War Of Past And Future

“But… I never used it, I swear never,” stammered Tony.

“You didn’t need to use it,” said Raya through gritted teeth. “Valkyr must have known I’d send for you.” A sickened look crossed over her face.

“You worry about finishing the tests, I’ll handle any uninvited guests,” said Bowen with a low growl. They left the room together and headed back into the hangar. Not knowing what else to do but refusing to be separated from her mother, Leura jumped up off the couch to follow, with the others close behind.

Inside the hangar, the workers were gathered around the Casimir. It had yellow lights flashing at different points along its surface, and it was beginning to make a strange noise, like a curved piece of metal struck by something heavy, sending resonating waves of high and low notes bouncing around the hangar.

Bowen barked out some names, and those he called came hurrying over to him. “We’re expecting company. We need to shift some of this junk to create cover for the others. And go grab as much firepower as you can from the armoury, get moving!” They sprung into action, and Bowen strode boldly off towards the hangar entrance to get started.

There was a large station filled with computer monitors off to the left hand side of the Casimir, and the remaining workers were gathered around it. Raya walked over to them, with the twins, Sol, and Tony behind her.

“Have you started?” Raya asked the group anxiously. A tall, curly haired woman wearing a white lab coat glanced away from the monitors to answer her.

“A few minutes ago, we narrowed the scope to primary systems only which should speed things up a bit. But it’s still going to take a while, we just don’t have the processing power here.”

“Alright Cassie, let’s just keep a close eye on it. If anything gets flagged we need to jump on it straight away, we can’t wait around for the full readout.”

“We’re on it boss, it’ll pass all checks, you’ll see,” said Cassie with a reassuring smile. Raya nodded, but didn’t smile back. Instead, she turned to her family.

“It was a mistake bringing you here, I see that now. We don’t have time to get you home, but we have to get you as far away from this hangar as possible.”

“We’re not going anywhere!” declared Leura, so loudly that many of the people at the monitors jumped.

Raya’s temper flared. “You will, or I’ll have Bowen and the others carry you out. Valkyr and her scouters could be here any second.”

“But I don’t get it,” said Wentworth, his face scrunched up like it always did when he was trying to figure out a difficult problem. “If they know we’re here, why don’t they just go back to before you even arrived and wait for you? Or come to think of it, couldn’t they just go back to before you escaped from Jotunheim and guard you better, or move you to a more secure spot or something. I mean, they can time travel… they can stop all of this from happening in the first place, can’t they?”

“No darling, they can’t,” said Raya, and her voice softened as a faint look of satisfaction spread across her face. “Even time travellers have limits. Remember the second principle of time travel? The structure of time can protect itself. They can’t go back and stop me from escaping from Jotunheim, just like they can’t go back and stop me from bringing you here. It would cause a paradox.”

“That sounds dangerous,” said Sol, with gleaming eyes and a wide smile.

“Actually, quite the opposite,” said Raya, smiling faintly at the disappointed look on Sol’s face. “A time traveller can’t deliberately change anything about the past that would remove the reason they wanted to change it in the first place. The structure just resets to the moment before the change was made. So they can’t stop me from escaping Jotunheim, because if I never escaped, they’d never have a reason to stop me. And if I never brought you here, they’d never have known we were here in the first place.”

There was a stunned silence for a few moments as they each tried to wrap their heads around this.

As usual, it was Wentworth who saw the big picture first. “But, that would mean you can’t stop the Final Fall, wouldn’t it? If you save everyone, you’d have no reason for wanting to save them in the first place. Wouldn’t that cause a paradox?”

Leura felt a deep relief. So, after all this, Raya’s plan wasn’t even possible. The Final Fall was protected by the structure of time itself. They could still escape from here, leave as a family and stay that way forever. But the feeling began to rot inside her when she saw a look of pride on Raya’s face.

“Exactly, Wentworth. No one can stop the Final Fall, or the creation of time travellers… but that’s not what we’re trying to do here. We’re not changing the past, we’re creating the future.”

A shout rang out from across the hangar. It echoed around the massive space, and all who heard it felt themselves freeze with fear.

“THEY’RE HERE!”

All eyes turned towards the hangar entrance in time to see a small explosion blast open the doors that Bowen and his team had been barricading shut. Bits of scrap metal went flying across the hangar, and the defenders dived behind the makeshift barricades they’d hastily set up. None of the debris came close to reaching the Casimir, but Leura felt the ground shake with the force of the explosion. Her legs felt like jelly and she was faintly aware she was hyperventilating. She reached out, not towards Wentworth or Tony, but towards Raya, gripping onto her arm like she was afraid it would be torn away from her at any moment.

