The Parallel Conspiracy: A Mystery Adventure of Alternate Worlds

The Parallel Conspiracy: A Mystery Adventure of Alternate Worlds Page 13

by Richard Lori

 

  Jen pulled her eye away from the spy-cam viewfinder. Over the sound of machine gun fire, she asked Agacia, “The party room you spoke of is around this corner?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the young woman replied.

  She turned to Fuller and Bechler. “This room is marked as an upper reception room on the building plans.”

  “Great,” said Bechler. “That’s a damn big room. There could be dozens of guards in there with them.”

  They were standing off a large hall at the top of the main stairway at the front of the palace. There were large windows facing out to the main gate and opposite them was the entrance to the reception room, with two security guards posted. At the windows were three guards firing at Sue across the street.

  “There are two guards outside the door and three at the front windows,” said Jen.

  Bechler stepped next to Jen and took the spy-cam from her. He looked through it for almost a full minute before turning back to the group.

  Bechler said, “Have the girl walk past the two guards at the door and distract them so they look away from us. You and I will step around the corner and take them out—you the left, me the right. The three at the window are making so much noise they won’t notice at first. We’ll take them out next—me the closest, you the two farthest.”

  “What about me?” asked Fuller, putting his hand out towards Bechler to get the spy-cam.

  Bechler handed him the device. “I don’t think all of us can get around the corner fast enough. If you want to though, go wide around Jen and me and start firing at the guards at the windows.”

  “Okay,” said Fuller, looking around the corner through the eyepiece.

  Jen explained the plan to Agacia. Her eyes wide, she shook her head. “I cannot do that, Flavia. Those guards will hurt me and the noise…” She put her hands over her ears. “I cannot do as you ask.”

  Jen put her hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “I promise I will not let them hurt you.”

  “No, Flavia! No!” The girl started sobbing, her body convulsing.

  Jen could see she was working herself into a panic like before and knew there was no possible way she could do what they asked.

  Jen said, “That is all right, we will do something else.” Turning to Bechler, she said, “She is too scared.”

  “Yeah, I see that,” said Bechler, shaking his head with a scowl.

  “I think we can do it without her help,” said Fuller, removing his eye from the spy-cam. He turned back to the others. “With all the noise from the three at the window firing, I think we can just go around the corner shooting. We should be able to get the two at the door before they can do anything to warn the others. Hell, we’re far enough away that I don’t think they’ll even see us in their peripheral vision.” He handed the camera back to Jen. “They’ll be dead before they know what’s going on. Even if you guys miss with the first shot and they are able to get a few rounds off, nobody will know if it’s them firing or the three at the window.”

  Bechler nodded. “I suppose you’re right. Same plan as before but no girl.” His eyes narrowed to slits as he looked at Fuller. “Make sure your particle gun is set low, John.”

  Fuller grinned. “It is.”

  The three lined up at the corner: Jen first, Bechler behind and Fuller to the left of them both. Jen would go towards the middle of the hall and Bechler would swing around to her right. Fuller was to arc around them both to the left and try for the first guard firing out the window.

  “On three,” said Bechler. “One, two, three!”

  Jen ran out, took careful aim and hit her mark. Neither man noticed her, and the second guard only started to react when he saw his comrade slump. Bechler got off a shot but only hit him in the arm. The man was about to scream when Jen hit him in the head with her second shot.

  She was about to turn her attention to the window when she heard someone yell out as several dull blows slammed into her chest. When she shifted her gaze to the window, she could see tracer bullets streaming through and the guards turned with their backs to the walls. The Gatling gun had started to rake the third floor, forcing the men to turn and take cover. When they did this, one of them saw what was happening to the guards at the doors. He immediately called out and started shooting.

  Jen was taking aim at the closest man when his chest flared for a split second when Fuller hit his mark. Several more rounds struck her while she shifted focus to the two remaining, only one of which was discernible as he began to throw himself to the ground. The second became apparent when the flash of his gun caught her eye as he fired from his prone position on the floor. The bullets struck her in the stomach when she fired.

  Her arm jolting about from the bullets pelting her, Jen’s shot missed and struck the floor in front of the man, spraying up chunks of stone into his face. As he shrieked from the sharp splinters piercing his eyes, a hole smoked into his head from Bechler’s second shot, muting the scream into a choke. Jen turned her focus to the last man, who was now also prone on the floor. When she fired her gun, Fuller’s shot struck just before hers, causing the guard’s head to burn to a char.

  Jen ran forward with the others following, Agacia coming around the corner when she saw all was clear. They hugged the wall opposite the windows to stay out of the trajectory of the Gatling gun’s bullets. When they got to the double doors of the reception room, Jen pulled the spy-cam from her pocket.

  She snaked the lens end of the gooseneck under the doors and peered through the eyepiece. She could see it was a large room in depth but could not see all the way to the left or right. Either the wall the door penetrated was a few feet thick or there were wing walls sticking out into the room perpendicular to the door, blocking her peripheral view of the large hall. She slid the lens all the way to the bottom far left of the doors and could see the right wall where a group of four people was sitting in front of a massive fireplace. One was a woman dressed in a flowing silk gown, and she assumed this was the empress.

  The furniture was arranged around the hearth in a “U” shape with a single chair across from the fire and two benches running at a ninety-degree angle towards it. The empress sat on a bench with her back to the door. One of the men was in the chair, and the other two on the far bench, their faces angled so they could see the door. The three men were guards and had rifles standing on the floor next to them: stock to ground, barrel pointing to ceiling.

  Jen shifted her body and slid the lens to the far right of the doors to get a better view of the left side of the room, but there was no one there. As she took in the panorama, she noticed one problem. There was no sign of the children.

  She rose from her kneeling position. “I see a woman I believe is the empress, but I do not see the children.”

  “Let me take a look,” said Bechler snatching the camera from her. He got down and peered through the eyepiece, cursing under his breath. After shifting to both sides, he rose. “Damn it! We’re running out of time. We’ll have to get the empress and ask her where her kids are.”

  “Let me have it a second,” said Fuller, reaching for the camera. He too went to the floor and looked into the room.

  Another blast of bullets came through the window from the Gatling gun when its aim rose to the third floor again. Bechler ducked his head as shards of wood and stone hailed down on them. He looked at the bank of windows and exclaimed, “What the hell is she doing over there? She’s wasting ammunition shooting up here now.”

  He vocalized what Jen was already thinking. Something was wrong. The Gatling gun firing had not ceased for some time, and she knew Sue would not continue to shoot like that unless there was a problem. By her internal chronometer, Jen knew it was almost time for Sue to shift back, so she may be trying to finish off the last of her rounds. This was doubtful though.

  She flipped her radio microphone on. “Sue, are you there?” She paused for a reply then said again, “Sue, please re
spond.”

  She could see the worry on Bechler’s face when he called out on his radio, “Sue, are you there?”

  Fuller sprang from the floor and looked at Jen with wide eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “I do not know,” replied Jen. His look created a discomfort in her thoughts unlike any other she had felt before. She said, “Something is wrong or Sue would not continue to fire like that. However, I do not believe we should be concerned at this point, her lack of response may indicate a failure of her radio.”

  “They may be hitting her hard,” said Bechler. “So hard she can’t get a look out the window to see that no one is on this floor firing at her anymore.”

  “Yes, that is probably it,” Jen said, hoping to ease Fuller’s concern. “I will have Cassius increase his firing and also start to drop the napalm rounds.” She knew this would make the entire compound in front of the building an inferno and drive everyone away.

  The Gatling gun had worked its way down the building again, so Jen ran to the window to call Cassius and to see what was happening near Sue. She could hear Fuller and Bechler talking in low voices when she left them by the door but filtered it out as she called on her radio. “Cassius, are you there?”

  “Aye, miss,” he replied after a pause.

  “There is something wrong with Sue. She is not responding to us and has not stopped firing for several minutes.”

  She saw the Gatling gun fire its last rounds, the streaking hot tracers ceasing to stream from the window. Its barrels were still revolving around while the gun arced back and forth, so she knew that Sue still had the firing button depressed. Jen was convinced that something bad had happened to her.

  “Cassius, start firing as fast as you can for the next five rounds, and then fire every minute after that. Start using the ones with the yellow stripe on them.”

  “Aye, miss, I’ll shoot the yellow fish out.” Because of the streamlined shape and fins on the rounds, Cassius referred to the mortar shells as fish.

