The Lilliput Legion

by Simon Hawke

  She swallowed hard, took another deep breath and leaned back against the wall. “Damn,” she said to herself. “It’s got to stop. I’m starting to lose it.”

  A soft red light suddenly came on above her comscreen and an electronic buzzer sounded three times in rapid succession, paused, then sounded again. General Forrester’s face appeared upon the screen.

  “Lt. Cross?”

  “Here sir,” she said.

  “Come up to my quarters, on the double.”

  “Sir!”

  She rolled out of bed and quickly slipped into her black base fatigues. Moses Forrester was not in the habit of calling the people under his command in the middle of the night and summoning them “on the double” unless there was a dammed good reason for it. She was dressed in moments and out the door, running down the corridor toward the lift tubes.

  Brigadier General Moses Forrester was an unusual commander. He was entitled to a full complement of personal security and staff at his quarters and offices atop the Headquarters Building of Pendleton Base, but he bad only four guards working two shifts, which meant that there were only two guards on duty at any one time, plus an orderly who doubled as a secretary. Rather than wear full dress uniforms or even the less formal duty greens, Forrester insisted that his guards dress in the infinitely less impressive and more comfortable black base fatigues, which he himself preferred. No ribbons, no decorations, no insignia other than division pin and rank. This gave him the impression, he said, that he was surrounded by soldiers, rather than hotel doormen.

  Formerly the commander of the elite First Division, the Time Commandos, Forrester had been promoted and was now the director of the Temporal Intelligence Agency, which had absorbed the First Division. Although Forrester was entitled to wear civilian clothing if he chose to, he never did, except for the 19th century, green, brocade smoking jacket he liked wearing during evenings in his quarters, when he was fond of settling down with one of his cherished Dunhill or Upshall pipes and a good book. Forrester had been in the service all his life. He had enlisted straight out of high school and risen through the ranks, taking advantage of military benefits to secure an education for himself along the way. He had earned a doctorate in history, one in political science, and one in temporal physics, though he often professed to know less about the intricacies of what was more commonly called “Zen physics” than he really did.

  Few people knew his exact age. He never spoke of it and no one ever had the temerity to ask. He looked positively ancient. His face was deeply lined and his hair might have been white if he had any, but Moses Forrester had shaved his head for as long as anyone could remember. However old he looked, and he looked like an old grizzly bear with hemorrhoids, he was in remarkable physical condition. He was well over six feet tall and ramrod straight, with shoulders that filled a doorway. He had a chest like a bull and he could effortlessly curl an eighty pound dumbbell with one hand.

  When he led the First Division, he knew every soldier under his command by name. He had handpicked them all. He had not had the same luxury with his new command, since he had inherited all the agents of the T.I.A. in a lump sum, but he was rapidly “weeding out the deadwood,” as he put it, which had led to some resentment on the part of many of the T.I.A. personnel. Forrester didn’t give a damn. The ones who would resent him were precisely the ones he wanted to get rid of. He’d get to all of them eventually.

  When they had been two separate branches of government service, there had been no love lost between the First Division and the T.I.A.. There had been an intense rivalry between them. Now they were all together under one command, and it was an uneasy marriage. Forrester allowed the former soldiers of the First Division to wear their old commando insignia, a stylized number one bisected by the symbol for infinity, while the agents of the T.I.A. continued to wear their own official insignia, which consisted of the symbol for pi. (Forrester himself wore both, one on each side of his collar.) The T.I.A. insignia had always been something of an agency in-joke, as it represented a transcendental number, infinitely repeating, therefore suggesting the true nature of the Temporal Intelligence Agency—an organization whose reach and whose agents were infinite. However, it wasn’t until recently that Forrester had realized the true nature of that sly “Company” joke.

  A former agency director had once requested complete data on all agency personnel and he’d been told that his request was impossible to grant. When the director had asked why, he was told that it was because no one in the agency knew exactly how many T.I.A. agents there were. Headquarters staff was one thing, but section chiefs out in the field had virtually complete autonomy to function on their own, to pick and choose their own personnel, either recruiting from other units or from civilians in the field, and they had literal carte blanche in their budgets requesting whatever they thought they needed to maintain their sections. Usually, they got their allocations with no questions asked.

  When Forrester reviewed the budget of the T.I.A., which was among the agency’s most closely guarded secrets, he had been absolutely staggered. Not only did the T.I.A. command the single largest budget among all the government services, but it appeared that many of its operatives generated their own supplementary budget on the side, as well. A large number of individual field agents, section chiefs and even department heads were covertly involved in everything from legitimate businesses to organized crime, including such unsavory pursuits as gambling, prostitution, drug trafficking, Contract assassination and using time travel to conduct stock manipulations.

  Forrester was aghast. He had previously encountered the Temporal Underground, a loosely connected organization of deserters from the future who had managed to set up a sort of transtemporal underground society, but now it turned out that the T.I.A. had its own version of the Underground, known as the “Network,” and that over the years, these renegade covert field agents had set up an entire transtemporal economy. Forrester’s investigations had only revealed the very tip of the iceberg.

