by David Weber
Life wasn’t only about work. Perhaps it was finally time to set duty and honor aside and focus on family.
A knock came from the door.
“Enter.”
The door opened and Anton Silchenko stepped in. Klaus-Wilhelm didn’t like the look on his face at all.
“Sir, sorry to disturb you at this hour.”
“It’s all right.” He stubbed out his cigarette and sat up behind his desk. “What seems to be the problem?”
“We have two unexpected visitors at the main gate. Americans as far as I can tell. Normally I wouldn’t bother you with something like this, but they’re not the usual sort we get.”
“Are they looking to cause trouble?”
“I don’t think so, sir. One of them had a message for you and said you’d want to see him once you received it.”
“Very well. Let’s hear it.”
“The message is actually an object, sir.” Anton reached into his pocket, retrieved a gold and diamond ring, and set it down on the desk blotter.
Klaus-Wilhelm frowned at the instantly familiar object, then picked it up and turned it round between his fingers.
“Interesting.”
“You recognize it, sir?”
“Indeed I do, but this has to be a forgery. I know exactly where the real one is.”
“In that case, shall I have them dismissed?”
“No.” Klaus-Wilhelm set the ring back on the blotter and knit his fingers together. “Have they been searched?”
“Yes, sir.” He pointed to the ring. “That was all they had on them.”
“Nothing else? No papers or passports?”
“No, sir.”
“That seems unusual.”
“My thoughts as well, sir.”
“Search them again, just to be sure, then bring them to the foyer. I’ll call when I’m ready to receive them. Keep them under armed guard at all times.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But before that, check in with the Gräfin. If she’s free, I’d like her to come to my office. If not, I’ll deal with this on my own.”
“Understood, sir. I’ll make sure I’m not intruding.”
Klaus-Wilhelm nodded, and Anton left and closed the door. He picked up the ring again.
“What are you two doing with a forged von Schröder heirloom?” he wondered aloud. He honestly didn’t know what they expected to gain out of this, but they were right that he would want to see them. The heirloom’s history within the von Schröder family wasn’t common knowledge, so it would take a von Schröder or someone very close to the family to understand the ring’s significance.
Were one or both of these men such people? If so, who could they be?
The ring had once been worn by his first wife, Elfriede, and he felt his mind being drawn back to her as he turned the ring over and over in his fingers. She’d passed away over fourteen years ago, but somehow seeing the ring off his second wife’s hand brought back long-forgotten echoes of grief and pain.
The door opened without a knock this time, and Yulia Obolenskaya von Schröder swept inside, looking as beautiful as the day he’d met her in May of 1946, although it was a little difficult to see that tough-as-nails young Ukrainian Insurgent Army major in the elegant German noblewoman of today.
His spearhead had been driving north out of Romania, only a few kilometers into Ukraine, still almost five hundred kilometers from Kiev, and the Ivans had started recovering. They’d been dug in hard, there seemed to be no end to their damned T34 and KV tanks, and the not-too-distant rumble of their artillery had told him it was about to get still uglier, when Майор Obolenskaya turned up at his HQ and insisted on speaking to him. To him—personally. He’d been amused by her demand, at first…but only until he’d actually set eyes on her. She’d been all of nineteen years old and she should have been home worrying about boyfriends. That had been his first thought. Of course, he hadn’t known—then—that she’d been fighting Stalin’s Communists since she was fifteen, but he remembered thinking that not even the baggy uniform could conceal the absurdly young major’s graceful—and shapely—carriage. Yet the fact that she was a beautiful young woman had been the farthest thing possible from her mind. Her hair had been short, the fingernails cut short and square, the strong fingers calloused, the high cheekbones and rich mouth devoid of even a trace of cosmetics, and the only thing she’d been interested in that day had been trading her partisan unit’s ancient Mosin-Nagant rifles for something better.
His staff had tried to shoo her away. The commander of an entire armored corps cutting its way into enemy territory had far too many important things to do than to waste time talking to a single, brash, teenaged female major from a so-called army made up of lunatic Ukrainian nationalists! But something about her had caught him. God only knew what, yet he’d held up a restraining hand at his chief of staff, beckoned her closer, and as he’d found himself listening gravely to her impassioned plea, he’d realized this was no ordinary young woman. He would never forget the way her eyes had glowed as if he’d just crowned her kaiserin when he’d ordered his quartermeister to issue her unit three hundred Gewehr 43 semiautomatic rifles. Or the way those long, calloused fingers had fieldstripped one of them in seconds…or the way she’d zeroed the sights as quickly as any of his own veterans could have done it. She’d been half his age, anything less like his beloved Elfriede would have been impossible to imagine, and yet…and yet…
She’d come into his life at a time when he’d been half a man, a creature of pure duty who’d lost his wife and pushed his only son away to keep him safe. He hadn’t thought himself unhappy…until she’d filled the empty husk of his life with warmth and light and he relearned through her what it meant to be a complete person once more. And now, as she stepped into his office, he marveled yet again at the way the brunette hair flowed down either side of her strong, oval face. At the proud lift of her head, the sky-blue eyes under the birdwing eyebrows that produced a regal air that belied her youth. She might be two decades his junior but she possessed a strength of will equal in every way to his own…and he had no idea how his own heart leapt into his eyes whenever she entered a room.
