Thursday
July 4th, 2148
2:45 p.m.
Power Jump Ship
Phoenix, Arizona
Fourth of July.
There were no fireworks, no hamburgers or hotdogs on the grill, no Boston Pops Orchestra, no parades… Ah, so much for the long lost days of burgers and milkshakes.
After the wars, all holidays including the Fourth of July were the same as any other day. People got up, scavenged for food or other resources that they needed, tried to survive another day. For the Power Team, that particular Fourth wasn't quite like any other day for them. Usually, they had daily routines to attend to. These routines had established themselves months earlier. It didn't matter what the chore, mission or assignment they were about to go on, each person still had to perform the same routine day after day - gathering Intel of all of Dread's activities which was a never ending task.
Intel gathering had become perhaps the most monotonous routine. Whether in the control room of the Arctic base or on the jumpship, each man sat at a different console and compiled any and all information gathered over the previous hours, collating the details and cataloging troop movements and Resistance efforts. The information didn't waver much from day to day. Dread moved troops into an area, locals tried to escape the area, Resistance forces worked overtime helping civilians get to safe areas, soldiers would fight biomechs and Soaron... same news, different day.
As routine as the information could be, it had to be distributed quickly. To that end, Scout had worked for months building the hardware necessary for the jumpship's computers to connect with Mentor, their computer personality matrix and database. The idea for the connection had first been planned out by their pilot Jennifer Chase, but they lost her before the plan was realized. Scout had worked long hours to make that plan come to fruition, and when they were on the jumpship, they could speak with the hologram. They could send the information they gathered to him and then he could filter it through to particular bases and funnel it to outlying groups via radio waves dated with time stamps. That way, information wasn't duplicated. All in all, it saved time, and there was a growing fear that time was something they were running out of. The war had ramped up in the last few months to a level no one had ever experienced before. One theory was that since Dread wasn't human any longer, he didn't need sleep. He could wage war every hour of every day and give it his personal attention. Resistance forces were stretched to the limit in both resources and physical strength. Every day, there were battles. There wasn't a single day of rest for anyone. Nerves were frazzled and emotions were ripped. People were on edge. No battle was the simple hit-and-run so well known in previous years. Now, they were destructive massacres where both sides fought until one side claimed the field by slaughtering the other.
Whoever won the war would win it by utterly destroying the enemy.
However, on that Fourth of July, the Power Team wasn't fighting. They weren't gathering military Intel. Instead, they were working for the third day on a scientific research mission which was nothing more than a fancy way of saying they were gathering Intel to see if Dread was up to something even more sinister. Like any other day, it drifted by without recognition and each man focused on the task at hand.
The daily tasks were necessary work, but there was a growing annoyance with the routineness of it all. There was little amiable conversation, few jokes, no songs playing over the speakers, no whistling while working, nothing from before. Everything and everyone was serious. It seemed as if what they were fighting for didn't have the same hold on them as it once did. Preserving anything from the past or re-building the world was far from their minds. The main goal was to survive the present and destroy anything remotely connected to Dread, even if it cost them dearly. Again.
No matter how bad things were in the present, Hawk, Tank and Scout half-heartedly tried to interject a little of the old give-and-take of their conversations from before, but Jon wasn't interested. He didn't smile anymore, didn't make any kinds of jokes. He was angry all the time. It hadn't interfered with his duties; in fact, it had made him one of the most ferocious fighters in the war. Losing Jennifer had changed him. It shut down his idealism. Hawk was worried that the anger and vengeance would burn out his friend from the inside, so they tried to get him to laugh, to not be so serious all the time, to remember that good times had existed once and that there were still good times to be had if they won the war. He didn't respond often, but it didn't stop them from trying.
That morning of the Fourth, they were investigating a series of storms that had been reported sprouting up between what used to be the San Gabriel Valley in California to Los Alamos, New Mexico for the last seven days. The storm would last one hour and then stop, then start again an hour later and be even stronger. Stronger winds, more intense lightning, louder thunder. Someone could almost set a chronometer by it. The one fact that defied explanation was that the storms didn't move. They had stayed over the exact same stretch of land for the last seven days despite the high winds and tornadoes being recorded. Their fear was that Dread was experimenting with weather-controlling machinery. It wasn't impossible. He'd created some devastating weapons over the years, but until they could get more data, they wouldn't be able to deduce any concrete information or accurate scientific theories. So for the last three days, they gathered data, timed the storms, gauged what was going on within the storm clouds. At that moment, they were waiting for the next storm to start so they could take more readings.
