The Time Traveller's Ball (The Erik Midgard Case Files Volume 1)

Chapter 14

XIV

“So tell me, Midgard,” said Commander Horus, pouring himself a glass of whiskey, “in less than ten words. What is your excuse for wilful disregard of orders this time?”

            “The same one as the last few times, sir,” I said, standing to attention before his desk. “Time demanded it.”

            It was several hours later and we were back home on Luna. Mirabi was downstairs, organising the evidence cataloguing, the statement taking, the background checks and all the other details necessary to ensure the guilty parties got their just desserts. With a case this complex, solving it meant the hard work had only started.

            “Oh, really?” said Horus. “The space-time continuum outranks me, does it, Sergeant Midgard?”

            “No, sir,” I said, “but standing orders in the field are that we have the authority to do whatever is necessary to prevent damage to the time stream and avoid paradox reactions. I did not intentionally disobey instructions, sir.”

            “Really?” said Horus, his eyes flickering to the screen of his deskcom. I realised he was polygraphing me.

            “Technically I did, sir,” I said, “but my choices were limited. Events conspired. The gravity loss, finding the Falls’ were in the vault, the robot, the meltdown. Stuff kept happening that we had to deal with and then follow up. Sitting around and waiting for the Bush to arrive just wasn’t an option.”

            “Hmmph!” said Horus, his moustache bristling, as it always did when he was reasonably proven wrong. “You know, I find it endlessly amusing, Midgard, how you whine on and on about Arjuna’s knowledge of your future, but then you leap on the same arguments whenever you need to justify whatever the hax you’ve done this time.”

            “This experience had given me something of a new perspective, sir,” I said.

            “I’m sure,” said Horus. He looked at my report on his desk. Writing it up had taken an hour and it had stretched out to fill three data crystals; one of narrative, two of background detail, explanatory notes, computer models of the time loops and diagrams of how it all fitted together. “I won’t try to make head or tail of this now. Just assure me that we have all the crooks in custody and that we have enough to hold them.”

            “Everyone except the Falls and more than enough evidence for the rest,” I said. “We’ll get convictions, sir.”

            There was no doubt in my mind about that. Jacques Loki and Orson Osiris were formalising their confessions downstairs. Karl Yahweh was hiding behind a phalanx of lawyers in the interview suite, as they tried in desperation to argue down the J.I. ambassador’s extradition bid. Brian Mammon and Charles Washington-Allah had been shipped under guard to the Solar Union Parliament in Tycho City and were already squirming before a corporate crime investigation committee. Chris Venus was downstairs, being formally cautioned for blackmail and Destiny Heaven was with him, trying to worm her way out of nearly fifty unpaid parking tickets. A DNA check had turned up dozens of outstanding warrants from across the Solar System for James Metatron; for what appeared to be about twenty years of work for the J.R. He was already in a maximum security holding cell, awaiting transport to Ganymede, though the Prince had said before he’d left that he was going to talk his father out of pursuing the death penalty.