Tempus: The Phoenix Man

by Matt Hilton

  The big man was spurting blood with each step. The more he panicked, the faster his heartbeat, the quicker the blood pulsed from his wounds. Rembrandt went after him, the big man now backpedalling. His back hit the partly open door, slamming it shut.

  He kicked at Rembrandt, hoping to force him away with his heavy boots. Rembrandt slashed at the limb. The shard scored the armour plating, but came close enough to the flesh of Granger’s calf that the big man shied away and tried to escape across the room.

  He got both hands on the sideboard and heaved it off the floor. He swung it over his head and then forward. Slick with his blood, he couldn’t control the sideboard fully, and it spun from his grip, and crashed down feet away from its intended target. A ribbon of scarlet also splattered on the floor. In desperation Granger swung a boot at Rembrandt’s thighs, hoping to cut his feet from under him. Rembrandt dodged sideways. He swiped at Granger’s face. And the shard broke into glistening slivers against his helmet’s visor. Granger didn’t see this as a victory, only a momentary respite from further injury. He charged away from his tormentor, heading for the exit.

  In Rembrandt’s hand he still clutched one slice of ceramic. It had cut into his palm and was slick with blood, but he didn’t relinquish it. He didn’t go after Granger, but ducked towards the other giant. He snicked the leather strap apart and lifted the freed truncheon in his left hand. Then he went after Granger.

  The big man struggled with the doorknob. His blood made it slippy and he could get no purchase on it. Rembrandt leapt at him, bringing the truncheon down in an overhead arc. The truncheon struck the helmet with a ringing echo and Granger almost folded beneath the force. Still, the steel had saved his skull, if not fully from the concussion of the blow, and he battered backwards with an elbow. He struck Rembrandt in the upper chest. Had the point of his elbow struck flush, he would most likely have smashed Rembrandt’s sternum, but it was with the flat of the elbow and his triceps. Nevertheless the blow was powerful and knocked Rembrandt back, gasping for breath. Granger spun, throwing a punch that would fell a horse.

  He was out of range, and Rembrandt wasn’t threatened by the punch. But at the last second he understood that Granger could be sneaky too. The big man unfurled his hand and flicked a palmful of pooled blood into Rembrandt’s face. Blood went into his eyes and mouth and instinct turned him away, while he pawed at the offensive liquid to clear his vision. In that moment Granger could have followed and smashed him to the ground, but the giant was more concerned with self-preservation. He grasped at the knob once more and hauled open the door. He stepped backwards through it and into the hallway.

  Rembrandt dashed his vision clear, spat a mixture of Granger’s and his blood out and then charged. The big man braced himself, but it wasn’t enough to halt Rembrandt who tackled him around the waist and powered him backwards. Rembrandt still held the truncheon and he fed it around Granger’s lower spine and grasped it with his opposite hand. The added leverage forced Granger all the way across the hall and they collided with the elevator doors. A shudder went through Granger as his combined weight worked against the truncheon and the single vertebra it was wedged against. The giant let out a groan as pain flared up his spine to the nape of his neck. Rembrandt drove in again, yanking back on the truncheon. Granger clubbed down at Rembrandt’s back, but the man was relentless. He threw his shoulders into Granger’s chest, again and again, as he timed a corresponding yank on the truncheon. Granger’s legs began to give out. They slipped and skidded on the floor, aided now by the pooling blood.

  He tried to force Rembrandt away. He punched at Rembrandt’s head and shoulders. His right hand was so weak he could barely make a fist. His left hand now slapped as often as it struck with any force. Suddenly Rembrandt relaxed his grip slightly, but only so that he could slip the truncheon below Granger’s hips. When he yanked this time, the length of wood dug deeply into the backs of the giant’s knees and Rembrandt hauled him fully off his feet and dumped him on his back against the elevator doors.

  Weakened by blood loss and pain, the big man lay there gasping. Life was yet in him though, and self-preservation an issue. He struggled to sit up. If he could get one hand on Rembrandt’s throat it would be all he required to throttle the smaller man to death.

