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Post by dans on Feb 12, 2020 23:04:48 GMT
A New Beginning
Catching up to the Legion
“OK, team, just like we rehearsed it. Time Jump in 5 minutes!” Gina Lance, a.k.a. the super heroine Canary and leader of the Legion of Justice, looked around at her teammates. The golden-clad blonde was proud of her teammates. They had some personality conflicts – especially hers with Drake ‘Greenfire’ Burroughs, but when there was a problem that needed the whole team to solve it, they worked together like a machine. ‘They better!’ she thought, ‘or they’ll be in SO much trouble!’
The Legion was gathered in the main control room of their asteroid headquarters, Knight Base. Some were busy and some idle, some were calm and some were nervous, but they were all excited. They were about to pilot Knight Base through the time stream from 1988 into the late 23rd century. The Legion was going home! Or as near to home as they could ever get, here in this new timeline. And they had almost no idea what they might encounter.
A couple of weeks ago, the Legion of Justice had traveled back in time from the year 2285 to 1985 and foiled a plot by the immortal villain Vandal Savage and his servant robot Futura to destroy the Justice Society of America. In doing so, they had altered their own past significantly, to the extent that they would never be able to return to the time they knew.
One of their scientist members, Rexford Tyler, also known as Timepiece, insisted that their time tampering had actually wiped their own timeline totally from existence: it didn’t exist and never had existed. Nothing remained of it but their memories. Burroughs, who was also an accomplished physicist, theorized that their actions had spawned a new, alternate timeline, and shifted them out of their original timeline into the new one – and though they couldn't return to the original, it was still 'out there', somewhere, 'alongside' their own, like the rails of a train track. Both scientists agreed, though, that it had been the recent Crisis on Infinite Earths which had weakened the temporal framework of the universe enough to allow their actions in the past to change their own history – and that similarly changing the past would never be as easy again, as the after effects of the Crisis died out with the passage of time. And they both agreed that regardless of which theory was correct, they would never again be able to return to their timeline of origin.
Emotions ran high among the proponents of these two mutually exclusive theories. Rex's brother, Randall (Hourboy) Tyler was particularly outspoken against Rex's theory: “So what does that make us, then? Ghosts that just popped into existence at random, all of us at the same time and with shared memories? Figure out the probability of that! You might think Mom and Dad never existed but I know better. Even if they don't exist any more, they did once! We aren't just time ghosts with no past.” Rex’s ‘never was’ theory probably hit Rand the hardest, as his super power was to become a 'time ghost'. He and Rex would probably have come to blows if Canary hadn't intervened.
A few hours earlier, Greenfire and Theresa (Star Lass) Knight had returned from a quick scouting trip to their new future. Knight Base asteroid was currently orbiting Earth's sun in the Asteroid Belt in 1986, and the Legion couldn't take the chance that when they popped into the 23rd century, their own 800 mile diameter miniature world would materialize in the same space as some other giant rock. The two energy-wielding heroes hadn't spent a lot of time in the future, just long enough to pick out an empty volume of space in the midst of the Asteroid Belt and to make sure they weren't jumping into a war zone or a busy space lane. Gernsback, their supercomputer ally created by Rex, assured them that he could navigate accurately through time and space and emerge precisely in the safe location the two scouts had selected. Despite Beck’s past successes navigating through time and space, Canary still wasn’t totally convinced.
After their recent experience as outlaws, the Legion was hoping that emerging in the Asteroid Belt, rather than nearer to Earth, would conceal their arrival in the future, at least long enough for them to become familiar with their new milieu. Wherever and whenever they arrived, they would need to stay – they had vowed, as a group, to give up time travel after this one last trip. The Legion's intervention in the history of their own timeline had already had serious consequences. First, they had been thrust out of their original timeline into one in which their actions had failed to stop a war in 1986 in which all human life on Earth had been wiped out. And then, by purest luck, their subsequent intervention had created still another timeline, their current timeline, in which they had managed to divert that war. They didn't dare take a risk of destroying this latest timeline as they had the last two they’d been in!
Time Jump
After all their planning and rehearsals, the time jump wasn’t very dramatic. Gernsback chanted a countdown for the final 12 seconds, but instead of announcing ‘Zero’, he reported “Time Translation Initiated”. The Legionnaires felt an internal ‘bump’, similar to that experienced when Rex/Timepiece used his powers to take them uptime, and the star field on the external monitors blinked out, replaced by featureless gray. “Breakout in 40 seconds”, Gernsback added shortly afterward.
“OK, team, on your toes – we don’t know what we’ll find!” Canary reminded her teammates. Everyone expected a quiet, safe ‘reentry’, but Canary _was_ a belt-and-suspenders type gal, after all – and the Legion was tired of being caught unprepared by surprises.
Another quiet Gernsback 12 second countdown, “Breakout” and another internal ‘thump’, and it was done. To the unaided eye, the star field that popped onto the screen was indistinguishable to the earlier view. “Welcome to the new 23rd century!” the intelligent computer announced complacently.
“Status!” Canary snapped out the order. “Rex, Theresa, Drake, don’t be shy!”
The three scientists studied their arrays of complex instruments intently, seeking verification of their current location, date and orbit. Though Genrsbeck had insisted stridently that there was no reason for independent human verification of their arrival data, Canary had hitched up her proverbial suspenders and insisted.
