6 CHAPTER 5

"Excuse me? You've been here four months? I'll bet that seemed funny when you thought about saying it," Raj said, unimpressed. "You might notice that I'm not laughing."

His eyes glared angrily. Raj might enjoy the rush of battle, but he was not interested in screwing around, especially when things went wrong on a mission. He was very much all business once he started up. The way he looked at the crewman, almost burrowing into his skull, was more than a little unsettling to be on the business end of.

The crewman swallowed hard. He shook his head slowly, carefully. His matted beard scratched against the remaining fabric of his collar. "It's been one hundred and fifteen days since the accident. I've counted every one of them."

I stepped in closer, grabbed his shoulder and squeezed hard enough to make him wince. I shook him once, forcing his focus to shift to me.

"Listen!" I said sternly. "We're not here to dick around, crewman."

He nodded, his gaze somewhat detached. "Yeah, I know, you're marines. You said that. Great. What the hell took so long?"

"Let's start with your name, crewman," I demanded.

"Engineer Fourth Class Ramirez," he replied, his voice somewhat shaky.

I looked around the cargo bay, at the open containers. I gestured for David to check one of them out. He reached deep into the closest container, using his gun's light to look around. He pulled out a small card. He stared reading.

"This was full of emergency rations, but it's empty," he said as tossed the card back inside. "There's a layer of dust inside, and lots of other particulate matter. It might be from the fire, or it might have accumulated over time. I can't tell."

I looked back to the Crewman Ramirez. "What exactly happened here?"

Ramirez looked around, his eyes looking to the shadows. He seemed nervous, more so by the moment. He looked behind him, but another squeeze to his shoulder brought him back to me. At the same time the guys looked around, watching for whatever it was Ramirez seemed to be watching for.

"What are you looking for, crewman?" I demanded.

"We're not safe here," he said in a hushed tone. "We should head back to the shelter."

"What's the problem?" Raj asked.

"The intruders," he whispered. "They come through here, sometimes."

"What intruders?" I asked, looking to the hatch. "Edra?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. We've never actually seen them. We know they're here, though." He started to become even more agitated, pulling against my grip, toward the hatch. "Please, we need to leave. I'll take you to the emergency shelter. We're all gathered there. They won't follow us there. Please, they've hit groups this small, before. We have to go!"

"Who does?" I asked again. "Who hits groups this small? What's going on, Crewman?'

"I don't know," he said. "We've never actually seen them. We know they're here, though."

"Can you describe them?" Raj asked impatiently.

He shook his head violently. "I don't know. We've never actually seen them," he started.

Raj cut him off. "Yeah, we got that, thanks."

I looked to Raj, who was watching Ramirez with a suspicious squint. David and Kyle had the same sort of look. We all knew something wasn't right here, but we also needed information. Ramirez obviously wasn't going to provide the intel we needed, not until we followed him. He was either a very good liar, or he was genuinely scared of something.

"Stay here and don't move," I insisted, and left him with Raj.

David and Kyle met me near the open containers. Both had suspicious looks. Kyle was the first to speak.

"Shit," he said with a shake of his head. "This guy's got six shades of crazy goin' on in his eyes."

"The repetition, word for word, like programming or something," I said, nodding. "David, what do you think? Is this the temporal psychosis you were reading about?"

He looked over my shoulder briefly, then back to me. "I'm not sure. It's possible. I'm not a medic. Something is wrong, obviously. He goes from calm to twitchy, then back again. Maybe he's just shocked to see us."

"Four months." I took in a deep breath, blew it out with a huff. "He looks like shit and smells worse. I have a hard time believing he got that bad in the few days since the Saturnus left port."

"It's like that transmission with your voice," David reminded us. "He's not on the same clock as us."

"I still don't get that," Kyle grumbled with frustration. "Like what happened on the needle-jumper? What the hell? I swear I watched that bulkhead rot away right in front of my eyes. My gear looked like it had been sitting in there forever. And the fuel, burning up in a quarter of the time, but the computer saying it burned normally; what's going on?"

