by Simon Hawke
"That's quite an interesting collection you've got there," said Darkness, suddenly materialising behind them. He projected himself forward through space-time in a rapid series of translocations, leaving behind a trail of ghostly afterimages. He stood over the table and gazed down at the tiny prisoners.
"If you're anxious to be rid of them, I'll take them off your hands."
"You?" said Lucas. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
"Why? What would you do with them?"
"Oh, I was thinking I could dress them up in little suits of black or white and use them to play chess," said Darkness, with a perfectly straight face.
"Oh, for cryin' out loud!" said Delaney. "We haven't got time for jokes!"
"Who's joking? They'd make a dandy chess set. Only I'd need thirty-two and you've got only twenty-six. Think you could manage to rustle up another half a dozen?"
"Forget about it," said Delaney. "What's happened to Andre and
Gulliver?"
"They were abducted. "
Delaney rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right. We already know that. Where were they taken?"
"New York City," Darkness said. "The 20th century. September 13, 1992, to be exact."
"Are you sure?"
"I am always sure, Delaney," Darkness said, wryly. "I do not make idle pronouncements. I observed the settings on their warp discs, and to be doubly sure, I followed them. They were clocked to an old warehouse building on Washington
Street. They're in a loft, on the top floor. The man who took them prisoner is some sort of renegade T.I.A. agent, a member of the Network. I didn't hear him say his name, but he's a tall, slim, dark-haired, rather bored-looking individual dressed like a giant boysenberry'. He was holding them there alone, apparently waiting for someone."
"He was waiting for General Drakov," a small voice said from behind them.
They turned to face the table where the Lilliputian prisoners were all laid out.
"What did you say?" Delaney said.
The Lilliputian commander struggled to sit up. "I said, he was waiting for General Drakov. That warehouse on Washing 138
Simon Hawke ton Street was one of our base camps. And the man your friend described sounds like Victor Savino. I've met him. He controls a criminal organisation known as the Family through a man named Domenico Manelli."
"Savino?" said Delaney. "Vic Savino? Tied up with the 20th century Mafia?" He glanced at Lucas with astonishment. "Savino's the T. IA. section chief in that temporal zone. Steiger's mentioned him dozens of times. They started out together.
The man is something of a legend in the agency."
"And he's with the Network," Lucas said. "That means Drakov is not only still alive, but he's hooked up with the Network somehow. The most dangerous enemy we've ever faced, and our own people are involved with him. Christ, I don't believe it!"
"It doesn't make sense." Delaney said, shaking his head. "Why would the Network be involved with Drakov?"
"Because he has something they want," the Lilliputian commander said. "Us.
Hominoids, tailor made to your specifications. All it took was just one demonstration and they let Drakov name his price. "
"Why are you telling us all this?" Delaney said. "Because I'd like to see the bastard burn," the Lilliputian said, to a chorus of grumbling assent from his men.. "Why?"
Delaney said. "And why should we believe you?"
"The son of a bitch marooned us on that island," the Lilliputian leader said. bitterly. "I've seen him squash men underfoot as 'an object lesson in discipline.' We were never people to him. We were cannon fodder. A toy mercenary force that used live ammo. It was kill or be killed. When the hit on
Gulliver went bad and he escaped, Drakov decided to evacuate the island. We're all that's left of the original regiment, the 'first generation,' as he called us. And he hung us out to dry. The second generation helped him do it. They just left us there for you to find. “
"You mean he knew we were coming?" said Delaney.
"He said it was only a matter of time," the Lilliputian leader said. He grimaced. "No pun intended. When he found out Gulliver had escaped with the help of an Observer, he realised that Gulliver would be interrogated and you'd eventually find the confluence and discover the islands. He said that it would be a pity if there was nothing left for you to find."
"So he left you there," Lucas said, "to kill us when we arrived."
The Lilliputian nodded. "He said that our only chance to stay alive would be kill you. We'd have all died anyway. Our commanding officer was killed.. A snake got him. I was the exec." He snorted. "Some great commandos we turned out to be.