  Jen headed back to the others just as Fuller and Agacia ran off down the hall. She went to Bechler and asked, “Where are they going?”

  “John noticed there was a decorative balcony with niches for statues on three sides of the room. He’s having Agacia take him to an access door so he can fire down into the room if we need it.”

  Although the plans did not show balconies, she had noticed the arched alcoves high up on the opposite wall when she had looked in earlier. She realized now why the wall with the entrance door was so thick. The balcony was over the doorway, supported by the wing walls.

  “Good,” she said.

  “He’ll radio us when he’s there.”

  Jen was back on the floor with the spy-cam to make sure the guards were not coming out when an explosion boomed. An accompanying flash of flames swirled outside the windows, a wave of heat striking her when she turned to look. When the initial flare faded, she could see fiery blobs of jelly oozing down from the tops of the windows.

  “Shit!” exclaimed Bechler. “That damn thing hit the front of the building.”

  “The laser must be aimed at the palace,” said Jen as she stood.

  “Damn it, something is really wrong with Sue,” he said. “We can’t wait anymore. Once the framing under the clay roof tiles starts to catch fire, this whole building will go up.”

  He hit the button to activate his radio microphone. “John, a napalm round just hit the front of the building. We’re going in now before the fire spreads.”

  “Okay, I’m just getting into place anyway,” replied Fuller in their headsets.

  Bechler went to the double doors of the reception room and Jen followed. “I’m going left and you right. I’ll take everyone from the empress left and you everyone right. Let’s go,” he said, unholstering his particle gun.

  Jen pushed open the door on the right while Bechler did the same on the left. They barreled into the room, guns raised and ready to fire. When she reached the corner of the wing wall protruding into the room, Jen got off her first shot, hitting the man sitting across from the empress. She was about to take her second shot when Fuller’s voice blared in her ear.

  “Stop! It’s a trap!”

   

  *****

 

   

  Sue started to roll over as she roused from unconsciousness but was stopped by a sharp pain in her back. It felt like nails were being driven into her shoulders so she froze and braced herself against the tenderness. When she cracked open her eyes, her mind was a fog and she could not remember where she was. The shadows before her coalesced into a stone wall as the orange light streaming in from the window made it flicker.

  A stench of burning gasoline pierced her nose when she inhaled her first deep breath, shuddering to full consciousness like someone had put smelling salts beneath her nostrils. She knew where she was now. She remembered the grenades exploding but was unsure of anything after that. Her surroundings were quiet now but for the periodic boom of a striking mortar and the incessant crackle of the flames outside.

  There was a stab in her side when she tried to shift her body again and realized the remote for the Gatling gun was still underneath her. She pulled it out with her free hand and pressed the button, but nothing happened. The ammo spent and the battery discharged, it was useless now so she threw it aside.

  Not able to rotate onto her back, she scooted away from the wall and rolled onto her stomach. Rising to hands and knees, her joints ached like a twinge of arthritis afflicted them. Although she felt ancient, she muscled herself to her feet, swaying around as though drunk. She put her shoulder to the wall until her head cleared.

  She checked her radio to contact the others but found it was dead, a flying fragment having cut the headset cable. She looked at her watch, brushing off the dusty dial to read it. She was unsure but thought she had been unconscious for less than ten minutes. In any event, her time here was growing short so she started to prepare for her eventual shift.

  The guards left her to work in peace since they had stopped shooting due either to the Gatling gun no longer firing or the inferno on the palace grounds. She did not care which, only that they left her alone.

  The plan was to not leave anything usable behind for Placidia so she would need to destroy what she had not used. The main task was to set a thermite charge to the Gatling gun, which she would leave behind. Although they would have no ammunition, Bechler felt it best to destroy the gun so as not to give Placidia more ideas about weapons. Since she had napalm grenades left over, she placed these below the gun too. As the thermite melted the gun to slag, it would drop off onto the grenades and set them off. The building would burn down, and would leave no trace of what they had done here. She hoped all the occupants would get out.

  Sue wired the detonator and set the timer for fifteen minutes. That should be more than enough time, but if not, she would reset it for more time in ten minutes. The last thing she did was to check the nitrous oxide tanks to see if they still had sufficient charge. Once she verified they did, she went back to the filthy mattress. Upon seeing it, she decided against sitting on it because razor sharp bits of brass shell casings peppered it. Instead, she went to the corner where she had been, cleared a spot on the floor and sat until the shift happened.

   

  *****

 

   

  Fuller and Agacia had just gotten to the edge of the shadowed balcony niche when Bechler radioed him that they were going in. They were in the first of the gallery’s arched alcoves along the wall opposite the fireplace, next to the corner where this wall met with that of the entrance door wall. A polished white statue stood between the girl and himself, a soulless observer of what was to come.

  From his perspective, Fuller could not see the entrance but had a clear shot at all those sitting by the fire. He turned to the young woman and said in a low voice, “My friends are coming in.
” He laid his weaponed hand on the low iron railing to steady his aim. “If the empress gets in the way of them shooting one of the guards, I should be able to get him from up here.”

  Agacia murmured, “I do not understand, Lord. The empress is not there. That woman is Helva, a servant.”

  Fuller’s head snapped to her, his heart skipping a beat. “What?”

  His mind reeled, attempting to interpret the significance of this detail. The query was answered when he shot his gaze back towards the room. A ball formed in the pit of his stomach as the terrible chronicle played out before him.

  The face of one seated guard scorched into smoke from Jen’s shot when she came around one of the short wing walls rimming either side of the entrance. Bechler, on her left, fired off a shot and struck behind the ear of the guard seated in the chair. A split second later, four other guards, hiding underneath the overhang above the entrance, came out from under it. Two sprang around the right wing wall flanking the door, coming up behind Jen, and two others circled about the other wall, running around to Bechler.

  Fuller fumbled for his microphone switch and called, “Stop, it’s a trap!”

  It was too late by then. The guards were already on them, holding barrels to the backs of their necks between the helmet and collar. His two friends froze, first from the sound of his warning, then from the barrels on their necks.

  The sound of the guard’s command echoed around in the cavernous room when one of them ordered the two to drop their weapons. Jen did so as she turned to Bechler and translated the order for him. He likewise dropped his gun with a resounding clatter when it rebounded several times off the marble floor.

  Fuller rested his gun hand back on the rail and was about to fire when a startling revelation forced him to freeze as firm as the statue next to him. Placidia himself swaggered from under the balcony, his arrogance apparent to Fuller even at this distance. He listened as the man’s braggadocio resounded throughout the hall.

  “Ah, my friends, you have come to me just as I expected,” Placidia’s voice boomed out. He walked around to confront Jen and Bechler. “Please remove your helmets so we may speak more comfortably.”

  Again, Jen translated for Bechler while she removed her helmet, clutching it to her chest. Placidia’s smile faded though when Bechler emerged from under his helmet.

  Placidia snapped his head towards one of the guards and bellowed, “John Fuller must still be about. You and Drusus search the halls for him and do not come back without him or his head.”

  Two of the guards flanking Jen and Bechler walked towards the entrance and disappeared beneath the overhang, the doors thudding closed a moment later. The remaining guards continued to hold the guns to their heads while the last by the fireplace moved to Placidia’s side. Helva, who had impersonated the empress, rose from the floor where she had flung herself when the shooting started. She walked towards Placidia and stood behind him, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

  Placidia looked at Jen. “You I seem to recall as being with John Fuller when he showed me his thrower.” He turned to Bechler. “You I do not know.”

  “We underestimated you,” said Jen. “You expected us to come to this room.”

  “Yes. My spies have done well for me and gave warning of your plans,” Placidia boasted. “You will tell me where John Fuller is now.”

  “Why do you believe he is here?” Jen asked.

  Placidia chuckled, “Of course he would be here. I am sure he would want to see firsthand as he outwits an ignorant, backwards barbarian such as me. Now, tell me where he is, or I will be forced to hurt you.”

  Fuller ignored the rest of his words as the conversation continued, knowing that Jen was stalling until she could get an opportunity to strike back. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for her though. Despite her hyper-quick reflexes, there was no way for her to do anything as long as they had guns to their heads. While she may be able to spin around fast enough to take the gun from her own guard, Bechler could not. She would alert his guard, and he would fire if she tried anything like this. Even if they were able to coordinate their actions successfully, there was the third guard to contend with, and he would be able to shoot before they could address him.

