ADVENTURES THROUGH TIME (2025 Edition) by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

CHAPTER 20 – THE IMPERIUM STRIKES BACK

09:27 (Universal time)

Monday, October 28, 1940 ‘B’

Imperium super-battleship ROYAL SOVEREIGN

Earth orbit

“So, you are positive that all your equipment will work, especially those portable time distorter units and time-jumping spy probes?”

“Absolutely, Your Majesty.” replied the head of the scientific study group as he faced King Stan the Sixth, sitting behind the work desk in the office of his royal suite. “We conducted a number of tests, which all succeeded without a problem. The time drive of this ship has also been modified so that it could be tuned quickly to the frequency of the timeline where the Time Patrol originated from, once we find that frequency of course.”

“And how close are you to finding that frequency, Doctor?” The three scientists facing King Stan hesitated and looked at each other before their leader answered in an embarrassed tone.

“That is still a problem, Your Majesty. Without a lead of some sort, finding that frequency could be a long search indeed.”

Stan felt irritation but kept an outer appearance of calm: he was a realistic enough man to see how difficult that particular task was. Those scientists had however done well enough to let his plan go ahead.

“Thank you, gentlemen! Be advised that we will jump ahead by a few months shortly. We will then need both your portable time distorters and your special spy probes. You may go.”

Once the three scientists were out of his office, Stan contacted by intercom Major Kossov, the commander of the guards from the Ministry of Security who were aboard the flagship. Despite being a Security Ministry officer, Kossov seemed to be both a decent man and a capable officer. His guards were also the only ones to have fought directly with the Time Patrol forces and their experience could become handy just now. Kossov bowed his head on Stan’s viewing screen when he saw who was calling him.

“Your Majesty, what may I do for you?”

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“I need you to report to my suite with that young female guard who was wounded in ancient London and healed by Laplante. What is her name again?”

“Private Rina Tonen, Your Majesty. She is one of my best guards. We will be at your suite in a few minutes, Your Majesty.”

“Thank you, Major!”

Switching off his intercom, Stan then thought over his plan for the last time, trying to find a possible flaw in it. He however could not think of anything wrong with it. Logically, his plan should prevent the creation of the Time Patrol and thus preserve the future existence of the Imperium. Opening a drawer of his desk, he took out the ancient book that had led to so many mistakes and to the possible demise of his empire, looking at the picture of a smiling young woman in old British uniform on the cover of the book.

“I’m sorry it has to come to this, Brigadier Laplante. You were a worthy opponent indeed.”

The sound of his door buzzer then made him put down the book.

“Come in!”

Major Kossov and a young female guard, both in the green uniforms of the Ministry of Security, entered and came to rigid attention a few paces in front of his desk, saluting him.

“Major Kossov and Private Tonen reporting as ordered, Your Majesty.”

“At ease!”

Stan examined carefully Rina Tonen before speaking: she seemed very athletic and strong and was also pretty.

“Major, I have a critical mission to give to Private Tonen, a mission on which could depend the very existence of the Imperium. Do you have full confidence in her?”

“Yes, Your Majesty!” answered without hesitation Kossov. Stan then looked at Rina Tonen, who stood impassive, as a good trooper would.

“Private Tonen, we are about to jump forward by a few months, to June 24 of 1941, over Berlin, Germany. At that time, Nancy Laplante had been captured by the Germans and handed over to their secret police, the Gestapo. Your mission will be to transport yourself inside the prison where she is being tortured by the Gestapo, find Laplante and kill her. If you are successful, Laplante will die before she has a chance to go back to the future and create her Time Patrol. At that date, she has already contributed enough to the British war effort to ensure future British dominance over the World and thus prepare the future emergence of the Imperium. Once you have killed

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her, you will transport back to this ship, using a portable time device just developed by our scientists. We will then wait a bit and then jump to 3386 to ensure that our mission had the desired result. Do you have any questions, Private Tonen?”

“No, Your Majesty!” answered Rina, apparently undisturbed by her new mission. In reality, the order to kill Nancy Laplante was leaving a bitter taste inside her mouth. To kill her in fair combat was one thing. To do it while Laplante was strapped to a torture rack and helpless was another thing. However, the king was correct: her death was the price to save the Imperium.

“Good!” said Stan before calling the bridge on his videophone. “Commodore Nousma, have the ship jump high over Berlin, Germany, at 22:00 hours local time on June 24 of the year 1941.”

“Right away, Your Majesty!”

Fifteen seconds later, a flash of white light briefly permeated the whole ship. Stan then got up from behind his desk and started walking out of his suite.

“Please follow me, both of you.”

It took them ten minutes of walking and elevator-hopping through the 800-meter-long behemoth to arrive at a scientific laboratory where a dozen men and women were busy doing last minute adjustments to a number of pieces of equipment. The scientists all stood up at the king’s entrance.

“At ease, please! Doctor Leitrim, is everything ready?”

“It is, Your Majesty.” answered an old, distinguished man sitting in front of a large viewing screen. “We can launch the spy probe when you wish.”

“Then proceed.”

Leitrim punched a few commands on his control console. A tiny ball the size of a large pearl that was floating inside a glass cage then disappeared in a flash of white light. Leitrim explained out loud what was happening as the overhead picture of a city appeared on his viewing screen.

“We were able to find on an old map of Berlin the address mentioned in that old book of yours, Your Majesty. The probe is now flying down towards it. We could not risk a direct jump inside as we are lacking the very precise coordinates needed for a safe jump. Our probe will however help us map accurately the objective as it goes around and inside it.”

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The picture from the probe soon showed a close-up of a gray, sinister building guarded by soldiers in black uniforms.

“The main interrogation center of the Gestapo in Berlin, Your Majesty. From your book’s description, it was a truly nasty place where I wouldn’t care spending time.”

“We will soon see for ourselves. Find a basement window and have the probe jump inside.”

The probe’s camera soon showed a low window shut by steel bars and situated at sidewalk level. The probe passed through the bars but bounced on a glass surface with an audible noise. Leitrim, looking annoyed, played with his controls.

“Just a temporary annoyance, Your Majesty. I will have our probe jump through that glass pane and…AAAH!”

Everyone who was looking at the screen jumped back from fright and surprise as the battered and bloody face of a man suddenly appeared on the screen, filling it due to the short distance. King Stan understood first who the man was.

“Don’t worry, Doctor: this is only one of the unfortunate prisoners of that center, who was probably attracted to the window by the noise of the probe colliding on it. Proceed!”

“The poor man.” said one of the female scientists. “Look at his hands. They seem to have been crushed.”

“The Gestapo had a fearsome reputation, miss.” said Stan, who had read all he could find on that time period. “I have to warn you that even worst sights will probably come soon.”

Leitrim and many of the scientists swallowed hard at those words: as top-flight scientists considered loyal to the Imperium, they had been mostly cocooned from the less savory aspects of Imperium security operations. The probe then jumped inside what turned out to be a tiny cell, bare except for a sanitary bucket. Leitrim made it jump again, this time inside a concrete basement corridor. He then made it follow the corridor towards the left, from where horrible screams of pain could be heard. The scientists in the lab were now on edge, disturbed by the screams. Rina Tonen herself, even though she was an experienced, combat-hardened soldier, felt nearly ill by now, while Major Kossov tried to keep a straight face. The probe then made one more jump through a thick, steel-reinforced door and the screams became much louder. The probe was now floating near the masonry ceiling of a large room with stone pillars. A number of sinister instruments furnished the room and two men were visible in front of a naked woman

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strapped to a heavy steel chair. The biggest of the two men was kneeling in front of the woman and moving two electrical wires to various points of her body, making her scream every time the electrodes touched her skin. The smaller man simply looked on calmly, a notepad in his hands.

“Nancy Laplante.” said coldly King Stan, while Rina Tonen clenched her teeth but forced herself to keep looking at the sadistic show. She however couldn’t look anymore when the big man applied a red-hot iron to Laplante’s left breast, rolling it slowly across her nipple. Stan’s right hand firmly but gently grabbed her arm, forcing her to look back at the screen.

“Private Tonen, I don’t like this anymore than you do, but you will have soon to go down there and kill that woman. The existence of the Imperium depends on it. You have to watch this and be ready to jump to that room at the first opportune moment. Doctor Leitrim, have Private Tonen equipped with a portable time distorter and program the necessary coordinates in it.”

“Yes, Your Majesty!” replied Leitrim, too happy to have an excuse to stop looking at the awful scene filmed by the probe’s camera. Rina Tonen soon had a black, flat steel box strapped against her belly. A series of small display panels and control buttons covered the upper side of the box. Leitrim took a minute to carefully program two sets of spacetime coordinates in the box, then showed two large buttons to Rina, one red and one green.

“Your time distorter is now programmed and you will only need to press either of these two buttons. Pressing the red one will send you to a spot in a corner of that interrogation room in Berlin. Pressing the green one will bring you back here in this lab.” Leitrim next pointed at an empty spot in the lab, where eight small cylinders were attached to a large tubular frame forming an empty cage.

“Those cylinders fixed to the frame are spacetime beacons. They will actually guide your time distorter back to that precise spot, where you will materialize a few centimeters from the floor. Thus, be ready for a short fall on your return trip.”

“Red button to go, green one to come back. Got that! Where exactly will I appear inside the interrogation room, Doctor?”

