TimeRiders

by Time Riders (epub)

  Foster patted his hand. ‘Relax, Liam. You’ll do just fine.’ He looked at the support unit treading water. ‘And you must trust Bob. In that silicon brain of his is everything you’ll need for this quick trip. He’s going to be your walking encyclopedia… aren’t you, Bob?’

  ‘Ja. Ich habe alle benötigten Daten, Herr Foster.’

  ‘English for now please, Bob.’

  Bob nodded sternly. ‘I have all the required data, Mr Foster.’

  ‘Good.’

  Liam looked up at the old man. ‘I… I’ve got to admit I’m a little scared.’

  ‘I know,’ he replied softly. ‘First time alone is always a bit daunting.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve been there before myself. You’ll be fine.’

  With a little effort Liam managed a cavalier grin.

  ‘Just go there, lad, look around, see what you can see… and come back to the same spot a couple of hours later.’

  ‘What if we’re late?’

  ‘If you miss that window, we’ll open the window again exactly an hour later, for just a few minutes. If you miss that, then we open it exactly twenty-four hours later. That’s the standard missed-rendezvous procedure. Don’t worry, Bob knows all about that and will keep you on schedule.’

  ‘But if we miss all the windows?’

  ‘Just make sure you don’t.’

  Liam swallowed anxiously. ‘But… but if we do miss every one of them windows… is there not a way to arrange another one?’

  ‘If it comes to that, there is a way for us to talk to you, but it’s one-way only. You’ll not be able to talk to us.’ He patted Liam on the arm. ‘Just make sure you stick to the schedule.’

  ‘I… I’ll try me best, Mr Foster, so I will.’

  ‘I know you will, lad.’

  Foster got to his feet and took the steps down the side of the cylinder on to the concrete floor of the arch. ‘OK, Madelaine, begin the launch procedure.’

  ‘Launching in one minute.’

  The displacement machinery attached to the water tube began to hum deeply.

  Sal stepped forward, staring at their foggy outlines inside the tube. ‘Good luck, Liam!’ she called out. ‘Be careful!’

  He let go of the side with one hand and quickly waved. ‘I’ll be all right there, Sal. Don’t you worry about me now.’

  The lights in the arch dimmed and flickered as power diverted to the tube.

  ‘Forty seconds to go until launch!’ announced Maddy.

  ‘Remember, Liam,’ shouted Foster as the hum grew more intense, ‘you’re just going for a look … Don’t get involved in anything.’

  ‘Right you are!’ cried Liam, his voice rattling nervously.

  ‘Thirty seconds, fellas!’

  Liam’s legs kicked in the water, sending cascades of bubbles up the tube. The hum of the generator increased in volume and pitch.

  ‘Twenty seconds!’ Maddy called out, her voice almost lost in the deafening whir of charging-up machinery.

  ‘OK, Liam,’ shouted Foster, ‘time to let go and go under!’

  Liam nodded, sucking in one deep breath after another.

  ‘Fifteen seconds!’

  ‘Come on, lad… you’ve got to let go!’

  Liam nodded, still sucking and blowing air, hyperventilating, his legs thrashing in the water beneath him.

  ‘Ten seconds!’

  ‘Come on, Liam, you’ve got to let go now!’

  Taking one last gasp of air, he did so, quickly sinking under the water. Through the scuffed and foggy plastic, Foster, Maddy and Sal watched him flail in panic as he sank slowly to the bottom. Bob ducked down effortlessly beside him… and touchingly – so Sal thought – reached out and held Liam’s hand.

  It seemed to calm him, just a little.

  ‘Three… two… one…’

  With a pop the water and both occupants vanished.

  CHAPTER 35

  1956, Washington DC

  They landed amid a small copse of mature cedar trees with a heavy, wet splash.

  ‘Arghh!’ yelped Liam. ‘I hate that goldfish-bowl thing!’

  ‘Information: the device is called a displacement cylinder,’ said Bob, crouching beside him, already alert and assessing their surroundings.