It had been quiet for too long, so Scout broke the silence. "Storms have been here for seven days. We've been tracking them for the last three. Data's the same. Nothing's changing. The next storm's about to start and it'll be more of the same, only stronger. We need a break. Anybody got any interesting Fourth of July stories?"
"2127," Tank answered quickly.
Ah. Conversation. Good way to break the monotony.
"2127?" Hawk asked.
Tank nodded. "The last fun Fourth of July I had. I was in New York. My brother was scheduled to ship out the next week for his new post, and I'd been told to report to Babylon 5 after my Academy graduation, so we were trying to enjoy our down time by taking some R&R there. We had just left the gym where we'd been playing basketball. We had reached a hotdog stand near Central Park when the fireworks started. Everyone there just stopped and watched them. We could hear bands playing in the park. I think some people started singing. That was the best hotdog I remember ever eating. After that, I was fighting battles for years on the Fourth."
Hawk almost laughed. "2127 was my last fun Fourth too," he mused. "Me, Joanna, Stuart, Morgana, and the kids all went camping. We could see the fireworks from the campsite. Jon," Hawk looked over at him, "do you remember that?"
Jon thought for a moment before nodding. "If I remember correctly, you and Dad got into a very intense discussion of the best way to make s'mores."
"Mine was right, Stuart's was wrong," Hawk quickly added.
Scout looked up from the monitor, a slight grin on his face. "Storm's starting again, it's stronger than the last, and dare I ask? What is the best way to make s'mores?"
~0~0~0~0~
2:47 p.m.
Somewhere near what used to be JPL in the San Gabriel Valley…
Surrender in the name of Lord Dread!
Go to hell!
Her eyes never left Blastarr as she reached back and triggered the self-destruct on the power source - the heat blasted her down to the ground; the flames were all around her -
JON! TAGGART!
The screams, the yells, was that Mentor's voice? It sounded wrong.
Then there was the pain.
Pain…
She felt pain then.
She felt her body wrenched away, torn from the heat and the flames, through an airless void into a bitterly wet cold.
She felt pain now.
Every breath, every movement sent pain screaming through her nerve endings.
How… where was she?
She couldn't focus.
She couldn't see.
Thunder echoed in her ears.
She felt dirt and rock beneath her…
It was raining. Torrential rains. Something hard was at her back - was it stone blocks? She couldn't tell. She could feel the soft ground beneath her. Her clothes were soaking wet, filling with mud. She could feel herself sinking into it. The air was cold. Very cold. Ice was hitting her face, snow, rain…
She was hurt. How? She didn't remember… it didn't matter. Almost unconsciously, as if by habit, guided by procedures drilled into her time and again – she moved her arm - pain shot through her shoulder - but she pressed the emergency beacon on her wrist communicator.
Help would come.
Help was coming.
She kept telling herself that help would be there soon. Just keep breathing. Help was coming.
Her last conscious thought was that she thought she had been inside the base moments ago… She was talking to Jon… Blastarr was coming…
~0~0~0~0~
Hawk couldn't resist. "First, you toast the marshmallow over the open campfire. You know, one of those big marshmallows you had to buy special, not the usual large ones that aren't as big. Then –"
BEEP
BEEP
"What the –" Hawk immediately turned back to his control panel. "Jon, there's a signal coming over our secure emergency frequency," Hawk tried to enhance the signal. "It's coming from the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles."
Scout glanced back. "That's one end of this storm system we're tracking."
Jon moved quickly next to Hawk. "We're the only ones with access to the secure frequency, and all four of us are here. What's the pass code?"
Hawk checked… Hawk double-checked… "That's not possible. Mentor, are you reading the pass code on the signal?"
Mentor looked down at both Hawk and Jon from a computer screen as he analyzed the signal. "The pass code is the one assigned to Corporal Chase. It is authentic. The signal matrix is originating from her communicator." His voice sounded absolutely stunned.
"That's not possible," Jon whispered, repeating Hawk's denial.
Mentor quickly analyzed the frequency. "The signal is gone, Captain. My sensors indicate that the winds have grown stronger in that area. It is possible that the interference from the storm caused a random signal to mimic Corporal Chase's pass code."