Both looked back at the viewing screen, just in time to see the big German smash one of Laplante’s fingers, which were already missing their nails, with a heavy hammer. The scream from Laplante made both Leitrim and Tonen cringe. Leitrim hurried to his control

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station and lowered the volume, then passed a shaking hand on his forehead while looking at King Stan.

“How could anybody do such barbaric things to other human beings? And she didn’t give away any information despite of all this?”

“She didn’t, according to all the sources I consulted.” replied Stan in a soft voice. “Nobody ever denied that this woman had incredible courage. I will mourn her after her death. Private Tonen, are you ready?”

Rina took her eyes off the screen and unholstered her pistol, making sure that its magazine was full before cocking the slide and chambering a round.

“I am, Your Majesty. I have only one question: what do I do if my time distorter malfunctions and I am trapped down there in Berlin?”

Stan approached her and stopped close to her, his eyes staring into hers.

“Whatever happens, the primordial thing is to kill Laplante and to make sure that she is truly dead. If you are trapped there afterwards, you can imagine how the Germans will feel about you: you will have just killed a very important prisoner for them and you will also be plainly from the future. I would suggest that you don’t let yourself be taken alive, Private, unless you want to go through the same kind of tortures that poor woman is enduring now.”

“I…I understand, Your Majesty. I will do my duty.”

“Excellent! We now have only to wait until those Germans leave Laplante alone for a moment. Then, you will jump to Berlin. Doctor Leitrim, do you have any spare portable time distorters, in case of emergencies?”

“We have two more units, Your Majesty.”

“Then program them with the same coordinates as for Private Tonen’s unit. That way, we will be able to send a rescue team at a moment’s notice.”

“Who do you want on that rescue team, Your Majesty?” Asked Major Kossov.

“You and me, Major. I am not going to ask things from my soldiers that I won’t do myself.”

“Understood, Your Majesty.” said Kossov, feeling renewed loyalty towards his monarch. He was the kind of person to inspire others the same way as did…Nancy Laplante. Kossov could feel that the King had a soft spot for the woman he was about to have killed and spoke up about an idea that had been nagging him.

“Your Majesty, wouldn’t it be more humane to simply grab Laplante and bring her on this ship instead of killing her?”

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Stan shook his head sadly.

“I thought of that myself, Major. However, as long as she lives, Nancy Laplante could still escape one day and start this whole circus again. What tells us that this ‘Creator’ of hers will not appear later on and give her all these psyonic powers we fear so much?”

“I see, Your Majesty. It was just a wild suggestion on my part.”

“And one I was glad to see coming from you, Major. Once this mission is over, I would very much like to transfer you and Private Tonen to my Royal Guards Corps, or what’s left of it.”

“I would accept with pleasure, Your Majesty.” replied Kossov, meaning it.

“I would too, Your Majesty.” added Tonen, making Stan smile.

“Excellent! Grab a chair, both of you: we will now have to wait until the Germans give us an opportunity to act.”

That wait was a nerve-wracking one for all of them, as the Germans kept torturing Nancy Laplante for another two hours, using about every sadistic method one could think of to inflict pain short of amputating parts of her body. The two Germans, tired from their work, finally called it a night and left the interrogation room, with the now unconscious Laplante still strapped to the heavy steel chair. Stan then patted Tonen’s shoulder, who was by now a nervous wreck from watching the tortures inflicted on Laplante.

“Time to go, Private Tonen. Come back in one piece.”

“I will do my best, Your Majesty.”

Rina got up from her chair and walked to the cubic frame in the middle of the lab, stepping inside it and turning around to face the viewing screen. After making sure that Laplante was still alone in the interrogation room, Rina pulled out her pistol and pressed the red button of her time distorter unit. A flash of white light then enveloped her for a brief moment. She fell about twenty centimeters and landed on a concrete floor. The impact took her out of her sensation of amazement at finding oneself suddenly in a new place. Looking quickly around her, she saw no Germans in sight. The door of the interrogation room was closed but the big bolts on it were not pulled in place. Rina thought for a moment of going to the door and locking it but dismissed that idea as a waste of time. Instead, she approached cautiously Nancy Laplante, inert and immobile in her torture chair. Her body was now nothing but a mass of bruised, swollen and

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burned flesh, with blood dripping from numerous superficial wounds. Feeling pity for the woman, Rina gently pulled back the hair covering her face. It was swollen and bleeding, with her left eye shut by multiple blows and her lips split open. Rina’s touch was somehow enough to wake up Nancy, who slowly looked up at the Imperium trooper.

“Pl…please, help me.” she said in a barely audible voice. Tears now coming to her eyes, Rina shook her head slowly, answering back in English.

“I’m sorry, I can’t!”

Straightening up, Rina pointed her pistol at the right side of Nancy’s head and started pulling the trigger. That tiny effort suddenly appeared a Herculean task to Rina, whose hand started shaking badly as she sobbed.

“Please forgive me for this, Nancy.” she said weakly before pulling the trigger all the way. The blast from the shot was accompanied by a strange visual effect: as the muzzle flash appeared in what looked like slow motion to Rina, Nancy Laplante and everything in the room seemed to split into double images of themselves for a second or so. Then, Rina was left looking down at Nancy’s body, now slumping forward with a large exit hole on the left side of her head. Blood and pieces of her brain were scattered on the floor. As in a daze, Rina took hold of Nancy’s right wrist and felt for a pulse. There was none: her mission was accomplished. As she was turning around towards the door and raising her left hand to press the green button, she saw a German standing in the doorway, pointing a pistol at her. Swearing at herself for having wasted precious time, she went for the green button as the German fired twice. Sharp and intense pain in her belly made her stagger and drop her pistol. The German then fired a third time, causing more pain in her belly, at rib level, and making her fall to her knees. In a desperate effort, she pressed repeatedly the green button as the German rushed towards her. Nothing happened. With panic mixed with disbelief she pressed the button again and again, still without result. Only then did she see the three bullet holes in the casing of her time distorter.

“NOOO!” she screamed in despair before looking for her pistol. She had only the time to see a blurred movement as the German swung his pistol butt hard at her chin, knocking her unconscious.

01:46 (Berlin Time)

Wednesday, June 25, 1941 ‘B’

Applied physics laboratory, H.M.I.S. ROYAL SOVEREIGN

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“Where is Private Tonen?” raged King Stan, staring at the viewing screen where the trooper had just disappeared after firing her pistol at Laplante’s head. Incredibly, Laplante was still alive, even though the muzzle of Tonen’s pistol had been nearly touching her head. Tonen could not possibly have missed such a shot, as much as Laplante should not have survived it. Yet, Laplante was still moving, while Tonen had disappeared in the middle of a weird visual effect. Stan turned his head towards Leitrim, who was apparently transfixed at his controls.

“Doctor Leitrim, where is Private Tonen?”

“The…the timeline: it has just split!” replied weakly the scientist, stunned.

“WHAT?”

“For a moment, all my instruments went crazy, overcome by a surging wave of spacetime distortion. It can only mean one thing, Your Majesty: your trooper’s action of firing at Laplante somehow caused a split in the timeline, in essence creating another timeline parallel to this one. Your trooper is probably now in that new timeline.”

“How could that be, Doctor? How could the act of killing one woman split the timeline?”

“Your Majesty, if your son Len was right, that woman was not just any woman. She created this timeline unconsciously by her actions, thus making herself a critical node in spacetime for this timeline. It would be the same case if one would change history by killing prematurely a historically important person in the primordial timeline, like Hitler, Napoleon or Julius Caesar. Also, Private Tonen, who did the act that caused the split, does not belong to this time period, which must have been the catalyst in this event. If my theory is right, then Laplante is probably dead in another timeline, with your Private Tonen near her.”

“But we have to retrieve our trooper.” objected Major Kossov. “We can’t abandon her in this barbaric time period.”

“I agree.” said firmly Stan. “Doctor, can you isolate the frequency of that new timeline, which we will call timeline ‘C’ for convenience sake?”

“It will take some time, Your Majesty: I have to go through a jumble of signals and distortions. It will take a few hours, at the least.”

“Make it quick, Doctor: a young woman may be in big trouble right now.”

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02:11 (Berlin time)

Wednesday, June 25, 1941 ‘C’

Interrogation room, Gestapo center

Berlin

Rina Tonen woke up with a sharp, continuous pain to her chin and jaw. She tried to feel her jaw but realized then that she was tied down to a sort of X-frame and lying on her back. She was also naked. Panic nearly overcame her when she remembered where she was. What was Major Kossov waiting to show up and take her out of this hellhole? The voice of the man who had been questioning Nancy Laplante then made her look towards her feet, where she saw the small man standing between her spread legs.

“Do you realize how much damage you caused by killing Brigadier Laplante, miss? Now, I will have to get the answers from you, whoever you are. First, who are you and where do you come from?”

Having seen that man and his assistant torture Laplante for hours, Rina had nothing but pure hatred for him and nearly spat her answer.

“Go to hell, you cowardly sadist!”

The man did not reply to that, instead extending his arms and applying two electrodes to her genitals. The pain was horrible, making Rina’s body arch convulsively. She however barely managed not to scream, attracting a nod from the interrogator.

“Another tough woman, albeit much bigger than even Brigadier Laplante. You are obviously from the future, if I look at your size and equipment. Those six fingers per hands are also an interesting evolutionary step. By the way, whatever you had strapped to your belly saved your life. The bullets barely had enough strength left after passing through that box to break your skin. As a qualified doctor, I was able to extract them in minutes without difficulty. Now, those slight wounds won’t impede my work one bit. Karl, raise the voltage.”

