Time Jumpers Episode 7: Hapsh'm and the First Coethi Encounter
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First Time Displacement Battery has survived a supernova in the age of First Light by ducking into voidtime. But the ship has suffered damage anyway and repairs have to be made.
After the repairs, the jumpship Cygnus attempts a risky jump to their home time stream. They make it, but not quite where they wanted to be along the worldline. In fact, they’ve arrived some sixty years earlier, at a world called Hapsh’m, and a time when Umans first encountered the hated enemy Coethi.
The Bugs have swarmed over much of Hapsh’m City and Dringoth decides they have to “fight the battle we’re in.” Despite misgivings from some of the crew about messing with this worldline, the time jumpers boost down to the planet and use their skills, tactics and weapons to help the Hapsh’mites fight off the enemy. But Captain Dringoth has been here before, for he was part of the original defense of Hapsh’m sixty years before. The exec, Commander Nathan Golich, believes Dringoth is systematically trying to re-live all his earlier exploits and change the outcomes. Something needs to be done.
As happened before, the Bugs are defeated and Dringoth emerges as a decorated survivor. But the main worldline is changed, in violation of strict Time Guard policy. The mystery deepens when Golich, on short liberty in town, finds an unusual patron at a bar in Hapsh’m City, a man he has encountered before, a time pirate who has the power to make Golich wealthy beyond belief, if only he will give up his Time Guard commission. If Golich agrees, a new life will be opened up to him. But if he does agree, Dringoth’s fiddling with time streams and worldlines could endanger everyone and everything, even allowing the Coethi to penetrate to the very heart of Uman space.
Seventh episode in the Time Jumpers serial.
Philip Bosshardt
Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses...just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He’s been happily married for over 20 years. He’s also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Keeshond dog named Kelsey.For details on his series Tales of the Quantum Corps, visit his blog at qcorpstimes.blogspot.com or his website at http://philbosshardt.wix.com/philip-bosshardt.
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Time Jumpers Episode 7 - Philip Bosshardt
Time Jumpers
Episode 7: Hapsh’m and the First Coethi Encounter
Published by Philip Bosshardt at Smashwords
Copyright 2019 Philip Bosshardt
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
A few words about this series….
Time Jumpersis a series of 20,000-30,000-word episodes detailing the adventures of Ultrarch-Jump Captain Monthan Dringoth and his crew and their experiences as time jumpers with the Time Guard.
Each episode will be about 40-60 pages, approximately 25,000 words in length.
A new episode will be available and uploaded every 4 weeks.
There will be 12 episodes. The story will be completely serialized in about 12 months.
Each episode is a stand-alone story but will advance the greater theme and plot of the story arc.
The main plotline: Time Guard must defeat the enemy Coethi and stop their efforts to disrupt or eliminate Uman settlements in the Galactic Inner Spiral and Lower Halo sectors of Uman space.
Uploads will be made towww.smashwords.comon approximately the schedule below:
Episode # Title Approximate Upload Date
‘Marooned in Voidtime’ February 1, 2019
‘Keaton’s World’ March 1, 2019
‘A Small Navigation Error’ April 15, 2019
‘Cygnus Rift’ May 3, 2019
‘The Time Guard’ May 31, 2019
‘First Light Corridor June 28, 2019
‘Hapsh’m and the First Coethi Encounter’ August 2, 2019
‘OperationGalactic Hammer’August 30, 2019
‘Byrd’s Draconis’ September 27, 2019
‘First Jump Squadron’ November 1, 2019
‘Planck Time’ November 29, 2019
‘The Time Twister’ January 3, 2020
Chapter 1: A Kink in Voidtime
"Time isn’t precious at all, because it’s an illusion. What you perceive as precious isn’t time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is."
Eckhart Tolle
Jumpship Cygnus
Time Stream: None
T-date: Unknown
The primordial sun Leviathan had detonated early. The Coethi force was likely gone, vaporized. When it happened, Cygnus was still in a bubble of voidtime, partially but not completely protected from the supernova. The bubble was collapsing fast. And the ship was spinning out of control.
Propulsors off line!
came Acth:On’e from the Engineering deck. Not sure if it’s a valve or some kind of pressure drop…it’ll take hours to troubleshoot!
