and setting up a hidden colony was tempting, but history had already been derailed. “And after that, we need to come to some kind of agreement with your superiors.”

“That’ll be easy,” Anderson predicted. “Offer them artificial gravity and force shields and they’ll fall over themselves to give you whatever you want.”

“Noted.” Ethan rubbed his forehead. “If only …”

He shook his head. It would have been easier if they’d fallen back in time to the early days of the Terran Federation. They would have reported to the past admirals and … everything would have been a great deal simpler. But the human race of 2308 was fragmented … he couldn’t recall the details, not offhand, but there were a lot of colonial struggles in humanity’s future. Who knew how they’d play out now? Hell, most of the major governments were disturbingly authoritarian, using public safety as an excuse to crack down on free speech and democracy. Giving Federation technology to them would make matters a great deal worse.

“We’ll see,” he said. They were safe from the Killers now. They could afford to take the time to sit down and plan out how to handle the situation. “We’ll deal with the incoming threat … I assume you’ve already communicated with your superiors?”

Anderson checked his watch. “They should be getting the first alert message shortly,” he said. Estimating how long it would take for a transmission to reach its destination was an old spacer’s trick. “But they won’t know more until the later messages reach them.”

Ethan scowled. “A time delay,” he said, crossly. “No hypercom here, of course.”

He stared at the display for a long moment, then shrugged. “We’ll take the fleet to intercept the incoming enemy,” he said, finally. “And then we’ll make contact with your government.”

Anderson met his eyes. “I need to be there to see it,” he said. “Can you tow my ship?”

“Of course.” Ethan allowed himself a smile. “Or we can find room for you on mine.”

“I think I need to be on my command deck, for now,” Anderson said. He needed to reassure his crew … and his superiors. “I also need to update Titan Base.”

“Understood.” Ethan paused as a message flickered into his implants. “I need to go attend to something. Please remain here. You have full access to the datanet, use it as you see fit.”

“Is it wise to read the future history books?” Anderson sounded unsure. “Or …”

“History has already changed,” Ethan said. “And it will likely change beyond all recognition in the days and weeks to come.”

***

Hamish wondered, as Boswell left the compartment, if leaving him alone was some sort of test.

He couldn’t recall any foreigner being granted unrestricted access to a USN computer core. It was rare for anyone who wasn’t a naval officer to be given access, and even they had their access permissions sharply circumscribed. He couldn’t read files he didn’t have a clear need-to-know, and even accidentally trying to gain entry could result in an investigation, perhaps even a court martial. And yet, Boswell had left him alone … or was he? The bulkhead was clean, lacking even a single decoration, but there could be any number of bugs embedded in the metal, watching him. Hell, they were probably monitoring everything he read on the computer.

Bracing himself, he tapped a switch. The user interface was simple, easy to use. A few hundred years of development had clearly done wonders, he noted, as he tapped his name into the holographic keyboard. Hundreds of files appeared in front of him, each one claiming to be a biography of a space navy hero. He couldn’t help wondering if they’d mistaken him for John Paul Jones, or Admiral Nimitz, or even Neil Armstrong. There was no reason there should be multiple volumes of his life and times. But there were.

Hamish hesitated. Did he want to know?

He did. He scanned a short biography quickly, feeling his blood run cold. His early life was perfectly documented, right down to his first girlfriend … the one who had decided she didn’t want to be married to the navy. His training, his first cruise, his first promotion, his slow climb to his first command … a chill ran down his spine as the biography moved into fiction, an outline of a career he hadn’t had … yet. A desperate battle, a promotion, a series of squadron and fleet commands … it wasn’t real, and yet there was something about it that made it authentic, something he couldn’t ignore. He’d had an ancestor who’d written alternate timelines, incredibly detailed pieces of work, and yet they’d never quite rung true. This one did.

Impossible, he thought.

He poked through the files, selecting and scanning a handful at random. Their current enemies, the Diyang. Later enemies … the Killers, creatures who had never shown themselves to humanity and yet brought the human race to the brink of extinction. Starship designs so advanced they might as well be alien, stupendous megastructures so large he couldn’t even begin to imagine how they’d been constructed, starships so big they laughed at the Death Star … how had such a towering civilisation fallen? It was just unbelievable.

My family are safe, he thought, relieved. The files said they’d survived the Diyang. That’s good …

His eyes lingered on one final file, an introduction to the Terran Federation. It was a grim reflection of the ideals of the United States and Western Civilisation, ideals that had been forgotten long ago in the face of civilisation-threatening disasters, falling birth-rates and truly horrendous economic insecurity. It touched him to think that humanity had recovered from its self-inflicted wound, but … would the current politicians back in Washington agree? Or Beijing or London or Brussels or …? Where did his duty lie?