  Rembrandt had other ideas. He stepped back, avoiding the feeble swipe of Granger’s fingers. Then he lurched in again and whacked the truncheon across the Plexiglass visor. The visor shattered, some of the shards driven into Granger’s face. The big man cried out. Rembrandt angled the truncheon, taking it in both hands, one clasped directly above the other, six inches of wood protruding, and drove in as though with a short spear.

  The truncheon found Granger’s open mouth, his soft palate. The tapered tip of the truncheon was blunt when compared to a spear, but still pointed enough to drive through the delicate tissue forming Granger’s palate and throat. Rembrandt levered up and down on the opposite end of the shaft, while Granger attempted to scream around the obstruction. Only when the giant fell silent did Rembrandt relent. He slowly withdrew the truncheon. It glistened with blood and saliva. Rembrandt stood poised to strike again, but Granger was dying. Blood bubbled in his damaged throat, popped in his open mouth. His eyes rolled up into their sockets.

  ‘I always preferred it when you kept your mouth shut,’ Rembrandt said to the unresponsive man. ‘Now I’m happy that you didn’t.’

  Though it had proved an effective weapon, Rembrandt released the truncheon. It clattered on the floor next to the dead man. Rembrandt crouched down and riffled through Granger’s pockets. He found a spare box magazine for the Spectra submachine gun. Returning to Semple’s living quarters he found the gun where Granger had dropped it. He slapped the fresh magazine in place, and hit the charging bolt. Then he searched for where he’d dropped his gun. He took a spare mag from his waistband and prepped the weapon. He pushed the handgun into his belt, cradled the Spectra against his chest and went in search of Semple.

  Chapter 41

  April 5th 2018

  Central Command, Tempus Facility

  There was a tremor in the floor and walls. It had begun as a subtle vibration, barely detectable through the soles of shoes, but had grown in intensity. A large machine, hidden below decks, would make a boat shudder with a similar rhythm. Loose items on the work counters now jiggled and shook, some of the smallest items bouncing, rolling, and falling to the floor. Computer monitors rattled. An empty cup fell from a desk, shattering and splattering tepid coffee over George Fox’s shoes. The young technician stared up at the satellite feeds, his mouth hanging open to one side, like he’d suffered palsy. He thumbed his spectacles.

  ‘I think that bringing back Semple’s bodyguards might have been a bad idea, Sir,’ he said.

  A blot was building on the screens, this one less than fifty miles south of the bunker’s Peak District location. It was growing with the same terrifying speed of the larger wave of destruction storming towards them from the north. By the rate of momentum, both anomalies would converge within miles of the bunker in a very short time. Earlier Fox had approximated a four-hour window of opportunity to escape the Tempus facility, but he’d woefully underestimated the force and destructive nature they faced. Although the external symptoms were horrifying enough, none of them had given much thought to the subterranean effects. The tremors were a sign that things were about to grow much worse, cataclysmically so.

  There was a sound like a deep-throated groan. The bunker was in its seventh decade, and though it had been built to withstand an overhead nuclear strike, no one had calculated its integrity should the attack come from below. The groan was the super structure moaning in protest at the tectonic forces applied to its lowest levels.

  Tiny spider web cracks began crawling along the ceiling, dust drifting down like the first snow of winter. Metal sheathed in concrete shrieked under pressure, and the walls began to crack open, with gaps wide enough into which a big man could inset his fingers. Somewhere far below them
something exploded, the sharp crack and following rumble carried to the lab via the air-conditioning ducts. The satellite feeds began to break up, the pictures disintegrating one second, back the next, freezing, then stuttering back to life again.

  ‘No one is getting out of here alive. Don’t you see, this is our punishment for playing God!’ Professor Doherty’s exclamation came as a surprise to Coombs. The man had always been philosophical about the nature of interdimensional time travel, and spoke about the subject with a resigned tone. Highly pitched like this, the professor showed he was as much in love with his life as Coombs was with his.

