Ben revved up the motorbike, and they roared down the runway and towards the exit. A soldier stood in their way; but Ben had no intention of stopping. The soldier didn’t have time to raise his weapon and dived to the ground as they roared past. They were away and free.
Ben pulled into a motorway services station and looked at his watch. It was 5.15 a.m. They were both tired and exhausted. Ben ordered breakfast for them, and they sat down to talk. Apart from a few truckers and the serving staff, there was no one in the service station.
Elle picked at the scrambled eggs on her plate, she was too tired to eat; she just wanted to sleep. Ben opened CAI and showed Elle the information he received from Stuart. It boosted her spirits. At last, it looked like she might be able to return to 2046.
“Can we get a motel room?” said Elle.
“What did you have in mind?” said Ben, smiling back at her.
“I’m too tired for that,” said Elle. “I just want to sleep.”
“I’ve got Jane’s credit card, so you’ll have to play being Jane.”
“Okay.”
They started to walk out of the service station entrance when Ben quickly pulled her back inside.
“What is it?” said Elle.
“The helicopter; it’s still there. I noticed it when we went into the station. It must be circling.”
“What do we do?”
“Wait here in the restaurant,” he said.
He went to one of public telephones and made a call. A few minutes later, he returned and updated Elle. He had called Richard and asked him to bring Jane to meet them further along their route.
“Major, I did as you instructed,” said Carla speaking on her helicopter com, as she followed her target on her night vision goggles. “I’ve been following them since the escape. They’ve just left a service station and are heading north.”
“Don’t lose sight of them, but don’t give away your position,” said the Major.
“It’s difficult, sir. I’m relying on line of sight. We can’t get any satellite surveillance here. It’s like there’s a total blackout. Something serious is messing with our computer systems.”
“What about Daniels?”
Carla laughed. “It’s shocking what happened to her. The Bitch is still alive, but she’s broken her nose and is having a bad hair day. They’ve taken her to Med Centre, but she won’t be there long.”
“It couldn’t have gone better if we planned it. I half expected she would do something stupid like this; and it’s worked in our favour. It made the escape look just that little bit more realistic.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Just keep tracking them. They’re now running and under pressure. If they have anything to do with that craft they might just lead us to it,” said the Major. “Keep me updated.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
An hour later, Ben and Elle pulled into another service station. Inside the service station, Jane and Richard were waiting for them. They switched clothes in the toilets, and two people in bikers’ leathers left the service station on the motorbike. Elle watched them as they left, and prayed that they would not be hurt. They were heading towards Scotland and trying to buy Elle and Ben some valuable time. As they disappeared into the distance, the helicopter followed them.
“I do hope they’ll be okay,” said Elle.
“Don’t worry, Jane’s an experienced rider.”
“I meant about the security services.”
“I’m sure they’ll be all right.”
Ben bought a holdall and some toiletries in one of the shops open in the complex. Then after a further coffee, Elle and Ben left the service station in Jane’s 4-wheel BMW.
About 6:20 a.m., Ben and Elle pulled into the university sports centre car park. Ben parked the BMW, and they entered the sports centre together. At that time of the morning on a Saturday, the Sports Centre was expected to be almost deserted except for the most extreme sports enthusiasts. Elle went into the ladies’ changing rooms with Ben’s holdall to freshen up and take a shower.
Later, she caught up with Ben in the reception. Despite the lack of sleep, she felt fresh and ready to go again.
“What now?” said Elle.
“We check out Stuart’s work,” said Ben.
“But it works, doesn’t it?” said Elle.
“I think it does, but I didn’t have time to look too closely at it before I left Scotland. So we’ll go to Physics Building, and I’ll run some test data through a mainframe simulation.”
“Do we have to go there? I don’t want to meet Rider.”
“It’s Saturday. Not even Rider is that keen. The building will be closed, and we need to hang out somewhere. We can’t go back to the flat.”
“Okay.”
They walked through the university to the Physics Building. Ben entered the security code, and they entered the building. The building looked deserted.
As the lift came down Elle looked around her nervously. The lift dinged, and they were soon on their way up to the top floor. They walked out onto the top floor. There was little natural light in the corridor, but at least that reassured her that no one was there. Ben left the lights off, and they walked down to the room with the white boards. At least that room was well lit with natural light.
They worked through the equations one by one through the morning. At lunchtime, they broke for something to eat and ate in the Union building. They returned in the afternoon to work on the simulation and continued into the evening.
Elle sat on the desk, playing with her fingers. She had nothing to do but wait for the billions of combinations of data to be processed through the computer. Ben sat calmly waiting for the results. The minutes passed.
Just when the tension seemed to be unbearable for Elle, the laptop chimed — the results were back from the mainframe. Ben stared at the screen scanning down the results. Elle looked over his shoulder.
“What does it mean?” she said, not understanding the output.
Ben turned and smiled at her. “The simulation matches 99.9% — it’s the best we could ask for — but there’s still a one in a thousand risk. Do you still want to go?”
