The Fourth Rome

by David Drake

  He heard Chun say, “Yes. I’ll be fine, Team Leader.”

  Then Roebeck’s tread shook the decking under him.

  “Let’s get the rest, living and dead.”

  They phased one more time. It better be the last time. Grainger’s hardsuit electronics were getting really balky. When he potentiated the system to return to the logged coordinates, for a minute it seemed like his suit didn’t have a destination logged.

  He was hanging in nothingness. His worst nightmare. He tried to move. Nothing worked. He was imprisoned in that huge hardsuit, nowhere at all. It scared the shit out of him.

  He actually said, “Please, God, no.” Until then, he didn’t think he believed in God. But getting hashed was no way to die.

  God must have heard him. All of a sudden his balky suit popped out of phase right where it should have. Roebeck was lifting Orlov. She hadn’t taken any chances this time. She’d bound Orlov before she tried to move him. The motions she’d made had stayed in the air around her as if she were spinning herself and Orlov an electric blue cocoon.

  “Where were you?”

  “Stuck. Nearly got hashed. I ain’t doin’ but this one more trip without a complete tear-down of this system.”

  “That’s all I ask—just this one more trip,” Roebeck’s voice said, coming from a blue-laced helmet that was all he could see above her static cocoon.

  Then he was alone with poor dead Zotov and Matsak, still frozen in time. He grabbed them both with as few motions as necessary, scooping up the living man atop the dead man in one servo-mechanical embrace.

  Grainger hit the virtual keypad and closed his eyes against the aurora borealis in the conference room, which seemed to be catching on fire.

  When he opened his eyes again, he was standing among nukes with blue fire crawling all over them. Static charges were shooting around like bullets of flame. Sure as shit, if any of those birds had a live triggering mechanism, one or more of those nukes was going to blow.

  “Come on, Grainger. Board! We’ve got to displace now!”

  Roebeck’s command was so urgent he barreled up the ramp without worrying about what would happen if he fell.

  If he fell backward on his ass, or forward on the two unprotected men in his grip, the result would be the same.

  In six steps, he was up the ramp. Roebeck was retracting it before he even got clear. He stumbled, all two ;ons of him. Caught himself with one hand before he crushed Matsak, still alive, into Zotov, already dead.

  He heard the lock close up. Roebeck yelled, “Power down, Grainger, stat! Or you’re not going where we aie. We’ll get you out of the suit later.”

  Damn. He didn’t have time to get out of this suit first. If he shut it down now, he didn’t have enough power left to start it up again on his own. She was the boss. He had to trust her. Dying of asphyxiation in that hardsuit wasn’t his first choice, but it probably beat whatever had started to happen out there when the static charge in the stasis field caught on fire.

  He crouched a long time in darkness, unable to change position, before the other ARC Riders got around to him and gave him some auxiliary juice.

  His systems came back on. He knew he was sweating and shaky. He didn’t want them to see. So when they started to help him, he warned them off. “I got into this suit. I can get out of it. Go torture the prisoners or something.”

  By the time he had his systems running, the other ARC Riders had removed Matsak and Zotov from under him. He tapped into the main data bank and got a fix on FILI at the moment they’d displaced. There was no mushroom cloud. Dumb luck or good work on Roebeck’s part, disarming the FILI nukes, he couldn’t say. Maybe the static fire had dudded out the triggering mechanisms of any live warheads, fried the electronics. There’d been enough charge loose in that nuke storage bay to equal anything an EMP gun could deliver. Who the fuck knew what happened when Roebeck released a stasis field that had been riled up that way? Not him, that was for sure. The only unusual reading he could get from FILI was an elevated hot count from the crushed SS-N-25. You can’t have everything.

  When he’d stashed his gear and changed into standard issue, he went forward. He didn’t ask what they’d done with the live prisoners and Zotov’s body. They were in holding caskets, waiting for drop off in 50K.

  Matsak was sitting in Grainger’s accustomed seat. When the revisionist saw Grainger, he grinned through his beard. “The Tim! Prhyet, tovarisch. Oh, it is well to see you!”

  “What the fuck? We’re letting revisionists ride forward, now?”

