The Armageddon Cog

He sat across from her, halfway through his second drink, gesturing for his third. He'd be damned if he was going to handle this thing she had sober. From the look of her, she felt the same way. The problem was, she'd been handling it for the past week.

Her body slung forward in that state of advanced drunkenness where remaining upright was a near-insurmountable challenge. Her head didn't so much weave as swivel and lurch. When she managed to bring her face up, her bleary eyes were a watery blood-red. Her hair was a ragged tangle, and the last vestiges of makeup blended into an ashy ochre smeared down her face. An arm swung wildly to point at him, then flop down on the table. She knocked a double vodka back and dropped the glass on the floor, giggling as it shattered. The giggle became wet sobbing and she tried hard to force words from numb lips.

"You godda take it," she said for the tenth time. "I promissa steal it, but I donwanna keep it. Can't." She shook her head and it dropped to the table with a loud thud. She forced it back up, to stare at him, bleary-eyed. "Didda buncha ninsha shit t'get it. Fuggin badass's me. 'swhat I do. Badass shit an stealing an stuff." She reached into her pocket with a hand burned nearly to the bone and threw it at him. "Take it."

He took it in the hand that wore the specially designed glove, then placed it in the reinforced briefcase. The song of madness had erupted in his brain the moment he touched it, but subsided once the case was closed. He finished his drink, further muffling the dread song. He looked on the sodden mess with new pity. She'd been carrying it around in her pocket. He held out a thick envelope.

"Well, you've earned every penny of this."

She lay sprawled half across the table, not even bothering to look up. "Fugyer munny. Fuck you." He started to put the envelope away and her uninjured hand opened. "Gimme," she said.

He placed the envelope in her hand and left. At the door, he turned and looked back. The kind old man that ran the bar had come to her and, with the help of his round little wife, essentially carried the drunken spy to what he presumed was a back office. Let her sleep it off, then. If she could.

The limousine pulled up in front of the bar as he exited, the back door opening.

"Get in."

He obeyed.

Once seated inside, he immediately handed the briefcase to the thin gentleman with the wispy blond hair. The man did not bother to open it, merely closed his eyes briefly and smiled.

"Well done," he said. "I trust she was sufficiently compensated?"

"Yes."

The thin man clicked sympathetically. "Such a shame. She was the best we had, the only one who could do the job. She knew it would ravage her," he pursed his painted lips thoughtfully, "but I don't believe she really understood how much."

"What happens now?"

Thin shoulders shrugged. "She drinks away all the money you gave her and dies in a gutter somewhere, most likely."

"No, I mean with..." he gestured at the case. He could still feel its pulsing song.

The man laughed. "Oh, that. Yes, well." He patted the case. "I'll put it where it belongs in the machine."

"What machine?"

Another laugh. "Oh, you darling little hominid. This is the final piece of my infernal siege engine, the one I'll use to finally batter down the gates of Heaven." A shrug, then, "It will require fuel, obviously." He smiled, his teeth a foul yellow.

"But that's what all you people are for, isn't it?"

The Waverider

The stars sang to her.

The planets and comets and nebula clusters sang to her too, but it was the voices of the stars she loved listening to most. If she focused, she could pick out individual songs, like the languid ballad of a red giant many light years away. It sang of a long life that was coming to a close, of its brilliant youth and the myriad civilizations it nurtured on its fourth planet. It sang a bittersweet lament of that planet's death and a sad dirge for those who didn't escape it. Then she turned her attention to the sprightly tune of a new yellow sun, full of hope and the promise of life amid the swirling gas and rock of a young solar system. Its song was an anthem, vibrant and infectuous. She nodded her head to its rythmn for a while, smiling.

She pulled her awareness back, so all the songs blended to a single harmonious one. Starsong was beautiful, but to give oneself over to it completely was to ignore one's duties. And the duties of a Waverider, particularly one of the Justice Class, were of the highest importance. Few there were indeed who could master the complexities of the Wave with sufficient clarity to assemble the enigmatic Wavesuit, that near-mystical garment that allowed its wearer to channel the energies of the Universe itself.