  Fuller knew it was up to him to act. A plan formulated in his mind when he looked at the fireplace. The firebox stood taller and wider than the height of a man and was massive enough to heat the large hall in winter. However, its fire was small and was the main light source for the room. While there were oil lamps throughout the room, only a few were burning, with the flame set low. Placidia had kept the room dim and the back of the woman to the door to obscure her identity.

  While Placidia may have anticipated their moves up until now, he did not expect someone to be in Fuller’s location. Not having to concern himself with the mundane operation of the household, he may not even be aware that there was an access hatch for the balcony. After all, the servants would only use it to keep the white marble figures cleaned and polished. Fuller’s appearance there should provide a sufficient distraction.

  He whispered to Agacia, “Go back to the access door and wait for me there. It may not be safe for you here in a moment.”

  “Yes, Lord,” said Agacia, moving towards the hatch.

  Fuller lifted his face shield and lowered the goggles back over his eyes, turning on his night vision. His pulse quickened when he rose to his feet to execute his plan. He took several deep breaths as he told himself the plan would work and called out across the room as loud as he could, “Placidia, you wish to find me! I am here. I will surrender if you promise not to hurt my friends.”

   

  *****

 

   

  Jen looked up with the others when Fuller called out but was not surprised like those around her. This was what she had hoped he would do as a distraction. Although just perceptible to the others as he stood in the shadows, she could see him clearly with her extended vision. She could see his night-vision goggles on and a particle gun in the hand of his outstretched arm.

  She turned her body left to face Fuller while he continued calling down to Placidia. She could see with direct and peripheral vision everyone who was around her. The guard who had been behind her holding the gun to her head was now to her far left. Having been rattled by Fuller’s outcry, he was turned away from her and pointing the gun up towards the balcony.

  Placidia was to her right, and she could see the guard who had walked from the fireplace was there flanking him. This guard likewise had his gun pointed at Fuller, ready to shoot if the order was given. The woman Helva was at the very edge of her vision, standing behind Placidia and to his left.

  In front of Jen was Bechler with his guard still behind him. This sentry seemed more experienced than the others though because the gun was still at Bechler’s head. He had only looked at Fuller for a moment before giving his full attention back to his task. With her quick reflexes, she felt that she could pull the gun away from Bechler’s head before the guard pulled the trigger. Despite this, she decided to wait to see if Fuller could improve the situation more.

  Placidia, his eyes bulging from Fuller’s sudden appearance, said, “John, you are here!” He composed himself and said in a steady voice, “I am unable to see you in the dark. Why not come down and join us.”

  “Yes, I will. Please do not shoot me though,” pleaded Fuller, his voice quivering.

  “My men will not shoot. You have my pledge,” Placidia assured him with a grin.

  Fuller swooped his outstretched arms down. As he did, he snapped his visor closed with one hand and brought his gun down with the other. Before his face shield was all the way down, Jen launched herself forward. She slammed the gun barrel at Bechler’s head aside with her helmet and pulled him to the ground.

  As the two dropped to the floor, the room came to full illumination when a blinding flash and a massive concussion boom
ed out. When Jen hit the floor, she rolled and could see that Fuller had fired his particle gun at the fireplace at maximum setting. Once the initial flash of the vaporized logs died out, the room was in darkness.

  Shots burst out as the guards fired at Fuller. Jen ignored them and went for Bechler’s particle gun, which was still on the floor. Once in hand, she stayed low to keep the line of fire clear for Fuller but started to work her way towards Placidia.

  Another flash lit up the room when Fuller’s second shot burned off the head and torso of the man who had guarded Bechler. Despite the heavy damage, she knew Fuller must have lowered the particle gun setting, because the blast had been less than the first.

  As she worked her way over to Placidia, she could see he had gone to the floor and was crawling towards a door. When close enough, she grabbed his leg as another flash lit up the room. The machine gun firing stopped. She yanked hard on the consul’s leg, causing him to slam down hard to the floor on his stomach, his body scraping on the stone tile when she continued to pull. With his free leg, he kicked at her with the sole of his sandal and smashed it squarely into her nose. She ignored the attack, got on his back, and twisted his arm around behind to restrain him.

  The room flared to life one last time when Fuller took out the third guard. When the flash subsided, the room grew dim again, only a few of the oil lamps still burning. He called, “Jen, I’ll be down in a minute. Find out where the empress is.”

  Jen climbed off Placidia and yanked him to his feet, the consul groaning in pain when she tugged at the arm behind his back.

  Bechler came up beside them as Jen asked, “Where is the empress?”

  “I will not tell you,” Placidia grunted out.

  “As you said to us earlier, tell me or I will be forced to hurt you.” She wrenched up harder on his arm.

  Placidia groaned again as he squirmed in her unyielding grip. His voice cracking, he said, “My guards will be back any moment. You had better run while you can.”

  “We have already dealt with many of your guards. A few more will pose little difficulty.”

  “What’s he saying?” asked Bechler.

  “He will not tell me where she is.”

  Bechler punched Placidia hard in the stomach. The consul cried out in pain not only from the blow, but when he doubled forward, Jen pulled his arm up.

  “Did he tell us where she is yet?” asked Fuller as he came through the door.

  “Not yet, but I just gave him some motivation,” answered Bechler.

  “Where are the empress and her children?” Fuller questioned Placidia.

  “I will not tell you,” answered Placidia through gritted teeth.

  “We have no time for your delays.”

  “You may kill me if you like, but I will not tell where she is. It would be better to die by your hand than to live by the emperor’s,” asserted Placidia.

  By his determination, Jen knew he would not talk. In her study of humans, she had come across this phenomenon before. For some, physical pain and death were preferred over humiliation, and that is what Placidia would suffer if they removed his handhold over the emperor. As much as Lucius would want to, he could not kill the consul and expect the people to fall in line behind him. Placidia had many allies that would rally the mobs against the emperor for killing the consul for no apparent reason.

  The emperor would have to arrest Placidia and carry on with a very public trial to expose his corruption. Lucius’ standing would rise among the people for bringing this to light and all would fall in behind him. The public would demonize Placidia for his crimes and even his allies would turn evidence against him to save their own skins. He would be lower than a slave or beggar, and this would be unbearable to him. To fall from being the most powerful man in the known world to that of the lowest of subclass, something less than the most diseased scum of the human race, would be a million times worse than death.

  Jen looked into Fuller’s eyes while he stared back at her. As though reading her mind, he said, “We’re not going to get anything from him. Now what?”

  “Why? What did he say?” asked Bechler, scowling at Fuller’s resignation.

  “He won’t tell us anything. He said he’d be better off if we killed him now than he would be once the emperor takes back control.”

  “Son of a bitch!” yelled Bechler, his eyes narrowing. “I’ll beat it out of him then.”

  “That will not work,” said Jen. “We need to come up with another plan.”

  “And quick too,” said Fuller, looking at his watch. “You still have a lot of time here Jen, but Vince and I will shift out in less than an hour.”

  The three stood in silence, each isolated in their own thoughts. Since arriving, they had been in a continuous mode of action, as either they had planned everything ahead of time or what they needed to do next was apparent. Now, with the plan having broken down and the next course of action not being obvious, they seemed paralyzed to act.

  Agacia came to Fuller as he stood in deliberation. She asked, “Lord, may we speak?”

  It took Fuller a moment to respond. “Huh? Oh yeah.” It took a second more before he repeated himself in Latin so she could understand. “Yes, we can speak.”

  She led him away from the others and whispered. With her keen hearing, Jen listened to the girl say, “I think we can find out where the empress is without Lord Placidia’s help.”

  “How is that?” asked Fuller.

  “The woman over there,” she said, jerking her head towards Helva. “She is the empress’s personal servant and is very close to her. If she is part of Lord Placidia’s deception, she may be the spy of which he spoke.”

  Fuller’s eyes snapped towards Helva then back to Agacia. “So she may know where the empress is?”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  He went to Helva and grabbed her upper arms. “Where are the empress and the children?”

  The woman tried to shrink away from him, her eyes bulging. He clutched harder, his fingers gouging into her flesh and pinching to the bone. He asked again, louder this time, “Where is the empress?”

  Her head shot from side to side while she shrieked, “I cannot tell you! He will kill me if I do!”

  “That is right, woman, keep quiet,” said Placidia. “I will do worse than kill you if you talk.”

