by Simon Hawke
“Understood, sir. May I have your security detail take me into custody now for immediate scanning?”
Forrester frowned. “What for?”
“I want to have myself scanned so that you can be absolutely certain that I’m not involved with the Network. And I’d like to be taken into custody at once so that you’d be certain I’d have no time to warn them if I were,” said Steiger.
Forrester shook his head. “That won’t be necessary, Colonel. I’d be a damned sorry commanding officer if I couldn’t pick an exec that I knew I could trust. “
“I appreciate that, sir,” said Steiger, “but just the same, I’d like to insist. I want to be able to say that I did it, that I didn’t get any preferential treatment, that I got on the machines and passed. I can’t expect to ask anybody else to do it if I don’t.”
“I see,” said Forrester, nodding. He summoned his security detail. “Sergeant, place Col. Steiger under arrest.”
Finn and Andre hadn’t seen much of him since he’d taken command of the Internal Security Division, but they had sure heard a lot about him. In a matter of weeks, Steiger had organized the I.S.D., composed largely of handpicked commandos from the First Division, some headbusters borrowed from the M.P.‘s and a few trusted T.I.A. agents. He had whipped them into shape as a tight, well co-ordinated unit and brought down twenty-seven section chiefs who were functioning as cell commanders in the Network. Steiger had hit hard and fast and he had made his presence known. He, along with Forrester, was a marked man now.
“Creed, what’s going on?” said Finn.
“I don’t know,” said Steiger. “I only just got here. I got the call a few minutes ago and hurried right up.”
“The general will see you now,” the sergeant of the guard said, beckoning them to follow him. He conducted them down the hall to Forrester’s private quarters, then left them. Forrester was waiting for them, fully dressed in his black base fatigues. It was three o’clock in the morning and he looked wide awake.
“At ease,” said Forrester, tensely. “Bar’s open. Delaney, do the honors.”
They exchanged quick glances, then Delaney went over to the bar and poured a couple of neat Scotches for Andre and Creed, and an Irish for himself. He saw that Forrester already had a glass on the end table.
“To those who fell,” said Forrester, after they all had their drinks. They all stiffened slightly, then tossed back their drinks, emptying their glasses. Forrester sighed. “Your brother’s dead, Creed,” he said, flatly.
Steiger paled. “Sandy?” He blinked twice, his breath caught and then he swallowed hard and stiffened, getting control of himself. “How did it happen?” he said, softly.
“Sit down,” Forrester said. They all sat. Forrester took a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Steiger. “That is your brother’s handwriting, isn’t it?” he said.
Steiger unfolded the paper and glanced at the shorthand notation. He nodded.
“Read it out loud,” said Forrester.
“Field Observer Report, Cpl. Steiger, A.P.T.O. #617079972, Post 17-259. 29 April 1702, 1930 hours, Post Headquarters.” Steiger took a deep breath, cleared his throat and continued. “At approximately 1800 hours, encountered Dr. Lemuel Gulliver in the company of Mr. Jonathan Swift at Pontack’s eating house in Abchurch Lane.”
Delaney frowned. “What were those names again?” he said.
“As you were, Delaney,” Forrester said. “Hold the thought.” He turned to Steiger. “Go on. “
“Dr. Gulliver claimed to be the sole survivor of a ship-wreck,” Steiger read, “the Antelope, under Capt. William Prichard, reportedly lost at sea somewhere off Van Diemen’s Land. The man was in a state of near nervous collapse. He had been drinking heavily, but his report of encountering miniature people, approximately six inches in height—”
“What?” said Andre.
Forrester silenced her with a look. Steiger continued.
“... approximately six inches in height, created quite a stir. Most people hearing this reacted as if he were demented, but certain elements of his fascinating story drew this particular observer’s attention. Dr. Gulliver described, in great detail, some of the weapons used by these little people, or lilliputians, as his companion, Mr. Swift, referred to them. From the lucid description of these miniature weapons and their function, they were unquestionably miniature lasers and autopulsers. “
Steiger stopped for a moment and glanced up at Forrester with astonishment, then continued reading the report.
