the generator, and watched to see if the engine was working properly, and more importantly, if the area of space you were in had any anomalies. I didn't know enough about space navigation to understand the details, but I had seen the results of a ship where the captain failed to order a burst before opening a wormhole. The ship was left in pieces.
"Stages one and two have already been completed successfully. However, the Saturnus' third stage experiment is going to fail. That failure will be catastrophic. It will kill almost the entire crew, cripple the ship, and leave it vulnerable."
"Vulnerable to what, sir?" I asked.
"Shortly after the completion of stage two," Bishop continued, working on his hand-pad, "Edra commandos will board the Saturnus."
At that word, Edra, any sense of amusement left in the room was gone. We all leaned in. The Edra were our allies, or more accurately, not our enemies. Mostly humanoid, they could pass for distant cousins, if you didn't look too closely. Their home system was well away from Earth, and they pretty much kept to themselves. They found humans to be a bother, young upstarts, and they didn't have a lot of time or respect for us. Still, when the Edra were annoyed at someone, friend or foe, you knew about it. The presence of Edra commandos was never a good thing.
Bishop could see the concern in our eyes, and answered the question none of us had asked out loud, even if we were all wondering.
"The Edra found out about the Saturnus about a year ago. I have no idea how, but they did. I was brought into the project shortly afterward." He pointed to the Saturnus. "They are very unhappy with this project. They have filed protests with the government, and even sent an envoy directly to the President. They want the entire project scrapped, and the research abandoned. They did not share their reasoning with us, other than vague warnings about disastrous results."
"We ignored them, I assume," I finished for him.
He nodded. "Correct, Captain. I am uncertain what exactly the Edra's problem is with the Saturnus, but it seems that they did not take 'no' for an answer. According to my intelligence sources, Edra commandos will be aboard the Saturnus when the crew initiates stage three. We can only assume that they intend to seize her."
"Hold on," David said, his eyes shut tight, as he tried to wrap his head around the problem. He took a moment to sort out his thoughts. "You said that stage three will be a failure. Will fail. You're speaking in future tense, things that will happen."
Bishop nodded. Instead of explaining, he tapped his hand-pad. The small speaker inside started spewing static. After a few seconds, I began to make out a voice.
"Echo-two, Echo-two," the tired, male voice called out. "This is Zulu-two-three, on the ball and requesting assistance." I sat up a little straighter in my chair. I felt a chill run up my spine.
"That's you, man," Kyle whispered to me, astonished.
"Shhh!" I hissed, trying to hear my own desperate voice through the static.
The recording continued, but the static made it hard to follow. "... Saturnus is compromised. Edra commandos are pushing... bridge is secure. Captain... won't cease experiment... temp... psychosis. Entire crew affected."
Admiral Bishop stopped the recording. There was a deathly silence in the room. I could feel the blood in my face drain away, and I realized I was holding my breath. I let it out with a loud puff. Everyone was looking at me, with glares that ranged from surprised to horrified. David eyed me keenly, as though examining me, considering every possibility.
"There are more recordings," Bishop said evenly, "but I cannot share them with you. Suffice it to say, things will go very wrong on the Saturnus. I am hoping you can sort that out before it happens."
"That recording," David said, looking to Bishop's hand-pad. "It hasn't been sent yet."
Bishop nodded. "Correct. So far as my people can figure out, the stage two burst, which our listening posts detected on schedule, destabilized the area of space around the Saturnus. Obviously the crew did not realize this, though we are not sure why. When they enacted stage three, something occurred," he stopped himself, "occurs, which creates some serious problems with space-time. I wish I understood more of it, but I am not a temporal physicist. In short, the experiment will not only fail, it will create a situation in which we are able to receive Captain Mallory's transmissions, despite them not having been sent yet."
"I guess we know why the Edra objected," Kyle commented.
Bishop grimaced, nodded. "That is as good a guess as any."
"So this is why we were brought here," I reasoned aloud. "You received this transmission, realized that we are going to be sent on this mission, and order us brought here."
"No," the Admiral replied. "You had already been here for several days when the Saturnus left. You were sent here pending the investigation into your actions in the field. The Saturnus was so highly classified, most of Fleet Command had no idea it was here. If they had, they certainly would not have sent you here." He shook his head. "No, you being here is a lucky stroke for us. We did not receive this particular transmission until this morning. Others had been streaming in during the night, though we could not identify the voice. I had already decided to deploy you, when this particular transmission came to me."
"Am I the only one getting a headache?" Kyle muttered.
"Let me keep it simple, then," the admiral raised his voice slightly. "What we know is this; the Saturnus will shortly begin the third stage of her experiments. That is scheduled to happen in less than three days. Your squad will be deployed via needle-jumper. You will board the vessel and stop stage three from going online. You have full discretionary authority during this mission. If that means weapons, so be it. All of the details we can give you, we will put into your hand-pads. You can read them on the way. In the meantime, I want you geared up and ready to board your ship right away."
There was a silence in the room, the disconcerted scowls of four men who were being asked to walk into the bizarre and unknown. It felt like an ambush, with that creepy transmission as a sort of warning, like when the enemy accidentally snaps a twig while he lies in wait for you. When you heard that tell-tale snap, you stopped, reassessed, and generally either backed away or started shooting. You certainly didn't keep walking forward. In this case, we were doing just that.
"Any questions?" the admiral asked.
I shook my head, trying to keep my own fears from showing through. This whole situation smelled like shit, and we were about to be eye-balls deep in it.
Where was a simple board of inquiry when you needed one?
Goddammit.
***
Less than an hour later, laden down with as much gear as we could carry, we were strapping into the troop hold of our needle-jumper, and waiting for launch clearance. Needle-jumpers are small military transports. They can't generate their own wormholes, so they are loaded onto larger, specially-built ships, which move into position, generate the wormholes themselves, and then fire the needle-jumper like a bullet from a gun. They arrive at their destination unseen, move in under the best stealth tech humans could develop, and if necessary, literally jab their way into enemy ships like a hypodermic needle. Needle-jumpers were shaped just like the name suggested. They were one-way ships, but did have slow escape capability, mostly the drift-away-and-hope-you're-found kind.
The troop hold was small. It was designed for twelve troops, but the four of us had so much gear, we pretty much filled the small, cylindrical compartment. The curved ceiling forced us to duck as we strapped our duffel bags full of equipment into the unused seats. The troop hold had compartments for gear bags, much like any civilian airliner or spaceliner, but soldiers never used them. The compartment doors tended to jam when the ship rammed its target. If we went in hot, I didn't want us to have to pry open the compartments to get our gear. So, we strapped them to the deck. Only our rifles stayed