That was why the
Upholder
could never go back to her own time. She could not spread that curse of forbidden knowledge to the others. It was Anton Koffield
’
s sworn duty to prevent any such thing from happening. He could not, dared not, try to make contact with any of the players in the drama.
And what of the uptime relief ship? Why hadn
’
t she shown up yet? Had the one courier drone sent out on the uptime side of the timeshaft failed to get through? But it was clear that at least one of the couriers sent through the downtime side had made it. A time-sealed message should have been put in storage for seventy-nine years to let the uptime side know.
Unless.
Unless, somewhere in the seventy-nine years that stood between the downtime and uptime ends of the assault, they had learned something. Learned the answer to what the intruders were, and why they had come. Or learned there was no reason to relieve the
Upholder,
no purpose to be served by the effort of sending a ship. Maybe the people on the uptime side already knew all would be well—-or already knew that disaster of some sort was foredoomed, that any attempt at rescue or relief would fail, and that there was no sense wasting more lives and treasure.
Or else there
was
no Chronologic Patrol anymore, on the upside of the timeshaft. Eight decades had passed, long enough time for things to change, to evolve or collapse.
Or else—
Hell and damnation! He stood up and began to pace the length of his cabin—something he would never allow his crew to see him doing. There was no end to the
or-elses,
the
what-ifs.
He could speculate until the end of time itself and it would do him no good.
Time itself was the problem. He was caught up in the tangled complexities needed to prevent paradoxes. That irony was far from lost on him.
His ship was lost in the fog of time, hemmed in by the hidden past and the unknowable future. He and his ship and her crew were marooned on a tiny island of present and known events, but cut off from all other knowledge by the endless expanse of the ocean of years.
He might as well head back up to the bridge and see if anything had happened. It was pointless, of course. The bridge crew would have summoned him if anything had. But there were limits to how long he could stay in that cabin. Besides, if he were on the bridge when things happened, he would know about them that little bit sooner.
He stepped out of his cabin and headed toward the bridge, his mind still chasing the problem around and around. Even in the midst of so much uncertainty, there were things of which he was absolutely positive. He had
no logical or factual basis for the knowledge, but still it
was there, solid and hard. He was utterly sure that, when
the time to decide finally came, he would know no more
than he did right now.
And he knew, deep in his heart, deep in his bones, that
no uptime relief ship would come.
The
Upholder
was on her own.
Of that there was not the slightest doubt at all.
Time ground down on them.
Nothing changed but the time left until the convoy ships would commit to final approach. There was no further word from the downtime relief ship, and no sign whatsoever of an uptime relief ship.
Nor was there any sign of the intruders, or any clue as to who or what they might be. Koffield checked over every record of events since the first intruder alert and studied all the tracks and contacts and reports and false alarms from detection and comm as they came in. But it did no good, told him nothing he did not already know. There was no brilliant, long-overlooked answer to this problem, no sudden insight.
Koffield made sure to be on the bridge well before final-approach commitment for the first of the convoy ships. Three hours before the last moment when he could order an abort, he was in the captain
’
s chair, hunched over its repeater displays, monitoring the situation.
He had to choose, but none of his possible choices was good. Again and again, the conundrum wheeled through his mind. If he ordered the convoy to hold on this side of the wormhole, he would likely be causing further casualties and suffering, in the Glister system. If he let the ships through before the downtime patrol ship signaled that she was ready on station and ready to receive clearance codes, there was at least some danger that a nervous downtime ship would fire on the convoy. And even if he lost his nerve and tried to make unauthorized communications with convoy or patrol ship, it was all but certain the other ships would refuse the contact anyway.
Koffield knew perfectly well that the act of not deciding was a decision in and of itself. With every second that passed, the convoy ships got deeper into the worm-hole gravity well. With every moment that passed, more thrust would be required for the ships to break free, and there would be less time to apply that thrust. The maneuver that was needed to abort from final approach would grow more violent and difficult with every moment that passed. In the last few moments before final-approach commitment, any potential abort maneuver would be so violent that it would likely wreck any ship that tried it.
With every passing moment, the simple fact that he had not yet ordered the convoy to bail out put more pressure on him to let them pass. If he ordered a bailout too late, he would be issuing death sentences for all aboard the convoy, and therefore might as well let them through to try their luck on the other side. There would come a moment when he would have decided by default, by
not
deciding.
But Captain Anton Koffield did not like the idea of letting things slide, of letting things drift, or allowing decisions to make themselves. He came out of his reverie and looked about him, at the bridge crew, tending to the stations and monitoring the incoming ships, at the silent comm systems, at the
Upholder
herself. They had all done their jobs. Now it was time for him to do his. He had to decide—and deciding was not going to be that hard. He would make his choice—and then hope.
He allowed himself one last scan of the repeater displays, and then spoke.
“
Comm, the five incoming ships have full and final clearance to enter the timeshaft wormhole. Transmit the appropriate signals. Execute and acknowledge.
”
“
Aye sir,
”
the comm officer replied.
