by Chuck Dixon
And they were men who kept others captive as slaves. And slaves they did not see value in. They saw them as beasts to be exploited and beaten and then discarded when their use was at an end.
He wouldn’t be able to use the beach as a trail anymore. He’d have to move inland, using foliage and terrain for cover.
This world, whenever it was, became a more dangerous place with the presence of men.
56
The Gilded Abattoir
The sun set over the hilltops west of Nanking, shifting the dusk created by the smoke of torched buildings into true darkness. The emperor’s army blasted the fortified gate to the inner city to rubble with cannons pushed into position by the brute strength of teams of coolies under the whips of Tartar cavalry. Soldiers and peasants alike swarmed in to help themselves to the plunder of gold and flesh. A final defense of eunuchs and bodyguards was swept aside in a hail of bullets and a hedge of bayonets. Their bodies were mashed to pulp under the heels of the invading horde.
Courtiers of the kings of the Heavenly Kingdom were treated brutally, dragged from hiding and either beheaded or impaled on spears to the delighted jeers of the invaders. Royal concubines, of which there were thousands, were assaulted inside the shelter of their seraglios. Many of them had lived their entire lives within the haven of the palaces of God’s other son. They knew only the pampered life of perfumed air, fine silks, and the rarefied existence of prized creatures born to serve the desires of one man. Now they were at the mercy of a throng of men filthy with soot and blood; men who pawed at them like beasts and subjected them to unimaginable outrages.
There were still pockets of resistance within the city of palaces. Fighting raged across once magnificent gardens and into courtyards. The paradise on Earth constructed by the Taipings became a slaughterhouse as knots of musketeers and spearmen fought with frantic devotion to defend the homes of their masters. The attackers pressed forward, driven by avarice and revenge, and brushed the hold-outs away.
The team moved in well behind the first wave that rushed through the conquered gate. They were all exhausted and hurting from a long afternoon of the street-to-street fighting that brought them to their goal. They’d come miles through streets and lanes, fighting all the way.
Boats wore a blood-stained rag wrapped around his head to staunch the flow from a deep cut on his scalp. Lee was limping from a spent musket ball that struck his knee. Shan had taken a grazing hit from a spear point and had a rough bandage tied about his forearm. One side of Byrus’ face was purple with bruises where a hurled rock had collided with his face. Only Bat Jaffe remained untouched except for some cuts from stone shards to her face, neck, and arms.
“Anyone know where to find the place we’re looking for?” Boats said, his back to a garden wall. The team sheltered out of the line of fire of stray shots that were flying everywhere.
“Beats the shit out of me,” Lee said, watching a soldier rush by, shoulders draped in layers of silk robes looted from some wardrobe. He saw the man spin when musket balls struck him, the silk fanning out like a rainbow-hued gown before the soldier fell to the ground where he lay still in a spreading pool of blood.
Shan bolted from the group to leap the wall of a pond and charge to where a soldier was forcing a eunuch in yellow livery to his knees. The soldier, in armor crusted with spatters of dried blood, pressed the mewling eunuch to the ground with a booted foot between his shoulders. He raised a curved sword to take off the servant’s head.
Not slowing his rush, Shan struck the soldier full in the face with his fist. The soldier stumbled back, dropping his sword, knees buckling. Shan was on the man as he crashed to the tiles. A boot heel drove into the man’s throat. The soldier let out a gurgle from his crushed windpipe and then lay still. Shan returned to the team with a hand locked on the back of the eunuch’s neck, trotting the terrified man before him.
Shan hurled the eunuch against the garden wall and shouted a stream of Mandarin at the man. The eunuch squeaked out a burbling torrent, raising a hand to point the way, nodding madly. A swift kick to the ass set the eunuch running with the team following.