  He had his acoustic pistol on his hip in its regular quick-draw holster. The pistol leaped into his hand. He pointed it at Matsak without hesitation. “Up, Matsak. You ride in the back.”

  Matsak’s bearded face fell.

  “No he doesn’t, Tim. Sasha’s going to help us out with a couple problems.”

  “Such as?” Grainger asked through gritted teeth. Sure, Matsak was a good guy. But he’d been on the wrong side. The rules were clear enough. What was Roebeck thinking of? He didn’t take his eyes off the prisoner.

  “Tim, holster your weapon. That’s an order.” Roebeck’s tone was like a backhanded slap. He put the gun away reluctantly. But he didn’t take his eyes off Matsak.

  Then Roebeck said, “Like the nuclear emissions from FILI, for one.”

  “Absolutely,” Matsak agreed, nodding his head vigorously. His burning eyes met Grainger’s. “My poor country needs no more of these … dirty nuclear accidents. In my opinion, I can help arrange a quick and quiet cleanup. The most minimal damages. The least proliferation of sensitive information. This has always been part of my job.”

  “You’re going to let him go?” Grainger was thunderstruck. He looked away at last, to Roebeck at her team leader’s station. The bow screen didn’t show anything. They were hanging out of phase again. Damn, didn’t Roebeck ever get enough? Chun was ready, wands poised, to send them to their next stop.

  “We need to minimize the damage. Control further proliferation of the temporal implant technology. Lots of the technical reports related to this implant weren’t done on computer. They were typed by hand. Chun can’t get to them to destroy them. Every hard copy has got to be tracked down and destroyed. That has to be done by someone who las plausible and continual access to sensitive scientific research files. And we don’t have an agent in place anywhere in the Eastern European theater on this horizon. Chun’s just confirmed that for me. So now we’ve got a volunteer.”

  “Shit, I thought for a minute you’d lost it completely, Roebeck.” Grainger leaned back against the bulkhead. “Yeah, that’ll work. If you trust him.”

  “Trust me?” Matsak grinned slyly. “I am Russian. This is my country you have just been saving. So sorry, Tim, but how can you not trust a man to do what is in his own national interest? There will be many files to destroy. It will take much effort on my part.” Matsak sighed heavily. “I will be very busy.”

  Chun said from the bow, “He’s been giving us a lot of data about Etkin and Orlov. He’ll help with the interrogation. Then we’ll put him back in place on his horizon in time to run the damage control operation for his ministry. Best we can do for those people. Remember, we caused this nuclear accident. It didn’t have to happen this way.”

  It was a good thing that time wasn’t as sensitive to warping from small changes as people of Matsak’s era had thought. You really had to bash the past over the head to get the present to take a different road to a new future. Thank … God.

  “So very sorry, yes. Many will be ill, or be dead. But it is better than the alternative. You know our history, Tim. It must be this way.”

  Grainger shrugged. He still didn’t like it. Matsak had seen too much. He wasn’t even sure if they were empowered to take on locals as agents in place.

  “The Russian people,” Matsak said, sensing Tim’s hesitation, “believe that the Roman Empire gave to the Byzantines, and the Byzantines to the Russians, the secret knowledge of power technologi
es. They are technologies for controlling societies. Not hardware, but those power technologies you have seen for yourself—social technologies. This is why we are called socialists. Our society is a result of those power technologies, applied for many years to innocent people. I cannot be a part of bringing that weight down on Russian heads again. I will work with you because you work for freedom. Freedom is what the Russian people want. Freedom is what they shall have. Remember, Tim, the new is just the—”

  “—well forgotten old. Yeah, Sasha. I remember. Okay. If it matters, you got my vote.” He stood up straight. “Guess I’ll go back and start interrogating our buddies Etkin and Orlov. Who knows how much I can learn before we dump them in 50K?” The technology captured from Etkin was going to be well received by Central. Roebeck would probably get a real enthusiastic “atta-boy” for a mission well done.