For years, Rex Tyler, Timepiece, had been confined to a float chair which totally encased him below the waist, unable to use any of his limbs and totally dependent on the chair's clumsy built-in prosthetics. Today his newly designed exoskeleton allowed him to manually manipulate his control panel, and his fingers flashed across his keyboard with speed and precision that couldn't be matched by an unaugmented human. And he got his answer first.
“July 4, 2285”, Rex reported proudly. “Same day this whole thing started Just as we planned.” *
Theresa “Star Lass” Knight had a miniature Cosmic Rod surgically grafted into her nervous system that allowed her to sense and control ambient cosmic radiation. And, perhaps due to her family's long association with the Cosmic Rod, she had the innate power to sense and to some extent control the local gravitational field. Utilizing her senses to direct Knight Base's own ultrapowerful sensors gave a quick answer to her assigned task.
“129 degrees, 257,491,050 miles, +/- 5%, -34,250 miles +/- 10%,” Theresa called out enthusiastically, her numbers denoting their location in solar coordinates – 129 degrees clockwise around the sun from the imaginary line between the sun and the galactic center, ~260 million miles from the sun, about 34,000 miles below the plane of the ecliptic. “Bulls eye!”
Drake Burroughs, usually called Greenfire, had been a top-flight apprentice physicist before the 'accidental' explosion that had left his disembodied mind in control of the mystical green energy of the Starheart, the meteor that the legendary Green Lantern had used to construct and energize his Power Ring. Now he needed a containment suit to keep his energy from dissipating. Even after a year in the Legion, he was still learning to use his powers – perhaps he was hampered by his natural scientific distrust of magic. He framed a mental command to his energy in precise scientific notation, and was a bit surprised when an answer he could understand popped into his head. A quick check of his instruments verified it.
“Our orbital vector is exactly on the mark, bird lady,” Drake confirmed. “Looks like everything’s right on the beam!”
“THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!” Canary exclaimed triumphantly. “And DON’T call me that!” She would have sworn there was the faintest mocking green smile on Drake’s faceplate.
In a whisper that was easily heard by everyone on the room, the tiny Chemique said to the large gleaming figure next to her: “You owe me five credbits, Goldy!”
“I’m good for it – the next time we get paid!” Sandy, the Golden Boy replied calmly. What little money the Legion had, mostly Sentinel Gate credbits, would likely be worthless in this new era. If they needed anything they didn’t already have, they were going to have to build it or barter for it – assuming they could find someone to barter with. It might be a long time before any of them got paid!
“Belay that, you two!” Canary snapped, but without any bite. “Thanks, Gernsback!”
“Perhaps in the future you will no longer think it necessary to double check my results,” Gernsback replied, sounding smug. Ever since his computing power had been exponentially expanded by his migration to the Knight Base supercomputer from the much smaller computer built into Rex’s float chair, he had become increasingly skilled at verbally conveying human emotion. In a tone that could almost be called a whine, he continued. “I realize that humans have a fundamental paranoid distrust of computers that you mischaracterize as 'caution’, but after repeated confirmation…”
Canary interrupted. “OK, Beck, you’ve made your point. And my point is, as the leader it is up to me to decide how cautious we should be.” To the rest of the Legion: “OK, let’s find out more about our new home! As we planned, by the numbers, hop to it!”
New Home, Just Like the Old Home
As the scout team had verified, space around them was awash with radio waves carrying analog and digital information. Gernsback’s job was to locate the most powerful signal sources, decipher and encode the signals into formats the Legion’s consoles could handle, and then route these signals to the consoles of various Legionnaires. The Legionnaire would attempt to triage the signals, assign them to categories, and then reroute them to the team of analysts designated to study each category. As the first signals started coming in, there was a flurry of activity, as programming was categorized and rerouted, and then, when their consoles’ memory capacities were reached, each settled down to analysis.
Anything of historical interest was rerouted to Kid Terrific, Cathy Beamish, possible dangers were routed to Rand and Gina for threat analysis, and anything that suggested non-humans was routed to Horus (Hawk Lad), Wildcat and Sandy. Greenfire, and Rex took science and technology, and Teleteen (Tommy Tamare), Chemique (aka Miqui) and Theresa were looking for indicators of everyday life.
After a half an hour of study, Cathy gave them all a crash course in history, “Technology advanced rapidly after we left the 20th century, especially in the area of computing. Perhaps too rapidly. Around 2035 or so, some kind of threshold was crossed and computers became sentient and self-directing – and started assuming control of all the societies in the Solar System. Eventually, the organic species united and rebelled, and there was a devastating war, the “AI War”, lasting nearly 50 years, until the last self-aware computer was eradicated. Intelligent computers were outlawed in the Solar System; a ban that still stands. Heroic computers such as the Red Tornado fled to the stars. Since then, technology has recovered and is approximately equivalent to the era we left, with the exception that only specialized, severely limited automation is allowed. If Gernsback were revealed to the current civilization, we would become outlaws and he would be destroyed!”
