The Madman's Clock

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 14

Everything happened slowly.

The trigger slowly pulled back. I felt the pressure against my finger. I felt the pistol warm up in my hands, ready to fire the small burst of plasma. The slight whine that preceded the shot seemed to hover in the air.

I held my breath.

I shifted my balance, moving my left foot back to help resist the kick of the pistol's shot. I squinted in anticipation of the flash of light, and the blast that would occur when the plasma burst impacted flesh and bone. I turned my head slightly to the side, knowing that there would be blood spatter from a shot this close.

The Captain blinked.

She started to turn towards me. Her eyes were still blank, seeming to look through me, past me, as though all she could see was the experiment's progress. Her eyes were deep blue, but danced with greens and reds and blues from the displays around us. Despite the color, they seemed cold.

In an instant of utter clarity, I was aware of everything around me. I could see the crew at their stations, moving with a hive-like efficiency. I could hear the voices of my men as they took the fight to the enemy. I could hear the Edra returning fire, and underneath their weapons I could hear their hissing and clicking as they spoke. I could smell the fear in the air, and my own sweat.

I could see the yeoman, still rattling off figures and readings, staring straight ahead. The wires leading from his head, down his back, and into the console suddenly seemed like a snake, something alive, as they were choking the life out of him and the rest of the bridge crew.

I understood, now.

I stepped to my left, the barrel of my pistol sliding along the skin on the Captain's temple. The pistol pushed aside her cap as I moved. I was so close to her, the barrel caught the underside of her ponytail, which slid off the end of the barrel.

I took aim at the yeoman, and as everything seemed to return to a normal pace, I fired.

The plasma burst struck the yeoman in the back of the head, blowing out the back of his skull. There was a shower of sparks as the plasma interacted with the wiring implanted in the yeoman's brain. His head snapped to the left at a sickening angle, and then rolled right as if he were looking over his right shoulder at me with wide eyes. His whole body lurched to the left, spinning to face me as he fell. His body fell against the console in front of him, and then slid to the floor.

There was a moment of pure silence, and then the computer voice, which had been so even, so soothing, so alluringly serene, began to shriek as thought it had been hit. The voice babbled, but no words came out. There was screaming everywhere in the room as the crew lurched about, thrashing in agony.

Captain Paetkau fell forward onto the console, her head smashing into its smooth surface. The surface shattered, and I saw blood as she held onto the console, trying not to fall to the deck. Her hands gripped it as though she were on a cliff's ledge, her fingers white and claw-like. She threw her head back and screamed. The scream was piercing, deafening. I stepped back in horror as she and her crew seemed to burn in a fire I couldn't see. It was the most frightening thing I had ever seen.

I stepped back, and turned toward the hatch where my men fought. They weren't in sight, but I could hear them. I ran toward them, but before I could reach the door, David stepped into view. His eyes seemed half desperate, half saddened. Without a word, he shut the hatch. I heard it lock from the outside. There was a blast against the door, and I knew he had blown the locking mechanism so it couldn't be opened from the outside at all. He was buying me more time.

Before I could use that time, likely bought with my men's lives, I felt a hand grip my shoulder painfully. My shoulder and collar bone started to crack from the force of it, and I spun around to face Captain Paetkau. Her eyes were wide, and she c****d her head slightly to one side, as though she couldn't keep it upright. Her mouth was wide open in a silent scream.

I swung, striking her across the face. She staggered back, blood pouring from her mouth, meeting the red flow from her scalp. She reached for me again, and I leveled my pistol, finding my target square in her center of mass. I squeezed the trigger, but someone slammed into me from my right, sending me to the deck. The pistol went off, but I missed and lost my grip on the weapon. I watched it slide across the deck.