Through the smoking remains of the entrance, scouters dressed in black bodysuits streamed into the hangar. Blinding lights erupted all around them as Bowen and the others exchanged fire, and the hangar was filled with the deafening noise of war.

“Down!” screamed Raya, as she pushed the twins, Sol, and Tony behind a large steel crate to the left of the Casimir, a short distance from the computer monitors. A piercing beam of blue light shot over their heads and burnt a hole in the highest monitor wide enough that Leura could’ve fit her whole arm through it.

The noise, smoke, and flashes of light from across the hangar were overwhelming, and Leura felt deeply afraid for Bowen. It seemed impossible for anyone to make it out of that fight alive. Her impulse to look briefly overcame her fear for her own safety, and she popped her head up over the top of the crate to see what was happening near the hangar entrance.

She only had a few seconds before Raya yanked her back down, but in that time she saw dozens of scouters swarming into the hangar, stepping over those that were already laying charred and lifeless on the ground, and firing weapons that were incinerating the scrap metal that Bowen and the others were hiding behind. Jets of blue or red lasers, balls of piercing yellow light, and what looked like beams of pure darkness filled the space between the two sides, though it was clear that most of it was coming from the attackers. Bowen and the others were retreating to barriers further back from the entrance, firing wildly as they went. The last thing Leura saw was a few of the scouters flying into the air like their shoes had built in hoverboards, before she felt a strong tug on her arm and the scene was replaced by the shiny metal of the crate again.

“Stay down!” shouted Raya, and Leura was shocked to hear such anger in her voice. She turned to see Raya crouched in front of them with the zero point blade in her hand, no longer covered by the dark sludge. Not until this moment did Leura fully appreciate how terrifying a weapon it was. The pure dark edges made it seem like the blade wasn’t just built for violence, but longed for it. Just as that unsettling thought had taken shape, a soldier landed without a sound right behind Raya, his sleek grey gun held high and ready to fire.

The next few moments seemed to move in slow motion. Raya saw the look on Leura’s face and reacted instinctively, spinning low to the ground and slashing out with the zero point blade. The soldier fired at the exact same time as the blade cut into him. If Raya had been the target, they would have died together. But the soldier was facing the monitors, and the people working on it. His gun fired a jet of blue light right into Cassie’s exposed back. She crumpled to the ground, and the soldier followed her down a second later. Neither of them moved again.

Leura watched all this happen like it was a scene from a movie. It didn’t feel real, and she had a strange feeling of detachment, as if she wasn’t really there, that none of this was actually happening. But the feeling didn’t last long, because two more soldiers landed in front of them and fear like she’d never known took hold of her as she watched her mum fighting for her life against two bigger and stronger men.

Raya fought like a force of nature, moving so fast Leura’s eyes could barely follow. She took one of the soldiers down with a slash of her blade and a sweep of her foot, but the second one struck her with the handle of his gun before she could get out of the way. She staggered, but managed to pull the soldier down with her, keeping him from getting enough distance to point and shoot at her or anyone else. They wrestled on the ground, both trying to keep the other’s weapon away from them, but the size difference was just too great, and the soldier almost had his gun pointed at Raya’s head.

Leura moved without thinking, but before she’d gone more than a few inches, Tony’s arm had flung out and knocked her backwards as he threw himself on top of the scouter, roaring with a reckless rage that had been building inside him for thirteen years. The scouter tried to shake him off but Tony was locked on tight, with his arms around their throat. The scouter had no choice but to loosen his grip on Raya, which was all the window she needed to end the fight with a well placed thrust of her blade.

Shaking from head to toe, Tony stood up and pulled the scouter off Raya. He helped her to her feet, and they looked at each other for a long moment. The chaos all around them seemed to dim, and something passed between them that they’d both thought was lost forever. Then the moment ended, and they came back to the dangerous reality around them.

Tony crouched down to check on the twins, and Raya turned to the remaining people at the monitors. “Is it ready? What’s it saying?”

“There’s a problem with containment field three, we need to make another adjustment,” said a man nearest to them in a trembling voice.

“Can you do it?” asked Raya, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice, and to not look at Cassie on the floor beside her.

The man didn’t have the same resolve, and he looked straight at Cassie before answering. “Not as fast as she could.”

“Then get moving!” bellowed Raya, more harshly than she intended. The man nodded and waved a few of the others forward. They crowded around a panel on the side of the Casimir, pried it open and started working on the complex machinery inside.