Something flickered. He looked up just in time to see a pretty young woman – with old eyes – materialising in front of him. “Ethan has been delayed,” she said. “I’ve been asked to keep you company.”

Hamish stared. “You’re an AI?”

“No, I’m an eHuman,” the image said. “Rachel Boswell.”

“An eHuman?” Hamish felt as if he were losing his mind. “What is …?”

Rachel cocked her head. “Ah. They – we – haven’t been invented yet. In simple terms, my essence was transcribed into a datacore and my physical body was placed in stasis. I am essentially a human who lives in an electronic world.”

Hamish shook his head in disbelief. “How do you know you’re not just a copy? Or …”

“I think, therefore I am.” Rachel smiled. “Or maybe I think, therefore I think I am.”

“I …” Hamish wasn’t sure what to make of it. The whole idea struck him as absurd and yet … who knew what would be possible in the future? “Do you plan to return to your body at some point? Or will you be displacing yourself from your own body? Or …?”

“My body was lost during the Battle of Earth,” Rachel told him. She didn’t sound very concerned about it. “My genetic code is on file, and they’ll clone me a new body, sooner or later. Right now, there are other problems.”

“Like a hostile fleet bearing down on Earth,” Hamish said. A thought struck him. He’d been too dazed to think of it earlier. “I need to call my ship, before someone does something stupid.”

“I’ll inform Ethan,” Rachel said. “I’m sorry we plunged you into this mess. It wasn’t our intention.”

“You would have been wiped out if you’d stayed put,” Hamish said. It wasn’t as if he’d known he was flying towards a glorious future. The biography he’d scanned might have the ring of truth, but it wasn’t real. Not yet. Not ever. “Better you come here and rebuild than vanish into deep space.”

Rachel smiled, rather wanly. “I hope your leaders agree,” she said, quietly. “No matter what we do, our presence is going to be hugely disruptive.”

Hamish nodded. He couldn’t disagree.

Chapter Seven: TFS John Birmingham, 2308

Captain Rupert spoke with quiet intensity, his holographic presence making it feel to Commander Boswell as if they were sharing a compartment rather than Rupert being on his own ship. “Is it wise to bring a primitive onto our ships?”

Ethan kept his face under tight control. TFS Explorer was a survey ship, operating under strict protocols to ensure no newly-discovered alien race learnt anything of the Federation until their bona fides were firmly established. Making contact with races that hadn’t managed to climb out of their gravity well was forbidden, and any sort of contact with races that hadn’t mastered FTL was frowned upon except in the most extreme circumstances. The human race was not protected by the non-inferences edict, though, and besides … they were the ones trapped in the past. It wasn’t as if Hamish Anderson – the Hamish Anderson, hero of the First Interstellar War – had fallen through a wormhole into the far future.

The Killers haven’t followed us, as far as we can tell, he thought. But we’ll meet them again, sooner or later. We have to be ready.

“I think we have no choice,” he said, flatly. The briefing had been the quietest on record, relief at escaping the Killers mingling with the grim realisation they’d damaged history beyond repair. It was far too late to run and hide even if he wanted to do it. “History as we know it is gone.”

He took a breath. “And besides, we’re going to need their help,” he added. “Rebuilding our technical base will take years, even with it. Replacing the damaged stardrives and expended missiles will pose all sorts of technical problems, which we will have to solve. The locals” – they were going to have to come up with some proper terminology for the whole affair – “can help us and we can help them in turn, not least with the simple fact their system is about to be attacked.”

The display altered at his command, revealing the Diyang fleet as it glided through interplanetary space. It was impressive by local standards, a hard core of nine fleet carriers and twelve battleships surrounded by fifty-seven smaller ships and hundreds of starfighters. It was difficult to believe Captain Anderson would be able to slow them long enough for the human navies to get into position to intercept, but … the history records were very clear. They were going to be slowed, then stopped … they had been, in the original timeline. Now …

“The more impressed they are with us, the better,” Captain Singh said. The Marine Corps officer sounded eager for the engagement, after years of endless defeats that had culminated in the near-complete extermination of the human race. “If we make a big show of defeating the Diyang, modern humans will be less inclined to argue about what we need from them.”

His eyes hardened. “And they will argue, Commodore. The governments on Earth aren’t the Terran Federation, but a cluster of immature governing systems run by immature men who put their own interests ahead of their people. They’ll expect us to submit to them, to put our ships and personnel under their command, and … they’ll expect us to give them free access to our technology. It would be a very bad idea.”