  Jen yanked up hard on Placidia’s arm, almost dislocating it. The consul screamed in agony as Jen bellowed in his ear, “Stay quiet or I will break your arm!”

  Fuller said, “He will kill no one. He is our prisoner now, and we are taking him with us.”

  Helva wailed as Agacia said, “Please, Lord, let me speak with her for a moment.”

  “Very well,” said Fuller, letting her go. “But be quick. We have little time.”

  Agacia took Helva by the arm and led her away from the group, her gentle voice calming the woman. Bechler looked at his watch. “We’ve got to go now, or we won’t have enough time to get them out of here.” He shifted from one foot to the other several times then said, “I better check the hall to make sure nobody sneaks up on us.”

  He opened the door and intense light poured in from the hall. He slammed it shut and walked back to where Fuller was standing. “It’s an inferno out there. We won’t have to worry about someone coming in that way, but we’ll have to use another exit to get out.”

  As he said this, Agacia walked up to them. She said, “Helva has told me where the royal family is. I will take you there if you wish.”

   

  *****

 

   

  They had come almost full circle. They were in the basement kitchen only three doors down a second hall from the troop barracks. If they had known earlier that Placidia was holding the family in the servants’ dining room, they could have completed the rescue in minutes. Fuller did not care. He was just glad to be closer to the escape route, because time was slippin
g away.

  In this deep hour of night, the kitchen was deserted, so they lit an oil lamp to see by. They searched through the kitchen and surrounding pantries for something with which to tie Placidia. The best they were able to find was a stack of linen towels so they bound them into a makeshift rope, lashing Placidia’s hands behind his back. They wadded one up and stuffed it into his mouth, muffling his protest when they did so. When the binding was complete, they locked him in a pantry and moved into the hall beyond the kitchen.

  Upon reaching the door to the dining room, Jen got down to look under it with the spy-cam. She spent a half-minute shifting the lens about before rising and handing the device to Bechler. After looking a few moments, he rose and motioned for them to go back down the hall.

  When in the kitchen, he said to Fuller, “There are only two guards in there with them. I think they’re there to keep the wife and kids in the room rather than fight off an attack.”

  “The whole family is in there then?” asked Fuller.

  “Yep, the kids are asleep on a blanket on the floor, and the empress is at the table with her head down. There’s one guard sitting in a chair next to the door, and the second is at the table across from the empress.”

  Fuller nodded. “Can we rush them?”

  Bechler said, “Well… we could try, but I’d rather get one of them out of there first so we have only one to deal with inside.”

  “How do you propose we do that?” asked Fuller, the brow of one eye rising up.

  “I’m not sure. We’ll have to come up with something to lure the guy by the door into the hall.”

  Jen said, “I do not agree. I believe I can kick in the door, shoot the guard at the table and go around the door to get the second one. He should be startled enough that I can get him before he starts shooting.”

  “No, I don’t like it,” said Bechler, shaking his head. “If he reacts fast enough, he might be able to get off a few rounds before you kill him. A ricochet could hit one of the family members.”

  “The chance of that happening is very small,” said Jen.

  “Wait a minute,” interrupted Fuller. “Are you saying the guard is behind the hinge side of the door?”

  “Yeah,” replied Bechler. “I think the idea is if someone comes in the room, they won’t know he’s there until he starts shooting at them from behind.

  “How close to the door? Is he right by it?”

  “Yep. The chair is about a foot from the door jamb,” said Bechler.

  “Good,” said Fuller with a grin. “We’ve seen how fast Jen is. Why not have her open the door as fast as she can and swing it around so it smashes the guard behind it. You can be out in the hall with your particle gun aimed in the general direction of the guy at the table. Once Jen is clear, you can take final aim and get him. Everything should happen fast enough that he won’t be able to get his gun up to fire.”

  “Hell, he isn’t even holding his gun. It’s propped against the chair next to him,” said Bechler.

  “That’s even better. There’s no way he’ll have enough time to get it then,” said Fuller. “What do you think of it, Jen?”

  She smiled at Fuller. “I think that is a great idea, John. Thank you for asking my opinion.”

  Fuller flashed a quick smile in return then looked at Bechler. “Well, should we go with it?”

  “Yep, let’s go.”

  Agacia stayed in the kitchen while the others went back down the hall. Bechler motioned for Jen to give him the spy-cam and then went down to look under the door. When he stood, he motioned for the others to get in position. Jen was at the door, Bechler behind her, and Fuller beside him to the right, the two men holding particle guns ready to fire. Bechler nodded for Jen to proceed.

  Jen eased the latch up and then sprang into action. In a blur, the door was open as she ran full speed around the arc, surprising even Fuller with the velocity she was able to attain. There was a loud crack when the door impacted the guard.

  As momentum continued to propel her around, Jen cleared the opening of the doorway and Fuller got clear aim of the man seated at the table. Time slowed as his mind raced from adrenaline overload, and he wondered what was wrong with Bechler that he did not fire. The moment stretched to infinity until his mind concluded the other would never shoot so he willed his finger to press the gun’s contact.

  A scream peeled out from the man behind the door and the crunching of bone and splintering of wood grew ever louder. When Fuller could feel his finger reach the final micrometers of the trigger’s travel, the face of the man at the table burned from brown to black as it turned towards him. When his button hit home, the face burst to flames from the combination of Bechler and Fuller’s beams hitting it one after the other.

  From the corner of his eye, Fuller caught the door edge spinning around when the hinges ripped from the frame due to Jen’s massive thrust. The screaming muffled, then stopped, as the door splintered into large pieces. The top portion smashed into the open mouth of the man, his skull crushing under the enormous pressure. The flare faded, exposing only a charred remnant of a corpse as it slid from the table to the cold stone floor. It was over.

  When Fuller realized it, despite the mental stretching of a mere instant into eternity, the assault had only taken but a single tick of the clock.

   

  *****

 

   

  The glass wall of the booth came into focus as Fuller steadied himself with his outstretched hand. When his head cleared enough from the vertigo, he turned to walk from the quantum shifter but jerked to an immediate halt. There was a prone figure piled on the floor outside the booth. Since Jen was not due back for hours and Bechler would return to his own universe, he knew it must be Sue.

  His chest ready to split open from his pounding heart, he rushed over to her. He almost fell when his head began to spin again from the sudden movement. As he went to his knees next to her, slivers of light bounced off golden fragments peppered into her back. Afraid to turn her over, he crawled around to her front to see if she was still alive.

  “Sue,” his shaky voice croaked. He pulled up the face shield of her helmet and slid up the goggles. “Sue, are you all right?” he cried, his voice cracking.

  He touched her dirt-smudged cheek and could feel the warmth of her skin. The sign of body heat and the pink color of her skin under the grime heartened him. While he knew she was alive, his concern was still great due to the amount of shrapnel in her back. When he started to remove her helmet, she stirred.

  “Sue?” he said again.

  Her eyes opened, and his heart lifted in relief. He felt his eyes moisten while his hands removed her helmet and lowered her head to the ground. He stroked her hair and gazed into her magnificent azure eyes.

  “John?” Sue whispered, blinking several times.

  “Yeah, it’s me. How are you?”

  “Tired.”

  “So you thought you’d just take a little nap on the floor here?” he said, smiling.

  “I couldn’t go any farther,” she said in a low voice. “My back hurts.”

  He knew he needed to get her in the house and examine her injuries but was uncertain of how to get her there. He would carry her but was afraid to put any pressure on her back until he could get a better look at it. If nothing else, he would have to put her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  “You think you can make it in the house if I help you?”

  “Yeah, I can,” she said, a little more alert. She did not move for several seconds then grabbed Fuller’s arm and pulled herself, with obvious effort, to a sitting position.

  Fuller stood. “Here, grab my hand, and I’ll pull you up.”

  When she placed her hand in his, he tugged, and she came to a vertical position, falling into him. He steadied her as she clutched at his clothing. After remaining like that for a moment, she put her arm around his neck and
they started to walk.

  As they went along, he could see a pained look on her face with each move she made. He said, “We should get some aspirin in you to help with the pain.”

  “I have some codeine in the kitchen.”

  His brow rose. “Codeine in the kitchen?”

  “Yeah,” she groaned. “It’s from when I hurt my back a couple of years ago.”

  “Oh, okay. I’ll get that for you then.”