Rina steeled herself as the man approached again the electrodes towards her genitals. This time she screamed.

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07:49 (Berlin Time)

Wednesday, June 25, 1941 ‘B’

Applied physics laboratory

H.M.I.S. ROYAL SOVEREIGN

Leitrim rubbed his tired eyes, taking a short pause from fixing the signals analysis screen. He and his team had been working non-stop for over six hours now and he was feeling the fatigue in his old bones. They however had a crucial task to complete as quickly as possible.

“Alright, Lita, enhance the Kd spectrum of the spacetime signal and replay the sequence…that’s it… FREEZE!”

Leitrim and his primary assistant looked at the wave shapes displayed on the screen with growing enthusiasm.

“We have it!” said softly Leitrim before shouting. “WE HAVE IT! WE HAVE THE FREQUENCY FOR TIMELINE ‘C’!”

That attracted his other assistants at a run to the screen, where they stared at the waveform pointed by Leitrim. As most of them congratulated the old scientist, a young assistant pointed at another waveform near the edge of the screen.

“What’s that, Doctor? It looks like a ghost reflection of timeline ‘C’.” Leitrim and the others looked at it as well: it was effectively at the opposite of timeline ‘C’ compared to the frequency of timeline ‘B’, where they were actually. The truth then dawned on Leitrim like a ton of bricks.

“The primordial timeline! We found it as well! Quick, someone notifies the King!”

King Stan, having been awaken from a deep sleep, was in the laboratory fifteen minutes later and listened carefully to Leitrim’s explanations, Major Kossov listening besides him as well. Stan finally patted the shoulder of the old scientist.

“Well done, Doctor! Record both frequencies in the ship’s computer and adapt the ship’s time distorter drive to make it able to jump to either timeline, then do the same with your portable units: we have one of our troopers to save.”

It took another hour to prepare everything, at the end of which King Stan ordered a jump to the same date-time in timeline ‘C’. Next, a new spy probe was launched, jumping directly to the Gestapo interrogation room while Stan and Kossov stood ready to

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jump themselves. The King was now holding a big machine gun fed by a linked belt of cartridges connected to an ammunition backpack. The first pictures sent by the probe made both Stan and Kossov swear.

“The bastards!” growled Kossov as he watched a German who was methodically roasting Rina Tonen’s breasts with a welding lamp. The young trooper, solidly tied to the same steel torture chair than Laplante had been, could do nothing but scream continuously. The German stopped for a few seconds, only to ask a brief question to Rina. When she shook her head while crying, the German resumed the torture, making her scream again. Stan looked resolutely at Kossov.

“You grab Tonen and her equipment. I will cover you. We jump at my count. One, two, three, GO!”

The two Imperium men materialized in the back of the Germans present in the interrogation room and were not noticed immediately. Using that to full effect, they shot dead the two Germans closest to Tonen, then King Stan swept his fire to kill the two other Germans present as Kossov ran to his trooper. Going to the door, Stan stood in it and opened fire as soon as three SS guards turned a corner at a run, chewing them down mercilessly. Having plenty of ammunition with him, he fired short bursts every time a SS guard dared show up, forcing them to stay behind the cover of the hallway corner. A shout from Kossov then told him that the officer had Tonen. Looking back for a second, he saw Kossov standing, with Tonen thrown across his shoulders in a classic fireman’s carry. Tonen’s vital equipment, including the shot up portable time distorter, was also in his hands.

“Jump now, Major! I will follow you in a few seconds.”

Stan then closed the door and locked it. Seeing a shape covered by a blanket in one corner of the interrogation room, he went to it and lifted a corner of the blanket. What he saw was the mutilated and battered head and upper torso of a dead Nancy Laplante. The sight made a hard lump appear in his throat.

“Goodbye, Brigadier Laplante. I hope that they will honor you the way you deserve in London.”

He caressed her hair one last time, then got up on his feet and pressed the green button of his time distorter unit. To his immense relief, he did materialize as planned in Leitrim’s lab on the ROYAL SOVEREIGN. Taking off his ammunition backpack and time

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distorter unit, he then rushed to Rina Tonen, who had been laid hurriedly on top of a lab coat spread on the floor.

“How is she?” he asked to Kossov, who was holding her head.

“In a horrible state and suffering a lot, Your Majesty. I have already ordered a medical team to the lab.”

Tonen, still conscious but shaking continuously, managed to whisper a few words.

“Didn’t…talk…sir.”

“I know, Private Tonen. You did a splendid job.”

“Is…Imperium…alright?”

Stan hesitated for a second, then lied to her, not wanting to make her suffering look pointless.

“The Imperium will live on, Private. Now, shut up and rest.” A medical team showed up at a run with an anti-gravity gurney two minutes later and quickly loaded Tonen on it, then departed for the ship’s infirmary as quickly as they had come, with Major Kossov in tow. Stan then turned towards Doctor Leitrim, who had been watching on from his control station.

“Doctor, what are the chances that an Imperium as we know it will eventually appear in the future of timeline ‘C’?”

“I would say quite good, Your Majesty. I have been thinking over that for a few minutes and all the conditions for the future appearance of the Imperium are in place in timeline ‘C’. Nancy Laplante is now officially dead; she had time to transfer most of her knowledge to the British and Great Britain is in a good position to dominate the world in the years to come, at the detriment of the United States and of the Soviet Union. However, the same cannot be said of timeline ‘B’: we cannot try to kill Nancy Laplante in 1941 without splitting further the timelines and she will thus be able to eventually create her Time Patrol, with the consequences we know for our Imperium. In fact, as long as the Time Patrol remains a threat to us, it can still find timeline ‘C’ and manipulate it in order to kill in the egg any Imperium due to see the day in the future.” That depressed Stan to no small degree.

“Then, I have no choice but to destroy the Time Patrol in its nest, in the 34th century of timeline ‘A’.”

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13:30 (North America Central Time)

Monday, July 10, 3386 ‘A’

Time Patrol headquarters, New Lake City University campus American Great Lakes area, Global Council

Dana Mulano, Chief Supervisor of the Time Patrol surveillance center, was positively fuming by now. It had been over seven hours now since they had detected the formation of a new timeline which had split from timeline ‘B’. Her crew had even been able to isolate and measure the frequency of that new timeline ‘C’ but had been unable to transmit that vital information downtime to the rest of the Time Patrol due to a faulty circuit module in the time wave transceiver unit. Even worse, because of that same equipment failure, they had been unable to monitor the signals from their surveillance satellite network for more that fourteen hours now, and that at a time when an Imperium battleship was on the loose in the past. As bad luck went, they didn’t have a spare circuit module and had to repair the faulty module instead, a job that was proving to be extensive and complicated. Dana was about to have one of her technicians jump in a time scooter to bring the information on the new timeline to 1942 ‘B’ when a sensors operator monitoring the civilian air traffic network gestured to get her attention. Walking to the man’s control station, she looked at the big radar picture screen showing the air traffic over North America.

“What’s up, Lenny?”

“The continental air traffic control center is in an uproar because of a contact that is refusing to identify itself and is now crossing the Atlantic coast near the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River. It previously was first detected over the middle of the Atlantic, where it loitered for about an hour before moving West.”

Dana suddenly felt dread at those words, as an awful possibility formed up in her mind.

“Quick, Lenny, override the controls of the G-3 orbital space telescope and point it at that unidentified contact.”

“But the Astronomical Council will skin us alive for diverting one of its best telescopes like this.”

“I don’t give a damn about them! Consider this a Code Red Situation.”

“Uh, as you wish, Dana.”

It took a minute for the operator to override the usual control authority of the space telescope and have it pointed down towards the correct spot. A high-definition color

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picture then filled the view screen of Lenny’s control station. The huge ship visible in the cross hairs made Dana and Lenny freeze with instant fear.

“The ROYAL SOVEREIGN!” shouted Dana, her face pale. “It is heading our way.”

Trying to combat the panic about to overtake her, Dana reviewed quickly what could be done. One thing however appeared obvious: get help!

“Karla, forget your control station and come here on the double.” Dana grabbed an electronic notepad and wrote down a short message on it before giving it to the waiting technician with an urgent order.

“Karla, run to the scooter hall, take a scooter and jump to Northolt on June 4 of 1942 ‘B’. Give this message to our people there and tell them that the Imperium battleship ROYAL SOVEREIGN is here and heading our way and that we need help, fast! Now go!”

As Karla left the center at a run, Dana shouted orders around at various operators and technicians.

“Jay, activate now the defensive shield generator at maximum power! We are about to be attacked. Then sound the air raid siren and alert the University

Administration to have its students and staff take shelter. Tell them that this is not a drill. Rana, warn all the personnel not on active shift to evacuate the area right now: I am not sure that our shields will withstand the fire from such a behemoth.”

“What about our various robots stored in hangar number one?” asked Rana. “They represent a lot of valuable and very costly equipment.”

“Have them disperse as well away from the headquarters but pass the warning first to our personnel. Golen, put our Point Defense Robots on full alert, with authority to fire the moment that this Imperium battleship is within range. Have also our PDRs disperse to the maximum extent possible. Make it quick!” Her heart now beating furiously, Dana looked around her, trying to think of what she should do more. A thought then crossed her mind.

“Lenny, advise the continental air traffic control center that the unidentified contact is an enemy battleship and that all air traffic should avoid this area at all cost.”

“I’m on it.”

