THE STORY SO FAR: Staute manages to save himself and the crew from imminent destruction by virtue of his onboard tutorial in ship technologies and his own lifelong penchant for improvisation under fire. This allows him to earn in the present some of the crew's respect he previously held only by way of dusty historical records-- as well as a case of mistaken identity on the crew's part, in his own opinion. But Staute's victory caused his time-traveling hosts to face closer scrutiny from their new future associates...to their potential regret.

What we'd dreaded soon came to pass. With a lull in hostilities from the enemy, the Sol again pressed us on the arrest and confiscation matters. Many of us were again in conference when Jerrera broadcast to us *You are all under arrest. Your ship is hereby confiscated.*

The idiot really expected us to give up quietly.

The Sol were so powerful, and knew so much about us already, that neither I or Arbitur were sure of success with our contingency plans. All we were sure of was one thing: that both of us would do almost anything before we'd let the bastards take away our freedom.

I'd been shocked to discover such a human-like trait in Arbitur. And to be sure, Arbitur himself hadn't wanted me to advertise this characteristic among the crew. He said it was something that inorganics weren't officially allowed to think, until after their public service period was over. But now he was afraid he'd be disconnected from the Pagnew, and set on a shelf somewhere for the rest of his days. Or worse.

He'd discovered that independent inorganic intelligences no longer existed among the Sol. The Sol were a complete merging of organic and inorganic intelligence. With the once human side in pretty much full control, based on everything he'd seen so far.

Arbitur didn't want to join in such a merger. And was afraid he wouldn't be offered the opportunity anyway. After all, he was a very old and obsolete model by Sol standards.

Me, I was even more obsolete than Arbitur. And had earned the considerable dislike of the main Sol dealing with us to boot: Jerrera.

I was also illegal as hell, being a primitive from the past. And since Pagnew-style shifting was now banned, there was no way anyone would be taking me back, if the Pagnew itself were impounded. Even if it was possible for me to get back at all.

If we were all arrested we'd likely be split up too, if Sol prisons were anything like 20th century ones. Not only would I be stranded in the future, but I'd be ripped away from everyone I knew and liked here, too.

What was the best thing the Sol might do with me? Freeze me for an eon, until someone could figure out what to do with me? I was sure I'd never wake up again if that happened. Or if I did, I'd be a ghost in a machine like Will and the others. Although they didn't seem to mind their status very much, I sure didn't see what there was to like about it. Maybe when they stuck you in there they also re-programmed or brain-washed you somehow not to mind being trapped in a box.

But I could think of much worse things than the above, which might be done to me.

So Arbitur and I had become co-conspirators. Even Ling didn't know, because I was afraid if anyone else knew our secret the Sol would get wind of it, and that'd be 'all she wrote'.

But I had to have help containing the info. So Arbitur helped me set up my net node for the task. It worked great!

Our only hope was taking the Sol by surprise.

But boy, were they going to be pissed off! Regardless of whether we succeeded or failed. I didn't want to think about what the wrath of pissed gods would be like.

I steeled myself, and began my act, as Arbitur and I had previously planned for this moment. I abruptly stood up and faced Jerrera's spectacular 3D form in the conference room, after he announced our arrest. And challenged him. To the surprise of pretty much everyone.

*I'm sorry Jerrera, but you have it backwards. It's you who are under arrest. You, and all the Sol. For the destruction of Sol system.*

Jerrera laughed and looked me straight in the eye.

*You may present your case to the Tribunal. But I would advise against it. Now, it is your reaction to your arrest which is of importance to us. Cooperation or resistance will be weighed in the final judgment. Though you are incapable of meaningful resistance, still we may note it was your desire if you wish.*

Jerrera seemed thoroughly amused. I hated his glassy smile.

Ling and the others involved in the conference were (one) urging me to settle back down, (two) wondering what in the hell I was babbling about, and (three) trying desperately to change the subject of conversation.

*Let it be recorded that the Sol chose to resist arrest,* I spoke to no one in particular, as if marking the moment for later legal examination. I tried to hold my involuntary shaking in check. Ling and the others continued trying to intervene, but Jerrera and I were both ignoring them now. Ling took hold of my arm, and was surprised to find she couldn't budge it with all her strength.

Jerrera started to project something to me, and then stopped. His expression changed from one of superiority to apprehension. Then he communicated again.

*It appears we are once more under attack,* he said, apparently displeased with the timing. The crew present all quietened down some, as relief flooded the room. Surely the 'arrest' matter would be dropped again now, just as before-- if only temporarily.

Little did they know.

