Patton's Spaceship (The Timeline Wars, 1)

by John Barnes

  I did a big mock wince; it was true, unfortunately, that something about my not-quite-healed right ankle had always made me hit just a little funny, right toward DeJohn. Of course he’s tall enough to play third and second at the same time …

  “Oh, I’m in better shape these days. Might surprise you. Anyway, I have to run—meeting a client soon—but thanks for letting me know about the car. I’ll call the garage in an hour or so and see if they can tell me anything. If they can’t, I imagine I’ll need your help again.”

  “You got it. Say, did your client get through the Seattle airport okay this morning? That is where they were headed, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah—what do you mean, get through okay—”

  “Well, you put ’em on the plane early in the morning, and it’s about a six-hour flight, so I was just thinking that when the hostage situation developed there it must have been about when your client was landing.”

  “Hostage situation?! I haven’t had the radio on all day. When was this—”

  “Middle of this afternoon—still morning their time,” DeJohn said. His face got sort of soft and concerned, and I realized I must look pretty bad.

  “Who’s doing it?”

  He blew out his breath like a man who has just realized he has to do something tough. “Ah, shit. Mark, buddy, I really shouldn’t have mentioned it. It’s the old enemy, Blade of the Most Merciful. Looks like they’re back, and some kind of gang warfare seems to have erupted around them—they’ve been running the crime in the Islamic communities in a dozen cities around here. In fact a CMU prof was working on documenting that, and now he’s disappeared, guy name of Harry Skena, and—”

  “Damn, damn, damn,” I said, more to shut him up so I could get away than anything else. “Skena was supposed to be my client starting tomorrow! He’s turned up missing?”

  “Didn’t show up for class, and the dean’s office at Pitt got a call—”

  I knew Harry was okay, of course—this was leftover information from earlier—but it was a good way to get DeJohn out of the way while I ran to see what was up about Seattle. I didn’t exactly know what powers an ATN Special Agent had, but maybe he was kind of like a US Marshal in the Old West, or a freelance superhero, and if I could get him to hit Blade I wanted to watch him do it. I hadn’t forgotten how effective that little silvery gadget Ariadne had used to waste a dozen Bladers had been.

  “We had a private hideout for something like this—sorry but I’ll have to grab a cab and go there. I’ll call you if he’s okay, all right, DeJohn? And save a few strikes for me.”

  “Will do, buddy, and ’preciate it.”

  He went back toward his desk, the bag of McDonald’s lunch still under his arm, and I bolted out the door and down the steps.

  I was just dashing out to look for a cab—in Pittsburgh hailing a cab is nearly impossible, but I didn’t want to run all the way to the next cab stand—when a hand caught my elbow. “You heard the news from Seattle?”

  It was Skena. “Yeah, I heard,” I said.

  “Come on with me,” Skena said. “I’ve already notified base, and we will be expected there—they’ll have weapon packs for both of us. We just need to get down to my van in the garage, here.”

  We got on the elevator, and it dropped quickly. “I might have a former client on the site.”

  Skena grunted. “Of course you do. That’s why I was so surprised earlier. She’s the one I thought you couldn’t possibly know, that I’m keeping an eye on in this timeline.”

  “Mrs. Brunreich?”

  “The daughter, Porter.”

  I gaped at him. “She’s just a ten-year-old kid—”

  “Yeah? Well in more than fifty timelines descended from this one, she gets a lot more important, pal. So far we don’t think any of those timelines have been found by the Closers, but maybe one has, or one in which she’s important has, whether we know about it or not. Doesn’t matter much; the point is, it’s quite possible their whole reason for coming here, aside from capturing this timeline, was to find her and kill her.” The elevator door opened and Skena ran through, pretty fast for such a big guy.

  He unlocked the back of his van, and, just as he opened the door, a window shattered. I turned, saw the man with the pistol, and had my .45 out instantly, giving him a couple of rounds to pin him down.

  “Inside!” Skena shouted. I wasn’t sure why it was urgent, but I could tell it was, so I jumped in—

  It got dark, and silent, then gray, then vision returned, then sound returned. I was getting used to this.

