Asteroidal Dragoons

The mavericks back at headquarters didn't realise that the drill-bit needed to be quantum.

'That's as far as it will go,' the Engineer hollers.

'More steam!' I say to him, shouting through the pneumatic messenger. My voice echoes through the brass piping of this behemoth we're operating. On the other end, I hear the Engineer harumph, then he loads more coal.

I feel the change immediately, both my hands dug into the control panel, the heat coursing through them almost painful. Reminds me of summers on Neptune, once the Cyber-Queen's Dragoons had reclaimed it.

The Navigator's shrill voice through the piping: 'The reactor's going critical! It can't take much more of this!'

I sip my tea. Ceylon, specifically. I miss Old Earth.

The Navigator cries again, 'It's going to blow! We're all going to die!'

I set down my tea onto a coaster, grasp the pipe. 'If only. I've still got utility bills.'

Over the Navigator's yelling, I pull the throttle, timed to the last second. I tell myself the sweat on my palms is from the heat. Forty years in this machine, and my heart still races. Perhaps a sign I'm taking this seriously.

Easing off the throttle, we're floating in space. A telegram from Headquarters beams through the holoscope. 'HER MAJESTY IS SATISFIED.'

Covered in coal dust, the Engineer – a set of gold-rimmed spectacles lost within a beard – the Engineer clambers onto the deck, salutes me. I return the salute.

'Begging pardon, sir. But we've been digging up the Past.'

My stomach somersaults. Gastric acids climbing up my throat – the taste of fear. 'That's not possible. This sector is only designated for the Present,' I say.

Outside, beyond the brass of our hull, asteroids weave lazy ellipsoids around Titan. In the star-glittered vault, I can see the Navigator and his suit – a heavy burden repurposed from the days England plumbed an ocean filled with waves.

The Engineer grabs his flat cap, the whites of his knuckles showing. 'What shall we do with the Past?' he says to me.

I can't tell him I don't know. That's not what New Eton teaches us to say. This man, like all the men of his class, needs to believe that I am in control, that things are Well in Hand.

'Very well,' I say, suppressing the panic, 'We shall report this incident to Orion's Vice-Constable'

Having been offered a procedure, the Engineer's eyes light up. Anything but the miasma of not knowing What To Do. No, his was a world in which there were Higher Ups. Men of Higher Standing who Knew The Proper Thing.

And I am supposed to be one of them.

'Shall I call the Constable via holoscope?' says the Engineer.

'Not immediately,' I stuff my hand into my waistcoat, Napoleonically, hoping my servant cannot see my trembling.

An orchestra of serpents – the hiss of a two-stage seal. The Navigator emerges, his big, bright eyes peering at us with a mixture of panic and joy.

Then, jolting to some internal reprimand for his having forgotten, he salutes us both. 'No damage to the external hull, sir! However, there was another–'

'–Excellent work, Squire Navigator.' I cut him off. On any other day, I would hear what it is he has to say, but right now I need to prevent our demise.

'But sir!' says the Navigator, 'There is a matter of–'

'Whatever it is,' I say, 'It must wait. There are matters I must attend to.'

With those perceptive eyes of his, the Navigator sees the Engineer still troubled. Perhaps the Navigator even sees something of a worried contour across the regimented line some are wont to call my mouth.

Somewhere, in the Ship's Reactor, a wretched groan like iron giving birth to a nightmare. The Engineer and I exchange a look. The Past is already bleeding into our time reserves.

I signal to the Engineer with a hand motion. With a nod, he walks off, understanding that the Engineer cannot be seen as running. It isn't the thing to be done.

In the distance, nonetheless, the Navigator and I both hear them. The Engineer's footsteps – frantic, breaking into a sprint. Then, the elevator's belching hiss.

This isn't good. The explosion won't just vaporise the three of us. If the radius is even sub-critical, the settlements on Titan facing our ship's reactor will die, and the death will be agonising.

I reach for my Ceylon tea. The mug plays a shrill note as it shatters against the deck's gridded iron. I cannot control my hand's trembling.

'Sir!'

'Yes, Navigator?' I say without turning. There must be some way to reverse the damage. There must be some way.

'Sir, before I specialised in Star-Charting at the Academy, I took a course in Temporal Harvesting Dynamics.'

The left half of the control panel's indicator lights flash red. At least the emergency beacon hasn't sounded yet. Supposing it were to sound, The Cyber-Queen's Most Illustrious Space Patrol would have already vaporised our reactor from the Space Laser.

'Sir! The paper I sat for Temporal Harvesting was only a second-class, but that's because I've always struggled with the exam essay. I think my knowledge was a bit better than the examiner's board were willing to grade. At least, that's what my College Tutor said to me.'

'Navigator,' I say to him, 'at another moment in time, a discussion of your tertiary education's particulars would regale me. At present, there is a –' I pause to find the right word, '– a situation.'

I hear the Engineer approaching, his heavy footsteps. The Engineer's glasses are marked with tears. 'It is too late, sir.'

'It isn't,' says the Navigator.

The Engineer and I pause to stare at the graduate, not two years out of the Academy.

Even now, on the cusp of thermodynamic Armageddon, my first instinct is to reprimand him for speaking out of order. I choose not to.

The Navigator points to the indicators, 'We've ingested at least thirteen gallons of the Past through the drill.'

'Well-noted,' I say.

'But,' says the Navigator, 'Ours is a class-B reactor.'

'And your point?' I ask.

'That amount can be negated by a proportionate amount of Future contained within a person's life force.'

The Engineer ventures to say, 'But that would require–'

Then, the Navigator's diving suit collapses, empty. The Navigator's phantasm leaks out of it, passes through the ship's viewport, and vaporizes.

