Arc Riders

by David Drake

  Major Carnes looked as though she’d been awake for a week. Her skin was dull and, though she’d never be called hollow-cheeked, her face lacked its normal roundness. Even Barthuli looked worn, to the extent you could tell with Gerd.

  “It’ll take at least an hour to refuel,” Carnes said, nodding toward the ramp. “Want to get out and walk around?”

  Weigand shook his head. “I’ll stick here,” he said. “When I’m operational, I don’t… well, anything else is a distraction. Besides, there’s the suits.”

  In the C-141’s bay, cardboard boxes were stacked and covered by cargo netting on seven wooden pallets. There were also two Conex containers, eight-foot cubes of corrugated steel for secure transport. One Conex contained the team’s displacement suits.

  In a barracks bag under Weigand’s seat was an EMP generator. Weigand had built it before they left Chicago, mostly out of local materials requisitioned from Great Lakes Naval Station. The field expedient was a bulky, ten-kilogram device with its own shoulder stock instead of being a clip-on to other weapons. To power the unit, he’d had to cannibalize the power pack of one of the headbands. The result wasn’t perfect, but Weigand knew he needed a tool that could take out hostiles wearing ARC armor before he got deeper in the danger zone.

  “I’d like to go out also, Pauli,” Barthuli said. “I’ll be interested to see how much the base differs from its status in our timeline. It’s the primary transshipment point feeding the war zone.”

  “Do you have all that information in your little computer?” Carnes said, bobbing a finger toward the bulge in the analyst’s pocket.

  The transport’s bay echoed with the sounds of attendants and their equipment outside. Aground crewman walked past the trio, carrying a flashlight and chattering with animation into a walkie-talkie.

  Weigand wondered if Air Force maintenance standards were collapsing as suddenly as central political control was. The Pacific was a very big ocean. If this plane came down in it, Nan’s team was going to have to seal off the revision without help from Pauli Weigand.

  “No,” Barthuli said to Carnes. “That will have to wait until we rejoin the transportation capsule—or return to ARC Central, of course. But if I don’t gather the information now, it’ll be lost forever.”

  Carnes looked at Weigand and raised her eyebrow in interrogation. Weigand shrugged and made his decision as he spoke: “Sure, go see if you can find a canteen and bring me back something that isn’t emergency rations. And something to drink, a liter if they’ve got it.”

  He flashed Barthuli a smile as hard as that of a statue’s marble lips. “Rebecca,” he said, staring at the analyst. “I want you to have him back here in an hour. If that means you knock him cold and drag the body back, do it. Do you have a problem with those terms?”

  “No,” Carnes said. She glanced at the analyst appraisingly. “I’d already decided I’d do that this time, if it was just Gerd and me alone.”

  “If it’s a choice between you having a physical headache, Gerd,” Weigand said, “and me having a figurative one, I’ll make sure it’s your problem from now until you’re Nan’s responsibility again. Understood?”

  “Perfectly,” Barthuli said. He didn’t appear to be either surprised or upset. He linked arms with Carnes in a mimicking of the gallantry of a past age. Together they left the aircraft. They had to walk with care in cargo bay, because the deck plates were roller-side up for ease in moving containerized cargo.

  The ground crewman was in the front of the aircraft, talking with one of the flight engineers. Outside, a red light threw rotating pulses across the concrete as a truck pumped kerosine into the C-141’s fuel tanks.

  Pauli Weigand had done everything he could do at this moment. When they reached Bien Hoa Airbase, Gerd would locate transportation for the next leg of the journey—either to Hanoi or to Son Tay directly, depending on what was available. Weigand would have the job of getting the team aboard by routing the necessary orders through the communications chain.

  But until then, Weigand had no immediate task. Some people, perhaps most people, would have spent their time worrying about the unguessable future. Weigand simply turned his brain off. He didn’t chat, didn’t play solitaire, didn’t even look out the window when windows were available—which they weren’t on this strictly military transport.