David held silent for a moment, deep in thought. He stared intently at some point on the ground, unconsciously running his left index finger across his temple. A nervous tick. He had the answer, but didn't like it.

"It's like time in this area of space is no longer a constant," he said slowly. "Time is flowing at different speeds, depending on where you are. We obviously brushed past something like that. My guess is that the Saturnus caused this when they attempted stage three."

"Meaning what?" Kyle prompted, waiting for David to get to the point.

"It's like when a normal ship tries to form a wormhole for a jump," our combat tech tried to explain. "If something goes wrong, there's sometimes a rip in space. The energy released prevents jumps for weeks after, until it dissipates. Remember last year, when the Isis tried that combat jump?"

"I heard about it," I replied, "but we were all on the ground."

David shook his head. "No, I wasn't, remember? I took the shuttle up with that prisoner we nabbed north of Drakeerie Pass. The shuttle got caught in the middle of the battle."

I nodded. "Yeah, right. I remember, now."

It had been a close thing, too. The enemy had jumped in right on top of our ships. The battle was very quick, and we almost lost our hold on the entire orbital sector. Thankfully, our carrier's fighters were able to beat them back long enough for a battleship to come into range, but not before a horribly damaged UES Isis tried to jump out of the fight.

David continued. "We came through the cloud tops just as the Isis tried to jump. When the wormhole collapsed, it sent out bursts of radiation that ignited all of the debris in the area. Remember, I said it looked like a fireworks display."

"Yeah, yeah, I remember," I said impatiently.

"This may be the same thing," he explained. "The wormhole collapses, and because it's not just poking a hole through space, but through time as well. So, it causes fragments of space-time. This ship might be in one of the fragments."

"The entire ship is plus four months, then?" Kyle asked.

"No," I replied. "The transmission, the one of me, was made before the experiment was initiated. At least, it sounded like that was what was happening."

"This ship might be inside several fragments, or it might be a gradient," David went on. "Here, it's four months. Other parts of the ship might be experiencing different times. Or, it's possible that we somehow changed things when we hit whatever it was on approach, and ended up four months into the future."

"So," Kyle said with a wince, as though he had a headache, "we're already doing things differently than the 'us' who sent that transmission? We're changing the future, or, um, the past?" He snarled in frustration.

David shrugged. "It's possible. I really don't understand the physics behind this, Kyle. I'm not a professor, just a combat tech. I got a twenty minute crash course before we left, and that's it. The more of the ship we see, the more of a grasp on this mess I hope to get."

Kyle gestured to Crewman Ramirez, who stood uneasily beside Raj. His shifty eyes scanned the room, still searching out whatever it was that frightened him.

"Let's ask this guy," Kyle suggested. "He's gotta know something."

"Look at him," David said. "He's a bundle of nerves. We could press him, but he likely doesn't know much. Engineer Fourth Class, that's the bottom of the barrel. This guy is a low-end wog, not a technician. A guy like him is probably on his first or second cruise. He probably spends more time cleaning things than anything else."

"He wants to take us to a crew shelter," Kyle said. "Let's go. Maybe we can find someone who has a fuckin' clue, because we obviously don't know shit." He turned to David. "No offense, man."

David shook his head. "None taken. I'm in over my head, and I said that in the briefing. Remember, I begged him to let us take someone from the project along."

"We all knew that wasn't going to happen," I said. "We cost a lot to train and gear up, but we're still way more expendable than some virgin geek in a lab coat. We're on our own, here."

"Then we have to find someone who was directly involved with the experiment," David replied. "The Saturnus has a crew of five hundred and twenty. Someone who worked in the core had to survive this long."

"Alright," I said loud enough to be heard by everyone. "Raj and I are up front with our new friend, Kyle and David behind. Watch and move."

I returned to the frightened crewman. "You stay right with me, is that clear?"

He nodded, hopefully as scared of me as he was of whatever he expected to find us. He pointed toward the hatch through which he had entered. "That way. The shelter is that way."

