The 82nd Airborne



Once a crack division of paratroopers, the 82nd is now a floater division. They are para-time cartographers, pathfinders, without whom the time wars can not be fought.

In the early days of time travel, there had been disastrous accidents with people materializing inside walls, clocking back into the same location occupied by another person. Such accidents are still possible and they occur from time to time, but to minimize their possibility, there are the floaters. These soldiers always precede any fighting unit sent back into the past. They chart the geographical locations and the time periods in which the soldiers from the future will do battle, making extensive surveys of terrain and construction, population density, climatic conditions, in short, everything that will affect a soldier sent back into that time and place.

They are clocked out above ground, equipped with floater paks, so that they will appear in Minus Time at very high altitudes, which eliminates the possibility of their appearing in a space occupied by someone or something else. Using their floater paks, they descend to isolated areas, where they break up into teams, each team equipped with survey equipment and a chronoplate. These are crack troops, the cream of the Temporal Corps, the most disciplined of soldiers. Floaters are loyal and not known to desert.