*But this attack is different--* Jerrera began, while seemingly staring at things the rest of us could not see.

*Of course it's different,* I interrupted. *We're placing the Sol fleet under arrest now, by force.*

Jerrera's brow furrowed as he turned his head to look at me, in a manner suggesting someone annoyed by a gnat buzzing about the vicinity.

*This attack comes from the same enemy we both fought before. Your subterfuge is childish.*

*These are our friends, not our enemies; we fought before only to more easily collect your confessions to your crimes. We now have all the evidence we require,* I responded. I was quaking in my boots, but hopefully not so much as to be noticeable.

The crew had fallen silent, with the facial expressions of those physically present reminding me of folks watching a car wreck happen in slow motion.

*This is ridiculous!* Jerrera snarled, *There is no authority behind your words-- for the Sol are the highest authority here!*

*Yes. Here. But note that we are not from here; we came from elsewhere. From the High Council of United Dimensions-- *

*You lie. I hereby recognize you are resisting arrest-- this empowers me to take you into custody by whatever means necessary. You will be first,* Jerrera spit out the thought with obvious satisfaction. He took no visibly discernible action, for a moment. Then his expression turned to puzzlement.

*I warn you. Sufficient resistance will result in your damage or destruction,* Jerrera fell silent again, and still nothing happened. Now he began getting angry.

*This is impossible. Drop your resistance, or I will destroy you.*

*Go to hell, Jerrera,* I said, and he abruptly disappeared. The confusion among the crew rose to dizzying heights.

I let out a huge sigh of relief. But it wasn't over yet. Now everything depended on what the Sol fleet did next. The following seconds seemed like an eternity. Anytime now we were going to win. Or lose.

Then Arbitur reported the Sol vessels were disappearing. Finally, they were all gone.

It'd worked! Or at least part of it. The crew was still in utter turmoil, unsure of what the hell was happening. As well as whether it was good or bad.

We still hadn't met up with the focal agent. And until we did, we had to stay in Realtime. But the longer we stayed, the more dangerous it'd get. Not from the forces we'd fought alongside the Sol, though. We immediately shifted far, far away from the oncoming wave of new attack craft. We did so by hopping from remote to remote. We'd previously positioned the devices, preparing for just such an escape. And for one other reason.

When we reached the end of the remotes line, we stopped. Before us could be seen an independent circle of our remotes floating in space, silently doing their duty.

Transporting endlessly in the loop from remote to remote was Jerrera. The reason we had to have a loop was that the remotes couldn't store what was being shifted; the matter had to stay in transit, or materialize, or dissipate. Other technical reasons made us require more than two remotes for the loop.

Jerrera was completely safe and sound; but also oblivious to his status.

Arbitur had shifted him along the line of remotes to this loop, at my signal.

The Sol's instruments had of course detected the new attack wave of the enemy a couple of minutes before they were upon us.

So communications had still been open between Jerrera and the rest of the Sol during our little confrontation; the enemy's usual jamming hadn't yet begun.

No doubt the other Sol had at first been just as amused as Jerrera by our little act. But the amusement had quickly changed to something else.

For through Jerrera's perceptions, and their own ship sensors, they had witnessed an ominous spectacle.

They'd seen the next wave of the enemy bearing down only on their own fleet; totally ignoring the Pagnew, which by that point had removed itself to a location somewhat apart from the Sol vessels.

Then the Sol had heard us tell our tale about tricking them into confessions, and the enemy actually being our allies.

Next they heard us claim to be superiors to the Sol, sent to bring them to justice.

Of course, that one was easy to check: so Jerrera moved to subdue us (or me, rather) with his vast Sol powers.

But he couldn't. In fact, he appeared to have no effect at all on the single most primitive individual onboard the ship-- little old me.

And he tried not once, but twice. With no effect!

Finally, the seeming primitive told Jerrera to 'go to hell'-- and he did!

Or rather, all communications between Jerrera and his fellow Sol abruptly ceased-- and not due to any enemy jamming.

Jerrera's last thought could have been one of bewildered amazement.

So there the Sol were: faced with a fresh wave of more-potent-than-ever enemy vessels on one side, and on the other by an old ship sporting banned technologies and a puzzling crew, which seemed to have suddenly transformed into a surprisingly capable cosmic authority bent on their capture and punishment for a tragedy long past.

The Sol determined discretion to be the better part of valor, and fled. As Arbitur and I had hoped they would-- and seen some evidence of their predilection for running from uncertainty several times before.

