by David Weber
The lone rifleman emptied his magazine, slammed in another, and fresh fire pounded the combat frame. None of it missed, but the STAND’s shield shrugged it off, and Nox triggered his incinerator. The tsunami of blue flame enveloped the single defender, and his boosters carried him down the stairs.
*
The safe room door shuddered under the force of some unimaginable blow.
Yulia drew a deep breath and shut out her daughters’ cries. Shut out everything except that door and the weapon in her hands.
It shuddered again. And then it slammed open and a nightmare given physical form stormed through it. She’d never seen—never imagined—anything like that skeletal, metal…shape, but she knew Mikhail Hrytosenki was dead. That was the only way Misha would have let something like that past him with her girls behind him.
And it was the only way it was getting past her, as well.
The heavy, familiar weight of the .45 rose in her hands. Her target was barely five feet away, and she squeezed the trigger.
The combat frame’s head twitched sideways as the first 230-grain jacketed slug smashed into it at 830 feet per second. Seven more followed. They couldn’t penetrate the armored carapace, but two more of Nox’s sensor nodes disappeared. He cursed mentally at the fresh damage and turned toward the source of those slugs.
The woman who’d fired them calmly ejected the empty magazine, slapped in another, let the slide slam forward, and raised the pistol in a two-hand grip.
*
The security force responded to Silchenko’s command. Dispersed teams concentrated on the foyer, dashing through the residence’s smoke-filled corridors with reckless speed. Two three-man fire teams from the East Wing reached the foyer first and raced into the passage.
*
Nox snarled in fury as he realized he’d been wrong. The stupid indigenes hadn’t been protecting the professor after all.
He wheeled, darted back out the broken door, just in time to be greeted by a tornado of rifle fire and the thunder of primitive hand grenades. Some of the rifle slugs evaded his shield and damaged the synthetic muscles in his right leg and the grenades’ blast staggered him, but their fragments bounced uselessly and his rail-rifle swept the stair above him, slaughtering the three men who’d fired at him. He launched a trio of grenades that flew up, past the top of the stair, bounced down the passage and turned the three-man team still racing toward him into bloody bits and pieces of what had once been human beings.
“Sir, the TTV is back! We’re taking fire! We’re—”
The roar of the TTV’s Gatling guns eclipsed the cacophony around him, and operators and their drones vanished from his virtual vision, icons disappearing with the speed of summer lightning. He would have grimaced if he’d still had a face, but instead he boosted up the stairs and went rocketing back the way he’d come.
Riflemen opened fire as he reemerged into the foyer. Their shots ricocheted from his shield, but another Panzerfaust flew toward him. This one smashed squarely into him, and the explosion blew off his incinerator arm and triggered more alerts in his virtual vision. He tumbled sideways, fired boosters to compensate for his spin, and landed with two feet and his remaining hand on the floor. How many heavy weapons did these people have?
Rifle rounds snicked through the air, screaming ricochets bounced off marble walls, and he opened fire with his rail-rifle and charged forward.
The wall to his right exploded inward under the TTV’s fire and he dashed into the midst of the defenders, using them for cover against its guns. He ripped one man’s arm off, grabbed him by the neck, and held him up as an additional makeshift shield as he tore through the others with his rail-rifle.
More soldiers poured into the foyer, and Nox knew he couldn’t kill them all. Not before they killed him. But he didn’t want to. Not anymore. There was only one man he wanted to kill now—only one life that belonged to him—and he would claim it before death took him.
He crushed the windpipe of the corpse he held, threw it at the indigenes charging toward him, then boosted toward the foyer staircase. They must have decoyed him into that basement for a reason, and that meant the governor had to be behind them.
And if that was where the governor was, so was Raibert.
He fired his boosters at full power, soaring over the defenders still funneling into the foyer, and triumph flared within him as his sensors picked the unmistakable signature of an Admin synthoid out of the knot of men headed down the staircase toward him.