“They’re the legal government of Earth,” Captain Harrington objected. “Shouldn’t we be taking orders from them?”

“They’re not our government,” Singh pointed out. “And they don’t even have the faintest idea how to make best use of our ships.”

He looked around the holographic table. “The simple fact is, these people may be our ancestors, but they weren’t always very nice people and, by our standards, their governments are thoroughly unpleasant, the kind of governments we’d overthrow back in our own timeline. If we let them start giving us orders …”

Ethan rubbed his forehead. It was a complication he hadn’t really envisaged. There was nothing in the naval regs covering such a situation, and even if there had been, he was completely alone. The fleet council could vote to remove him, if they saw fit, but … he scowled as he looked at the display. The whole situation was utterly unprecedented. And his priority was saving what he could of the Terran Federation.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said. He’d need to review the history records and make some plans, once the coming engagement was over. “Does anyone have any better ideas?”

“The Empire is out there,” Y’Opohan said. The Zargana seemed to grow in the holographic display. “We go there instead, recruit allies to support Earth and engage the Killers. They’ll recognise me as a Great Lord and listen, when I tell them …”

“Out of the question,” Singh snapped. “These aren’t the genteel aristocrats of our time, but the conquerors who pushed Earth to the brink of destruction. They haven’t had their reformation yet, or their …”

“And you think your people will be any better?” Y’Opohan showed his teeth. “Your ancestors were just as barbaric as mine; don’t try to deny it. You give them your tech and they’ll build another ant nest, see if they don’t.”

Ethan shuddered. The exact chain of events that had led up to the development of the ant nest, a cybernetic insect colony that had enslaved thousands of humans, might not be clearly understood, but the results were all too clear. The masters had sought to create a world where they were the only ones with free will, while everyone else lacked the intelligence to understand the horror of their existence and do something about it. They hadn’t created the only horror of modern technology, but it had easily been the worst. If they hadn’t been defeated …

“They wouldn’t unleash nanotech like that,” Rupert said. “We’d warn them …”

“It wouldn’t be enough,” Y’Opohan said. “There’s always someone willing to push the limits as far as they will go.”

He might have a point, Ethan conceded privately. The Federation had been a post-scarcity society. There were enough resources for everyone to do their own thing, from building fantasy castles in the clouds to carrying out their own research into everything from medical technology to advanced stardrives. Accidents were rare, and genuine malice even rarer, but they did happen, and the results could be disastrous. If the locals got their hands on modern fabricators or nanotech …

“Right now, that’s not a problem,” he said. “Does anyone have any objection to my plan to engage the Diyang?”

“It will be a completely one-sided battle,” Singh predicted. “How can they fight something they can’t even see, let alone hit?”

Ethan felt a twinge of something he didn’t care to look at too closely. The Federation had had the same problem, when they were fighting the Killers. The first engagements had been completely one-sided because modern sensor suites hadn’t been able to track the alien ships, let alone provide accurate targeting information. A great deal of research had been done, in the last couple of years, but it hadn’t been enough. The thought of handing out the same kind of defeat was horrific and yet … better that than the alternative. Besides, the Diyang might be shocked enough to end the war and reform without four years of bitter fighting. They had reformed in the original timeline.

After we beat them so soundly they couldn’t hope to continue the war, he reminded himself. If we do it to them now …

“They can’t,” he said, finally. War wasn’t fair. He had no obligation to give the enemies of humanity a fighting chance. He lacked the resources of the Federation, the planet-sized starships that could cow any aggressor, no matter how determined to gain the wealth of his towering civilisation, and the absolute superiority that would give him the freedom he needed to crush the enemy without killing anyone. “If no one has any objections, we will proceed.”

There was a long pause. No one spoke.

“Very good,” Ethan said. “We will proceed as planned.”

He tapped his console, shutting off the holographic conference. The illusion of a conference chamber vanished, replaced by the bland bulkheads of his ready room. He knew he should have decorated – it was his right as CO – but it had never felt right, with the Killers breathing down their necks. The war had ground them all down. He wished, with a twinge of selfishness, that Rachel had downloaded herself into a clone body before the Killers had swept through Sol. It would feel so good to be able to hold her again, to relax into her arms …

His console chimed. “Captain, General Geddes is requesting a conference.”

Ethan sighed, inwardly. General Jenny Geddes was the commander of the Marine Expeditionary Unit attached to TFS Chesty Puller. The only Terran Marines left in existence … he wondered, suddenly, what the United States Marine Corps and the Royal Marines, to say nothing of a dozen other elite units on Earth, would make of their descendants. Would they consider them worthy heirs or cowards? Ethan could argue it either way. But right now, it wasn’t his problem.