Going to the station controlling the internal security cameras, Dana switched a viewer to the camera showing the inside of the scooter hall. To her relief, she soon saw Karla jump on a time scooter and disappear in a flash of white light. At least they could now

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hope for help soon. Dana next went to a locked steel locker in one corner of the center and, taking a key she always kept with her, unlocked it. Inside were a row of machine-pistols and assault rifles, along with spare magazines and ammunition. Taking a machine-pistol for herself, she then distributed weapons to her seven technicians remaining on duty in the center. She had just finished doing that when Lenny shouted to her.

“Dana, I’m having trouble convincing the continental air traffic control center that this is a real emergency.”

“What? Give me that videophone line!”

Dana spoke in an angry tone as soon as she heard the voice of the air traffic control supervisor in her own headset.

“Listen up, mister! This is the Time Patrol surveillance center and we are declaring a Code Red Alert Worldwide: there is an armed and hostile Imperium battleship approaching the Great Lakes area.”

“Is this worth disturbing the air traffic over the whole continent, miss? Are you sure that this contact is what you say?”

“Our identification is positive: that ship is the battleship ROYAL SOVEREIGN, flagship of the Imperium Navy, and it is armed with nuclear weapons. Now, stop wasting time and warn all the ships to stay clear!”

“Uh, alright, we will pass the word.”

Just twenty seconds later, Lenny banged his fist in anger on the edge of his control station.

“What the hell? A heavy starliner has just taken off from New Lake City astroport.”

“Are these people all terminally dumb?” raged Dana. “Contact it and order them to land immediately.”

13:37 (North America Central Time)

Bridge of H.M.I.S. ROYAL SOVEREIGN

King Stan, sitting with members of his family and three of his royal guardsmen in the V.I.P. seats situated directly behind and above the command stations on the large bridge of the ROYAL SOVEREIGN, was monitoring closely the events around him when the Sensors Officer spoke up briefly on the command channel.

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“Warning! A large ship is taking off now from what must be New Lake City astroport, near our main target area.”

Commodore Nousma didn’t hesitate one second. They already knew from intercepted civilian news channels programming where the Time Patrol headquarters was situated and the battleship must have been detected by now, or else the staff of the Time Patrol were a bunch of incompetents, an unlikely assumption after seeing how it operated. That ship taking off could only be part of a Time Patrol reaction force.

“Weapons Officer, target that ship with our main plasma battery and fire!” A quick set of commands pointed the focusing nozzle of the huge weapon installed in the nose of the battleship and charged it with over twenty gigawatts of energy. A bright violet beam of synchrotron energy then shot out of the nozzle, reaching across 900 kilometers to its intended target.

Over the New Lake City astroport, the luxury astroliner ORION had just taken off, loaded with 1,460 passengers headed towards the Jupiter system, when it got the first warning from the Time Patrol headquarters. Unsure what to think at first, the captain of the ORION decided to contact the air traffic control center to confirm that warning first before taking any action. That delay was fatal. The 400 meter-long astroliner was hit dead center by the fifty meter-diameter beam of energy from the ROYAL SOVEREIGN. With its relatively thin hull and lack of protective shields, the astroliner was cut in half like butter under a hot knife within a second, its parts raining down on the astroport and causing additional heavy damage and loss of life.

On the ROYAL SOVEREIGN, the bridge staff did not have much time to enjoy that apparently easy victory. The Sensors Officer’s shout of alarm about multiple missiles being fired from many locations on the ground was cut short by dozens of bone-jarring impacts and explosions on the armored hull of the battleship. As the series of impacts continued in quick succession, an irritated Commodore Nousma shouted at his Weapons Officer.

“Mister Konik, what are our defensive batteries doing and how come these missiles can penetrate our shields as if they didn’t exist?”

“Sir,” replied the overwhelmed officer, “those missiles disappear from our screens as soon as they are launched, then reappear only just before impacting our hull. Our laser batteries have no chance to even target those missiles.”

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“Then target the launchers, dammit! Damage Control, what is our situation with those missile impacts?”

“We are sustaining serious damage to our outer compartments and our hull is starting to look like Swiss cheese, but no vital systems have been affected yet, sir. Those missiles have heavy explosive warheads but not the nuclear warheads that they would need to really hurt us.”

“Then evacuate the personnel from the outer compartments towards the armored core of the ship. Weapons Officer, target the headquarters of the Time Patrol with our main plasma battery and fire when ready.”

“Aye, sir!”

The huge weapon soon fired again, with the Weapons Officer then reporting in a monotone voice.

“Target area destroyed, sir.”

Those simple words could barely describe what had just happened on the ground. Hit by a massive, sustained beam of energy, the headquarters building of the Time Patrol was vaporized, along with the surveillance center located underneath it, while the other buildings of the Time Patrol complex were either melted down or caught fire. The nearest buildings of the university complex also caught fire, with dozens of students and staff who had been too slow to evacuate then becoming instant human torches from the intense wave of heat radiated by the plasma burst. The surviving university students and staff running away could only watch with panicked dismay the exchange of fire between ground missile launchers dispersed around New Lake City and the still unseen attacking battleship, from which came a rain of laser beams trying to take out the launchers. The two first scoutships to react to the crisis then arrived in the middle of total pandemonium.

13:41 (North America Central Time)

Scoutship TEEN TEAM

“Ingrid, I just lost all contact with our headquarters.”

“I know! I’m afraid that they are goners. Do you have that damn battleship in your sights, Tom?”

“I’m ready to rock and roll.”

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“Then try to target the laser batteries in the tail of that monster. With the little effect the missiles from our PDRs seems to be doing, we will have to make each of our missiles count.”

“Ingrid, I have a better idea.” said Tom, then speaking for a few seconds and making Ingrid nod. It was a crazy, most unconventional idea but it could well work.

“Alright, I buy it. Let me advise Sandra Billings first, then we will go for it.” replied Ingrid before switching to the air ops channel and contacting the scoutship AMERICA, flying in loose formation with the TEEN TEAM and also under cloak. “TEEN TEAM to AMERICA, I’m going for a really close flyby of the ass of that monster. Be careful where you shoot for a while.”

“Understood, TEEN TEAM! I will also be flying close to it, but on its back. Stay cloaked as long as you can if you want to stay alive.”

“Will do, AMERICA!”

While speaking on the radio, which was on crypto mode, Ingrid never kept a straight flying path, wiggling her scoutship around all the time. That paid off, as three powerful laser beams burned through the airspace she should have been in a second ago. The young German did another zigzag and blew air in relief.

“Hell, they have some good radio direction-finding equipment on that ship. That’s another lesson: speak as little as needed on the radio from now on.” Pushing her scoutship to its maximum acceleration rate, Ingrid closed in quickly on the enemy battleship, passing it before performing a loop to line herself behind the ROYAL SOVEREIGN.

“Alright, Tom: it’s your game now. Where exactly do you want me to land?”

“On the top of the middle upper tail portion. Watch my visual marker on the holosphere.”

“Got it!” said Ingrid as soon as she saw the red crosshair on the surface of the projection sphere surrounding their seats. Calculating carefully her spacetime jump, she then pressed the jump button. She was ready for what was coming and landed with her landing gear extended the moment her scoutship materialized only fifty meters over the tail of the battleship, then engaged the magnetic clamps incorporated to her landing gear. With their scoutship now firmly glued to its target while still cloaked, Tom fired their heavy ship laser battery repeatedly, taking out the laser beam directors visible at the surface of the battleship’s hull. Now safe from enemy fire, Tom switched on a very low frequency radar normally used only to map underground soil layers during planetary

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exploration missions. The radar waves were able to propagate through the hull of the battleship and soon gave Tom an approximate map of the inside of the aft portion of the enemy ship. In the meantime, Ingrid was busy programming new, special orders for the twenty combat robots stored in her cargo bay. Once Tom gave the proper coordinates for her robots, Ingrid ordered them to jump inside the battleship and to create maximum havoc once in. As soon as the robots disappeared, Tom made the 24 heavy missiles transported by the scoutship jump spacetime and appear as one deadly cluster inside a large craft hangar he had detected in the belly of the battleship.

On the bridge, Commodore Nousma was still trying to make sense of the report of a seismic radar wave detected inside the ship’s tail section when a tremendous series of internal explosions rocked the battleship. Alarms started all over the bridge, with operators reporting a number of distressing news.

“Sir, the attack craft squadrons main hangar has been destroyed by a massive internal explosion. The munitions and fuel in our craft are cooking off and exploding as well. Most of the crews of the attack squadrons are missing and feared dead, sir!”

“The whole lower aft portion of the ship is vented to the outside and on fire, sir! The fires are out of control.”

“Sir, intruder alert in the aft main generators section! Armed robots are causing mayhem there!”

With Commodore Nousma trying desperately to deal with these problems and with ground-fired missiles continuously exploding against the hull of his battleship, King Stan felt gloom descend on him. The 75 armed craft of his attack squadrons had represented the main nuclear punch of his flagship. With them gone, his hopes of destroying the industrial capacity of this society and thus paralyze the Time Patrol were down to nearly zero. He was also realizing now how much the Time Patrol outfought and

outmaneuvered him and his forces in terms of fighting through time. Until only recently, he had not been able to even find this timeline, while every equipment, weapon and tactic of the Time Patrol was geared towards using the secrets of spacetime to the fullest. He was probably going to lose this last battle as well and would be lucky to save his family from this disaster. As he decided that he would personally not survive this defeat, he remembered one young woman who deserved a second chance at life. Activating his videophone, he contacted the infirmary of the ship, getting the chief surgeon on the line.