“
Clearances transmitted. Standing by for mirror replies.
”
There was a brief pause as the comm officer watched his screens.
“
Mirror replies received.
”
“
Very well,
”
Koffield replied, and leaned back just a trifle in the captain
’
s chair. That was that. He had decided, as best he could, based on the information he had, and acted on his decision. He could do no better, and no more.
No more except wait, and watch.
The last hours of the convoy
’
s approach passed without incident. Koffield remained on the bridge more out of a sense of duty than out of need. But endlessly watching nothing at all happen seemed a waste of valuable time. Koffield occupied himself with calling up his own personal work on his main repeater display. He caught up on the endless routine items that had gotten stacked up and shoved to one side since the intruders
’
attack: repair reports, inventory updates, duty roster changes, and the like. It felt good to work through the routine, normal stuff, to pretend, if only for a little while, that everything was the way it was supposed to be.
Koffield looked up from his work after a time and wondered, not for the first time, if the crew was pretending at normality as hard as he was. More than likely they were. They were not fools. They had, no doubt, worked out the logic of the situation, just as he had. Some of them, most of them, maybe even all of them, knew they were never going home, that the only things now left to them were duty and, if possible, survival. The Chronologic Patrol would take care of them—the CP always took care of its own— but even if the CP was generous beyond all imagination, it could not give them back their homes and families. And the crew knew that.
What scenes had played out, away from his view? Bull sessions in the mess compartment? Heated arguments in the bunk rooms? What had his officers wisely kept from his attention, knowing he would be forced to obey regulations and mete out punishments that could do no good to anyone out here? Koffield knew there could be no justice, no logic, no merit in punishing the crew for feeling the same terror he felt himself, terror that was entirely justified and rational. So long as the fear was kept in check, and his people did their duty, he would gladly turn a blind eye to trivia and trust his officers to bring him word only of things he truly needed to know.
Just let them all get through this. Let everything stay on an even keel until the convoy was through, and then—
“
Captain, I
’
m getting something strange on long-range detectors,
”
Sentar, the detection officer, called out.
“
What is it?
”
Koffield demanded, snapping out of his reverie.
“
It looks like a fast-moving gamma-ray source, real close in, but that doesn
’
t make any sense.
”
And Koffield knew. There was no doubt at all in his mind. He had no proof, no evidence at all, but still he was certain, unshakably so.
“
Moving toward what?
”
he asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.
“
Still getting a vector—it
’
s—it
’
s headed straight for the wormhole.
”
Of course. Where else would it be going?
“
Look for others,
”
he said wearily.
“
There will be two others, probably coming in on widely dispersed vectors, driving for the wormhole.
”
Of course they would come back. And of course they would come back now.
The convoy. Whatever happened next, those ships had to get clear.
“
Communications! Flash alert to all convoy ships—abort, abort, abort. Cancel final-approach clearance. Break off approach and take up parking orbits. Send that in clear over all voice and data channels.
”
“
Two more gamma-ray sources incoming!
”
the detection officer shouted.
“
Correction—three, four, five,
six
total sources incoming. All decelerating at extremely high rates, bearing in toward the wormhole from widely scattered vectors. All match profiles of the intruder ships that killed the
Standfast.”
Six
of them. The original three survivors must have had some way of building copies of themselves, or maybe each of the original intruders had been a docked pair of duplicate ships that was now split up. Or else three of the incoming intruders were some sort of decoy—or else there was some other explanation that Koffield was missing.
Whatever it was didn
’
t matter. What mattered was that six intruder ships were there, and heading for the wormhole, and they could not be allowed to break through into the past, no matter what the cost.
“
Battle alert,
”
Koffield said, his voice flat and cold.
“
All personnel to battle stations. Weapons, what are our present options for attack on the intruders?
”
Amerstad was working the weapons panel.
“
None, sir,
”
she said, an apology in her voice, if not in her words.
“
They
’
re too far out of range and moving too fast for us to hit. Even if our weapons systems were fully operational, we wouldn
’
t be able to hit them.
”
“
Will we have a shot if they decelerate to more or less normal velocity closer in to the wormhole?
”
“
Possibly,
”
said Amerstad, studying her displays as she spoke.
“
We
might
be able to get a targeting solution with the laser cannon. But I doubt we
’
d be able to get off any sort of shot at all with the railgun. Even if we could, we
’
d have friendly-fire problems with the convoy ships.
”
“
Can you give me meaningful odds on our chances of destroying some or all of the intruders?
”
“
Very roughly, fifty-fifty odds we can score a hit on one of them. Maybe one in ten that we could score hits on multiple targets. Odds on hitting and destroying all of them—I
’
m sorry, sir. Far less than one percent. Maybe one chance in ten thousand we could do it. Maybe a lot worse than that.
”
Koffield nodded to himself. Those were the answers he had expected. And those answers told him something else he had already known, deep in his soul. Defeat was all that was left to them. A defeat so vast, so complete, that it was terrifying to do so much as contemplate it. A defeat that would trade victory over the intruders for incalculably greater losses.