The Wave. That omnipresent energy infused everything and everyone. All were aware of it, to the point where it was almost mundane and it did, indeed, serve many mundane functions. The mighty starships of the Galactic Fleet would never have left their home systems without the powerful Wave Engines to bend interstellar space. Even the primitive races knew of the Wave, though most who knew it confused it for some form of deity. Only the Waveriders, however, had that rare quality that allowed a living being to act as conduit for the Wave, bending the Universe to their will to work miracles. To do so required beings of incorruptible integrity possessing an iron will. A dedication to justice and the preservation of life was a Waverider's paramount mission, and in that a Waverider was ever vigilant.

Thus did Kae Starr, Justice Class Waverider, hear the merest whisper of a failing distress call. A passenger liner, traveling too close to a restricted system, ran afoul of a black hole and was being pulled inexorably toward destruction. With nary a second thought, Kae focused her perception to the signal's origin point, bending space about her so all the millions of light-years between them fell away in the span of a single step. As she approached the distressed liner, she felt the black hole's persistent tug. Against all instinct, she dove further into that maelstrom of gravity, grabbing hold of the liner and straining with all her prodigious might against the singularity's pull.

As she felt herself steadily losing ground, she channeled the Wave into a shield of pure force that would hold the sinking ship together. Gritting her teeth, she renewed her efforts. She was a Waverider. She would prevail.

Though a little assistance would not go amiss.

On Her Wedding Night

Maryann sat patiently through the ceremony. The priest droned on, sermons building upon sermons, that she very nearly forgot what she was there for, her mind drifting far from her surroundings.

It was then the good Father bid the bride and groom to stand, and she returned to herself.

Ah. Yes. That was it.

It was Maryann Barton's wedding day, and she could not possibly have felt less joyful. Her husband-to-be was an oafish man of business. His was an old family, their fortunes long in decline, until he discovered the veritable gold mine to be found in the trade of human beings. It was to his newfound wealth her father had sought to wed himself by wedding her to this aging and lecherous slaver. That she might be utterly repulsed by this corpulent oaf was of little concern to her father. Of course, Maryann had always been of little concern to her father, save as a bit of decoration, or as bait with which to entice wealthy men. The Bartons were also an old family, with similar fortunes to those of Maryann's erstwhile husband, prior to his lucrative business venture.

As the older man leaned in for the kiss, his vacant leer told her she would be of little concern to her husband as well, save as a source of offspring and a means to sate his trite and simple lusts.

She could bear it, all of it, for her new husband was a fool. A wealthy, foolish braggart who had, in his heavy-handed attempts to woo her, shown her his next scheme. He was poised to take control of a floundering textile business after divesting himself of most of his current holdings. The slave trade was not as respectable a profession as his ambitions required, and had therefore outlived its usefulness.

The formal ball was typical of its type, with food and wine in abundance and all the latest dances. She was partnered by several other leering old men and one dashing young soldier. She paid little attention to him, for all his rakish good looks, bestowing the favor of her fluttered lashes and empty giggles for the others. They would be of use to her later, the soldier would merely be a complication.

She smiled, however, in the early hours of the morning to think back on her dance with the young soldier. She smiled as she looked down at her dead husband, the last of his poisoned brandy soaking into the carpet. It would appear that he drank himself to death, upon any examination by a physician, and his excessive consumption at the ball would provide the necessary evidence. Yes, she smiled to think of the soldier, but laughed out loud to think of the look on her husband's fat face when he'd realized she was murdering him.

"No, my darling," she'd said softly, "do not try to speak. I am told the poison makes such a thing painful." She'd smiled, settling languidly against the plush pillows of the bed. "I have been told," she'd said as he fell to his knees, face red and eyes bulging, "by my mother, since my earliest memory, that a woman's greatest and only ambition is to marry well. That all we have is by leave of men, and all we do is by their will." She'd shaken her head then. "This did not sit well with me." The oaf's throat had swollen closed at this point and he'd gone beyond hearing, but she'd continued talking, "I resolved to prove her wrong." She'd laughed as his eyes rolled back in his head, "Thank you, dear husband," she'd said, kissing the reddened forehead, "for the assistance you are about to offer me in that regard.

