The Turner Chronicles Box Set Edition

by Mark Eller

  Then again, despite David Lincoln's position and influence, the type and condition of his small office did not actually say that this was one of those best jobs. An indication, perhaps, that his connections were not as earthshaking as the pictures indicated. More likely, the explanation had to do with his mixed heritage. Though he was considered Hispanic, David Lincoln had an embarrassing amount of Anglo blood running through his veins.

  "Turner," Aybarra said once he finished shifting himself around in the chair so it was at least minimally comfortable, "has been lying all along. Yes, the area is broken into several countries, but they are serious and well run countries and not the hodgepodge of mismanaged backwaters he described to his superiors. The one he lives in, Isabella, is a loose republic with a population density higher than he reported, though it is still low when compared to a similar area in our own Jefferson. As best I could tell in the short time I was there, Isabellan technology is eighteenth century in some respects, nineteenth in others, and way back to the twelfth century or before in a couple areas. Most notably, they have no steel or gunpowder. They do, or a few individuals do, have something that appears to be magical or psychic abilities, which isn't surprising since Turner apparently has something similar. However, they seem to need some sort of apparatus to make it work. I'm not sure what that something is since I was not over there very long. However, I did learn that it isn't easy to get one of whatever it is."

  Drawing a folder from his brief, Aybarra looked around the small office his boss commanded once again. Despite the pictures, the place was…well…it was depressing. Thirty years of service during four administrations had earned the man no more than a twelve by twelve room without windows. Worst of all, the air conditioning did not work. Apparently there was a problem with the pneumatic damper controlling his segment of the system's cold deck. In other words, the place was sweltering and constantly smelled of stale cigars.

  Maybe he was better off staying in the field after all. Was probably better for him. After all, in the field he could only get shot. An office like this would probably grind him down.

  Then again, it would be nice to have an opportunity to find out.

  Looking thoughtful, Lincoln drummed his heavy fingers on his desk, making a repeated thudding noise that Aybarra found distracting.

  "Go on," Lincoln encouraged. "Tell me about Turner."

  "A bit of a mystery there," Aybarra admitted. "Turner seems to have ceased all efforts at preparing the ground for military control. Over the last few weeks he has exerted a great deal of effort in gaining financial control of many of the prime businesses, yet the locals don't seem to resent him for this. It appears that he only became financially active after there was some type of crisis, possibly indicating that he only acted to alleviate some sort of local trouble. It is more likely that he is following his own individual path to greater power in accordance with the dictates of General Field, but truthfully, I am not exactly sure."

  Aybarra tossed the folder on his commander's desk. "This has the details of my observations. What I don't understand is how the two who escaped from the bus station managed to gain the abilities they displayed. The man is a vicious criminal, but during the short period that I observed him he seemed no different in his limited paranormal abilities than any other person in Isabella. The woman appeared to be strong but she did not strike me as being strong enough to tear the door off a police vehicle."

  Finished, Aybarra waited for his boss to respond.

  "Perhaps," David Lincoln said, "it's an increase of their natural abilities. The reports I read say that Turner and Klein have more ability when they start on this side than they do on the other." The commander clasped his fingers, leaned back in his creaking chair, and wiped an already damp rag across his sweating forehead. "Personally, I find the thought that this Eric fellow can do more than I already saw very unsettling, but that is a matter for another time. How is Turner doing? The reports say that he lost a lot of blood."

  "Yes sir," said Aybarra, "He did, although there is no visible wound to account for that. As best we can tell the blood seems to have come directly through his skin. The doctors put him on IVs to replace his body fluids after they finished repairing his injuries. He had two badly broken ribs and hairline fractures in three others. His heart was bruised and its irregular rhythm had the doctors concerned for a while, but it seems to have steadied down."

  "And the others?"

  "The redhead had a fractured skull along with several knife slashes to her body and a large patch of torn skin and missing tissue from her breast. Her skull has been repaired and accelerants have been given to her to speed regeneration. Also, she has had artificial skin grafts that will, of course, be indistinguishable from her own skin, and the rest of her wounds have been closed and sealed. Since she was not aware of anything that happened to her beyond the initial attack, there should be no mental trauma for her to overcome. However, just to be safe a memory block was inserted anyway. The doctors say when she regains consciousness in a few more hours there will be little evidence of her ordeal. Sarah Townsend was an easier matter. She only suffered from two breaks in her collarbone. Those have been repaired, and she is already awake."

  He sat quiet a moment. "I suppose we are done with the Field Militia compound. The other teleporter appears too infrequently for us to monitor him, and we have not been able to attach an agent to his operation."

  His commander shook his head no. "I still want to get men into Colonel Klein's operation. We barely missed getting two men in with him when he transferred over to Chin three days ago."

  "Three days? I thought he wasn't supposed to be back for months yet."

  "Like our dear friend Turner, the ever elusive Colonel Helmet Klein seems to have shaded the truth. I do agree with one thing, though. Our Turner side of the operation is now dead so I might as well recall Hill. I see no way he can be maneuvered into another useful situation inside the Militia, and he might be of some use here. Maybe Turner still holds some trust for him. He might even have bonded with Hill. Also, I want you with Turner when he wakes. It's possible that he remembers you saving his ass, so that might give him some reason to trust you."