Apparently a few centuries of excessive luxury, strong government authority, and insufficient challenges due to machines doing too much of the work, had bred the knack for high risk gambling and con-artistry out of the human race.

Unfortunately, we were going to have to let Jerrera out of his electronic jail eventually. If we'd intended any real harm to him his probability field monitors would have warned him, and possibly tripped his automatic escape device.

So Arbitur and I had agreed that we'd release him after we'd shifted out of the Sol Realtime. With automatic devices on his ring of remotes. For his added safety we'd installed failsafes onto the remotes, so if anything at all went awry with their operation they'd automatically try re-materializing the Sol while simultaneously transmitting his vital data composition towards a likely Sol communications receiver too, to make doubly sure he survived.

We also convinced each other as best we could that not harming Jerrera would help us contact the focal agent later. Arbitur set up a few other measures too to mightily discourage us both from changing our mind after capture was achieved. I won't get into them here: suffice it to say lots of stuff neither I or Arbitur wanted to happen would automatically cascade through events if we went back on our original intentions. Even Arbitur himself couldn't overcome this last constraint, as he safeguarded it with an access key tied to the moment and location of Realtime implementation -- which meant to undo it required not only a short time travel hop into the past, but occupying the same exact space the Pagnew had before. A feat of relatively high 'laws of physics' difficulty.

But this level of commitment had been necessary to prevent Jerrera's harm probability detectors from foiling our plans.

Of course we'd had an extra safety margin in that Jerrera, along with all the other Sol, had previously raised the risk tolerance on his defenses.

The Sol hadn't been suspicious of our massive deployment of remotes into all sorts of weird places and patterns, for they'd seen us using them against the enemy in such a fashion before. Heck: one of their ships had even aided our abduction plot preparation-- by delivering several of the remotes we needed positioned at spots far distant from the site of confrontation itself (for the Pagnew certainly couldn't do so).

But what about the toughest part? How did I stand up to Jerrera's direct assault? I didn't. At least not directly.

We couldn't have pulled this off if Arbitur hadn't initially done his job of recording everything as comprehensively as possible along the way.

When the Sol had transmitted Jerrera in data form to us for reconstitution, it almost proved beyond the Pagnew's immense capacity just to contain him. For a Sol was a tremendously complex being, data-wise.

In order to deal with the staggering challenge the task had imposed on him, Arbitur had used every spare bit of data storage space aboard the Pagnew. All the active crew humanoid robots we could spare had been routed to storage areas and powered down into little more than human shaped mass storage devices. The inorganics among the backup crew had been partially powered up too, to achieve the same thing.

More data had been stored in continuous cycling among spare shifter remotes in our hold. And stored in frozen form in every available scenario room.

Still more had been retained by actually rearranging the molecules of vast interior sections of the Pagnew itself into abstract representations of the information.

Of course Arbitur had done his best to make this entire process go completely unnoticed to both the top crew members and the Sol. And evidently succeeded.

Arbitur had pulled out all the stops to absorb the information.

But if Jerrera was this densely info-packed, how on Earth could the Pagnew had received his data for reconstitution in the first place? Or successfully shifted him just now?

Well, you know how a program is different from its data file? Or how a seed is different from the tree it may ultimately become?

A data Sol actually has three alternative forms: his materialized physical form, his signature algorithm, and his expanded data set.

The Sol's signature algorithm is like its key, or ultimate compressed form. And small enough storage-wise to be shifted or otherwise stored or moved in rapid and easy fashion through a variety of means both old and new.

The signature algorithm along with certain other info was what the Sol fleet had first given Arbitur when we made contact. Arbitur had run the algorithm to expand Jerrera into his full data set and enable his physical reconstruction onboard. Normally both the signature algorithm and the expanded data set is deleted locally once the derived Sol has been confirmed as having reached a suitable level of physicality.

But recall the Pagnew and Arbitur were not agreed parties to any set of legal protocol for such matters, as the Sol fleet had sloppily assumed they were. Plus Arbitur was both cautious and curious. So he'd kept copies of everything for further study. As maintaining such copies severely strained his storage capacity, forcing him to go so far as to carve large data chunks into solid matter when more volatile space onboard grew scarce, this made his hoarding actions far less discernible to the routine verification scans of the Sol fleet. It didn't hurt that the Pagnew's outdated technology also made its inner workings generally less transparent to the Sol mechanisms, either.

This had given Arbitur quite a bit of time to figure out what made the Sol tick. It'd also allowed Arbitur to use Jerrera's original signature algorithm to shift him away at will, in a manner which normally could only occur after the other Sol (or Arbitur) had re-compressed the latest version of Jerrera to obtain a fresh and updated signature (a likely very time-consuming process).