  Weigand remained standing, working out kinks caused by the fold-down seats. Discomfort was a normal part of being an ARC Rider; it didn’t bother him. The danger this time was greater than it would be on a normal operation, but that was merely a difference of degree, not kind.

  What froze Weigand whenever he let himself consider it was the fact that he was in charge of the operation. Putting Weigand in a situation like this was comparable to ordering an arachnophobic to care for a collection of tarantulas.

  But nobody’d ordered anything. Pauli Weigand was here because of fate or luck or God, take your pick. He had to make the decisions because neither of his companions was capable of doing so. He’d sooner have stuck his hand in a fire, but that wasn’t an option. Weigand would carry on until they’d succeeded or they’d rejoined the remainder of the team.

  Or until he was killed, of course.

  It was a good thing for Weigand that he could turn his mind off when he didn’t need to think.

  Acar and a lowboy carrying a large gasoline-powered forklift pulled up at the rear of the aircraft. Five men in Air Force dress uniforms got out of the car. They wore dark blue armbands which Weigand didn’t recognize, and the four enlisted men carried M16 automatic rifles.

  A civilian started the forklift. The uniformed men spoke for a moment to the C-141’s female loadmaster, then walked up the ramp with her.

  Weigand moved aside. The loadmaster gestured to him. The officer, a full colonel, approached Weigand as the riflemen waited watchfully. “May I see your identification, please?” the colonel shouted over the forklift’s snarling clamor.

  Weigand’s face was still, his skin cold. He handed over the leather bifold he’d gotten in Chicago.

  Weigand’s present ID stated that he was operating under the authority of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and that his name and rank were matters of the highest security classification. The ID wasn’t, in fact, of a type in use anywhere within the US establishment, but a query to a governmental database citing the card’s identification number would elicit a supporting response. Institutional secrecy was the imposter’s best defense.

  The colonel peered at the card in the beam of an aluminum flashlight. “Thank you, sir,” he said. His armband had a five-pointed star in a white circle. It wasn’t the regular Military Region 5 insignia. “You have two companions. Where are they now?”

  “You have no right to question me,” Weigand said coldly. The forklift drove up the aircraft’s ramp. Echoes multiplied the already deafening noise.

  The airmen pointed their M16s at Weigand. His acoustic pistol was in the side pocket of his tunic. He’d be better off to chance his strength and speed, but even that was a sure loser. Two of the riflemen were several meters back, far enough that Weigand couldn’t hope to dispose of them by hand before they could fire.

  The loadmaster detached the straps holding the team’s Conex in place. The forklift bounced forward over the rollers and clanged its forks into the grip points welded onto the bottom of the container. The engine revved, spewing dizzyingly thick exhaust fumes.

  Weigand placed his hands on his hips and glared, arms akimbo, at the officer. “Colonel,” he said, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but it’s a bad idea. Trust me. It’s a very bad idea.”

  The colonel grimaced. “Sir,” he said, “I’m carrying out the orders of Lieutenant General Oakley—”

  “The base commander here?” Weigand said, shouting to be heard. The forklift backed away, carrying with it the Conex. “Then he’s out of his mind—and so are you if you take his orders. Our mission and our equipment”—He jerked his chin in the direction of the forklift; tho
ugh Weigand’s body didn’t move, he noticed one of the airmen’s hands twitched on his rifle—“are critical to the war effort.”

  “We understand the significance of what we’re dealing with, sir,” the colonel said. “Believe me, we want to have you on our side. We intend to have you on our side. Come with us, please. You’ll have to come anyway, and it’ll be better afterward if everything stays friendly now. But you’ll have to come.”

  Weigand chuckled. “Yes, of course,” he said. He strode calmly toward the ramp. The nervous airman hopped two steps back, keeping well clear of the grab for his weapon that just might have occurred had the fellow been less alert.

  The team had screwed up, had overegged the pudding. Weigand, the man in charge, had screwed up. By suggesting on the manifest that the team and its hardware were a war-winning top-secret project, they’d aroused the interest of locals who had more immediate needs for weaponry.