"Deck six," David said with a nod, as he looked over the ship schematic on his wrist display. "Cargo bay five."

Ramirez shook his head. "No, it was destroyed in the accident. We're all packed into the starboard passageways, forward of the auxiliary water purification system. It's the only secure area that is still livable."

The jittery, filthy crewman picked up his flashlight and led us out through the hatch, into the port passageway. The passageway was dirty as he was, and most of the lights were out. A few of them flickered, and one or two more worked properly. It was enough light to see that the walls were scorched.

I kept to the crewman's side, my rifle at my shoulder but lowered. Despite the very odd circumstances, this was, after all, an Earth ship. The crew was supposed to be on my side, no matter how much Admiral Bishop had suggested that might be otherwise. Of course, there was the Edra to contended with. They were here, somewhere.

"What happened here?" I whispered. "There was a fire, obviously, but how did it start?"

"A big one," Ramirez said as his gaze shifted to every closed and dogged hatch, as if he expected them to blow open at any moment. "I don't know all of the details, but it swept forward from the central core a few minutes after we started running stage three. I was working forward of here, when the ship lurched violently. By the time I arrived to help fight the fire, it had swept up five decks. At one point, the entire forward half of the ship, almost everything, was burning. We lost a lot of people."

We turned a corner, heading away from the outer hull. The stench of burned plastic and wiring was strong. The narrow passageway was strewn with debris, most of it scattered and broken beyond identification. There were no lights here, and we had to use our shoulder and gun lights to find our way. Ramirez used his own flashlight, though he kept pointed at the deck, as if he feared he would find something horrible if he raised it any higher.

I spotted a broken firefighting mask and oxygen canister. The canister was ruptured. If someone had been wearing that, the blast would have killed them and probably torn them in two. The mask's faceplate was blackened with what I guessed was old, dried blood. Several fire extinguishers were scattered across the deck.

"Six men died right here," Ramirez said. "When Johnny's canister blew, the force of the explosion threw the hatch shut. We could hear the others screaming, pounding on the door. We didn't dare open it. The fire would have spread, and we couldn't control it. They didn't scream for long, thankfully."

I felt a chill rush through me, like I was walking over corpses. I had seen far more battlefields than I wanted to think about, but this place, this passageway in particular, really bothered me. There was a sense of something gone terribly wrong, men and women swept up in something they couldn't control. I had the oddest feeling, like somewhere in the back of my mind, I could hear the burning crewmen screaming and pounding their scorched fists against the hatch.

"Hey, Jack," Raj said, nudging my shoulder from behind. "Are you alright?"

The echoed sounds of pounding and screaming faded, replaced by the low, incessant hum of the ship.

I shook off my slight daze. "Yeah," I replied, unsure of just how honest I was being.

Ramirez led us through the far hatch, and turned us right. There was less burning here, and piles of small, spent extinguishers, a dozen or more. Several panels had been removed from the wall, and lay where they had been tossed. I could see a lot of ad-hoc repairs, some of which looked to have been fixed over and over again. This ship was in sad, sorry shape.

"Remember those pictures?" Raj muttered to me.

"Yeah," I replied, keeping my eyes open for whatever it was that was spooking the crewman. "Clean, white bulkheads. Brightly lit passageways."

Ramirez muttered under his breath. "The fire certainly took care of that."

At the end of this new passageway was a dogged hatch. The crewman pointed to it. "We're here."

I pushed past the engineer, and examined the hatch. It was dogged tightly, and the handle on our side was gone. The console that would have opened the door automatically had been ripped out.

"Wait," Ramirez said. "They're right on the other side of the door. I just have to knock."

"Who?" I asked.

"The rest of the crew," he replied. "At least, everyone who's still alive." He looked to my rifle, still lowered, but at my shoulder and ready. "You might want to be careful with that. Security shoots first, these days. Too many close calls."

"Edra?" I asked again.

He shrugged. "I don't know. We've never actually seen them. We know they're here, though."

"You said that already," I replied.

"Really?" he said quizzically.