  Liam picked himself up and squatted beside the support unit amid the foliage. Beyond the low-hanging branches, out on the well-trimmed acre of lawn in front of the White House, he could see soldiers gathering.

  ‘Who are they?’

  Bob’s eyes slowly panned across the scene in front of them. ‘The insignia and uniforms indicate that they are a mixture of American marines, rangers and airborne,’ he replied. ‘Recommendation: we must have clothes.’

  ‘Yes, clothes would be really nice.’

  Bob stood up and announced, ‘I shall acquire clothes,’ before disappearing through the trees and foliage.

  Liam continued watching the soldiers. They looked like they had already seen some fighting; many were wounded, some being dragged by their colleagues. All of them looked exhausted and battle-shocked; their grimy faces had defeat written across them.

  He noticed a large olive-green vehicle with tracks instead of wheels, and a turret with what appeared to be a long, slender barrel protruding from it. It lurched across the grass amid a plume of dark smoke. It looked dented and scorched as if it too had seen some action. The vehicle reversed across the lawn, kicking up divots of soil and leaving deep tracks in its wake, backing up against a large white building – the White House.

  To his untrained eye this looked very much like the ragged assemblage of some kind of a last stand around the building – perhaps it was all that was left of the United States army.

  ‘Blimey,’ he muttered.

  He heard a deep rumble coming from above and glanced up through the leafy branches. The sky was overcast, thick with grey low-hanging clouds that promised an imminent downpour. The rumbling was deep, so powerful he could feel it vibrate against his chest. It was coming from somewhere above the clouds.

  The American soldiers, like him, were watching the sky anxiously – all eyes trained upwards, waiting for something to appear.

  Liam craned his neck to get a better view.

  What’s up there?

  Behind him he heard a heavy footfall and turned to see Bob holding out clothes and boots. ‘The owner of these clothes is dead,’ he explained without any trace of emotion. ‘He will not be needing them.’

  Liam took them and looked at the damp stains of blood. ‘You didn’t kill someone to get these clothes for me, did you?’

  Bob shook his head. ‘No killing was required.’

  Liam grimaced at the thought of stepping into another man’s clothes. On the other hand, standing undressed in the middle of a war zone struck him as the worse alternative. He pulled them on as quickly as he could.

  ‘It looks like those soldiers are setting themselves up for a last-ditch defence.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Bob, his eyes smoothly scanning across the lawn.

  ‘And I guess whatever’s coming –’ Liam looked up again at the darkening sky from where that deep rumble was issuing – ‘is coming from right up there.’

  ‘Possibly an airborne weapon system.’ Bob’s eyes flickered shut. ‘I have data files on the advanced aeroplane prototypes that were being developed by the Germans at the end of the Second World War.’

  ‘They actually used aeroplanes during the… the Second World War?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  The rumbling grew even louder and Liam found himself having to shout to be heard. ‘Big ones?’

  ‘Jet propulsion, delta-wing designs, VTOL systems,’ replied Bob, raising his flat-toned voice to compete with the deafening drone fr
om above.

  ‘Well, that means nothing to me,’ shouted Liam. ‘What the hell are those?’

  Bob cocked his head for a moment. ‘I am able to provide detailed schematic blueprints if I can locate a drawing implement –’

  Suddenly, the tumbling dark clouds above them momentarily spread thin enough for Liam to see what was approaching.

  ‘Bob! You see that?’

  Above them, descending through the clouds, was a giant dull-grey disc-shaped vessel, easily a quarter of a mile in diameter. It almost seemed to fill the sky above the White House as it slowly pushed its way down through the billowing clouds. He could now make out dozens of spinning rotors slung beneath the craft, giant propeller blades whisking the air beneath the belly of the enormous disc, projecting a powerful downdraught that set the cedar trees around them rustling and swaying.

  Liam noticed the emblem he’d seen earlier on Maddy’s screens, stencilled across a hundred feet of the vehicle’s immense hull.