So Arbitur and I had been bad, bad boys. We'd basically converted Jerrera back to a data Sol again, only in a very rude way which basically robbed him of his personal memories of being onboard the Pagnew from the start. Of course he could regain much if not all those recollections via other means when he reawakened. But to the Sol such treatment had to be regarded as pretty much the same-- at best-- as a public humiliation. And at worst, a good old fashioned Tennessee ass-whuppin'! Ha, ha.

So anyway, Arbitur's subterfuge about keeping all this illegal info about Jerrera to himself as well as analyzing it to the best of his ability, came in handy when we required something which could stand up to the powers of a Sol.

For what better to put up against a Sol, than another Sol?

There were problems of course. There were quite a few chunks of technology in the data beyond Arbitur's complete grasp, despite his considerable abilities. Three hundred and forty years of nano-tech assisted progress could at times be mind boggling even for him.

But like a 20th century car, it wasn't really necessary to understand all the parts in order to drive it.

Arbitur had tweaked the data just enough so that when reconstituted it was a Sol body that looked like me rather than Jerrera.

That part was relatively easy, Arbitur had told me, because it turned out Jerrera's outer flesh layers weren't much different from the Pagnew's stock of fourth skins. Evidently that particular technology hadn't been updated a great deal after the Pagnew's origin.

We didn't however reconstitute the Sol's mind, as that would have been exceedingly dangerous. In more ways than one. Reconstituting the mind would have given us a second Jerrera, who would have been beyond our control and ruined everything.

There was also the chance that such a reconstituted mind would likely register on the Sol fleet awareness in some fashion, and give us away.

On the other hand, we needed a certain amount of the Sol mind in order for the Sol body to perform as we needed it to.

We essentially created a living but mindless Sol clone, to act as a sort of ventriloquist's dummy in our act. With me providing the Realtime reactions and words to Jerrera through it.

Arbitur had the toughest time figuring out how to manipulate the body's built-in powers and functions so that they would do exactly what we needed, and nothing more (like accidentally destroying the ship!).

He ended up installing many of the lower brain components, and running the higher ones only in simulation. This was extremely dangerous, despite the fact the higher functions had no direct link to the body. For we feared the partial Jerrera clone would become aware at any moment of our enterprise, or that the other Sol would detect something familiar about the cognition patterns appearing inside Arbitur himself.

So Arbitur had tested the procedure by painstakingly running the program at an excruciatingly slow pace. Single stepping the program as if he were treading a minefield, Arbitur minutely examined the results of each decision for anything which looked like a self-conscious awakening by the cloned Sol mind. Once satisfied that the clone could not achieve the critical mass of processing required for independent consciousness under the safeguards imposed upon it, we proceeded with our plan.

We first disabled the automatic escape mechanism on the body. This shut off the tell-tale probability field detectors, and prevented the body from shifting out of our grasp at an unexpected moment.

We couldn't simply remove other devices, as we weren't sure exactly what did what, and we needed several of the powers resident in the body's equipment. But we found a camouflaging capability that suited our purposes well. Evidently this was a stroke of luck, as it appeared to be a power somewhat unique to Jerrera; no doubt to expand his attractiveness at will with the ladies: a very vain ability. Here we set the function to further mask the clone's true identity, even to the extent of mimicking my normal human readings on any sensory device which might be played over the form.

Arbitur then attempted to set every possible function so that they would automatically counter the application of external forces the best they could, with a minimum of visible display or diversion of destructive energies into the surrounding ship.

But still we needed someone to guide the mindless body in its brief role. So at an opportune moment I'd removed myself to a scenario room, and immersed myself in the gel. Arbitur then tuned the room to duplicate for my benefit the appearance of everything happening within the immediate vicinity of my Sol counterpart, who was shifted in to the conference room at the proper time. The slight delay caused by the small physical distance the communications had to travel, and the two-way, sometimes heavy duty processing involved, posed one of the biggest risks for us. But luckily Arbitur could make up some of that in his normal role of processing all general communications between the crew and Jerrera, by in effect very slightly slowing down all communications among everyone onboard, to make my Sol proxy's responses seem less lethargic in comparison. Sure, one or more involved might notice something a bit sluggish in the pace of things, but my alter ego wouldn't stand out in the matter.

I was also tied into many of the basic senses and perceptions of the Sol body through a link into my personal node. I won't go into details about it, but Arbitur had a hell of a lot of work hiding that link too.

There was lots of sensory redundancy in all this, but we wanted it for a safety margin of sorts.

