Wrinkle in Time (9781458093967)

Kris Katzen

Published by Bluetrix Books, Smashwords
edition.

© 2011 by the author

Copyrighted material. All rights reserved.
Please do not reproduce in part or in whole without the express
prior written consent of the author.

A Wrinkle in Time

What the hell was taking them so long? Luke
Parillo had sent the urgent interstellar message over a week ago
requesting assistance. Sometimes it still galled him not to have a
starship at his disposal any longer. Not that he'd ever admit that
to anyone.

It wasn't finding the corpses that had so
unsettled him. It was finding thousand-year-old corpses in the
midst of Earth technology from a hundred years in the future that
really set off alarm bells. And Parillo lacked the means with which
to investigate.

Parillo kept at his work because that was the
only thing keeping him sane while he waited. On his hands and knees
on an anti-grav unit a centimeter above the ground, he used the
fine brush to clear away dust from what had been, thousands of
years ago, a breathtaking mosaic tile floor.

"Captain Parillo."

"I know that voice," Luke Parillo looked up
from the ruins he was excavating with such painstaking slowness. A
smile spread over his face as he got to his feet. He stepped clear
of the work area and brushed his hands on his trousers to get rid
of some of the dust. "No one has called me that in fifteen years.
It's 'Doctor' now, or sometimes 'Professor'." He strode forward,
hand outstretched.

The lean, lanky blond caught it in a strong
handshake. "Good to see you again, Luke. Archeology suits you."

A shadow crossed his face and he stated what
she'd left unspoken. "And I got out just in time, right?" He'd
retired from the fleet just before the rumblings from the Wyneeri
began, and a year before the War exploded across the sector.

"You were lucky. I'm happy you did."

"I'm not. I still think Command was wrong to
refuse my request for reinstatement once the fighting started."

"I can understand your feelings," Darcy
Dennis followed him as they picked their way among trees and down
the rocky hillside toward the dozen prefab cabins at the base of
the slope. "But honestly, Luke, losses got so bad that there
weren't enough ships to go around. And I seem to recall you
declining to teach at the academy," she said, gently yet
pointedly.

"I didn't think that was the best use of my
skills," he admitted. But then he shook off the old grievances.
"Captaincy suits you," he echoed her own words back with a
twist.

And it did. The dark blue uniform, now
sporting the gold piping of command, looked good on her and she
wore it easily. The slacks had a narrow gold stripe running down
the side of each leg, and the high-collared jacket had one on
either side as well. The white jersey underneath had a crew
neck.

Then Parillo added, "You'd better be taking
good care of my ship."

Dennis laughed although she could tell the
words were only half joking. "You're welcome to take a look
around—after you show me what has you firing off priority one
messages to the EMF."

"That's precisely where we're headed."
He continued out the other side of camp, snagging two flashlights
and a bag of hoverlamps from a table as he passed. "Everyone else
is on the ship," he said in response to her quizzical expression.
He'd sent the other ten members of his team up to their transport
in orbit where he hoped they'd be safer. They'd humored him and
agreed to work on surveying they could do from the
Whirlwind
. "It's a ten minute
walk."

The hilly forest had little ground cover, so
it was easy to avoid the rocks as they walked. "George still your
XO?"

"No, his promotion went through a
couple weeks ago. He's the captain of the
Independence
now. Had the nerve to take my Chief
Engineer with him, the bastard."

Seeing as she didn't sound the least bit
upset, Parillo chuckled. "So did you promote from within? Or go and
filch from someone else's command staff?" He felt a surge of
parental pride that so many of 'his' officers had not only chosen
to stay in the EMF, but now had their own commands as well. And he
felt intense relief that so many had survived the war.

"I kept it in the family. My Second Officer
was way overdue. I was lucky not to lose him in the meantime. And
the new Chief Engineer is quite the golden girl. You keep up with
the scuttlebutt, right?"

He searched his memory a moment. "Ah, yes.
Alynda Burnette, right? The most recent whiz-kid from the
academy."

"No, no. She's an ancient twenty-five years
old now. I think there's another child prodigy already. Some
physicist." She looked around when Parillo stopped but saw nothing
besides more woods and hills.

"Right here," Parillo walked around an
oddly-shaped outcropping and moved aside some fallen branches to
reveal a metal hatch.

A hatch bearing an EMF insignia that was
recognizable yet clearly different. The background coloring had
changed from a pure black to darkest navy, and the style of the
stars framing the Earth, and of the Earth itself, was more
ornate—an artistic representation instead of photographic.

Dennis let out a low, long whistle. "Not what
you expected to find."

With a grunt of agreement, Parillo handed
Dennis a flashlight then turned on his own. She followed her former
commander inside, the two beams of light playing down three steps
and illuminating a short passage that ran longwise between the two
parallel walls.

They were inside the double hull of a ship.
The stairs stopped at another hatch. Parillo pried it open and
activated the hoverlamp which, spewing brightness that made both
people shield their eyes, floated lightly away and to the ceiling
at the center of the room beyond the interior hatch. Then he got
out of the way so she could see for herself.

They stood on the bridge of a starship, one
that had the same layout she was accustomed to, only smaller and on
one single level. There were two stations fore, presumably con and
ops or the like, and two chairs in the center of the circular area.
Several more stations lined the aft wall. It would have looked like
a perfectly respectable and fully functional bridge if not for the
fine layer of dust...

...and the dead bodies all around.