“Put her through,” he ordered.

Jenny’s face materialised in front of him, a blunt-faced woman enhanced to the limits of modern technology. Her body looked rough and crude, her breasts practically non-existent and her face sharp, striking rather than pretty. Ethan wondered, suddenly, what her local counterparts would make of her, and the rest of her command. They’d been reluctant to put women in front-line military positions, if he recalled correctly, and it had taken decades for them to get over the taboo of actually sending them into combat. Or had they already overcome it? He didn’t know.

“Sir,” Jenny said. Her voice was as blunt as the rest of her. “My unit is ready to deploy on your command.”

“Good,” Ethan said. “Is that why you called?”

Jenny gave him a sharp-edged smile. They’d never really been friends – Ethan was an explorer at heart, Jenny was a warrior – but they respected each other. He hoped she wasn’t having problems with Captain Singh. She was in command of the unit, but he was in command of the ship, a guaranteed recipe for conflict. The Corps was normally very good about smoothing out personality clashes between its senior officers, yet right now … Jenny and Captain Singh were the Corps. There would be no more Terran Marines until they rebuilt the technological base to create them.

“No, sir,” Jenny said. “There’s another matter I need to bring to your attention.”

Ethan leaned forward. “Besides finding ourselves in the past?”

Jenny didn’t smile. “We’re not alone, sir,” she said. “Vendetta accompanied us.”

“I know,” Ethan said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “They were yanked through time too.”

“Yes,” Jenny said. “They were yanked through time to an era where their empire dominates the local sector, where their empire is expanding to the point it will encounter the Federation a few hundred years from now. What happens if they want to go home?”

Ethan hesitated. “Y’Opohan suggested making contact with the Zargana instead,” he said, slowly. “I shot the idea down.”

“I think you need to shut it down harder,” Jenny said. “Their entire ship needs to be taken into our hands.”

“You’re suggesting attacking an allied vessel?” Ethan was shocked. “Are you serious?”

Jenny met his eyes. “Right now, the Zargana Empire is expanding rapidly. They both outnumber and outgun the human race. If they stumble across us now, Earth will fall. They are an aggressive and imperialistic species, sir, and even after the reformation, they never quite gave up the old ways. What if Y’Opohan betrays us to his people?”

“They fought beside us,” Ethan pointed out.

“They had no choice,” Jenny countered. “The Killers were slaughtering them too.”

Ethan shook his head slowly. “Can we take their ship? Should we take their ship?”

“We can board and storm, yes,” Jenny said. “And we should. Better safe than very sorry.”

Ethan forced himself to think. “If they go to their empire, it won’t be their empire,” he said, finally. He’d scanned some of the time travel fiction loaded into the ship’s databases. One novel had followed a group of neo-confederates – he wasn’t quite sure what they were – who had gone back to their ideal era, only to discover they were the wrong skin colour and found themselves enslaved. An easy mistake to make, he supposed, if you’d grown up in a world where skin colour was as changeable as clothes. “They were born after the reformation. The Empire as it currently exists is very different.”

“Perhaps,” Jenny said. “But would they be smart enough to know it?”

“Yes,” Ethan said, firmly. “Y’Opohan isn’t a fool.”

He sighed, inwardly. The Zargana Empire had been based on racial, sexual, caste and religious apartheid. You were born into your place and you stayed there, from birth to death. The Empire hadn’t started to change until after they’d been soundly defeated by the human race, and it had taken a civil war to make the changes stick. Y’Opohan was a creature of the post-reformation empire and … he was smart enough to know his ship and crew would be extremely unwelcome in an era that firmly believed half of them shouldn’t be anywhere near a starship.

“Given time, we can help him set up his own reformed empire,” he said. “It’s his only hope.”

“I hope you’re right,” Jenny said, stiffly. “But there are an awful lot of fools out there.”

“We’re allies,” Ethan said. “You don’t stab allies in the back.”

He sighed, eying the starchart. They had too many other problems that needed to be solved urgently. Anderson hadn’t received any updated orders from his superiors … Ethan wondered, suddenly, if Anderson’s superiors believed his reports. He wasn’t sure he’d believe a report of super-starships from the far future, with or without them being refugees from a lost war. His lips twitched at the thought. If the USN was already preparing Anderson’s court martial …

“I hope you’re right,” Jenny repeated. “My unit is ready to deploy on your command.”

“We’ll see if we can bring a handful of locals along,” Ethan said. “They’ll need to see what we can do.”