Dringoth had already figured that out. Voidtime is supposed to be isolated from normal spacetime…Leviathan blowing up shouldn’t have slammed us like that!
Golich couldn’t count all the flags and cautions on his board. At least the hull’s not compromised…not yet.
He had to speak above the wailing of the master alarm klaxon and ISAAC’s sulky voice, ticking off the problems.
I’ll try the core…see if we can pulse our way back to stability—
Already the ship’s wild gyrations and oscillations were causing problems. Dringoth winced at the sound of someone wretching his guts up behind them. It was Dr. Linx, pale green and spewing vomit everywhere. Acth, status of singularity core….
The Telitorian’s voice was strained. Core down to ten percent…we’re losing pressure in the main plenum. Converger’s already blown and twist fields are failing fast. Recommend we bank the core for repairs immediately…otherwise—
his voice lowered, we could have a breach.
No way,
Dringoth decided. I’ve got to get her under control. Give me whatever you’ve got—patch it the best you can. I’m starting a pulse sequence in ten seconds.
Copy that.
Dringoth ordered everybody to stations.
Hundreds of years before, sailors becalmed in the doldrums of old Urth would sometimes set out small boats filled with rowers, to physically pull a ship forward, hoping to find the slightest gust of wind to fill their sails. In a sense, Cygnus was trying to do the same thing. By judicious pulsing of her singularity core, modulating the power—and it was not a practice the dockyard engineers recommended—the hope was that the ship would gain enough reactive force through her damaged twist buffers to react against the vacuum structure of spacetime itself, against the matrix foam that constituted reality at its most fundamental level, to shove and nudge and will the ship toward the outer barrier of the voidtime channel. With luck and some skillful maneuvering—they were counting on Golich and URME for this—maybe the ship could gain enough momentum to punch through voidtime itself and back out into a normal time stream.
Then, even if the ship were still damaged and adrift, she had a better chance of being detected and rescued.
URME monitored the twist field output of the core carefully while Golich worked the power controls. Over a span of a few minutes, synchronizing their efforts, the two of them managed to tweak and nudge and prod Cygnus forward, while M’Bela and Dringoth kept the ship oriented properly and headed toward the voidtime barrier. Inside of an hour, ship sensors registered the first faint tugs of the gravimetric wall that was the voidtime barrier.
Queenie, where are we?
Dringoth asked.
M’Bela studied her plot. Pretty damn close to the wall, Skipper. Maybe you could steer left five degrees more. That would position us better. I’m already seeing the wall’s effects on our accelerometers. Momentum’s picking up smartly.
Dringoth gingerly worked the ship’s controls. Cygnus had only minimal maneuvering ability, so he had to plan each maneuver carefully, working with URME’s core pulses and any residual trim left in Cygnus’ rudders and planes. He had to worry about deadband too, so as not to ‘stick’ any controls in a position he couldn’t recover from.
How’s that?
Better…much better.
I don’t want to try a jump until we know what we’ve got that’s working.
Golich was at the secondary console next to Dringoth. He grimaced but said nothing. Finally, a little sanity. The man’s going to get us all killed.
Slowly, with a lot of breath-holding and cursing and fist-squeezing, Cygnus was brought under some semblance of control. Residual shudders and vibrations reminded all of them that the ship had sustained a lot of damage, perhaps irreparable damage.
At least, Dr. Linx had stopped throwing up all over the command deck.
Dringoth decided not to look behind his seat. Somebody get the Doc back to sick bay. And clean up that mess while you’re at it.
After several hours of checking and tallying all the damage, Dringoth decided to call an all-hands briefing in the crew’s mess. He frowned and shut his eyes, listening to the litany of the damage reports.
…probable flowvater impacts too…the actuator indicators show they won’t move more than a few degrees,
Golich was saying. Same goes for the rudder, really all our external controls. That supernova really slammed us.
Alicia Yang glared first at Linx, then at Dringoth. Captain, you said we’d be protected from anything Leviathan did once we were in voidtime.
Evelyn M’Bela picked up the argument, staring at Linx. Right. And that star wasn’t supposed to be blowing up right in our faces either. URME said we had a few days, maybe even a few months.
Maybe we shouldn’t have jumped to voidtime.
Jeez, Queenie, if we hadn’t jumped we would have been flash-fried in that supernova.
Linx shrugged, still looking slightly pale