Beyond the access chamber he came into a reasonably sized room, approximately thirty feet square. The two side walls were full of touch-screen computers which presently displayed scrolls of data, matrixes of numbers running at incredible speed as the state-of-the-art quantum computers ran computations a billion times faster than the human brain was able to comprehend.
The main activity in the room centred around a semi-circular workstation, inset with computer screens which displayed the quantum computer’s conclusions at a speed the three human scientists gathered around it could comprehend.
A body lay sprawled in a pool of blood on the deck but King ignored it and focussed beyond the scientists who still had not noticed him. At the front of the room was a clear polymer wall and, through it, King could see robotic manipulator arms. The chamber tapered into a cone-like shape and beyond the opaque, frosted-glass-like cone, the distorted silhouette of the large particle accelerator could be seen.
He took this all in, in a moment, and then wrenched his handgun out of its holster and aimed it at the scientists.
“You’re going to send me back!”
60:
Kamikaze
Searing agony exploded from Raine’s shoulder and shot through his body. Despite all his training and experience, both his mind and his nervous system were overloaded. The mental shock of seeing Rudy O’Rourke impaled on Gibbs’ knife, coupled with the physical shock of that same knife slamming into his body, had left him unprepared for Gibbs’ attack. Now, he felt the world around him blur as Gibbs’ hands wrapped tightly around his throat. It felt as though his head was about to explode.
Then, from some inner reserve, he pushed through the daze and slammed his knee into Gibbs’ groan with such force that he swore he felt something pop. The other man wailed like an enraged dog and reeled back, groping his jewels, his face streaked with tears.
Raine threw a fist at him and his nose disintegrated under the impact, a splash of red bursting forth. He drew back, then went in for another punch but Gibbs lashed out, more instinct than planned assault, and slammed the palm of his hand into the hilt of the knife still embedded in Raine’s shoulder.
He reeled in pain, a cry of agony wrenched from his throat.
Langley hit the top step and fired his P90 at the two stunned marines guarding the corridor to the bridge. Before they even hit the deck, he burst through the heavy door, weapon blazing, and fired indiscriminately inside.
The bodies of the Eldridge’s crew, taken completely by surprise, convulsed under the barrage of bullets. Two drew their weapons and fired back but the door shielded Langley from the fire. He swung his P90 in the direction of the resistance and, moments later, it ceased.
Cautiously, he pushed the door open and shuffled inside.
“We can’t,” Doctor Tobias stuttered nervously.
“What do you mean, you can’t?” King snarled. He had just demanded that he use the device to send him back in time by a little over two weeks, back to the ruins of Sarisariñama, to a point before he stumbled upon Pryce’s body and the fragment of the Moon Mask. He could stop any of this from ever happening.
“This isn’t the Tardis,” the doctor said. The two technicians eyed the archaeologist warily. “The distance back in time that this ship can theoretically travel correlates to the amount of tachyon energy that is discharged. The more tachyons, the bigger the backwards jump. It has taken days of computations with a quantum computer to accurately determine the amount of tachyon energy we need to travel back to our target point. Now you want me to rework the calculations just like that?!”
King made a show of chambering a bullet into his handgun. “It doesn’t have to be exact. Two weeks, two months,” he shrugged. “Even two years—”
“That is the other problem. We wrote a failsafe into the control program which prevents it from calculating a date of less than one hundred years.”
King’s heart sank. “Why?”
“To prevent the possibility of a time traveller meeting himself.”
“So what if he does?” King snarled.
“So what?” Tobias scoffed. “The same matter cannot occupy the same point in space-time,” he explained. “Theoretically, if such a thing ever happened…”
“What?” King demanded as Tobias trailed off.
“It could be catastrophic. Such a reaction could theoretically tear apart the entire space time continuum.” King’s expression was blank, uncomprehending. Tobias sighed, trying to think of the simplest way to put it. “It could destroy the world. No, not just the world, but time itself.”
Gibbs lashed out with his legs, taking Raine’s feet out from under him. He went down hard, felt a rib crack. His head struck the safety banister and he saw stars. Then Gibbs’ fist smashed into his face and his vision exploded. Another blow came, and then another and another.
“Do it,” King ordered Tobias.
“Didn’t you hear a word I said?”
“You were only too happy to screw around with the space time continuum a few minutes ago—”
“Under controlled conditions!”
“Controlled conditions?!” King laughed bitterly. “Take a look around! Does this look controlled to you?” Then he levelled his handgun at Tobias’ head. “Do it. Override the program—”
“I can’t!”
King slammed the butt of his gun into the other man’s face. He spat blood. “Don’t lie to me!”
“I’m not!”
King felt as though he was standing outside of his body, watching someone else control it, watching someone else use it in such a brutal manner. He was a man of peace, not of violence. Yet he knew that whatever wrong he did here, now, he could un-do it in the past.
He moved the barrel of the gun down and placed it squarely on Tobias’ knee cap, pulled the trigger—
“Okay!” he screamed. “Okay! I’ll do it! I’ll do it.” The scream became a sob.
King took a deep breath and removed the gun. The scientist was trembling and he felt bad for treating him in such a way. But then he remembered that everyone here was responsible for Sid’s death and his heart hardened once more.
Tobias turned back to his computer and began inputting commands into it. Moments before King had burst into the control room, he and his team had written a work-around program which would enable them to bring the accelerator online while there were people inside it. Now, he quickly began disengaging one of the other failsafe systems and recalculated the temporal destination. Streams of data waltzed across his screen, converging lines indicating the approximate tachyon requirement versus the point in time desired.
Eventually, he announced, “I’m ready.” He barked commands at the technicians. One of them began operating a joystick and, in response, King saw through the transparent partition one of the robotic arms began to move.
“Closing radiation screen,” the technician controlling the arm announced and in response a thick sheet of lead began to drop in front of the giant window to protect the control room’s inhabitants from the tachyon radiation. King’s eyes switched over to a computer monitor which played streaming video from inside the chamber. With shocking dexterity, the robotic arm opened a lead case, reached inside and extracted the Moon Mask.
Welded carefully together, after many thousands of years, the Moon Mask was now whole and complete. All the facades that had been added to it by ancient civilisations had been cut away and now, what King stared at was what had been carved by the hand of some sophisticated artist from a civilisation that had no name official name.