Jenny smiled, baring her teeth. “We’ll give them one hell of a show.”

She raised her hand, then tapped a switch. Her face vanished from the display. Ethan shook his head and turned his attention back to the reports from his senior officers. The crew were performing their duties, thankfully, but the refugees were torn between relief at being saved from the Killers and fear of what the old-new future held. Some wanted to be put off the ship at once – he had no idea where they thought they could be dropped – and others argued they’d pop out of existence once history changed beyond repair. Ethan had no idea if there was any truth to that suggestion, but … it wasn’t as if he could do anything about it. If a tidal wave of non-existence was raging towards the fleet, they were all about to die.

The console bleeped. “Commodore, Captain Anderson has returned to his ship,” Commander Horace Abad reported. “They’ll be ready to be towed in twenty minutes.”

“Make sure we hold them gently but firmly,” Ethan ordered. Grant lacked compensators as well as drive fields or artificial gravity. John Birmingham would have to project a compensator field around the ancient starship to protect her crew from the sudden acceleration. “And ask if any of their crew wish to board our ship first.”

“Aye, sir,” Abad said. “If we have space for them …”

“We can handle a couple of dozen, even if we have to cram them into the secondary shuttlebay,” Ethan assured him. Grant had a tiny crew, by his standards. “Have we heard anything from the inner system?”

“No, sir,” Abad said. “There’s been no reply to Anderson’s messages. But there’s no sign anything else has changed.”

“Good.” Ethan leaned back in his chair. “I’ll be on the bridge in twenty minutes.”

“Aye, sir.”

Ethan rubbed his forehead, bringing up the long-range sensor display. An analysis program was already running, trying to determine if history had changed before their arrival … Ethan suspected there would never be any clear answer. Their history records were good, but they didn’t have exact positional data for every last starship, spacecraft, and asteroid mining vehicle scattered over the solar system. They might have slipped into an alternate universe, going sideways as well as backwards in time, yet … if they had, they’d never know. The theories were just … theories.

I guess we’re getting some hard data now, he mused. But it won’t be enough to get us back home.

He shook his head, firmly. Home was gone. It wasn’t just hundreds of years in the future, but gone. Destroyed. Wiped out by an incomprehensible alien force. His birthplace was gone, everyone he’d known as a child and a teenager was gone; his home, where Rachel and he had married, was nothing more than dust floating in space. The sheer scale of the disaster was beyond all comprehension, trillions of humans and trillions of other races brutally slaughtered, their civilisation wiped out so completely there was no hope of the dead ever being resurrected into clone bodies. They were gone …

Tears prickled in his eyes. He wanted to believe that others had survived, that a spacefaring civilisation stretching over thousands of light-years could not be completely wiped out, but he feared the worst. The Killers had been too advanced, too powerful … they’d found colonies he would have sworn were undetectable, blasting them from orbit until there was nothing left but asteroids and dust. The sheer spite they’d shown was terrifying. So too was their power and determination to commit genocide on a galactic scale.

Maybe there is someone left, back home, he told himself. But I will never know.

Centring himself, he stood. He had a duty to his people. He would carry it out or die trying …

He promised himself as he stepped through the hatch, his world would live again. 

And when they met the Killers again, it would be different.

Chapter Eight: USS Grant/TFS John Birmingham, 2308

“Captain,” Georges said, as Hamish made his way onto the bridge. “Is it true …?”

“Yes,” Hamish said, shortly. He’d sent a message, an outline of the situation and a warning of the alien fleet’s arrival, knowing it would be forwarded to Titan Base. “Did we get any message from Titan?”

“No, sir,” Georges said. “They should have gotten our first message, at least.”

“Yes.” Hamish strapped himself into his command chair and studied the display. The squadron was holding position, waiting for orders. “Prepare the ship for heavy acceleration.”

“Aye, sir,” Georges said.

“And inform Major Montrose that he is to transfer himself to Grant,” Hamish added. “I’ll take him with me to the future ship, when they call. They specifically requested a combat soldier.”

“Yes, sir,” Georges said. “Should we … should we not find an American?”

“There isn’t one,” Hamish reminded him. The squadron hadn’t been assigned any marines. The only groundpounders on his ships were two platoons of Royal Marines. “We’ll just have to make do.”