  Weigand was sure he could get clear before long, but time suddenly was a factor. As the US establishment fell under the weight of an unwinnable war, it became more and more likely that the collapse would crush the team as well.

  There weren’t going to be many more flights to Southeast Asia. While Weigand didn’t recall the team’s survey of the timeline precisely enough to know what was going to happen to Travis AFB during the spasms of civil war which completed the nation’s destruction, he was sure it wouldn’t be anything good.

  The air outside the cargo bay was hot and dry and thick with the smell of jet fuel being pumped into the C-141’s tanks. The Conex and forklift were being chained into place on the lowboy.

  “If you’ll get into the backseat, please, sir,” the colonel directed. An airman held the door open for Weigand. Another airman got in on the opposite side. They were going to sandwich Weigand in the backseat, making it virtually impossible for him to jump from the car while it was moving.

  “Pauli, we’re auditing the situation,” Gerd Barthuli said through the bone-conduction speaker in Weigand’s headband. “Rebecca has you in sight, and we’ve taken precautions to avoid joining you for the moment.”

  “Gerd, Colonel,” Weigand said sternly as he bent to enter the car. “I want you to know that I expect to be on that aircraft when it leaves here in an hour!”

  “General Oakley will discuss matters with you in detail, sir,” the colonel said. He didn’t sound concerned.

  Before the colonel got into the car’s front seat, he drew a pistol from his belt holster and held it in his lap as he sat down. Whoever these people were, they seemed to be professional enough to be sure Weigand was going wherever they wanted him to go.

  Weigand’s only options were whether he chose to arrive dead or alive. The M16s were too awkward for use inside the vehicle, but the officer’s pistol was not. Weigand didn’t doubt the colonel would shoot him through the front seat if he had to.

  “Pauli, all right,” Barthuli said. “You’re hoping to escape in time to leave on the present flight. We’ll help from this side.”

  Another great transport staggered aloft, the roar of its engines dissipating slowly as it reached for altitude. Weigand wondered if it carried supplies and men to the war zone, like the aircraft his team had arrived on. The partial load on their own C-141 was another sign of how completely war had stripped the US of the matériel necessary to fight.

  The lowboy turned cautiously and drove back down the access road by which it had approached. The colonel nodded; his driver brought the car around to follow. Only one runway was lit, and only occasionally did Weigand see another moving vehicle. Clumps of grass grew through cracks in the asphalt roadway.

  The lowboy turned into the lit interior of a hangar nearly a kilometer from the transport’s berth. The great doors began to slide closed even before the car was fully inside.

  The hangar contained pallets, three light armored cars, and at least a hundred uniformed troops. There were no aircraft. The vehicles and personnel all bore the blue circle-and-star insignia rather than normal US markings.

  The sedan pulled up beside a group of officers, all of them male. In the near distance, a siren howled for a few lonely seconds, then fell silent again. The airman to Weigand’s right got out and ushered Weigand from the car. The colonel remained seated in the front seat, his pistol unobtrusively leveled.

  A fat man wearing a white dress uniform rather than the light blue of Air Force personnel watched troops climb aboard the lowboy. The men carried tools, including a bolt cutter with lever arms nearly a meter long.

  The man in white gestured Weigand to him with a crooked index finger. Other officers watched alertly.

  “You’re one of the specialists from DC, are you?” the fat man said. He turned his head to look directly at Weigand for the first time. “What’s your name, then? Since we’ve got to call you something. I’m Oakley, and I fully intend to be President Oakley before the year’s out. Do you understand?”

  Oakley’s voice was rich and assured. He would have been a powerful speaker in a setting with better acoustics than this echoing hangar.

  “You don’t need to call me anything,” Weigand said flatly. “My business is on the other side of the ocean. It’s your business, too, you know. Everyone’s business.”

  The padlock dropped from the Conex, its hasp severed by the bolt cutter. Troops pulled open the container’s triple doors.

  “I think the Chinks can wait, don’t you?” Oakley said. Both sides of his tunic front were covered with medal ribbons. “We’ll get to them—never fear, we’ll get to them. But the first order of business is to put this country back on a proper footing with a leader who knows how to lead!”