“Your Majesty? I am afraid that I’m very busy right now and…”

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“It won’t take long, Doctor. Are there any healthy guards in the infirmary right now?”

“Uh, there is one young Ministry of Security guard standing vigil over Private Rina Tonen, Your Majesty.”

“Perfect! Give him an anti-gravity gurney and have him bring Private Tonen to the bridge and report to me directly.”

“To the bridge, Your Majesty?” asked the surprised chief surgeon. Stan nodded his head.

“Yes! Tell that guard to hurry!”

Stan then closed the line and returned his attention to the tactical situation, which was going from bad to worse. There were now reports of a high-power laser drilling through the upper sections all the way to the core sections. That report suddenly made his mind click on something. Grabbing his command microphone, he spoke directly to

Commodore Nousma, sitting a few seats down from him.

“Commodore, have your defensive laser batteries sweep close to the hull plating of the upper section: there may be an unwanted fly stuck there. Do the same in the aft section.”

“Aye, Your Majesty!”

Stan then switched his personal viewer to a camera giving a view of the top of the ship. As he suspected, the laser beams crisscrossing the hull soon encountered an invisible object, creating explosions of sparks.

“THERE’S YOUR FLY, COMMODORE! SWAT IT!” shouted Stan triumphantly. The gunners of the battleship reacted swiftly, concentrating twelve laser beams on the invisible attacker. A small ship soon became visible, spewing thick smoke from multiple holes in its hull. It soon exploded; its burning remains cutting loose from the battleship and dispersing in the relative wind.

“What about the aft section, Commodore? Did you find anything there?”

“Not yet, Your Majesty. However, a number of our laser directors on the upper aft hull are not responding and we can’t effectively cover that area with laser fire. If there is… What now?”

All the lights had dimmed for a fraction of a second, prompting the annoyed question from Nousma. An engineering technician answered him from a control station one platform down.

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“Sir, those roving robots have just succeeded in cutting the main power cables from the generators section. We are now on secondary power across the ship.”

“Sir, our shields are now down.” shouted the Defensive Systems Officer. “Without main power, we can’t put them back on.”

“Have the royal guardsmen take out those robots and then send in repair teams.” Replied Nousma. The officer’s answer to that was subdued.

“Sir, the guardsmen are already dead. The robots wiped them out in mere seconds while losing only four machines themselves.”

“Then seal the generators section and trap those damn robots there.”

“Sir, that won’t work: these robots can jump spacetime.”

As Nousma was left out of arguments, a young Ministry of Security guard came to the V.I.P. seats while pulling a medical gurney and presented himself to the King, saluting him.

“Your Majesty, Private Den Selan reporting with Private Rina Tonen as ordered.” Stan looked briefly at the young guard, then at the dazed Rina Tonen lying on the gurney.

“Good! Install her down across those four empty seats and strap her in, then take a seat beside her.”

“Yes, Your Majesty!”

The young guard, helped by Prince Len and Dame Miri Goshenk, quickly moved Rina to the designated seats after raising their armrests out of the way and buckled a safety harness around her, then took an empty seat beside her, ending up immediately to the right of the First Mistress of the Imperium. Miri, an experienced psychologist, didn’t miss the way the young man was caressing gently the head of Rina Tonen. She touched his arm and whispered in his ear.

“You know her well, do you?”

The young guard hesitated, then answered, also in a whisper.

“We are intimate, Your Highness.”

A loud noise and shouts of joy then attracted the attention of both to the giant viewing screens, in time to see a small Time Patrol ship fall out of the sky, in flames.

“What happened, Stan? I missed that.” asked Miri to her husband, seated to her left.

“That Time Patrol ship just did something incredibly brave: it took position right in front of the nozzle of our main plasma battery and fired inside it, revealing its position at

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the same time. It was then hit repeatedly and collided violently with us. I’m however afraid that the last act of that ship took out our heaviest armament.” Miri, like Stan, followed with her eyes the falling, burning ship. After a few seconds, a sphere was ejected from the ship and parachutes soon deployed, slowing its descent. That prompted a comment in a low voice from the king.

“Thank the stars! Brave men like these deserve to live.”

As they looked back up at the bridge, the whole ship suddenly became totally unstable and started rolling and pitching around wildly for a few seconds until a modicum of control was restored. The pilot, sweat on his forehead, then shouted at Nousma.

“Sir, we just lost all the computerized flight controls due to cumulative damage. I am now in purely manual mode and I don’t know how long even that will hold.” This time, it was King Stan who reacted to that by giving an order to Commodore Nousma in a resigned voice.

“Commodore Nousma, the ship is as good as finished. Give the order to abandon ship.”

Nousma looked at him silently for a moment, unable to accept the awful reality. He then shook himself back and activated his ship’s intercom.

“ALL HANDS, THIS IS THE CAPTAIN. ABANDON SHIP! I SAY AGAIN, ABANDON SHIP!”

King Stan was next on the intercom.

“All hands, this is your king. You all served bravely but more fighting is now senseless. Once on the ground, surrender without further resistance to the local authorities or to the forces of the Time Patrol. I am certain that you will be well treated. Goodbye and good luck to you all.”

Stan then looked at Colonel Xitak, the commander of his royal guardsmen, seated to his left.

“Make sure that my family escapes safely, Colonel. Use any means to ensure that.”

Stan then got up from his seat and ran down to the pilot’s station, where he politely but forcibly ejected the pilot from his seat and took his place. The dejected pilot then had no choice but to go sit in the king’s previous seat. Miri, looking at this with disbelief, then started unbuckling her safety harness while shouting.

“STAN! COME BACK HERE! STAN!”

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Heavy Plexiglas panels then slid quickly into place, turning the V.I.P. section into an enclosed escape module on the command of Colonel Xitak. Miri, now trapped inside the module, could only bang repeatedly on the Plexiglas walls while crying until Xitak forced her down in her seat.

“Put your harness on, Your Highness. There is nothing else you can do now.” Xitak, sitting back himself and buckling up, then activated the last part of the ejection sequence. The V.I.P. module was pushed upward into a roof recess of the bridge by hydraulic pistons, then ejected via an evacuation tunnel leading to the top of the ship. It emerged into the clear afternoon sky and followed a preprogrammed flight path until Xitak could assume manual control of the module, which had its own propulsion drive. The passengers of the module could now see the ROYAL SOVEREIGN, its battered hull showing the frightful extent of the damage it had taken, veer to the North, away from the now close New Lake City, and take some altitude as evacuation pods shot out of it in droves. The wounded battleship nearly flew out of sight before starting a steep dive towards the far side of Lake Michigan, where it finally crashed in a titanic explosion. Miri and the rest of the royal family wept quietly while Xitak flew down towards where he had seen the evacuation sphere of the Time Patrol ship land with its big, bright orange parachutes. If they were going to surrender to the Time Patrol, he reasoned, they might as well do it to one of the crews who had helped shoot down the ROYAL SOVEREIGN. As he was about to land a hundred meters from the sphere, which was spewing thick black smoke, three ships of the Time Patrol sped by. One of them, of cruiser size, slowed down and turned around, overflying both the sphere and the Imperium module for a moment before leaving the scene. Xitak, who had been scared of being shot down for approaching the sphere, put down the module on its landing legs and powered down the propulsion drive, then turned around to look at his passengers.

“The orders from the King were clear: we are to surrender without resistance. We will thus leave all our weapons inside the module. You may go outside after me but stay near the module until I declare the area safe.”

Unbuckling his own pistol belt, Xitak left it on his seat before going to the access airlock of the module and stepping outside. The air was warm and dry and a fair breeze blew from the West. Xitak started walking towards the sphere but had to stop halfway, as a woman of the Time Patrol landed between him and the sphere. She was armed but her pistol was still holstered. Xitak then recognized her: it was Nancy Laplante, looking none too pleased. Xitak quickly raised both hands high.

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“I am unarmed, Miss Laplante. King Stan gave us the order to surrender without resistance. The royal family, minus the King, was with me in the evacuation module.”

“Where is the King now, Colonel?”

“Dead! He took the controls of our ship for its last dive, so that as many of us as possible could escape before the crash.”

Laplante’s expression softened noticeably at those words.

“King Stan was a brave man. I will regret him in a way. If you will now excuse me, I have to go check on my scoutship crew.”

“May I come with you, miss?”

“You might as well, now that you are here, Colonel.”

Xitak then followed Laplante to the smoking sphere, as the latter shouted in English.

“INGRID! TOM! WHERE ARE YOU?”

“OVER HERE, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SPHERE! QUICK: INGRID IS BADLY HURT!”

Both Laplante and Xitak then broke into a run, going around the sphere and finding Tom Allen kneeling besides Ingrid Weiss, who was lying in the long grass, inert. Tom’s face and hands were blackened by soot and his uniform was singed in a few places but he otherwise appeared all right, although panicky. Ingrid was another matter: her uniform was half burned away and hideous second- and third-degree burns covered one side of her head, her right arm and half of her back. She also appeared to be in shock. Nancy, horror on her face, ran to the duo and knelt beside her adopted daughter, examining her extensive burns.