  We were standing in a little white room with two of those silvery “super squirt guns” on holster belts lying on a table. He put one on and handed me the other. “Sorry to rush, but we’re in real time, Mark. It’s only the big machines up at ATN that can go forward and backward. These little gadgets just take us short distances crosstime. But it’s still the fastest way to SeaTac.”

  “Well, if we’re in real time, then let’s go,” I said, buckling mine on. “How do I use this gadget?”

  “It’s called a SHAKK. Seeking Hypersonic Ammunition Kinetic Kill. Point it and squeeze the trigger. It hits whatever is in its sights at the time you pull the trigger, out to about six miles, so be sure you aim—hip shots are a real bad idea. Don’t lead anything—it homes in on what it’s pointed at, and anyway at Mach 10, you don’t need much of a lead. You have two thousand rounds in the magazine. Move the switch back, here, for semiauto. Middle position is six-round bursts that hit in a hex pattern about a meter on a side. Far position is full auto, about 400 rpm, and you’d use it against a whole army—won’t need it this time. Better stick to semiauto. Got that?”

  “How much recoil?”

  “Zip. Ammo is self-propelling, like a rocket. Any other questions?”

  “Nope. Let’s go grease some Bladers.”

  He grinned at me. “Knew I could count on you for a fun time. All right, god knows what we’re going to find. I’m bouncing us right into one of the airline frequent flyer clubs, which with a little luck won’t have anyone in it at the time. Use your common sense. Radio traffic that the artificial intelligence is analyzing says there’s no good guys inside—just the hostages, us, and Blade. Remember the goal is wipe out the Bladers, then get back out—soon as we’ve got ’em all we’ve got to run back to the club. I don’t want to have to shoot my way through your local police just to avoid having to explain these gadgets.”

  “With you all the way,” I said. I made sure my SHAKK was set for semiauto, and Skena said, “Delivery system, attention, activate please destination specified now.”

  When he said “now” it got dark, silent, gray—

  Luck was not with us, or maybe it was. We popped into the clubroom that Blade of the Most Merciful was obviously using as a headquarters. There were about ten of them standing around, and when something went poof in their midst, being the sort of guys they were, they were pointing guns before they knew what it was.

  Moreover, at that HQ level, figure a few of them had seen Closers pop in and out, and had a good idea what was going on. The only thing that saved us, I think, was that they didn’t know the Closers had enemies with the same technology.

  I saw nothing but men with guns in front of me, so I brought my SHAKK to bear, squeezed the trigger, popped it from man to man doing that. They were grabbing for their guns, but I’d gotten most of them before one of them did get an AK swung around—

  There was a deep whirring noise beside me and the rest of the enemy fell over. “Wha—?”

  “Never say never. I used full auto. Your authorities are really going to wonder about all the little holes in the walls, but the ammo has already self-destructed in there. Let’s go.”

  When we came out the door, there was a Blade guy coming in the other way. I popped him, and that was the first time I had time to see what the SHAKK actually did. A long time later it was explained to me that when you point a SHAKK at a human being, the round not only homes in on him, it fin
ds his head and then, after penetrating his brain pan, “slows down” by spiraling through his head. Since it starts out at Mach 10, by the time it comes to a stop it’s pretty much converted the head to puree.

  What I saw was that I squeezed the trigger and his head bulged for an instant, there was a sort of pink spray from his ears, nose, and mouth, and then his head fell inward like a deflating water balloon, which in a sense was what it was. I took a moment to heave, but I ran after Skena all the same; next time I wouldn’t be freaked out, but this first one was a surprise.

  We were suddenly out in the common area, and the Blade guys were everywhere, standing with their AR’s over the hundred or so hostages lying prone on the floor. They’d tied their hands and made them lie down close together so that when the time came to kill them they need only spray the floor with full auto, and I found out later that when we burst in on them, the hostages had been in that position, with no bathroom breaks, for seven hours. Quite a few of them had ended up pissing themselves, and one diabetic had gone into a coma and quietly died during that time … but I don’t suppose any of that bothered Blade of the Most Merciful.

