“By the Great Father!” one swore. “Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Yes,” Chir replied flatly. He was doing a pretty good job of putting the pain out of his mind and he didn’t want to talk about it.
“A Blackfur travelling with a lizard,” the other observed. “Your friend here didn’t tell us it was you.”
“This Blackfur will be nameless for this conversation,” said Chir, “and is officially working for the existing government.”
The younger of the two grew slightly more alarmed, but was instantly calmed by a gesture from his senior. “No need for that,” said the latter, “this Blackfur is all business. He has a reputation that is, I think, more reliable than most. He’s probably working for the government because they can pay him, but my guess is he wants to make a deal. Weren’t planning on getting your leg blown off?”
“It wasn’t a planned amputation,” Chir replied with a grimace. “And if I wanted to escape, I would have done so.”
“You’re here for the array,” said the senior. “We know all about your plans. You’re powering up the arrays so the government can continue to expand their power.”
“I was also hoping to prevent another purge,” said Chir. “Clan Stoneback have gotten more ruthless as supplies are running out, and it won’t take much to trigger another mass-killing.”
“What? How is the Clan of Females letting that happen?” asked the younger of the pair. He had forgotten he was supposed to be pointing his gun at the V’Straki, and was now staring at Chir in open-mouthed horror. “Isn’t Stoneback supposed to be on a leash?”
“That is less true than it once was,” said Chir. Stoneback had always considered themselves the protectors of the Clan of Females, and of Gao in general, and now they were showing they would do anything to bring everything back to stability. The females held a strong voice in times of peace and prosperity, but now that they were faced with an existential crisis it was all managed by Stoneback. “Killing an entire platoon around these parts was like waving an enemy banner.”
“You’ve got some way to fix that?” the senior demanded. Clearly the possibility that they’d all get wiped off the map had not been communicated to the locals involved in the plan.
“Not one you’re going to like,” said Chir, “and it isn’t a certainty either. I’ll need some people to blame the ambush on and serve up to Stoneback. Hopefully they’ll leave it at that.”
“Let me get this straight,” the senior said, “you want us to hand over members of our group to be executed for treason, and you can’t even say it’ll help?”
“This was not our mistake to fix,” Xayn interjected with a growl.
“We could hold the two of them hostage!” the younger suggested, leaving the senior to roll his eyes.
“Hostage, eh? Just how much value do you think this Blackfur has to their side? Knowing his history, I bet those Stoneback’ers can barely stomach being around him,” the senior replied, and looked to Chir for confirmation. “That so?”
“I don’t think they’d have any issue sleeping if we died,” he said, significantly downplaying his role. Everybody in his camp had guessed his real identity by now, although they all acted otherwise. They found him far too useful to mete out justice, and that was unlikely to change while they struggled to keep the upper hand. “At worst it’d be an inconvenience.”
“Doesn’t please me much to disappoint them, but I think we’re going to have to make a deal,” said the senior. “Let’s hear your plan, then.”
“You think I’m going to explain that in the middle of a field?” Chir asked in consternation. “I just had my leg blown off, so how about we make the amputee comfortable before he saves you all from yourselves?”
They could only grumble so much because it was clear he was right. They might not have been happy to let him and his companion into their hideout, nor to make him comfortable, but the senior had quickly persuaded the rest to avoid making a fuss. Only when his modest demands had been met did Chir explain his idea.
The first was to show them a way to tap into the communications arrays, while simultaneously activating it for government use. “This,” he said, “is just about the only thing they can use to talk to each other, with the exception of couriers. You can learn a lot if you can listen in.”
“The signal is encrypted,” one of the separatists noted. “It’s useless even if we can get the transmission!”
This was one of the few times that Chir wished Askit was still around. The Corti Hacker seemed to be able to circumvent just about every security protocol anyone could come up with. Chir could only achieve a fraction of that, but he could also ensure he remained useful to both sides. “I can organise the passcodes to be relayed at regular intervals.”
“What about preventing a purge?” the senior separatist reminded him. “Access to the transmissions would be nice, but it won’t help if we’re all too dead to do anything with them.”
“I’m more interested in why he’s helping us at all,” said another.
Chir appreciated the sentiment—given that he was working for the oppressors, they’d be mad to think he was aiding them out of the goodness of his heart—and he answered with a question. “If this is a government run by Stoneback, don’t you all think that they’ve grown far too strong? Their founding mission is to protect the females, but they have always had other clans to assist with actual governance. There exists no counterbalance to their influence now that Highmountain, Straightshield and Whitecrest are effectively destroyed.”
