New Atlantis Bundle, Books1-3

by Glover, Nhys

  But it was a hardship she was more than willing to bear, if the payoff could be measured in lives. In this case, the lives of one hundred and fifty Jewish women and children who had been destined for Belzec, the Nazi death camp. Tomorrow, in this time-line at least, the goal she had been working toward for the last year would be reached. And she, meek and mild little lab assistant, Faith Lincolnshire, would have initiated and help pull off a miracle beyond anything she could ever have imagined possible.

  Of course, counting her chickens wasn’t a good idea. There was still a lot of work to be done before they could call this mission a success.

  But a hundred and fifty lives! That was amazing. Most Retrievals were singles and employed two Jumpers. But on this mission they would be Targeting one hundred and fifty people with only ten Jumpers. Statistics alone made this mission impressive.

  But this wasn’t about statistics. This was about human suffering and death. This was about reducing the Holocaust’s toll in one audacious swoop. This was about snatching children from the very maws of death.

  ‘I do not paddle in the ocean! What do you take me for, one of the children? But I will enjoy a long soak in my tub. It will take hours to get the stench out of my nostrils.’ Zygmunt sniffed loudly, as he ran his damp handkerchief under his nose.

  ‘Death can be exceedingly odoriferous, can it not?’ She let her words drip sarcasm. When had she begun to demean herself by using the lowest form of wit? Sometime in their first few hours together, she imagined. When it became apparent that Zygmunt was there under sufferance, and that he felt no empathy for the victims of the genocide that was taking place around him.

  They’d passed several rotting, naked corpses along the track, and signs that animals had dragged others away to devour. Faith hadn’t been able to keep food in her stomach during any of the three Jumps she’d made to this time-line in the last few months. Luckily, the gaps between Jumps had been weeks, which gave her the opportunity to recover from each trauma. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live it every day, without reprieve.

  ‘Odoriferous? An understatement. And a hygiene risk, most certainly.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Zygmunt, have you no heart at all? These are human beings, not road kill. I have not seen anything like it since …’ She stopped herself from following that line of thought. It was too painful to remember, even after all these years. Maybe that was why this experience was getting to her, undermining her usually calm and gentle persona. It reminded her too much of that other time, when it wasn’t a mere two million lives that were lost, but a billion.

  She had once tried to work out how many a billion was. It didn’t sound a lot when you said it. But when you started adding the zeroes together, then it became an overwhelming number. Easier to say that one in a thousand had survived the Last Great Plague of 2120. And she knew exactly what “one in a thousand” looked like. She’d been the one, and had seen the thousand others who hadn’t survived.

  And she remembered the smell, although back then it had been mid-winter, and frost and snow had slowed decomposition. But she still remembered that smell.

  Soaking in a hot tub, or even in the ocean, wouldn’t wash that stench from her nose. Ever.

  ‘You have to remember, my dear, I have lived through all this before. And not just in quick snippets of time, like you. Years of it. And I wrote about it, at considerable personal risk, I might add. So you can come down off your high horse, and give me some credit.’

  He spoke like a pedantic old professor, which was exactly what he had been before his Retrieval from a Russian Nursing Home in 1960. Now, with a clone body, he looked like a tall, slightly stooped and emaciated man in his early forties. His ginger hair, greased back in the fashion of the 1940s, was thinning above his brow, and Faith was reminded of a Dickens character – possibly an arrogant Uriah Heep – as she looked at him in the sepia tones of twilight.

  All thoughts of Dickens and of the Plague flew out of her mind in the next moment, as they turned a bend in the rail line. Suddenly, coming toward them, were three uniformed men walking along the tracks. In the gathering dusk, they were little more than dark shapes, but their uniforms were distinctive.

  Gestapo!

  ‘Quick, head for the trees!’ Faith cried, forcing herself to keep her voice low.

