Scarecrow and Hutch walked in silence down the passageway towards the wardroom. They’d been with Reynolds for hours trying to formulate a plan to engage the White Whale. After so much time, the Nautilus senior officers came up empty-handed. Reynolds suggested a break. Go get something to eat, and they would resume after dinner.
“Hutch,” Scarecrow said as he turned to his CAG before they reached the wardroom, “I’m racking my brain over this thing, and I keep coming back to your suggestion about the time–”
“Not here,” Hutch replied. He pulled Scarecrow to one side. “Maybe you should spend some time at Monterey. Then you could sit through the lectures the rest of us got about how serious this whole thing is, and how punitive Command will be if they hear us discussing it. I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“But even you’ve got to admit it’s the only way to deal with this White Whale. Everything else we’ve brainstormed has come up short.”
“My office. Now.”
They arrived at Hutch’s office, where he locked the hatch and activated the portable dampening field generator Reynolds had loaned him.
“Still have that thing, huh?”
“Yeah, I never got around to returning it.” Hutch turned to face his squadron leader. “Steve, it’s against the law to even discuss this. To try and implement a plan to use our time travel tech to destroy an enemy asset, even one as formidable as the White Whale, could bounce us both into adjoining brig cells. You’re not some nugget, out to prove his worth. You’re a squadron leader. A Group Commander.”
Hutch turned and rounded his desk, falling into his chair as he resumed his gaze at Scarecrow.
“We’ve had this conversation before. You were traumatized at a young age. Not once, but twice, and you’re still struggling with that pain. As a result, you have this overwhelming compulsion to protect–everyone. Add to that the fact that you were introduced to Solar Warden, with all its advanced technology, the existence of aliens and all the rest, through a violent and traumatic circumstance. Then you joined the fight immediately and it’s thrown you off your game. As a result, you’re struggling to find your center once more.
“All of these issues push you to the point you’re willing to risk your career, my career, your future with Sandy–” Hutch sighed. “She said you almost killed Watson the elder when he attacked you two in the passageway. I shudder to think what you would have done to Watson the younger if you’d caught him in the act.”
“It’s not–”
“Yeah, it is.”
“You know I’m working on it, and lately I’ve had some setbacks. But this is a perfect solution to–”
“No, it’s not.”
Scarecrow crossed his arms and stared at Hutch. “Then give me a viable alternative that isn’t illegal.”
Hutch stared back, opened his mouth to speak, but hesitated. “I– can’t.” He shrugged.
“Exactly.” Scarecrow sighed and relaxed his posture as he continued. “Even you have to admit, when you’re backed into a corner with no options, you use whatever resources you have to survive. And that’s what we’re talking about, here. Survival. Not just us, but Earth as well. The entire human race.
“We have no defense against this White Whale. It’s an overwhelming force. And even though it may be against the law to even discuss, our only solution is to use this time travel technology. I’m sure the law was established to keep the technology from being tampered with for nefarious reasons. We’re not some Bond villain trying to take over the world–we’re trying to save it.”
Hutch stared at Scarecrow, silent.
“You won’t have to risk your career. I’ll do this on my own.”
“How?”
“I’ll find a way.”
“Not by yourself you won’t,” Hutch said with a sardonic chuckle. His stare morphed to a concerned bearing. “For the umpteenth time, cut the cowboy act. You need me. But I don’t want to go to prison.”
“To save the world … it’s a small price to pay, don’t you think?”
“What about Sandy?”
“Wasn’t it Mr. Spock who said, ‘the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?’”
“Don’t let her hear you say that.”
“I’d like think she would understand.”
The two officers stared at each other while tension hung thick in the air.
“Alright. You win.” Hutch sighed and leaned against his desk. “If we could program the transporter to send a warhead back in time to the precise moment your sensors first detected Moby Dick in the Wolf system, we could easily destroy it and preserve Deep Space Platform Five, and possibly the rest of Solar Warden. And Earth. I doubt it’ll stop at Platform Five.
“But there’s no way we’re going to convince Jonathan, and Command will be an even harder nut to crack.”
“Then we do it on our own. We don’t tell them, we just do it.”
“Who? You and me? By ourselves? Who do you think we are? Batman and Robin?” Hutch stared at his friend for a moment, letting his words sink in. “No cowboy act.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“This requires a little more technical know-how than you and I possess, buddy. I can operate the transporter, but I don’t know how to program the time coordinates. We would need a specialist for that.”