There were five hundred of us in the first generation. We're all that's left."
“Well, Lieutenant, regardless of whatever Drakov told you, you're not going to be killed," said Lucas. "We're going to dock you to our headquarters in the 27th century. And you're going to be treated humanely, like prisoners of war. Special arrangements will obviously have to be made for your detention, but nobody's going to kill you. I guarantee it."
"Wait, Lucas," said Delaney, "let's think about this for a minute.”
Lucas frowned. "What do you mean? What's there to think about? We have to deliver the prisoners. Surely, you're not suggesting that we-"
"No, no, of course not," said Delaney. “You know me better than that. I was merely thinking that we might be overlooking an opportunity here." He glanced at the Lilliputian leader. "Lieutenant, how'd you like a crack at your old friend, Drakov'?"
"Finn, no!" said Lucas. “Absolutely not! I know what you're thinking and you can just forget about it!"
"Why?"
"Why? Are you serious? We can't simply dock to the 20th century with a suitcase full of Lilliputians! It's too risky! How do we know we can trust them?"
"When you get right down to it, we don't," said Finn; "But I believe him.
Everything he's told us fits with what we already know about Drakov. And if the
Network is involved, we're going to need help. We can't ask headquarters for backup because we don't know who we can trust back there."
"Maybe not in the T.I.A., but we can trust our own people, the First Division,"
Lucas said.
Delaney shook his head. "They wouldn't have anyone to spare. You don't know what it's been like, Lucas. Ever since Forrester uncovered the Network and set out to break it, it's been all-out war. 'The only people he can trust in the entire agency are our old First Division people and there simply aren't enough of them to go around. Most of them are on adjustment duty, just like we are, and most of the rest are engaged in ongoing undercover work, trying to help expose new Network cells and break them up. We're not only trying to preserve the continuity of the timeline, we're faced with hostilities from the parallel universe and from within the T.I.A., as well. And with the old man in the hospital, Steiger's going to have his hands full. We can't ask him to spare us any reinforcements, Lucas. And even if we could, there’ll be no way to be sure that word of their clocking out to help us wouldn't leak out and someone would clock back ahead of them and warn Savino. "
Lucas-nodded. "Yeah, you're right. I guess it's going to have to be just you and me, like in the old days. Only this time, we've got the Doc along to help us."
“Just one moment," Darkness said. "When did I become a temporal agent?
Somehow, I don't recall enlisting."
"Don't hand me that, Doe," Lucas said. "I don't recall asking to be brought back from the dead and made into an experimental human time machine, either! Now if you want to see how your prototype functions in the field, then I suggest you come along and help, otherwise I'll just go and, do it myself!"
He disappeared.
“Lucas! What the… where did he go?" Delaney said. "Oh, hell," said Darkness.
"I'm afraid he translocated to the 20th century. "
"You mean-"
"Yes, I'm afraid so," Darkness said, with a sigh. "He was thinking about going and doing
it himself and that's precisely what he did. I fear I didn't quite get all the bugs out of system. It does tend to interpret one's thoughts rather literally."
"Well, don't just sit there, for God's sake! Go and help him!
He could be in trouble!",
"Not if he keeps his wits about him," Darkness said. He grunted. "That'lI be the day. I'd better go and help him."
He vanished.
Delaney quickly programmed new transition co-ordinates into his warp disc. He glanced down at the Lilliputians.
"If the offer's still open," said the lieutenant, "we accept."
Delaney threw open a closet door and took out a brown leather valise. He grabbed several shirts out of the closet and stuffed them down into the bottom. "All right," be said. setting the valise on the table and carefully cutting the Lilliputians' bonds. "Get inside. But if you try anything, so help me, I'll do the Mexican hat dance on this bag. Let's go."
