TimeRiders

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘It looks like some kind of superhero,’ whispered Sal in awe.

  ‘Uh… it looks very strong, so it does,’ said Liam warily, guessing how much damage just one of those huge hands could do. ‘Are you sure it’ll behave itself, Mr Foster?’

  The old man laughed. ‘Oh, don’t worry, Liam, you couldn’t hope for a more reliable colleague.’

  ‘Does this one have the brain of a mouse too?’

  ‘Yes. But it also has a silicon neural net processor unit and a wafer-plex data storage unit inserted into its cranium.’

  Liam looked at Foster, bemused by the gobbledegook. ‘A silly-con new… what?’

  ‘A computer in its head,’ cut in Sal.

  Liam, none the wiser, turned to Sal. ‘A what?’

  She sighed and cocked a dark eyebrow. ‘You really are from 1912, aren’t you?’

  ‘It’s a machine that lets the unit store information, Liam,’ said Foster. ‘Lots and lots of it. In that skull is a small block of circuitry that we can fit more facts into than a hundred libraries full of books.’

  Liam’s jaw dropped. ‘How’s that possible?’

  Foster waved a dismissive hand. ‘That’ll have to come another time. The history of computers is another whole subject, and one we don’t have time for right now.’ He stepped towards a panel on the side of the tube. ‘This unit’s been full term for a while now – waiting its turn. So, let’s not keep it waiting any longer, eh? Stand well back… This stuff really smells.’

  He punched a button. The bottom of the perspex tube swivelled open, releasing a flood tide of the thick liquid on to the floor. It splattered and spread – a large viscous steaming pool of gunk that smelled appalling, like meat gone bad. The creature inside flopped out through the bottom on to the floor, loose and lifeless like a large twist of boiled tagliatelle.

  ‘It’s dead,’ said Sal.

  ‘No, it’s booting up,’ replied Foster. ‘Give it a moment.’

  They watched in silence as the warm foul-smelling liquid steamed on the floor. Liam noted with some relief that it was draining away through a grille in the middle of the floor.

  Then the naked form twitched.

  Maddy and Sal gasped.

  ‘That’s a good boy,’ whispered Foster. ‘Come on now.’

  The muscles flexed and rippled down its back as it slowly stirred to life. After a few groggy seconds it pulled itself up on bulging arms, as thick as any normal person’s thighs, until it kneeled on its hands and knees.

  The creature’s gaze slowly drew up from the floor and rested on them.

  Liam could see in the thing’s grey eyes the twinkling of something that looked like an awakening intelligence. The clone opened its mouth and vomited out a river of thick pink goo that splattered on to the floor.

  Maddy made a face. ‘Ewww.’

  Sal curled her lip. ‘Oh, that’s totally jahully gross.’

  ‘Has it just been sick?’ asked Liam.

  ‘No, it’s emptying the liquid out of its lungs.’

  It gurgled for a moment, the sort of sound a contented baby might make after a feed. Finally, its mouth struggled slowly to form what appeared to be a clumsy and awkward version of a friendly smile.

  ‘Ba-a… gagah… bub… glah…?’ it uttered.

  CHAPTER 18

  2066, New York

  Kramer finished erecting the wire cage, tightening the last of the bolts holding it together before standing back to look at it.

  ‘This is it?’ asked Haas. ‘This really is the first ever time machine?’

  Kramer nodded, admiring it silently.

  It was little more than a metal grille box, the size of a shower cubicle. Sitting beside it on the floor was something that looked like a copper kettle and, next to it, a modest palmtop computer. A few feet away their portable generator chugged noisily, feeding a steady supply of power to Waldstein’s machine.

  ‘The displacement energy field is fed into the wire cage,’ said Kramer. ‘It’s only big enough for us to go through one at a time. It’s going to take us longer than I thought to get where we’re going.’

  Karl Haas looked at his watch. ‘The deadline passed half an hour ago, sir. The police surely won’t wait much longer.’