*
Raibert saw the combat frame’s trajectory curve, arcing toward him, and raised his right arm. Anti-synthoid rounds erupted from his splayed palm, Benjamin ripped out short bursts from the MP44 one of the fallen guard force would never need again from two stairs above him, Klaus-Wilhelm’s Magnum thundered, and a half dozen of his surviving troopers emptied their MP44s.
Nox staggered under the assault. The anti-synthoid rounds punched holes through his chest armor, ricocheted through internal systems. More fire from behind tore into his weakened rear armor, and more systems blinked abruptly off-line.
His boosters failed. He slammed to the floor, heaved back to his knees, and fired at Raibert. But the rail-rifle’s round only dented the woven prog-steel under the synthoid’s coat, and still more rifle fire ripped into the combat frame.
He collapsed on his face, juddered as he tried to get back up…then lay still.
Klaus-Wilhelm reloaded his empty revolver.
Nox scrolled through his active systems. There weren’t very many of them, but he saw that the chronoton telegraph was still functional.
Good. He could perform one last duty before he died.
He loaded a simple but important text message into the telegraph’s spool, keyed the transmit command.
I’m sorry, sir, he thought as the message pulsed outward through time.
One of his remote sensors had somehow survived, still fed his virtual vision. He watched through it, trapped in the inert prison of his combat frame, as Klaus-Wilhelm von Schröder pushed through the circle of troopers around him. The governor’s face was like hammered iron. He went to one knee beside the frame, and Nox watched him shove the muzzle of that enormous, archaic, primitive revolver into a gash in his armored back.
And then the Provisional Governor of Ukraine squeezed the trigger once…twice…three times—
He emptied the cylinder, and somewhere in the process, one of those massive rounds delivered 1,100 foot-pounds of energy to the combat frame’s brain case and Special Agent James Nox ceased to exist forever.
*
She couldn’t see.
She moaned deep in her throat as she tried to move. She couldn’t. She pushed weakly with her hands, trying to stand—trying at least to crawl—but only her right hand responded and she swallowed a strangled scream as the attempt twisted the shattered vertebrae in her spine.
She tried to call their names, but her voice was too faint for them to hear her over the crackle of flames. She—
“Lie still, Liebling,” a beloved voice said. She’d never heard it sound that way. Never heard it waver, threaten to crack and fail.
“K-Klaus-Wilhelm?” she managed to whisper.
“I’m here, meine Geliebte.”
She felt his hands, felt them lifting her head, resting it in his lap. He was sitting on the floor beside her, a corner of her flickering brain realized, and she remembered the summer nights he’d sat on the rattan couch on the residence balcony with her head in his lap while they watched the brilliant stars overhead. His lips brushed her bloody forehead, and her lips twitched in a tiny smile. But then she stiffened.
“The…girls, kohanij?” she whispered. “Are…are…the girls—”
Her voice failed, and she gasped in anguish as she tried once again to push herself upright.
“Lie still,” her husband said again, softly, serenely. The quaver had left his voice, and he stroked her hair. “The girls are fine, Liebling. You saved them. They’re fine.”
“Good…”
The single word ghosted out of her, softer than a sigh, and he kissed her forehead again.
“You can go now,” that beloved voice told her gently, lovingly. “You can go now, my love.”
“Love…y—” she breathed.
*
Klaus-Wilhelm von Schröder’s eyes were dry as he cradled his wife’s bloody, broken, mutilated body in his arms. He kissed her forehead one final time, then straightened, still holding her.
“Governor, let me have her!”
He looked up at the man named Raibert—his once fierce eyes stunned and broken—and Raibert leaned closer.
“If I can get her to the Kleio in time, we can still save her!” Raibert said urgently. “The…the medical facilities in my ship can heal her completely if I can get her there quickly enough!”
Klaus-Wilhelm looked at him, then past him, to the shattered storage cabinet, the scorched, blackened, carbonized flesh that had once been his three daughters, and then back at Raibert.