A second body slammed into me, and then a third. Before I could roll away, I was under the crushing weight of half a dozen bridge crewmen. They all reached for my throat. My left arm was pinned against the deck. I swung with my right, striking someone. Two more crew took their place. They grabbed at my throat, squeezing. I gasped for air, and felt my eyes begin to bug out. My limbs gave out on me. With no oxygen to power my muscles, I was not much more than a rag doll. The world started to go a bright, blinding white. I could see stars in front of me, and I knew that I was dying.

Then suddenly, without warning, it stopped. The hands released me. I gasped for air loudly. As the crew that was piled on stood up, freeing me, I rolled away. I couldn't see much. I focused on the pistol a few meters away, and started to drag myself along the deck. Before I could reach it, sets of hands, I had no idea how many, grabbed me.

I was lifted into the air, held overhead, face up. My arms, with barely any strength in them, were stretched out to my sides as I floated on a sea of hands. I watched ceiling panels fly by as I was carried across the bridge. I struggled, but they held me tightly. I was too weak to fight them off. After a moment, I was dropped onto my knees on the deck. I fell back onto my lower legs, my head and shoulders drooped as I tried to recover my strength.

I felt a hand grab at my chin and lift it. I was looking into the wild eyes of the Captain. She leaned in, her face covered in dripping blood. She leaned in so close, I could smell the iron. Her face was twisted into a rage so completely opposite of what she had been only a minute ago. It was like she was a different person.

"You have severed the connection," she snarled. "You have destroyed the interface. The artificial intelligence cannot connect to the temporal core!"

The yeoman. He was the interface. In that one clear moment before I fired, I had realized that Captain Paetkau was not the center of the bridge. She gave the orders and the crew responded, but she was not the focal point of the experiment. It was the yeoman. It was something in the way he responded to her. Something had jumped out at me, then. The Edra used neural interface technology, but we obviously didn't have all of it, or understand it. Somewhere along the way, our engineers had made a change. They used a person in place of whatever Edra tech they didn't have.

"It's over, Captain," I gasped, my throat barely open, throbbing from the assault. "The experiment is over. It's all over."

"No!" she shrieked and shuddered. "The experiment must continue. I have my orders. The experiment will continue!"

"You can't," I replied, barely able to see straight. "Not without him." I pointed to the corpse on the deck behind her.

"You are wrong," she said. "I can initiate it from the core itself. I don't need him!"

I had to stop her. If she tried to open a wormhole without computer assistance, she would destroy the ship. She would do more damage than she already had.

I tried to stand up, but my legs still weren't working. The Captain reached into her pocket, and pulled out a familiar hand-pad. It was Commander Hall's. It was the map she had made of the fragmentation zones. She must have taken it from Senior Chief McGowan. She opened it, her wild eyes darting back and forth as she read it over.

I spoke as loudly as my weakened state would allow. "Even if you wanted to, the Edra will stop this. They have control of the command deck. They'll have the bridge soon."

She looked down on me, and I felt like an ant about to be stepped on. She regarded me curiously, her eyes examining me closely. She looked to the crew standing behind me.

"The suit," she said flatly.

"What?" I asked.

Before I could even think of escape, the hands of the crew were on me. They dragged me to my feet, and though I had some strength, I was still not strong enough to fight off the six or seven crewmen who tore at me. They detached my pack. They were careful to remove the hoses connecting it to the back of the suit's neck. I fought, but they held me tight, and I felt a rush of cool air as they removed the armor plating on my chest and unzipped the suit itself.

Very quickly, I was dropped back on the deck. My CEVA suit was off, gloves and boots and everything else, leaving me in the thin layer of sensor weave worn beneath it. As soon as I was down, the crew punched and kicked me, beating me until I was a pile of bones on the deck. They hadn't hit hard, but I was too weak to stand up to much of a pounding.

I watched helplessly as Captain Paetkau stripped off her uniform and put on the CEVA suit. Two crewmen reattached the pack, hooking up the air hoses, and power lines. Once her gloves, my gloves, were on, she turned back to me. She knelt down beside me and grabbed my chin painfully, turning it to face her.