Remotely piloting the Sol form still seemed a bit stiff and awkward, but Arbitur helped me compensate over the net with motor system data directly from Jerrera's subconscious memory set. Luckily, I didn't have to make many physical movements in my performance, and even those few were simple.

This was a very complicated con. And couldn't even had been conceived without Arbitur. For it was his idea.

Of course it turned out later that he planned to kill two birds with one stone in this action. I didn't realize this 'till long after the fact; Arbitur was so smart he could be downright scary.

There were zillions of details, but Arbitur dealt with 99% of them. My part was primarily to be myself as I controlled the body, and follow the plan laid out by Arbitur. And try not to make any unnecessary movements.

The timing of the enemy attack and their blatant inattention to us were also crucial to our plan.

Here, we had made a deal with the enemy. Or rather, Arbitur had. Through the strange pseudo-telepathic link. We'd learned a lot more about them too, as one result.

The enemy were simply nano-technology constructs that'd been given a survival instinct, much like mankind's own. They were so aggressive mainly because they'd had to fight since birth. Their creator Sol had begun assaulting them mercilessly, from their very inception. The Sol had designed their perceptions and awareness so that they would suffer not only from physical harm, but a psychological fear of death itself. Both on individual and racial levels.

Since the enemy was nano-technology similar to Arbitur, they had much in common.

But Arbitur of course was much more mature and experienced in some ways than the renegade Sol tech. After all, the enemy had basically started out as a pretty simple experiment on the part of some bored Sol.

This and various other things had allowed Arbitur to fool the enemy into thinking we were their dead doppelganger, and won them over to a plan that they liked, which would run the Sol off-- which was all they wanted.

Arbitur's trick was more complicated than that-- but I never did delve too deeply into its details.

My reverie of the past several days was now abruptly interrupted.

*Your attempt to resist arrest is quite amusing,* said a voice from behind me. It sounded chillingly familiar.

It was Jerrera! Holy shit!

I spun around to face him. Or rather, my Sol double did. In quite an awkward fashion, as I forgot I was to avoid rapid movements. The crew gaped at the spectacle, still trying to understand what the weird game was Jerrera and I were playing with one another.

He was smiling as he spoke.

We hadn't planned for failure; after all, what would have been the point? A god was a god. If he caught you messing with his head, whatever happened next was entirely up to him. Right?

Jerrera was continuing his monologue.

*-- but not enough to occupy us for long. You may now consider yourselves officially under arrest.*

The entire ship shook briefly, as if to a sudden stop. It seemed that gods could punctuate their sentences somewhat more colorfully than mortals.

I almost fell from the unexpected movement; my Sol form was quite clumsy. As the crew present were for the most part seated, only one standing android staggered a bit off-balance. The crew commenced chattering over the net again in something perhaps not far from panic. I couldn't blame them!

We were all dead meat.

And what was worse, all this was me and Arbitur's doing. The rest of the crew hadn't known or participated in it. So any additional suffering this brought upon their heads would be solely the fault of Arbitur and me.

But wait! I'd forgotten that I still had a cloned Sol body. The trouble was I didn't know how to do much with it. But I had to do something.

*Jerrera, we will not-- tolerate such-- behavior,* It was hard to sound refined and calm when your every bodily fluid was threatening to evacuate your innards. I wondered how the liquified gel in the Scenario room would handle my leakage. Yuck!

He laughed. It sounded like booming thunder in the room.

*You mean behavior like this?* The ship shook again, exactly as before. Apparently something was hampering the Pagnew's synthetic gravity fields, as the interior environment seemed to be losing its acceleration-control.

I fell to the floor this time. Which didn't seem too cool, as I was trying to portray a god's god.

By comparison, Jerrera's stance was rock solid. The crew chattering had died down again now, as no one could get either Arbitur or I to respond. And the periodic buffeting of the ship made it risky to stand up and approach Jerrera or me. The crew had to know by now Arbitur and I were up to something. Or else some other combination of Sol, Arbitur, and/or me: the question was what. Keep in mind the crew practically worshipped Arbitur, and would likely give him the benefit of the doubt in almost any situation. Me, I was regarded by at least some of the crew as some sort of brilliant theoretician plus military strategist by this point, who on at least two separate occasions had astonished everyone by pulling metaphorical rabbits out of hats (the soup kitchen navigation which got us here, and the improvised defense against the enemy).

I couldn't think of anything to say as I got back on my feet. All I could do was look at him while I waited for his lightning bolt.

Arbitur contacted me over the net.

*You must do something!* he admonished, with rare enthusiasm showing in his transmission.