  Aybarra should have saluted but he was forgiven that duty due to his once wounded arm. Though his wound had been sealed the area was still tender. From past experience he knew that it would remain so for most of another day. He rubbed his thick hair and wondered just what it was about him that had attracted David Lincoln's attention. Whatever it was, he wanted to get rid of it. Assignments like this were just a bit too strange for his personal comfort. Despite the depressing nature of this office he really did want to sit behind a desk--just like his boss. He wanted to find out for himself if the job was as dull and boring as it appeared. Maybe they would give him a promotion after this assignment was over.

  Nah. They wouldn't do that. Paper pushers were easy to come by. Field agents of his caliber were a different matter. The truth was that the agency had very few men of his quality left. Competent people like him who also happened to be the wrong race never got an opportunity to grow a fat behind. No, he was probably a field man for life, however long that life might be.

  Chapter 22

  Aaron escaped from bad dreams of ropes and blood and screams. Opening crusted over eyes, he discovered that he lay on a bed while an IV dripped slowly into his arm. There was a window to his left, curtains drawn, faint light radiating around the curled edges. An empty chair was placed under the window. The faint outlines of a holovid appeared in the corner of the room, and he was surrounded by the antiseptic stench of hospital air.

  So he had crossed over.

  Turning his head to the right he saw that a curtain hung on that side of his bed.

  A black man sat in a chair near Aaron's feet. The man's head was bent down to look at a book held in his hands. Aaron shifted his weight; crisp sheets rustled, and the man looked up.

  Aaron stared.

  "I know you," he finally said. "You
were with General Mays. Captain something or other."

  "Actually I am Major Samuel Aybarra of National Intelligence," the man said. "I'm afraid your group was conned by a covert operation we have been running for the last ten years. Unfortunately, the only way we can infiltrate some of these little militias is by posing as one of them ourselves. But don't worry. You're not wanted for anything in Jefferson. After all, you haven't been out of the complex since you were a child except when you go to that other world, so you haven't had a chance to break any laws."

  Aaron relaxed at the man's mistake and his lie because Aaron was wanted by the Jefferson government. He just was not wanted for anything he had done that was illegal.

  Wait a minute. They still thought he had never been outside the complex. Apparently they had not put two and two together. How could he have landed in a place outside the complex if he had never been outside of it? Of course, he was assuming he actually had landed in the bus station like he had intended. Then again, how much did the government know of what he could do? Did they know his limits?

  "Not saying much, are you?" Aybarra commented wryly. "Well here is your update. You lost only two and a half pints of blood, most of it right through your skin, but part of it was due to a nosebleed. We replaced the blood and did some other work on you that will probably be explained later. The two women are fine, although both are still under sedation. As soon as they come out of it all three of you will be put in the same suite so you will feel more comfortable."

  Relieved, Aaron sighed. Tension he did not know he felt washed away.

  Aybarra gave Aaron a serious look. "I wouldn't try anything as strenuous as that last leap again if I were you. The trip almost killed you. Next time, I suggest you leave the walls and floors and furniture behind."

  "I'll try to arrange matters differently," Aaron promised.

  "We will be asking you a lot of questions. You must expect that."

  "I can understand why you want to." Understanding did not mean he intended to answer those questions. He wasn't going to answer a single one of them if they made the mistake of putting all three of them in the same room. If they did that, it was going to be one, two, three transport out of here. "I remember seeing you over there. You had a gun."

  Aybarra was bright enough to catch his unasked question. "I hid in your last load of supplies. We knew you were lying about your abilities because you were bringing coins back to Hill and Gore. From the requests you had been making, Hill suspected you were about to bug out. That meant you wouldn't care if you showed your superiors you had been lying, so Hill hauled in extra cargo and the tarp to provide me with a hiding place. I'm afraid he was not too particular as to what he threw under the tarp."

  He grinned suddenly. The grin transformed his face into a happy caricature of delight.

  "You owe me big," Aybarra added with a laugh. "You told us the population was a mixed bag in Isabella. Do you realize how hard it was for me to blend in? I haven't seen such a collection of nothing but white in all my life. Most of the information I gained was from eavesdropping while I was buried in hay or hiding in weeds."

  "Slavery never became popular on the new continent," Aaron explained. "There is some slavery overseas, but it's not color specific. However, there are blacks in the New Land but mostly they live in their own separate country. The few blacks who moved into my area bred back into the population centuries ago, but some of their racial traits can still be seen in the general population. Sometimes you see a person with a darker skin, but nobody thinks anything about it. For the most part, racial bias does not exist in Isabella."

  Aybarra held up a hand to stop him. "I don't care about any of that. I just wanted to kick your ass for getting me in an awkward situation. You haven't noticed, have you?"

  "Noticed what?"

  "You've been using your arm. The left one, and you will be able to walk normal. The doctors didn't like the idea of letting that wound on your back finish its natural healing so they decided to seal it. Good thing for you that they did because they found a neural transmitter buried in your back. I'm told that it had leads going to all sorts of interesting places. Your doctors left all those leads in place, but they deactivated the transmitter and removed a little bomb that was attached to it. Son, it appears that your problems were deliberate."

