REDEMPTION TRAIL

The night continued to age on Theti as the dim evening sky faded to darkness. The disaster siren still sounded its warning, though its message had become somewhat diminished by fading batteries. Despite the dying sirens, the Theti night was still peaceful and unburdened by whatever threat that had triggered the alarm. General Raver and Chellaina were still in the confines of their disaster shelter; they were determined to stay underground until communications, and word of an all clear, were restored.
The disaster shelter was buried deep underground and protected by three feet of top quality, lime/shale concrete. The long staircase leading to the disaster shelter was sealed off by a sliding slab of concrete at the top, and a thick, hardened alloy hatch at the bottom. All-in-allit was nuke-proof.
The shelter was reasonably large and divided into three rooms, two of which were used to store supplies and equipment. It had been electronically maintained by a small collection of utility robots, which had kept it clean and made sure that supplies and equipment were in proper working order. Despite the fact that the shelter was tidy and fresh-smelling, its dull, grey concrete walls and utilitarian d‚cor made it seem more like a prison than a disaster shelter.
Chellaina found a chair to sit in as she worked at her crocheting, though it was small, hard, and nothing like the pink, fluffy chair she had become accustomed to. Still, she managed a smile as her hands diligently worked the hook and yarn in the drab, prison-like shelter. She looked up from her task to see if she could catch a glimpse of Fenton, who had been busy with something in one of the store roomsshe had a pretty good idea of what held The General's interest.
Chellaina returned to her task, then spoke in a tone that sounded suspiciously like a tongue-in-cheek demand.
"What are you doing in there, Fenny?"
She continued with her art as she waited for a reply. When it became apparent that a reply was not forthcoming, she looked up to see if anything was wrong.
There, standing near the door of the storeroom, was General Fenton S. Raver in full battle gear. He was dressed in a World War Five spacesuit with a .40 caliber lead-projectile pistol strapped to his boot and a weapons belt wrapped around his waist. The General's aged body clearly had trouble holding up the 30 pound life-support package on his back, along with a laser rifle, which was slung over his shoulder. To add to his burden was a 25 pound particle beam rifle, which he precariously held with both hands.
He stood motionless with an ear-to-ear smile, and said nothing.
Chellaina set her crochet in her lap, then slowly brought her hands together in a heart-warming gesture.
"Oh, Fenny. You look so handsome in your uniform." She smiled proudly as she briefly glanced up and down his uniform. The sight of The General in his uniform did spark a few precious memories, though it was his smile that brought her the greatest delight.
"I used to wear thisback when I was young and spiky."
"I remember," Chellaina assured him.
His smile diminished somewhat as he brushed a feeble hand over the five gold stars that were proudly mounted on the shoulder of the pressure suit.
"I never wore these stars into battle; the UN didn't make me a general until the war was over. Three months later, the UN decided to disband the military all together."
Chellaina nodded proudly and did her best to keep his spirits up, though she knew that The General's short reign was somewhat of a sore spot with him.
"You're still a general, Fennyyou'll always be a general."
The General let out a disgruntled sigh, "I know."
There was an uneasy pause as The General thought about the past. "I had good ideas for rebuilding the United Nations Space Force." He nodded in an assured fashion, "Damn good ideas."
He lowered his head, "But, the security council decided that no-one needed a military anymore. They said my plans were good, but they just didn't need them."
Chellaina tried to sound encouraging, "Remember, Fenny, a lot of people still had bad feelings about the warit had nothing to do with you or your plans."
The General nodded, "I know..." He lowered his voice to a mumble, "...We're probably better off without a military or war machinesthey only bring about war."
The General turned, then, with a certain amount of difficulty, carried the heavy particle beam rifle toward the door of the store room.
Chellaina felt an incredible pain for him as she watched him set the weapon down next to the door frame. She did her best to bring out his pride, which had become somewhat hidden by increasing age.
"The world has changed, Fenny. That was all historyand you were part of it. You were there when the realm needed you. You're a heronothing can chance that."
The General's aged hands carefully withdrew from the particle beam rifle in a slow, uncertain fashion as he checked to make sure that the weapon was propped up properly and would not slide to the floor.
