Time Salvager Read Online Free

’s rotation when he jumped back. He was spinning fast enough to wring the liquid out of his body. The atmos band around his wrist managing the environmental shield was the only thing keeping his insides together in the vacuum.
    James pulled up the time on his AI computer band: 22:38:44, 05, June 2511, Earth Standard, exactly sixteen hours, fourteen minutes, and thirty-three seconds since he had first jumped back to the exact same date and time in 2212.
    A distant voice, like sound coming from the other end of a long thin tube, crackled inside his head. “James, this is Smitt, you back in the present? Come in, my friend.” There were ten counts of silence before the voice repeated itself. “James, this is Smitt, are you back in the—”
    “I’m here,” James answered, his comm band relaying his thoughts back to his handler. “Any ripples?”
    “Negative. Swails’s body was found back on Eris, but the ripple only affected a three-week stream before the time line healed over it. How’s the package?”
    James activated his exo-kinetic band and pulled himself out of his spin. The ring of darkness surrounding the sun disappeared into a lone black circle as his body stopped rotating: the dwarf Eris. He stared at its black surface, so different from the glittering display of life he’d seen just a few short hours ago from his point of view. In the past, Eris was a bustling colony, brimming with lights, life, and constant movement. Now, it was an abandoned husk. James opened the netherstore container and checked its contents. Nodding with satisfaction, he raised his head and looked back at the sun.
    “Smitt, all packages secured. Pick me up.”
    “Sending the collie your way. You came back a bit farther out than we predicted. Hang tight. What took you so long?”
    James pulled up the tactical from his AI band. Smitt was right. He was twenty minutes late on his return, courtesy of those last few moments with Grace. At the speed the High Marker was hurtling through space, that twenty minutes covered a vast distance. Still, it had been worth the delay to spend a few more moments with the legendary Mother of Time.
    Sixteen hours ago, he had jumped back to 2212 on Eris and snuck onto the High Marker before it took off. Then he had murdered Swails, sent the body back to Eris in one of the cargo containers, and spent the entire day impersonating the pet as he watched Grace Priestly at work. It was a magnificent experience.
    Still, he had almost missed his window. If he had dallied another twenty minutes on the High Marker , at the speed it was flying out of control, James would be dead by the time the collie got to him. Even now, being twenty minutes off, it’d take the collie over an hour to reach his position. This was the tricky part of ship jumps. Placement and parallel periods were two completely separate variables; both had to be carefully calculated. And no matter what, the present time line continued. The amount of time James spent in the past had to be added to the present during his return jump.
    Forty minutes later, James caught a glimpse of a small flickering light traveling from the center of the black circular mass that was Eris. As the collie approached to intercept, the light slowly grew larger. Space had a funny way of distorting distance. While the gleam of the collie started out no larger than the nail of his forefinger, it grew steadily. It was still another half hour before it finally pulled up next to him.
    James willed his exo to push him toward the collie until he stepped onto its starboard wing. A few breaths later, he was inside, strapping himself into the pilot’s seat. He connected his bands to the collie’s power source to maintain his levels, but didn’t bother compressing the interior of the collie, preferring to depend on his atmos for air.
    Chronmen generally had an unsavory reputation within the solar system, but no one ever called them careless. Careless men in his profession did not live