They reached a complex of buildings with high angled rooftops. At the rear of the decorative gardens was a windowless structure, the front doors bashed in. Inside, heaps of dead lay in a broad foyer room and at the bottom of a long flight of steps leading to a mezzanine above. Among the dead lay the wreckage of a fancy cart and pieces of broken statuary. The brass barrel of a cannon lay under a pile of corpses.
The eunuch pointed the way up the steps. Shan kicked at him with a hissed curse. The eunuch ran away through the doors and into the night.
“They were here,” Bat said from where she’d climbed the steps past the pile of bodies. She held a spent brass cartridge between her fingers. She tossed it to Lee, who snatched it from the air.
“Damn,” Lee said, examining the cartridge. A .44 round stamped with the markings of the munitions factory in Chizhou.
“Zim! Zim!” Byrus cried as he raced up the steps, his gladius in one fist and a round Tartar shield he’d appropriated somewhere on the other arm.
The team charged after him. The little Macedonian leapt through an open doorway at the top of the steps and over fallen doors and broken masonry. Guns up, the rest sprinted to keep him in sight. Bat noticed a pair of heavy wooden rams wrapped in hemp ropes lying in the wreckage of the door.
The vast chamber was empty. A pile of dead men lay on the floor around a patch of moonlight cast from a jagged hole in the ceiling. There were brass casings everywhere. Boats found one of the team’s modified rifles leaning on a barricade of furniture and what looked like treasure chests.
“They made it this far,” the SEAL said, slinging the found rifle over his shoulder.
Byrus ran up and down the corridors of plunder calling Jimbo’s name.
Shan lit oil lamps and handed them to the others to begin the grim search for the missing men.
Lee searched the dead while the others spread out across the treasure house. All he found were the bodies of near-naked men with some kind of black substance rubbed into the skin. Swords and axes lay around them. All showed signs of gunshot wounds; puckered entry wounds and exit wounds the size of coffee saucers. The hollow points were man stoppers.
Jimbo and Chaz weren’t anywhere in the killing field.
He found long trails of blood, black in the moonlight, smeared across the tiles toward the door. There had been more men here at some point, men who took their wounded with them. Or prisoners. In the dust, and in the blood trails, he saw prints from boots. There had been soldiers in addition to the naked swordsmen. They were either driven off or were called away when the palaces of the inner city became infested with imperial troops.
Bat was quickly lost in the maze of astonishing riches piled everywhere she looked. She searched the floor as she ran and called the names of the Rangers. The others were calling out as well. Her rifle raised to her shoulder; she scanned the way before her over the front sights.
The absolute quantity of wealth was hard to comprehend. She was struck by the triviality of things like clocks fashioned in the shape of elephants and tigers against the horrors of what was going on outside. All of this misery was caused by effete tyrants more interested in their own amusements and affluence than in the welfare of their followers. She knew the same could be said of the mandarins in Peking. This was a war with no good guys and no bad guys. Two men who claimed to be the Son of Heaven battling to maintain their lofty place, both dead now. This was a war with only suffering for those unfortunate enough to be born to lower castes. A pointless conflict. No wonder history chose to forget it.
She felt the pangs of fatigue climbing her legs and into her hips. The adrenaline rush of battle was fading. The fighting seemed far away from this museum, surrounded by gold, silver, gems, and pearls. Bat leaned back against a seated Buddha statue twice life size. It was carved of some kind of smooth green stone streaked with pink. Buddha smiled at her
benignly, hands clasped together. Gold earrings fixed in his ears, gold rings on his fingers.
Somewhere out in the dark Boats was yelling for Jimbo and Chaz. Shan barked Wei’s name. Byrus was farther away, his voice calling plaintively, “Zim! Zim!”
Bat sank to the floor and regretted it. Sitting would only make it that much harder to get up. All the aches and pains of the previous weeks gripped her at once. She kept up with the Rangers and the SEAL and could almost match Byrus for energy level. But there was a limit to her conditioning and toughness, and she was feeling herself drawing near to it. It wasn’t so much what she’d done as what she’d seen.