  Aaron lifted his arm experimentally. It did not hurt. It really did not hurt. It sat on the end of his shoulder, a straight, pain-free, fully usable arm with strong flexible fingers attached. Experimenting, he shifted his legs. No pain.

  "Those bastards," he whispered, soft as a snake's hiss. He had gone through agony. He had gone through fourteen years of hell. How many of those years were unnecessary? How many operations were shams, done so wires and transmitters and bombs could be placed inside his body?

  Damn. And to think that he had kicked himself for not being loyal to the General. That was one internal conflict he would not have again.

  The bastards.

  Aybarra nodded knowingly. "They probably kept going in and changing things until they got your natural teleporting ability strong enough for what they wanted. Now that we have our hands on you, we can figure out exactly what that right thing is so we can repeat it with other people, hopefully without all the side effects."

  * * *

  When Miss Hawks walked into the suite of rooms that had been provided to them, Aaron thought she looked quite admirable. She wore new jeans and a checked flannel shirt, both tight enough to accentuate her important lines and hint at others. Her flushed face was alive. Sun browned, wind roughened, with small wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and lips, she was the epitome of handsome, character, and strength.

  Considering her previous condition, he was extremely happy to see her looking so healthy. He just wished she was not so pissed.

  At him.

  Sarah's expression when she first came into the room held plenty of warning. The warning wasn't given soon enough to prepare him for Miss Hawks' right cross.

  After he picked himself off the floor and spent a few moments rubbing his jaw, Aaron backed very carefully away from the very angry Miss Hawks.

  "What was that for?" he demanded.

  "What was that for!" Her face flushed a deeper red. "I got clobbered, stripped, cut, and kidnapped because you are a fraud! Then you ask what that was for! I was almost raped and murdered, for the Lady's Sake. Miss Townsend tells me you didn't even have the decency to look away when I was stripped naked. How dare you!" Her voice, filled with indignant shame, cracked at the end.

  "I wasn't looking at you," Aaron protested. He held up an arm to ward off a flying ashtray. Fortunately, she was so upset that her aim was more of a fictional concept than a real fact. The ashtray missed him by a foot and bounced off the couch. "I had broken ribs." He thought of the bloody horror she had been and shuddered. Thank God for modern medicine.

  "I saw you looking," Sarah contributed helpfully, leaning against the outer doorframe. "As a matter of fact, you've now seen a whole lot more of her than you've ever seen of me."

  Aaron glared at her. Damn it, the vixen was enjoying this.

  "I haven't seen any of you," he shot back to Sarah, "though the Lady knows I've tried." She had the grace to look contrite, almost. He looked back to Hawks. "Look, my ribs were broken. I could hardly breathe, and I was afraid we were all going to die. On top of that, I was trying to pull us all out of there. Okay. Yes, I saw you less than completely clothed, but I really didn't pay the matter any attention. I had more important things on my mind, things like getting us out of there."

  He was babbling. He was a blooming, babbling idiot.

  And then he caught her look. Storm clouds had gathered. Obviously time to bolster his defenses. He drew in a deep breath. "And no, I am not the type of pervert who gets his kicks out of sadism, not even voyeuristic sadism. Miss Hawks, from my point of view, your being naked was a matter of no interest beyond my wanting to save you."

  Miss Hawks' glare turned more furious.


  Sarah shook her head despairingly. "Oh, you poor boy."

  "Why take it out on me?" Aaron protested while Miss Hawks' eyes turned towards a heavy lamp. "Dozens of other people probably saw you when we were brought here." Dropping quickly, Aaron rolled to the floor. The thrown lamp almost passed over his head. It was stopped in its trajectory by the electric cord that was still plugged into an electric socket. Jerked back by the cord, the lamp fell to the floor, and shattered.

  "They, I do not know!" Hawks snapped. "They owe me no respect. They are not my partner. They did not get me in that spot in the first place, and they did not say my body was not worth looking at."

  "Wait a minute. I didn't say that." Had he said that? Gods, please let him not have said that.

  Aaron did not dodge fast enough this time. The end table's leg caught his hip. Leaping backward he dove behind the couch and carefully peered over the top.

  Looking as confused as Aaron felt, Aybarra stood behind Sarah.

  "Turner, what the hell is--"

  Sarah flattened him. She turned so fast Aaron did not have time to think of shouting a warning. Aybarra fell straight to the floor before he could blink. Before he could blink a second time Miss Hawks kicked him in the stomach.

  "You will speak to my partner only with respect!" Miss Hawks raged.

  "What did I--?"

  Sarah jerked him to his feet. "My intended," she said firmly, "is an important man. He is a good man. You will speak to him respectfully, or you and I will have a private conversation that you will not like."

  Aybarra looked imploringly to Aaron. Doubtfully, Aaron rose from behind the couch. It was good to see all that womanly anger being directed at somebody else since it meant that he might be safe now. Still, it would not hurt to be prepared to take cover again.