He rose from his seat and smiled warmly, holding out his hand to her.
“You wanted to see me, kohanij?” she said, squeezing his hand as he kissed her cheek.
“Yes, Liebling.” He gave her fingers a quick answering squeeze—feeling their softness, remembering those warrior’s callouses—and then released her hand and held out the ring. “Would you take a look at this?”
Yulia tilted her head to one side, then took it and held it next to the ring on her finger.
“Where did you get this?” she asked. “It’s the same as mine. Are there two of them?”
“No. Only one was ever made. This must be a forgery.”
“If so, it’s a very good one. I can hardly tell the difference.”
She held both up for him to compare under the light, and he too had trouble finding any fault in the forgery. The diamonds in the new ring shone even more brilliantly than the real one, but that might have been a result of the gems being cleaned recently. He did notice very subtle differences in the smoothness of the setting. The forgery possessed a few wear marks Yulia’s ring didn’t have and had been adjusted for a different-sized finger, but other than those few discrepancies, they were identical.
“Someone showed up at the gate with this,” Klaus-Wilhelm said. “I’m having them brought in to see what this is about. Are the girls in the north wing?”
“They should be.”
“Go get them. Take them to the safe room.”
Those brilliant blue eyes narrowed suddenly, and Майор Obolenskaya looked out of them at him.
“Are you expecting trouble?” she asked quietly.
“I’m not sure, and I’m not about to take chances. Go get them. And tell Misha I said no one gets near any of you until I tell him differently.”
“All right.” She leane
d up and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll see to it.”
“Thank you.”
She left, and Klaus-Wilhelm opened the right-hand drawer in his desk. He took out the gunbelt, buckled it around his waist, drew the engraved, presentation Smith & Wesson Model 29, and loaded six .44 Magnum cartridges. Then he reholstered it and shrugged, settling his unbuttoned jacket around its undeniable bulk. The weapon had been introduced by the American gunmaker only two years earlier, and this one had been a gift from General Ernest Harmon. He and the American had become firm friends at the 1949 Berlin Conference where the Western Alliance and its new transpacific allies had met to coordinate Operation Oz with the brutal campaign on the Eastern Front, and they’d remained close since. Some of his fellow Germans would no doubt pooh-pooh the huge revolver with its five-inch barrel as typical American overcompensation, but it fit Klaus-Wilhelm’s hand perfectly.
And whatever he hit with that gun was going to die…which was just the way he liked it.
He picked up the phone and dialed the foyer.
“Yes, sir?” Anton answered.
“Bring them up here.”
*
“Both the professor and Doctor Schröder are inside,” James Noxon stated, watching the feed from the lone Scarab reconnaissance drone. They’d deployed only one drone, both to reduce the chances of detection and because they’d been almost certain where Kaminski was heading.
And they’d been right.
“Recommendations?” Jonas asked, standing near the front of the bridge with Earth’s gravity pulling them down for a change.
“I’ll lead our operator team in an assault on the residence,” Nox said. “We’ll take both men out before anyone knows we’re there.”
“Or we could just charge in with two chronoports and level the place,” Jonas countered.
“The chronoports aren’t expendable.”
And I swore to your father you’d come back from this alive, Nox thought. I’m not about to fail again.
“You’re not expendable, either,” Jonas countered.
“We don’t know where the TTV is. It’s too risky.”
“Forget it. I’m not sending you and the operators in unsupported. I’ve seen firsthand what that ship’s weapons do to people. It’ll tear you to ribbons and then mulch the ribbons for good measure.”
“It won’t get me.”
“I said forget it,” Jonas said, almost shouting now.
“As you say, Director,” Nox replied with deadpan calm.
Jonas sighed. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.
“We’re three hundred kilometers back from the residence. It’ll take too much time for us to reach you if it falls into the crapper and the TTV attacks.”
“Then what are your orders?”
“We’ll send a Cutlass in first like you suggested.” Jonas looked up, pondered the map for a moment, then drew a line north of the residence. “But the chronoports will sweep in behind to here. We go in low and quiet. We should be far enough back to avoid being noticed but close enough if you and the operators need assistance.”
Nox nodded. The staging point looked far enough away from the action to him.
“In that case, I’d like your permission to transfer into my combat frame.”
“Granted. Load up, Nox.”
“Sir.” He turned away and walked to the bridge exit.
“And Nox?” Jonas asked, never turning from the map.
“Yes?” He looked back at the son he’d been placed on this ship to protect.
“Don’t do anything stupid out there.”
He couldn’t think of anything worth saying to that, so he turned again and strode to the back of the ship, then took a ladder down to where eleven special operators were gearing up for combat with variskin armor, rail-rifles, and guided grenades. Two of them ran final diagnostics on the combat drones.
They stopped what they were doing and waited for him to speak.