"Yeah," Raj said. "In the cargo bay. You said there are intruders aboard."

His eyes became slightly glazed over, and though he looked right at me, it was as though he didn't quite know I was there.

"I don't know," he said slowly. "We've never actually seen them. We know they're here, though."

He turned away from me, leaving me with a small, boiling pain in my gut. He moved to the hatch, and banged on it with his fist. Five bangs, then two. I smirked briefly at the pattern. 'Shave and a haircut, two bits.' Simple, but effective. From behind the hatch, I could hear the gears of the lock turning.

I looked behind me, to my men. I signaled for them to hold fast, and to keep a close watch on Ramirez. Something was very wrong here, and whatever lay beyond that hatch might only make things worse. The large hatch swung open, and I was face to face with three naval security men, rifles raised. Their eyes went wide with shock, shifting between me and my men, and Ramirez.

"What's this?" one of them barked, as he shifted his rifle aim between me and my men.

Behind him, I saw a crowd of sailors looking toward us. They were all as tattered and dirty as Ramirez. Most simply sat on the deck, leaning up against the bulkhead. Some lay down. All eyes were on us, though most seemed distant and unfocused.

"They're here to rescue us," Ramirez explained, his hands held up to calm the guards.

One of the guards, a burly man in a tattered, burned uniform, took another step closer to me. His skin was so dirty, it was hard to tell what color it was. His finger was on the trigger, and his hands shook slightly. Not a good combination. I tried looking him in the eye, a good way to gauge stability, but he wouldn't meet my gaze. The guard's gaze darted back and forth between my men and I, and then to Ramirez. The other two guards watched this one, though their uniforms were all so worn down, it was hard to tell who had what rank.

"Lower your weapons," I said calmly. "We're marines, and we're here to help."

I held very still, my rifle kept low. I waited patiently. His eyes still avoided mine, and his hands still shook, but he didn't seem to be escalating the situation. I decided to make the next move. I slowly slung my rifle, as did Raj and David. Kyle was watching our rear and so kept his pistol drawn, though he held it at his side. I took a step forward, the echo of my boot on the damaged deck plate seemingly the only sound around us.

"It's alright, sailor," I said evenly. "We're marines. We're on your side and we're here to help. Just lower your weapon. It's okay, I promise."

The guard still wouldn't make eye contact, though his weapon was pointed at me. I was afraid to make a move. I could probably step to the side and rip the rifle out of his hands. The other two guards, more focused than this one, were too far away to reach. It would be risky, especially if the shakes meant what I thought they did.

"Jonas," the voice came from behind the twitchy guard, further down the passageway. "Jonas, stand down."

The guard looked behind him, and I took the chance to edge slightly to the left against the bulkhead, out of the line of fire. Thankfully, he lowered his weapon and relaxed his posture. The other two guards did the same. From down the passageway, another naval security guard came into view. His uniform was in far better condition than anyone we had seen so far. It was hardly pressed and inspection-ready, but it was very clean, which made it an odd contrast to others here.

The man wearing it moved toward us quickly, his confident strides and square shoulders very different from the huddled, shaking crewmen around him. He had a sidearm, standard navy issue, holstered on his hip. He let his hand rest on it, like one of those Wild West sheriffs from the movies. The moment I saw that, I knew exactly what this black-haired, buzz cut giant was all about. I looked sideways at Raj, and we made eye contact. He knew it, too. King of the hill; every ship had one, and it was usually the Chief of Security.

"Sir," Ramirez called out. "Sir, look, Marines!" He gestured to us. "They're here to rescue us."

"I can see that," the approaching Lieutenant said flatly.

He stopped just short of me and looked me over. He was taller than me, a good few inches over my even six feet. His hair was cut very short, even for navy regs. His Lieutenant's bars were the only thing in this place that shined, and shine they did. His uniform, the white of a security officer, was starting to gray, but still far cleaner than any of the others here. I noticed a cut up his left sleeve, stitched up with almost obsessive care. There was a 'Chief of Security' badge on his left shoulder, and he was angling his body ever so subtly so I would notice it. His right hand rested on his holstered pistol. He looked down on me with an air of arrogant superiority that fitted what he was perfectly.