She hesitated to let that sink in. “The presence of a universal enemy forced the organics to unite to form the Solar Alliance, and the Solar System has generally been peaceful since the end of the AI War. Around 2100, the Solar Union joined with a number of worlds to form the loose Association of Worlds, and there is now considerable commerce among the members and associates of the AoW. Unfortunately, from the Sol system’s point of view, there are a number of machine civilizations associated with the AoW, so humanity’s relationship with the Association is not friction-free.”
“A number of civilizations which we know from our own time are also members of the Confederation,” Sandy added. “I guess this isn’t unexpected – although we made significant changes to Earth’s history, it seems likely that the farther you get from Earth, the lesser the effects of the change will be. In particular, my homeworld of Aurelia and the Empire of Elaigar (Wildcat’s home) are both members, though I haven’t seen any mention of either Challenger or myself in the small sampling of extrasolar news we’ve gathered so far. Other associates include the Dominants, the Comptrollers, Juneo, Thoron, Xenon, Sentinel Gate, the Protectorate of Free Planets and Zor.
Tommy joined in with enthusiasm. “One thing that’s WAY different on Earth is…”
He never got to finish. An alarm started blaring and Gernsback interrupted. “Some things never change.” It sounded like he would have sighed, if he’d been human. “Knight Base is under attack!”
At that instant, the station shook violently as if in an earthquake. The normal quiet background hum of Knight Base’s big nuclear reactor became louder and deeper, and the earthquake stopped. In the external view screens, Gina could see flashes as deadly energy bursts and laser beams impacted on the Base’s powerful force shield.
Think Before You Jump
While his teammates did their research, Rex had struggled with a growing foreboding of imminent doom, a feeling that he and the Legion were about to lose everything they had ever known, unless he did something - right now! In the past few days, he’d come to realize that his ‘one timeline only’ theory had some disturbing implications, but he’d managed to ignore these in the rush to prepare for their latest time jump. Rand’s assertions that the team wasn’t just a bunch of time ghosts that had materialized out of nowhere with a full set of shared memories… what if he was right and the timeline made adjustments to deal with such a thing? Suppose anomalies such as the Legion were subsumed by the time line – subtle alterations were made to time itself to account for them, and the anomalies were forced to change to fit the time line, and when the sublimation was completed, no traces of the former timeline remained, not even in the memories of the people involved? What if changes like this had already begun in the Legion in other timelines, but they had managed to escape those other lines before they were totally subsumed? Or what if they hadn’t escaped in time – and everything they now remembered was false?
As these thoughts flashed through his mind, Rex realized he was able to somehow ‘sense’ something with the part of his mind that controlled his power - something attempting to change him. Physically, it was as if billions of tiny fingers were pinching him, pulling, pushing, twisting at his body, trying to knead and shape it like a baker works with dough. He could feel an external ‘pressure’ on his mind as well, somehow trying to ‘reshape’ it – and there was an emotional aspect as well, a growing lassitude and apathy towards the idea of changing – what did HE care if he was changed? In his case, at least, any change had to be for the better, right? Everyone knew that it really sucked to be Rex!
‘WRONG!’ The strength of that mental screech stunned him! Rex had known many emotions in his life, but apathy was NEVER one of them. And there were worse fates than the life he remembered – suppose the time line decided he shouldn’t even exist any more? One thing Rex had never done in his life was give up and just let things happen – and he wasn’t about to start now!
Rex’s instinctive response to threats was to activate his power, and he did so now – and he instantly felt that threatening external pressure ease – whatever force had been trying to change him, his power was now protecting him! But, it was working in a way he’d never before experienced. Instead of moving him uptime, out of sync with the present, his power was now acting like a shield against that unknown force. He could still feel that evil pressure around him, somehow pushing against the shield he’d instinctively created. And he could sense that force still attacking his unprotected teammates. He didn’t even have to think about what he did next: he instinctively extended his power to protect his teammates and all of Knight Base!
He was almost thankful when the attack began; it gave him something other than his foreboding to concentrate on. He realized that, at least for now, he could maintain his newly discovered shield with a minimum of concentration. So he was able to respond quickly when Gina gave her first orders in response to the attack,
Canary needed a sitrep. “Beck, what the hell was that? Why did it stop?”
“We are the target of a powerful energy weapon,“ the computer replied. “I've reinforced the force field, but I am unsure how long the field will hold under the current level of bombardment. The reactor is currently running above the prudent operational threshold.”
“Your best guess?” she snapped back. “Do we have seconds, minutes, hours?”
“It is only a rough estimate,” Beck replied stiffly, and Canary remembered how much he hated being pinned down on a ‘guess’. “At least 1 hour, no longer than 90 minutes, at this level of bombardment.”
“Who or what is attacking us?” Canary asked in return.
“The beam is blanketing out my sensors, and I am unable to discern the source.”
“Well, let's get out of here, then.” Canary shook her head. “No use fighting an unknown enemy with an unknown beef. Use a boom tube and put us halfway to Alpha Centauri. Execute!”
Nothing happened. Gina knew it took Gernsback no more than 2 seconds to calculate a boom tube jump. “Gernsback, what's wrong?”
Rex interrupted. “Our instruments show that space-time is roiled around us. Someone is using a Tyler Unified Field Distorter to jam our Boom Tube.” He sounded indignant. Several months and 2 universes ago, Rex had worked out the theory behind such a jamming device, but he hadn't yet had time to build it. They'd just popped into this new era, and already someone had stolen his invention! And, it was getting harder to concentrate on shielding himself and his teammates. Much harder.