There’d been suffering in her past. She’d witnessed what men could do to one another. She knew what she could do herself if pushed to it. At night the faces of the men she’d killed came back to her. Not as flat images seen through the lens of her scope, targets too far from her hide to be visible to the naked eye. Instead, she saw them in her dreams as if they were within reach of her hands, in the same room with her. Their faces, their eyes, their smiles, and scowls were imagined, of course. The men whose lives she’d ended were only seen fleetingly as they passed through the reticles into the kill zone. She did not feel remorse at killing them. It was war. It was for her people. The men she killed threatened the fragile peace of her adopted homeland. What she regretted was that it had to be her who pulled the trigger. It was a task she now wished had fallen to another.
And now the scale of the horrors she’d seen on this latest trip back into The Then. She’d been witness to sights that she was certain would replace the faces in her dreams. She’d walked, unheeding, through the misery all around her. There’d be a price to pay for that. There’d be no unseeing those sights. They would only become more vivid in her memories. Just as the faceless men who dropped in her scope took on the clear visages they wore in her dreams.
The men called the names of their friends with no answer. Their voices faded away in the vastness of the treasure house. She dropped her face to her hands and heaved a sharp sigh. There were no tears though her eyes burned. Bat sipped in air and held it in her lungs. A brief respite. A moment of quiet all her own and then she’d resume the search with the others. Though she felt the search was pointless. How could three men alone have survived the slaughter here?
In the momentary silence, she heard a recurring tapping. A metallic scraping, muted but regular from somewhere near her.
Clink. Clink. Clink. Pause.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
“Guys!” she shouted, standing with eyes searching the gloom.
57
The Looters
Lee came upon the curious sight of Bat Jaffe and Boats kneeling side by side each with an ear to the floor.
“What the hell—” he started.
“Shh!” Bat and the SEAL shushed him in unison.
“Is it Morse Code?” Bat whispered.
Clink. Clink. Clink. Pause.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
“Naw,” Boats said, eyes moving as he listened to the tapping resonating through the tiles, his hand cupped about his ear.
“Then what is it?” Bat said.
“‘Jingle Bells,’” Boats said and pulled his combat knife from its sheath to rap the butt on the floor.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap. Tap.
A metallic grinding sound vibrated through the floor beneath them. Ten feet before where they knelt, down a lane between life-sized statues of real and fanciful beasts, a bronze war horse seemed to come to life. It shifted sideways to reveal a bar of yellow light rising from a gap in the floor.
“That better be you up there, motherfuckers!” Chaz’ voice boomed from somewhere below.
Jimbo was the last to step out of the trap in the floor. He held a thick roll of camel skin cradled in his arms. He unraveled it to show the others a curved tube of ivory capped on one end with a golden swan and on the other with a crouching frog. It was damned close to the computer model Wesley Fong showed them back on the Raj. The whole thing was roughly the size of a muffler off an army truck.
There was a lot of back pounding. Byrus embraced the Pima about the waist and had to be pried off. It was all smiles except for Shan and Wei who looked on without speaking.
“How’d you find it?” Boats asked.
“I found a manifest book. Remember what Gordon told us about these guys being crazy for paperwork.” Jimbo grinned. “Wei found it listed in a secret vault. It was down there with a stuffed dog and a porno collection.”
“You’re shitting us,” Lee said.
“No lie. A taxidermied Pekinese and a bunch of paintings that would make Larry Flynt blush,” Jimbo said. “Wei has the inventory book. We’ll bring it along for Dr. Fong. He’ll be in Heaven.”
“Too bad we couldn’t bring back some pictures for him,” Chaz said.
“That’s a hell-no,” Lee said. There was a strict ‘no cameras’ rule for anyone going through the Tauber Tube.
The sounds of voices and footfalls echoed up from the open foyer below. The looters had reached the treasure hoard of the East King. Boots and bare feet pounded up the steps toward them in a hurry. The sound of hoots and cries of delight resounded across the vault as the newcomers took in the golden sea of valuables before them.