  Kramer nodded. ‘I know. We should get started.’ He kneeled down beside the palmtop and started to tap the touch-screen with a stylus.

  ‘It will be cold where we’re going, Karl. The men will need to pull out their winter tunics.’

  ‘I’ll warn them. Should I call through the –?’

  His question was interrupted by the sound of a muffled thud.

  Kramer looked at him sharply. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘They’re coming in!’ Karl straightened up. ‘I’ll have the men fall back from the main hall. We can hold them on the stairwell to the basement. It’s a good choke-point.’

  ‘Whatever you think best. Just buy me as much time as you can.’

  Karl nodded and turned on his heel, running down the dark aisle and already on the radio to his men upstairs.

  Kramer looked back at the screen and tapped in the time-stamp: a very specific time, a very specific place. He turned to two men standing nearby.

  ‘Max, Stefan, we must start by sending the equipment through first, all right?’

  Both men nodded and began dragging their boxes and canvas sacks into the cage.

  Karl Haas reached the top of the basement stairs and stared out through the open double doors into the museum’s dark main hall.

  He thumbed his radio. ‘Rudy, Pieter, what’s your status?’

  The earpiece crackled a reply. ‘They’re inside the building. They sent tear gas and flash-bangs down the left wing and they’re moving our way.’

  ‘Pull back to the main hall. And hold them there for as long as you can. We’re setting up a defensive position on the basement stairwell.’

  ‘Copy that.’

  Karl squinted into the darkness of the main hall and realized, despite the slithers of blue flashing lights stealing in through the boarded-over windows, it was still too dark.

  ‘OK, gentlemen,’ he spoke quietly into his radio throat mic, ‘it’s show time. Everyone, go to night-vision.’

  He reached up to the unit strapped around his crew-cut head and flipped the night-sight HUD down over his left eye.

  Moments later he heard the first percussive rattle of a firearm echoing around the empty halls.

  He turned to the man kneeling on the stairs beside him. ‘You ready for a fight, Saul?’

  The soldier nodded, even managed an edgy grin. ‘Yes, sir.’

  The men lifted in one last sack of equipment and closed the door to the wire cage.

  ‘Stand clear,’ said Kramer.

  He looked down at the palmtop’s small glowing screen. ‘OK, then,’ he said, crossing his fingers behind his back. He turned to Max and Stefan. ‘This is where we get to see if this old machine actually works.’

  He tapped an icon on the screen – PURGE.

  Immediately sparks spurted from the wire cage, showering on to the equipment inside. For a moment Kramer worried the canvas sacks might smoulder and catch fire, causing the ammo clips inside to explode.

  But the display of fireworks was short-lived. As the last glowing embers cascaded down, he realized the cage was already empty. He looked at his two men, wide eyed and grinning like fools. He laughed.

  ‘And so it does.’

  With no time to savour the moment, he ordered them to load up the cage again as he reset the transmission program on the palmtop.

  At the back of Kramer’s mind – although he realized now wasn’t the time to voice it aloud – was: in what condition were those things arriving at their destination? Intact? Or in pieces? He could visualize too easily himself arriving in the past and only living long enough to see his body had been contorted into a steaming pile of inside-out organs.

  He licked his lips anxiously.

  You’re not chickening out now, are you,
Paul?

  CHAPTER 19

  2066, New York

  Karl listened to the radio traffic coming in from his men. From their quick bursts of distorted cross-talk, it sounded as if they were doing a good job of keeping the police armed-response teams tied down. Both flanking teams had called in at least a dozen kills between them. The police were getting chewed-up out there from the snatched exchanges he could hear over his earpiece.

  But already two of his men were dead.

  Rudy had gone down early – took several rounds in the chest. Aden, one in the head: dead before he hit the ground.

  His men were buying time all right, but they couldn’t afford to lose too many. They couldn’t afford to lose any, if truth be told. There were only two dozen of them. Twenty-four men… not exactly an army. Hardly enough to conquer history.

  He tapped his throat mic. ‘All units fall back to the basement stairwell. Immediately. Keep your heads down. I don’t want any more casualties.’