"Jon?" Hawk looked at his friend.
"It's impossible. The code runs on a personal DNA-based frequency. It can't be duplicated or mimicked," Jon muttered. "Besides, Jennifer's dead, Hawk. There was nothing left in the remains of the base. Her communicator was destroyed. It's got to be a trap. What's in the San Gabriel Valley?"
"In this particular location - it's where the old Jet Propulsion Laboratories were located. The buildings were used as temporary settlements for nomads for years after the Metal Wars." Hawk answered quickly. "There's nothing there now but structural debris since earthquakes and artillery have pounded that area for the last few years."
"I've heard of the Jet Propulsion Labs," Jon told him. Something was tugging at his memory. "Mentor, what did they study there?" It had to be a trap. Jennifer was dead, but how could anyone have gotten her communicator? It would have been destroyed when the base exploded. And how could they have used it? It was based on her specific DNA.
But only her communicator could produce that signal. It couldn't be duplicated, not with the multiple layers of security protocols and frequency filters Jon installed on all of the communicators.
Mentor quickly answered, "The Jet Propulsion Laboratories was a research and development center funded by the federal government. It was also a NASA field center. A primary function was the construction and operation of robotic planetary spacecraft. However, they also conducted other astronomy missions such as earth-orbit missions. It also operated NASA's Deep Space Network."
BEEP
The signal sounded again, but just as quickly as the signal was found, they lost it again. "We've still got interference," Hawk announced. "No way to check if it is the real pass code."
"Captain!" Scout almost shouted from his post. "Sensors are showing that much larger storm is hitting the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles and stretching all the way to Los Alamos, New Mexico. All the storms we've been monitoring have united into a massive one. Intense thunder, violent lighting, it looks like several tornadoes have formed along the entire stretch. Temperatures have dropped drastically. That could be interfering with the signal."
"Keep monitoring, Scout," Jon told him.
"Working on it," Scout answered quickly. "This one came one hour after the previous one ended and... what the hell?"
All three men turned toward him. "What?" Jon asked.
"I just did a cross check on the atmosphere. Something really big is in this storm. I'm reading tachyon particles."
"Wait a minute," Hawk put up his hand to stop Scout. "Tachyons? I remember hearing something about those years ago when I guarded Stuart's lab. Aren't they just theoretical?"
"Tachyons?" Jon asked.
Tank was confused. "What are they?"
"Think time travel, big guy," Scout explained quickly. "A tachyon is a subatomic particle that moves faster than light. They were thought to be theoretical for years except for one thing - uh, what was his name? Professor Dillard, I think? Did some joint research with some labs back in the 2050's - Mentor, where did Dillard do those experiments?"
Without hesitation, Mentor answered, "At the Jet Propulsion Lab and Los Alamos in the mid-21st century—"
"Both?" Hawk quickly interjected. "That's at both ends of the storm, and the location for the old Jet Propulsion Laboratories location is where we're picking up this signal."
"Looks like," Scout agreed.
"Scout, how much do you know about tachyons?" Jon asked, his voice very steady.
Scout shrugged. "Not much. We lost all the data that was at those labs when Dread destroyed them. We've got a documentary about science fiction becoming science fact in our library files and Dillard's mentioned. He did a dual study to see if tachyons existed and to see if there was such a thing as time travel and if tachyons were involved in any way. Science fiction stories already connected the two, and it looks like there might some fact behind the fiction. Working at the JPL, Dillard tried to make a temporal/spatial connection between there and the Los Alamos Laboratories in New Mexico."
Mentor added, "That site was known as the facility for the Manhattan Project during World War II. In later times, the scientists were concerned with national security, outer space, renewable energy, medicine, nanotechnology and supercomputing during the 20th and early 21st century."
Hawk glanced back at Scout. "How many times did you watch this documentary?"
"More than once. After Dillard's experiments, they began to have a more serious interest in temporal physics and time travel. But here's the catch - Dillard couldn't prove the existence of tachyon particles back then. He couldn't track them; he couldn't get them to register on any type of equipment until he realized that since they were faster than light, he needed to look for what wasn't there. Sort of a trail where the energy had been shoved out of the way because the tachyons basically sped right past all the other particles. It was the absence of absolute proof that indicated there was something there and that's what really got the study of tachyons off the ground."
"And they're connected to time travel." That got Hawk's attention.