He walked past them to a black endoskeleton cocooned against the wall by malmetal bands and festooned with weapons: right-arm heavy rail-rifle; left-arm incinerator; shoulder-mounted grenade launcher; dynamic malmetal armor; full variskin coverage; maneuvering boosters in the legs, shoulders, and hands; and a full suite of active and passive scopes. The operators had already loaded Pathfinder-6’s backup chronoton telegraph into the frame, which was standard procedure for DTI ground missions.
He looked upon the smooth, eyeless head. The combat frame represented the pinnacle of Admin ground combat for something the size of a human. He’d been one of the first volunteers to inhabit these killing machines, and he had hundreds of successful sorties to his credit.
“Put me in,” he ordered, and took off his jacket.
The operators cut through a thin seam in his artificial skin shaped like a U halfway down his back and peeled it up to reveal the access slot to his case. He sent the release code, and they pulled the unlocked case from his spine.
The world vanished, replaced with simple shifting patterns of color and almost musical background sounds designed to prevent sensory deprivation should his connectome be kept in this state too long.
The loading VR vanished after only a few seconds, and he didn’t have to open his eyes.
He didn’t have any.
The room, the eleven operators, and the vacant shell of his synthoid body formed around him as intricate constructs of visual light, infrared, ultraviolet, sonar, and radar. He wasn’t human anymore, but an amalgamation of weapons, armor, and technology. He didn’t look human, didn’t feel human.
And he had no desire to be human.
Not anymore.
*
Anton Silchenko led Benjamin and Raibert across a gold-accented foyer lit by crystal chandeliers hanging from a high, vaulted ceiling, then up a grand flight of red-carpeted stairs to a second-story balcony that branched off toward the three wings. The second story of the Provisional Residence was over twice as tall as the first story, allowing for truly expansive interiors designed to impress visitors with their scope and grandeur, while rooms in the lower floor served more mundane functions.
Two men from the security detail followed them with machine pistols at the ready.
Benjamin wondered if his father was somewhere in the residence that very moment. He did some quick math in his head and figured Klaus Schröder would be about seventeen in this part of the timeline. Klaus had visited Klaus-Wilhelm in the Ukraine toward the latter part of his governorship, after the worst of the partisan attacks had died down, but he’d spent most of his time in the US, so Benjamin didn’t think he was likely to run into him.
Which suited him just fine, because he had enough to deal with right now without throwing a teenage version of his own father into the mix.
“More guns,” Raibert muttered under his breath. “Why does everyone we meet want to point a gun at me?”
“Calm down,” Benjamin whispered back. “This is what we wanted.”
“I am calm. Just frustrated, is all.”
They took a right into the east wing where cooler colors replaced the warm reds and golds of the foyer. Swirls of light and dark blues climbed the walls and rich purples spiraled across the floor.
“Well, we’re getting that audience,” the synthoid whispered. “What’s your next move?”
“Just leave it to me. I’ve got this under control.”
Raibert glanced back at the soldiers. While not technically holding them at gunpoint, they were still holding guns.
“Sure, you do.”
“You trust me, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Anton led them down a hallway taller than it was wide with walls covered in paintings of wild animals and scenic vistas. The seasons changed as they walked by, ending in desolate paintings of Ukrainian winter directly outside a thick oak door.
Anton knocked.
“Enter,” came a muffled voice.
“The governor will see you now.” Anton opened the do
or and beckoned them to come in.
Benjamin walked into a rectangular office, small but expensively furnished, and met his grandfather’s eyes. He was tall and broad shouldered like most Schröder men, with a buzz of blonde hair and gray eyes that he would someday use to skewer grandchildren when they lied.
But this was no withering patriarch of the family with sunken cheeks and failing vision. His back was strong, his muscles firm, and his gaze unwavering. Deep inside, Benjamin had still expected the loving grandfather who would regale him with stories of familial pride, but instead he found a towering figure with ten times the presence.
Klaus-Wilhelm grimaced ever so slightly at Benjamin.
He sees the family resemblance, Benjamin thought. Well, of course he does. He’s tough and smart. I’d expect nothing less.
Klaus-Wilhelm held up the ring. “Which one of you brought this?” he asked in English.
“I did, sir,” Benjamin said, almost instinctively standing a little straighter.
“You have some explaining to do.”
“Yes, sir. I do.”
Klaus-Wilhelm nodded at the direct, respectful tone. It had worked well for Benjamin when he’d been a kid currying favor, and it was working right now.
“Well, then. Let’s hear it.”
“Sir. First let me say that while you don’t know me, I do know you.”
“A lot of people can lay claim to that.”
“Not the way I can,” Benjamin continued. “I know you on a personal level for reasons you may already suspect.”
Klaus-Wilhelm’s jaw tightened at the remark.
“I also know that you are a man who does not tolerate obfuscation. You respect truth and directness, and so that’s exactly what I’m going to give you.”
He took one step forward and spoke in a clear voice.
“My name is Benjamin Schröder. I am your grandson from the year 2018 and I have traveled back in time because I need your help to save the universe.”
