The Madman's Clock. Aaron Ph.D. Dov
with us, strapped to our bodies. Marines didn't give up their rifles. Ever.
In addition to our own personal combat gear, blast armor, power packs, medical kit, rations and water, a dozen tools that did everything we might need, and of course our plasma rifles, we each had a duffel bag full of extra goodies. Raj was carrying enough remotely detonated explosives to cut a battleship in two, let alone the Saturnus, which was maybe a quarter the size. Raj took a particular joy in blowing things up. It wasn't the technical challenge that excited him, but the idea that he could take all of the power inherent in large hardware, and with the push of a button, reduce it to wreckage and rubble.
David was carrying all sorts of engineering diagnostic equipment, handed to him by a nervous physicist who insisted that we take all sorts of readings before we shut the Saturnus down. David could probably take control of the ship and fly it home, and do it all from a closet, considering the sorts of gear he was carrying. He also carried a small, sealed water cooler that sloshed as he carried it. We always brought it along for needle-jumper insertions. We should have brought two of them, but we couldn't find a second cooler in the rush.
I was carrying a bag full of emergency beacons, meter long tubes on retractable tripod legs which put out a signal powerful enough to be detected in the next star system. I also had a small tank with enough trizene gas to put the entire crew to sleep for a year, and the gear to hook it into the Saturnus' environmental system. I also carried a specially-issued Captain's Pad, a small hand-pad usually issued exclusively to ship captains. I could do anything to that ship, once I interfaced it with the Saturnus' system. I could even blow the engines, or direct it to fly into a star, if it came to it.
Kyle had his favorite toy, an autonomous gun drone. David had once commented that Kyle's gun drone, the heaviest that could be carried by a man in the field, could have held back Xerxes' legions at Thermopylae. That's probably why David called the drone 'Leo' after Leonidas, the Spartan king who held back Xerxes' millions.
Kyle, ever the minimalist, simply shrugged and said 'whatever, man. It kills shit."
As we strapped ourselves in, David read through his hand-pad.
"Anything interesting, so far?" I asked.
He nodded. "Yeah. Apparently, the scientists who developed this thing are worried about something called Temporal Psychosis. Their medical people think it might happen if the wormhole they open isn't stable enough. Of course, that's pretty much what happened, so," his voice trailed off.
"So the Saturnus' crew is gonna be all crazy?" Kyle asked.
David nodded. "I don't know psychology, but yeah, possibly. The file here says we need to watch each other for signs of it."
"Like talking to people who aren't there?" Kyle said with a smirk. "Stuff like that?"
David shrugged. "It says here they think early signs might be having a distracted look, trouble focusing. On the other hand, being overly focused might also be a sign." He read through the file, holding the hand-pad closer, as he did when he was fully concentrated on something. "After that, you might see a slight trembling in the fingers, or uneven pupil dilation."
"Like from a stroke, or head trauma?" Raj piped up.
David shrugged again. "I guess so. This is all theory. Whoever wrote this file was guessing, since we have never played with this sort of tech before."
"Great," Kyle muttered. "Now all we have to do is start staring everyone in the eye, looking at their fingers, and asking them if they're listening. Cool. That should work."
I waved him off. "Look, we'll figure it out when we get there. We'll just keep our eyes open. Let's focus on the rest of the briefing materials, and see if we can learn something that isn't a theory."
"Hey, Jack," Kyle said, smirking at me. "When you snap, and go all silly and shit, I'll call your mom."
Just then, the pilot of the tug assigned to move our needle-jumper spoke up, coming in over the speakers. "Alright gentlemen, you're ready to go. We will be meeting up with our launch ship, the Nautilus, in twenty minutes. Please hit your go-buttons once the airlock is sealed and you're all strapped in. Enjoy your flight, and thanks for flying Scare Air."
I smirked at the in-joke. There was nothing quite like inserting into a combat situation using a needle-jumper. Using a sharp object on the enemy was great, but who wanted to be the sharp object?
"Anything else," I asked, shaking my head, "before we get this mission off the ground?"
"Yeah man!" Kyle called out, raising his hand as much as the seat straps would allow.
"What is it?"
"Your sister is totally hot!" he yelled.
Everyone laughed. Hearing everyone's laughter, including my own, over the rumble of the engines, helped settle my nerves just a bit. Everyone was smiling. The stress of the last three weeks, the debriefings, the doubts, the odd looks, all of it went away. It was our small ritual, our way of clearing the air and leaving behind all of the unimportant things. As bizarre as this mission sounded and felt, this was just another op. Get in, do our jobs, and get out. It's what we did, and we were very good at it.
It was time to put our game faces on.
CHAPTER 3
One day later, most of it spent reviewing intelligence briefings or sleeping, we were in position for our jump. During the long flight, we took the time to put on our CEVA suits. The Combat Extra-Vehicular Activity suits were the latest and greatest kit around. They weren't the bulky beasts that Fleet used to issue. Those things always reminded me of the sort of winter clothing you wrapped a little kid in; bulky and hard to move in. The CEVAs were different. They were form-fitting, made of interlocking plates of a metallic material I couldn't spell, let alone pronounce. They allowed for almost as much range of motion as the thin sensor weave we wore underneath. They could take a relatively powerful blast without breaching, and they had hours of air built into the backpack. Best of all, they didn't have a separate helmet. Instead, with the press of a button, it emerged from the back of the neck and swept over the head like a hood, closing a transparent plate over the face.
As the first jump ended, the rattling in the deck plates and in my teeth finally subsided, and our mother-ship, the Nautilus, came through the wormhole. The lights around us flickered back to life, slowly, unevenly. The deep hum subsided, and I loosened my grip on the straps holding me into my cushioned seat. Kyle, sitting to my left, was still gripping his straps fiercely, with his eyes shut tight. He was probably focusing on not puking, something he often did after jumps.
I closed my eyes until the lights in the cabin were all fully lit. The flashing sometimes nauseated me, especially after a jump. The scene around me seemed to shift slightly, left then right, before setting itself straight and steady. I popped my helmet, and as it retracted behind my head I took in a slow, deep breath. The air was very cool, pumped into the cabin that way purposely to help keep passengers clear-headed. My hands stung from the straps, their marks dug deep into my palms. If not for the tough skin of the CEVA's gloves, I might have been cut. I flexed my fingers, working out the soreness in the muscles.
The jumps only took a few seconds, but the buildup took several minutes of ever-increasing rumbling. A hundred different noises rattled the ship, and being in a needle-jumper, docked but not part of its mother-ship, we felt it all the more. It was like being a bull rider, with all of the bull's energy focused on that single-handed grip.
"Launch in three minutes," the voice from the Nautilus control center echoed in the cabin.
"Okay everyone, check your gear," I growled through the fading nausea.
Regulations included a long list of checks that were supposed to be made before a needle-jumper was launched from its mother-ship. There were strict sets of confirmations to be made, dictated by a list handed to each passenger