Satisfied that the weapon wouldn't fall, he turned his weary eyes to Chellaina, then sadly nodded, "I was a hero, back when I was young and spiky." He shook his head in self-pity, "Now, I'm just a doddering old man."
"Now, Fenny!" Chellaina's words were punctuated with an assertive, upheld finger; her voice became somewhat scolding, "You remember what our friends at Elderly Support Services said about that kind of talk!"
A silent moment or two passed, then Fenton agreed with a reluctant nod. "I know." He presented a weak smile for Chellaina's sake, "I should be proud of what I am, no matter how old I get."
"That's right," there was a marked degree of certainty in Chellaina's voice, "I'm proud of the fact that they picked me to save the greatest hero in history. I know I'll never be a surgeon again, and you'll never be a soldier againbut we can still be proud of what we are." She nodded, "Together we saved a lot of lives; you from the bridge of your Star Saberand me in my operating theater."
The General tried to appear more positive, "You're right, Chelly; nothing will change that." He though about her words for a moment or two, then smiled and nodded in a more genuine fashion, "We should be proud of what we are."
Chellaina shared his smile; she knew that The General's doubt of his self-worth had passed, just as it always had, and that it would probably not surface again for quite some time to come.
The General seemed to be in much better spirits as he, and his bulky gear, went back into the store room, which was somewhat akin to a pack mule in a china shop. After rummaging around for a moment or two, he struggled to turn his burden around in the cramped, congested space of the storeroom, then emerged with a World War Five doctor's uniform on a hangar.
Chellaina smiled at the sight.
"Try it on!" he encouraged.
"Heavens, nothat was so long ago." There was a pause as Chellaina thought about that era in her life and the countless lives that she saved. Unlike Fenton, Chellaina usually avoided reminiscing about the war, though on very rare occasions, she did feel the urge to sift through her glory years.
"Is my medical case still in there?" she asked with a fragile smile.
Fenton nodded, then eagerly pointed to the store room, "Should I get it for you?"
"Well," her smile grew somewhat, "I don't suppose it would hurt to take a look."
With that, Fenton eagerly returned to the store room; it wasn't often that Chellaina wanted to indulge in his favorite hobby: war memorabilia.
Chellaina waited patiently as Fenton rummaged through the store room. Her gentle smile began to fade, however, when she noticed an unsettling, eerie, low pitched rumble that seemed to come from everywhere. The uncertainty on her face quickly changed to fear as the rumble grew.
"Fenny?" Her voice was marred by alarm.
Fenton struggled to emerge from the store room; it was apparent by the look on his face that he too was disturbed by the rumble.
"What is it, Fenny?"
The General shook his head as his uneasy eyes surveyed the confines of the shelter, "I don't know."
The rumble continued to grow, as if a herd of multi-ton beasts were racing across the ground above them. Within seconds, the entire disaster shelter began to shake and tremble. It started out low at first, then quickly escalated as dust began to fall from the ceiling.
Fenton started to make his way toward his wife's side, though the growing, pounding vibrations of the floor hampered his efforts. The ground-shaking tremor continued to escalate; Chellaina could see that Fenton was having problems maintaining his footing.
There was a loud crash as several shelves in the store room caved in, then Fenton lost his footing on the shaky floor. Chellaina saw him fall to the ground just an instant before the lights went out.
Chellaina's terrified voice could hardly be heard over the growing rumble, "FENNY!!?"
A brief instant later, an enormous crash, followed by the sound of falling debris, filled the dark confines of the shelter. Chellaina screamed as something of enormous proportions knocked her off her chair and sent her tumbling to the cold, concrete floor.
"Fenny!"
There was no response.
Chellaina cried and whimpered on the floor in total, absolute darkness. The shelter continued to tremble for a moment or two, then the shaking quickly diminished as the disturbance moved off into the distance.
Chellaina coughed once or twice from a heavy haze of dust, then made a feeble effort to raise her head. She felt bruised and battered in numerous places and had reason to believe that her arm was bleeding, though she could not be certain because of the darkness. She abandoned her efforts to raise her head when she realized that something heavy was lying across one of her legs.
"Fenny!" she pleaded, "Help me Fenny!"
There was no answer from the dust-choked darkness.
