Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(131)

“I have no choice,” he said. “We Elfreth need my salvaging more than ever.”

Franwil’s face took on a perplexed but curious look when he said those words. She nodded in approval and the ends of her lips curled slightly upward.

Grace turned to Elise. “Talk sense into the idiot.”

Elise looked surprised, then worried. “Grace is right. I didn’t realize. We’ll find another way.”

Stunned and speechless, James just stood there. In a way, this was what he’d always wanted. To stop being a chronman and not have to face the tragedies of the past. However, this was the one time he wanted to travel back in time. He finally had a cause worth fighting for, with people who were important to him.

Something else occurred to him.

He turned to Grace. “I can only survive one more jump?”

“Sixty percent isn’t exactly odds I’d gamble with.”

James nodded. “I can live with that. There’s one more jump I have to do. I don’t care about the odds of survival. It’s worth the risk.”





FORTY-NINE

CONSEQUENCES

The tribunal was a spectacle, a scandal that spread across the entire solar system like Academy gossip. Every senior of the chain made the trip to Earth to see his shame. Levin thought he could keep his dignity intact as the day progressed, but it was hard. Rumors became gossip; gossip became facts; facts became accusations. By the time he was brought up on charges, Levin had all but committed genocide against the human race and destroyed the entire chronostream. It was all he could do to keep his back straight and not wither from the onslaught of blame and judgment being piled upon him.

Thank the abyss the tribunal was mercifully short. There was no reason for it to have wasted anyone else’s time and gone any longer than the three hours it did for the entire leadership of ChronoCom to find Levin Javier-Oberon guilty on all charges. After all, he had pled guilty to every single one and offered no defense for the crimes of not upholding the Time Laws, of willingly letting a known fugitive escape, of attacking a valued Valta operative ally, and of high treason. That last stung Levin the most, but he kept his head held high and face stoic as the charges were read.

To his left, the vids broadcasted his shame, as billions tuned in to the entertaining reality drama of a high auditor’s fall from grace. High Director Jerome, the head of ChronoCom, personally recited his crimes and continued at length for all the universe about the stain Levin had caused on the agency’s honor and how every other member of ChronoCom would have to bear the weight of his shame.

To his right, Kuo, along with an entire delegation of Valta suits, smirked as the light shone onto his humiliation. Levin had to admit; her presence there hurt him as well. He could feel her smugness all the way from the center of the room. At the very least, she had a broken leg for all his efforts, thanks in large part to the many monitors who had stood with him that day at Central.

They were the one thing Levin defended in this trial: his people. He passionately argued for leniency for all the monitors who had saved him from Kuo, citing their loyalty to the agency and his direct command as the cause for their attacking this so-called valued ally. He had ordered all those monitors not to counter his false claim. In this case, the little white lie saved dozens of them from the fate he was about to endure. In the end, his sentence was the same as that of many before him.

“At least I’ll get to see Cole one more time,” he muttered as his life sentence of labor until death on Nereid was pronounced. He wondered if Cole would be glad to see him, or whether he would stab him in the back while he wasn’t looking. What surprised and stung him a little more was when Jerome announced that his name would be stricken from the Watcher’s Board and from all ChronoCom records. He would effectively never have existed. To be cast off from the tiers … that broke Levin’s stoic facade, his iron will shattering. He had earned the right to be on that board. It shouldn’t have been something they could take away.

Yet, Levin had no regrets about his decision. If what the Mother of Time had said was true, then Levin embraced this fate gladly. He looked out the large dusty windows where the gray winds swirled, continually layering more grime on the glass until the view was nothing more than dark shadows passing by. If what she had said really was true, then why not? One life was a small price to pay. He just hoped that James and the girl came through with their promise.

“Do you understand your charges and sentence, Levin Javier-Oberon?” Jerome said as the trial wrapped up.

Levin tore his gaze from the window and addressed the court in a clear voice. “I do, Director.”

“Do you have any final words before it is carried out?”

Levin looked over at Kuo, her eyes glinting in the light. She was daring him to break, to show that he had lost his faith. In the end, he supposed he had, at least with this current iteration of the agency he had grown to admire and then come to loathe. But then again, he had learned something new as well, and though he was powerless from this point on to see it through, he’d like to think that he, Auditor Levin Javier-Oberon, ninth of the chain, had played a small part in saving humanity. No one here could take that away from him.

“I do not, Director,” he said.

*

Kuo, Jerome, and Young stood with hundreds of others at the launch pad and watched as the transport disappeared into the night sky as it began its journey to the penal colony on Nereid. Kuo sent a signal through her AI chip to the rest of her team. The effect should be dramatic, after all.