“Them and just about every other clan,” muttered another, “but if it wasn’t Stoneback, it’d have been another. There’s been a lot of talk about whether we even need clans in this era. You don’t see too many of them in the rest of the galaxy.”
“The rest of the galaxy is not Gao,” Chir replied. “The clan structure is far from perfect, but that is no reason to completely destroy something that helped raise our species to the stars.”
“My people also had such a society,” Xayn interjected, surprising everyone—Chir included. “We were assigned to a general group when we were young, after our natural tendencies were measured. This assignment was strictly enforced, and the warriors naturally dominated during the war. It was accepted that this focus was a strength, but my father sometimes wondered otherwise. I am an engineer, and would not have been given combat training during the war. Things changed for the better when we stopped forcing our people to only pursue one fate, even if we were wiped out shortly afterwards.”
“We do not restrict our people from seeking to join different clans,” said Chir, somewhat annoyed at the argument. Xayn was supposed to be on his side, and this really wasn’t helping.
“Once they join, can they leave?” Xayn asked, already knowing the answer. “To whom are they loyal? Your world or their clan? To those of you who remain clanless—is that your wish? I hear that it is not.”
“Of course not!” said one of the separatists. “Becoming a member of a Clan carries many responsibilities, but it also comes with benefits! A male in a Clan has many more options in life, and a greater chance to gain the favour of a female!”
“Then if everyone wants to be in a clan, why are there so few?” Xayn asked. “Why aren’t there enough clans to accept everyone?”
“You can’t just make a clan!” replied the same separatist, but did not seem confident in the statement.
I did, thought Chir as he considered past, although it had never been an official group. He had managed to convince clanless males—and a handful of females—that the galaxy was changing and that he could show them a new way going forward. He’d mostly wanted to stick it to the existing clans and show them they weren’t as special as they thought, but his fledgling group had disintegrated as soon as the Hierarchy attacked. Building the group had been simple, however, and had so few obstacles that it was—now that Xayn pointed it out—inconceivable that there were so few.
It had to be outside influence. Yet another case of the Hierarchy manipulating things to their own benefit.
“You can,” he said. “There’s nothing stopping anyone from doing it, and if you want it to be official then you just need to be recognised by at least three other Clans.”
Not that Chir had ever sought that kind of recognition for his own clan. He’d always intended for force the issue with threats, once he was well established, but he’d never got the chance. “This does mean there’s another path to victory.”
“You want to turn the separatists into their own clan?” inferred the most senior of the separatists. He had been sitting quietly for some time, stroking his chin while lost in thought. “A legal path to victory.”
“That’s right,” said Chir, “except I intend to turn you into several clans. When the Mother-Supreme calls for a vote, there are certain considerations as to how much weight each clan’s vote can hold. Officially you will be different clans, but in practice you will act as a single voting bloc. We’re getting ahead of ourselves, though, since you first need to survive.”
“And for that we need four of you to blame for the attack,” said Xayn, stepping in to explain. “You will be the heroes who save everyone, even if nobody will remember your sacrifice.”
“Wonderful speech,” Chir remarked with a groan, and remained quiet while the separatists argued about who to sacrifice and whether they should be following this argument at all. “I didn’t know you felt that way about the clans.”
Xayn nodded slowly. “This is not my world. You are not my people. Yet anyone can see that there are few benefits when one thoughtlessly sticks to the existing way of doing things. I thought you could use an outside perspective.”
As someone who prided himself on thinking strategically, Chir felt indirectly chastised by this comment. A good strategist was always ready to throw aside the old plan when it would no longer work, since doing otherwise would court disaster. Time did not permit detailed plans, but once the war was over they could start the reform. “Well… let’s hope we can make use of it.”
++++
++++
Dastasji, Agwar system’s outer asteroid field
Adrian Saunders
After the initial barrage, it had been a long time since the last explosion had rocked local space. These days it was a more regular event, scheduled down to the minute, and life had become strangely routine. Adrian would wake up in the morning, run through the empty corridors for some light exercise, and then enjoy some home-grown breakfast. Then he would check on the latest reports about the defensive grid and the final touches being made on the fake battleship.
It was, for the most part, a fully functioning vessel, although it lacked conveniences like a living areas, control interfaces or life support. Adding those would have greatly increased the build-time, and the ship wasn’t intended to be used that way. It was a distraction in case the enemy managed to break through, and a way to fake his own death for these invaders. Although it sounded conceited, he still believed they were coming for him, and that they wouldn’t stop until he was dead. It meant that there was no point in leaving Agwar, because they would hound him until they finally won.