  ‘What the hell is that thing?’ he yelled.

  ‘Information: it appears to be a circular dirigible,’ replied Bob. He seemed to recognize the bemused and panicked shrug returned by Liam as an indication that he hadn’t a clue what one of those was. ‘It is a disc-shaped airship – a reinforced aluminium hull containing many large cells filled with buoyancy gas.’

  Some of the marines on the lawn, frozen into a motionless stupor by the sight, raised their firearms and began to shoot pointlessly at it.

  A black square slowly appeared in the dark underbelly of the craft, then another, and another.

  ‘Er… now that’s not good, is it?’ cried Liam.

  Bob nodded in agreement. ‘Is not good.’

  Liam saw something dark emerging from the squares, dots that quickly grew in size as a shower of somethings rapidly appeared to be descending towards them.

  A canister the size of a Thermos flask thudded into the grass thirty yards from them among a group of haggard-looking marines. The marines backed away from it as it started to spew out a yellow smoke. Several more canisters landed heavily and started billowing smoke across the lawn.

  ‘Tactical smokescreen,’ offered Bob.

  The air was soon thick with a mustard-coloured mist. Through it Liam could just about make out the nearby silhouettes of the American soldiers on the lawn, drawing fearfully back across the clipped grass towards the steps and the grand portico at the front of the White House.

  Now he could see more dark shapes descending through the mist from above – dozens, perhaps hundreds, of them. Bigger than the canisters this time.

  They heard something crash heavily through the cedar trees behind them, accompanied by a shrill hissing sound. They spun round to see a man tangled awkwardly amid thick branches; he wore a loose black rubber boiler suit that reminded Liam of the bin bags that seemed to line every backstreet in New York. Covering his face was a dark rubber mask with two glass plates where the eyes should be. His head was kinked at an impossible angle and Liam realized the neck had been snapped on the way down through the tree’s branches.

  Twin cylinders strapped to his back continued to discharge high-velocity geysers of gas noisily, which lasted only half a dozen seconds more before finally fizzing to a silence.

  ‘Aerosol-based fast-descent system,’ announced Bob calmly.

  Above them Liam could hear that same hiss multiplied through the air as other men in rubber suits began to land nearby.

  ‘Sod this! We can’t stay here!’

  The support unit nodded. ‘Recommendation: it will be tactically correct to go inside the building known as the White House.’

  ‘Yeah… OK,’ Liam said, stepping out from the cover of the small copse and on to the open lawn.

  ‘Please wait!’ barked Bob. He stepped across to the body dangling from the branches and, with a hard tug, pulled it to the ground. He effortlessly flipped the body over and withdrew a weapon from the man’s backpack. His calm eyes appraised its effectiveness and how to use it within seconds. He shouldered the weapon and nodded approvingly.

  ‘Rapid-fire pulse carbine.’ His grey eyes locked on Liam’s. ‘Weapon technology from the middle of the twenty-first century.’

  ‘Well, that’s interesting… but can we go now?’

  ‘Affirmative. Please follow me, Liam O’Connor.’

  Liam nodded. ‘Uh… sure, all right, you go first.’

  Bob pushed out through the foliage beneath the trees and into the open, striding forward with the carbine held at his hip.

  The yellow murky air was now filled with the sound of hissing canisters and the thud of boots making a heavy landing on the lawn. Liam could see the smudged outlines of men all around them; mask-muffled voices barked orders in German.

  Oh, I’m so-o-o very going to die.

  One of the moving outlines took a step too many towards them and suddenly called out a sharp challenge.

  Bob was frighteningly fast – lashing out with the edge of his free hand and chopping at the man’s throat. Liam heard a dull crack above all the other noise.

  ‘Follow,’ said Bob.

  CHAPTER 36

  1956, Washington DC

  They moved quickly across the lawn until Liam realized they were now among the retreating marines backing up the alabaster steps and firing sporadically out into the mist in front of them.