Raya turned her attention back to the other side of the hangar.

The fighting was coming to an end. The few remaining defenders were pinned down behind an old, rusted machine that couldn’t take much more damage. The scouters were advancing through the hangar, and a few more had taken to the air.

“How much longer!” shouted Raya over her shoulder.

“I think it’s a transistor fault, deep inside, near the core,” answered the man through gritted teeth, “I can’t get to it quickly.”

“We can help!” shouted Sol over the noise. She dashed over to the man and held out her arm. Stardust emerged from within her sleeve, its upper half morphing into dozens of different tools. Leura looked at Sol and felt the bond between them fracture. Did she know what she was doing, choosing to help these strangers over her best friend? Did she understand what was going to happen if they succeeded?

“Nanobots,” said the man, uncertainly, “maybe, if they’ve been programmed for mechanical engineering…”

“Just get it fixed, and turn it on!” demanded Raya. She turned away from the Casimir as the man was directing Stardust through the inner machinery, just as three more scouters landed in front of her.

Two of them looked just like the others, masked and armed, their guns pointed at Raya. But the third held no weapon, and her head was uncovered. Engraved on the armour across her chest was the red hourglass symbol, much larger than the ones on the scouters’ masks.

“Don’t force me to do it, Raya,” said Valkyr Thorisdottir. “You know that’s what they want. For you to die fighting, right here and now.”

“What they want? You mean what Frey wants!” spat Raya, with so much fury that Valkyr flinched. “That’s all you are isn’t it, all you’ve ever been. Her obedient little lapdog. Ready to do anything for dear old mother, even betraying your best friend.”

“That’s what you think I am?” said Valkyr with wide, half-crazed eyes. “I saved you! I stopped it before things went too far. Any longer and they would have killed you, Raya.”

“You saved me! You call rotting in that hellhole being saved? They took everything from me! You took everything from me!”

Raya lunged at Valkyr, all sense and reason forgotten, driven by the singular impulse to inflict as much pain as she had been forced to endure. Then a sound like nothing they’d ever heard before made the entire hangar shake. A sound that felt like it didn’t belong in this world. Chaotic, and grating. It came from the Casimir.

Everyone looked. It was not something that could be helped. The people over near the Casimir had been thrown backwards, crashing into the monitors or skidding across the hard floor. Some were now struggling to pick themselves back up, while the machine itself flashed like a beacon of green lights.

They finished it, was all Leura had time to think.

While everyone stared with horrid fascination at the Casimir, Raya took back control over her raging mind, and acted. The first scouter was down before anyone realised what had happened. The second had time to raise their weapon, but not to fire it, before they too were crumpling to the floor, far too injured to pick themselves up again.

Raya stood in front of Valkyr, taller, and more imposing in every way. Whether by choice or by pure instinct, Valkyr took a big step backwards, and something passed between them, a deep understanding of where they stood with one another.

“Is it contained?” she asked over her shoulder.

“It’s contained,” answered the man through heavy breaths. “But we shouldn’t have felt such a strong repulsion. There still must be some containment breach. Either that or we’ve miscalculated the amount of negative pressure it would create.”

“Close enough,” said Raya, more to herself than anyone else. She struck Valkyr hard in the side of her head, knocking her to the ground. Then she turned her back on the woman who had once been her closest friend, and lunged at the Casimir.

“Raya!” shrieked Valkyr as she tried to push herself to her knees, “please, don’t do this!” But if Raya heard her she took no notice. She reached out a hand towards the Casimir, then turned in surprise to see Leura standing beside her.

“Leura?” Despite all the noise and the chaos raging around them, Raya spoke like they were all alone. “They’ll destroy it, you know they will. They’ll bury this place, and me with it. I have to go. You have to let me go.”

Leura didn’t say anything, she didn’t know what she could possibly say to make her mum realise that what she was asking for was impossible. That she could never let her go.

“I need you to be brave, little one. Just one more time.”

Raya gave Leura a final look that was filled with thirteen long years’ worth of pain and heartache, then the air began to collapse around her and the Casimir.

Leura and Valkyr screamed NO at the exact same time. Both of them dived towards Raya.

Leura was much closer. She latched onto Raya and hugged her tightly, closing her eyes as the hangar disappeared around them, certain of one thing, and one thing only. That she was never letting her mother leave her behind again.

She had no idea if Valkyr made it too, but knew she would find out soon enough. Once she’d opened her eyes again, in a whole new time.