“How are we looking this morning?” he asked Trix after his morning routine. He took a sip of his hot drink that tasted somewhat like coffee and waited for her response.
“Two more weapons platforms were completed on schedule while you slept,” she replied, indicating their presence and firing arcs on the main display. “We now have at least three separate points of attack on any location between Agwar and the debris ring.
The moon had been shattered by the destruction of the planet, and continued to break apart. Most of the main chunks clung to each other, but a ring was slowly being created as it fell to pieces. It was an easy place to collect materials for the construction effort, and an even better place to hide the weapons platforms. Between the concealed network of zheron cannons and the steadily expanding minefield, Agwar was becoming the most heavily defended place in the galaxy.
“How close are we to getting that to five?” he asked. That was his goal, after all; a completely obscene level of destructive power that turned the remains of Agwar into a fortress.
Adrian knew the enemy would eventually break through, and based on their earlier efforts they would come in force. They would need to burn a fleet to reach the battleship at the heart of it all, and when it exploded there would be nothing to suggest their victory was anything but complete. Adrian had no intention of being anywhere near that final battle, and had withdrawn the Dastasji to the outer system months ago. If all that wasn’t enough to convince them he was making a famous last stand, then he really had to admit defeat.
“We should be there within another dozen sleep-cycles,” Trix replied. “Unless something happens you can spend today in your usual routine.”
“Great,” he replied without enthusiasm. Most of the actual work was carried out by a swarm of robots centrally controlled by Trix. The little work left over was menial and was easily accomplished with the slightest effort. At first, he’d put his vast supply of free time to teach himself things, then he’d started to invent a range of extremely dangerous new weapons using technology he found around the ship, and finally he’d moved on to inventing reckless activities like go-karting down the corridors. The others had grown equally bored and had eventually overcome their reluctance to enter stasis and had done so, leaving Adrian as the only organic being to remain awake. He would have liked to have joined them, but he needed to keep Trix company and stay up-to-date in case there was some kind of emergency. “Keep me posted, I guess.”
“Adrian,” she called out as he went to leave.
“Don’t worry,” he reassured her, “I’ll just be down on the Flight Deck doing the normal checks on the stasis chambers.”
“Not that,” she said. “Something happened. We just registered a new contact.”
Without further hesitation, she put it on the main display. It was definitely something, though further information was lacking. As far as the sensors were concerned it was empty space, but the quantum field was more regular than the surroundings and it was mobile. It would have been undetectable if local space was less damaged, or if the Dastasji hadn’t spent the last year monitoring the quantum field.
“That’s nearly invisible,” said Adrian. “Way better than any other cloaking technology we’ve seen. What’s its bearing?”
“Agwar,” said Trix, “although it seems to be getting there relatively slowly. If there’s an intelligence behind it, I’d say it was trying to slip past your defences.”
“Do we know where it came from?” Adrian asked.
“I would have detected a wormhole or a warp field,” Trix replied. “They’re not going to disguise a warp transit field even if they can pretend to be empty space. As for a wormhole… well, you know what those look like.”
“Pretty hard to miss,” Adrian agreed. “Then what… this thing just floated into the system? Why are we only seeing it now?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, “but I doubt it’s just been drifting along until now. I would have seen it. What would you like to do? I can probably kill it pretty easily.”
“Not a good idea to annihilate something without being sure it’s the enemy,” said Adrian. “An even worse idea to destroy the enemy without learning anything first. You can’t tell me that stealth tech couldn’t help us.”
“It would transform war as we know it,” Trix replied. “The galaxy would become a much scarier place. Worse than that: the anomaly isn’t just a façade, it’s actually making space more stable around it.”
Adrian recoiled. “Are you serious? Lead with that shit! If that were me, I’d be building an area big enough to make a wormhole. Then I would use it.”
“This thing is hardly big enough for that,” she objected.
“This thing got here and you only just noticed it,” he retorted. “Maybe there are more. Maybe it can build a bigger field. Maybe it’s just running careful and quiet before blasting out a field big enough to use. Send the cannons the coordinates and get them tracking it.”
“We’re killing it then?” she asked.
“Probably. We’ll send out a broadcast from the battleship first, wide spread like we don’t know exactly where they are. Give them some chance to talk if they feel like it,” he replied. “Then we make a decision either way. Tell them we know they’re out there and what they’re doing.”