He sighed inwardly as he keyed his console, updating the rest of the squadron as well as sending yet another message to Titan Base. It was quite possible they didn’t believe a word, he reflected sourly, even though there was a war on and only a complete idiot would file a fake contact report. Perhaps they thought ET – the Diyang, according to the history records – had captured the squadron and was using them to lure the navy out of position. It wasn’t impossible. The combined space navies had been planning to go on the offensive, when his squadron had been dispatched to the edge of the Solar System. If the aliens had held off a few weeks, they would have been able to crush Earth with ease …

“Signal from … ah, from John Birmingham,” Georges reported. “They’re ready to take us into their tractor web.”

“Understood,” Hamish said. “Tell them they may proceed.”

A dull shudder ran through the ship, a faint and unpleasant sensation of imaginary gravity … coming and going so rapidly it was hard to believe it had ever existed. The display changed a moment later, the giant cruiser accelerating so rapidly that Hamish honestly feared the sensors were having flights of fancy … or he was the victim of an elaborate deception intended to turn him into a traitor. The world around him might be a trick … he bit his lip hard, savouring the pain. It was real. And that meant …

“Sir,” Georges said. He sounded badly shaken. “We’re travelling at nearly 0.10C!”

Hamish swallowed. Grant couldn’t begin to reach a tenth of the speed of light. If she tried, if she didn’t run out of propellant, she’d shake herself to pieces long before she reached her target speed. Hell, they should be smashed against the rear bulkhead … he keyed his console, flicking through the live reports from his duty stations one by one. The ship was shaking slightly, but otherwise unharmed. It was impossible. Truly impossible. And yet it was happening.

“I …” Hamish shook his head. “Let us hope they know what they’re doing.”

He stared at the display, watching the squadron falling away so rapidly there was no hope of them catching up. They’d be sending their sensor reports back to Titan … he wished, for the first time, that he could speak to his superiors in realtime and get orders. It felt wrong to put his fate in the hands of desk jockeys, men who knew nothing of the realities of interstellar travel and combat, but … for once, having someone looking over his shoulder would be almost welcome. It wouldn’t leave him feeling that he’d be solely responsible for disaster, if disaster threatened.

“Incredible,” Georges breathed. “We’re actually accelerating.”

Hamish felt numb, again. They were passing through space that had barely been charted. The combined space navies had done what they could to plot out the gravity eddies that played merry hell with interstellar travel, but here … the future fleet didn’t seem to care. He guessed they’d charted the entire region centuries ago. Hell, they might have solved the mystery of just why a drive that should be capable of jumping a starship fifty light-years in a single bound … couldn’t.

They’re not using their FTL drives here, he told himself. They don’t need them.

His console bleeped. “We’re cloaking now, to avoid detection,” Boswell said. “Keep your active sensors deactivated.”

“Got it.” Hamish felt a flicker of anger at Boswell’s order, even though he knew it was absurd. “We’ll stick with passive sensors …”

Another shiver ran through the ship as she started to decelerate, as rapidly as she’d accelerated. It was impossible … another impossible thing. The technological gulf was just too wide … he swallowed hard, then cursed as the display lit up with red icons. ET was advancing in force, over a hundred starships sneaking towards Earth … he’d seen the history records, watched a battle his other self had fought, yet … all of a sudden, the future seemed very real. It was impossible to even try to convince himself it wasn’t.

“My God,” Georges said. “There’s nearly two hundred starships out there.”

Hamish shared his feelings. The alien fleet was huge, more tonnage than he’d seen at the last fleet review. If it reached Earth … he couldn’t believe he’d tried to slow the fleet and succeeded, that he’d survived the engagement and gone on to be a naval hero. No matter how he looked at the odds, they were staggeringly against him … had been against him. His heart twisted painfully as he stared at the display, wondering if he’d been cheated of something he deserved or if he should be grateful history had changed. He honestly didn’t know. It was too much.

“They’re inviting you and Major Montrose back to John Birmingham,” Georges told him. “They’re sending a stealth shuttle …”

“Good.” Hamish had wondered how the future folk intended to handle the transfer. He’d carefully not asked, just to see what they did. “Tell the Major to grab his kit and meet me at the forward airlock. You have the bridge.”

“Aye, sir.”

***

“There’s no hint they’ve detected us,” Abad reported, as Ethan stared at the alien fleet in front of him. He’d activated the main display for the benefit of Anderson and his peers. “Their active sensors are stepped down.”

Ethan nodded, curtly. The Diyang had taken one hell of a risk in bringing their fleet out of FTL so far from Sol, but it would have paid off for them if they hadn’t been the victim of simple bad luck. There were no monitoring stations that might detect their presence, no military bases that might manage to slow them down … if they hadn’t encountered Hamish Anderson’s tiny squadron, they might have won the war in a single blow. As it was, it was a very close-run thing indeed.