  Skena belly-flopped onto the hard concourse floor, and I followed his lead, flipping my own SHAKK to full auto. From the angle I was at, anything live and standing was a Blader, so I swung the SHAKK back and forth twice, holding the trigger down. It made that deep bass whoosh that I realized must be the sonic booms of its tiny ammunition. (Later, again, I learned a SHAKK round was about a third the volume of a BB shot and almost entirely propulsion and guidance system. It was the sheer energy of impact that did all the damage with those things.)

  Skena had been spraying, too. As soon as we’d hit every target we could see, we leaped up again. A shot rang off a pillar, giving away the Blader just coming out of the men’s room—a lesson in taking the time to aim. I sent a shot after him, and it nailed him as he turned to run.

  Skena pointed his SHAKK at a hand slowly reaching up over a sofa and fired a shot at the hand (a little crack! noise like popcorn popping hard); an instant later we saw the pink spray from behind the couch. “Neat gadget, hunh?” he whispered to me.

  I didn’t answer—I’d seen a flicker of movement near the women’s room, and I was running toward it while I tried to think what it might be. Maybe just a female Blader deciding to hide in the toilet—

  I charged in anyway. As I rounded the corner a shot bounced off the tile beside me, spraying me with the fine gravel of the wall, and the boom of the pistol echoed through the bathroom. I dove in in a headfirst slide, the SHAKK in front of me, had just an instant to see three men and Porter, pointed at the first man and squeezed the trigger—

  The second man leveled a pistol at me, the third jammed his gun into Porter’s neck, lifting her head, and as time slowed down I saw his finger start to move down onto the trigger.

  I was already squeezing the trigger on the SHAKK, and I brought it to bear on the gun thrust into Porter’s throat. There was no time to think of aiming, I just hoped I was pointed right—or did I even have time to think that? Remembering it now, anyway, I always hope it was pointed right—

  It was. The SHAKK round recognized explosives at the bottom of metal tubes as dangerous, so first it looped around, smashing the inside of the barrel into a thick mess of metal fragments, blocking it, then it smashed the bullet backward. The gun blew through at the hammer end. I imagine it would have hurt like hell, since it tore most of his hand into pieces and sprayed them up his sleeve, but I was squeezing off my second round, and this one went right into him; his head did the inflate/deflate routine.

  A round had screamed off the floor in my face, and I brought the SHAKK around, got it pointed at the surviving Blader’s foot, squeezed the trigger, and made his head do that funny pulse, too.

  Then it was quiet with a ring. I was about three-quarters deaf from the effect of all those shots in a bathroom, and so it took me a moment to realize I was hearing something besides the high-pitched scream of my own tortured ears.

  It was Porter, and she was starting to sob. I stepped forward and scooped her up into my arms—

  “Mr. Strang?”

  “Yeah, kid, it’s me. Never mind how I happen to be here. And listen, you’ve got to not tell anyone it was me, you got that?”

  She pulled back and nodded solemnly. “Are you—you must be working for some very important organization or something. Like the CIA or something?”

  “Like that, yeah.”

  “That gun is some kind of special equipment, isn’t it?”

  “You bet,” I said. “Just trust me, I’m working for the good guys, okay? Where’s your mother?”

  Porter’s face folded up like it was being sucked inward, and I knew before she gasped it out. “They, they, they … they said they were going to show us what they’d do and they … they said they’d show us … they—”

  “Oh, Porter.” I held her tight; I knew, god I knew, from the way I’d lost Mom and Jerry and Marie to the same bunch, but what consolation could that be to her?

  Later when I got the full story, it was what I would have expected if I’d been thinking at all. They “decided” to kill someone right off to “let the other hostages know they were serious.” (Of course it was really what they were there to do right along.) They announced they were going to kill Porter Brunreich, who they pretended was just a random name from a passenger manifest. So Harry Skena had their number right.