“You want them to think we’re lying?” she asked in surprise. “If you don’t want them to know we know, why are you making the broadcast in the first place?”
“Because right now they’d be sticking to a plan,” he said. “If they’re peaceful they might decide to respond. If they’re not they’ll do something else. We get an answer no matter what they do.”
Going up an unknown enemy with no information was about the dumbest idea Adrian could imagine. How many situations had he survived because the enemy thought he was too weak or stupid to win? They always thought they were untouchable, and even with the protection of the defense grid and the Dastasji it was still important to avoid falling into the same trap—it was easy to think you were safe until you were suddenly proven wrong.
“Cannons are tracking it,” Trix reported, “and the message is out there. Now we wait and see.”
They didn’t need to wait for long; the target, whatever it was, made its move and instantly confirmed Adrian’s fears. With their element of surprise ruined they came to a halt, and the region of stable space was expanded. And there wasn’t just one of them.
“Fire!” he commanded. “Fire now! Target new locations and keep firing based on proximity to Agwar, or if anyone looks like they’re opening a wormhole.”
“Sending targeting parameters,” Trix reported. “We’re getting confirmations of hits on the inner region, but I think we’re going to lose control of the outer region. A wormhole is already spinning up… make that two wormholes.”
There had been upwards of a hundred different objects on approach to Agwar—far more than he’d been able to deal with at such a variety of ranges—and most of them had been wiped off the tracking grid. A handful remained, beyond the limits of the defensive grid, and powered up their connection back to their owners. Trix had been overconfident in her ability to detect enemy vessels, and now they were paying the price.
“More contacts have been detected,” she reported. “This time from the wormholes. We’ve seen their kind before.”
She displayed the diamond-shaped vessels slowly emerging from the wormholes and falling into formation. They weren’t the same as the original vessel guided by the A.I, but there were a lot of similarities. Adrian guessed that they’d changed their plans on realizing there was a problem with the destination, but had kept on testing in case of a change. It had also lulled him into a false sense of safety, while their stealth ships had crept in and surrounded the planet.
“Looks like there’s a lot of them,” he observed as their numbers continued to increase. “What are they waiting for?”
“They’re sending a broadcast,” Trix replied, putting it on screen. The creature presented was, like the previous time, some kind of bird person.
“I am High Conqueror Arhtach! Feel honoured, Adrian Saunders,” it said, “for you have been designated as a personal enemy of the God Emperor and will be destroyed by his will like the trash you are. We are the third fleet to be assembled, more powerful than the previous two combined, and we shall not fail! Once we have dealt with you, your miserable galaxy will be next!”
Adrian stared at the message incredulously. “Jesus Christ… is this guy some kind of video game villain? And when did I beat two of their fleets?”
“I think they’re referring to the collapsing wormholes,” Trix replied. “It seems this has already cost them a lot. It’s a pity they don’t seem like the peaceful kind.”
“They’re just as fanatical as that crazy A.I,” he said. “There was never a chance this was going to end peacefully. It’d be nice to know what I’d done to piss off their God Emperor, even if I don’t think he’d take an apology.”
“Right now you’re not giving an apology,” Trix informed him. “The battleship has responded with one of the many recordings you had uploaded, and you are currently telling the High Conqueror that he can eat an entire bag of genitals while making inappropriate gestures.”
Adrian groaned inwardly—many of the recordings had just been placeholders he’d never gotten around to replacing, even with his ample free time. Any chance at peace was squashed forever. “Well… fuck. Let’s just never tell anyone about that. What are they doing?”
“I believe the High Conqueror has entered some form of frothing rage,” said Trix, “and the fleet is breaking from formation. They’re headed for the grid! Nothing to do now but watch.”
Adrian knew she was right, and sat down to watch the exchange. Tense though it was, there was little excitement to be found in blips on a screen disappearing. The enemy fleet was readily able to target and destroy the few cannons responsible for annihilating the stealth fleet. Bold moves by the battleship lured them in, only to vanish in nuclear fire as the mines latched on.
Drawing to a sudden halt as their advance line disappeared, the rearguard pivoted under sudden assault by the remaining defensive cannons and the main guns of the battleship itself. The sudden and cycling barrage on each ship was enough to confuse them in a moment of weakness, and the mines did the rest. The entire battle lasted little more than ten minutes.
“Well,” said Adrian, “that was a bit anti-climactic.”