  When they reached the house, they stopped in the kitchen, and Sue swallowed a tablet. They proceeded upstairs to her bedroom, where Fuller helped remove her body armor. When he began to remove the jacket, she howled in pain.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “It feels like you’re ripping the skin off my back,”

  “I think some of this shrapnel penetrated through the vest and is sticking into your back. What is all this stuff anyway? It looks like gold razorblades or something.”

  “Two hand grenades went off in a pile of empty shell casings.”

  Fuller examined the shredded material. “Damn, it sure did a lot of damage, but I suppose it could have been worse.”

  “How?”

  “It could have been the steel grenade fragments that hit you instead of this soft brass. We need to get this jacket off before I can do anything.”

  “All right. Just do it then.” She held her arms back and gritted her teeth.

  “Okay, on three.”

  “No! Just get the damn thing off! I don’t want to know when you do it, just pull the damn thing… Ahhhh!” she yelled when Fuller yanked the jacket off, pulling the shards embedded under her skin with it. With the jacket off, he could see that blood covered her shredded shirt. His stomach turned with thoughts of the wounds below.

  “I’m sorry, Sue,” Fuller cried.

  “Mmmm,” she moaned, unable to speak. Her body swayed then twisted as she thumped onto the bed, her face now turned so Fuller could see it.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as he looked at her sour expression.

  “Yeah, it just hurts like hell,” she said in a strained voice.

  “That codeine should start to take effect in a few minutes. I need to get your shirt off, but I’d rather cut it off so I don’t open those wounds up any more than I just did. Do you have any scissors?”

  “Yeah. Over in the nightstand drawer,” she said, pointing behind her.

  “I’ll need to get some towels too.”

  “I’ll get them.”

  “No, just stay there. I will,” commanded Fuller.

  He threw his own jacket to the floor and went to the bathroom. Opening the linen cabinet, he sorted through the stacks and found two towels and a washcloth. They were more worn than the others in case the blood stained them. Returning to the bedroom, he met Sue while she was coming out the door. She had removed her shirt and was carrying it against her stomach with her right hand as she steadied herself on the doorframe with her left. Blood smeared her abdomen and bra.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I didn’t want you to cut my shirt so I took it off. It’s full of blood,” she said in a daze.

  “Yeah, I know. Go back in the bedroom so I can clean you up,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder to lead her back.

  “No. I don’t want to get blood all over my bed,” she snapped back, shrugging away from his grasp.

  He had never seen her acting this way so was concerned. She seemed confused, unsteady and willful. Had she lost that much blood or was it just the codeine taking effect? He did not want to guess but needed to examine her back to determine how severe her injuries were.

  “All right then. Let’s go to the bathroom,” he said in a calm voice.

  “Okay,” she said, tottering towards him.

  She grabbed onto his shirt, and he took her arm as they walked. When they entered the bath, he led her to a low covered radiator where she sat so he could examine her. Dried blood covered her back but several trickles of fresh blood flowed down. However, he was relieved when he saw none of the sharp metal fragments protruding out. If there were some under the crusted blood, he could see no sign but would not be certain until he washed her.

  “I’ll need to get this cleaned up so I can see better,” he said, going to the sink.

  He wet the washcloth and began to dab at the obvious wounds. She flinched and groaned several times when he hit the more tender spots but said nothing to him as he went about the task. He made several trips to the washbasin to rinse out the cloth, the bowl filling with red swirls when he rung it out.

  “I’ll need to undo your bra,” he said, turning pink. “There’s a bad cut under it.”

  “Go ahead. I won’t complain,” she said with a low chuckle.

  He did not know why she found this amusing but unfastened the bra with some resistance from the hooks. The straps sagged off her shoulders once loosened, and she held the cups over her breasts while he continued to clean.

  When he had gotten the wounds cleaned, he could see no sign of shrapnel. The smaller fragments had been too light to penetrate, and the bigger ones had remained embedded in the fabric of the armored jacket.

  There were three major wounds, with many pinprick-sized ones. The worst of the three was on her left shoulder blade. It was a gash about an inch long but not very deep. Some of the brass had hooked itself under her flesh and had torn out a chunk when he had removed the jacket. Although blood was still flowing from this and another wound on her right shoulder, they were only slow trickles. He applied pressure to both for several minutes, stopping the streams altogether.

  “Do you have any Band-Aids?” he asked.

  “In the medicine cabinet,” she said, yawning.

  He removed several strips from the box. “I’m just going to put these on the bigger cuts. You’ve got quite a few smaller ones, but they should be fine.”

  “All right, go ahead. Hurry though. I’ve gotta pee.”

  “Sure,” he said, peeling the paper from the first strip. He applied several across the large cut and two more to the other cuts, hooking her bra back when completed.

  “All set,” he said as he rose.

  He put the box back in the cabinet then helped her from the radiator. When he left the bathroom, he shut the door and waited until he heard the toilet flush and the sink running.

  When the water did not stop, he called, “Is everything all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m just washing up,” she said, her voice muffled by the door.

  “Okay, just don’t get your back wet.”

  “I won’t.” After a moment, she said, “Can you get me a clean bra and panties from my room?”

  “Me?” he asked, his eyes opening wide. The thought of rummaging through her underwear drawer just did not seem right.

  “Yeah, there’s no one else out there, is there?”

  “Well… all right. Where are they?” he stammered out.

  “The second drawer down in my bedroom dresser.”

  “Okay.”

  He got the garments, and when he returned, he called, “Here they are. What do you want me to do with them?”

  “Hand them in.”

  He started to open the door but froze. “Are you decent?”

  “If you keep opening that door, you’ll find out. Just hand them in. You know, reach around.”

  He cursed himself and extended his arm through the door. Sue took the bundle and emerged a minute later wearing the fresh underwear, her face clean and hair let down.

  “How’re you doing?” Fuller asked, blushing from her state of undress.

  “Better now, but I wish I could take a shower. I still feel nasty.”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” he said, trying to keep his eyes locked on her face. “You don’t want to open those cuts.”

  “I know. I just want to get some sleep anyway.”

  “Well
, let’s get you to bed then,” he said, taking her arm.

  He walked her to bed and helped her in. To prevent her cuts from opening, she crawled in on hands and knees and lay on her stomach. When she put her head on the pillow, she said, “It’s a good thing I’m so tired. I never sleep on my stomach.”

  He could not help looking at her scantily attired body while he pulled the sheet over her. His mind filled with thoughts he knew would never be as he tucked the sheet around her with great care.

  Her eyes already closed, he started to walk off when she called to him. “John?”

  He went back to her. “Yeah?”

  “Come here,” she said, her eyes open and looking at him.

  “I am.”

  “No. Real close.”

  He knelt on the bed and brought his face near. “Okay, I’m here.”

  “Closer.”

  “What?”

  She stretched and gave him a light kiss on his lips. “Thank you,” she said. The corner of her mouth came up as she put her head back on the pillow. She closed her eyes again and her face relaxed, looking like she was already fast asleep.

  Fuller stayed bent over her for several seconds before standing. While his lips still tingled from the warmth of her touch, his brain was numb as the confusion of fatigue seemed to drift out from her mind and into his.

   

  *****

 

   

  Jen swung the reins in her hands, turning the horses towards the rough brick building ahead. Dim yellow light streamed out the windows as shadows from inside played across them, making them pulse like a beacon towards which to navigate. The rhythmic bobble of the wagon on the cobblestones altered when the steel-rimmed wheels shifted angle over the rounded pavers. When adjacent to the structure, another tug of the reins slowed and then stopped the wagon in front of the door.

  Upon freeing the empress and children from the servant dining room, Jen and the others had made it through the tunnel to the bakery without further incident. While Fuller and Bechler remained behind to shift out, Jen, Agacia and the imperial family had loaded into the enclosed traveling wagon they had bought for the trip out of the city. They thought it best to knock Placidia unconscious to bring him to the emperor, so drugged him with the remaining hypo.

  The darkness of night had grown deeper, and the surface of the road more jagged as they drifted farther from the city to meet up with Cassius. He had stopped firing the mortars once they had radioed that they were out of the palace, and he waited in the farm field for Jen to arrive. Before leaving, he sparked the thermite charge to make sure the weapon and the rest of its shells were unusable for any locals. The remainder of the journey, while not long or eventful, had been rough from the wagon bouncing along the uneven road.

  When Jen descended from the driver’s seat, she noted how much brighter the sky was becoming as the hour of sunrise was nearing. Cassius came down beside her, the roman-style armor he wore clattering with each move. The two walked back to the carriage door to debark the emperor’s family.