“My God, Ingrid! Hang on for a second, while I heal you.” Extending both of her hands over Ingrid, Nancy then closed her eyes and concentrated. Xitak watched with disbelief white light radiate down from Nancy’s hands and envelop the teenage girl for a few seconds. The burns disappeared gradually but quickly, leaving her body intact when the light faded away. Nancy was not finished, though. As Ingrid was waking up, more light enveloped her burnt hair, making it grow back at a fantastic rate. Nancy then helped Ingrid up on her feet. Tom Allen was frantically hugging and kissing his wife as Xitak approached, hesitant and still stunned.

“Miss Laplante, I truly don’t know how you did that, but we also have a seriously wounded woman with us. Could you help her, please?”

“The One’s compassion is to be extended to all, Colonel. Show me to her.”

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Too shaken still to figure out what her cryptic message meant, Xitak nonetheless led her to the module. Most of the royal family was already outside, breathing with delight the pure country air. Nancy smiled and bowed when she saw Miri Goshenk, who was wearing her full regalia as First Mistress of the Imperium.

“I am truly happy to see that you and the rest of the royal family are safe and sound, Your Highness.”

Miri gave back a weak smile.

“Thank you, Miss Laplante. However, you may simply call me Miri, as my titles mean nothing now.”

“Miri it is, then. I was told that you had a wounded who needed help.”

“Private Tonen is inside the module, miss.”

Nancy stopped and looked with mild surprise at Miri.

“Private Rina Tonen is with you?”

“Yes, miss: the King ordered that she be evacuated with us. She is in an awful state.”

“Not for long, Miri.” replied Nancy before entering the airlock of the module, negotiating the two successive doors, then climbing the steep ladder to the passenger compartment. She found young Den Selan sitting beside Rina’s head and comforting her with soothing words. Nancy quickly gave the guard a friendly smile.

“I am here to help Rina, young man. Do not be alarmed.” Nancy then delicately pulled away the bed sheet covering Rina’s nude and battered body, recoiling in revulsion at the sight of the savage marks of torture on the guard’s body. Her eyes then fell on a large letter ‘K’, branded with successive applications of a red-hot iron on Rina’s belly. Her face now both grave and sad, Nancy looked into the eyes of Rina, who was looking back at her with a silent plea for help.

“I see that Karl tortured you as well, Rina. Did you go to Berlin in 1941 ‘B’ to kill me?”

Rina slowly nodded her head, tears appearing in her eyes.

“I was ordered to, in order to ensure the survival of the Imperium. It was the most difficult act I ever had to do. Please forgive me, miss.”

“You are forgiven, Rina.”

With those words, Nancy healed Rina within a minute, then bent over and kissed her tenderly on her lips.

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“I can feel your memories of those moments in Berlin. Forget what happened there. I wish us to be good friends from now on. Would you like that?”

“Could you really forgive me for killing you, miss?”

“I have already forgiven you, Rina. You can get up now.”

“I…I will find her something to wear, miss.” said Den Selan, still shaken by the sight of Nancy’s healing process. He was back after a few minutes with a pair of boxer shorts and a T-shirt. Both were a bit too small for Rina but the fabric could stretch. Nancy smiled while looking at Rina’s body, which now filled tightly the shorts and T-shirt.

“That’s quite a sexy fit, actually, Rina. Let’s go outside in the fresh air.”

A troop of a dozen horses arrived at a gallop as Nancy, Rina and Den emerged from the module, making members of the royal family marvel.

“These horses must be trained, to come to us like this.” said a young teenage princess. Prince Len, who had seen twice the documentary on the life of Yeshua, spotted a brown horse leading the pack and smiled.

“Could that be? PEGASUS!”

The leading horse, on hearing this, turned towards the teenage boy and stopped abruptly in front of him.

“You know me, boy?”

Nancy laughed hard at the faces the Imperium members did on hearing the horse speak in Neo-English. The other horses then surrounded the group, with Nancy approaching Pegasus.

“Report, Pegasus! What is the status of our headquarters?”

“It was completely destroyed, along with most of the rest of the complex. A number of university buildings caught fire as well. Some of our personnel not on shift were able to evacuate the danger area in time, along with us and other robots, but the losses are heavy, including many students and staff members at the university. I heard on the civilian emergency radio net that an astroliner was shot down while taking off from the New Lake City astroport and that the casualties there are at least 2,000 dead, with many more wounded.”

Nancy bowed her head in sadness, mourning the death of so many innocents. If she felt any anger or hatred towards the Imperium members, she did not let it show. Turning around, she designated the horses to the members of the royal family and the Imperium guards.

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“Please take place on these horses, ladies and gentlemen. They are actually sophisticated robots and can easily take on two riders each. Prince Len, would you like to ride Pegasus with me?”

“I certainly would, miss.” replied enthusiastically the big boy of sixteen. As they were mounting up, two big combat vehicles mounted on multiple wheels came in at high speed, following the terrain contours and using its cover to the maximum. Nancy reassured quickly Colonel Xitak, who nearly jumped off his horse to take cover in the nearby trees.

“Do not worry, please! These are two of our Point Defense Robots, or PDRs in short, who were tasked to defend the area around New Lake City. We had 160 such PDRs firing at your battleship. They will now stand guard on your evacuation module and our rescue sphere until they can be retrieved.”

Xitak and his guards looked with respect at the long, quadruple rail guns and the missile silos, now empty, arming the vehicles.

“No wonder the ROYAL SOVEREIGN was taking such a beating from the ground. Any lesser ship would have been shot down within seconds.”

“Well, that is now in the past. Let’s ride!”

The horses, with their riders mounting without saddles or even bridles, adopted a smooth trot to avoid accidental dismounts. They headed towards a large column of black smoke rising from behind a line of nearby trees. Once past the trees, they were able to see New Lake City in the distance, about four kilometers away. The smoke came from the fires still burning around the university campus, which was nearer than the city. After a little bit over twenty minutes of riding, the group arrived near the edge of a huge crater in the ground, where the headquarters building of the Time Patrol had stood. The other buildings of the complex, including the residential tower and the sports center, were now reduced to burned out hulks. Only the more distant ship and storage hangars were more or less intact. Dozens of vehicles from the firefighting department of New Lake City were still busy putting out fires through the nearby university campus, while ambulances were everywhere, with long lines of burned people on stretchers laid on the ground, waiting for medical evacuation. Nancy looked at all this with growing sadness and dismounted, walking towards the nearest line of stretchers, where dozens of paramedics and volunteers were frantically providing first aid to the wounded. Miri Goshenk dismounted as well, intent on lending some help. She was about to ask to a paramedic if she could be of help when she saw Nancy Laplante stop and look skyward

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while raising her arms. Laplante then became intensively bright and a silent explosion of white light surged out of her, with a wave front of energy expanding quickly outward. Miri felt only deep well-being when the energy wave passed through her. Blinking from the surprise after the wave had passed, Miri soon realized that the wounded around her were now getting up by themselves, their burns apparently healed as if by a miracle. Nancy Laplante still shone for nearly a minute while the energy wave expanded past the city and reached the nearby astroport. It then died down a few kilometers past the astroport, while Laplante returned to her normal aspect. With everyone around her except for Ingrid Weiss and Tom Allen looking on in stunned disbelief, Nancy emitted a strong mental message around her.

“I am nothing but The Hand of The One. Thank and praise him, not me.” Before Miri could go to her and ask any question, the reporters present and covering the disaster rushed to Nancy and assaulted her with questions. Ingrid Weiss went to Miri and gently took her arm.

“Come, Dame Goshenk. These reporters are not about to leave her alone for a while. I have asked for someone to come down from our cruiser so that proper care can be taken of your people.”

Miri suddenly felt alarm at those words.

“Are we going to be put in cells? If you do, please spare the children that humiliation.”

Ingrid gave her a weird look then, with her voice hardening a bit.

“Dame Goshenk, your Imperium was ready to torture an eleven-year-old British princess. Don’t worry, though: we are not barbarians, even if we are Ancestors. What we had in mind was to rent rooms for your people at the Lakeside Hotel, in New Lake City. There are no true prisons in the society of the Global Council anyway.” That answer from the half-naked Ancestor girl was so unexpected that Miri had trouble believing her.

“Excuse me? We came and did all that damage, killed your people and for that you are simply going to put us in hotel rooms?”

“What else could we do? Kill you? This war between the Imperium and us is over and the Imperium is no more. The best future, the only future actually for you and your people, is to integrate peacefully into the society of the Global Council and to build new lives for yourselves. Is that such a bad prospect to contemplate?”

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Miri felt a chill then: that teenage girl was right. Her Imperium, the life she was used to and into which she had been raising her children, even her king and husband, all that was gone now.

“You speak with much wisdom for your age, miss. How old are you?”

“Biologically, I am nineteen, Dame Goshenk. Spiritually, I am over 7,000 years old. I probably would have died today if not for the help from Nancy, who is my adoptive mother. However, many innocent people did die because of your Imperium. So, be grateful and quiet, take your hotel rooms and behave: it will be simpler and much nicer for everybody that way.”

The teenager was about to walk away when Miri grabbed her arm.

“Wait! What is your name?”

“My present name is Ingrid Weiss, Dame Goshenk. My first ever name, seven millenniums ago, was Amdira. Either name will do fine.”