“And can you save her daughters?”
His voice was flat, level, unshadowed by any emotion, and Raibert’s expression quailed before its terrible emptiness.
“No,” he said softly. “No, I’m…afraid not. Their wounds are…”
His voice trailed off.
“Then let her go, too,” Klaus-Wilhelm said, and now all the pain in the universe was in his voice. “I won’t bring her back to face that. Let her go knowing she saved them. That they’re still alive.”
Raibert shifted, opened his mouth, but Benjamin put a hand on his shoulder. He looked at the younger Schröder, and Benjamin shook his head ever so slightly. Raibert hesitated for a moment longer, then drew one of the deep breaths a synthoid didn’t truly need.
“Yes, sir,” he said gently.
*
A long silence passed, minutes perhaps, and then someone knelt by Klaus-Wilhelm’s side. He looked up to find Benjamin next to him, and he knew in that moment they truly were of the same blood. He saw the tears in the man’s eyes, the terrible understanding that could come only from someone who recognized the four dead people in this room. Who’d known them.
He saw the recognition…and the grief.
“You really are my grandson, aren’t you?” he asked, knowing—and believing—the answer he would receive.
“Yes, sir. I am.”
“And you need my help.”
“Sir, that can wait. Take some time to…” he trailed off.
“No.” Klaus-Wilhelm looked down. He stroked Yulia’s hair one last time, then set her gently aside, stood up, and faced the others. Faced Benjamin, Raibert, Silchenko, and the grief-stricken members of his security force who knew they’d all failed to protect the four most important people in their governor’s world.
“The two of you came here to ask for my assistance,” he said.
“That’s right,” Raibert replied.
“And these monsters who came here and killed so many of us!” He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Who slaughtered my wife and children with no provocation! Do you stand against them?”
“Yes, sir. We do.”
“Then this is not a difficult decision for me to make.” His nostrils flared as he laid his palm on the revolver holstered at his side. “Everything I have and everything I am is at your disposal.”
He looked to Anton, and the Ukrainian bowed his head ever so slightly.
“Sir, I’m with you, and I’m sure the rest of the men are, too,” he said simply, his voice like iron, and the soldiers behind him nodded in agreement. Klaus-Wilhelm heard the murmur of their voices, recognized the fury and the determination.
“We’ll follow you anywhere,” Silchenko grated, looking down at the Gräfin’s body through tears of his own. “To the gates of Hell, if that’s where you lead us.”
Klaus-Wilhelm marveled, not for the first time, at how tough his men were. A monstrous mechanical thing out of time had just kicked their teeth in. They had every right to collapse, to at least demand time to recover. But they hadn’t done that—not his men! They only looked back at him, the fury crackling in their eyes, ready to find the ones responsible for this and do some kicking of their own.
“Thank you.” Klaus-Wilhelm von Schröder told them softly, reaching out, laying one hand on Silchenko’s shoulder and gripping hard. “Thank you all, meine Kameraden.”
Then he turned to Benjamin, and his voice was the same unwavering iron as Silchenko’s had been.
“What would you have us do?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
DTI Chronoport Pathfinder-Prime
non-congruent
The message punched Csaba Shigeki in the gut, and the beginnings of tears stung his eyes. He struggled to read the whole thing, despite how short it was.
The message from Nox read: TTV engaged in Ukraine, 1958. Pathfinder-6 destroyed. Pathfinder-8 destroyed. TTV combat capabilities HEAVILY upgraded. Ground team eliminated. No extraction required.
Jonas was…dead? And Nox, too?
Shigeki released his harness and floated out of the seat. He squeezed his eyes shut and put a hand to his face.
Was this true? Was his son really dead? But how could that be? How had the TTV taken down two chronoports at once? How in Yanluo’s burning realms was the professor doing this to them?