  ‘Doing our bloody best, Karl,’ one of them called back. He recognized Pieter’s voice. One of the other men laughed over the radio comms.

  The intensity of chattering gunfire increased momentarily as both teams laid down suppressing fire before hastily abandoning their positions to fall back to the main hall.

  Karl turned to Saul. ‘Ready? They’ll need covering fire.’

  Kramer watched the fourth cageful of equipment vanish amid a shower of sparks. He just prayed to God that their invaluable equipment and his men were all going to end up in the same spot, rather than scattered throughout history.

  He looked around. Most of the kit had gone through.

  ‘So now,’ he said, ‘we need to start sending people.’

  Max pulled his Arctic-camouflage jacket from his backpack. ‘I’ll go first, sir.’

  ‘Good man, Max.’

  He zipped up his jacket, unslung his pulse rifle and offered Kramer a crisp, clipped salute before stepping confidently into the cage.

  ‘You ready?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Ready to change history, sir.’

  Kramer nodded. ‘To change it to the way it should have been.’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  Kramer saluted the man. He felt self-conscious making the gesture, having never been the military type – but it seemed like the right thing to do. ‘I’ll see you on the other side with the others, Max.’

  ‘I’ll see you too, sir.’

  Kramer hit the purge icon.

  The last of Karl’s flanking men raced across the main hall towards where he and Saul were holding position in the open doorway to the stairwell.

  Moments later several gas canisters rattled across the dusty marble floor of the hall and instantly spewed clouds of acrid smoke.

  Karl’s men squeezed past him, gasping and winded from their sprint.

  ‘There’re loads of ’em,’ said someone. ‘It’s crawlin’ with ’em out there!’

  ‘Down the stairs!’ Karl shouted. ‘And set up a defence position below at the basement entrance! Go! Go!’

  The men trampled downstairs, their heavy boots and equipment packs jangling noisily.

  Karl aimed down the barrel of his automatic, his night-sight HUD of little use through the billowing smoke. He fired off a dozen rounds into it, more in the hope of forcing their heads down than in hitting a target.

  The kill zone was too wide here for just the two of them to hold. They’d be better withdrawing with the others and holding the stairwell at the bottom. The police would be forced to bunch up on the stairs. A much better kill zone.

  ‘Go, Saul, go!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Down to the basement. Go!’

  Saul followed the other men down, leaving him alone in the doorway. Karl pulled three manual-fuse anti-personnel grenades from his belt and set fuse times a minute apart. He tossed the first out into the hall, dropped the second at the top of the stairwell and turned round to scramble down the first two flights of stairs, where he placed the third grenade.

  He raced down the third flight of stairs to the bottom of the stairwell.

  ‘Hold your fire!’ he called out in the dim light as he descended. ‘It’s me! It’s Karl!… Hold your fire!’ His voice echoed off the hard breeze-block walls.

  His men were waiting, eighteen of them, tucked behind a barricade of boxes and crates hastily built across the open doorway leading to the museum’s vast storage basement.

  ‘Excellent work,’ he said, slapping the shoulder of the nearest man as he clambered over to join them. ‘There’s a three-minute spread of grenades up there, which should slow them down.’

  He looked around at his men. ‘How many did we lose?’

  ‘Another two,’ said Saul. ‘Dexter and Schwartz.’

  His face tightened.

  Not good.

  ‘Karl? What about them?’ asked one of his men, nodding at the museum’s security guards huddled together a few yards away beside another stack of crates and boxes.

  ‘Do we kill them?’ he asked.

  Karl bit his lip in thought for a moment. They were no threat. Old men, frightened men. He’d let them go up the stairs, but the chances were they’d be gunned down the moment they stepped out into the main hall.

  ‘All right, Joseph, tell them they should go find a quiet corner and hide. Wait until the gunfight is over.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Oh, and tell them to make sure they call out to the police first before they show themselves. They’ll be trigger-twitchy.’