There was too much tension in the air for what Ramirez called a rescue. These people were fearful, not excited. Nobody said anything. All eyes were on the security chief. I waited for him to look me over. I didn't have any markings on my CEVA suit. No rank or unit badges. That was standard for a recon squad, but it didn't help us make friends. I decided to be the better man here, and cut through the tension. This man was on our side, after all. I extended my hand.

"Captain Jack Mallory, Marines," I said formally.

After a moment, the chief took hold of my hand. He squeezed too hard. He was broadcasting a tough-guy facade that seemed to fool everyone in the room except the four of us. Naval security officers were not marines. About fifty years ago, some admiral had the bright idea to take ship security away from the marines, and put it in the hands of "less aggressive, more thoughtful" personnel. The idea was that they were more like police than soldiers, and that's how it was still phrased. The result was that naval security officers tended to display a sense of superiority. Any marine knew the truth; they were intimidated by us.

"Lieutenant Robert Aisin, Chief of Security aboard the Saturnus," he replied. "Welcome aboard, Captain." That last bit was said with far too little sincerity.

I nodded. "Thank you."

Aisin continued. "Where is your ship docked?"

"Lieutenant," I said quietly, "I wonder if my men and I could speak to you privately for a moment?"

He looked my men over, and then me once more. Slowly, he nodded. He gestured for us to head down the passageway where he had come from. We passed him and the other guards, entering the shelter. I saw Aisin out of the corner of my eye. He whispered something to one of his men, who then exited the way we had come.

Turning on his heel, Aisin lead us down the passageway. I turned to see crewmen shutting and dogging the hatch, barricading it with metal bars through the handle, to stop it from turning. These people really were afraid of something. Obviously, the Edra commandos had been living up to their brutal reputation.

Aisin led us down the passageway, past perhaps two dozen sailors. All were tattered and filthy. Some slept, others sat quietly. A few were bandaged here and there. Everyone had a far off stare, as if they were a million miles away. None made eye contact with me, or Lieutenant Aisin. Many were shaking slightly, one or two more than slightly. Down several side passages I saw more crew, all in the same condition.

The lights flickered, those that worked, in any case. Some of the deck plates were warped and they rattled as we walked over them. Bulkhead panels were left open, or their covers were removed altogether, exposing the wiring and pipes that kept the ship running. Most were full of bypasses. There were open containers everywhere, half-filled with rations, blankets, and other survival and repair supplies.

When we turned the corner, he led us down another passageway to a dead end. The hatch there had been badly damaged, and wasn't going to open any time soon. Aisin started in on us as soon as we reached the wrecked door.

"Alright, marine," he said sternly, using the title 'marine' instead of my rank, a very standard way to remind me of just who he thought was in charge. "Why are you really here? It's been four months, and you're too well armed to be search and rescue techs."

I looked to Raj, who was watching Aisin very closely. He quickly met my gaze, razing an eyebrow. He was wondering the same thing I was; should I tell this man my mission? Besides the secrecy of the mission, the time problems, the accident, all of that, there was something out of place. Nobody here seemed genuinely happy to see us. We were friendlies, fellow humans serving the same planet. If these people had really been here for four months, they should have been a lot more excited to see us. The only hints were the obvious signs of psychosis we had seen, the shaking and generally twitchy behavior.

I decided that lying wasn't going to get us very far. "Lieutenant, I am here with orders to shut you down."

He grinned, amused. "Shut us down?" He looked at my men quickly, then back to me. "Shut what down? The wormhole experiments? Those tests stopped four months ago when the central core blew. We've been crippled and adrift ever since."

I nodded. "We're still trying to get a handle on exactly what happened here. From our perspective," I started, before being cut off.

Aisin didn't give me the chance to finish. His face turned red. "What happened here is that someone sabotaged the central time core."

"Sabotage?" David chimed in.