“OK, Beck, take us back to the 20th Century. 10 femptos after we left.” Again, nothing happened. Gina sighed. “Of course, I should have fruppin guessed, the Tyler Disrupter blocks time jumps too, right? So we fight.”
War Zone
Doc Quantum of the Time Trust
Knight Base was a war zone. The Legion of Justice had only been back to a version of their own time for a matter of minutes before they found themselves under attack yet again. They’d been on the run for so long — literally for ages — that they had lulled themselves into a false sense of security when they realized that they were returning to a world where they were not constantly hunted by that golden android and her so-called Legion of Doom, who had plagued them throughout time.
Canary began shouting out orders, making her shrill voice heard above the rumbling. “Greenfire, Star Lass — make sure those shields hold up! Hour Boy — do some recon! Timepiece, Gernsback — find some way for us to get out of here!”
Rex shuddered. It was more difficult than he’d thought to keep the time-field in place while the base was under attack. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he let his concentration slip. Most likely the Legion of Justice would continue to survive in some way, but their memories would be irrevocably altered to adapt to the new timeline. The Legionnaires may have already experienced this during their voyage into the past, when history was altered at least twice; their own memories may have been subtly changed. Yet the Legion of Justice was not wiped out of existence during those times, and he hoped they wouldn't be now. Maybe they’d just be transformed into whatever alternate Legion already existed.
But there was also a slight possibility that the Legion did not exist at all in this timeline, and that the altered timeline would erase them from existence along with their old memories. Timepiece didn’t think that would happen, but he didn’t want to take that chance. Still, he knew that he could only protect the entire group for so long.
The only alternative he could see was to compress the time-field to his own person, something that he could sustain indefinitely, but that would make him the last person to remember the old Amgov timeline. He wasn’t sure how that would affect his place in this altered timeline, either. He was the master of time, but even Timepiece could not say with any certainty the effects of his decision. All he knew was that his choices were becoming severely limited with every moment that Knight Base was under attack.
Star Lass rushed forward, with Greenfire trailing behind her. “Theresa, wait!” said Greenfire.
“Hurry up, Drake!” replied Theresa Knight. “Let’s put those new abilities of yours to good use for once!”
“Wait!” repeated Drake Burroughs. “I’m not sure this is a good idea! Yeah, I have a bit more control over the Starheart, but I’m still better at blasting stuff than doing any of that fancy green magic stuff!”
“No time, Drake!” said Star Lass. “C’mon! With any luck, we’ll find you something to blast along the way!”
Hour Boy had leaped several minutes into the past and now passed through Knight Base’s outer hull to see what was going on outside. Randall Tyler was able to do this because he possessed the unique ability to make such short jumps backwards in time, but since one of the diverse and sometimes contradictory laws of time travel held that no one person could physically exist twice in the same time period, his time-leaping self invariably became a phantom. It was while he was in this phantom form that he could explore like a ghost, finding out what he needed to find out. It was a useful skill for intelligence-gathering, but it had its limits. For example, he had no control over physical objects while in his phantom form, so if he saw a bomb being set in the past while in his phantom form, he couldn’t simply become physical once more and defuse the bomb. Instead, he had to wait until he caught up with the time when his earlier self jumped into the past. And by that time, it might be too late.
Now, Hour Boy flew around Knight Base frantically, trying to make the best use of his time to find out who was attacking the team, but he could see no one. As far as he could tell, there were no hidden ships waiting in ambush for the time to strike, nor were there any superhumans waiting to attack the Legionnaires. As far as he could tell, a few minutes in the past, Knight Base had looked as peaceful as it always looked.
Rand was about to give up his search when, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted movement. It was small, but definitely moving along Knight Base’s outer hull. Hour Boy frowned and moved in for a closer look. It seemed to be a small animal, some kind of space-animal that didn’t need to breathe oxygen, or something. But as he swooped in closer, he saw that it wasn’t any kind of biological life at all. It was robotic.
‘That’s strange,' he thought to himself. 'How could something so small as this attack our whole base?’
Just as this thought crossed his mind, however, he saw something moving not far away. As he looked, he saw another one of these small robots creeping along Knight Base’s outer hull. And then he saw another. Eventually, he happened to be looking in the right direction to see one of the tiny robots literally pop into existence, as if suddenly transported there from elsewhere. And Randall Tyler realized that if there were enough of these tiny robots, they could indeed cause a lot of damage when attacking en masse.
As his time began to ran out, he watched as countless small robots began popping up around him outside Knight Base, their appearances occurring at an exponential rate. And when there were enough of them, they would begin their attack. By that time he needed to be back inside, or he’d be in deep trouble.
Hour Boy’s phantom form passed back into Knight Base and flew through the levels at top speed, finally reaching the gathered Legionnaires moments before Knight Base began rumbling from the attack. Whoever was behind this attack was evidently organized and presumably wanted to get rid of the Legion of Justice before they could prove a threat. He just hoped that his information would help Canary come up with a plan of attack, and fast, because he wanted to find out whoever was behind this and kick his sorry ass.