A collection of rough men with wild eyes braced the team. From the smell, a lot of them had been drinking heavily. Their armor and clothing were black with spilled blood. Shan approached them with hands open before him and speaking steady, reasoned words to the suspicious bunch. The pillagers decided in the end, distracted by the riches spread about in all directions, that there was enough to go around and drifted off to begin sacking the treasure house to the bare walls.
Outside, the sun was coming up in an angry sky streaked black with the smoke of burning homes. The air was foul with the smell of blood. As the air warmed flies were beginning to gather in clouds. Across the courtyards and gardens, bodies lay like piles of rubbish; mutilated and stripped of clothing. Drunken soldiers and conscripts stumbled in mobs among the palaces or lay sleeping wherever the alcohol finally overcame them. From over the rooftops came the occasional report of a musket. The battle was over. The rape of the city was only beginning.
“We need to find a place to hole up,” Lee said. Bat gripped his arm.
“I know we’re all beat to shit. God knows I hate the thought of taking another step,” she said to him, eyes red. “But can we please get away from here? Sleep somewhere on clean grass?”
Lee looked to the others who nodded in silent agreement.
With their prize stowed in a rucksack on Jimbo’s back, they hiked back the way they came on the shortest route out of Hell they could manage.
58
Visitors
The day was gray overcast and the sky low enough that the tops of the tall cargo cranes disappeared into an opaque cloud ceiling. The launch cut across the water with all running lights blazing to ward off any river traffic that might cross its course to the sheltered anchorage where the Ocean Raj lay.
Jason Taan brushed aside all assistance in finding his way down through the ship to the chamber where the time travel device was housed. This was the latest of his trips out to the Raj. Each one ended in disappointment. It had been a full six months since he sent his two operatives back to pursue the team of mad Americans. He was growing impatient with waiting and weary of Morris Tauber’s excuses. Most of all, he was tired of the physicist’s condescending explanations on the relativity of time travel.
He wanted the team back today. He wanted the prize he’d already spent a fortune for, today. Right now.
“Another false alarm?” Taan growled, storming into the control room. Morris Tauber sat at the array of monitors on which numbers and three-dimensional models morphed and scrolled with dizzying speed. These were the dense calculations for aiming and manipulating the gigawatt energy needed to power the device in the chamber below, visible through the wall of glass.
“I’ve had a tra
nsmission from our operatives. I’m a few hours from getting an accurate fix on their chronal position,” Tauber said, himself weary of Taan’s impatient tantrums. “You said you wanted to be here when they returned.”
“I was in a meeting,” Taan groused, pacing. Actually, he was glad to be able to cut the meeting short. It was a tedious teleconference with the execs of an Italian engineering firm. He hated dealing with Italians. They were the only people, other than the Chinese, who took so long to come to a decision and even longer to act on it.
“There are tea and raisin buns,” Tauber said and turned back to his keyboard.
Taan threw himself into a chair and glared down at the array of carbon steel rings in the manifestation chamber. They were already sheathed in a casing of frost preparatory to being activated.
It was almost midnight when the new transmission came through. “Op team to central control. You reading this? Op team to central control.” It was Lee Hammond’s drawl coming from the speakers.
“This is Mo. We have you with crystal clarity. Come back,” Morris said, standing at the control console. Taan was standing, looking down into the manifestation chamber, the floor invisible in a chilly mist.
“We’re within range. Port of Shanghai. You have a fix?”
“Give me a minute to make adjustments. Fine tune things, okay?” Morris said.
“Ask them if they have it!” Taan shouted, turning from the glass.
“What’s your situation? What do you need us to prepare for your return?” Morris said, ignoring the billionaire’s furious gaze.
“We lost a man. We’re banged up but no need for urgent medical attention.”
“Heat up a pizza!” Boats’ voice in the background of the transmission.