"This experiment is too important to fail. I have my orders."

"No, Captain, listen to me," I said, almost begging her at this point. "I have new orders for you. You have to stop this!"

"I do not recognize your orders," she replied. "I think you were sent here by the enemy."

"What enemy?" I demanded.

She reached down and grabbed my dog tags, twisting them round and round until the chain started to choke me. The chain was strong enough to pull me up slightly. After a moment, it snapped and I fell to the deck. Still clenching my dog tags, she walked toward the rear of the bridge. The crew seemed to follow her every move. Nobody even bothered to hold me down.

At the rear of the bridge was a ladder leading upward. We were on the top deck of the ship. There was nothing above us. She was going for the emergency access hatch, but that was only used during construction, before the ship was pressurized. It was also used to enter ships that had already lost atmosphere in an emergency.

"No!" I croaked, trying to reach her before she vented the bridge.

The crew grabbed me and held me down, and all I could do was watch in horror as she checked the seal on the CEVA suit, activated the helmet, and opened the access panel to the hatch. She used the tethers on the belt to secure herself to the ladder, and then powered up the hatch lock controls. She grabbed hold of the lever controlling the hatch, and pulled down.

A red light began to flash, and a klaxon filled the bridge. A moment later, the hatch slid open, and the air on the bridge began to vent. My ears popped from the pressure change, and the howling was the only thing I could hear. People screamed. Anything not fastened to the deck was pulled across the bridge along with the escaping air.

I grabbed hold of the railing surrounding the Captain's platform, and it took every bit of strength to hold on as I was pulled toward the open hatch. Others flew through the air, pulled off their feet. A few grabbed hold of what they could, but most ended up tumbling toward the open hatch and the vacuum of space beyond it. They smashed into consoles, displays, and everything else along the way. They held on desperately, trying to dig their fingernails into bulkheads and displays.

I watched in horror as the Captain untethered herself, and careful to position herself directly under the open hatch, pushed up. The escaping air did the rest. As if she could fly, she shot upward and out of sight.

Moments later, one of the bridge crew was pulled through the hatch. Her screaming was cut off once she was out of sight. Then another body was pulled out, and another. Another crewman reached the hatch, his body facing it as he reached it. He was able to brace himself against the ceiling, his feet and arms keeping him from passing through. Then someone struck him, and another, and another. He screamed from the pain, and then was suddenly silent as the force of all that weight being pulled through the hatch broke his spine. His body bent gruesomely backward, and then passed out of sight.

More of the crew was sucked out, but the small hatch began to clog with the bodies of the crew, piled up like a stack of limbs. It was sickening, but their screams were beginning to fade as the air was sucked out of the room.

Suddenly there was an explosion, and the hatch leading to the command deck blew in. It flew past me, barely missing me as it struck the Captain's console, and the dead yeoman. Two Edra raced into the room, and were instantly pulled off their feet by the vacuum. As they struggled to take hold of something, more Edra raced into the room. They too were pulled off their feet.

A few seconds later, still more Edra entered. They managed to keep on their feet, moving with cautious steps, one foot at a time. Magnetic boots. Two of them made their way towards the hatch, holding onto anything they could for stability. As soon as they reached the hatch and its clogged pile of bodies, they tried closing the hatch.

It wouldn't close. There were too many bodies, flailing and shrieking, in the way. The Edra tried pulling them down. As they did, some were pulled out into space. One or two managed to take hold of the grating in the decks. After several excruciating seconds, the Edra cleared and closed the hatch. Everyone fell to the deck.

The emergency klaxon stopped, and there was an unsettling stillness. Nobody moved or spoke, as the ship automatically re-pressurized the bridge. As the air flowed back in, the sounds of heavy breathing were everywhere. My own breathing, deep gasps, seemed to echo throughout the bridge.