Chaos at Knight Base
Rand noted that the small golden robots all had a characteristic shape. ‘Those are exbots. It must be the X-Pack!’ he thought excitedly as the ‘bots locked 'arms' with each other, beginning to cover the dome with a grotesque golden lace cocoon. In their time-line of origin, the X-Pack had been a band of super-powered space pirates from the planet Xtrema. Exbots built a cocoon around a structure and released acid to dissolve whatever they enveloped. ‘But we just put them in prison!’ Then he remembered that they were in another universe. ‘Uh, Oh! They’ve got an X-Pack here too. I need to warn Canary!’
Now that he was back in the big, circular control room, still in his time ghost form, he could see on the big main view screen that the bombardment had just started. Then the base force shield snapped to full power, and Rand realized the fiendish plot of Dr. X: the exbots were already INSIDE the force field! For some reason, Gernsback hadn’t sensed them earlier, but now the Legion was defending against the wrong attack! He took up a position next to Canary, who was now standing next to her central control chair, and waited – only a few seconds remained before he ‘caught up’ to the present. As he always did on seeing her, he spent an instant admiring her slim, athletic form and her short spiky hair, her confident stance and determined features.
A group of his teammates had already arisen from their own perimeter control stations and were headed for the corridor that lead to the main airlock – those Legionnaires whose powers could protect them in space without an environment suit. All their costumes had e-suit capability built in, but Canary was the cautious type; the rest of the Legionnaires could venture out in ships if the initial assault team required assistance. Sandy and Tommy led the way, followed by Miqui. Though his costume consisted of only shorts and boots, Sandy's golden body could easily withstand the cold and vacuum of space. Tommy could use his telekinesis to maintain a bubble of shirtsleeve atmosphere, and Miqui's powers could adapt her android body to space for short periods of time. Drake and Reesa, surrounded respectively by their green and yellow auras, drifted after them, arguing as they flew about Drake’s new-found control over his powers. The intangible Rand frowned – Drake and Reesa really should have taken the lead. Canary was surely going to say something caustic to the energy users when this was over!
Wildcat and Cathy were standing in front of the tactical monitor, examining space above Knight Base. Wildcat had just finished drawing a circle on the touch screen and Gernsback was enlarging that area. Maybe Chall’s vision, as acute as that of any hunting cat, had noticed something even the Legion’s AI had not? Horus was up near the big transparent dome in the room’s ceiling, getting a first-hand look at the scene outside. He had never trusted cameras to show him the ‘real’ scene around the base.
Something was bothering Rex – he was clearly in agony. His eyes were clamped shut and his face was screwed up as if he were making some kind of tremendous effort. He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out. And then, his face relaxed as if whatever had been attacking him had stopped.
Sandy stopped so abruptly Tommy bumped into him, knocking him to the ground. The Golden Boy's colorful robes flashed brightly and barely softened the loud metallic crash as he landed. He started to rise, looked around, and then collapsed back to the floor with a metallic clang.
Canary screamed in her loudest ‘normal’ voice: “Burroughs, you effin’ bastard, this time you’ve gone too freepin’ far!” She spun on her heel, scanning the room, looking for the green-suited energy being. Her waist long braid swung behind her like a whip, and her filmy cloth-of-gold harem costume fluttered and revealed enticing views of her voluptuous curves to the still-intangible Hourboy. When she saw Burroughs, she barked once as she blasted one of her patented ‘Sonic cannonballs’ into the back of Drake’s containment suit.
The Base’s security computer began blaring an alarm “Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!” Small cylinders hanging from the ceiling rotated, aimed, fired, and Sandy, Miqui, and Reesa were pinned in place, unable to escape through the blue tinged 'prison beams'.
On the tactical screen, Wildcat and Cathy saw that a swarm of exbots was about to envelop a small spaceship in the Knight Base hanger. Cathy spun so fast she knocked off her captain’s cap, revealing her closely cropped red hair, and a plastic plate set into the back of her skull. She raced for the passageway to the hanger. “Sorry, Ambassador!” she launched over her shoulder. “I gotta get to the Swashbuckler and save the swag!” The nameplates on her hat and chest had the ship's name embossed on them, as well as 'Captain Beamish'.
“Cat ssssssspeed!” he hissed at her back. “This boring diplomatic touuuuurrrrr hasss suddenly become much more interesting.” He purred appreciatively at her figure in the trim, military style pilot's suit, then casually adjusted his three piece suit as he turned his gaze back to the center of the room and focused on the provocatively clad Canary.
His sensitive hearing warned him just in time to leap aside as Horus fluttered weakly to the deck where he’d been standing. Hawk Lad's feathered wings barely cushioned his fall, and his beaked cowl was knocked crooked. He didn’t seem to notice, but lay there writing and moaning.
“Gernsback, turn off that damn alarm,” Rex grunted to his console. “They aren’t intruders.” Nothing changed. “Gernsback, display information about the X-Pack!” Nothing happened on the big screen. “Gernsback, respond! Sitrep! ”
Greenfire turned to his attacker. “Dammit, Gina! What the HELL was that…“ and then he abruptly shut up as he noticed her costume.