  Joseph grinned and nodded. He obviously shared the same opinion of the dunderheads upstairs.

  Amateurs. Big boots, big guns and no brains.

  The first charge went off in the hall with a dull thump.

  Karl put a hand to his earpiece and nodded. He turned to his men. ‘Ross, Pieter, Stefan, Joseph. Head down there,’ he said, gesturing towards a narrow passageway between two tall storage racks on their left. ‘Kramer is down there. He has the machine running now and is sending us back one at a time. You four are first.’

  The men nodded and headed into the passage.

  The second charge went off at the top of the stairs. Louder. Rubble and debris rattled down the steps.

  This is it, Karl, he told himself. Thelast holding position.

  CHAPTER 20

  2066, New York

  Kramer sent the man through and reset the co-ordinates for the next as the rattle of gunfire echoed down the passageway from the distant stairwell. He had lost count of how many of them he’d put through, perhaps a dozen, maybe fourteen.

  Karl had radioed through a few minutes ago; they were down to the last five men holding position at the bottom of the stairs. Another man had gone down – Saul. Wounded badly.

  Things were getting tight by the sound of it.

  He tapped his throat mic. ‘Karl, you need to come now!’

  Haas’s voice crackled back over the radio. ‘Someone’s got to hold them here, sir. If we all turn and run, they’ll be on to us in seconds.’

  Kramer cursed. Karl was right. Someone was going to have to be left behind to buy enough time for the last two or three to be sent through and for Kramer to sabotage the machine so they couldn’t be followed. Already they’d lost five good men; to have to leave one or two behind to hold them off wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

  ‘Dammit,’ he hissed.

  If he’d managed to find the machine sooner, assemble it just a little more quickly… or if the police had taken a few more minutes to get organized before storming the museum they could have all been through into the past without any blood shed, without a single casualty.

  ‘I’ll hold them,’ wheezed Saul.

  Karl looked down at him; the front of his grey and white Arctic-camouflage tunic was almost entirely black with his own blood. Several unaimed shots sprayed over the top of the stair’s handrail had found him, thudded into his chest and knocked him off his feet. The young lad was spraying thick gouts of blood with each
laboured breath; a lung, or both, had been hit.

  Karl didn’t need a medic to tell him that the rest of this young man’s life was now going to be measured in mere minutes, perhaps even seconds.

  ‘Saul, I…’

  ‘You have to go, sir.’ The young man forced a ragged smile. ‘You have to go… Change this world for a better one. Kramer’s one.’

  Karl nodded. ‘We’ll do it, Saul.’

  ‘You better,’ he gasped, a thick curl of congealed blood leaking from the side of his mouth. ‘Go… now,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll give you… as long as… I can.’

  Karl nodded. Saul was fading fast.

  He looked at the remaining men and gestured with a well-practised hand the signal for them to break cover and pull back to join Kramer. As they did so, Karl emptied a complete clip on to the stairs. Sparks and sprayed chips of concrete danced amid plumes of dust. The armed police, getting ready to storm the last flight of stairs, backed off, ducking their heads from the heavy fire.

  The clip empty, he looked down at Saul quickly and squeezed his shoulder. ‘Perhaps we’ll see each other in another time.’

  Saul grinned, then began firing at the stairwell with short economic bursts that would conserve his ammo and hopefully buy his comrades the precious time they needed.

  Karl turned and ran after his men, hearing their pounding footsteps ahead of him.

  Kramer reset the machine once more. The last of the men with him had gone through and now he was waiting for Haas and whoever else was with him.

  He could hear footsteps and, in the distance, short staccato bursts of gunfire.

  ‘Hurry!’ he called out.

  Out of the darkness two men emerged. Ronan and Sigi.

  ‘Quick!’ he said, ushering the first of them into the wire cage. ‘Where’s Karl?’

  ‘Coming just behind us, sir.’

  ‘All right… good.’

  He activated the machine, sparks showered and the darkness flickered alive with strobing light as Ronan vanished. Sigi stepped in just as Karl’s pounding footsteps could be heard.