  Zygmunt was no fool. He immediately took off, on long, spidery legs, in the direction of the tree line to their right. She followed as fast as her own short legs would take her. If they were lucky, the men wouldn’t have spotted them yet, and they could disappear…

  ‘Halt!’ The command echoed in the fast approaching darkness, as a bullet punctuated the word with a loud explosion.

  Faith did exactly what she was told. Raising her hands above her head, she started to turn back toward the uniformed men.

  But Zygmunt didn’t obey. In shocked horror, she heard another explosion. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her partner flail his arms, as he crashed to the ground. A little grunt was the only sound he uttered as the bullet pierced his back. She screamed.

  So close. They had been so close. The tree line had been only yards away.

  Faith’s legs almost gave way under her. This terror was like nothing she had ever known. She felt as if someone had clamped a vice around her ribs, and was slowly tightening it. Gasping for air she couldn’t find, she felt light-headed and dizzy. Her gag reflex fought with panic for control of her actions. Flight, faint or vomit seemed her only options.

  Zygmunt was dead, face down in the dirt, a dark hole in the back of his serge jacket. And three murderous monsters were fast approaching her.

  Think! She had to think!

  But panic was making thought impossible. All she seemed capable of doing was staying on her feet, frozen to the spot. Her arms waved jerkily in the air as her body shook with tremors. What would they do to her? They had come so close!

  Hubris! This was her punishment for hubris. Who was she to think she could orchestrate the rescue of so many? All she’d managed to do was orchestrate the death of a Newcomer. And probably her own.

  She was losing the battle to remain standing. Heat flashed up through her body and burned her face. The world was beginning to spin.

  When the Gestapo agents reached her, she suddenly felt overwhelmed by their menacing size. She was used to being the small one in her own world. But that had always made her feel protected. Here, and now, her five foot two inches made her feel tiny and intimidated.

  ‘Where is the paratrooper?’ The tallest and bulkiest of the three barked at her in Polish.

  Shaking her head to clear it, she couldn’t hold back a whimper of terror.

  ‘Answer me, bitch! You were meeting the paratrooper. Where is he?’

  One of the other men was leaning over Zygmunt’s body, searching his pockets. He pulled out the PA, and she grunted in fear. They couldn’t get their hands on their Portal Activators. Such advanced technology was an anachronism in this time. It could lead to all manner of Temporal Displacement.

  It was all her fault! Hubris…Hubris!

  The third man had come up behind her. He yanked her arms down and behind her back. As her legs gave way under her, he was the only thing that kept her upright. Then he pressed his revolver into the soft flesh beneath her chin. The cold, hard metal smelled of gunpowder. This was the gun that had shot her partner. Any moment, he would use it to blow her brains out, too.

  ‘Your friend is dead, and you soon will be, if you don’t tell us where the paratrooper landed!’

  It was all so surreal. So impossible. Less than forty eight hours ago, she had been safe in the Twenty Fourth Century, in their perfect, utopian world. This was just a nightmare without end. She shouldn’t die here! This was not where she belonged!

  Chapter Two

  Luke Daniels, or more rightly Lukasz Danielewski, heard the shot ring out in the dark forest. He had already buried his parachute, and was set to make his way to the rendezvous point a mile to the nort
h.

  The sound froze him in place for a second, as thoughts flew through his mind. It was coming from the east, from the direction of the railway track, if he’d got his location right. The gunshot would have nothing to do with him. His AK, or Polish Home Army, Reception Committee would be coming in from the opposite direction. So it had nothing to do with him.

  But, though his training told him to run, and get as far away from the threat as possible, his instincts told him something different. For whatever reason, they demanded he go in the direction of the gun shot.

  Before he gave himself a chance to second guess them, he followed his instincts, moving like a loping mountain lion through the undergrowth, toward the report.

  The second shot, and a woman’s scream, had him cranking up his speed to a run, his heavy rucksack barely registering as a load. During his Commando training in Scotland, he’d hiked at a fast jog, with a fully loaded Bergen rucksack, over eight gruelling miles in the middle of winter. This sprint was nothing. And his soft soled gym shoes made him as silent as it was possible for a heavy, running man to be, in dry undergrowth.