“Drake! It's a freepin' time eddy. I couldn't stop it!” Rex yelled to his teammate. They had discussed 'time eddies' in the past few weeks, but they had no evidence that they had encountered such a phenomena in their past time trips – so the best they could do was hope that the theory of time that predicted time eddies was the wrong theory.
“Way ahead of ya, Rexxie. I’ve been wanting to do this for a LONG time!” Drake crowed loudly. He pointed both arms at Canary and unleashed a tremendous energy blast that picked her up and hurled her backward through the air until she smashed into a wall!
Rand became solid as his personal time frame ‘caught up’ to reality. He raced to the fallen Golden Boy. “It’s the X-Pack!” he screamed. “Sandy, the dome’s covered in exbots – you gotta get out there and stop them!’
In the other timeline, Dr. X hadn’t planned for Sandy’s power when he’d designed the acid-drooling robotic bugs. Their golden skins were impervious to their own acidic weapon, but Sandy could control gold just by touching it. In their last encounter with the XPack, all he’d had to do was touch one of the linked bots, and then extend his control through their radio links to reach all of them. He'd commanded their shells to contract, crushing the controlling circuitry and motors within.
Rand spoke urgently as he reached to drag the Golden Boy out of the prison beam. “You can give us time to get ready for the Pack attack!” The super powered XPack always followed up the attack by their exbots by killing any survivors and looting the structures the exbots destroyed.
Sandy looked at him with a bewildered expression and answered back, but not in English! “That's his native tongue!” Miqui said, also bewildered.
“That's not our Sandy!” Drake shouted. “But we need him now!” In a burst of green energy, he and Sandy vanished, to appear instantly on the monitor's view outside the dome. A green sphere surrounded their heads.
“Rex, I am no longer able to access Knight Base's mainframe computer. Somehow I have been locked out and all the access codes changed,” Gernsback's flat, uninflected voice came from the arm of his float chair. “I am attempting to regain access. Meanwhile, I suggest you go to manual override.”
“WHAT THE FREEPIN' HELL IS GOING ON?” Canary's cry, fortified by subsonic and supersonic overtones, cut through the babble, and for just an instant, everyone was silent.
Time, see how you changed me!
“Damnit, Sandy! I KNOW the green magic can work as a telepathic translator!” Greenfire cursed. His aura wrapped around his helmet and Sandy's head. “It worked for every Green Lantern ever; I'll make it work for me!” He concentrated his entire will power on the Starheart energy, talking to it directly. 'I want to be able to talk to my friend!'
“Who are you? How did I get here! Where is here?!” suddenly he heard a shout in what passed for his head, so loud that it hurt. The magic of the Starheart was responding to his will! Not only could he 'hear' Sandy's thoughts, the Starheart was causing Sandy's thoughts to sound exactly like his friend's audible voice. And his total confusion was being clearly conveyed!
'Tone it down, Green, please?’ he asked meekly. ‘And please, please use his real name!' Drake pleaded to the green magic. He'd never bothered learning Sandy's real name, but he was sure he'd heard it and it must be stored somewhere in his subconscious.
“Sandy, I'm Greenfire of the Legion of Justice. We need your help!” In the back of his mind, the magic spoke to him, reassuring him that Sandy was indeed hearing his plea in his own language – and his real name. He needed the Golden Boy to act in a hurry. “These bugs are going to kill my friends!” ('your friends, too' he didn't project – no reason to confuse Sandy any more). “You can save a bunch of lives by stopping them!” He pictured in his mind what he wanted Sandy to do – extend his conscious control into the linked golden exbots and shut them down. “You're the only one who can do it!”
Sandy was an Auron – a race of ‘artificial’ beings created perhaps 100,000 years ago by Aranel Anaurime on the planet Auruhoth. They looked almost identical to humans, although they tended to be a bit taller and bald. Most of their bodies were composed of gold. Their life processes (birth, growth, death) mimicked those of organic creatures, and biologists almost universally agreed that that they were truly alive, despite their unusual origin and bodily composition. As well as being very strong and extremely massive, Aurons were ductile, and could stretch and reform their bodies incredibly. And, they could touch gold and control it, just as they controlled the gold composing their own bodies.
In the Legion’s original timeline (the AmGov timeline), the adolescent Sandy had been shanghaied into the Legion, forced into loyalty by AmGov threats to his homeworld. He’d been kidnapped from the Auron equivalent of a monastery, where he had nearly finished with his training to be a priest of Anaurime, Goddess of the Sun. In the current timeline, he had recently completed that training, and had been officiating at a celebration to Anaurime when somehow, he’d been ripped from away from Auruhoth and thrust into a battle between the Legion and (perhaps) the X-Pack.
So he was understandably confused. Yet, the urgency of Drake’s telepathic plea came through to him. The idea of golden robots used for evil and destruction offended him. He reached out and touched the nearest exbot, and extended his consciousness, until he could feel that he was enwrapping the entire Knight Base dome. He’d never felt so large, so powerful, before; he doubted if any Auron had ever done anything like this! Perhaps this was a small sample of what Aranel Anaurime felt during every instant of her life? No matter… he concentrated, and all the linked golden shells clenched like fists, crushing their contents – and the exbots were dead!