“I think I know someone who may be able to help us with that,” Scarecrow said. “And she thinks she owes me a favor.”
“And what about a warhead? We can’t just stroll down to the magazine like we’re going to Bass-Pro and pick one off the shelf. It needs to be configured, not to mention it will have to be removed from its delivery system. Again, we’ll need another specialist.”
“And I know just the crusty old Brit who fits that bill,” Scarecrow said with a smirk.
“This is no joking matter. We have to be sure these specialists aren’t going to jam us up.”
“We can trust them.”
“We’re probably going to need a transporter specialist as well.”
“We’ll find one.”
“We also need to do this ASAP, before this White Whale strikes again. The more mess we have to clean up, the greater the possibility of a temporal screw-up.”
“Before my wedding. We can pull it off before Sandy and I get married on Friday.”
“That’s a pretty small window, Steve. To find three other people and convince them to commit a crime that could land us all in the brig for 10 years?”
“Let me handle it. Let’s meet in my stateroom tonight at 2100 hours. I’ll have our team assembled by then.” Scarecrow disengaged the dampening field and opened the hatch. “We’ll meet then to discuss our plan. Gotta go!”
Scarecrow gathered his team in his stateroom, and just as they began to plan their strategy, there was a rap at the hatch.
“Whoever it is, get rid of them,” Hutch said with a whisper. Scarecrow rose and waved his hand in a dismissive gesture while he opened the ingress.
It was Cooper.
“Hey Lover, wanna take a stroll in the arboretum? There’s a couple of things I want to run by you for the reception–” She peered over Scarecrow’s shoulder and frowned as she noticed several of his guests. “What’s going on?”
Scarecrow stepped out into the passageway with her and secured the hatch. “You shouldn’t be here, Sweeting. I didn’t want to involve you …” He stared over his shoulder at his hatch. “… In this.”
“Involve me in what?” Cooper cast Scarecrow a look of confusion, then her expression morphed to understanding. “Wait just a second. This is a boomer, isn’t it? Hutch is throwing you a bachelor party.”
“No, it’s nothing like that.” Scarecrow attempted to reassure her, but she crossed her arms and stared at him in disbelief.
He was about to launch into an elaborate excuse that had nothing to do with the truth, when he sighed. “We’re getting married in four days,” he said. “I don’t want us to start our lives together by keeping secrets from you.”
For a fleeting moment, Scarecrow thought he saw something in Sandy’s eyes, but as quickly as it appeared, the look was gone. He opened the hatch and motioned for her to enter. Cooper ducked through the hatch and surveyed those present as Scarecrow followed her in and secured the hatch behind them.
“I thought you were going to get rid of her?” Hutch asked.
“Yeah, like that would ever happen,” Cooper replied. “This is a boomer. Only I don’t see Zvi, and I expected at least a couple of strippers. But I certainly didn’t expect to see you here, Stacey. Girlfriend, please tell me you’re not here to peel for these reprobates.”
“Absolutely not!” Instinct caused MacPherson to cross her legs, throw an arm across her chest and clutch her collar with her other fist, ensuring the zipper on her flight suit stayed where it was.
“Oh, I don’t know …” Banks said as he leaned forward and stared at MacPherson with a lecherous grin. “I wouldn’t mind seein’ that.”
“Chief!” Scarecrow scolded as Stacey cast the chief a disgusted glare.
“I’m just sayin.’”
“They don’t let you out of your cave very often, do they, Chief?” Cooper said, her tone deadpan.
“Alright, enough,” Hutch said. “Since the Major is here, we might as well read her into our plan.” He nodded to Scarecrow, who took several minutes to explain the real reason why they were gathered in his quarters.
“Are you all nuts?” Sandy said with an incredulous lilt when Scarecrow finished, staring around the room at each occupant. “Don’t any of you realize you could wind up in the brig just for discussing this? I would’ve expected more from my fiancé, and Stacey, how did they rope you into this?” Cooper turned and cast an angry glare at Hutch. “CAG, if you get my husband-to-be arrested four days before our wedding, I’ll have your guts for garters!”
“Well said, Mayjor!” Banks smiled and slapped his knee with delight at Cooper’s use of the British expletive. Then he stared at her thighs and attempted to visualize it. His smile increased.
“No one’s going to prison,” Scarecrow assured Cooper. “We’re talking about preventing the deaths of thousands of lives here, not to mention eliminating an overwhelming enemy threat. We’ll make this work, and we won’t get caught.”