  There was even a rumor that an entire 21st century American crime family was, in fact, a Network operation, funneling profits into the past in what had to be the most elaborate laundering scheme in history. Wealth generated by organized crime in one time period financed complex operations in earlier centuries that were aimed at placing Network agents in key positions in governments and in the private sector, thereby enabling them to skim profits and set up complicated secret trust funds and numbered accounts that would, over the years, mature and be passed on to individuals designated as “Network affiliates” —people in the past who looked after Network interests in exchange for wealth and power. The end result was a cyclical economy that fed upon itself and grew by exponential leaps and bounds.

  Forrester had used some of his crack commando units to infiltrate his own agency and so far he had managed to establish T.I.A. involvement in AI Capone’s Chicago crime syndicate, as well as certain clandestine branches of American, Soviet and Israeli intelligence services in the 20th century, a time before advanced mind scanning techniques became available. Over the years, Network agents had been skimming profits from such diverse sources as the British East India Co., United Fruit, 19th century Moroccan slave trade operations, IBM, Bell Telephone, various South African diamond mines, Roman tax collectors—some section chief had even managed to become appointed the Roman governor of Antioch—casinos in both Las Vegas and Monte Carlo, and a host of other businesses in a wide variety of time periods into which they had infiltrated.

  The money itself was virtually impossible to trace. It was difficult enough to conduct a modern paper chase in an attempt to untangle the complicated finances of corporate bandits, how was it possible to trace money laundering operations that transcended the boundaries of time? Swiss bank accounts? Perhaps, only in which time period? Liquid assets? Maybe, only in what form? Gold dust taken out of Colorado mine shipment in the 19th century? Jewels pirated from a Spanish treasure fleet in the 1700’s? 20th century bearer bonds hija
cked from a messenger on Wall Street, which were then converted into cash, transferred to a Panamanian account, wired to Brussels and used to purchase weapons at a discount from an arms dealer who was a Network front operation to begin with, which meant simply taking money from one pocket and putting it right back into another, increasing it along the way? It was absolutely mindboggling and it had been going on for years.

  Corrupt T.I.A. section chiefs affiliated with the Network often lived better than heads of state. They had become so involved in their own transtemporal private enterprises that they looked upon the T.I.A. as a sort of part-time job, their official duties merely the cost of doing business.

  Forrester had taken it upon himself to put them out of business, every last one of them, but it was a mighty tall order. In the first sweep operation conducted by the newly organized Internal Security Division, no less than twenty-seven section chiefs were clocked back from their posts, ostensibly for “orientation conferences,” and placed under arrest. The first attempt on Moses Forrester’s life was made the very next day.

  There had been several more attempts since then, despite the dramatically increased security. Forrester did not like to be crowded and refused to accept having any more guards around him in his private quarters, so elaborate measures had been taken to protect him without his being aware of the increased protection. Security throughout the entire Headquarters Complex had been beefed up. Scanning devices and automated defense mechanisms had been installed in all the corridors and lift tubes leading to Forrester’s offices and private quarters. Enough security and antipersonnel devices had been installed to hold off an entire battalion, but Forrester had found out about them and ordered them removed, saying that he didn’t much care for the idea of computer-controlled autopulsers tracking everybody’s movements through the hallways. What would happen if there was a glitch? The antipersonnel devices were removed, but Security had clandestinely re-installed the scanners.

  The whole thing had led to a great deal of friction within the agency. Not only had two rival commands been united into one, with all the attendant complications that imposed, but commandos were being used to round up renegade field agents, which only served to exacerbate the problems. What it all came down to was the fact that there was another T.I.A. within the T.I.A., and as if it wasn’t bad enough that they were faced with opposition from a parallel timeline, the agency now had to do battle with itself. The urgent summons to Forrester’s quarters could have meant anything from another attempt on his life to a new temporal crisis, so Andre wasted no time in getting up there.

  Finn Delaney met Andre in the corridor leading to the lift tubes. A bullish, muscular man with dark red hair and wide, good looking, typically Irish features, Delaney was, after Forrester, the most decorated soldier in the Temporal Corps. He might have been command staff rank himself by now if he hadn’t been reduced in’ grade so many times for various infractions, ranging from direct disobedience to specific orders to striking superior officers. He had .little patience for such trivialities as hand salutes and uniform regulations and expecting a veteran with his record to adhere to such things was an invitation to have one’s teeth loosened. Delaney took no orders from anybody except his commanding officer, for whom he had boundless respect and admiration. Aside from which, for all his years, Forrester was the one man Delaney was not sure he could take. As a major, Forrester had been their training officer on their first temporal adjustment mission and Finn remembered all too well what the old man was capable of dishing out.