“From the description of their uniforms and tactics, these so-called ‘Lilliputians’ sounded exactly like modem commandos, only on an incredible, miniature scale. The story sounds unbelievable, until one asks himself how a man of Gulliver’s time could possibly imagine weapons such as lasers and autopulsers and describe their function in such accurate detail, right down to reporting the extremely high-pitched, staccato, whooping sound made by a cycling autopulser the extremely high pitch possibly accounted for by the scale of the weapon. Taking into account the fantastic genetically engineered creatures from the alternate timeline previously encountered by temporal adjustment agents on—”
The expression on Steiger’s face abruptly changed.
“What is it?” Andre said.
Steiger looked up. “It stops there.” He glanced at Forrester. “Do we have a confirmation on this?”
Forrester nodded. “Your brother was very thorough in noting the time and the location. I had an S & R team clock back. I took special care to instruct them not to risk arriving any earlier than an hour after the stated time in the report. You understand, of course.”
Steiger nodded.
“Search and Retrieve clocked back with your brother’s body about half an hour ago,” said Forrester. “We have full confirmation…
“I’d like to see him, sir.”
“I’m told he looks pretty bad, Creed,” said Forrester.
“I don’t give a damn. Sir.”
Forrester nodded. “I understand. But you’re to report directly back here when you’re through. I have a security detail standing by to escort you. “
“I don’t need a goddamn—”
“As you were, Colonel,” Forrester said, quietly, and Steiger immediately shut up. “I’m not insensitive to your feelings at the moment. However, there have been threats against your life and you are understandably distracted. You will accompany the detail and return here when you’re through. Is that clear?”
Steiger licked his lips and took a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. You are dismissed.”
Steiger stood, snapped to attention and saluted smartly. As he turned to leave, Forrester stopped him.
“Creed?”
“Sir?”
“I’m sorry as hell, my friend.”
Steiger grimaced and nodded curtly. “Thank you, sir.”
As he left, Delaney said, “I think I’d like another drink, sir.”
Forrester nodded. “Get me one, too,” he said.
“What killed him, sir?” asked Andre.
Forrester hesitated. “Laser rifles,” he said, softly. “Miniature laser rifles.”
Chapter 2
It was Sandy. There was no question of it, though there was not much left of him to recognize. His body looked as if a dozen psychopathic surgeons had been at work on it with laser scalpels. Sandy had fought before he died. He had fought hard, but it hadn’t helped him any. Steiger turned away, struggling to control his emotions. Sandy had been all the family he had left. The white-coated pathologist slid the long drawer holding Sandy’s body back into the freezer.
Steiger blamed himself. When they were children. Sandy had always been the weaker one, smaller and more delicate. He was much more sensitive to things and much less aggressive. He had always been more naturally empathic and more thoughtful than his older brother. His strengths, Creed knew, lay in different areas than his own, but unfortunately, that was something that their father
never understood. Victor Steiger had been a lumbering ox of a man, with all the inner sensitivity of a tree trunk. He had valued Creed’s obvious gifts over Sandy’s more subtle ones. Consequently, Creed was always held up as a model to his younger brother and Sandy was often mercilessly taunted by their father for not being able to match Creed’s athletic abilities. Privately, Creed always sought to reassure his younger brother, trying to minimize the harm caused by their father’s scorn of him, but the damage had been irrevocable. Sandy had always felt, deep down inside, that he simply didn’t measure up.
Creed had been against his entering the service. Not because he didn’t think that Sandy would make a good soldier, but because he knew that making a soldier out of Sandy would be like trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole. A scientist, perhaps, or better still, an artist; some sort of creative profession would have suited Sandy perfectly and given him more joy, but Sandy had insisted on following in his older brother’s footsteps. It was as if the shade of their dead father still loomed over them and Sandy felt he had to prove that he could measure up. And now he was dead.