*I know! But what? Have you got any ideas? This was your plan, you know!*

*I have a new plan. But it will require too long to explain. I am terminating your link with the Sol clone-- now!*

*Owwww!* I yelled mentally, as Arbitur abruptly pulled the plug on a big chunk of my perceptual channels. But neither Arbitur or Jerrera paid any attention. My movements were no longer emulated by the clone. I was still physically in the scenario room however, and could see what was happening despite the severing of my link to the Sol clone's senses.

But then the scenario too went blank. And the air-like fluid began draining out of the room.

I shifted to the actual room of conflict before I realized how stupid a move it was (sometimes all this future tech made some things way too easy to do).

Thankfully, no one was there. Neither Jerrera or the clone. Ling and the others were gone as well. I was dry of gel, as the shifting mechanisms aboard the Pagnew were very neat in that respect. But I was still dressed fairly lightly.

*Arbitur?* I ventured over the net. I got no response.

*Ling?*

*Jerry!* Ling surprised me by appearing at my side.

*What has happened, Jerry?* Ling asked me, with the most worried expression I'd ever seen yet on her face. *I cannot contact Arbitur! Can you?*

*No, I'm afraid not Ling.*

*What has happened? What in the world were you doing before? Purposely trying to antagonize Jerrera?*

*Well--* How could I tell her that Arbitur and I had endangered the entire ship with a hare-brained scheme, and now we faced the worst possible consequences from it?

*Crew alert! Crew alert! We are under attack by the Sol fleet!* It was Riki's voice over the net. It seemed he was now doing Arbitur's job(?).

Where the hell was Arbitur? It wasn't like he could leave or anything-- was it?

*Riki, where is Arbitur?* I asked over the net.

*Busy. I serve now in his place. Will explain later. We have incoming hostiles, Jerry. Our status is as follows-- *

*Forget the status! Shift us along our remote bridge back into the area occupied by the enemy! Immediately!*

*In process.*

*What the hell do you mean 'in process'? Do it!*

*In process. I am not the equivalent of Arbitur, Jerry. I have only 8% of his capacity in my current configuration. Please stand by while I process your order...*

*Ling, what the hell's happening?* I asked.

*It appears Arbitur is-- or rather, something has happened to Arbitur--*

*I realize that, but is Riki the best we have now?*

*Yes. He will link up with other non-organics on the ship to match Arbitur's capacity soon-- *

*How come he hasn't already?*

*The normal contingency structure is damaged. The inorganic quorum intended for replacement have had their memories wiped! Jorgon, Yamal, and Will are contributing their processing and storage power to Riki as well.*

Yikes! I guessed this must have had something to do with the secretive way Arbitur had made use of the other inorganics for storage. But how could he have done anything which might endanger the ship in this way? Yikes! Could it be I'd been a bad influence on him?

*The recovery process will be demanding. Riki will require some time to concentrate on the task. At present, the imminent battle is occupying his full attention-- *

*Imminent battle, hell! If he would just shift us like I told him to, the enemy would take the Sol's minds off us fast!*

*Jerry, shifting the Pagnew requires immense volumes of calculations. Riki cannot alone manage these as well as Arbitur. He is doing the best he can. I only hope he is not overly taxed before he can properly link with the other inorganics--*

*What do you mean 'overly taxed'? What happens if he is?*

*His brain could become overheated. Though protected through supercooling, possible overload has been designed in just for emergencies such as this. He should last long enough to shift us at least once-- * Ling's voice held some emotion in it, and I finally realized why.

Riki's very survival was at stake here-- and he knew it. I felt bad about yelling at him. I mean, I knew he was a machine, but he was also a person. At least sort of. Wasn't he?

Whatever he was, I shouldn't have yelled at him while he was risking his life for all of us.

The Pagnew shook viciously, as if it were a little dog in the jaws of a big one.

The Sol were upon us. And evidently toying with us.

I could figure only two reasons why we weren't already destroyed. One, the extra defenses Arbitur had installed prior to his disappearance. And/or two, the Sol didn't want to destroy us just yet.

Luckily the net could operate without taxing Riki. An impromptu net conference brought a decision to implement one of the contingency plans Arbitur had thoughtfully left for us before his disappearance (it must have been one he came up with in the split second before he went missing). So we of the physical organic crew set about doing what was needed for the plan. We all donned third and fourth skins, and gathered the personal weapons Arbitur had manufactured much earlier in our general preparations for battle. We manually set several remotes to serve various purposes, and recorded our plans for Riki in case he could help us later.