20:13 (North America Central Time)

Suite 1001, Lakeside Hotel

New Lake City

Miri Goshenk was sitting in front of the holovision set of her suite with her children, Princes Len and Sten and Princess Danya, watching with intense interest the GNN hourly news program. Unsurprisingly, today’s battle between the ROYAL

SOVEREIGN and the Time Patrol was the big news. For Miri, the way the news medias of this society were covering the affair showed too well that the Global Council had not known war for a very long time. If fact, the newscaster himself said so during the program, mentioning the 29th century as the last time a war had happened on this Earth. There were thus numerous hyperboles, exaggerations and a general ignorance of military affairs or even of the business of war which quickly irritated Miri. From what she had seen up to now of this society, however, she could not deny that these people were highly advanced both technologically and socially and had a refined artistic sense. They were a world apart from the average Imperium citizen, who was also technologically advanced but rougher and tougher in manners, or from the Ancestors of the Time Patrol, who seemed to have been literally immersed constantly in a culture of war while in their original time periods. As they were watching pictures of the carnage caused by the crash of the astroliner ORION, Len looked at his mother with concern.

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“Mom, are they going to punish us for all these civilians killed by us?”

“I don’t know, Len. However, as the girl from the Time Patrol told me, they don’t even have jails in this society, so I doubt that they have anything like the death penalty or something we would consider a severe punishment. For the other members of the Imperium captured earlier during a raid on the London of 1942 ‘B’, where Princess Margaret came from, I am afraid that their situation is much more precarious.” The mention of Princess Margaret made Prince Sten, who was thirteen, smile as he pictured her in his mind.

“I have to say that Princess Margaret was really cute. She was so tiny, so fragile-looking. She was also quite funny. Don’t you think so, Len?” His older brother, who was actually a bit smaller than Sten and also much smaller than the average Imperium boy of his age, answered after a moment of hesitation.

“She was effectively cute, Sten. The other Ancestor girls I have seen were also very cute on average. The one who piloted the ship that shot up the ROYAL SOVEREIGN was positively beautiful. I think that their hair contributes a lot to the beauty of the Ancestor girls.”

Princess Danya, eleven years old, made a face at those comments from her brothers.

“You boys are so superficial. Cut their hair off and what will these Ancestor girls have over us then?”

The buzz of the door chime interrupted that argument. Telling her children to stay in place, Miri went to the door and looked at the video monitor beside the doorframe that showed her visitors: a woman and a very old man, both wearing civilian clothes of high quality. There were still no armed guards or combat robots guarding the door of her suite or that of the other hotel rooms occupied by Imperium members. Miri opened the door and bowed slightly her head as a welcome.

“Good evening! What may I do for you?”

The woman, a distinguished person with a sympathetic face, answered her.

“First Mistress Goshenk, I am Tomi Kern, newly elected Global Chief Administrator of the Global Council, and this is Global Justice Administrator Sten Vargas. Could we speak with you for a while?”

Miri was agreeably surprised by this. To have the head of the planetary system’s government visit her instead of simply summoning her to her office was a sure sign that they were going to treat her and her family with dignity. Miri thus warmly welcomed them inside the suite, presenting her children to the two visitors. After shaking hands

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and exchanging kisses with them, Kern and Vargas took place in a sofa close to Miri’s easy chair. Miri switched off the holovision set and looked at Tomi Kern.

“Chief Administrator Kern, I am honored by your visit, especially in view of today’s circumstances. I wish that we could have met in a more peaceful setting.”

“What is done is done, First Mistress Goshenk. This conflict is now over and we are here to discuss about the future of your people. As First Mistress, you now represent the top surviving official of the Imperium, am I right?”

“You are correct, Chief Administrator.” answered softly Miri, the face of Stan flashing for a second inside her head. “As such, I also bear responsibility for the acts of my people. If you want to prosecute someone for our attack on your society, then let it be me.”

“Please, Dame Goshenk,” said Sten Vargas, “we are not here to put blame on anyone. In fact, we are not planning to present any charges against you or your people. While we have not seen war here for centuries, Miss Laplante and her Time Patrol have recently taught us back the meaning of the word and have opened our eyes to reality. This conflict was the unfortunate consequence of the acts of a man thirsty for power, namely your General Veck, and of a number of political mistakes on both sides. The Time Patrol was created to protect us from the dangers of time travel, but we failed to listen to its advice and tried to preserve our precious peace by cocooning ourselves, instead of doing our part in trying to reassure your Imperium that we were no threat at all. Exchanging embassies would probably have gone a long way towards defusing the mistrust between us.”

“It would have indeed, Chief Justice Vargas. On the other hand, my husband, King Stan the Sixth, was deadly afraid that, despite the reassurances given by Miss Laplante that we would be left alone if we didn’t interfere with history, your government would one day come back on its word and decide to erase us from history. Seeing your society now, I realize that your government would never have been capable of such a treacherous act. Without wanting to push blame away from me, I can say that I was horrified when King Stan decided to launch a massive nuclear strike against your society as soon as feasible, in order to eliminate the support base of the Time Patrol. If the Time Patrol had not stopped our ship today, your world would be by this evening a nuclear wasteland. There were over 2,450 nuclear warheads aboard our ship and on the attack craft we transported.”

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Both visitors paled visibly at those words. Tomi Kern hid her hands, which were now shaking.

“So, we have even more reasons to be grateful to the Time Patrol. This will go a long way in helping to clear their name.”

“Clear their name?” said Miri, surprised and confused. “I am afraid that I don’t understand you on this point.”

“You may call this either rank cowardice or utter stupidity on our part, Dame Goshenk, but the truth is that the Time Patrol had been ordered to abandon Miss Laplante to her fate when she was captured by you while on her diplomatic mission. The Time Patrol mutinied rather than let her down and went into exile in time with their ships and equipment. The previous government then declared them a criminal organization and even tried to close down the operations of their headquarters, the one you destroyed today. I was elected yesterday to form a new government after I circulated a worldwide petition protesting the treatment meted to the Time Patrol and demanding for new elections.”

Miri looked at her with total disbelief mixed with more than a little contempt.

“You mean that your previous government first sent her on a diplomatic mission to talk with us, then refused to do anything to help her?”

“Basically, yes! Their argument was that we should have hidden away from you and not reacted when your General Veck launched his raid on 1942 ‘B’ London. My reaction, and that of my husband, who lost his post as Chief Administrator when vetoed on this by his own cabinet, was why create the Time Patrol in the first place, only to tell them to do nothing when faced with the first threat to the integrity of history?”

“Chief Administrator, do you know what would have happened if your Time Patrol would not have reacted to Veck’s raid? Veck would have become even more reckless with his use of time travel, until he would have discovered your timeline. Then he would have either destroyed or enslaved your society to satisfy his thirst for power. Instead of having to face only one ship, like today, you would have had the whole Imperium fleet to deal with, something even your Time Patrol could not defeat. That is what hiding from us would have brought you.”

Kern and Vargas then exchanged looks.

“How soon can you have the charges against the Time Patrol dropped, Sten?”

“Tomorrow, Tomi. It will be my first official act after our swearing in.”

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“Uh, wait!” exclaimed Miri. “If your Time Patrol is still officially a criminal entity, how can they operate here without apparent restraints? Who is paying for the hotel rooms we are using?”

Tomi Kern, realizing how foolish her answer was going to sound like, turned away her eyes in embarrassment.

“The Time Patrol is the only group in the Global Council to have access to lethal weapons. Nobody would dare try arresting its members. As for your rooms, I believe that the Time Patrol used its own gold reserves to pay for them.” Miri hid her face in her hands, exasperated, while Prince Len rolled his eyes upward and made a face.

“Alright,” said Miri, “let’s deal with something you can handle. What do you plan to do with us?”

“Integrate your members into our society as smoothly as possible, Dame Goshenk. There will be no criminal prosecution against any of your people. The ones responsible for this tragedy are already dead.”

“And, as a new citizen of your society, I can choose what I will do in my life here?”

“Absolutely! That goes for all of your people as well. I will have a number of government clerks show up tomorrow after breakfast to process your people as new citizens and provide you with startup funds.”

“That is very generous of your people, Chief Administrator. What about the crews of the two interceptors shot down over London two weeks ago? They are still being held by the British.”

“Not anymore, Dame Goshenk: Miss Laplante told me just one hour ago that they have been released by the British and that most of them will arrive here tonight.”

“Most of them? I don’t understand.”

“Uh, it seems that some of them have already requested to join the Time Patrol.” Instead of making Miri angry, those words actually made her laugh hard.

“Please excuse my choice of words, but I can understand their decision: I too would prefer to work for somebody who has balls.”

“Uh, Mom, could I join the Time Patrol too?” Asked timidly Prince Len, stopping cold Miri’s laughter. She stared at her son for a moment, then smiled.

“Why not? You always loved history. What better place than the Time Patrol to keep learning about it?”

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15:06 (Warsaw Time)

Thursday, June 4, 1942 ‘B’

Time Patrol command post, Gesia Street

Warsaw Ghetto, Poland

Jack Crawford was planning the shipping out of the excess materiel and robots no longer needed in Warsaw when Natia Mindicor showed up in the command post room, three church dignitaries close behind her.

“Excuse me, Jack, but a delegation from Rome has just arrived to meet with Miriam.”

Jack hid as best he could his displeasure: they were busy enough as it was without having to contend with some commission of inquiry from the Vatican. Those dignitaries probably wanted to discuss Miriam’s links with Yeshua, a delicate subject that could easily enough raise a religious storm. He wished that Nancy was here to deal with this instead of him, who never paid much attention to religious things. He however politely invited the three churchmen inside the command post and offered them seats, which they took. The senior churchman, a short man in his early sixties and with a prominent nose, radiated human warmth and put Jack more at ease quickly, speaking in French at first.