Steiger shut his eyes and struggled to get his emotions back under control. If only he could travel back through time and change things, save his brother’s life or get to him even earlier, when he was still only a small boy, and explain to him that those things which their father saw as weaknesses were not weaknesses at all, but simply different strengths their father couldn’t recognize for what they were. If only be had known then what he knew now, he could have done ever so much more than merely reassure his younger brother each time he failed to live up to their father’s expectations.
And the hardest part of it all was knowing that he had the ability to do just that—he had the ability to travel back in time. But he would not. He could not. Something like that was against all regulations and for damned good reasons. It was far too dangerous. There was no telling what could happen if you went back into the past and confronted your own relatives or even yourself when you were younger. To do that meant to risk creating a temporal paradox, one that might not be severe enough to split the timeline, but one that could create profound changes in your own life, changes that would be completely unpredictable, changes that could set off a chain of circumstances that would lead to even greater temporal contamination. .
“Come on,” Steiger said to his security escort, two armed M.P.’s who had been waiting at a respectful distance while he viewed his brother’s remains. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
As the M.P.‘s turned to go out through the doors, Steiger beard several sharp, rapid, chuffing sounds and something whizzed past his left ear. The bullet took one of the M.P.‘s in the back of the head and exited through his forehead, splattering brains, blood and bone fragments all over the door. As Steiger threw himself to one side and clawed for his sidearm, he felt the second bullet graze the lower part of his lat muscle on the left side. The second M.P. went down before his weapon had a chance to clear its holster. Steiger rolled and fired. The low intensity plasma charge struck the pathologist in the chest, burned a fist-sized hole right through him and dissipated on the wall behind him in a brief, incandescent burst of flame and smoke.
Steiger slowly got to his feet and winced with pain. He was bleeding from the side. He ripped open his shirt and checked the wound. Luckily, it was only superficial. The amount of blood always made a flesh wound look much worse than it really was. The M.P.‘s, unfortunately, hadn’t been so lucky. Both of them were dead.
“Damn!” Steiger swore through clenched teeth.
A young doctor dressed in surgical greens came through the door abruptly. Steiger, his nerves ragged, almost shot him.
“What the hell …” the doctor’s eyes grew wide at the sight of Steiger’s plasma pistol, then he saw the dead bodies on the floor. “Oh, my God!”
“Who’re you?” said Steiger.
“What happened here?”
“Answer my damn question!”
“I … I’m Dr. Philip Torvalt, pathology resident.”
“You know that man?” Steiger asked the young doctor, indicating the dead assailant in the lab coat. “He one of your people?”
Torvalt glanced again at the slain M.P.’s, then approached the assassin’s corpse, glanced down at him, swallowed hard and shook his head. “No. No, I’ve never seen this man before.” He looked back up at Steiger. “What the hell happened here? I was … Colonel, you’re wounded!”
“It’s only a scratch.” Steiger glanced down at the two dead M.P.‘s, his lips compressed onto a thin line. “They got the worst of it.”
“You’re bleeding profusely,” Torvalt said, frowning. “You’d better let me see that. It could be serious. I’ve never seen a laser wound that didn’t cauterize.”
“It wasn’t a laser,” Steiger said. “Bring me that man’s weapon.”
Dr. Torvalt started to reach for the pistol, then hesitated. “Should I be touching this?”
“Why not?”
“Well… I don’t know, I mean... it’s evidence, isn’t it?”
“Were you planning on arresting him? Come on, snap out of it, Doctor. You act as if you’ve never seen a dead body before. What the hell kind of a pathologist are you?”
“There’s no need to be sarcastic, Colonel,” Torvalt said, stiffly. He wrenched the pistol loose from the dead man’s grip. “After all, it isn’t every day I walk into the middle of a war.”
“War?” Steiger snorted. “Hell, this wasn’t a war, Doctor. This wasn’t even a small skirmish. This was merely murder.”