"Theoretically," Scout said. "Documentary didn't really say that anything was proven. But it's been used in a lot of science fiction TV shows and movies. I think it was scientists back in the early 20th century theorized they existed first."
"If they're theoretical, how can our sensors be reading them?" Hawk asked.
Scout cleared his throat. "After Jennifer and I watched the documentary a few times, she wondered if she could rig up the sensors to pick them up. She didn't really think they'd ever work, but she was curious. She built a highly sensitive sensor to try to pick up sub-atomic particles. I've been using that sensor to help track the storms." That was all he needed to say.
"Time travel… and Dillard did his dual study at both the Jet Propulsion and the Los Alamos facilities..." Jon began to say.
BEEP
Hawk glanced back down at the monitor. "We're receiving another signal. Same one. It's reading like it's from Jennifer's communicator."
Hawk might as well have been thinking out loud. They all knew what was going through his mind. They were thinking the same thing, but it was impossible. Time travel wasn't possible, and besides that, they had witnessed Jennifer's death. They watched her last moments on a vid-screen as she stood her ground against Blastarr. They heard her shout her defiance to a machine. They saw her take her last breath. It was a trap.
BEEP
BEEP
BEEP
The signal remained longer, its strength strong.
Scout rechecked the storm pattern. "Wind direction's changed. That might be letting that signal through to us."
Hawk quickly zeroed in on it. "Mentor, double-check it. Let's make sure -"
He didn't have to ask Mentor anything. He had the results in front of him. Good thing since they immediately lost the signal again due to the storms.
"Jon, the emergency signal… it's Jennifer's code. Definitely. It's the one you changed it to after Andy Jackson got past our defenses. It can't be duplicated. No one else had it; no one else knew it and the communicator was destroyed. And since the communicator is coded to our individual DNA, no one else could use it even if they had it."
Hawk glanced up at his friend. Jon's eyes were practically riveted at the signal frequency shown on the monitor. Jon knew it well – he'd designed it himself. Not only was it an emergency beacon, it transmitted a person's vital readings. Heart rate was fast, blood pressure was low, body temperature was falling slowly and whoever was holding the communicator was badly injured, in extraordinary pain and fading fast.
But if it was Jennifer… no, no one could consider the possibility. She was gone.
Yet they all knew one fact in particular - if someone was impersonating Jennifer, Jon would have no mercy on them.
"Gear up," Jon told them, his voice flat and angry. "Power on your suits. Let's find out who's trying to get our attention."
~0~0~0~0~
The jumpship, seemingly of its own volition, flew faster than specs allowed to the San Gabriel Valley area. The ship hadn't performed above spec in months, since before Christmas. Scout had repeatedly said that it was because the ship missed Jennifer, but the ship was an inanimate machine... right?
"Hawk, what's going on?" Jon asked the moment he realized that the ship was flying quite steadily through intense turbulence.
"No idea. It's like every system and circuit on board have gone into overdrive. It's like they're pushing past their limits on their own 'cause I'm not doing it. All the boards are in the green. No danger of overheating or short-circuits."
No one would say it at that moment. No one would dare utter a sound, but they were all thinking the same thing - the jumpship believed that the signal was coming from Jennifer and was racing to reach her. Her pilot was calling for help, and no storm was going to get in the jumpship's way.
The ship landed smoothly in a torrential rainstorm. Smoothly. Without a hint of a rough touchdown.
"Not a word. Nobody say nothing," Hawk warned as they walked off the ship. "Let's just go." No, no one was going to say anything about the ship's performance. The ship didn't behave like that for anyone other than Jennifer. As accomplished a pilot as Hawk was, he didn't have the same connection with the jumpship as Jennifer did. The ship would fly for Hawk, but it would skydance for Jennifer.
It had skydanced all the way to the San Gabriel Valley despite the winds, the storms and falling temperatures.
Jon couldn't believe it. It was the Fourth of July, and the weather was that cold? In California? Unbelievable. It felt more like December in Colorado. The storm winds howled so loudly, the thunder boomed so explosively, the team had to yell in order to be heard over their communicators.
"How long has this storm been going on?" Tank yelled out.
Scout double-checked the readout. "Not quite twenty minutes. If it follows the pattern of the other storms, it'll die out in another forty minutes. What has me curious is how the entire line of storms joined up to make this one! Tachyon levels took a big rise and then got steady. Now they're dipping fast! Got no explanation!"