  Jen said, “We will leave Placidia sleeping back there until we find out where the emperor’s men want him.”

  “Aye, miss,” replied Cassius. “I hope the dog is bruised up good from bouncing around on the floor.” The old man chuckled.

  The door opened when they neared it, and the empress peered out from inside. “Have we arrived?”

  “Yes, my Lady,” said Jen.

  They had been directed to this building by the empress relaying instructions from her husband. It was a way station between the capital city and Antium, and troops from Legatus Aquilinus’ legion were to meet them there. From here, they were to move on to Antium under the protection of the soldiers.

  The empress reached behind her and grabbed the younger of the two children, handing the small girl down to Jen. She lowered her son down with Cassius assisting and then jumped from the wagon herself. The last to emerge was Agacia, her face aglow with a smile and looking as though the trip were some great adventure.

  Three troops emerged from the building. The leader walked towards the wagon while the two others followed behind. He saluted the empress. “Majesty, I am Decurion Augustus Fabius at your command.”

  “I am gratified to see you, Decurion,” said the empress. “Please escort us into the building where it is warmer. The night air is not good for the children.”

  The decurion saluted again then strode to the door while the group followed along, the two other guards remaining behind to tend the horses. Jen accessed her data regarding the Roman military and recalled the term ‘decurion.’ He was the commander of a turmae, which was the smallest cavalry unit in a Roman legion and would consist of around thirty-two men.

  Jen entered the station and was struck by how empty the large room was. While she could not see the entirety of the space, the bulk of the building was this one large room, and it only contained a mere twenty-five soldiers at best. Most sat at tables that ran in several rows along the back wall in front of one of the three fireplaces. The other two fireplaces were positioned with one to the left and one to the right side walls and had a few men seated on the floor in front of each of these as well.

  “Where are the rest of the troops?” asked Jen.

  “The legion is still en route,” replied the decurion. “It took longer to break camp at Selucia than expected, so my turmae was sent ahead to meet the empress. We were instructed to wait here for the lead elements of the legion to arrive before taking the imperial family to Antium.”

  Jen’s eyes narrowed when she heard this. They were very vulnerable here to the remnants of the palace guard, and Legatus Ocella who was still loyal to Placidia. It was not safe to remain with so small a detachment to guard them.

  “When will the rest of the legion meet up with us?” she asked.

  “They should be here by midday.”

  Jen shook her head and said to the empress, “My Lady, I believe we should continue our journey and try to meet up with the legion.”

  “Why do you say this?” the empress asked, the muscles in her jaw tensing.

  “I do not believe the number of soldiers at this station is sufficient should the palace guard or any of Ocella’s legion follow us here.”

  “Why do you believe they will follow us here?”

  “Placidia has shown himself to be quite cunning. Since his spies have warned him of our plan to rescue you from the palace, I find it likely that he was also informed of our using this station as a rendezvous point with Legatus Aquilinus’ troops.”

  The empress shook her head. “If that were the case, would his men not already be here?”

  “No. They had anticipated stopping us at the palace, so would have no need to send men here. However, once they discover that we escaped, they may dispatch troops to track us.”

  Cassius broke in, “But, miss, without Placidia to direct them, would they do this? Also, you told me the palace was ablaze when you escaped it. Will they not think you all dead in the fire?”

  “I have taken this into account as well,” said Jen. “Considering Legatus Ocella will be arrested and tried like Placidia, I believe he will try to avoid this outcome. Without being sure of what happened to us, Ocella will send troops here.”

  “Then we should leave as soon as possible,” said the empress.

  Jen turned to the decurion, “Please assemble your men and ready them to move out. We will go on ahead in the wagon. Meet up with us as fast as you can.”

  The decurion looked from Jen to the empress and back again, appearing unsure if he should be following the order or not. The empress settled his doubt when she ordered, “Do as she says.”

  The decurion rushed to his men, barking out orders. The men scrambled to their feet and began packing their gear.

  “Come, we must hurry to the wagon,” said Jen, rushing to the entrance of the station.

 
When she got to the door, she opened it but froze. It was too late. There were already legionnaires armed with rifles spreading out on the other side of the road. She jerked her head left then right before turning and pushing the empress back into the building.

  “What are you doing?” snapped the empress. “How dare you shove me?”

  Jen ignored her outrage. “We are too late. Ocella’s men are already outside and surrounding the building.”

  The decurion, who was still barking at his men, was unaware. She shouted above him, “Decurion, we are too late. The men of Ocella’s legion are outside and surrounding the building. Please have your men barricade any back entrances and guard the windows.”

  As the men scrambled from the new commands he yelled, she took note for the first time that none carried guns with them. Some only had sword and shield while others had bow and arrows. Given the light weaponry, she knew it would not take long for the men outside to inundate them. The slowness of the conspirators’ weapon shipments would work against her now as the only men supplied the automatic arms were those of the palace guard and part of the legion guarding the city.

  Despite this weakness, she had three particle guns at her disposal: her primary, which was down to a quarter charge, her backup with a full charge and Cassius’. They had given him one to protect himself while firing the mortars. He was minimally trained in its use though and had not been given the chance to do much target practice.

  She looked at Cassius. “Do you still have your particle gun?”

  He looked puzzled at first then said, “You mean this, miss?” He pulled the device from under a plate of his armor and held it out.

  “Yes. Good, you have it.” Jen turned and called out, “Decurion!”

  The man looked at her while he spoke to two of his men. When he finished his instructions, he came to her. “Yes, miss?”

  “The soldiers outside are armed with the new dart shooters. Do you know of these devices?”

  “Yes, miss,” replied the decurion. “The officers of my legion were given demonstration of these but have not been supplied with them.”

  Jen produced one of her particle guns. “I have here a weapon more powerful than the dart shooters, and I will give it to you to use.” She handed him the weapon and pulled out her backup one. “You hold it in this manner and point this end towards your target. You push this button to fire it.”

  Jen aimed at a chair across the room and fired. The wood burst to flames for a second then continued to glow orange and smolder like charcoal.

  The decurion’s eyes popped open as he stared at the chair, his eyes eventually shifting to the weapon in his hand. “What form of magic does this use?”

  “I cannot explain now, but do you think you can use this device?”

  “Yes, miss, I will do my best.”

  “Good,” said Jen. “I need advice from you now. Given that we have only three of these weapons and the men outside are armed with the dart shooters, do you think we can defend this building and keep them from entering?”

  The decurion tore his eyes from the gun and looked at her. She could see his face change when his military training took over. He said, “I am doubtful. How many are out there, miss?”

  “I counted at least one turmae if not more.”

  “I have five archers which can shoot out the windows, but they will be no match for the dart shooters,” said the decurion. “The darts can be fired very fast from what I have seen. When my men aim to shoot, they will be very vulnerable to them.”

  Jen was now beginning to understand the human emotion of frustration and could understand why humans cursed as a way to vent the anger. There seemed to be no good options for them, and her mind felt ready to explode trying to come up with alternatives. It was only a matter of time before the siege would start and they would be helpless to stop the superior force. The question was how much time and why they had not attacked yet. Could they be waiting for further reinforcements? Were they afraid an all-out assault could injure or kill the imperial family, thus eliminating them as hostages? She was not sure.

  “Miss,” said Cassius, interrupting her thoughts. “I have an idea.”

  Her head snapped around to the old man. “What is it?”

  “Since we will be unable stop them from entering the building, why not let them in?” He pointed to the rows of tables along the back wall and continued, “If we push the tables on their sides into one corner of the room, we can get behind them and use them as a shield from the darts. When the devils come in through the windows or doors, we can shoot them with the… uh… pargun?” He held up the particle gun.

  Jen’s mind stopped spinning and locked onto the idea. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “That is a brilliant idea!” She turned to the Decurion. “What do you think?”

  He nodded. “Yes, that is good. It will give us a much smaller area to defend and a better chance to aim and shoot as they come in. We only need to hold them back until the rest of the legion arrives.”

  While Jen corralled the empress and children into one of the front corners of the building, the men carried tables and chairs over to form a barricade. While the dense hardwood tops of the tables were several inches thick, Jen had them double up the rows to provide sufficient thickness to stop the rounds. She had the outer row placed with legs out and the inner row with legs in. Since the tops of the outer row angled down towards the ground and the inner angled up towards the ceiling, it provided two deflection surfaces for the bullets to strike, which should also provide added protection. Outside all this, she had the chairs turned on their sides too. This not only gave a third layer of protection but would also slow down their opponent’s advance should they make it into the room.