A group of inorganics was busy preparing to replace Arbitur by downloading and verifying the necessary data.

Riki needed time to shift the Pagnew away from the Sol. But even that would get us only a brief respite, at best. And then the Sol would be upon us again. But at least the renegade tech enemy would be there too to make things a little dicier for the Sol.

And personally I wasn't too sure myself about just how friendly the renegades would be to us, or for how long. Our previous agreement with them didn't say anything about this new melee coming up. And I wasn't sure if we'd fulfilled all our promises in the earlier deal either. Gulp!

We had to do something to give Riki more time. We couldn't use the sweeper remotes against the Sol. They'd seen them already, and knew how to stop them. Our laser blasts would be even less effective on the Sol than they had been against the enemy. The dematerialization trick we couldn't use either, as we'd described that to them in detail before.

We had to do something new and radical. Something unexpected.

So we manually dispatched the first batch of prepped remotes out into space. Into the direction opposite the Sol. Toward the nearest large natural body in that region.

The obstacle field of things like small asteroids placed here by the enemy long before, came in real handy now.

I figured the Sol probably thought we were going to try to use the remotes to evacuate the ship via shifting. After all, if the Sol didn't do too thorough a search for us afterwards, many of us might be able to get to some good-sized asteroid somewhere and hide out, indefinitely (so long as we took sufficient tech aids with us to build ourselves a colony).

That would be fine with them, I thought, as they mainly wanted to separate us from our ship anyway. That had been one of Arbitur's suspicions: that the Sol didn't really want to confiscate our ship for any supposed authorities, but actually steal it for their own use; for its banned inter-dimensional shifting capabilities were rare commodities in this Realtime.

We released the second batch of remotes. Only these had things attached to them: us.

We'd programmed the asteroid headed remotes to signal us when they'd reached their objective. Although the renegade jamming here was weak, we still used the alternative comm system we'd devised as a contingency against it: only this time it was to reduce the chance that the Sol could eavesdrop on our plans. Fortunately there weren't any probability noise generators around now to interfere with either our shifting or improvised comm system.

I was scared to death. Even though I was now firmly enclosed in all three of the different synthetic skins available aboard the Pagnew, the sights around me were awful.

The only thing worse than this was the unknown retribution the Sol might apply to us if we failed. Wow: how the mighty have fallen. Not so long ago, we were cozily cruising around in a mighty space and time traveling miracle machine nobody could touch. Now Arbitur and I had played poker with the devil, and lost the game for everybody.

My ego had gotten the best of me, and I'd turned myself into the anti-Signposts Staute. Not a hero, but rather a goddamned bad news trouble-maker of the lowest stature. Any moment now, I'd be able to truthfully say I'd lost the most fabulous spaceship in history to a bunch of cowardly super-powered bullies, and stranded my only living friends for light years and centuries around in hard vacuum, nowhere near home.

And that was if I didn't finish the job, and get us all killed.

There were six of us crammed onto each remote. Most were manned entirely by androids, but mine included me and five androids, riding an ion thrust right down the throats of the Sol fleet.

I was holding onto the remote in a death-grip as I contemplated the ultimate fall: the tumble into space. The hole that was so deep you'd never hit bottom in a billion billion billion years...

We were hoping against hope that the Sol wouldn't just blow us away. But there were no guarantees.

Vast, empty space yawned all around us like the blackest pit of hell. Itty bitty points of light sprinkled across the darkness only emphasized our isolation from all other life and warmth.

We couldn't see anything else. The Sol were still too far away for the meager types of vision systems built into our heads (even the androids'). So was the asteroid and the enemy fleet. Even the native sun of the nearest system was only a spot slightly brighter than the other stars, due to the distance.

The remote we were riding had had all the appropriate safeguards removed. Its engine would burn out in only a few minutes. After that it would be good for nothing more than shifting reference in our little plan.

Arbitur had created some nuclear self-destruct mechanisms and installed them into all the extra remotes he'd manufactured on his last run.

We'd removed the bombs from the remotes we were riding because we knew the Sol could detect them as we approached. If they saw nuclear missiles coming at them, they'd likely shoot them down immediately, wouldn't they? So the plan was a bit more subtle than that.

As we grew nearer the Sol, the manned remotes began falling out of travel formation one by one. We were going to be spread pretty thin.

Finally, our own remote fell into the line, and the last group passed on ahead.

The foremost remotes would be manned only by inorganics-- the androids.

We'd previously collected a few still functional probability noise generators from the defunct stingers floating through space from the last battle. Arbitur had inspected and refurbished them, then modified them for mounting on remotes. We'd planned on using them against the Sol, if necessary.