“What you plan to do is very noble. It’s all you, Lover. Every bit of it.” Sandy turned and took Scarecrow’s hand in hers, then cast him a loving smile. “But it’s also highly illegal, and for that reason, I can’t be a part of it.” Cooper turned and stared at a crewman she’d never seen before. “I don’t know you,” she said. “How did they shanghai you into joining their little rebel alliance?”
“I wasn’t shanghaied. I joined of my own accord,” he replied with confidence. “I had a sister on Deep Space Platform Five. I’m all in.”
“Major, this is Corporal Ricky Sullivan,” Scarecrow said. “He’s a transporter technician.”
“He may be all in, but you can count me out.” Cooper stared at her fiancé as she nodded at Sullivan. “And if you do get discovered and arrested, don’t expect me to visit you in prison. And don’t wait for me to bring you a cake with a file in it, either.” Sandy stood to leave.
“You’re not going to say anything, are you, Major?” MacPherson asked, her voice timid.
“If I wasn’t marrying this delicious … buffoon in four days …” She placed her hand on Scarecrow’s shoulder, ran it down across his chest, then snapped her fingers up to deflect off his chin. “… The whole bunch of you would already be in the brig.” She turned and headed for the hatch, then stopped and looked back at them one more time before ducking through the egress, shaking her head in feigned disgust as she did.
Then Cooper was gone.
Everyone sat silent for a moment, considering the major’s warning. Scarecrow snapped them all out of their stupor as he turned to MacPherson. “Stacey can you program the transporter to correctly target the time coordinates I have from the sensor telemetry onboard our TR-3B?”
She looked him in the eye as he finished posing his question. He knew her answer before she spoke.
“Yes. With Ricky’s help, we can target both the spatial and temporal coordinates. We can put the chief’s bomb precisely where and when it needs to be, Sir.” Her eyes narrowed with determination. “Right in the heart of the White Whale. In the Wolf system. Two weeks ago.”
“Lieutenant MacPherson and I were talking while you were in the passageway with the major, Sir,” Sullivan said. “We’re confident that we can get the job done.”
“Okay, but we’re going to need an excuse to get Nautilus to FTL out to the Wolf system, to get the transporter in range of the While Whale.”
“Sir?”
“The admiral explained to me that the transporter has a limited range. It can only reach as far as a third of the width of our solar system. We need–”
“Sorry, Sir,” Sullivan said as he interrupted Scarecrow. “You’re correct in your assumption, but we can execute this from where we are now in our own star system, either orbiting Mars or Earth.”
“How so, Lieutenant?”
“Sir, if we’re transporting through space alone, then we do have limited range as you mentioned. But once we include temporal coordinates other than the present, that range becomes unlimited. As I’m sure you’re aware, space and time are linked, which is why they’re often referred together as ‘space-time.’ When we manipulate the time factor, targeting our temporal coordinates in another time-frame, those coordinates become unlimited. We can transport anywhere in time, either future or past. That also opens up the limits on the spatial coordinates, and our range becomes as unlimited as the time we’re targeting. Temporal mechanics can be tricky, Sir. They don’t behave in a way we would consider normal.”
“And how do you even know this?”
“I studied temporal mechanics when I was at Monterey, Sir. It’s part of the coursework for understanding the physics behind the transporter.”
“Well, I’m sure glad you’re on our team, Ricky. You just solved a huge problem for us.” Scarecrow sighed with relief as he turned to the chief petty officer.
“What about it, Chief? Have you got something that can take out a 14 mile wide enemy mother ship? A White Whale? Moby Dick?” He expelled the last title with a deliberate lilt to his voice.
“Ya wanna pulla Jonah, do ya, Commahnder?” the chief asked. “Get ‘em to swallow a bomb, and end up with a serious cayse of dyspepsia?”
“Your Aunt Gladys isn’t going to do it, is she?”
“Nope. For this, you’re gonna need …” His tone was forceful, and rang with finality. “…Brutus.”
“Brutus?”
“Yep. ‘E’s the biggest bomb I got in me arsenal. Only got one, mind, but he’ll get the job done, sure.”
“What’s Brutus’ yield, Chief?” Hutch inquired with trepidation. The chief smiled his wicked smile.
“Six hundred and fifty megatons, CAG.” His eyes burned with malevolent glee. “That’ll give your Moby Dick a real case of the dyspepsia. A real big case, sure!”
“How big is it, Chief?” Scarecrow asked. “Size-wise, I mean. Will it fit through the transporter?”