For a moment, Andre was too stunned to move. First Lucas had miraculously come back from the dead, and now Reese Hunter. But then she realised that this man couldn't possibly be the Reese Hunter she had known, the one who had been brutally murdered by the Timekeepers in 17th century France. This could only be his twin from the parallel universe, an officer in the Counter Insurgency Section — their counterpart to the Temporal Intelligence Agency.
They had met when Forrester had sent them on a mission through a confluence, into the parallel universe, where Nikolai Drakov had pretended to defect only so that he could hijack the S.O.G. 's Project infiltrator along with its brilliant director, Dr. Moreau. It was from Moreau that Drakov had learned how to create his deadly hominoids. Capt. Reese Hunter_ had been sent out to stop him and he had met the
Time Commandos when they were all taken prisoner by Drakov and his homicidal henchman, Santos Benedetto.
They didn't really know each other, and yet, in another sense, they did. This Reese Hunter was not the same man who had helped Andre to avenge her brother's death, but he was identical to that Reese Hunter in almost all respects, as if they had been cut from the same mould. He, in turn, had also known an Andre, although the
Andre he had known in his own universe had been killed while on a mission, just as the Lucas Priest and the Finn Delaney he had known had died. During the time they had shared the same prison cell at Drakov's headquarters on the island of
Rhodes, they had discovered that they "knew" each other well through having known their counterparts. It was an eerie sort of intimacy.
When they had escaped, they had taken Hunter prisoner. There had been no choice, of course. He was the enemy. But once they had crossed over back into their own timeline, Hunter had escaped with a stolen warp disc and they hadn't seen him since. Now there he was, lying on the floor at Andre's feet. badly bruised and battered. He was from the other side, but at the same time, he was indistinguishable from the man who had helped her and changed her entire life. They were the same, right down to their
DNA. As he raised his face to look at her, Andre could not suppress a gasp. And then, involuntarily, she moaned softly.
"Oh, Reese! What have they done to you?"
He squinted up at her through swollen eyelids. "Andre? Is that really you?"
Drakov chuckled. "It's rather like old home week, isn't it?" he said. "It really is amazing how fate keeps throwing all of us together. The late Professor Mensinger doubtless had an equation of some sort to account for how the Fate Factor keeps selecting us out of random temporal zones and manoeuvring us together to resolve our mutually disruptive influence. Well, perhaps this time we can settle things, once and for all."
Andre looked up at him from where she knelt on the floor, beside Hunter. "Drakov, how can you possibly be alive? I saw Forrester kill you!"
"Did you, indeed?" he replied, in an amused tone. "Somehow I've always thought that it would happen the other way around. I trust I died well?"
For a moment, she wondered if Drakov had somehow cheated death like Lucas had. With Nikolai Drakov, it seemed that almost anything was possible. His birth had been a temporal anomaly. He had been conceived when a very young Moses
Forrester, fresh out of boot camp and on his first assignment — in minus time, had been seriously injured and separated from his unit. He had been nursed back to health by a beautiful young Russian gypsy girl named Vanna Drakova. Stranded, crippled and with a damaged implant, young For-rester had thought that he was trapped forever in the past. By the time an S amp; R team finally found him, Vanna was pregnant with his child. Forrester, afraid that Yanna's child would be aborted, never mentioned it and the Search and Retrieve team took him away into the future, never to see the girl he loved again.
Nikolai was born in the middle of a brutal Russian winter storm while Moscow burned during Napoleon's retreat. He had survived when most other infants would have died in such severe conditions. His seemingly miraculous survival and his unusual health were due to the antiagathic drugs that were still active in his father's system, Forrester having received the anti-aging and immunising treatments shortly following his induction into the Temporal Corps.
From what little the uneducated gypsy girl could tell him about his father, Nikolai had formed a picture of some supernatural, demon lover who had abandoned both of them.
For years, he felt that he was cursed, a demon issue, and when his mother was murdered by a knife-wielding rapist who had given Nikolai the scar upon the left side of his face, the bitter, resentment and the fear had turned to savage hatred.
