Weapons of choice

Ensign Curtis interposed himself between the two men in the unfamiliar role of peacemaker.

"Yes, son?"

"These eyeglasses, sir. Do you actually wear them in combat, so you can see in the dark?"

"We do. But they have other uses, too. They'll take a shotgun blast from twenty yards out. Your face'll get shredded, of course. But your baby blues will be A-okay." He grinned ghoulishly. "They can display a bunch of tactical information, too. Real-time imaging from intel drones, spy-cams, and so on. So if you're wondering what's on the other side of a hill, say, you can see without popping your head up to get it shot off."

Jones could see that neither Curtis nor Black really understood what he was talking about.

"Put them on, Ensign," he said.

When Curtis had the goggles snug over his eyes, Jones made another series of fingertip adjustments on his flexipad. Wally's head moved from side to side as he was instantly overwhelmed by the mass of data. Inside the goggles he could "see" five movie screens. Each seemed to contain a different view of the same scene-a squad of soldiers attacking a building. Curtis couldn't tell if it was for real or made up. After a few seconds Jones shut down the goggles and asked him to hand them over to Dan Black.

The second time around Black did better at hiding his surprise, but the look on his face still gave him away. He watched the film through to the end before lifting the goggles.

"I'm no foot soldier," he said, "but how in hell is anyone supposed to fight with that five-ring circus to distract him?"

Jones grinned like a hungry wolverine. "Thousands of hours of training."

Black nodded. It was just a small movement. "Admiral Kolhammer?" he said, with a slight shift in his voice indicating that he was approaching a personal Rubicon. "How'd you really get here? Assuming you are here and we're not there, wherever it is you came from."

Kolhammer sighed. "Truth be known, I can't tell you that, Commander. Not because it's restricted information, but because I don't really know. When I was last in Pearl, I attended a briefing with the captain and executive officer of the Clinton. A bunch of no-name spooks and pinheads gave us a soft sell about this research project we were to ride shotgun on. They said it was for a new weapons system, gave us a lot of bullshit about a gun that wouldn't so much fire a bullet or a missile as take it directly to the target. One of them, a Japanese man actually, talked about 'collapsing the distance' to impact. It sounded like a bunch of crap to us, but ours is not to question why."

"Some things really don't change then," Black smiled, a small gesture of genuine warmth for the first time.

"No, they don't," admitted Jones.

"Anyway," Kolhammer continued, "I don't expect you to understand the science. Even I only have a Popular Mechanics notion of how it all works. But these guys were generating enormous levels of energy, enough I guess to actually warp the structure of space itself. And one of the things we've learned is that, on a certain level, space and time are the same thing. I guess they just got their figures wrong. I promise you, as we know more, we'll fill you in."

"That's pretty fucking wacky, if you ask me," said Black.

"Any wackier than this?" said Kolhammer, holding up the goggles and then swinging them around to take in the entire chopper.

"Or me?" said Colonel Jones.

"Yeah, quite a bit, since you ask."

Lieutenant Commander Black cracked his big broken knuckles. "You know, I might look like a real palooka, but I have a master's in civil engineering. It's only from Dakota State, but I had to sit down for five years of book learning like everyone else. Just because I used to break rocks for a living doesn't make me a fuckin' rockhead. I understand progress. The way I worked a mine was a hell of a lot different from the way my granddaddy did.

"I look at this bird and it seems mighty queer to me, but Ensign Curtis, he tells me these things are already on the drawing board. You got a woman flying this thing? Fine. I'll bet Amelia Earhart could fly rings around her. And as for you, Colonel Jones, my great-great-granddaddy on my mama's side was a lieutenant with the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, a black regiment with white officers. He died with his men, charging the Confederate guns at Fort Wagner. The grapeshot cut them up so bad, you couldn't tell who was who, or who was what, if you get my drift. So the home I grew up in, you ever spoke the word nigger, you got your ass whupped good and proper. Maybe you want to bear that in mind, Colonel Jones, before you go judging the content of a man's character by the color of his skin."

Jones gave Dan Black the benefit of his hardest glare, until a sly smile cracked open his granite features.

"Well put, Commander. Touche."

"Admiral Kolhammer?"

"Yes, Ensign?"

"How can you be sure you went back in time, and we didn't come forward?"