“Shall we move the picket in response to this?” Durantt asked, then turned and saw the director. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t…I can take care of things here if you like.”
“No, that won’t be necessary, Captain.” Shigeki wiped at his eyes, took a deep breath, and shoved his grief down into the deepest pit of his mind. He knew he could only contain it there for a short time, but he locked an iron door closed behind it and pulled himself over to a linear map of the timeline.
“This can wait, sir,” Durantt said quietly, urgently.
“No, it can’t. We need to stop him. Nothing else matters. Vassal?”
“I stand ready to assist you, Director.”
“Analyze the situation. Where is he heading next?”
“Assuming Professor Kaminski has made successful contact with Governor von Schröder, his most likely course of action will be to proceed farther up the timeline, possibly to the Event itself. Where precisely, I cannot say.”
“Then we must be ready for him.” Shigeki selected several icons representing the chronoports and began shifting them. “All chronoports will proceed downstream, but we’ll take it slow. The professor might already be on the move, and we need to be able to spot him as we reposition. That goes for all chronoports except the ones in 1920. Have them rendezvous with the center of the picket at maximum speed.”
“Are you sure it’s wise to leave that part of the timeline unobserved?” Durantt asked.
“I am through playing games with this man,” Shigeki spat. Then he sucked in air, slamming his control back into place. “The next time we spot the TTV, I mean to end this. We are hitting him with everything we have, and in order to do that, we start grouping up now.”
“Understood, sir.” Durantt spun to face the bridge crew. “Telegraph, send out the orders.”
“Yes, sir. Spooling the first message now.”
Shigeki took a few ragged breaths, trying to contain the fire consuming him from within. He needed to remain calm, composed. Giving in to rage wouldn’t bring Jonas back, and it might lead to the loss of so much more. He imagined the professor before him as the small, helpless man he’d spoken to in that DTI cell. It would have been so easy back then to wrap his fingers around that scrawny throat and choke the life out of him. And then to condemn his connectome to a one-way abstraction where he would writhe for the rest of eternity in absolute torment.
But that was just fantasy, and Shigeki forced himself to come to terms with the grim reality. Kaminski was pressing ever closer to his goal, and if he succeeded, everything was lost. His son wouldn’t simply be dead. He’d have never existed in the first place.
I have
to stop you. No matter the price.
But despite what was at risk, this was no longer just about universes. No, this was personal now. A personal duel between him and the professor. A battle of wills and wits. He’d made the mistake of showing the man mercy once, but perhaps that private history could be leveraged to his advantage…
He wondered.
“Once you’ve sent out my orders, Captain,” he said with a dark, humorless smile, “I have one more telegraph for you.”
“To whom, sir?”
“To the TTV.”
“Sir?” Durantt’s face scrunched up in confusion.
“You’re going to have every chronoport blast this message out at maximum power. Wherever and whenever the professor is, I want him to hear it.”
“If those are your orders, sir. But we’ll have to disable the encryption on the telegraphs. And even then, there’s no guarantee the TTV will be able to translate the underlying binary in our transmission.”
“That won’t be a problem.” Shigeki opened part of their twentieth-century archive and held the patterns above his palm. “I know a code they’ll recognize.”
*
The TTV sped into the past, and its newly expanded crew prepared for what was to come.
Benjamin had to admit he was impressed by how his grandfather and the twenty-two survivors of the security force took finding themselves on a time machine in stride. Sure, they gawked at their surroundings, marveled at how the medical caskets healed their wounds, and yelled the first time they rode a counter-grav tube, but they quickly settled down and focused on the business at hand. He wondered if anything could faze these men for long.
“No,” Benjamin said firmly.
“I honestly don’t see what the problem is,” Raibert countered.
“I’m not telling my grandfather to put those abominations on.”
Raibert peered into the bin. “What’s wrong with them?”
“They’re not appropriate.”
“But they can’t see the displays without them.” He jostled the bin full of pink and purple swirly interface glasses.