Years later, when he had found out the truth about his father from a woman known as Falcon, the infamous leader of the Timekeepers, Drakov had vowed that he would never rest until Moses Forrester was dead and the timestream was irreparably split. He was, of course, insane. And he was also dead. Andre had seen him incinerated by a plasma blast. So how could he possibly still be alive? And then the only possible explanation struck her.
“My God, you've done it to yourself," she said. "You've created a hominoid from your own genetic template!"
"Very good, Miss Cross," said Drakov, with an appreciative nod. "Very good, indeed. Only that should be hominoids, plural, not singular."
She paled. "How many?"
He smiled. "'Ah, now that would be telling, wouldn't it?
And what's life without a little mystery?"
She stared at him, astounded. "Does.. does that mean that you.. that you're…"
"That I'm what?" said Drakov, smiling. "The original Nikolai Drakov or a hominoid? Interesting question. You see, under normal circumstances, a clone would essentially be a sort of carbon copy, yet not necessarily the same as the original. Such things as culture, environment, experience and so forth play an important part in the formation of a personality. It's not merely a matter of genetics.
However, a hominoid is considerably more than just a clone. There is genetic manipulation and cybernetic surgery, among other esoteric procedures. And when you add time travel child rearing into the equation, what I call 'time lapse maturation,' carefully supervising the development through the years and using implant education to program specific memory engrams, why, then what you might very well wind up with would be a clone who has the same experiences, the same memories, and the same exact personality, carefully cultivated from identical genetic stock. And in such a case, how could you tell the difference? If I were the original Nikolai Drakov, I would naturally know that I was the original. Yet on the other hand, if I were not the original Nikolai Drakov, but I had been given the same memories and personality, how could I ever know?"
"So what are you saying?" said Andre. "That what Forrester killed was a hominoid?"
"Perhaps," said Drakov, smiling slightly, enjoying her confusion. "And perhaps not. Suffice it to say that he killed a Nikolai Drakov. But, as you can see, there are more where that one came from. "
"Dear Lord, I understand absolutely none of this," said Gulliver, miserably. "It seems that I have come full circle somehow. Will this madness nev
er cease?"
"Never fear, Mr. Gulliver," said Drakov. "For you, it will cease all too soon.
You've really become quite an inconvenience. You seem to live a charmed life. I've never met a man who was more inept, yet so difficult to kill. It defies all explanation. "
"Leave him alone, Drakov," Andre said. "He has nothing to do with this."
"My dear Miss Cross, he bas everything to do with this," said Drakov. "If not for him, you would never have stumbled upon this little venture of mine until it was far too late for you to do anything about it. As it is, I was forced to move ahead of schedule and alter my plans somewhat. Altogether, you've been very irritating."
"I think you'll find us a lot more irritating before it's all over, Nikolai," Andre said.
"Really? Oh, I see. You're no doubt anticipating rescue by your two gallant young comrades,… Steiger and Delaney. Well, you may have quite a wait. Knowing those two as I do, I imagine the first thing they did upon questioning young Mr. Gulliver was to go looking for my island base. If they've been unfortunate enough to find it, they will have also found the reception committee that I left behind for them.
Somehow, I doubt you will be seeing them again. In any case, for you, Miss Cross, it is all over. Savino, bring her."
Savino came up behind her and grabbed her by the arm, lifting her up and shoving her away from Hunter.
"Savino?" she said, staring at him. "Vic Savino?" "That's me," he said. "Get moving."
"Traitor." She spat in his face.
He punched her in the jaw and knocked her to the ground. "Coward" shouted Gulliver. "You craven coward, hitting a woman!"
Despite his hands being cuffed behind his back, Gulliver rushed Savino, but Savino merely stepped aside and tripped him.. sending him sprawling
"Enough of this nonsense," Drakov said, irritably. "Bring her, I said!"
Savino grabbed Andre and manhandled her into the elevator. As he got in after them, Drakov beckoned to the two men he had brought with him. He indicated
Gulliver and Hunter.