“You’re only saying that because you’d normally be directly involved in all of that instead of watching it from a safe distance,” Trix replied. “Things seem a lot more exciting when you’re trying to avoid getting your arse blown.”
“Blown off,” Adrian corrected, “and I guess you’re right. We put a lot of effort into having a plan and I guess it’s working so far. Those guys had a real bad day, and I’m here sipping something that wishes it was coffee. Since we can’t shut down those wormholes without giving away our position I guess we need to wait for the next wave. I wonder if each group will move incrementally faster than the last.”
“Unlikely,” Trix replied, “since they all seemed to be of identical construction. I pulled a lot of useful data about their weaknesses though, so at least we have something extra going into the next battle. We even have most of the primary cannon group still functioning.”
“This must be the first time they’ve come up against such a small enemy with so much fight,” said Adrian. “They just went in with basically no strategy at all, like they didn’t consider us a threat. That won’t happen again.”
“Strategically speaking, they’d be stupid not to adjust their tactics based on what their stealth ships have been sending them,” Trix agreed. “They’ve got incredibly advanced artificial intelligences, so I don’t think that’s going to happen. Next time they’ll expect the cannons, and they’ll account for the minefield as well, even if they don’t know all the details.”
Adrian barely had time to refill his mug before the next wave emerged from the wormholes spewing further threats and fanatical nonsense, only to be answered by his best impression of a Rick-Roll. Adrian did not have a voice for singing, and a root vegetable did not make for a convincing microphone, but he still managed to power out two minutes of pure nonsense.
“God, I feel like the bad guy here,” he remarked as the cringeworthy performance came to an end. “At least they seem a little confused, so that’s good.”
“They’re probably wondering why you’ve just professed your love to them,” said Trix. “They do seem rather upset, like you’re not taking this seriously.”
Adrian sipped his almost-coffee without comment.
“They are not the only ones who would prefer you take this more seriously!” Trix snapped. “One of their Artificial Intelligences was nearly able to kill you at least three times. An entire fleet of those things isn’t likely to use the same tactics more than—”
She stopped short as they proved her wrong. The second wave moved in faster than the first, targeting cannons more quickly and testing the minefield. There was no ingenuity to it, no grand plan other than the use of brute force. They were not meeting Adrian’s expectations of higher intelligence and he couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. “You know I was just making a shitty joke, right? But they’re really doing the exact same thing as before except faster. Is there some kind of crazy plan we’re not seeing?”
The second wave vanished into atomic dust as the third appeared, and this time it attacked without preamble. Again they came, and in greater numbers than before, with no better strategy than picking out the locations of his cannons and the gaps in the minefield. They swarmed towards the shattered world with no regard for their own wellbeing, relying wholly on their numbers and the sturdiness of their ships to see them through. This was not how normal militaries fought wars.
“This is a real problem,” he told Trix as the fifth wave burned itself out and the sixth began its approach. “I was expecting them to be a bit smarter than this, but they just keep coming like their lives don’t matter. They really are fanatics, and they’ve got enough firepower for it to be a real problem. A stationary fortress isn’t the way we should be fighting maniacs like this.”
Their vessels were extremely well equipped when it came to quantum field weaponry, and defenses against it, but they were poorly defended against something more conventional. It’d be far better to send them on a merry chase around the system, leading them on with signal ghosts and running them through minefields, only to fall on those too damaged to stay with the formation.
“Isn’t it fine?” Trix asked. “Your plan is to lose the battleship after all, and put up enough of a fight that they’ll never question whether you were actually on board. You can’t tell me that’s not a fight.”
She was right, of course. He might have a plan for the future, but if he wanted to put it into action then they needed the enemy to think he was dead. And it was working so far—by the time this battle was over there’d be enough debris in the system to build a small moon.
The battleship’s movements became more bold as the enemy fleet pressed in, trying to give the impression of desperate gambits. It descended closer to the surface as the outer cannons finally fell silent, using the planetary radiation to mask its exact presence. It gouged out canyons in the magma and weaved its way through great gouts of molten iron to further attempts to reduce sensor precision. The enemy fleet followed as the thirteenth wave swarmed through the gaps in the minefield, though they remained above the chaotic surface.
They only had to get lucky once.
“Well…” said Adrian as the battle ended, “I’m glad we were out here. I trust we haven’t been detected?”
“I think things would be getting pretty interesting if we had,” Trix replied. “Right now they seem to be disengaging via the minefield breach and heading back to their wormholes. I think your plan actually worked! Is this the first time we haven’t had to resort to ‘Plan B’?”