“Keep our distance,” he ordered. The sheer primitiveness of the alien sensors might work in their favour. The cloaking device, perversely, was designed to hide the fleet from far more advanced foes. “Prepare to deploy the marines.”

“Aye, sir,” Abad reported. “They’re ready to deploy when you give the command.”

Ethan looked up as Anderson was shown onto the bridge, his eyes flickering around as if he didn’t quite understand what he was seeing. The futuristic technology was too advanced for him to easily comprehend, from the neural links that allowed Boswell’s crew to command their ship to the sensors that could track objects moving faster than light. The holographic display was the most understandable piece of technology on the bridge, and much had changed in the last few hundred years, leaving the icons as incomprehensible as everything else. Ethan was mildly surprised Anderson was taking it so well. He wasn’t sure he could have handled it so calmly.

But he became a naval hero for a reason, Ethan reminded himself. He’s used to handling difficult situations.

“Take a seat,” he said, as a chair grew out of the deck. “We’re well within weapons range now.”

Anderson sat, gingerly. “How do you intend to proceed?”

The doubt in his voice shouldn’t have been surprising. The fleet was well out of local weapons range. Ethan leaned forward, indicating the display. The Diyang didn’t know it, but he could target and destroy their entire fleet before they knew they were under attack. He had no intention of wasting his FTL missiles on their hulls – the missiles couldn’t be replaced in a hurry – but his energy weapons would be more than enough. The alien hulls would be ripped apart effortlessly.

We’re not the Killers, he told himself. And we don’t kill needlessly.

“We’re going to capture their entire fleet,” he said. The Diyang would be hopelessly vulnerable to the marines, once they boarded the alien ships. “And we’re going to take their crews prisoner.”

Anderson gaped at him. “They’re here to lay waste to Earth and you intend to take them prisoner?”

“Yes,” Ethan said. He had no intention of slaughtering millions of aliens. There was no need to commit an atrocity. “We can take them easily and we will. Besides, none of those crewmen volunteered to be there. They don’t deserve to die.”

“Hah.” Anderson sounded unimpressed. “We’ll see.”

Ethan smiled. “Yes. You will.”

***

Major John Montrose was practiced at keeping his expressions under tight control, after years in the Royal Marines, but he found it hard to keep his astonishment from showing on his face as he came face to face with a female marine officer. The woman … he honestly wasn’t sure if she was a woman … was strange, her body changed in a manner he found incredibly disconcerting. She looked like a parody of a strong woman, an actress in a military show written by someone who had never served in the military, yet there was something in the way she carried herself that told him she’d seen the elephant.

“Jenny. General Jenny Geddes.” Jenny shook his hand firmly. John knew himself to be a strong man, but her grip was tight and her motion controlled enough to suggest she could break his hand effortlessly if she wished. The military had been experimenting with enhanced soldiers for the last few decades … he guessed the research had borne fruit, years in the future or in the past, depending on how you looked at it. “Welcome to Marine Country.”

John nodded, looking around warily. The bunks were familiar, but everything else was oddly alien. The Terran Marines ranged from tall and lanky to short and squat, some taking a very visible interest in him and others preparing for the coming mission. They didn’t seem to be heading to the shuttles, or anything else he’d find familiar … what the hell were they doing? He was completely confused.

“You’ll be riding behind me,” Jenny said, as she led him down the corridor. “Did they give you any briefing notes?”

“No.” John stared as a hatch hissed open, revealing a pair of seats. He couldn’t help thinking of a dentist’s chair, with a helmet in place of the light. “I … what are we going to do?”

Jenny smirked. “I’ll be linking my mind into a Jarhead Mark VIII,” she said. “You’ll be riding behind me, seeing what I see and …”

“What?” John shook his head. “You’re not going in person? You’ll be flying drones?”

“Pretty much.” Jenny waved him to one of the chairs. “If the drones get destroyed, they can be replaced. My men are irreplaceable.”

“I …” John forced himself to start again. He’d used drones in combat, everyone had, but the best AI humanity could produce was still no match for a living brain. The time lag alone limited the use of drones in interplanetary combat. “How do you even control the drone? What about the time lag?”

“In layman’s terms, we have an FTL communications system,” Jenny explained. “There’s a lot of complicated theory involving quantum states and ansible links, but the long and short of it is that we don’t need to worry about any communications lag. Or power. Or even our lives.”

John blinked. “You have an FTL communications system?”

“Of course.” Jenny winked. “Doesn’t everyone?”