  Jen went to one of the front windows to see if the wagon was still there or if they had discovered Placidia. The soldiers had unhitched the horses and brought them to the stable, but the wagon remained in front of the window, blocking the view from across the road. Although the sun was now up and the temperature was rising, she could still see with her infrared vision the heat of Placidia’s prone body lying on the floor. While he would still be asleep for hours and would be unable to give orders to the men, she hoped to deliver him to the emperor along with his family. The window was not within the confines of the barricade they were building, but she decided to keep watch on the wagon until the attack started. Once this happened, she doubted anyone would take the time to search it.

  As the tables were still being assembled, a shout from outside hailed them. “Soldiers of the Aquilinus legion, this is Legatus Ocella. I order you out of the building now!”

  The call answered Jen’s earlier question why they were waiting to attack. They had waited for the legatus to come up and direct the fight himself. There was much at stake here, and he could not risk a blunder by some lower officer. It was doubtful he could persuade his legion to take up arms against the emperor, so he needed the imperial family to use as bargaining chips. Ideally, he would like to get both the family and Placidia so they could restore the situation to its previous state—Placidia ruling the empire through intimidation. If all died, he had no good options.

  The decurion came alongside Jen and called back, “Legatus, I regret we will be unable to follow your order. I and my men were given explicit orders by Legatus Aquilinus and the emperor himself to protect the life of the empress and children with our own lives.”

  “Who is it that speaks?” asked Ocella.

  “I am Decurion Augustus Fabius of the Aquilinus Equites Legionis.”

  “Decurion, you are mistaken,” shouted Ocella, his voice trying to sooth despite its high volume. “I am not here to harm the empress in any way. I am here to rescue her from the band that kidnapped her from the palace. These criminals are agents of the barbaric tribes to the west, and they will take them there as hostages. The imperial family is in great danger from them.”

  “I am sorry, Legatus, I ha
ve my orders. You are welcome to wait for the arrival of Legatus Aquilinus and the emperor to discuss the matter with them. They are expected here soon, near the head of the legion.”

  The decurion looked at Jen. “Let us hope that will make him wish to leave.”

  Jen shook her head. “I think it will make him more desperate to hurry his attack.”

  Her prophecy rang true when shots sprayed in through the window, almost hitting the decurion. He ducked down as shards of the mud brick flew inward. The two ran to the protection of the barrier while their men moved the last of the tables into place.

  The decurion called to them, “Hurry with that barricade, the attack has started!”

  They had slid the last table into place but several were still scrambling to shuffle the chairs when Jen saw a soldier at one of the windows across the room. Her gun snapped up and fired. She hit the assailant but was a split second too late, his shots striking one of the soldiers inside. He was wounded in the leg so two others helped him behind the barricade while everyone inside ducked for cover.

  Several more troops appeared at windows but none tried to come in. They took cover along the edges of the brick openings and sent bursts of fire into the tables. Chips of wood flew up when the rounds struck home, but none penetrated through to the other side. With the constant confusion and decisions to make, Jen had forgotten her helmet in the wagon. She stayed low like the others, not returning any fire.

  Her keen hearing and lightning-fast brain analyzed the pattern of fire and bullet strikes and was able to determine the location of the shooter and his target. She could tell when anyone was shooting towards her and when each soldier was reloading his weapon.

  Jen waited until the stream of bullets from one stopped coming and another arced away from her position then stood and fired towards her far left. Although she missed the sliver of the soldier’s face peering through the window, she had set her particle gun to a higher energy state. Even if she missed her target, the heat from vaporizing brick would still cause injury.

  The man screamed in agony when his face was scorched from the wave of heated atoms spewing from the wall. Jen ducked when another surge of rounds arced back towards her. She timed out the pattern twice more and was able to shoot again, both times hitting her mark. Upon striking the second, a shout arose outside and the pummeling of the barrier stopped. She could not hear everything they said but caught enough to know they were changing tactics. She stayed at a crouch and worked her way over to Cassius and the decurion to make plans of her own.

  “They have stopped firing for now,” said the decurion.

  “I believe they have discovered they will not be able to shoot at us through the barricade,” said Jen. “They are planning something else now.”

  “I believe they will try to storm one or both doors.”

  “That is very likely.”

  The decurion put his hand to his chin. “If I were them, I would hold us down by continuing to shoot through the windows and send in troops through both the front and back doors.”

  “The front door will be easy to protect,” said Jen. “I can open a gap between the two rows of tables and the front wall small enough that anyone at a window will not be able to angle a shot at me. As soon as anyone enters the door though, I will have a clear aim.”

  “Good, that leaves the back door then.”

  “I should be able to do the same there,” said Cassius. He pointed to the barricade where two tables met. “The back door is about there. If I open a gap I can shoot the devils when they come in.”

  “Well, let us do it then before they start coming,” said the decurion.

  They opened the gap by the front door first, Jen crawling between the rows after moving the first table over. She shoved the table in the outer row away from the wall then crawled to where they would fire at the back door from. She opened the gap on the outer row while the two men opened the inner row. She was crawling back to her spot by the front door when the firing began again.

  Bullets streamed in through the windows, striking the outer row of the barricade. After several rounds penetrated the wood and bounced off her body armor, Jen fell flat to her stomach, staying low and snaking along the ground. She was about to turn the corner to get behind the inner row when she heard the front door open.

  In a flash, her body twisted so she faced the door, the particle gun aimed towards it. For a time, nothing happened but then a burst of fire from the windows began and a man rushed through the door. When he turned to charge the barricade, Jen shot him in the chest. He froze with a look of utter shock and fell over dead, never knowing what happened.

  A second soldier came through the door and piled into the first just as the corpse swayed forward, the impact accelerating the speed it fell. Jen tried to fire a second time, but the gun would not. She pressed the trigger a third time. The gun had recycled and the particles shot into the crown of the second man’s head as he stumbled over the first. A third legionnaire was entering but stopped. He threw himself back when the heat from the previous blast struck him in the face. She tried to shoot him too but again the gun did not fire.

  Jen knew the particle guns had a normal recycle time between shots of around 100 milliseconds for the charge to build up. However, with the higher power setting, she thought it might be taking longer to reach the needed potential. This was preventing the speed she desired, so she lowered it to regain a faster response time.

  She waited for the next victim to enter but no one else did. She wriggled her way around the end of the inner table row and got behind the inner barricade. As she rounded the table, a scream tore through the air when Cassius burned off the arm of a soldier entering the back door.

  To prevent shots from striking their own men when they came in the front door, the soldiers at the windows were not aiming towards Jen. Because of this, she was able to rise and fire into a group of legionnaires coming from the back door. Her first shot brought a man down, but again her second squeeze of the firing button did nothing. The gun was faulty and would need additional recycle time regardless of the setting.

  Before she could press the button again, one of the men at the windows saw her and raked his fire in her direction. Jen dove down, the shots going over her head. Before her eyes got below the level of the barrier, she could see more men coming in through the front, sidestepping the dead on the floor. A scream echoed through the room when the first man through walked into the line of fire going over her head. She raced to her firing gap and saw that a second soldier had collided with the wounded one.

  The soldier spun around to retreat, but Jen fired, hitting his shoulder as he exited. The shooter at the window had stopped after hitting one of his own soldiers, so Jen turned up the power on her gun, popped over the barrier and fired at him. The shot struck the side of his face so she turned towards the back door to see another going down from the shot of the decurion.

  Knowing the recycle time now, Jen waited to shoot the particle gun and watched as one of the soldiers still in the back hall brought his gun to bear on her. While her mind calculated whether he would be able to shoot or the charge of her gun would build first she stood frozen. Although it would be close, the gun would be ready before the man could fire. She stood waiting, no sign of worry displayed.

  The time was upon her, and her finger pressed down with haste as the barrel crept higher. His chest burned open but the last nerve impulses continued and the gun raked from the ground up to her. An eternity passed while the bullets came screaming on. Her mind was able to work faster than her body though so she could not execute its movement in time as the lethal projectiles whistled through the air.

  The first thudded below her right breast. Before the impact had time to ripple through the bulletproof fabric, the second hit the edge of her left breast, where her heart would be if she were human. The waves of the first strike were spreading out when the third crashed into her collarbone just a
s her body began to lower itself, the command finally beginning to execute.