The rumble that reaped havoc in the nuclear- hardened shelter had diminished to nothing. Once again, Chellaina raised her head in an effort to find her husband.
"Fenny?"
She listened carefully to the silence of the darkness. She heard no reply, no moaning, no breathingthere was nothing, only complete and utter blackness.
"FENNY!?"
Chellaina's heart-shattered tears filled the ruins of the disaster shelter; she was somehow certain that the great, World War Five hero, was gone.

The huge Star Saber that once took General Raver to victory continued to drift helplessly in orbit above the lunar surface, though preparations to launch it were well underway. Krey and Cassie had already connected the huge, 800 ampere-hour battery to the ship's crippled power distribution system, which allowed them to activate life support and overhead lighting. Work on the craft had become somewhat easier with the introduction of overhead lighting, despite the fact that many corridors were still dark due to missing bulbs and faulty wiring.
The preparations for flight had been expedient, considering the state of the vehicle; most of the stores, including Cassie's case, had been brought on board, the hydraulic system was topped off, and liquid oxygen and hydrogen had already been pumped from the tug's tanks to those of the Star Saber. With the bulk of the chores behind them, the crew of two struggled with the final task; loading the antimatter.
The antimatter itself only weighed 35 kilograms, or about 77 pounds, but the high-tech canister that kept the antimatter separated from the real world weighed nearly five time as much. Krey and Cassie were struggling to get the heavy, cylinder-shaped canister down a long, narrow access tunnel that led from the service area to the time distortion engines. The tunnel was only about three and a half feet in diameter, just big enough to accommodate the canister with three inches to spare, and nearly 600 feet in length. That long, pipe-like tunnel of ancient steel was one of the few passages in the rear of the ship that still held an atmosphere.
Cassie was guiding the rear of the canister, while Krey handled the front. Cassie insisted on taking the rear; she did not want the canister to block her exit, should a mishap occur. As it was, they nearly got the canister stuck when they tried to negotiate a narrow section, which was caused by a huge dent on the outside of the tunnel. They managed to get the dent behind them and had less than fifty feet of tunnel between them and the engine room, when Krey noticed the time on his watch.
"Whoa!" He let go of his end of the canister as surprise swept across his face, "Do you know what time it is?" He struggled to look at Cassie through the three inch gap between the canister and the wall of the access tunnel.
"Watch your end!" Cassie insisted, though his end of the canister was in no particular peril at the moment; it continued to drift down the tunnel under its own inertia.
"It's ten minutes past the grace period!" Krey exclaimed.
Krey grabbed a handel on the end of the canister and tried to add a little more speed to the massive cylinder.
"Why didn't the cufflets lock together?"
"I don't know," Cassie insisted. There was a short pause as she tried to think of a way to distract Krey from the facts; she did not want him to know that she had a computer connection with the UN, or that she had used that connection to extend his grace period. "How much farther do we have to go?"
Krey turned around to look down the tunnelthen panic struck; they had less than ten feet of access tunnel left, after which, the heavy battering ram would fly through the engine room and pile into the only time distortion engine that still worked. He did his best to apply as much graceful pressure to the center of the canister as possible, which was extremely difficult given the narrow dimensions of the tunnel and its lack of footholds.
When it became obvious that his effort was useless, he turned around and planted his back against the massive canister, then tried to grab the sides of the tunnel with his rubber soles. His boots finally found purchase against the cold steel walls and sang out with a short screech as Krey laid the bulk of his muscle into the canister. His efforts managed to slow the canister down considerably, but in doing so, he knocked the heavy cylinder off coursesending it into the aged, steel walls of the access tunnel.
A heavy, hollow, metallic thud echoed and reverberated throughout the shipfollowed by the sound of hissing air.
"Now you did it!" Cassie reprimanded. "You cracked the bulkhead!"
Krey turned around and grabbed the canister, then started to pull it toward the end of the access tunnel.
"Is it a big crack?" Judging from his tone of voice, one would have thought that a crack in a pressure- tight compartment was no particular cause for concern.
"Big enough," Cassie replied, "It's leakingwe're going to die in this death trap of your's! What kind of idiot would"
"Don't get excited! Here..." Krey reached into his pocket and pulled out a foil tube about the size of a small tube of toothpaste. "Just put some of this on it."