“Would French be appropriate, or another language would be more acceptable?”

“French will do fine, Your Excellency. I am Field Agent Jack Crawford, in charge of this outpost.”

“And I am Apostolic Delegate Angelo Roncalli, until very recently Delegate to Turkey and Greece and soon to be Papal Nuncio to Paris. This is my assistant for this mission, Monsignor Fra Arnoldi, and this is my private secretary, Father Umberto Galliano. We were tasked by His Holiness the Pope to meet with a Miriam of Magdala, who is said to be part of your group in Warsaw.”

“Miriam of Magdala is effectively here in this building, Your Excellency. Matters concerning her and her son David are however…delicate in terms of religious orthodoxy. If this is some kind of heresy tribunal, then I am not going to give you access to her: she is a young and gentle woman who deserves to be left in peace.” Roncalli nodded his head and smiled gently.

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“Do not be afraid for her, Mister Crawford. We mean her no harm, on the contrary. In fact, if she is who we think she is, she is already an ordained saint of the Catholic Church. We are aware of the implications of this case and I can promise you that our mission will be extremely discreet and that the results of our inquiry will only be seen by His Holiness the Pope.”

“In that case, you are welcome to speak with her. Do you mind if I observe your conversation with Miriam?”

“If you must, then I don’t mind.”

“Then follow me!” said Jack, getting up from behind the portable workstation he had been using. Before leaving the room, though, he switched the radio functions of the workstation to remote control mode, so that he could monitor communications using his helmet radio, then put his helmet on. Climbing the stairs to the next floor with the churchmen behind him, Jack went to the room occupied by Miriam and knocked on the door. The Galilean woman opened the door after a few seconds, her son David in her arms.

“Sorry to disturb you, Miriam, but there are three visitors from the Vatican for you.” said Jack in Hebrew.

“The Vatican? What’s that?”

“The seat of the Catholic Church, which worships Yeshua as the Son of God. They would like to ask you a few questions, probably about your life with Yeshua.” Miriam glanced at the three churchmen, then whispered at Jack.

“Should I answer all their questions?”

“Tell the truth, Miriam. However, if they start bothering you, just say so and I will terminate the interview.”

Miriam nodded her head, then let Jack and the churchmen in. While Jack stayed up besides the door, Miriam offered her camp cot for the churchmen to sit in, taking herself the rocking chair in the corner of her small room. Roncalli used French again to speak to her.

“We can use French, Italian, Greek or Latin as you prefer, miss.”

“French will do, sir. What may I do for you?”

“If you could answer a few questions, it would help us a lot in our task, miss. I am Apostolic Delegate Angelo Roncalli, sent by His Holiness the Pope to investigate about a few rumors which reached the Vatican a few days ago. May I ask first your full name, place and date of birth?”

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“Of course, sir. My name is Miriam, daughter of Ephraim and Judith. I was born in the village of Magdala, in Galilee, in what would be your month of June, in the eight year of your calendar. I am now 25 years old.”

“How did you come to this time, Miriam?” asked politely Roncalli, who was letting his secretary note down the conversation.

“Nancy Laplante brought me to the year 3385, after Yeshua asked her to take me under her protection.”

“And who was Yeshua?” asked Roncalli, who actually knew the answer already.

“Yeshua of Nazareth is known to the Poles here as Jesus Christ. Yeshua was dying on the cross when he made his request to Nancy.”

“Why did he ask that of Miss Laplante? Did he know that she was from the future?”

“Yeshua knew that she was very special but Nancy was then known to all as Nava, a Sarmatian warrior woman who had come to Palestine to convert to Judaism. I believe that Yeshua didn’t know then about the true nature of Nancy. He however knew after his death, as he visited me in the year 3385, on the day of the birth of David.” Roncalli, along with the two other churchmen, reacted with strong interest to her answer.

“Jesus visited you in 3385? How?”

“He appeared to us in the hospital where I gave birth to David and held our son for a short moment, touching his head while praying, then disappeared from where he stood.”

Roncalli swallowed hard while looking down at the cute little boy in Miriam’s arms.

“Jesus is the father of your son, miss?”

“He is. We were married in Canae, a year and a half before his death.” Miriam then looked at Jack, but kept speaking in French, so Roncalli could understand.

“Jack, why not show them the documentary on Yeshua? It would answer most of their questions in much better detail.”

“I don’t know, Miriam. That documentary could create a storm of controversy. I will have to ask for Nancy’s permission before showing it to them.”

“Could you do that while I answer their questions, Jack?”

“Uh, sure. It shouldn’t take very long to get an answer.”

“Thanks, Jack!”

As soon as Jack was gone, Miriam smiled to Roncalli.

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“The documentary we were speaking about was produced by the Time Patrol to document the birth, life and death of Yeshua of Nazareth. Nancy Laplante spent years in the Palestine of my time, filming scenes from the life of Yeshua and following him around as one of his disciples. It is an extremely well-produced documentary that deals strictly with the facts of the life of Yeshua. Nancy followed him closely but did as little as possible herself in order not to interfere with the events themselves. She helped Miriam of Nazareth give birth to him and was there at his crucifixion. I however understand that the facts exposed in that documentary do not support many preconceptions about Yeshua’s life that are found in your Bible. I myself read your Bible and found many inaccuracies in it, mostly due to distortion of facts by the chroniclers who wrote about Yeshua after his death.”

Roncalli, while hurt by Miriam’s words, stayed polite and friendly. While many would never accept that the Holy Bible could contain mistakes, Roncalli was too well educated not to understand that the Scriptures had been translated and sometimes reworded many times through the centuries. The Time Patrol had the enormous advantage in this case of having been able to gather facts on the spot and at the time of the events in question. If those facts could show that Jesus was what the Church said he was, then he could live with a few changes to the Scriptures. That was however something only the Pope could decide on.

“Tell me about Yeshua, miss. What kind of man was he?” Miriam smiled and became dreamy as she remembered her lover and spiritual master.

“He was an extraordinary man, truly. He was incredibly gentle and kind, compassionate and tolerant. He was ready to accept anyone who would listen to his preaching, including sinners, women and people of low repute. He had the power to heal with his hands and did heal people all over Galilee and Judea. He also loved children and spent much time in their company.”

Miriam went on for many minutes, answering specific questions from Roncalli without any qualms or hesitations. The churchmen had priceless details about the life of Jesus by the time Jack Crawford came back, knocking briefly at the door before entering. He smiled at both Miriam and the churchmen.

“Good news: Nancy authorized His Excellency to see the documentary on Yeshua. I have set up our holovision set next door to show it. It is ready when you want.”

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“Excellent!” said Roncalli, pleased. “It should prove a captivating film. Will you watch it with us, Miriam?”

“I will, sir. I also want David to watch it, so that he could see pictures of his father and keep a memory of him.”

“A most understandable need in a child. May I say that he is a beautiful boy?”

“You are too kind, sir.” said Miriam, beaming with pride. As Roncalli got close to her to caress the head of the toddler, David saw the cross suspended from a chain around the churchman’s neck. His eyes sparkling, he extended a hand to hold it. He was still too far away to reach it but the cross flew towards his hand until its chain was pulled taut. After a moment of stunned surprise, Roncalli got closer, letting the child touch the cross. Little David looked up at him and grinned with happiness. At that exact moment, Roncalli felt a strong mental wave of human warmth which intensified when he smiled back at the child. The sensation of pure joy he felt from the boy made tears appear in his eyes, so marvelous the feeling was.

“He is such a lovely child! He is like a small angel.”

“Uh, you would not say that when trying to make him eat something he doesn’t like.” replied Miriam playfully. “Let’s go see the documentary now.”

18:47 (Warsaw Time)

Time Patrol command post, Warsaw Ghetto

There was a long silence from the three churchmen when the documentary ended. While the authenticity of the recordings could not be denied without a lot of bad faith, what they had seen was enough to cause a revolution, or worse, in the Catholic Church. Reserving his judgment for a later time, when his thoughts would have quieted down, Roncalli looked at Jack Crawford, who had watched the documentary besides them, explaining a few technical details or backtracking the recording to review a few critical moments at the churchmen’s request.

“Mister Crawford, another aspect of our mission here was to do an inquiry about the miracle of mass healing said to have been performed by Miss Laplante here in the Ghetto.”

“That miracle is much more than hearsay, Your Excellency. Thousands of people were direct witnesses to it and even more people will vouch that they were miraculously healed at that moment, all around Warsaw and the rest of Poland. Nancy

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performed a similar mass healing near London only a few minutes after the one in Warsaw and she did a third mass healing in the future, in 3386. She is now widely addressed to as ‘The Hand of God’ by everybody here in Warsaw, a title even an ex-atheist like me will not deny to her. She truly has amazing powers now, especially when it comes to healing. If the Catholic Church is thinking about calling her a saint, something which Nancy herself will deny, then you should know that the Church has already made one of her past personas, Joan of Arc, a saint.” Now deeply shaken, Roncalli got up from his chair and shook hands with Jack.

“We will now go investigate around the Ghetto and the rest of Warsaw. Thank you for your cooperation in everything.”

Roncalli then knelt in front of Miriam and kissed her hand, then kissed little David on his head.

“It was a great joy for me to meet you and your son David, Saint Mary Magdalene. May God smile on both of you.”

“And on you, Your Excellency. Shelamah!”

“Shelamah!” repeated little David in his tiny voice. Roncalli grinned and waved at the boy before leaving.