Anachron

The Anachron

"Welcome aboard, Subcaptain Davis."

The pilot greeted me when I boarded the shuttle to the Anachron.  One other crewmember was already aboard.  According to his uniform, he was Leftenant Martin.  He stood to greet me as I entered the passenger compartment.

"Subcaptain Davis, I presume?  Pleased to meet you.  Leftenant Jack Martin, communications officer."

"You presume correctly, and the pleasure is all mine."

The facility commander had said that we were a hand-picked crew.  To be honest, I was flattered to be considered on a par with Leftenant Martin.  I had had a chance to go through some of the booklet that the commander had given me.  Included in it were profiles of the crew.  A communications officer really has very few opportunities to do anything spectacular.  Leftenant Martin, though, was apparently a wizard on the equipment and had ways of maintaining communications and intercepting signals when others might think it was impossible.

"No, the whole fleet is talking about the battle at Jovix.  Is it true that you defeated four ships with just a single patrol frigate?"

"They were only fighters."  I tried to downplay it.  I didn't want any unnecessary hero-worship."

"Still, a single patrol frigate against 4 fighters.  Those are some pretty long odds, especially without a captain."

"I did what I had to do."  As he didn't seem willing to let it go, I decided to turn it around on him.  "To be honest, I should be flattered at being here with you.  I've read your profile."

"I do what I can.  I have a knack."

"Is it true that you're fluent in Markadian?"

"It isn't that uncommon in communications officers on the front lines, and especially on intel ships."

I had to admit that what he was saying made sense.  Even I knew a few words of the Markadian language.  A communication officer would undoubtedly have far more exposure to it than I did, so would develop greater fluency.

Just then, a third crewmember joined us, a Sergent Malone.  From her uniform, I guessed she worked in engineering somewhere.  Leftenant Martin and I introduced ourselves.

"Now that everybody's here, we might as well get going."  The pilot poked his head in.  "Everybody have a seat and we'll be pulling out in just a minute."

The shuttle pulled out of the station and into the black of space.  As we approached the Anachron, I got my first real look at it.  At a casual glance, it was really nothing to look at.  As we passed by it, though, I began to notice details about it that weren't so common.  First of all, the ship was long and shaped like a sausage.  Space ships tend to be pretty formless, because the vaccuum of space really doesn't impose any demands like atmosphere does, but this was a little extreme.

As we neared the front of the ship, I saw that the lower front of the ship, the "chin".  It was unusually large, which I found interesting because that's where the wormhole projector is typically mounted.  The most important part of a star-ship, that allows us to travel hundreds light-years without taking hundreds of actual years, and it was bigger than usual.  Would it give us the added range to leap-frog the front lines like the Markadians had done?

We got closer to the Anachron, and I noticed that the ship seemed strangely smooth.  It appeared to have no secondary weapons at all.  Being used to multi-role ships as I was, I found this unnerving.  I was accustomed to having choices in what I would be launching at the enemy.  One of the reasons for the victory at Jovix was that I could use rockets when the main power core was low, and particle beams while the launchers were reloading.  Having more than one weapon offers some flexibility.

When we passed over the top of the ship, I noticed why it lacked secondary weapons.  The entire top of the ship was lined with launchers.  These weren't just ship-to-ship rockets; the dispensers were much too big for that.  No, the Anachron was a bomber.  This ship was apparently meant to take an orbital position and lay waste to the surface of a planet.

Finally, the shuttle pulled right up next to the Anachron and made contact.  I felt the jolt through the floor before the pilot came back and announced it.

"We've arrived.  This way to board the Anachron."

We three passengers got up and made our way onto the ship.  The pilot became our guide for the next half hour, leading the three of us to our quarters, and showing us how to find important parts of the ship, like the bridge, lounge, and engineering.

When we arrived at the bridge, we had a chance to meet the captain.  Captain Lattimer was a grizzled old veteran, a rarity in the Terran Space Forces.  Fighting such a losing battle as we were, the mortality rate was very high.  Few people would survive long enough to be considered 'grizzled'.  I and the other newcomers greeted him reverently before moving on to the rest of the tour.

The ship's lounge was our next stop.  It had many of the usual trappings: bar, dining room, pool tables, foosball, darts.  It was deep inside the body of the ship, but included corridors to either side, leading to two observation lounges.  These two rooms were placed in the front corners of the ship, and from there we could see out into the universe.  There weren't many people in the lounge.  With a month left before the start of our mission, the crew still had the option of catching the shuttle back to the station.  Stations always had better trappings than ships, because they didn't have to fit into wormholes, so they could afford the extra space.

After the bridge and lounge, the engineering department was bustling with activity.  While most of the ship's crew were simply killing time, all the technical staff were busily making sure that the Anachron was ready for her mission.  Our guide introduced us to the head of the department.  The engineer told us he would like to show us around, but the department was too busy, and he couldn't spare the time for it.  There would be time later, though.

Finally, our guide lead us each to our quarters.

Over the next month, I had plenty of time to study the mission outline and familiarize myself with the ship.

The mission itself was quite simple, actually, and even explained a few things about the ship.  The Anachron could generate wormholes that would take us backward through time, not just across vast amounts of space.  We would go back to a time before the beginning of the war, and destroy Markad before they developed their space fleet.  So this was the technological leap that the facility commander had been talking about: time travel.

The mission profile didn't scream adventure to me.  To be honest, it seemed like it would be about as exciting as bombing an unoccupied world.  Destroying a world full of beings who were unprepared for the assault; it just didn't seem right, even for Markadians.  I had one month to come to grips with it before we all left on our mission.

During that month, I spent a lot of time on the bridge, meeting the rest of the officers.  On many ships, there would be at least three of every officer, and they would rotate shifts.  A captain would be on duty for eight hours, followed by a subcaptain like me for eight hours, then another subcaptain for a final eight hours before the captain returned to duty.  The communications officers would be on a similar rotation, along with sensor operators, gunners, navigators, and all the others.  On the Anachron, many of the shifts had officers missing.  There was only one shift of gunners, for example.  It wasn't altogether unexpected.  We would not need round-the-clock readiness like a patrol frigate or front-line cruiser.  The Anachron would be running with a minimal crew for sixteen hours of the day.

When I wasn't at the bridge getting to know the officers, I was down in the engineering department observing their officers.  I have always found that it's easier to get a little extra out of a ship after developing a good rapport with the engineers.  After all, when I needed more power, they were the ones who would either get it, or not.  Even if I didn't get a chance to speak to any of them, I overheard things, and they saw who I was, and this could make a difference.

About a week before we left for our mission, we received news from Jovix.  The Kent had returned there, along with another cruiser, as part of the permanent defense of the installation.  Jovix was the new front line, at least until a Markadian fleet arrived and wiped them out.  No more Kent.  No more Jovix.  After that, I no longer had any misgivings about our mission.  It's not that there was anything particularly vile about capturing a front line outpost, but I had some personal attachment to the site of my triumph.