  ‘I’m going. George is coming with me. There’s always a place for you, Prof. If you want it? We only need the good doctor’s hands at the controls. In fact, I’m thinking maybe it’s a good idea if you do accompany us, otherwise I trust Elizabeth might go through with her threat to jump us into the middle of a mountain or the bottom of an ocean.’ Coombs gave Heller a wry smile. ‘See, I’m not sure the doctor has any love for me these days.’

  ‘I never loved you,’ the doctor pointed out. ‘And I regret ever allowing you near me, you coward. I think it’s plain to see what kind of man you are now. In all of this you’ve never mentioned sending for your long-suffering wife. What about trying to save her instead of your own miserable life?’

  Coombs actually laughed at the admonishment. ‘I’ve been trying to find a way of getting rid of her for years without her taking me for half of everything I own; why look a gift horse in the mouth?’

  ‘You truly are a piece of shit, Vincent.’ Heller stabbed at the last few keys required on the computer. ‘There. It’s ready. Are you going or not, Professor Doherty?’

  Doherty shook his head. He was close enough to Doctor Heller to reach across and lay a calming hand on hers. ‘I’m not going anywhere. For one, I don’t think there’s any escape from this thing, and I’d rather die here alongside a friend than these cowards in a strange place.’

  ‘Suit yourself, Prof,’ Coombs said, with a nod towards the flickering video monitors. ‘Be brave and stay here and face that if you wish.’

  Onscreen was a news feed direct from a helicopter crew hovering just beyond the limits of the anomaly thundering towards them from the north. The awe-stricken reporter had little to say that the images couldn’t convey a thousand times clearer.

  Pyroclastic flows of super-heated ash and rock obscured the horizon, backed by a rising cloud as black as the deepest reaches of space. Taller than a mountain range, billowing and boiling, laced by cracks of lightning, it cascaded across the landscape at the rate of a hurtling locomotive. It was like a living and ravenous thing, intent on devouring the world. Unstoppable, it approached, incinerating everything in its path.

  Doherty bunched his fists by his sides.

  ‘We caused this to happen, and now you’re going to run out? I thought a captain was supposed to go down with his sinking ship?’

  ‘That’s the thing, I’m no captain, and I don’t see why I’ve to go down with the mess caused by you scientists. I’m a soldier. Best I do what a soldier does best and goes on fighting for another day. What have I got to look forward to if I stay here? Death? Well, that’s the least of my worries. Tell me what happens even if by some miracle I manage to halt the destruction. I’m strategic military commander of this facility, and it doesn’t matter if it was you, Doctor Heller or Terrence Semple pushing the buttons, I’m the one who’ll be roasted over the coals for it. Why should I face a court martial, lose everything I’ve worked for all these years, when a simple get out presents itself to me? Don’t look at me like that, Prof. We know that Rembrandt’s mission was successful and that he stopped the war in that other dimension. Things are healed there, and the timeline contemporaneous with our own now…except for this. I bet that the other dimension isn’t been torn apart by those bloody breaches we dragged open. I can go there and set up again, take over where things are the same as they were before this damn Tempus experiment began.’

  Doctor Heller gave the man no truck. ‘I repeat what I said before: you’re a bloody coward, Vincent. Always were and always will be.’

  ‘Because I wouldn’t tell my wife I was leaving her for you, or because I’m sensible enough to get the hell out of here while I still have a chance?’

  ‘That’s one thing I wouldn’t change if I had my time over again,’ Heller spat. ‘I’m glad you didn’t have the spine to tell your wife the truth; it showed me what kind of man you really were. Now, if you’re leaving, go now. I can’t bear to look at your sniveling face any longer.’

  ‘So a goodbye kiss is out of the question?’

  ‘Go. Before I do or say something I may later regret.’

  Hovering at Coombs’ side, George Fox gave Heller an apologetic wave. ‘I have so much to do, so many places to see, I can’t let it all end now.’

  ‘A coward’s a coward however you try to hide the fact,’ Heller said.

  ‘Forget her and her snide remarks,’ Coombs told the young tech. ‘She’s only jealous that I chose to take you rather than her.’