“Came through the transporter, Commahnder. Only, we ‘ad to dismantle it to get it on the lift to ‘aul it down to the magazine. Bit ‘o luck for you … we never did bover to reassemble it. It’s still sittin’ in its craydle in pieces. All we ‘ave to do is attach the detonator to the war’ead, arm it, set the timer, and Bob’s yer uncle.”
“And how are we going to explain the fact that the most powerful warhead in Nautilus’ arsenal is suddenly missing when someone comes looking for it, Chief?” Hutch asked the hard question. “This isn’t a simple firecracker, y’know. Something of this size and significance just doesn’t get misplaced.”
“Oh, don’t fret any more gray hairs onto your ‘ead ‘bout that, CAG. I can easily push some paper around, so to speak, and no one will be the wiser. ‘Sides, this is a Mark I. They’ve already gotta Mark III, so my Brutus is due to be decommissioned any time now. When that ‘appens, the war’ead will be on the manifest, but nowhere else … if you get my meanin’.”
“Alright,” Scarecrow said. “So we can set the calculations, we have the ordnance, now how will we deploy it? Hasn’t the engineering team dismantled the structure they used to launch the Corseque warhead already?”
“Nope,” Ricky replied. “It’s still in place. They told me they wouldn’t dismantle it until we return to Earth.”
“We’ll be at Earth tomorrow, Lieutenant. That doesn’t leave us much time,” Hutch said as he cast a concerned glance around the room.
“It’s gonna be pretty low on their list of priorities, Sir. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if they didn’t get around to it until the end of next week.”
“Will Brutus fit into the frame, Chief? I’m sure it’s a lot bigger than the first warhead.”
“Should just fit, Commahnder. ‘Sides, the magnetic clamps will still function even if the war’ead doesn’t make direct contact with the frame of the catapult.”
“Catapult,” Hutch said with a snicker. “I like it.”
“Okay, so when are we going to do this?” Scarecrow looked over at Ricky. “Lieutenant, there are always two technicians on duty in the transporter room at any given time. What are we going to do about your crewmate?”
“No problem, Sir,” Ricky replied. “Protocol dictates we have a relief team that covers us for our supper break. We have a graveyard shift tomorrow night. I’m the one that fills out the request for a relief team. I’ll just conveniently forget to fill it out. Then I’ll offer to cover the transporter room solo as a form of penance while my partner goes for his break by himself. That will give us an hour to configure the transporter and launch the warhead.”
“Will that be enough time, Chief?”
Banks pondered the question for a moment, staring off into the ether in his usual fashion. Then he turned to the others and smiled. “If the war’ead is on the lift, sitting outside the transporter room, and I’ve already set the detonaytor, then it should just be enough time, Commahnder. The tough part is getting it into the catapult. Once it’s in place, all I’ll ‘ave to do is arm it. Then it’s goodbye Moby Dick.”
“Hutch and I can help you with that, Chief, while you two are configuring the transporter.” He motioned to MacPherson and Sullivan. “We should be able to pull it off. Barring any unforeseen problems, of course.”
“We may have a problem, Sir,” MacPherson said. “The transporter draws a lot of power–more than almost any other system onboard Nautilus. We’ll be in the transporter room and can see the power spike on the console, but they’ll also be able to see it on the command deck. Nautilus’ systems officer will view the power spike on their display, and wonder what’s being transported. We’ll have to file a log of what came on or off the ship, Sir.”
“That won’t be a problem, Lieutenant,” Ricky said. “The transport will last less than three seconds. I can simply log it as an unsuccessful activation. They’re not that common, but they do happen. What I’m worried about is the fact that everything that takes place on this ship is recorded by the internal sensors. All of our activity will be on record. If someone views the logs, they’ll see what we’ve been up to.”
“Don’t worry about that, Lieutenant,” Scarecrow replied. “I’ve got it covered.”
“But there’s one more problem, Commahnder,” the chief said. “And I’m surprised you and the CAG ‘aven’t thought of it.”
“What’s that, Chief?”
Well Sir, I can provide you wif’ the war’ead, and I can set the detonaytor, but in order to arm it, I need the code. And–”
“I’ll take care of that too, Chief.”
“But Sir, you ‘ave to get the code from–”
“Relax, Chief. I’ve got it covered.”
“Sir, I can probably hack into–” Stacey said.
“I said I’ve got it covered.” Scarecrow glanced around the room at everyone. “This was the first thing Hutch and I discussed, and it’s already been taken care of. None of you have to worry about it. Just focus on your own tasks.”