The end of time

It had been a few days since the Doombringer incident, and Jay and Cass had still not spoken much in the interim.
Jay felt bad about everything that had happened, sure, but Cass had to understand that Jay’s long-dead wife had just shown up on the scene after six centuries (to him) and announced that they had a son!

Jay had spent 600 years trying to find a way back to the Blue Dwarf that he had left. To escape from the life that the STCP had dropped him into. Sure, he enjoyed the adventure. He was never one to sit still for long and his tenure as Captain of the Blue Dwarf had driven him stir-crazy what with rarely getting off the ship to get his hands dirty and spending all day doing smegging paperwork. The STCP had afforded him the chance to perform exactly the kind of feats of derring-do that he found exhilarating. One day he’d be gunning down Nazi’s in 1940’s Germany, trying to prevent future weapons technology from winding up in the hands of the Fuhrer, the next he was in ancient Egypt, seducing Cleopatra as a ruse to get to the alien from the future who was demanding that the Egyptian people worship him as a god.

But the thing Jay didn’t like, was that none of this was on his terms. He had a time machine. He had the means to travel back through time and stop the Hymenoptera attack that killed half of his crew from ever happening. Save countless lives, and by extension prevent the JMC / Space Corp civil war that erupted in his absence.

These were things he blamed himself for. These were things that as far as he was concerned he could…no…SHOULD have prevented. HE was the captain. HE was in command. HE was ultimately responsible, and the STCP were denying him the chance to put this right.

Of course what he blamed himself for more than anything was the death of his beloved wife and their unborn child.

And then, she walked straight back into his life, and dropped the bombshell that their son was being held captive at STCP HQ to get her to do their bidding.

And so it was that Jay, Phil, Katrina and Hoshi now found themselves aboard the Inbound Raven*, a few clicks from the Blue Dwarfs outer hull with the time fridge hooked up to the star-drive.

“Are you sure you’ve wired it up properly Phil?” Katrina asked stooping to inspect the madmans handiwork.
“Of course I have! I know what I’m doing!”
“It’s just that you’ve connected the tachyon flow regulator to the plasma coil with a paperclip and some chewing gum…”
“It’ll work just fine…trust me…”
“And the polaron charge valve is hooked up to the Raven’s anti-matter surge dampener….that can’t be right…”
“Look love…I’ve been working on these kind of systems for close to 100,000 years. I know what I’m doing…”
“You’ve plugged the yellow jack into the red socket….”
“Oops…” said Phil “Always get those muddled up…I’m not very good with cables…”
“Well that’s reassuring…”
Phil and Katrina’s discussion was interrupted by Jay appearing on a monitor from the cockpit.
“Co-ordinates are locked, we’re ready to go.”
“So are we!” Phil said, swapping the yellow and red jack plugs. “Actually…no…wait!!”
He reached behind the time fridge and switched it on.
“That would have been embarrasing eh!”
“Are you sure this is gonna work Phil?” Jay asked “not like the last time when we tried something like this and we ended up in a parallel dimension where Mini-Phil had conquered the known universe…”
“Look…” Phil said “That could have gone worse!”“You were only supposed to jump back two days to stop yourself from eating the curry that caused your bowels to release gases so toxic you’d need to be in stasis for nine million years before it would be safe to come out right in Taras face, that made her kick you out of the apartment for the night!”
“Yeah…well that’s not gonna happen this time! Relax, I’ve had millennia to perfect the procedure.”
“That’s what worries me…”
“Look, Jay…” Phil said, getting offended “When have I ever steered you wrong?”
“Well, there was the time you accidentally flushed me out of an airlock on G deck…I barely had time to get my space suit on!”
“Anyone could have done that!”
“While playing Scrabble?!”
“…well…you’d just made the word ‘poo’…that’d make anyone laugh so hard beer came out of their nose and short out the airlock controls!”
“Look! That’s enough!” snapped Hoshi, speaking from the co-pilots seat next to Jay “We can stand here bickering all day if you like, but it isn’t going to get Max back. Co-ordinates are set STCP HQ, at the very end of existence. The stealth tech is operational and we are ready to go – Mr FeBuggure, I for one trust you. You are notorious in the STCP for a reason!”
“Yes” said Jay “’Cos he keeps cocking up the space time continuum!! You know the dinosaurs? They’re dead because Phil sneezed into a micro-black hole he’d made in the kitchen!”
“CAN WE PLEASE JUST GO!” Hoshi snapped.
Katrina, Phil and Jay fell silent for a few seconds before they all spoke in unison “…..sorry Hoshi……”

Jay started the Ravens engines. Phil activated the time fridge, and within minutes, they were engulfed in an electric blue surge of energy.
The surge dissipated.
“Temporal stealth mode holding…” Jay said glancing at the controls “We’re invisible…and…we’re in the right place…Phil, you’ve actually done it!”
“Told you!”
“wait a minute…” Jay said
“What?” Katrina asked
“Phil…wasn’t the chrono-field meant to only engulf the Raven?”
“Yeah..so?”
“Cos you’ve brought the whole bloody Blue Dwarf with us!”
“Jay…they don’t have stealth…” Hoshi said “The STCP defenses will blow them apart….”

<tag! Welcome to the end of time itself, the Dwarf is a sitting duck for the STCP agents who are defending HQ!>

( * - The Inbound Raven was a large troop transport shuttle ‘borrowed’ from an alternate universe by Dean Thomas – it has more ‘oomph’ than a Starbug)