  As he noticed the darkness lessening, he knew he was about to reach the tree line. Beyond it, he would be in the open. He may as well paint a target on his back, if he went out there.

  But he could hear someone yelling now. A German male, demanding answers in Polish. Luke’s Polish was perfect, and he understood every word. That was the reason he’d been chosen for this mission. He’d grown up speaking both Polish and German in the home. In those days, it had alienated him from a good proportion of his American peers. Now it was his greatest asset. It was funny how the tables could turn.

  Slowing, he pulled his rucksack from his back, and dropped it soundlessly behind a tree. Then he drew a knife and a Colt 45 pistol from his belt, and kept moving. When he reached the very edge of the tree line, he stopped. Now he could see his goal at last.

  What he saw turned his blood to ice. Three Gestapo gorillas were interrogating a young girl no more than ten feet away. One had a pistol to her throat, while another stood in front of her with a gun levelled at her head. The third seemed more interested in something he held in his hands.

  ‘Your friend is dead, and you soon will be, if you don’t tell us where the paratrooper landed!’ The burly man standing in front of her was doing all the talking.

  And it suddenly became clear, that she and her dead friend had been innocent bystanders in his own little drama. Someone must have spotted his parachute coming down, and these men had been sent to investigate. These two hapless locals had just happened to cross their path.

  This was his fault. It was only right he make restitution. He couldn’t save the man’s life, but he could save the girl’s.

  Moving silently as a shadow through the trees, he repositioned himself directly behind the man holding the girl. With practised ease, he weighed his knife and took aim. In seconds, it had flown true, wedging itself deep in the agent’s back.

  As he watched the man’s stance relax in death, Luke sighted his revolver in readiness for the second assailant. He would be revealed after the first had dropped. But he needed the girl out of the way. Now!

  ‘Hit the ground!’ he yelled in Polish, as the girl’s captor released his strangle-hold on her, and collapsed.

  Surprisingly, she did just that. He had a clear line on his prey. Firing off two bullets fast, he took the man facing him in the chest and right shoulder. As he took aim and fired at his last target, two bullets exploded at the same time: one from his revolver, and one from the gun of the man he had just shot. The Gestapo agent must have fired just as death claimed him.

  Luke felt the searing pain in his chest at the same moment that the third man fell to the ground. This one was only winged. His aim had been off because of the impact of the bullet.

  Frustrated, he tried to move forward to finish him off. He couldn’t leave any witnesses behind. But his legs were losing power. They were turning to water beneath him. Dropping to his knees, he reached for his bloody chest.

  ‘Oh, dear God!’ It was the girl, and she was speaking English with a very proper accent. How strange was that? What was an English girl doing in the Polish woods?

  But the girl was next to him now, and somehow he was on the ground looking up at her. It was growing darker, but even the lengthening shadows seemed softened by the lines of her luminous face. Big eyes stared down at him in horror, as she reached for him.

  ‘Get the last one!’ His voice was little more than a raspy growl, but she would understand him. He spoke in English to make sure. His accent would mark him immediately as a Yank. He wondered fleetingly if she was one of the girls who swooned when Americans came to town, or one of those who turned up their aristocratic little noses, and ever-so-politely chilled them out.

  What difference did it make? She was too young for him. Even in the depth of twilight, she looked no more than eighteen. Just a kid.

  He tried to thrust the revolver into her hand, but she reacted as if it burned her. ‘No, I can’t!’

  ‘Get me up then!’ He tried to yell at her, but a croaking whisper was all that came out of his mouth. Nevertheless, she seemed to understand him.

  With all her meagre strength, and what was left of his, she got him to his feet. Slinging the arm furthest from the wound over her shoulder, she moved him, one staggering step after another, toward the writhing Gestapo agent. The Nazi was so consumed by pain he didn’t notice them coming for him.