He tossed the tube back to Cassie through the scant space between the cylinder and the wall then returned his attention, and his brawn, to the fuel canister.
Cassie managed to catch the tube as it came sailing out from between the canister and the wall. She turned the tube over, then read the label in disbelief.
"Leak Stop!?"
"Never go anywhere on this ship without it," Krey chuckled. "There must be at least a hundred pounds of that stuff holding the hull togetherI buy it by the case."
Cassie looked at the tube with uncertainty, then looked at the crack. The thread-like crack was only about three inches long, but air was escaping out of it fast enough to draw several strands of her hair toward it.
"This is stupid," she muttered as she squeezed some of the thick, gooey paste onto the crack. "You need a welder in here for something like this."
Krey had already managed to get the fuel canister into the engine room, and was struggling to maneuver it toward the time distortion engine.
"Just put some of that shit on it then come down here and give me a hand," Krey snapped.
Cassie watched the gooey paste with a skeptical eye; the thick bead of paste that she had laid on the crack was being pushed into the fracture by cabin pressure. She was certain that the air would escape once the pressure pushed the goo out the other side of the metal. To her surprise, the gooey substance quickly hardened, leaving the crack filled with a tough rubbery seal.
Cassie put her ear up to the crack and listened for escaping air; she heard nothing. She was impressed with the performance of the gooey Leak Stop, though she certainly wasn't going to give Krey the satisfaction of knowing that.
"If you don't mind," Krey shouted, "I could use a hand down here!"
An uneasiness crept over Cassie as she recognized the nature of the crack; it was metal fatigue, a condition that occurs when repeated stress takes temperament out of metal, making it brittle and susceptible to cracking. Her uneasy eyes glanced down the length of the tunnel; she began to wonder just how brittle the rest of the ship might be. She also wondered if Krey had any idea that his craft had become brittle with ageand that one good shock could cause the entire vessel to break into pieces.
"We want to get out of here before the UN shows up and starts asking questions about their stolen tugwhich I had nothing to do with."
Cassie was ready to return the volley in their bickering match, but decided that it would be better to just finish their work and get out of the service tunnel while there was still an atmosphere hanging around.

The antimatter canister drifted aimlessly about the engine room while Krey struggled with a stuck bolt on one of the massive engines. The engine room was dominated by three huge, time distortion engines, each of which was about eighty feet long and twenty feet in diameter. One of the engines had completely melted down and was nothing but an empty shell, another was marred by signs of overheating and stress. The third engine was serviceable, though it too had its problems.
Cassie's eyes widened as she entered the engine room; her mouth hung open in awe as she looked at the mammoth engines.
"Wow!"
"Impressive, huh?" There was a trace of arrogant pride in Krey's voice.
Cassie shook her head in disbelief, "This thing must create quite a time wake. I can hardly imagine anything needing this much engine."
Krey was still fighting with a stuck bolt, "I don't think they used them all at once." He paused to grunt a the bolt, which finally broke loose and was beginning to turn more freely. "One is more than enough to penetrate the time barriereven for this floating city."
"Floating junk-heap, you mean."
"If you don't like it, you can"
"What's wrong with this engine?" Cassie interrupted as she pointed to the engine that was obviously over-stressed. She really didn't care about the state of the engine; she was just trying to secure the last word.
Krey was quiet for some time as he finished removing the bolt. He thought about just ignoring her and pressing on with the job but, after looking at it with a cooler head, he decided that playing that kind of game would only bear ill fruit.
"The transfer plates are shorted," his reply was flat and unenthused.
"I see," Cassie said with a nod, "The plates got warped, shorted together, then took out the reactor."
Krey aired his mood with a disgusted, arrogant moan. He removed the last bolt on the engine, then opened a large access panel before replying.
"If you must knowthe plates are perfectly straight. They're shorted because someone welded a piece of metal across themand the reactor still works."
"Oh." A look of confusion came across Cassie's face as she surveyed the engine. "It looks like they ran this engine after the plates were shortedthat would cause a time inversion." She looked to Krey, "Why would anyone want to do that?"
"I don't know," Krey shrugged. "There's a lot of mysteries in this old ship." He gestured toward the floating canister, "Help me load this antimatterthen we can get on our way."