Aisin shot him a quick glare, and then looked back to me. "Yeah, that's right, sabotage. Captain Paetkau had everything under control. Everything was moving along perfectly. The first two stages went off without a hitch. She executed stage three, and everything went right down the tubes. Captain Paetkau knew what she was doing. She had everything under control! Someone sabotaged the experiment, and this is the result."

"Do you know who did it?" I asked, trying to squeeze more information out of him.

He shook his head. "No. Some think it was the Edra, but I don't buy that."

"The Edra?" I spoke up. "So you can confirm the presence of Edra commandos on the Saturnus?"

"No!" he barked, his voice echoing in the narrow passageway. "That's bullshit, plain and simple. There are no Edra on the Saturnus. There never were. Some wog in the engine room saw a shadow and screamed 'Edra!' My people spent an hour searching the area. Nothing was there but the over-active imagination of a useless junior officer who should have been more concerned with doing his duty than spotting phantoms."

"Lieutenant," I started slowly, trying to talk him down, "I can confirm the presence of an Edra squid ship docked near engineering."

He seemed to grow more upset, not at the presence of the ship, but at me, at us. He leaned in closer, and I could almost feel the heat radiating off of him.

"You are mistaken, Captain!" he snarled. "You are absolutely wrong. There are no Edra on the Saturnus, and there never were."

"Then why are you barricading yourselves in here?" I demanded to know.

"Saboteurs, Captain!" He spoke utter certainty. "There are traitors on this ship, and some of them are still out there, stalking us."

"Lieutenant," I said with some force, reminding him that I did, in fact, outrank him, "you need to calm down." I paused for a moment. "We spotted the Edra squid ship as we approached. Our ship will have sensor records of it, and we can show those to you, later."

He shook his head, closing his eyes like a child unwilling to hear the truth. "Captain, you're wrong. This is the work of saboteurs. Someone in the crew caused this, some traitor. If the wog who started that Edra rumor hadn't been killed in the explosion, I would strangle him myself. He was obviously in on it."

He turned away from me, leaning with one hand against the bulkhead. He was grumbling to himself, though I couldn't make out what he said. I turned to the guys. Kyle was just shaking his head, circling a finger around his ear, the universal sign for 'crazy.' He wasn't wrong. I needed to get hold of this situation.

"Lieutenant," I said calmly, "where is the rest of the crew?"

"They're all dead," he muttered, not even looking at me. "Most of the ship locked down when the central core blew." He turned back to us, not calmer, but at least steadier. "All of the emergency bulkheads dropped. The only crew to survive are here, thirty-two in total. They're mostly clerks from an office compartment, two decks up."

"Have you tried reaching the bridge?" David asked.

He shook his head. "Like I said, everyone else is dead. The internal comms system is down, just like everything else. We had an emergency transmitter, and we tried communicating with the rest of the ship that way, but we never heard from anyone. Then the transmitter died, maybe two months ago."

"But have you been to the bridge?" David pushed.

"No," Aisin replied. "Like I said, everyone's dead. There's a lot of radiation from the central core. Everything aft of section twelve is too hot to enter. We don't have any functional radiation suits. Without them, we can't reach the crawlspaces or lifts that lead to the bridge."

He stopped talking, and looked us over. Then he continued.

"Look, I have thirty-two crewmen here, half starved and totally exhausted. I don't really care what you came here for. I need to get them onto your ship. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to sort that out."

He brushed past us, and rounded the corner. As soon as he was out of sight, we four gathered in.

"Is anyone on this ship not totally fuckin' nuts?" Kyle asked.

David nodded. "At least we know what temporal psychosis looks like."

"The shaking, the fixation and repetition. The rapid mood swings," I replied with a nod. "David, how much of what these people say is reliable?"

David shrugged. "I really don't know. I don't have psychological training."

Raj spoke up. "Look at these people. It's obvious they've been here a while, in this state. At least as far as that's concerned, I think they're telling the truth."

"How is that possible?" Kyle demanded.