I saw a set of boots walk toward me, and the figure knelt down in front of me. I looked up, and saw Esaal, the Edra commander, looking down at me. He c****d his head to one side.

"Captain Jack Mallory," he said flatly, his fangs gleaming in the light. "You and I have several important matters to discuss. This time, perhaps you will listen."

I started to pull myself up off the deck. Esaal grabbed me by my shirt at the back of the neck, and hauled me to my feet with ease. He leaned me against the railing, which I held on to, desperate not to collapse. The room was spinning, but the environmental systems were automatically pumping in oxygen-rich air in order to help us to get over the hypoxia. I could feel my strength returning, but I certainly wasn't going to be putting up a fight.

He stared at me, watched me, waiting for me to regain some color in my face. As he did, David, Raj, and Kyle were brought onto the bridge. They were under guard, their hands fastened together on top of their heads. They were made to sit on the deck near the hatch. From behind them, Edra flooded onto the bridge, twenty at least. Some were wounded.

They moved throughout the bridge, sitting at the banks of consoles, working the controls. More moved to the rear, sorting out the few remaining bridge crew. Most were dead or soon would be.

"They need medical attention," I said to Esaal.

"Obviously," he responded. "However, the medical station on this ship, sickbay as you call it, is in the forward area of the ship. I have a medic, but he is not trained in human physiology."

"My men and I have some basic medical training," I replied.

"Captain Mallory, I am not likely to allow your men to move freely," he explained. "I have no interest in repeating our last encounter."

I shook my head. "I'm not apologizing, Edra."

"Esaal," he replied. "Edra is my species. You know this, but are referring to me by my species' name, likely in an attempt to upset me and force me to do something which you hope to take advantage of. Is this not so?"

"Whatever," I said, wiping the sweat and grime from my face. "What happens now?"

"Now we must discuss how we will stop the commander of this vessel from reaching the core chamber and initiating a temporal wormhole."

I waved him off. "The chamber doesn't have power," I said. "There isn't even emergency battery power left. She can't power up the core."

Esaal nodded. "I see. When you entered the core, you obviously noted the time frame."

"It was something like a hundred years or more. Everything is dead," I said, leaving out one important, personal detail.

"This is no longer so, Captain Mallory," Esaal replied. "I believe your actions here have changed the sequence of events as previously recorded."

"What?" I asked, and heard David say it at the same time.

"Like you, we are able to move between the time fragments," Esaal explained. "We arrived after the accident, and shortly before your troop ship jumped into the area."

"Get to the point," I prompted him.

"Unlike you, we understand temporal mechanics. We are able to accurately map out the fragmentation, and predict the shifts in its composition. The core was never fully activated, which is different than we originally monitored."

"I killed the person controlling it," I said, gesturing to the yeoman's body, now mangled under the blown hatch.

"Interesting," Esaal noted, looking to the yeoman's body. "We will have to confiscate the body for analysis. We will return it to your government, later. However, for now, we have more immediate concerns. Since you interrupted the temporal sequence, the accident, including the reactor overload and subsequent fires, has not occurred. The fragmentation is slowly resetting, moving outward from the core like a shock wave."

I stood up straight, and felt my heart thumping in my chest.

"That means the core is still operational!" David said it before I could.

Esaal turned to David, and then back to me.

"Do you permit him to speak on your behalf, Captain Mallory?" he asked.

I nodded. "He understands this mess better than I do."

Esaal c****d his head again, his red eyes blinking at me in confusion "Interesting. I have never met a commander of soldiers who was less skilled than his subordinates. Perhaps he should command," he said, looking to David.

When I did not answer, Esaal took out what looked like his version of a hand-pad. "You will enter any codes required for the core chamber. We cannot blast our way into the chamber itself, nor can we force the core housing open. The temporal core module is too sensitive, and would be dangerous if damaged."

"It's already dangerous," I said.