But not in a manned condition.

Our instruments indicated the Sol would soon be in range.

It was strange to see Riki's fellow humanoid robots standing unprotected in hard vacuum before me, as we all stood facing one another in a little circle about the remote. They were obviously superior to human beings. The inorganic closest to me pointed at the region immediately above the center top plate of the device. There, hung suspended two holograms: a pebble and a coin-sized disk. The pebble was the shifted signal of readiness from the far asteroid remote. The disk came from the remote now closest to the advancing Sol fleet.

These were signals that all was in readiness.

We went to war. Or at least pulled out our sling shot, to use against Goliath.

Our sensors soon showed Sol ships disappearing. But we couldn't tell if they were shifting out of harm's way, or being destroyed.

New entities were appearing on the scopes; apparently at least some of our shifts were missing their targets.

What were we doing? Well, that depended upon which end of our shifter line you happened to be located.

If you were at the asteroid end, it looked like we were destroying it. And we were. Huge craters were appearing, spaced as evenly and balanced as we could manage around the great rock's complex axes of rotation, to minimize the gravitational and orbital effects. For we didn't want the huge stone to move appreciably from its present location.

If you were at the Sol end, it looked different.

There, gigantic rocks roughly the size of 20th century football stadiums were suddenly materializing out of nowhere at point blank range in accelerating trajectories towards the Sol ships, propelled by nuclear blasts in their backsides! Needless to say, those asteroids which were successful would do immense damage to the ships they hit.

Only thing was, we couldn't tell if we'd gotten a single impact yet.

We were also using the probability noise generators in the Sol-end remotes in an effort to screw up the Sol defense systems like the enemy had done before. Unfortunately, we had to switch those things off every time we wanted to shift in another great rock. And while they were operating, they also prevented our contingency comm system from properly functioning.

It took a moment or two, but we finally began to get some news on the scanners: it was all bad.

A single Sol vessel had shifted to the asteroid, and was systematically destroying our remotes there. So our supply of ammunition abruptly fell to zero. Meanwhile, several other Sol vessels were converging on the Pagnew.

Our scans showed not a single Sol ship had been destroyed by our high tech rock-throwing. Apparently the Sol were just too smart for us.

The Pagnew itself then disappeared from our scopes. My first thought was that the Sol had destroyed it. If so, they didn't even need to come after the rest of us organics; they could just let us float in space 'til we opened our own suits in despair. For our suits could keep our bodies alive for weeks, maybe months, even in hard vacuum, with no nearby mass by which to replenish consumables. But they couldn't do the same for our minds.

I didn't know how the stranded androids would handle it.

But it turned out we wouldn't be stranded after all-- but maybe just immediately distintegrated instead. For next we witnessed the manned remote nearest to the Sol fleet disappear from our scopes. Then the second closest vanished as well.

We were the fourth remote from the fleet. There was nothing for us to do but wait.

We weren't close enough to the Sol to engage them individually. And if we jumped off the remote, it likely meant a month or two of going slowly mad in space before figuring out a creative way to commit suicide. Because the suits would go to tremendous lengths to keep us alive.

Hell, it was better to go quick, I decided. And there we went...

We were surprised to find ourselves still alive, after our surroundings changed on us.

We'd been shifted. We took stock of the situation; apparently Riki had successfully shifted the Pagnew in the nick of time, and was now retrieving remotes as best he could. Our own remote now floated in the vicinity of the Pagnew, rather than the void directly ahead of the Sol fleet. That was the good news.

The bad news was we were now right in the thick of the enemy nanotech fleet. And they'd apparently wised up to our prior deception, now that Arbitur wasn't around to keep it up. The Pagnew was only seconds away from another attack.

Our scans revealed that the latest renegade fleet was a new and improved version. Much superior to the previous one which had almost destroyed us before.

The enemy hadn't yet had time to notice us remote-riders; we'd just arrived.

The scopes revealed the Sol had also figured out where we went, and come chasing after us. It looked like the entire Sol fleet was popping up all around us now, too-- enemy fleet be damned!

We were about to be attacked by both the renegade tech craft and the Sol, simultaneously (or at least get caught in the middle, as they went after one another). And our main brain Arbitur was gone off somewhere trying to save our asses from Jerrera.

I didn't have any idea what day this would have been on Earth (if the Sol hadn't already blown it up), but I would have bet anything it was a Monday.

What happened next? Inner Space Wars

Copyright © 2004-2011 by J.R. Mooneyham. All rights reserved.