I waved everyone off, silencing them.

"Look, we need to get to the central time core, and see what's going on there. The CEVAs should protect us from the radiation." I blew out a frustrated breath. "Let's just do our job, and wait for recovery. Let the big thinkers back at Port 25 sort out all of this time shit."

David nodded. "We need to get to the bridge."

"Those Edra are out there, somewhere," Kyle added. "If the Edra came to stop the experiment, they either failed and were caught in the accident, or they succeeded by causing the accident. Either way, why are they still here? Edra commandos don't stick around. If they've been here for four months, they're looking for something and they're pretty fuckin' serious about finding it. We should probably figure out what it is."

"One more thing to sort out." David said with a sigh, rubbing his left temple. He gestured behind him, back toward the survivors around the corner. "In the meantime, the crew is going to want to know where our ship is. They're also going to want to know why we don't have a long range comms system with us."

"Imagine what he'll say when we tell them it was removed for security reasons, before we left port," Raj commented. "If you think he's paranoid now, that should send him into a fit."

I sighed. "We'll have to stall until we can complete our mission."

"And when they ask us why they have to wait another week before an actual rescue ship arrives?" Kyle wondered aloud. "What then?"

"Assuming it arrives at all," Raj grumbled. "The crew has been stranded here for four months. The Grover was supposed to arrive one week after our insertion."

"Yeah," David interjected, "but at some point we traveled four months into the future. Presumably, our rescue will do the same when it approaches the Saturnus."

"You're guessing, David," I said flatly.

He nodded. "Jack, I'd be happy to hear a better guess."

I shook my head. "No." I paused, working it all out in my head. "Alright, we have a mission to complete. Let's get on with it. We're going to try to reach the central core so we can take our readings, and then head to the bridge. Maybe it's not as bad as the chief says. Hopefully we can get this ship moving, and take her out of the time distortions. Other than that, we do what we always do. We figure it out, and get the job done. Sound good?"

The guys all nodded. Messed up mission or not, we were still marines, and we had things to do.

As we rounded the corner, we spotted Lieutenant Aisin talking to his three security officers. The other survivors were around the bend, out of sight. Whatever was about to happen, the security chief obviously didn't want an audience. They were standing together. Aisin had his back to us, and the other three leaned in close. All had scowls painted on their faces. The moment we came into view, one of them nodded in our direction, and they all stopped talking. Aisin turned toward us, and glared at me in a way that set me on edge.

"Uh oh," Raj whispered.

"Mmm hmm," I replied quietly. "Be ready."

Aisin moved to us. The security chief had that police 'look' on his face, the sort naval security officers get when they're about to arrest a drunk marine and expect trouble. He squared his shoulders a little more than before, and set his hand casually on his pistol. His three men stood behind him, all with their rifles in hand. I stopped just short of the chief and his men. Raj stood at my left side, Kyle to my right. David was behind me.

"Where is your ship, marine?" Aisin asked, his tone broadcasting that he already knew the answer. He was using his 'cop voice' to tell me that he was in charge.

There was no point in lying about it. "It's adrift," I replied. "We took damage approaching the Saturnus. We had to cross from our ship to yours, and access the airlock where your man found us."

Aisin nodded knowingly. "Oh, I know. I sent someone to check. Why didn't you tell us all of this, right away?"

"You didn't really give me the chance," I replied flatly.

The chief carried on as if he hadn't heard me. "How exactly did you expect to evacuate the crew in a needle-jumper?"

"As I explained, we were sent here to shut down this ship's experiments. We had no idea we would have to evacuate the Saturnus. We didn't expect to find you like this."

"What were your orders," Aisin asked, "once you halted the experiment?"

I could see that the security officers were becoming more jittery. Aisin's eyes were locked on us, and he held fairly still, but I could see his right hand moving slightly. He was preparing to draw his sidearm. Without looking to my men, I knew they saw it. I also knew that as relaxed as they would seem, my guys were just as ready to draw.

"Five days after our deployment," I continued on, "the UES Grover will rendezvous with the Saturnus, and escort her back to Port 25."