"Yes. As I have already explained, we understand temporal mechanics as well as their inherent instability. This is why temporal manipulation is now forbidden technology. Our own experiments, conducted briefly, proved that it was far too dangerous."

"Then you probably shouldn't have those things hanging around, huh?"

Esaal nodded. "I agree. In fact, the core your people found was on a ship which was lost while traveling to an isolated location where it could be dismantled safely. The ship was damaged during a wormhole jump, and all aboard were killed. Your people located the derelict craft before we could arrive. They stripped the vessel of a great deal of technology before fleeing. The human salvage crews likely had no understanding of what they were taking."

"It's all fuckin' fascinating," I said angrily. "Now let's focus on the problem, okay?"

"Yes, that is important." He held out the pad again. "The codes."

"f**k that," I said, pushing it away. "I'm not giving you the command codes to this ship."

Esaal turned to my men, and then spoke to his own soldiers. One of them held a weapon to Kyle's head. Esaal gestured to them.

"I could force you to reveal the codes," he said. "If this manner of persuasion proves ineffective, I am certain that my lack of human physiological knowledge will not be too much of an impediment to causing you great amounts of pain."

"Okay," I said with a sneer. "Torture me. Go for it, dickhead. See how long that takes before I finally give you what you want. Do you have that kind of time?"

"Likely not," he said evenly.

"Why don't you just kill the Captain while she's outside the ship?"

"Our issued equipment is not intended for operation in space," he said. "An oversight, it seems. As well, our ship would take too long for us to reach, detach from the hull and locate the Captain. We will have to intercept her in the chamber itself, since she will likely be accessing it from the airlock on deck 5. Based on the maximum speed of the average human in an EVA suit, this gives us approximately ten minutes to reach the core."

"I can hold out for longer than that, big guy," I assured him.

Esaal nodded, and looked back to his soldiers. The one with the display across his face, who had consulted last time we saw him, spoke back. They exchanged hisses and clicks for a moment.

"I suggest a temporary truce, Captain Mallory."

"A moment ago you didn't trust us," I reminded him. "Now you want our help?"

Esaal stayed quiet for a moment, before speaking. "Captain Mallory, your orders are to stop the initiation of the temporal core's full power test. My orders are the same. Despite the fact that you and your soldiers are responsible for the deaths of several of my subordinates, I am willing to cooperate with you. On my world, among soldiers, it is our most important law that the mission comes before all other considerations."

I nodded. "Us too," I said.

"Then perhaps we can work together, for as long as it takes to accomplish our common assignment."

"What happens after that?" I asked.

"My assignment is to either recover or destroy the core. After that," he began to say.

"I thought it was too dangerous to risk damaging," I said, interrupting him.

Esaal gestured to one of his people, who carried large equipment cases in each hand. "This one is not a soldier, but an engineer familiar with the temporal core technology. He is capable of disabling it so that it may be safely destroyed. While my first choice is not to do so under these conditions, I am prepared to authorize it if it will accomplish the mission. Once the core has been neutralized and destroyed, we will give you and the crew time to evacuate."

"You're going to destroy the ship, aren't you?" David asked.

Esaal looked back at David, obviously still bothered by the idea of a subordinate speaking to him.

"The Saturnus was built using Edra technology," he said to me, not David. "Your engineers are many centuries away from understanding what they stole from us. To allow you to keep it would be too great a risk. I would compare it to giving an infant a grenade. Therefore, we will destroy this vessel. Before that, I will see to the evacuation of all surviving personnel aboard the Saturnus. These are the terms I am offering, Captain Mallory."

I sighed, and nodded. "If that's what it takes, then I guess that's what we have to do."

Esaal nodded. "The mission comes first."

I looked around the bridge. c*****e, bodies, destruction. I looked at the yeoman, and the console in front of me, and then back at the hatch with its pile of dead and dying. I looked at my own men, bleeding and beaten.

"Yeah," I said. "The mission comes first."