Adrian scowled at the nearest camera. “It’s not the first time, but with these guys I don’t think it would have worked. Let me know when they’re all gone, and then assume someone is still out there to keep an eye on things.”
“You think they’ll leave a ship behind?” she asked. “Clearly they think you’re dead.”
“I’d do it,” he replied. “We should assume they’ll do the same. Worst case scenario we waste a bunch of time trying to lure out someone who isn’t there.”
“Reasonable,” she conceded. “Any idea how we should do that?”
Adrian nodded. “We still have a few construction drones on the moon. Once the wormholes close you can get them building something they can’t ignore. Something like one of their ‘cradles’ for example.”
“And if someone shows up to check it out,” Trix concluded, “the Dastasji can pop the bubble.”
Adrian nodded. “And this time,” he said, “we’ll be doing it from a comfortable distance.”
++++
++++
Mildura, Australia, Planet Earth
Thomas Bristow
The taxi had slowly rolled down streets that Thomas could barely remember. It was a slow-moving city, and it probably hadn’t changed since he’d grown up there, but things could always be different between timelines. The planet had been easy to find once he knew where to start looking, and had been shockingly well-protected for a technological backwater. This was a world that had seen a lot of change and it was still trying to figure itself out, but Mildura? Mildura never changes.
“This is me,” he said to the driver as they stopped outside a cheaply constructed unit. He remembered they’d called them hot-boxes since they were completely useless at keeping a comfortable temperature inside, and were barely more habitable than being outside. Developers weren’t exactly required to make these things comfortable. The small garden, if it could be called that, was obviously intended to survive the harsh climate, yet it had also been designed for appearance rather than longevity, and was little more than sticks and twigs. It was all a very far cry from the palatial gardens he’d enjoyed until recently.
He paid the driver in cash—carefully extracted from an ATM—and watched them drive away before he went to the door. The occupant was at home, of that he was certain, but it took a while for his knock to be answered.
The decrepit, crippled form of his temporal alternate opened the door and stood there in confusion. The man was clearly damaged, but retained enough of his wits to realise that something weird was happening. “Who… you’re me!”
“I’m you from the future!” Thomas said, playing along. “You really need to hear what I’ve got to say.”
The door was closed behind him, and it was apparent that the unit was otherwise unoccupied in spite of being untidy enough to house three. The alternate was half-way through demanding an explanation when Thomas crushed his windpipe and snapped his neck in a single overpowering movement. He initiated a set of old, rarely used augmentations, and moments later he looked just like the man, minus the painkiller addiction.
“Connect,” he said, speaking to his augmentations. “I have successfully replaced my time clone. What’s the status back home?”
“The fleet is celebrating their victory in your honour,” his assistant relayed. “They report the destruction of Adrian Saunders. To answer your next question: they did not see him die, but did destroy the ship he was on.”
“I’ll hold off on my own celebration,” said Thomas. He had tangled with various iterations of Adrian Saunders in too many timelines to count, and had only managed to kill him a handful of times. The man was blessed with some obscene mix of dreadful and incredible luck that plunged him into a series of dangerous situations while seeing him out the other side. It was probably a weird consequence of personally fracturing the space-time continuum, but it didn’t make him immortal. It did make him extremely irritating.
No doubt there was some version of Adrian—somewhere in the multiverse—that thought the same of Thomas Bristow. It certainly wasn’t going to be the local iteration; based on the testimony of the Irzht scout, the Adrian who’d fought the fleet wasn’t this timeline’s own, and the original was probably dead.
It was a good thing Thomas had more than one reason for visiting this wretched ball of mud—the time of the Irzht was drawing to a close, and the God Emperor needed a new chosen people.
“You’ve been analysing the planetary networks,” he said to his assistant, “what do you think we can do to get his attention, provided he’s still alive?”
“Based on recorded and observed events,” mused his assistant, “I would say he beat the hell out of your time clone like usual, since there appears to be some kind of history between you and his ex-wife. The last known contact date suggests the planet thinks he is dead.”
Things hadn’t gone quite the same way in Thomas’ original timeline. His version of Adrian had dragged him out to the desert where they’d both been abducted, but Thomas had survived and Adrian had never resurfaced. “Any other variables?”
“There’s a chance he has an illegitimate daughter from an earlier relationship,” the assistant replied. “Jessica Pierce has an eighty percent chance of existing in this timeline, although she would be a young teenager at this point in time.”