Elle’s face lit up with excitement. “Yes, yes, yes,” she said. “I have to.”
“Why is it so important to you to go back?”
“If I stay they’ll catch me eventually.”
“That’s not it though, is it?”
Elle took a deep breath. “My parents were killed in a road accident when I was twelve. We were going back home from the seaside and were involved in a multiple pile up. I was in the back of the car and survived. My parents weren’t so lucky. I want to go back to that time and stop it happening.”
“But if you do that you’ll mess up the timeline; it might have unintended consequences.”
“The timeline is already messed up. Jason Brannan is dead in 2011. In my world, he was alive in 2046. Every second I’m here I’m messing up the timeline in some way. Perhaps for once I can do some good for a change.”
“But what if it creates a paradox; like the grandfather paradox we talked about. What then?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t let my parents die when I know I could stop it. I’ll have to live with the consequences.”
There was a long pause.
“Whatever happens — I’ll help,” said Ben.
She smiled at him.
“We’ve still got plenty of time before midnight,” said Ben. “Do you want something to eat?”
Elle realised they had not eaten since lunchtime. She nodded.
“I’ll go and get us a pizza,” said Ben. “There’s a takeaway just outside the university, I won’t be long.”
“Okay,” said Elle.
Elle sat in Ben’s office, waiting for him to return. She looked out of the window. The university had come alive: the walkways were lit up and a steady flow of students was heading towards the Union bar. It seemed so long ago that she was an undergraduate like one of them with no
cares in the world. Now she was trapped thirty-five years in the past, with three of the world’s secret services trying to catch her. The sooner she returned to her own world the better.
Elle heard the lift ‘ding’ indicating it had reached the top floor. Ben is back. She decided to meet him. She walked across the office to the door and then froze. Someone had just turned the corridor lights on; and Elle knew it could not have been Ben. He had deliberately avoided turning them on when they first arrived. He had not wanted to light up the top floor of the building and draw attention to them. Elle turned off the side light in Ben’s office and stood there listening.
She could hear a noise down the corridor. Someone was coming along the corridor. She had heard the same noise before; it was the awkward step of Professor Rider, who walked with a limp.
Elle disappeared under the desk to hide from Rider. She heard him walk past and enter the room with the whiteboards. Dam, he’s bound to know we’ve been here. A minute or two later she heard his footsteps again coming towards Ben’s office. She could see he was carrying something that looked like a gun. Elle squeezed into the section under the desk where she could not be seen. The door opened, and she held her breath. Seconds ticked by.
“Ben?” he said.
She heard him shuffling around. Then the door closed, and she let out her breath. In the background she could hear Rider shuffling up the corridor; a door opened and then closed again.
Elle heard the lift returning again. It must be Ben. She had to warn him. She looked down the corridor and could see nothing. It looked like Rider had gone up the staircase to the roof. She moved as quietly as she could towards the lift. It opened and out stepped Ben carrying a pizza box and a bottle of red wine.
Elle put her finger up to her lip to silence him, and she pulled him into the ladies’ toilets.
“What’s going on,” said Ben.
“It’s Rider; he’s here. We need to get out of here.”
“Don’t you want a piece of pizza first,” said Ben, opening the box.
“He’s got a gun!”
“You’re right, we need to go.”
Ben looked around the toilet door into the corridor. “It’s clear,” he said.
Elle followed him out of the toilet and they walked towards the lift. Then Elle heard the noise of the lift; it was returning to the ground floor. But surely, that wouldn’t happen unless someone had called it.
“Quick,” said Ben, “the stairs.”
They turned and walked briskly towards the entrance to the stairwell. As they reached it, the doors opened. Two men came out of the door.
“Good evening Doctor Turner,” a voice came from behind them.
Elle turned to see the Major and the woman who had tortured her at the air base.
They had nowhere to run. Ben looked at Elle and she shook her head.
Ben smiled at Elle, “Run for it and don’t stop.”
Ben started running at the two men in front of the door to the stairs. He launched himself feet first at the first man. His body crashed into the man, who had no way of avoiding the impact. Ben was on his feet again in a second and struck out at the second man. The first blow was to the throat; the second blow was a kick to the groin. There were now two men down. Elle ran past them and towards the staircase doors, but before she got there, she heard the sound that terrified her most. She turned.
“No!” she shouted. “Leave him alone.”
Ben lay on the floor with the Bitch standing over him. She had her Taser rod in hand.
Elle ran back to Ben and dropped to her knees to cradle his head in her arms, “Leave him alone,” she demanded.
Ben was shaken, but still alive. “You should have kept going.”
Elle looked up. She was surrounded by the three men and the Bitch.
“Leave him alone,” she repeated crying.
“Then show us where the UFO is hiding,” said Daniels.
Elle thought for a moment.
“Okay, I will,” she said, spitting out the words through gritted teeth.