  Rapid bursts of fire lanced back at them out of the smoke, exploding showers of dust and plaster from the steps and the columns of the palisade. A marine standing beside Liam pin-wheeled from the impact of a shot and collapsed to the ground, a gaping hole blown out of his torso.

  ‘Follow,’ said Bob again, leading Liam through the marines returning fire towards a glass-panelled double door. A wounded soldier slouched by the doorway halted their progress.

  ‘Hey! Where the hell you two goin’? We’re holdin’ the line right here, goddammit!’

  Bob calmly twisted his arm and pushed him aside without any apparent effort. They stepped through the doors and into the White House.

  The carpeted entrance hall was thick with the stretched-out bodies of wounded soldiers, one trembling, harried army medic moving among them and tending them with little more than mercifully lethal shots of morphine. Ahead was a double doorway leading further into the building and the west wing. Holding position behind a hastily assembled blockade of furniture were a dozen more soldiers, grim faced and clearly ready to go down defending their president to the last.

  ‘My God, Bob,’ uttered Liam, ‘this is the president’s last stand!’

  Bob scanned the hall, the blockade, the marines ready to die.

  ‘Correct. The president called Eisenhower must be in this building.’

  ‘What do we do? Save him?’

  Bob turned to Liam. ‘You are the mission operative. Tactical decisions can only be made by the operative, not the support unit.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You are in charge, Liam O’Connor.’

  ‘I… I… I don’t know what we should do.’

  He looked out through the glass doors. Through the mist he could see little, but he could imagine hundreds more faceless soldiers hidden behind gas masks forming up on the lawn in front of the grand steps and the portico and readying themselves for a final devastating assault on the building.

  We’re here to observe, that’s all. Here to learn what happened. Nothing more.

  Well, he’d already guessed that the American people hadn’t politely invited these Nazis to come on over and run their affairs. But they needed more details, details that would help them pinpoint the moment further back in the past where history had taken a turn in this direction.

  ‘We need to find out how things got like this.’ He turn
ed to Bob. ‘Right?’

  ‘Correct. Mission priority one: obtain information.’

  ‘OK,’ he replied, looking around the hall. ‘So we need to grab someone and ask questions?’

  ‘Correct.’

  Liam stepped forward through the dead and the dying. To their left was a doorway that led to a communications room. He could see soldiers on field radios, civilians on telephones, typists and telephonists all making hurried calls, situation reports or, more than likely, final messages to loved ones.

  To the right was a room full of desks and filing cabinets. It looked less busy. Liam stepped across the carpet of bodies into the room. Some of the smoke from outside had leaked in through several shattered windows and the air was tinged with a fine yellow mist.

  He spotted a man in a smart blue suit sitting on the floor between two filing cabinets, his face covered in dust and dry-caked blood from a head wound.

  The man stared into space in front of him. ‘This is it,’ he muttered, his voice cracked and tired. ‘It’s all over. They’re coming for us… coming to get us… to get us…’

  Liam squatted down in front of him. ‘The Germans? Nazis?’

  The man didn’t seem to hear the question, his eyes unfocused. ‘We should’ve known… should’ve prepared… should’ve realized this was going to happen eventually.’

  Bob mimicked Liam’s posture and stooped down in front of the man. ‘Information request: please tell us everything about your divergent history timeline.’

  ‘Bob?’

  ‘Yes, Liam?’

  ‘Let me try first, eh?’

  He nodded. ‘You are the mission operative.’

  Liam reached a hand out to the man and rested it on his shoulder.

  ‘Hello? Mister?’

  The man’s eyes focused on him.

  ‘There isn’t much time,’ said Liam. ‘Listen to me, things can be changed. This isn’t how it was meant to be. We’re here to put this –’

  ‘No…’ replied the man, shaking his head. ‘No, you’re goddamn right this isn’t how it should be! They surprised us, just like them Japs did back in ’41.’