Sandy was overwhelmed with the feeling of power, and too intoxicated to even think of giving it up. He sent out more mental commands, and the golden nuggets that had used to be sophisticated robotic killing machines spit out their impurities, and started flowing back towards the Golden Boy. His body expanded, shredding his ornate ceremonial robes. As Drake watched, first in fascination and then in horror, Sandy grew and grew, in only a few seconds easily topping the Knight Base dome!
What. The. Frup.
Confusion reigned supreme inside the dome. Canary even stopped shouting orders for a few seconds. ‘Concentrate!’ she ordered herself harshly. ‘You are the LEADER!’
General Urbane had drummed one tenant into her in ahead of all others. “In a crisis, you must ACT NOW! It’s better to be doing the wrong thing than doing nothing.”
If she stopped to be sure she knew all the details of the current situation, the Legion would likely be doomed before she figured it out. She quickly scanned the room, marshaling her resources. She remembered a moment of disorientation and then she was rocketing across the room in a cloud of green energy, which then amazingly cushioned her so she wasn’t hurt by impacting the wall.
Drake and Sandy were gone. Cathy had already vanished in the corridor to the hanger. Hawk Lad… even in the urgent circumstances, she allowed herself an instant of astonishment. Hawk Lad had somehow been transformed from a Fetherian into a human with wings? But he was writhing on the floor, and she recognized the funk he’d experienced in the 20th Century because of his reincarnated spirit’s proximity to an earlier self. He was out of the action for now, too.
Star Lass used her Cosmic Rod to block the prison beams, and as soon as she could move, Chemique had disabled them by changing the superconductors in the projector circuitry to insulators. She should be able to count on those two. Rex and Rand appeared to be unchanged – Rex’s hands were flying across his control panel, and Rand was hurrying to the weapons console. Tommy looked the same, except he had a full head of hair. 'So that's my team. It ought to do. It haS to do!'
Captain Cathy
Cathy raced into the hanger area. The golden bugs that were threatening her small space cruiser hadn’t been in contact with their fellows, so they were unaffected by Sandy’s earlier commands. She pulled her pistol from her belt as she activated her mental link to the Swashbuckler.
“Buck, acquire targets from me!” She aimed the pistol at one of the bugs and yelled ‘Target!” as she pulled the trigger.
This action sent a sensor image of Cathy’s target to the Swashbuckler, where the sophisticated (though unintelligent) computer in the small ship used its sensitive scanning equipment to locate every bug in the hanger. The ship’s small laser began firing. Cathy was firing self-propelled self-guided projectiles, and even with her pistol on full auto, she never missed. Within a few seconds, between the laser and the tiny missiles, every exbot in the hanger had been shattered or melted.
Cathy queried the Swashbuckler through her implant. She was relieved to discover that ship’s security hadn’t been breached, and the contraband cargo was untouched in the hidden cargo area. And, she hadn’t had to reveal the highly-customized little ship’s unusual and illegal self-defense capabilities. 'It wouldn’t do for an Ambassador from the Empire of Elaigar and his hired pilot to be revealed as smugglers!'
Don’t Call Me
“I’ve breached the main computer’s access protection!” Gernsback reported to his creator. “This computer is much more sophisticated and highly protected than the last two.” The last two were the computer at the previous Knight Base, and the AmGov computer at the “Secret Technology Suppression Center” on AmGov Earth. “Launching the infiltration virus.”
Gernsback in his current limited form didn’t really understand what had just happened. When the time eddy had replaced the Knight Base of the AmGov timeline with its analog from the current time line, almost his entire store of information on time travel had been lost. But computers didn’t waste much time on being surprised – he accepted that this was a totally different computer, and went about his assigned task of taking it over.
“I estimate that this task will require my full attention for several hours. I will notify you when it is accomplished.” The last sounded almost snippy; even with the limited computing resources in Rex’s chair, Gernsback’s characteristic prickly personality came through.
“In other words, don’t call me – I’ll call you,” Rex sniffed, a bit miffed. “Just don’t interfere with anything other than the com…” His words sputtered and became a moan when all the lights shut off, the instrument panels went dark, and the constant noises of life support went silent. For an instant it was very dark inside Knight Base, and then all the battery powered emergency lights came on, filling the room with a dim, eerie red that was barely sufficient to see by.
Gina Takes Charge
“Rex, Rand, Reesa, Miqui, Tommy, form on me!” Gina barked into the murky room. "Reese, some light.” The Cosmic Rod produced a glowing white globe, floating in the air just below the dome, and lighting returned to almost normal.
“Rawrarraarrghar!” she projected, or something like that, sounding like an angry tiger about to attack. It was Wildcat’s real name – something he rarely heard from humans. He involuntarily snapped to attention – somehow Canary sounded exactly like his mother, the Empress of the five planet Empire of Elaigar, and she was MAD! Her next words were in English, but even so, he rushed to obey. “Find an aid kit and take care of Horus!”
She turned to Timepiece. “Rex, what just happened?”
“Time eddy,” he snapped back in reply. “The new timeline tried to change us to fit in. Rand and I weren’t affected because of our powers, and Theresa and Drake were protected by Drake’s magical aura. I assume that’s what protected Miqui, and to a lesser extent, Tommy.” He paused, unsure of how to go on. “You were apparently totally replaced by this timeline’s analog of you, but Drake’s blast restored your memory, at least.”