  Currently, Delaney held the rank of captain, but there was a pool going to see how long he’d keep his bars. Delaney didn’t care. The only thing rank meant to him was a slight boost in pay grade, but the only thing he ever spent his money on was Irish whiskey, so it didn’t make much difference to him one way or another. A private could get drunk just as cheaply as an officer in the First Division Lounge. And Delaney was a simple man; the service provided all his other needs. He wasn’t a parade ground soldier. He was an adventurer at heart. He was a man who had been born too late and so he lived chiefly in the past. Quite literally. The present was just something he barely tolerated. He and Andre both got into the tube and punched for the top floor.

  “He say anything to you?” said Finn.

  Andre shook her head. “No, just said to get up there on the double.”

  They were both tense, not knowing what it could be, but knowing that Forrester would never have summoned them like that unless it were something serious.

  Col. Creed Steiger was already there when they arrived, having responded to a similar summons. Large framed and well-muscled, though smaller in stature than Delaney, Steiger was very blond, with pale grey eyes and a sharp, hooked nose, like the beak of an eagle. It gave him a cruel look. He moved with the casual, relaxed-yet-controlled bearing of the seasoned soldier. He was Forrester’s exec, formerly the senior covert field agent of the T.I.A. Given recent developments, his position was somewhat uncomfortable, if not acutely precarious.

  For years, he had gone simply by the codename of “Phoenix,” working mostly on his own, changing his entire physical appearance from one covert assignment to the next, assuming a different personality with each role he was required to play. Even within the agency, he had been known as a maverick. Finn and Andre first met him when one of his covert assignments coincided with one of their temporal adjustment missions. With the merging of the First Division and the T.I.A., Forrester chose Steiger as his executive officer and assigned him as a partner to Finn and Andre, to replace the late Lucas Priest as the third member of his top temporal adjustment team.

  When Forrester’s investigations had uncovered the extent of the corruption within the T.I.A. organization he had inherited, he had called in Steiger and asked him point blank, “Did you know about any of this?”

  “Yes, sir, I did,” Steiger had replied. “Some of it, anyway. And to anticipate your next question, no, I wasn’t involved. I had a job to do and I had to look the other way a lot. “

  “I see,” Forrester had said. “Dammit, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “With all due respect, sir, I didn’t see what in hell would be the point,” Steiger had said. “You couldn’t really do anything about it and with the temporal crisis that we’re facing with the other timeline, I figured you already had plenty on your mind. It was a question of priorities.”

  “Indeed? Are you making command decisions for me now, Colonel?” Forrester had said, an edge to his voice. “What the hell made you think I couldn’t do anything about it?”

  “No offence, sir, but I don’t think you have any idea what you’d be going up against if you took on the Network. You’d be taking on an entrenched clandestine bureaucracy that’s been in operation for years. For centuries. A bureaucracy that has its own hierarchy, its own funds, its own supply and communications network and its own agents, all of which means that it can function completely independent of the agency. And it often does. The agency, on the other hand, cannot function completely independent of the Network, because the Network is an integral part of the agency, infesting it like a cancer. You can never really know for sure who’s in and who’s out.”

  “I could issue an order to scan all personnel,” said Forrester.

  “Yes, sir, you could do that. It would tend to make things a little rough on your new command, but even so, you’d still never get them all. Not by a long shot. There are covert field agents out there, hell, there are entire sections out there that have been operating off the books for years. They’re so deep, nobody knows about ‘em anymore. But the single biggest problem is that you don’t know who they are or where they are, while they know who you are and how to get to you, believe me.”

  “Is that supposed to scare me?” Forrester said, wryly.

  “I don’t think you understand, sir. These people play hardball and if you went up against them, you’d have to throw the book right out the window and play twice as hard and three times as nasty. It would
be a war, sir. And frankly, I think you’d get your ass shot off. “

  “Then you think that I should just look the other way and get on with business; is that it?” said Forrester, in a level tone.

  “I guess it doesn’t matter what I think, sir, because you’re not going to do that, are you?” Steiger had said.

  “No, Colonel, I’m not. I can’t. I’m just not built that way.”

  “Then with your permission, sir, I’d like to take charge of the operation. I know at least a few people in the agency that I could count on and who might just be crazy enough to take on something like this.”

  “No, Colonel,” said Forrester. “I appreciate the offer, but I want you to remain on standby status with Cross and Delaney. With the current crisis, I need my best temporal mission teams available on a moment’s notice. I intend to assemble a special strike force to deal with this so-called Network. It will be composed of former members of the First Division, people I know the Network hasn’t got its hooks into. And most of them have some experience with ‘throwing the book right out the window and playing hardball,’ as you put it. I intend to clean house, Colonel. Make no mistake about it, I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to get the job done. I’m the one running this outfit, not a bunch of underground profiteers and scam artists.”

  “I think you’ll find that they’re a little more than just profiteers and scam artists, sir,” said Steiger. “At least let me help organize the strike force while I remain on standby. I have some idea of what they’ll be going up against. I can point them in the right direction, maybe keep them from making some mistakes. And it might create less friction in the agency if the former senior covert field agent was officially heading up the strike force, rather than having it all be a First Division show.”

  “All right,” said Forrester. “I see your point. But I don’t want you going out on any field operations, is that understood? I need you available, on standby with your team.”