John felt his knees threatening to buckle. He’d always been on top of the technical tree, be it carrying out hostage rescue missions or kill-sweeps in the uncivilised parts of the world, and coming face to face with something a great deal more advanced was just … terrifying. He watched as Jenny tapped a command into a database, bringing up a holographic representation of the Jarhead. He’d expected an advanced mech, but instead …

“It looks as if an octopus and a spider had a love child,” he said. The Jarhead wasn’t remotely humanoid. He couldn’t tell which way was up. He presumed it didn’t matter. “How heavily armed is it?”

Jenny altered the display. The holographic Jarhead produced dozens of weapons and waved them in the air. John felt a flicker of admiration mingled with fear. He wouldn’t want to meet the Jarhead in a dark alley, not without heavy weapons and an entire company of reinforcements. Perhaps not even then. If the device was designed to be expendable, it could carry out missions most regular soldiers would consider suicide. John shuddered. Suicide attacks were commonplace outside the civilised world, young men throwing themselves on soldiers in a desperate bid to kill them both, but here …

“Put on your helmet,” Jenny said. “You won’t have full systems integration, not until you pass the qualifying exams, but otherwise you’ll see and feel everything I do. Just remind yourself it isn’t truly real. Not for you.”

John hesitated. He’d never liked VR suites, and this was clearly far more advanced, if it linked directly to his brain. He sat on the seat and reached for the helmet, feeling his hands tremble. It felt dangerous, as if he was walking straight towards an armed man, unsure if he’d pull the trigger or not. And yet …

“Go on,” Jenny said. “Nerves?”

“Fuck you,” John growled. It slipped out in anger. “I …”

“Maybe later,” Jenny said. There was something in her voice that suggested it wasn’t quite a joke. “For now … put it on.”

John took a breath, and did as he was told.

***

“Inform the marines,” Boswell ordered. “They will be launched in five minutes.”

Hamish sat on the chair that had seemingly grown out of the deck, another display of awesome technological superiority, and stared at the images on the display. He had a feeling Boswell was speaking out loud for his benefit, given that his bridge crew were apparently connected directly to the ship rather than sitting at consoles like his own crew. The alien fleet was growing larger on the display, seeming to pick up speed as it neared the waiting ships. And Boswell …

He felt a hot flash of anger, mingled with an odd kind of respect. What did it say about Boswell and his world that he was willing to take risks with his life, and the lives of his crew, to capture the aliens rather than simply blow them away? Hamish had read the files, and while they’d been evasive about the true power of the future weapons, they’d made it clear ET was well within Boswell’s engagement range. Hamish wasn’t even sure if it was possible to keep the aliens as prisoners. What sort of life support did they need? He had no idea. It stood to reason, he supposed, that they weren’t that different from humanity – there was no point in fighting if they lived on gas giants instead – but even so …

It isn’t as if we can send them to the work camps in Antarctica, he mused. They’re going to have to be treated with kid gloves.

He glanced at Boswell. “Did you have protocols for handling alien POWs?”

“We do, yes,” Boswell confirmed. “But we’re going to need help to handle all these prisoners.”

Anderson shook his head. Was Boswell that sure of victory? Perhaps he had reason to be. The technological gulf was too wide to be crossed easily, certainly not in time to matter. If Grant happened to go back in time to the War on Terror, or the Second World War, she could drop KEWs on her enemies until they surrendered or were pounded flat. It wasn’t as if there’d be a shortage of ammunition. They could mine Luna or nearby asteroids for raw materials, an endless supply of brutally simple weapons. The enemy wouldn’t stand a chance.

“I told Titan to prepare for prisoners,” Hamish said. God alone knew what his superiors would make of that. “But it’ll take them time to get ready.”

He wondered, suddenly, if it was even possible. They had inflatable habitats, he supposed, which would have the advantage of being difficult to escape, but … would there be enough? Or would they have to set up a POW camp on Earth? Or Mars? They could put together a dome some distance from the other colonies and keep the aliens there.

“They still haven’t got back to you,” Boswell said. He sounded vaguely surprised. But then, his ships could send messages across interstellar distances. The USN couldn’t get a message any faster than the speed of light. Even a courier boat would take time. “Are you in the habit of filing false reports?”

Hamish snorted. “No, but they might not believe the truth,” he said. There were dozens of reports of alien contact, filed by asteroid miners with too much time on their hands. They’d been funny until a real alien threat had shown itself. In hindsight, he wondered if any of the alien contacts had been ETs spying on the human race. “Would you?”

“Perhaps not,” Boswell conceded. “But right now …”

His timer pinged. “It’s time,” he added. “The marines are authorised to deploy. I say again, the marines are authorised to deploy.”

Hamish leaned forward. Showtime.

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