  In a way, Luke was doing the guy a favour. Left unattended, he’d die a long and agonising death. It was what he deserved. But the risk that other Germans might have been attracted by the gunfire, and find him in time to get information, meant he had to end his suffering now.

  With a shaking hand, he aimed and fired into the uniformed chest. The girl at his side jumped at the sound, and looked away. Instantly, the agent was still.

  Luke’s legs gave way beneath him again, and the girl let him drop. Surprised, he watched as she grabbed something from the ground beside the man he had just killed. Then she checked in her own pocket.

  ‘Thank heavens!’ Her voice was high with tension and barely controlled hysteria.

  Luke had no idea what had concerned her. But it didn’t actually matter anymore. His limbs were losing sensation. It would not be long before he too was dead. Leaning back on his elbow, his hand clamped to his chest in a half-hearted attempt to staunch the bleeding, he watched her with detached interest.

  She was intently pressing little buttons on what looked like a small version of the new walkie-talkies. Could she be calling for help? It was too late for him. But he was glad there was someone who’d come for her. They needed to get her as far away from all this death as possible. Get her back to her home in damp, old Blightie.

  What a debacle this mission had been. It had probably never been any more than a fool’s errand, anyway. The idea that Hitler was systematically exterminating a whole race of people was simply absurd. But the Polish Underground had been insistent, and so his superiors had sent him to verify the preposterous rumour.

  If he’d done what his training required, he would still be on mission. But the girl would be dead. And he couldn’t regret saving her.

  Suddenly, there was a bright light in front of him. So the stories were true. You did see a Light when you died. He wondered if his mother would be in that Light somewhere, waiting to welcome him. He still missed her, even after twenty years. Pleurisy had finally taken her, when she’d fought hard to survive so much else, over the years. It hadn’t been fair. But then, life wasn’t fair, he’d learned that the hard way at a very early age.

  But if the Light he was seeing meant he was dead, why did it still hurt so much? And why was the girl trying to drag him to his feet again? He had to try to help her. It was clear she wanted him to get up and go into the Light with her. So he would do what he could to assist.

  Uttering a guttural cry, Luke heaved himself up onto his hands and knees, and
let her wrap one dead weight of an arm around her thin shoulders. With another mighty cry of agonised determination, he thrust himself up onto his feet. Then, with her help, he staggered the two steps to the buzzing curtain of Light.

  And toppled into it.

  God, it was so loud! No one said that it would be so loud. His ears screamed their pain almost as loud as the wound in his chest tore at him. And then, when he thought he would go mad from the agony, the Light was gone, and so was the sound. He found he was crashing onto a stone floor, the last of his strength spent.

  ‘Medivac team now!’ He heard someone yell. What kind of team was that?

  The girl was looking down at him again, and he could see her clearly in what seemed to be broad daylight.

  He had his answers. It was all so obvious, now he could see her properly. She was an angel. That was why she’d carried him into the Light. Not a human girl at all, but a beautiful angel with soft, grey eyes that dominated her fragile, delicately featured face. Her light brown hair was parted down the middle and drawn back away from that gentle face. There was a hallo of light around her head. He had never seen anything so lovely.

  ‘Stay with me! Look at me soldier, look at me! Stay with me!’

  Why was she saying that? Of course, he would stay with her. And he never wanted to look away. If this was what death was, then he didn’t mind the pain. If it meant he could spend eternity staring into those bottomless, grey eyes, then it was worth it. Don’t be sad. I won’t leave you!

  And as the darkness replaced the light, he heard her say, ‘At last.’

  Chapter Three

  Spring 2332, New Atlantis GAIAN CONFEDERACY

  Faith watched with barely controlled impatience while the Medivac team gently lifted the American paratrooper onto the hovercot and began to pack his wound. A small electrode was attached to his wrist, which immediately began transmitting information on his condition. One of the medics watched the screen on his tablet, monitoring the data.