“Mara?”
(yes, sapphire?)
“Do…Do you think that…”
(what, sapphire?)
“Could she still be alive back there with…with the Black? What if they captured her group? What if—”
(no, sapphire. when the command vessel exploded, her group was too close to the phase—)
“I killed her.”
(no…no, sapphire. it wasn’t your fault.)
“How do you know?”
(when you cut apart the enemy that was attacking jove, you couldn’t have known that the debris trajectory would intersect the command vessel, much less that the command vessel wouldn’t react in time to avoid impact. it was simply an accident. Sapphire, it wasn’t your fault.)
“But it killed my sister!”
(jade wasn’t the only judas to die. We lost many patterns today.)
“Mara, leave me.”
She floated alone in the spherical expanse, surrounded by dead stars and broken dreams.
Does time pass in the Stream? They grew into young women in the gap between times, gradually becoming an integral part of the wave that was the Judas. The wave swept them along at a breakneck speed.
Consumed by their hatred of the Enemy, Jade and Sapphire were passionate in their quest for revenge. Hate became a physical manifestation when they joined the ranks of the droptroops.
Battle after battle, the twins fought with a ferocity unmatched previously in the Fleet. They fought almost as a single unit, as if a special bond connected them.
The sisters did not go unnoticed by Command. They were transferred from the Gethsemane Magdalene to the newly developed class of warships, the Golgotha, a replacement for the aging Mecca and Eden class vessels.
And then they went home.
“Mara?”
(yes, sapphire?)
“Is the beacon still transmitting?”
(sensors indicate yes.)
“Can you get me a movement reading? Has there been any Enemy response to our pullback?”
(i’ve linked into the planetary sentry net.)
“And?”
(phase space disruptions are off the board.)
…
(there’s been considerable enemy movement.)
“Where?”
(the enemy’s fallen upon the planet.)
silence.
(it’s over.)
“Thank you, Mara,” Sapphire sobbed. “You can go now.”
The Altwhen had fallen.
The concept of Altwhens had been fairly new when Jade and Sapphire were assigned to the new Golgotha vessel Mara. Almost a novelty, these mysterious holes in the Whenstream had not been regarded with suspicion until one fateful day when an Enemy armada had emerged from one, almost eradicating the force of Judas patrolling the area.
The entire philosophy of the Stream being a solid, cast, written-in-stone entity, substance, program, whatever it was was swept away. A task force sent into the Altwhen confirmed Command’s suspicions: Even after a When was lost, after all hope had faded, it still persevered in a shattered form beyond the Stream. A corrupt file fragment, lurking beneath the surface of the primary Pattern.
The sheer force of the Enemy tearing time apart splintered each When that they encountered. Each star they collapsed not only created another hole into the Stream, but also spawned countless hideous offspring: alternate eternities. Multiple timelines formed, multiple histories ran their course, either oblivious to the Enemy or enslaved by it. Most of these histories lay well hidden from the Stream, quietly unwinding, unhindered by the damnation thrust upon other Whens at the hand of the war the Enemy had begun.
Other histories, however, rose to the surface of the Stream, breaking through, sometimes spilling over, contaminating the Stream with their rogue code. These were the alternate eternities, the Altwhens, which the Judas so diligently tried to control. Sometimes, regardless of the efforts of the Judas, the resistance they encountered in the Altwhens was too harsh to keep in check. The Enemy forces festering in the alternity would boil over and break through the fragile barrier into the Stream, bringing with them whatever twisted version of the Purpose that particular variant of the timeline had instilled upon them.
The Golgotha class of warships was designed to prevent this leakage of Altwhen Enemy forces into the Stream. For a time, the Judas poured every available resource into the construction of these massive battle cruisers. No expense was spared, either in terms of natural resources or human resources. The possibility of an infinite number of Altwhens yielding an infinite number of Enemy was too great a threat to ignore. Tremendous fleets of Golgotha were pumped into the trouble areas to end potential threats and contain any rift damage. Virus control.
(((how’s she taking it?)))
(as well as can be expected. the last battle was such a senseless loss.)
(((yes. jove and aeolus were good judas. their loss will be sorely felt.)))
(sapphire mourns still for her twin.)
(((you can’t blame her for that.)))
(i don’t, but i fear that it’s affecting her health, both physical and mental. she’s reaching a breaking point.)
(((we all are. if our suspicions—)))
(silence. we must not discuss it yet. we have to wait.)
(((understood. watch her, mara. she is our hope.)))
Sapphire had been amazed at the sheer size of the containment force being sent into this particular Altwhen. This was her thirteenth Altwhen campaign, but she had never seen a fleet such as the one around her.
Seventy-five Judas Golgothas fell into the rift, streaming down into the alternity to meet whatever fate awaited them.
Even though no longer a grunt, she was still kept in the black about the importance of this mission. Jade, working her magic and charm through the chain of command aboard the Mara, found out bits and pieces of information.
She learned that this Altwhen was particularly volatile, and poised on a strategically-precarious position in the Stream, its entrance point a little too close to Command for comfort.
Prodding further, Jade learned what When this rift had emerged from.
Their When. Their home.
The planet itself had not changed much, the view from orbit suggested. The orbital solar plates still cast their ghostly shadows on the surface, and the immense automated aquaponics facilities still dotted the oceans. From orbit, the planet was pristine.
Surface scans revealed a different picture.
The Enemy had struck. Viciously.
After the massacre of the Judas from which the twins had been rescued, the Black had begun their harvest of the populace of the planet. Grisly reminders of the slaughter above the planet dotted its surface: the shattered remains of Judas and Enemy vessels alike.
There were other signs of Enemy activity.
Flattened cities. Scorched earth. Abandoned upload generators. The veil of the web still in place above some areas of the planet.
The dead Earth.
A newfound rage surged through Sapphire as she looked at the viewscreens. The Enemy had killed her world, consumed its energy, left it a husk floating in space.
In some deep, hidden part of her mind, she had hoped that this was all a nightmare, that her parents were still alive, that these people from the future, these Judas, would take her home to safety, to a world unscathed by this war out of time. She had hoped for so long.
These hopes died.
And from around the moon of Earth, the Enemy armada that had lain in wait, watching, struck down upon the Judas.
(sapphire?)
“What is it?” Exhaustion.
(we’ll be emerging into the stream soon.)
“Mara?”
(yes, sapphire?)
“Are you scared? I mean, are you—”
(yes, ’phire. i’m scared.)
Something was different. Something was wrong.
The twins stood shocked before the viewscreen watching the Enemy horde race toward the Judas when the battle klaxon sounded its despairing wail. They snapped into action, running to their assigned droptroop deployment zone. While they stood in place, bulky combat armor sealed itself around their bodies.