“And left that body!” Rand broke in, enthusiastically. “Never knew the lad had it in him!”
Gina took a quick look at herself. 'No wonder I feel so off balance.' She shook her head violently, twice. “OK, Rand, you think we’re under attack from the X-Pack? We’d better be ready for a fight.”
“It’s not the same X-Pack we know, Canary,” Star Lass warned. “It might not be an X-Pack analog at all.”
“We’ll know soon enough,” Miqui predicted. “They’re coming through that wall!” She pointed. The color of the wall changed. “If they are exbots, that will neutralize their acid. But I can’t affect them directly, something in their shells blocks my powers.”
Outside, the giant Golden Boy flexed his legs and leaped into space, blasting a crater the size of an Olympic swimming pool into the surface of Knight Base asteroid. Greenfire flared bright green as he was pelted by debris, and he flashed into the sky following his teammate. Or was he a teammate any longer?
Sandy’s giant eyes had noticed something moving near the planetoid, and as they approached, Drake could make out a spaceship - that resembled exactly that of Dr. X and the X-Pack. It was frantically firing projectile and energy weapons at the golden giant, and every hit was vaporizing gobs of gold. Sandy’s mouth was open in a silent roar of pain and anger. The ship was firing maneuvering thrusters wildly, trying to get out of Golden Giant’s ballistic flight path.
Drake raced closer, and willed his energy to push Sandy toward the spaceship. His unskilled use of his power wasn’t very useful; Sandy was still going to miss. But the Golden Giant had a plan of his own. A large part of his mass flowed into his hand, forming a giant ball of gold. Using every bit of his enhanced power, he threw that ball away from him, and the reaction altered his trajectory. Now only double the size of a human, Sandy slammed into the side of the ship, and the incredibly hard hull ceramic cracked, allowing him to drive tentacles into the cracks and hang on. He immediately began to try to rip the hull open, and Greenfire joined him. 'At last, something I'm GOOD at!'
Hull ceramic was among the strongest materials known to 23rd century science in the Amgov universe, and it was equally strong in this new one. Meanwhile, whoever was in the ship was working to stop them. The ship’s shield was turned on, then off - it formed too far from the hull to affect these external passengers. None of the ship’s weapons could be aimed at something on the hull. Finally, someone figured out how to electrify the hull - but Golden Boy had always been immune to electricity, and Greenfire’s magical energy shield was something else he was good at.
Sandy finally smashed his way through into a compartment, which was filled with Golden exbots. “Not really a good idea!” he spoke in English, barely audible as the air in the room whistled into space. He touched one, took control, expanded his mind into the network, and shut it down. To his surprise, ever computer-controlled device on the ship stopped instantly - and below on the surface, all the remaining exbots shut down. And so did the attacking ship’s Tyler Unified Field Distorter - with unexpected results.
In the hanger, Captain Beamish screamed and collapsed to the floor as the plastic plate set into the back of her head writhed and changed. Canary screamed in pain, stunning several of her companions, and collapsed. Hawklad stopped shivering and lapsed into peaceful unconsciousness. Wildcat stood stock still and began shivering, almost as violently as Horus had been. On board the Xship, Golden Boy snapped back into his original shape, shedding several tons of gold as he did.
For an instant, everyone was stunned. They had been immersed in deadly action from almost the second they had arrived and nobody believed it was over. But after a few seconds, nothing deadly happened, and Gina began barking orders. For a short time, at least, things were back to normal.
And yet they weren’t. At a quick debriefing, they discovered just how things had changed…
There was no prior Legion of Justice in this era. Many of the Legionnaires had no analogs in this era, and the time eddies had left them pretty much unchanged, except Tommy got to keep his new hair. Those who had analogues found themselves with two sets of memories - Cathy and Wildcat shared both their Amgov memories and their short but adventurous careers as smugglers in this time period, while Sandy remembered being a priest as well as a hero. Strangest of all were Gina and Horus, who were in new bodies - the bodies from this timeline, with memories from both timelines. Horus and Cathy adapted most easily to their respective changes - Horus had prior experience dealing with multiple sets of memories from his many reincarnations, and Cathy was used to adding changing memory sets as easily as dropping a quarter into a jukebox. Gina was probably going to have the hardest time - in one universe she’d been a strict and almost puritanical heroine, and in the other, an action-adventure star in adult virtuality productions, and her personalities clashed over almost everything. And, her body balance was totally different, which threw her martial arts skills out of whack. But she'd work it out.
Even Gernsbeck was changed. His new 'home' was much more powerful than the prior computers he'd inhabited, but but this one was filled with hardware and software safeguards that would simply shut down the computer when it exhibited a sign of sentient behavior. Each time one of these traps was triggered, Beck was bounced back into Rex's float chair until they could locate the latest trap and remove it. Beck could fix the software himself, but Rex often had to rebuild complex semi-conductor components to remove the built-in booby traps, or even fabricate new ones. Tommy's delicate mental senses and Miqui's ability to adjust the properties of tiny volumes of semi-conductor components were invaluable. Beck had fewer of these 'fits' as time went on and traps were fixed, but they had been so well hidden that no one could be certain they had all been cleared.
With their first crisis in the new timeline overcome, the orphan Legion of Justice turned their attention to finding their place in their new milieu.
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