  Maybe if the ARC Riders asked Command what to do with the Up The Line revisionist, they’d have been told to bring Etkin to Central. At Central, Command would have squeezed every bit of information about UTL technologies and breakaway factions out of Etkin’s brain. But that decision was way above all their pay grades. Grainger was pretty sure he didn’t want to know any of the details he was about to find out. But his team was charged with taking that information back to Central. When the ARC had that data, this mission was going to be classified out of existence.

  Etkin himself was one problem that Grainger felt perfectly competent to handle. Orlov and his hard-liner friends were only some poor fools who backed the wrong team and were just starting to pay the price. There was no reason not to leave Orlov, Neat, Lipinsky, and the old revisionists to the mercy of 50K’s flora and fauna. However they died, it wouldn’t be worse than being HPM’d and then trapped under a molten filing cabinet in Obninsk. But Etkin was a different animal. A potentially valuable one. Grainger would personally inject a locator into Etkin’s scrotum. Not much chance, in 50K, that Etkin would try digging it out of there. If Command later wanted the revisionist back, all they had to do to retrieve Etkin for further interrogation was follow the bouncing ball.

  He went back to see Etkin in his holding casket. The caskets had clear view windows so that you could check on the prisoners. There was a slot for food and water in case you had them long enough to feed them, and a two-way intercom enabled from outside only.

  Just Etkin’s handsome blond head and neck were visible through the window. The revisionist’s eyes were closed.

  Grainger tapped the intercom. “Privyet, tovarisch.”

  Etkin’s eyes snapped open. “Where’s Orlov?” Etkin demanded.

  Grainger didn’t see a good reason not to tell him. The sooner Etkin understood his situation, the better. Might as well establish what was what. “Next holding casket over. Don’t worry, as soon as we dump you and your Russian revisionist buddies in 50,000 BC, you can all compare notes.”

  “Fuck you,” Etkin snarled, and lunged against the casket window. The revisionist from Up The Line wasn’t much of a threat stripped naked in a casket, but Etkin would figure that out soon enough.

  “Easy there. I just came to see if you’re comfortable.”

  “We’re going to bury you, you know, Grainger! You think you’re civilized. You’re not. You’re primitives playing with toys you don’t understand. We will rise from the ashes of the 20th with an empire that will span the stars. Our Fourth Rome will live! You haven’t the technology, the might, or the brains to stop us. You’re only mongrels, our natural inferiors. We’ll blot you out forever—”

  “Seems to me I’ve heard that kind of talk before.” Grainger interrupted Etkin and toggled off the intercom with a slap at the glass.

  Tim Grainger headed forward without a backward look. Etkin wasn’t ready to be reasonable yet. How come these guys always thought they invented the Superior Race? Among Etkin’s cohorts Up The Line, everybody was probably just as blond and beautiful as he was. But nobody from a superior race was going to be waiting for Etkin where he was going. Grainger would give the revisionist a chance to calm down and try again before he turned Chun and her mind probes loose on him. Chun would extract from Etkin every name and location of Etkin’s revisionist agents, as well as the scope and design of the conspiracy Up The Line. Etkin would name names. Grainger was going to bet Roebeck half his hazard pay that one of those names would be Dr. Bill.

  The ARC Riders would make another pass to pick up the small fry, once the big fish had been delivered to 50K and Etkin had given up whatever secrets he held most dear.

  You had to let Chun verify whatever you were told by a captive. Etkin, like anybody else, couldn’t be trusted to tell the whole truth, even if he swore he was cooperating voluntarily. The ARC Riders had to be thorough. Their mission parameters included apprehending every principal and collaborator involved with this particular bad idea, and dumping the lot in 50K before heading back to ARC Central. Luckily, the pickings were easy when you had a couple of principals who just wouldn’t be able to resist telling you whatever they knew.

  Sasha Matsak met him in the corridor. In the narrow confines, Matsak pulled out a pack of Marlboros. “Cigarette?”

  “Shit, not in here.” He wished he could have one. “Can’t smoke in the TC.” Maybe when they stopped over in 50K, he and Matsak could step outside for a smoke “Sasha, I got a bunch more American cigarettes, and lots of dollars I don’t need. When we drop you back in Moscow, be sure to remind me. You can take them with you.”

