eyes testing our resolve. He wanted my squad because we were good at what we did, but I wondered if their laughter had given him a reason to reconsider. Had we grown too cocky? Were we too jaded to buy into the mission? I wondered that myself, but just for a moment. It had taken me a few minutes to get the idea straight in my head, and my guys weren't any slower.
"As I was saying," the admiral said with a look that balanced neutral and scolding, "the Saturnus is an experimental ship, top to bottom. To accommodate the central core, which is where the wormhole generator is located, they had to dump the standard jump-capable ship design and start from scratch. There is very little on this ship that is not state of the art."
"Sir?" David called out, raising his hand. He was straddling his chair, left arm draped over the backing. His brow was furrowed, his dark brown eyes looking to the holographic Saturnus, not the admiral. He was too focused to look Bishop in the eye, as he should when addressing an admiral. I didn't call him on it. Protocol was fine. Getting the job done was better.
"Sergeant Forres?" the admiral prompted.
Without looking up from the Saturnus, hovering as it did three feet above the table, David went on. "Sir, if you're serious, if this really is a time machine, how have you compensated for the energy issues? I mean, normal wormhole generation takes enough power on its own. How does the Saturnus generate the kind of power it would take to be that precise?"
"In truth," Admiral Bishop replied, "I do not know all of the engineering details. Even if I did," he said, shaking his head, "I would not pass them on to you. You are not being sent to power the ship up. I need you to shut it down."
David just shook his head. "Sir, I'm not a naval engineer. I'm a combat technician. I did a six month tour on a destroyer, because that's part of the training, but other than some tinkering, I have no expertise with things like this. This is all way over my head."
"You seem pretty clear headed to me, Sergeant," the admiral responded. "You are asking all the right questions."
"David doesn't know something?" Kyle muttered. "Someone write down the date."
David simply waved him off. "Okay, yeah, I get it. I'm a know-it-all, fine. I know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff, as everyone likes to say. That's all true, but sir, that's simply not the same as having the training to deal with something like this. We need to take along someone who knows the ship, or at the very least, a naval engineer who has some basic level of ship operations training. I don't have that, sir."
Bishop shook his head. "I cannot allow it." He pointed to the ship. "The Saturnus is so sensitive, I cannot allow anyone outside the project near it. The only reason the UES Grover is being allowed to tow the Saturnus back to port is because you will already have shut it down. That, and the Grover's commander has Special Operations clearance. Not even the ship delivering you is allowed to approach the Saturnus."
"Fine, so what about one of the engineers who actually worked on the ship?" David asked. "They're obviously cleared."
"To put it bluntly, Sergeant," the admiral said as he leaned in, "those people are way too valuable to risk on this. It is very possible that this will degrade into a shooting mission. I do not want some lab coat getting caught in the crossfire."
That caught everyone's attention.
Bishop carried on. "The Saturnus was deployed for her first full run," he said. "She left here three days ago, on schedule."
"How overdue is she, sir?" Raj asked, his finger errantly tracing a circle on the table. He was calculating in his head. I could almost see the gears turning, just as his finger did on the tabletop.
"She is not overdue at all, Corporal." Bishop tapped the projector. Above the Saturnus, a time line appeared, the graph stretching over the length of the ship. Marks ticked off, one at a time, indicating the ship's itinerary.
"The schedule was as follows," the admiral said. "She was to make her way to her destination, maintain position for forty-eight hours and run diagnostics, and then power up her experimental equipment," he said haltingly, before pausing. "Her time machine."
He had more to say, that was obvious, but he stopped anyway. I looked to the guys. Raj and Kyle were smirking again. I had to admit, it was hard to focus on the mission when the admiral in charge was talking about time machines. He might as well have briefed us for an assault on Santa's Workshop.
Bishop cleared his throat, and looked to his right for a moment. He had that same far off look in his eyes, as though he were looking toward something that might give him strength. In all of the stories, half rumor, half truth, which floated around about Admiral Bishop, I had no doubt that somewhere out there was something he never really lost sight of, even if it was light-years away. I wondered what reserves he was drawing on.
"Okay, look," he said evenly. His eyes seemed to grab at us, demand our attention. He sat down across from us, trying to look relaxed and failing. He had this rigid, always-at-attention look that he obviously couldn't shake, despite the informal way he reputedly worked. "I get it. When I was introduced to this project a year ago, I had a lot of trouble believing it. I wanted to throw the ensign who was briefing me out of my office. I thought it was a prank, but it is nothing of the sort. I have seen this ship, spoken to the scientists who built her, and the crew who mans her. This is all very real."
"We're sorry, sir," Raj started, "it's just that this is all a little hard to take in. You have to understand that in a job like ours..."
Bishop cut him off. "I know all about your job, Corporal. I used to do it, and a lot of uglier things besides. You operate on a combination of instinct and training. Your training gets you through the mission, but it is the instinct that tells you when to shoot, and when to watch and wait. Right now your instincts are telling you that this is nonsense, and I do not blame you in the least. However," he said, standing, glaring at us through the Saturnus' hologram, "whether you buy into this or not, the reality is simple; you are less than one hour away from launching. When you board the Saturnus, you will have slightly less than two days to complete your mission, regardless of how much friendly blood you have to spill. Does that particular detail help wipe the grin away, marine?"
He walked along the length of the table, stopping just short of Raj. The room was silent, each of his steps echoing in the wood-paneled room. I heard the creaking of his bones as he walked, and for the briefest moment, saw the scars on his arm, before his sleeve slid down to cover them.
"So, gentlemen, are you ready to listen to what I have to say?"
As if on cue, we all barked. "Yes sir!"
Bishop nodded his satisfaction, and returned to his place at the other end of the table. He picked up his hand-pad, and tapped away. The hologram of the ship grew before us, showing us details of the hull amidships. The ship was divided into several sections by massive bulkheads, and the notation on the diagram indicated that the bulkheads were part of the experimental gear itself. Every bulkhead extended outward from the central core, like an odd sort of web.
"Put simply, you will board the Saturnus, ascertain the situation, and stop the crew from conducting their experiment. You will halt the stage three experiment at all costs."
"Why?" David muttered, as much to himself as to the admiral.
"The first two stages are, put in simple terms, essentially a revving of the engines." Bishop pointed to the center of the ship, where the bulge held the time machine. "They are going to power up the machine; let it sit at fifty percent power for five minutes, and then power down. A few hours later, they will power up to ninety percent and attempt a burst."
Bursting was a common way to test a wormhole generator's stability. Our ships moved from system to system using wormholes, accessing a series of beacons scattered throughout this area of the galaxy. Before a ship fully opened a wormhole and passed through it, it sent out a burst, what under water would be called sonar 'ping'. Essentially, you sent a pulse out from