She helped Ben get to his feet. Ben looked at her, not understanding what she was doing. “Trust me,” she whispered to him. She walked towards the stairwell; but the men stopped in front of her.
“If you want me to show you, you’ll have to get out of my way.”
The Major and Daniels caught up with her and stood alongside her. The Major nodded towards the men, and they moved aside letting Elle lead the way. She opened the door, walked into the stairwell and headed up the stairs, with Ben following her. The door to the roof was open, and she stopped. The Major caught up with her and looked through the door. She could see the look of excitement on his face when he saw the craft under the tarpaulin. As Daniels looked through the door, her jaw dropped.
“See I have delivered what you asked for,” said Elle. “Now I want to go away with Ben.”
“One moment,” said the Major as he and his team walked out onto the roof.
“This is absolutely amazing. I never thought we would see this,” he burst out laughing. “We’ve done it.”
Just then a shot rang out, and one of the two men dropped to his knees and pulled out his gun. The other found cover in the doorway and pulled out his handgun. The Major and Daniels found cover behind an air conditioning outlet vent. Elle and Ben ducked back into the doorway. Another shot rang out. And a figure, presumably Rider, disappeared behind the other side of the craft. The two men returned fire.
The Major barked out orders to the two men. They moved apart. The Major had Rider trapped. There was no way off the roof except through this entrance. It was just a matter of time before the Major captured him, and with him the craft.
Another shot rang out. Rider was twenty feet away from the entrance to the craft. He threw caution to the wind and ran towards the craft’s entrance. At the same time Elle noticed that Daniels had circled to the back of the craft. Elle saw Rider running towards the craft and wince as a bullet struck him in the chest. But he kept going, and slapped his hand on the outside of the craft. The doorway opened and he crashed through the opening; but Daniels was right behind him and dived through the door before it closed.
Daniels looked at Rider, as she lay on the floor of the craft.
“What now?” he said crippled with pain.
“Does this thing fly?”
“Of course it does.”
“Then get us out of here,” said Daniels.
“You mean you’re not going to let your colleagues in?”
“No.”
“No honour amongst thieves then.”
He picked himself up and slumped into the command seat. Immediately, the consul came to life, and the monitors showed the view of the roof.
“You don’t even know what this is, do you?” he said.
“A space craft, or UFO?” she said.
“You’re an idiot. This is manmade. I made it, or at least some of it,” he said coughing.
“You’re hurt old man. You sure you can fly this thing?”
“It’s nothing. A shoulder wound I think.”
She saw him turn the dials on the consul and pick up central control stick. Daniels felt the craft move.
“You better sit down,” he said.
She sat down in the seat beside him. “Can you take this ship to America?”
“I can take it to Mars if you want.”
He laughed as it continued to lift off the roof of the building.
“When do you want to be there?”
“As soon as possible.”
“We may only have one shot at this. When do you want to be there? Which year?”
From his tone, the Professor was getting irritated with the conversation.
“This travels through time?”
“That’s what it does. Year?”
She thought for a second. “One year forward,” she said. That should be long enough for all the fuss to die down.
“Okay, that’s not very ambitious. But hey, I’m onl
y the driver. We have to make a slight adjustment, compliments of Ms Masters. He typed in the equation he had seen on the white board. Are you up for it?”
“Oh yes.”
“I have to warn you; there is a slight risk we won’t make it.”
“Hey old man, stop messing me around. I haven’t the time for this.”
He had a wicked look in his eye and he turned towards her.
“With this you have all the time in the world.”
He pulled one of the controls back, and the craft began to ascend. The tarpaulin ripped away, and the craft began to lift. It accelerated rapidly for ten-seconds, and then it stopped. Daniels looked at the monitors around her. They were sitting at 150,000 feet, just hanging in the air. The silence was frightening.
“Shouldn’t we be moving forward?” she said.
The old professor looked warn out. The bloodstain from the bullet wound was getting bigger.
“I may have got the wound assessment a little optimistic. Shit this hurts,” he said. “But isn’t the view magnificent?”
She took in the view. She had never quite seen anything like it, except in photographs from NASA. But this was real. She was here. And she had control of the most powerful craft on the planet.
“This is amazing professor.”
“Now this is the difficult part: are you ready?”
She nodded, feeling a sensation of elation running through her. She was actually going to bring the UFO home to America. The General and the President would be so proud of her. Her hand went to her chest where she could feel her father’s medal under the fabric of her top.
The Professor activated the time dilation control.
Ben stood next to Elle, as they watched the scene unfold from the safety of the doorway. He saw the exchange of fire and Rider dive into the entrance of the craft followed by Daniels. The Major ran towards the craft as it started to hum.
Elle screamed out, “No! Keep away.”
As if paralysed by the sound of her voice, the Major stopped mid stride and turned towards Elle. She picked up a pebble from the roof and threw it towards the craft, which was by now engulfed in bluish glow. As the pebble reached the glow, it disintegrated on contact.
Collision Page 23