“Merely?” said the doctor.
Steiger winced. “Sorry. I tend to get a little testy when people try to kill me.”
“Here.” Torvalt handed Steiger the gun, handling it gingerly.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Steiger, examining it.
“What kind of weapon is that?” Torvalt said, fascinated in spite of himself. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“That’s because it’s a bit before your time, Doctor. It’s a true collector’s item. A Semiautomatic lead projectile pistol fitted with a custom silencer. A 10-mm Colt Delta Elite, circa the late 20th century…”
“The 20th century?” said Torvalt, with astonishment. Alarmed faces were looking in through the windows in the doors. Several hospital staff people started to come in.
“Stay out!” snapped Steiger. They quickly backed out once again. “Doctor, I want this place secured. I’ll have I.S.D. co-ordinate with you. Get those men up off the floor and then I want a full workup on that one,” he pointed at the assailant’s corpse. “Retinal patterns, finger and palm prints, dental analysis, genetic mapping, the works. I want to know who he was before the night is out.”
“Colonel, that’s impossible! There’s no way I can do all that in—”
“Then get someone who can. This is top priority. I’m holding you personally responsible.”
There was a knock at the door.
“What is it? Steiger shouted, angrily.
“I.S.D., Colonel.”
“That you, Danelli?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Come on in. “
Three commandos in black base fatigues entered, their sidearms held ready. Steiger recognized them and lowered his pistol.
“You all right, sir?” Sgt. Danelli said, holstering his pistol.
“Yeah. You got here quick.”
“Responding to a report of a dead body, sir. One of the hospital cleaning staff found one of the doctors murdered.” He bent down and pulled the nametag off the dead man’s Jab coat. “Now we know why. What are your orders, sir?”
“First of all, get some more people down here and secure the area.” Steiger winced, holding his arm up as Torvalt staunched the flow of blood and examined the wound. “Nobody comes in, nobody leaves. Nobody goes off duty. I want all hospital personnel questioned. Everybody. We probably won’t learn anything, but do it anyway. Delegate someone to take charge of that. I
want you personally to get on the horn right now and call the old man. Alert his security detail, tell him we’ve got two men down, both dead, and I’ve got a superficial flesh wound. Pure dumb luck. The hitter was a pro. It was the Network, no doubt about it. Find out how many people knew about my brother’s body being brought in. Then get on to the S & R team that actually brought him in. I want to know how that hitter knew to be here. Then have someone call Archives Section and tell them to stand by for a download. Dr. Torvalt here is going to feed them everything they need for an ID check on the hitter. I want to know who the son of a bitch was. You got all that?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Right. Go to it.” Steiger winced again as Torvalt probed the wound. “Christ! You having fun, Doctor?”
“Sony, colonel,” Torvalt said. “It’s just that I’ve never seen a wound like this before. I wanted to make certain that there were no lead projectile fragments remaining in the wound. There could be a danger of lead poisoning—”
Steiger laughed. “Hell, Doc, if that had been a fragmentation round, I wouldn’t be sitting here. The bullet went clean through. Just spray on some disinfectant, slap a graft patch on and let me out of here. I’ve got work to do.”
Forrester glanced at the nervous-looking man who’d just entered the room. “With the security situation the way it is, I wanted Dr. Gulliver close by, where I could personally keep an eye on him.”
“Forgive me, gentlemen,” Gulliver said, hesitantly. “I did not mean to intrude, but I …” he stared at Andre. “Good Lord! You’re a woman!”
“I was last time I checked,” said Andre.
Gulliver turned to Forrester with a befuddled look. “But… a female military officer?”
And as he turned, he noticed the far wall of Forrester’s penthouse quarters. The entire wall was a window looking out over the lights and illuminated towers of Pendleton Base sprawled out below, a panoramic view that even included the sulpherous glow of Los Angeles off in the distance, to the north, Gulliver gasped.