  But they hadn’t bet on Angelica Brunreich. She might have been crazy as hell, and sometimes she was pretty unpleasant, but she was more of a hero than I’ll ever be; she switched tickets with her daughter and volunteered herself to spare everyone else’s life. Poor Porter had been so stunned she had no idea what was happening until it was too late—a big Blader just grabbed her mother by the hair, slapped her, shouted “open your mouth,” and when she did, jammed a short pistol on full auto between her jaws, hard enough to break her front teeth, deep enough to gag her, and pulled the trigger, emptying the clip.

  She probably died too fast to feel much pain. That’s what I’ve always told Porter since.

  They forced a couple of people to clean up the hideous mess; Porter sat and watched them drag her mother’s bloody body away. Then, somehow, she thought after they got a phone call of some kind, all of a sudden they had figured out that perhaps they hadn’t executed who they had meant to. It gave their game away, of course, to admit that “Porter Brunreich” wasn’t a random name but in fact their real target—but by then they must have been desperate, for the FBI was within an hour of storming the place (a process that was to scare the living daylights out of most of the hostages, who were still lying tied on the floor, unable to get up).

  So they had just grabbed all the kids between about eight and twelve—clearly they had some idea of what age person they were looking for—and started interrogating them. “Porter” could be a name for either sex, and anyway most kids carry no ID, so it took them a while.

  They had just grabbed Porter and figured out that the ticket they had seen her trying to throw away must be her mother’s. Blade of the Most Merciful were about to execute her when they heard Harry Skena and me making our fast, rude entrance and decided that she might be more useful to them alive, as a hostage; they had just reached that decision when I burst in.

  She couldn’t tell me any of that—I learned all of it later. All she could do at the time was sob into my shoulder, and all I could do was hold her. I wanted to tell her it was okay, it was going to be all right, but I remembered my own experience. It wasn’t okay, and it was never going to be all right again.

  “I’ll take care of you,” I whispered. “I promise. I’ll make sure you’re taken care of.” It was all I could think of.

  As I carried her out of that blood-spattered public toilet, Harry Skena came in. “All secured, and—oh, god, then you know.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “What can we do—?”

  “I’ve got someone coming over from HQ, on
e timeline over, to take care of things. She’ll be all right—or as all right as you can be, I guess—and we’ll make sure she’s taken care of. You and I have something else we have to do right now. We’ve got a chance to get at the Closers themselves if we rush.”

  I hesitated. Porter was hanging on to me like she’d never let go, and I couldn’t bear to pry the poor kid off me.

  “She really will be well taken care of—my word of honor on that,” Harry Skena said, “and what we’ve got is a chance to shut down the Closer bridge into your world. That means possibly years of peace before you have to fight them again—”

  “Go do it,” Porter whispered into my neck.

  “Do what, honey?”

  “Your friend says you can go beat the bad guys and make them go away for good, right?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “So do whatever you have to do. If he’s sending someone to take care of me, I’ll be okay. But you have to shut down the bad guys. It’s important.”

  She pushed away from me just a little and looked me in the eye. Her blue eyes were red-rimmed from crying, and there was a dribble of snot at the end of her nose, but I have never seen a more serious or dignified human being. “Go shut them down,” she said. “Nobody will be safe until you do.”

  “Aw, Porter,” I said, and gently set her down. “Now be good and do whatever the people Harry sends tell you to do, okay? And I’ll do my best to get in touch just as soon as I can.”

  She nodded firmly, and said, “I’m old enough to behave myself, Mr. Strang. But please go do whatever you’re supposed to do about that base. I won’t stop being afraid till those people are wiped out.”

  “It’s a deal, kid,” I said, and kissed her on her forehead. I turned to Skena, and said, “Okay, Harry, let’s go get them.”

  We went out via a bathroom; Porter was running down the hall, when last I saw her, to call the police outside and get people untied if she could. God only knew what they were going to think when they found all the Blade of the Most Merciful dead with exploded heads, and nobody in there but the hostages. Especially because I knew Porter was smart enough to dummy up and not tell them anything.