In full power suits, they walked through the torrential rain, following their scanners' readings toward the location of the signal. Their boots sank down to their ankles as they moved through the muddy sludge.
"It's starting to snow! Rain's coming down harder!" Scout called out. "And it's sleeting!"
"Snow? Here? In July?" Hawk looked up at his teammates as the flakes fell on his faceplate. "This is definitely one for the books."
A sudden gusting wind blew, first from one direction, then another. The team tried to lean into the wind to keep from falling over but kept losing their footing in the gales. It howled over their voices, and they shouted louder to be heard.
"Where's the signal coming from?" Jon yelled over the wind.
Scout paused to try to pinpoint the source. "Single vital sign just ahead, Captain. Readings are erratic. Sensors are showing this is the worst storm in a week!"
It was raining too hard to see much of anything. Walking side by side, maybe three feet apart so they could cover more ground and keep an eye on each other, they had to take small steps to navigate the muddy field.
"Temperatures are still dropping!" Hawk called back. Jon waved his hand in his direction to indicate he'd heard.
Scout checked another sensor. "It's the wind chill doing that! We're getting an uptick in the wind speed!"
Tank's foot caught on some half-buried foundation blocks. He couldn't counterbalance his weighty armor and tripped, landing right in the mud next to the blocks. Mud kicked up all over his suit.
"Careful, big guy," Scout called out. "Footing's pretty slick out here."
Tank looked back at them, made a move as if to signal he heard...
- there was something lying beside the blocks.
Tank wasn't moving. He was staring at what was before him.
Hawk paused in mid-step. "Tank? You okay?"
Tank crawled back... pushed his visor up so he could see what was lying there and then he stopped moving altogether.
The others saw him, but they couldn't see what he was seeing. "What's that? Log? Broken foundation stone?" Hawk called out.
"No," Tank called back. It wasn't a fallen log... no... what was that? Blond hair? A khaki uniform? He reached down to double-check and –
- touched a shoulder -
- pushed gently against the shoulder, the wet, blonde hair falling away from the face -
It couldn't be.
He quickly powered down his suit so his hand was free of his armor and gently moved the hair away from the face -
"Captain!" He moved, tried to keep the rain from hitting her directly. "It's Jennifer!"
The others moved toward Tank, but it was Jon who reached him first. He knelt down and immediately but gently lifted Jennifer's head out of the mud. The falling rain rinsed the mud from her face. The gentle slope of her nose, the angle of her forehead - could there be any doubt?
"Scout!" Jon called out.
Scout pulled a sensor out of belt and scanned the woman Jon was holding. Every indicator was in the green. "It's Jennifer. There's no doubt!" he yelled over a crack of thunder. "There's a trace of tachyons... DNA reads that it's her! No sign of digitization. She's hurt bad! Like she said, she's all broken up inside. Ribs, lungs... it's serious. Everything checks out to be her! How?"
Hawk took her wrist and checked her pulse. "Definitely not good. We need to get her to a doctor. Jon -" Hawk pointed out the sleeve of her power suit. No one else could have worn the suit. It was geared to her specific DNA. He then picked up her wrist to check her wrist communicator. "It's the real thing," he muttered. "It's the suit you redesigned for her. There's no mistaking it."
"How is this possible?" Scout asked as he used every sensor to record any and all atmospheric data of the area. "She can't be here. I mean, tachyons? December weather in July? It can't be time travel. I can't believe it."
"Worry about that later," Jon ordered. "Tank, get the stretcher. I don't want to jostle her too much. And get blankets. She's cold, and it's getting colder out here. Hawk, get the ship ready. Kirkland's hospital in Montana's the closest."
Her vital signs were taking a serious dip. Jon shielded her from as much of the rain and sleet as he could while the others rushed back to the ship through the storm to get the stretcher and prepare for liftoff. He powered down his suit, reached out and took her hand with his own - no armor to get in the way. It was cold, but not deadly cold. Not yet. It was from being out in the weather. How could she be there, alive? Miles away from the base? He kept hearing her final words in his mind. "I'm all broken up inside!" She knew she was dying then. How could she be alive now? How could she be in California? Could the tachyon particles be real? Could she have moved forward in time? Could the explosion have created some gateway that moved her in time? That sounded like science fiction.
A small voice echoed in his mind. Something about gift horses and mouths.
For once, he wanted to listen to the voice.