  “Spacebo.” Matsak smiled. “Perhaps you will have a chance to see more of my city one day. If not toda y, then when Roebecka comes to pick up the young girl she will adopt. In my opinion, it will take some time to find this girl, but my Ministry will make her a priority. On our side, I understand we must establish that the girl and her mother will die from the radiation … ah … accident. Or verify that the girl has no mother. This is a relatively simple matter. We still have our ways.”

  “You’re kidding me. What girl?” It was out of the question to go around saving innocent indigs, kid or not, about to die or not. What was Roebeck thinking, adopting a Russian kid? Then again, maybe this whole question was above his pay grade. What Roebeck did in her spare time was not his business. “Never mind. Sasha, what do you know about the implant work that Orlov’s scientists were doing? 2x)tov slipped me a sample.” Zotov was dead. He wasn’t betraying a confidence.

  “Oh, well. The implants.” Matsak shrugged. His hand waved as if gesturing with a lit cigarette. “This is … program to save endangered species.”

  “What?”

  “Do not laugh, this is official Academy of Sciences program, funded through Foreign Ministry by KGB. Implant is put into member of species which is in danger of not existing. Specimen is sent … back through time to find others like itself and improve species chance for survival.” Matsak’s eyes were boring into him. “Orlov is such a specimen. The implant in his body will send him back in time to whatever place the operator of the program chooses. This is very secret technology, of course.”

  “Of course. And Zotov and his boys reverse engineered the control mechanism from the crashed capsule at Obninsk, right?”

  “Umm … So sorry, Tim. Not precisely correct. My side has been studying Obninsk artifact for many years without concretne result until Etkin came on the scene. It is under Security Service direction that the Foreign Ministry’s Academy scientists have achieved—had achieved, for now there is nyet program, nyet key scientists left—the ability to send an implanted specimen to the past.”

  “Came on the scene? Are you telling me that Etkin survived the nuclear explosion of the UTL capsule I saw on that tape?” It was possible, if Etkin had been wearing the right hardsuit. The suits on the tape were more like the new exo-suits that the ARC Riders requisitioned at Central than the standard ARC issue. But why hadn’t Etkin displaced back Up The Line? Suit malfunction? Blast damage? Unless Etkin had been in an active bubble or hanging out phase, crippling suit damage was a real possibility anywhere nea
r ground zero. The UTL capsule that had displaced to that Russian town was capturing young adult Russians to implant, probably for the 9 AD operation. … Grainger’s mind was racing, picking up pieces and fitting them into the puzzle. A picture was beginning to emerge. Don ’tjump to conclusions.

  “Tim, I am saying you only what I know for certain. Etkin was no one of importance before the UFO came to Obninsk. After this, he is bolshoi senior official with sweeping powers in Section 6, KGB. Boss of Orlov’s scientists, Lipinsky, many others.”

  Then Grainger finally realized what he had been missing. “Those implants. Just the living organism goes, right? And what he’s physically carrying. If I understand the methodology, you couldn’t carry much, no significant hardware, with you through time that way. So how do you get back? The handheld enabler? Or is the implant a round-trip mechanism, set with some sort of elapsed-time delay. Or what?”

  “You do not.”

  “You do not what?”

  “You do not get back,” Matsak said flatly. He shook his head sadly. “Still you think like an American. The agents in the past—so what if they stay there forever? They are agents. If their mission is in the past, then in the past is where they will be. Ruslde scientists have not yet perfected the travel to the future. Perhaps now, they will not.”

  Grainger was staggered. His mouth was hanging open. He shut it. He leaned back against the bulkhead wall. “My error,” he said with a weak grin. “I forgot this was a Ruslde operation.” It sounded like Etkin had been stranded in Russia, unable to get home in a damaged displacement suit when his temporal capsule was destroyed by a Russian nuke. MIA—Missing in Action. Presumed dead Up The Line. He’d continued his mission from the Russian staging area where he’d become a castaway. “I didn’t really understand what you were trying to tell me until now. So where does Orlov fit in?”

  “It is my fault. So sorry for my poor English. Orlov is next … traveler by implant, yes? He will go—would have gone, since you have interfered—to the past. To wherever Etkin is—was—sending KGB agents.”