  Heller snorted. ‘There’s only one way you could have got me in that chamber and it was through force. I notice that you’ve been waving that gun around, but I know you, Vincent, you haven’t the balls to pull the trigger. How you ever made the rank of major beggar’s belief.’

  ‘I could go on exchanging pleasantries with you forever, Elizabeth, but unfortunately, I think that issue has been taken out of my hands. Come on, George, time we left.’

  Coombs and Fox went through the glass doors into the staging area outside the airlock. ‘Open the hatch, Doctor,’ Coombs called.

  ‘Opening on three…two…one…’ said Heller through the comms-link. True to her word the airlock door cycled, the large wheel rotating and the door hissing open. Coombs smiled back at her through the viewing window, even as he fed his pistol into the pocket of his jacket. There was no safety equipment or oxygen tanks required for this trip. He nodded at George. ‘Ready for the trip of a lifetime?’

  ‘Shitting myself if I’m to be totally honest.’

  ‘Me too, but it has to be preferable to staying here.’

  As if cued by his words, there was another detonation deep in the lab complex. Cracks formed along the viewing window as the floors above and below compressed by a few millimeters. Steam hissed from a vent. Coombs reached for the airlock door, but it began to glide shut smoothly.

  The fine gas sprayed them down.

  Then the second door opened and Coombs was peering into the transvection chamber. It reminded him of looking into the glass tube inside a thermos flask. The cylindrical walls appeared almost fragile, and if not for the fact they in turn were suspended in some sort of gaseous vacuum he feared that they would shatter into fragments the second he stepped inside. He took in a deep breath and moved into the chamber, mindful to stay on the narrow walkway that had no visible means of support. Fox moved in beside him, jostling for room although there was plenty. Behind them the door cycled shut, and the whirr and click of engaging machinery sounded.

  ‘You jump on three…’ Heller said through the intercom. Then, with more of an edge to her voice she added, ‘Any last requests before you go.’

  ‘Please don’t kill us,’ Fox said.

  ‘Don’t worry; I’m a doctor not a murderer. Your fate’s solely of your own making, George.’

  ‘Just hit the goddamn button,’ Coombs told her.

  ‘Gladly,’ she said.

  Light that looked more like streams of liquid on glass rippled the length of the walls. The glare grew in intensity, and then flashed.

  All that Coombs experienced was a momentary sense of disassociation, his body and sentient mind being separate entities in the magnitude of the cosmos. Then he felt a snapping together, and he staggered and almost went to one knee. Instinctively he thrust out a palm, and halted his stumble when it braced against a rough-hewn wall. His first thought was to check that George Fox had made the trip succ
essfully alongside him, and he found the young man standing a few feet away. George had his head tilted up, mouth hanging slightly open. His spectacles had been pushed up on his nose due to his uncomprehending expression. Coombs turned from him to survey his surroundings. There wasn’t much to see. The only light available was from lamps interspersed at distant intervals along a narrow corridor, and they offered dull ochre light at best. But it was enough to show that they were in a subterranean maintenance tunnel, along which wiring and heating ducts covered much of the ceiling. The walls and floor were practically featureless. They were bare concrete, with only a yellow directional arrow painted on the walls every hundred feet. Coombs looked both ways along the tunnel, but neither view offered anything different, apart from the direction of the arrows.

  ‘Where in hell are we?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think that we actually left the Tempus facility,’ Fox offered.

  A dull explosion sounded from behind them. After the reverberation petered out, a warm draught puffed past them, stinking of dust and smoke.

  ‘That bitch! Do you know what she’s done, George? Heller’s sent us into the bloody bowels of the facility. She has trapped us down here to die like rats.’

  ‘Oh my God! What are we going to do, sir?’

  ‘We’re going to find a way out, and when I do, I’ll show that hard-faced bitch if I’m prepared to shoot or not.’ Coombs indicated an arrow. ‘Obviously that’s the way out. All we need do is follow those arrows and we’ll find a route back up top.’