  Oakley’s eyes were gray and as hard as chilled iron. “There’ll be places for all those who help me willingly. Places for you and your friends. Be very clear in your mind, though: you will help me.”

  He smiled. There was nothing amused in the expression. “Or if you manage to die instead, we’ll figure out your secret weapon ourselves. So save yourself a hard time, why don’t you?”

  Men carried the displacement suits from the Conex. Oakley stared at the equipment, his eyes narrowing. “I’ve seen that sort of thing before,” he said. “But where’s the power supply? They are powered, aren’t they? Otherwise…”

  “Pauli,” said Barthuli’s voice in Weigand’s ear, “we’re outside now. Do you have your facemask?”

  “Gerd,” Weigand said, “I have a mask. What kind of transportation do you have?”

  “We can transport them to where they’re needed, if that’s what you mean,” Oakley said, irritated to hear a question rather than an answer to his own query. He didn’t comment on “Gerd.” Weigand needed the syllable to key his transmission to Barthuli.

  “Pauli, the vehicle we have will barely carry the three of us,” Barthuli said. “We’ll have to leave the suits here, out of phase. I’m sorry, but there’s very little time.”

  As if the analyst had to tell him that.

  “I’ll show you how the armor works,” Weigand said, walking toward the lowboy at a steady, purposeful stride. He reached to his headband and pulled the membrane over his face as he moved.

  Gerd and Rebecca must have retrieved the gas gun from the transport. The four rounds remaining in the magazine wouldn’t fill as large an enclosure as this hangar, but it would at least panic Oakley’s men. The effect of the gas would wear off completely in three or four hours, but the people who saw their fellows drop as if poleaxed wouldn’t know that.

  Oakley followed, a step behind. None of the officers surrounding the general had spoken since Weigand arrived.

  “It is powered, then?” Oakley demanded. “The suits aren’t just for protection?” He didn’t appear to have noticed Weigand’s facemask.

  “That’s right,” said Weigand. “There’s no integral weaponry, but the skin’s rigidity permits the user to carry up to about 400 kilos. Hard to balance then, of course.”

  He hopped onto the bed of the lowboy. Oakley grunted. A
brigadier general with iron-gray hair held out his arm as a brace.

  “Pauli, ready,” warned Barthuli’s voice. The hangar lights went out.

  Weigand dropped flat and switched his faceshield to enhanced thermal imaging. He drew the acoustic pistol from his side pocket.

  “Watch the spook!” General Oakley shouted, reaching for his pistol holster. “Don’t let the spook get into his—”

  Weigand shot him point-blank, then shot the brigadier beside Oakley for good measure. They were the only people who’d been watching Weigand at the moment the lights went out.

  One of the technicians on the lowboy switched on a flashlight. Weigand waited till the beam jerked toward the main doors, then shot the airman. The fellow pitched off the trailer as if sandbagged. His light spun to the concrete floor. The filament shattered in a green flash.

  Somebody started the engine of one of the armored cars. The structure was almost as hollow as the body of a drum. Distinct from the shouts and mechanical noises pulsing within, Weigand heard the choonk! of a gas projector.

  “Gas!” he screamed. “Nerve gas!”

  An airman far across the hangar fired an automatic rifle wildly. His bullets disintegrated against the walls in yellow sparks.

  Weigand crawled forward on all fours, staying low to avoid the random projectiles. They’d kill you just as dead as an aimed shot would. The technician carrying the bolt cutter ran into him and pitched screaming the few feet to the floor.

  Weigand reached the nearest suit, opened it, and set the control board on the inside of the backplate. He chose an infinite sequence of seven days out of phase, punctuated by returns to the horizon of three seconds only. He moved to the second suit.

  This location was about the last place Weigand would have chosen to abandon the armor, a busy and technologically advanced portion of the temporal horizon. He didn’t think Oakley’s personnel could accomplish much in the three seconds they’d have to deal with the suits, though. Anyway, it wasn’t as though Weigand had a lot of choice.