Nothing but skeletons remained, human
skeletons. Although the environment had been sealed, it had been
neither dry nor cold enough to preserve the flesh, which had
long-since vanished along with the clothing the ill-fated people
had worn.

Both of the central seats were occupied, as
were the two forward stations. Three more sets of remains lay in
the back.

"I think the fleet needs to work on
clearer communications," Dennis said sharply. "Because the message
I got was the equivalent of 'an archeologist found some ancient
bodies. Go check it out.' If they hadn't included your name, I
wouldn't have come at all." She touched her comlink. "Dennis
to
Nyranik
."

"Yes, Captain?"

Parillo raised an eyebrow and shot Dennis a
look at the boyishness of the voice. She grinned back at him and
held up a finger.

"Adams, what readings are you getting from my
location? Any lifesigns? Or energy spikes?"

"No, Captain. Reading two humans and that's
all. Are you standing in a buried ship?"

"That's right. Have Alynda and Jairgage beam
down to these coordinates with a full science team."

"Aye, Captain. How about Saran, Sir? You know
he'll be asking."

"That's fine. Dennis, out. Saran is chief of
security and he takes his job very seriously," Dennis explained,
then grinned and addressed Parillo's inquiring look from before.
"Adams's not as young as he sounds, Luke. Almost ten years out of
the Academy, in fact. So," she circled the bridge, careful not to
disturb anything, "I take it you haven't explored the ship yet?"
The only footprints in the dust were those she herself was
leaving.

"No. I hated waiting, but I didn't want to
risk it without any backup."

The shimmering and humming of the transporter
made them turn to face the dark blue screen. Two columns of
sparkling light in front of it coalesced into a study in
contrasts.

A petite woman with engineering insignia on
her collar had chocolate-colored skin, wide-set, deep-brown eyes
and a halo of curly black hair that framed her delicate features
and just brushed her collar. Parillo doubted the top of her head
would reach his shoulder. With her tiny frame, he was sure she was
often mistaken for a child from a distance, or even sometimes up
close.

Next to the diminutive woman, the other
officer appeared that much more imposing. Easily six feet tall, big
boned and well muscled, her almond-shaped eyes and straight black
hair, flowing to her waist and worn loose except for a headband,
showed her Chinese decent. Parillo had never seen such a tall
Asian. He estimated her age at somewhere in the mid forties. She
held a medical kit in one hand and a medical scanner in the
other.

Dennis introduced them. "This is my Chief
Engineer, Alynda Burnette, and my CMO Jairgage Chen. Professor Luke
Parillo."

"A pleasure, Professor," Burnette flashed him
a sparkling smile even as she went to work with her handheld
scanner. Following the tracks Dennis had just made, she scanned
each station around the bridge.

"Nice to meet you," Chen said, her own smile
much more low key and serene than her crewmate's. "Saran and his
security team are right behind us, Captain They're setting up a
perimeter"

"Can you tell what killed them?" Dennis
asked, gesturing around the compartment.

Chen consulted her medical scanner before
saying, "Not with this, Captain. Perhaps more sensitive instruments
on board can help. Whatever happened, happened a millennium ago
from our perspective."

"Maybe," Burnette said, still circling the
room. "Unless they somehow died before getting thrown to the past.
I'm getting conflicting readings. But that's to be expected,
considering. The ship has been here over a thousand years, but it
definitely originated in the future." She gave a satisfied "Aha!"
then brushed away some grime. "2613. That's the old-Earth year on
the placard. The only question is, how long after that did the ship
end up in the past."

"What about..."

Burnette anticipated Parillo's suggestion.
"All logs have been completely erased, Professor. There is nothing
left."

"Deliberately wiped? Or as the result of some
attack or accident?" Dennis asked.

"I can't tell yet. After we check everything
over, we'll see if she powers up. If so, that might give us some
answers."

As if on cue, the security team arrived. Six
of the bunch carried loads of equipment with them in cases both
hand-held and with shoulder straps. Each carried a hand weapon.
Three others, including a strapping brunette man, wore heavy rifles
slung across their backs.

"Captain, I'd like to start with
Engineering," Burnette said.

Dennis nodded. "Report in every ten minutes
until the ship is confirmed clear."

"Aye, Sir," Burnette took off across the
bridge with Saran at her heels. A hoverlamp, set at much lower
luminosity, floated behind them courtesy of Parillo.

Using a magnetic handle, Burnette opened one
of the accessways and would have started down the ladder but Saran
tapped her on the shoulder. She gave a laugh that was almost a
giggle. With a bow both elegant and exaggerated, the engineer
stepped back and allowed the head of security to go first.

"See what you can find here," Dennis told the
rest of the scientists, "Then work your way down deck by deck. You
two," she spoke to the security personnel, "are with us. We'll
scout ahead." She gave a knowing half smile, "Assuming you care to
join us, Professor."

"Need you ask, Captain?"

Despite dirty looks from the two remaining
security officers, Dennis took the lead and swung around onto the
ladder. The light spilling in from the bridge showed that the
accessway led the height of the ship, meaning all five decks. Based
on its apparent size, Parillo estimated the ship would have had a
crew of about forty.

One of the men from security followed Captain
Dennis and the other went last after Parillo, who activated another
lamp to track them before he descended the ladder.

It took Dennis a moment to get the door open
below. Once she was finally able to break the seal, she swapped the
magnetic handle for her pistol before pushing the door open and
going through.

"Burnette to Dennis," the girlish voice
echoed weirdly down the shaft.