"And have no fear, I will make much of the fortune you leave me," she assured him, "more than you ever could."

With a last glance for her departed husband, she rose from her bed and made for the bell that would summon the staff. She had to work herself up a good cry before they came, to be convincing enough as the shocked and devastated widow.

If only she could stop laughing.

The Time Jumpers Club

Dani slid the fusion rods into place, griping at Henri to start cycling the chronotron.

"Seriously Dani," he warned her, "relax. It's four hours to the jump, and our gear is just about set up. What are we supposed to do until then? Hit one of the parties?"

"No," Dani admitted with a sheepish smile. "I guess not. I'm just, y'know, excited..." She looked down and started fiddling with the buckles on her straps. Henri smiled.

"Ah, look at you," he said, shaking his head. "When we first got together, you thought I was insane to do this. Threatened to break it off if I didn't stop doing it. Now you're busting your seams to get to your first jump."

They smiled at each other, and Henri tucked an errant lock of her hair up into her skintight agesuit. "Wouldn't want just that strand turning grey, would we?"

"That's enough of that, the both of you. I didn't agree to let girls into the club to watch you two make out at every available opportunity." A rakish young man entered the room, futzing with his palmtop. "If I wanted to see that, I'd start going to class again." He waved his hand at them and slid the palmtop into a sealed pouch on his belt. "And put your masks on, unless you want your faces to be older than the rest of you."

"Well, doy."

"Shut up, Henri."

"Up yours, Doug."

"Wait," Dani said, mask halfway to her face. Henri already had his in place, sealing him into his agesuit. Dani looked between him and Doug. "Don't we still have, like, four hours?"

Doug grinned with one corner of his mouth. It wasn't quite a smirk, and Dani was convinced this was simply the best Doug could do with regard to a smile. "I assumed you'd be excited about your first jump," he said, "so I slid us all forward to just about midnight."

"I didn't think we could do that," Henri said, surprised.

"Tonight we can," Doug answered. "Time travel is easier at the fulcrum between years. It's why Dani waited until New Year's Eve to make her first jump."

"Oh yeah," Henri said, laughing. "Man, remember that jump we had in 2000? Made it to just a few millennia shy of the Big Bang on our third jump before the tether snapped us back."

"How far do you think we'll be able to go?" Dani asked as Henri made one final check of their gear.

Doug scratched his chin, pondering the horizon. "Hmmm. I'd say, what, a couple of million, both ways, give or take?"

Henri nodded. "Yeah. I'd say that's about right. Though I'm thinking of going forward first, if no one minds."

"Feeling optimistic?"

"Just adventurous."

Henri and Doug attached each other's calendar-packs, then Henri approached Dani with hers. "Here," he said, offering to attach it to her harness.

She turned her back to him and he set about inserting tubes and wires from the pack to her agesuit and back. "What is this again?" She tried to keep the nervousness out of her voice.

"It's a motor Doug and I built, that moves through 4th-dimensional space, keeping itself anchored to the time of its 3rd-dimensional origin."

"What?" Dani looked at him, lost. She'd read the research, but her Masters was in history. She only knew as much science as she absolutely had to.

Henri smiled. "Essentially, it has a safety feature built in so you can't get lost. Once I turn it on," he flipped a switch, and Dani felt an odd tug at her back. It was slight, and not uncomfortable. "You're tethered to this time and place." He and Doug turned theirs on, and Dani thought she could see, out of the corner of her eye, a long spiraling cord linking them to the main part of the time machine. When she turned to look directly at it, there was nothing.

"Ready?" Henri asked her, taking hold of her hand.

She squeezed his hand tight and nodded, grinning from ear-to-ear. "Yeah."

"Then let's go."

The future opened up before them, and they leapt into it. Tethered to the now by a strand of solid time, they fell swiftly toward tomorrow.