  The pressure of the strikes spread out across the suit, which negated the fatal force. However, something in her mind changed with the impacts. Her body continued its descent as the horrid memories of several days before flooded in. John was lying on the floor of the armory, and she was not certain he was alive. The fear of that moment was brought forth from her catalog of experience when she compared it to her current patterns. Was it fear that gripped her? Had the closeness of her own demise affected her neural potentials so much?

  Her body hit the floor, and she lay there unmoving as she analyzed the event that had just unfolded. She questioned her actions, discovering a conflict existed within her own mind as to what had just transpired. Her computational segment reanalyzed the data she had used to make her decision and found nothing lacking in her logic at the time. Her own uninjured body was proof of her correctness in taking the action. Yet there was an apparent lapse in her reasoning. There was an unaccounted variable in the equation and the bullets had come because of this.

  The feeling intensified. If her ability to calculate any risk had been in error once, the probability was great that there would be a similar one in the future. The next time could mean the end of her existence; however, this was not the frightening thought. While part of her programming was to protect her existence, this was not what drove her terror. She failed to understand the source, and this was the greatest puzzle of all.

  She knew her love of John was at its source, but that was all she could extract. The conflict twisted within the infinite complexities of the tangled neural network while she puzzled it out. Without a previous experience to compare her present state with, the analytical subroutines of her parallel processors were powerless to extract its source either.

  The decurion interrupted the wrenching of her thoughts when he called to her. As though from a great distance he asked, “Miss, are you injured?”

  The haze of fear slowed her responses as the disturbing specters still rebounded across the miles of connections in her net. She sensed that a vast stretch of time had been lost but a check of her atomic chronometer showed only fractions of a second had passed.

  As the forceful sensor inputs of the here and now came rushing in, she called back, “I am unharmed.”

  “The darts struck you though, miss.”

  “My clothes stopped them,” she said with a millisecond pause between each syllable.

  She spun on her knees and peered around the table, but nobody entered the front. Soon Cassius’ heavy fire on the back stopped, as did the hail of metal-jacketed lead from the windows. All was quiet.

  Jen fought to keep her thoughts on the enemy’s strategy as the fearful images kept rising from her neural connections. The decurion crawled over to talk, aiding to suppress her inner clash.

  “They have stopped for now, but they will try again,” he said.

  “I agree,” she replied, her words coming easier now.

  “They will step it up this next time though.”

  “Probably. However, I do not believe they will be too aggressive for they wish to keep the imperial family alive.”

  “That is true,” said the decurion nodding. He pondered for a moment with hand to chin. “There must be some way we can use that to our advantage.”

  “How so?”

  “I am not sure,” he replied.

  There was no time for further discussion as the guns began blazing again. This time shots sprang from not only the windows across from Jen but also from those along the wall to her right. Their openings not facing the barricade, the soldiers leaned through them and shot along the edge of the wall. By doing this, they were able to keep Jen pinned down so she would not be able to stand and shoot at the back door.

  “They are firing from those windows now,” said Jen, pointing to the right. “I believe they are going to rush the back door.”

  “I will assist Cassius,” said the decurion as he scurried away.

  Jen stayed down and watched the front door, knowing fear would not allow her to chance standing again. Some potential in her network had shifted and not all the logic routines together could force it back. While her designers had anticipated the learning ability of her neural network, they had never anticipated the extent to which she could grow. Through her prolonged study of human emotion and the integration of this with her humanlike mind, emulation was becoming reality.

  No one attempted to enter the front door, and firing from the windows across from it ceased. Firing from the right flank continued at a feverish pace though as bullets zipped overhead and rebounded off the bricks. Fired from a higher angle, they bounced downward into the barricade, whirling fiends that gashed into the flesh of the men around her. Her head was close enough to the wall so the ricochets did not hit and the armor she wore protected her body. She was safe for now. Despite this, her mind would not accept it, and she shrank back from each hit.

  Fragments of the earthenware blocks showered off as the unrelenting assault continued, causing her inner turmoil to rise in strength again. There was no distraction to push it away, no action to take, no planning to do, no person to hold a discussion with. There was nothing but the booming of guns, the screams of men when struck and the demon memory within to fight down as best she could.

  She had to do something. Just lying there was becoming too unbearable. Action of any kind was preferred to the wrenching she fought within. What to do was the question. Whatever it was could not put her in harm’s way though because the extremity of the fear she felt would prevent it. Within milliseconds, uncertainty turned to frustration and frustration to anger. A whole spectrum of emotion assaulted her, and with no experience to compare it to, she did not know what to do.

  A scream pealed out behind her while the battles within and without raged on. Still no one came through the door so she took her eyes from her lookout, turned towards the shriek and saw a soldier holding his neck. Blood was spilling out from around his grasp. As precious life poured from his wound, his screams ebbed and she could see the panic grow in his eyes, a mirror of her own. His face transmuted from fear, to shock, to confusion and to anger that this was happening—then resignation, acceptance and finally calm as his eyes glazed over from weakness. Death came.

  She stared at the lifeless shell until her glance caught sight of the empress in the farthest corner of the barricade where the two brick walls joined. She too had seen the man’s clash with death, the whole time shielding her children from the terrible scene. Her look fascinated Jen, and she could see the terror as the empress’s eyes pulsed from wide open to squeezed shut with each close shot. There was something more there though. With each shock of sound, her body convulsed but not to shrivel for her own protection but to protect something more important to her than life itself—the lives of her son and daughter.

  Time slowed and the rattle of mayhem subsided while the vision before Jen continued. Agacia was next to the empress, her face the extremity of terror but likewise not seeming so concerned with guarding her own life but that of the child beside her—the weeping little girl. No matter the terror either woman felt, both seemed driven by some instinct, some greater purpose more noble, the protection of the smaller lives next to them.

  Jen’s mind raced to find some similar pattern within her vast database, some similar experience of her own or stored from another’s life. Nothing would come. Nothing compared to the onslaught of emotion she had going on within herself or that of the two women. To be sure there were things of similar horror but nothing as vivid as this.

  From light years away came the voices of Cassius and the decurion, but her mind was too caught in the scene she was witnessing to interpret what was said. They were mere background clatter to be ignored like the rest.

  “They are getting through! I cannot get them all!” yelled Cassius.

  “Nor can I!” bellowed the decuri
on. He screamed out orders over the roar of thundering weapons. “Archers, prepare to fire as they come over the barricade!”

  Agacia’s eyes thrashed about in panic when she heard the command, but her eyes shot over and saw Jen looking. As the young woman stared back, a change came over her face and calmness appeared. Through some silent communication, Agacia seemed to say, ‘I’m not worried, you are here with me, Jen, and you will protect me.’

  Insight flashed. A pattern emerged but not for what Jen was feeling. The way Agacia gazed at her was the same way she had done so the night before when the palace guards spewed bullet after bullet through the bedroom door. There had been the same horror in the girl’s face to begin with, but then the same confidence when she somehow sensed she would be safe in Jen’s presence.

  The spark of intuition leaped, a different twist was envisioned and she was ready to act. Jen rolled over and over, stopping when she got closer to the two women huddled in the corner. She ended on her back with the particle gun ready, her fingers flying across its surface to adjust the power to its highest setting. She aimed towards the vastness of the ceiling corner across the room and fired.

  The concussion pounded her skin and waves of heat struck as smoldering wood and glowing orange roof tiles descended upon the throng of men who were storming the back door. She ignored the agonizing screams and fired a second shot, this time aiming towards the far end of the wall of windows the enemy was firing through. A second scorching blast hit her as the wall buckled from the intense energy, crushing men beneath a heap of earthen blocks. Jen’s arms swung about, again pressing the trigger for a third blast. Another shockwave slapped her back. The far wall of windows came down and more of the roof collapsed, crushing the soldiers under its mass.

  As Jen had calculated though, the timbers overhead, still supported by the ell of the walls behind her, held fast. The rubble of brick and wood blocked access to her group just beyond the barrier of tables. Debris entombed them and would take hours for the enemy to dig out, precious time they did not have with the fast approach of the emperor’s legion.

  As Jen lay still in the dust-filled darkness, her thoughts went back to the night before. Her memory became so lucid that she thought even now she was hearing the maniacal laughter of John Fuller as he blasted down the ceiling outside the palace bedroom.

 

 

  CHAPTER 13

 

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