"The Grover?" Aisin asked, his voice filled with suspicion. "She's a towing vessel. You said you didn't expect to find us in this condition." He raised his voice as he became more agitated. "Why would you bring in a tow vessel if you didn't expect to find the Saturnus adrift? What are you hiding?"

I spoke slowly, calmly. "Lieutenant, listen very carefully to what I'm saying. I am not hiding anything from you. I have no reason to hide anything from you. We were sent here to shut down the experiment, on orders from Admiral Bishop. We expected to arrive here in time to stop the execution of stage three."

Aisin interrupted. "That was four months ago!"

"I know!" I shouted, and then took a deep breath. I started again, speaking as softly as I could manage under the circumstances. "I know, I understand that. From our perspective, the Saturnus has only been out of port for a few days. We think that the stage three experiment created some instability in the area, and time itself is messed up. In short, time has passed faster for you than for us."

Aisin squinted at me suspiciously. He was shaking his head slowly, and was about to say something when I cut him off.

"Look," I continued, "we aren't sure exactly what's happening here. This is our best guess, at the moment. We need time to figure this out. We need to get to the bridge and central core."

"You can't get there," Aisin insisted. "The radiation levels are way too high."

I looked down at my CEVA suit. "These are state of the art. They'll protect us."

He still wasn't convinced. I could see it in his eyes. His hand stayed on his pistol, and his stance hadn't changed. His men were just as agitated as he was. I noticed that one of them, the man who had confronted me at the hatch, was still shaking, but even more so than before. The other two seemed fixated on him, just as before. I couldn't help but think that everyone here was stuck in some sort of loop, forever repeating a single behavior.

"And what happens if you reach those locations?" he asked.

"We gather some data," I explained, "ensue that the time core cannot be reactivated, and that's it. We wait for the Grover. We sit tight for five days."

"And if you find the saboteurs?" he asked, still fixated on his theory. "What then?"

"We will bring them straight to you," I assured him. "However, for the moment, my men and I need to keep moving. You're obviously safe here. Lock the hatch behind us, and wait."

There was a long silence, while Aisin simply stared at me. A lot of cops did their best to judge character that way, but Aisin was either taking his time, or the temporal psychosis was slowing him down. I held very still, careful not to glare at him, or give him any other excuse to give us more grief. Of course we could have fought our way out of here, and of course these security goons didn't have a chance. Still, I didn't want the crew hunting me, as well as the Edra. Bishop had explained that we might very well have to take on the crew, but that didn't mean I was eager to get to that point this early in the mission.

After perhaps a couple of minutes, Aisin nodded. He took his hand off his pistol, and had his men back off. "Alright, you can go."

He led us back to the hatch guarding the shelter. His men readied their rifles as they unbarred and opened the hatch. All the while, the survivors watched us passively, as if they did not really understand what they were seeing. We only really breathed a sigh of relief once we were back in the passageway, and heard the hatch lock behind us.

"Well," Kyle said with a smirk, "that was fun."

"Did you see how warped the deck plates were?" David asked. "Whatever happened, it sent out massive shock waves."

"Those people are just as warped as the decks," Kyle replied. "I got a good look at the rifle one of their security people was carrying. There were deep gashes in the barrel cover, like he'd been sawing into it with a knife or something. It would probably blow if he pulled the trigger. I saw other rifles stacked in a corner, but after that, I wouldn't ask them for a flashlight."

"That's messed up," Raj said with a shake of his head. "I'm still not sure I understand what we just saw, in there."

"Oh, I do," David replied.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Whatever it is that the time core did to these people," he said, "they're all done. Those theories about temporal psychosis aren't theories anymore. Those people are dangerous."

"We're only here for five days," I reminded him. "The Grover," I started.

"Jack," David interrupted, "I don't think we have five days. That's just my instinct talking, but it's telling me to do our job, find an escape pod, and get the hell out of Dodge. Otherwise we're going to end up just like these people."

I nodded. "Yeah."