I gasp.

Seven degrees to starboard through the viewport, the detached reactor – the Navigator had already removed it when he left the ship before. Now, the essence of his life force was bleeding into the machine – a great big cloud of the boy's nervous system swallowed by a time-eating engine.

From the Engineer's lips, a rasping please – 'Dear God.'

The tele-typewriter's clitter-clatter disrupts my heart's fevered desolation.

I think of all the times I gave the Navigator reprimands. I wanted to make him a Navigator of the finest class. I wanted him to be robust. I thought I was raising a hero.

It seems, I think to myself, a hero is what he already was.

The typewriter's bell-dinged pounding ceases. I retrieve the telegram, recognise the insignia – Her Majesty's Council.

'FOR SERVICES RENDERED TO HER MAJESTY'S GALACTIC EXPEDITIONARY REGIMENT

BY ORDER OF THE GALACTIC CROWN AND THE CYBER-MONARCH OF NEO-BRITAIN,

SQUIRE-NAVIGATOR JOSHUA REGINALD IS HEREBY INDUCTED POSTHUMOUSLY TO KNIGHTHOOD – FIRST CLASS.'

'They've knighted him,' I say.

The Engineer, fond of the Navigator as he was, doesn't allow himself to weep. Not audibly. 'Begging pardon, my Lord, but a fat lot of good that will do the young lad, now will it?'

The tears trickle silently. Utter heartbreak – the Engineer's and mine

I turn away from the Engineer. The servant cannot see his master cry. I must be his bulwark.

'And why did we do it?' the Engineer says, 'Because we had to meet our gormless quotas? Because the Ministers want another bloody monument? Why dig up the Time Weave when we could have left this God-forsaken asteroid well alone?'

'You're shouting now,' is all I can say.

'Of course I'm bloody shouting! He was a fine lad. A good lad. Didn't hurt none other. Always did his best for us, he did. And now this bloody Empire has gone–'

'Be very careful, Engineer,' I say through gritted teeth. It is everything I can do to stop the tears. To stop myself from agreeing with him aloud. 'You know well as I do that little birds exist within each of Her Majesty's ships. This is likely why they didn't destroy us in the first place.'

The Engineer, red in the face, unable to stop himself, drunk on his agony and fury and torment, 'I don't care! I don't care about this bloody empire! I care about that boy!'

I turn to him, finally allowing the tears to fall, 'And you think that I do not?'

The Engineer stares at me. The two of us stand there, lost in the agonising silence deprived of the Navigator's voice.

Then, a whistle through the pneumatic tubes – the crackling of a transmission – 'Begging pardon, Lord Captain and Engineer, Sir, but you wouldn't mind retrieving this reactor?'

The Engineer springs to action, laughing. 'It's 'im!'

I grasp the periscopic speaker, 'How in Heaven are you in there?!'

'My Lord, as I tried to explain to you, Temporal Harvesting Dynamics were my first specialism. And a Harvester need not give up the ghost, so to speak, if he and the reactor merge.'

The Engineer grasps the speaker, 'Lad! Such a thing hasn't been done in centuries! You're a genius.'

The shrill voice, sounding abashed: 'Sir, you are too kind. But may I request that you reel the core in? It is frightfully cold in this vacuum.'

I give the Engineer a nod. Before I can utter the command, the Engineer descends a ladder, goes to man the grasping talons, to retrieve the boy in the reactor.

'Young Squire,' I say to the boy over the tubes, 'I must inform you of a change, however.'

As the Engineer draws in the reactor, the crackling across the transmission subsides. Clearly now, I hear the Squire's voice, 'Lord Captain?'

'For your services to the Neo-British Empire, you have been granted a Knighthood, First-Class.' The tears stream down my face again, 'Should you desire to embody a government-issued cybernetic jar-suit – which I am informed by telegraph the armoury of Second Westminster still possesses – you reserve the option to leave your post and be afforded a Pension for Services to the Crown.'

'My Lord?'

'You don't have to call me that anymore, Sir.' I say, 'You outrank me.'

A long pause. Over the messenger tube, I can hear the Engineer's constrained breathing, awaiting the Navigator's response.

The Navigator says, 'Lord, it is my expressed desire to serve both yourself and the Master Engineer,' after a nervous pause, 'Fellow Sirs.'

I remain silent.

Through the trans-vacuum typewriter, the pounding keys spell out a telegram. 'NO NEED. HER MAJESTY'S FORCES COMMEND YOU FOR YOUR BRAVERY. INCIDENTALLY, AT TWO PARSECS NORTH, ANOTHER ASTEROID HAS BEEN FOUND.'

The Engineer across the tube asks me, 'What does it say?'

As I tear it apart, the shreds of telegram fall like so many bandages.

'Sir Navigator,' I say over the messenger tube, 'Please chart a course for Neptune.'

'My Lord? Is there not more work to do?' the Navigator asks.

'As ever there shall be,' I say.

Given the hairs standing up on my neck, I suspect Central Command's Space Laser is pointed directly at us. We are committing a Second-Order Insurrection by abandoning our expeditionary post.

However, as the Queen's Council has now realised to their horror, we are also holding aboard a Knight of the Galactic Empire, First-Class – one who is exempt from the Statutes of the Expeditionary Law.

Placing the space-kettle back onto its grill, I blow steam from my mug-in-reserve. The smell of Ceylon reminds me of Neptune's terraformed oceans.

'Cap'n,' asks the Engineer over the pipe, 'Where exactly are we going?'

'On vacation,' I say to them, 'We've earned it.'