by Simon Hawke
As if mesmerized, he started to move forward.
He heard Virgil Earp call out, “Boys, throw up your hands! I want your guns!”
The two parties were perhaps six feet apart.
Young Billy Clanton yelled out, “Don’t shoot me! I don’t want to fight!”
Tom McLaury said. “I haven’t got anything, boys. I am disarmed.” He moved his hands up to his coat and started to open it.
Virgil called out sharply, “Hold on! I don’t mean that!”
And as Virgil shouted, Jenny came running around the corner, saw Scott moving toward the men as if hypnotized and..
Lucas and Andre rounded the corner where the Capitol Saloon stood and suddenly everything seemed to shift into slow motion. It felt as if they were moving against some sort of invisible resistance, the current of the timeflow itself pushing against them. They saw Jenny running just ahead of them and it looked as if she were running underwater, bounding in slow motion, her hair gently rising and falling behind her as she ran toward the men ahead of her, Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp, Doc Holliday and Scott, all standing abreast and facing the Clanton and the McLaury brothers. They heard her call out, as if from the bottom of a well, and her words sounded slow and drawn out, like a record being played at the wrong speed as she shouted. “Scoooot… noooooooo!”
With agonizing slowness. Scott and Wyatt both turned around and, at the same time, three shots cracked out, their reports sounding like echoes in a cave. Like feathers floating on the wind, both Wyatt and Scott started to crumple to the ground…
In the next instant, with the suddenness of an earthquake, everything speeded up to normal and Lucas and Andre. straining against the invisible force that seemed to be holding them back, were thrown violently forward, as if shoved hard from behind. They both fell sprawling to the ground, hitting hard, Stunned. Lucas raised his head and saw Jenny running just ahead of them, moving with normal speed, and beyond her, moving toward the Earps and Holliday as if he were spellbound, was Scott. It was almost an exact replay of the scene they had just witnessed a split second earlier. A short distance past the Harwood place. standing in the middle of the street across from the Aztec Rooming House, they saw Finn Delaney. The Earps, Holliday, the Clantons and the McLaurys were already standing in the vacant lot. Scott was a short distance behind them, almost to the corner of Fly’s Boarding House and well out of the center of the street. And there was nothing standing in between Jenny, running toward the combatants, and Finn Delaney, standing in the middle of the street, on the far side of Third. And, as he watched, Lucas suddenly saw Dr. Darkness appear out of nowhere, standing at Finn Delaney’s side.
Andre started to get up. and Lucas saw it all in a flash of realization.
“ No! Stay down!” He threw, himself on top of her.
Delaney watched the men turn into the vacant lot between Fly’s and Harwood’s and then he saw Scott come running around the corner. As he passed the Capitol Saloon, Scott stopped and simply stood there for a moment, looking disoriented, then he started moving with a sort of odd gait, heading off to the side of the street, past Bauer’s Meat Market and the Assay Office, moving toward Fly’s Boarding House…
Delaney caught his breath. “Oh. no…” he said. “No, kid, don’t do it…”
Jenny came running around the corner, as fast as she could, hard on Scott’s heels. Then, just behind her, Lucas and Andre appeared as if out of nowhere, tumbling forward into the street. Christ, this is it, thought Delaney, raising his disruptor. He couldn’t wait for Darkness. He’d have to kill Neilson before he interfered…
“The girl, Delaney!” said Darkness, suddenly materializing at his side. “Shoot the girl!”
Without pausing to think. Finn shifted his aim and fired the disruptor on tight beam. As Jenny opened her mouth to call out, she was suddenly wreathed in the bright blue glow of Cherenkov radiation. An instant later, she was gone, her atoms disintegrated.
And so was Darkness.
Two shots cracked out. And then all hell broke loose.
Simultaneously, Finn Delaney, Lucas Priest, Andre Cross and Scott Neilson all seemed to hear a deafening roaring in their ears, as if an entire ocean were being sucked away, and then there was nothing but the sound of gunfire from the lot, an entire fusillade of shots, one right after the other, and the street became filled with gunsmoke.
Drakov had Finn Delaney square in the crosshairs of his pistol scope. He thumbed back the hammer, put his finger on the trigger and
… a blackthorn walking stick came down on the gun and knocked it aside. The shot went wild. Startled, Drakov looked up to see a gaunt man in an Inverness tweed coat looming over him, stick raised for another blow. Before he could throw up his arm to ward it off, the stick came down and Drakov collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
Darkness exhaled heavily. “I’ll be damned.” he said. “It worked.”
Simon Hawke
The Six Gun Solution
Conclusion
They all sat in Moses Forrester’s private quarters in the TAC-HQ building, drinking twelve-year-old Scotch. Andre. Finn and Lucas sat together on the couch, their drinks on the coffee table in front of them. Forrester sat across from them, in his favorite chair, smoking one of his deep-bowled pipes. Scott Neilson stood by the window, silently staring out at the glittering lights below.
“We all thought it was Scott.” Lucas was saying. “We believed he was the key. And, in a way, he was. In the other universe, he… or his twin.. lived about eight hundred years ago and he really was the Montana Kid, a famous gunfighter. In the other timeline, the Montana Kid was at the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral, which did not, in fact, take place at the O.K. Corral, but in the vacant lot a short distance from the alley that led to its back entrance. I guess ‘The Shoot-out in the Vacant Lot Between Fly’s and Harwood’s’ didn’t sound as glamorous as ‘The Shoot-out at the O.K. Corral.’ It didn’t really happen there, but it became part of the myth.”
“And in the other timeline, both Wyatt Earp and the Montana Kid died in the shootout?” asked Forrester.
Lucas nodded. “That’s what we saw. Jenny had a twin in the other universe, as well. Actually, there never was a Jenny Reilly in our universe. Not until Drakov put her there, in an effort to match what happened in the other timeline. What we first saw, as near as I can figure it, were the events that happened in the parallel timeline, only we’d been caught in a concentrated area of temporal instability, hallway between the two, in the act of crossing over. It was at that exact point that temporal inertia in both timelines reached its strongest surge, creating a sort of temporal whirlpool in which we became caught briefly. What we were seeing were the events that were happening in the other timeline, at the same exact instant as they were happening in our timeline, only we were caught in a sort of temporal lag.”
“So when you finally broke free and crossed over, you saw those same events replayed an instant later, in our timeline,” said Forrester.
“That’s right.” said Lucas, “In the other timeline. Jenny came running up to Scott and called out his name, because she was afraid he was going to get shot. Both Scott and Wyatt turned around and, in that instant, the shooting started There were three shots. I’m not sure who fired them-”
“Doc Holliday fired first,” said Scott, still standing by the window. He had a faraway look in his eyes. “Virgil didn’t want a fight, but Doc wanted it all along. And so did Morgan. There was a lot of bad blood between the two parties and Doc was still angry over the attempt to frame him for that stagecoach robbery and King’s escape from jail. Morgan was as hot-blooded as Holliday and they were both close friends. They wanted to finish it right then and there. A lot of people thought that when Virgil yelled out. ‘Hold on. I don’t mean that!’ he was shouting at Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury, who supposedly went for their guns. Only he was really calling out to Doc and Morgan, because be heard them both cocking their weapons. Maybe Tom McLaury opening his coat to show he was unarmed
was what set it off. Maybe Doc just had enough and felt like finishing it. Either way. Doc fired first, shooting Frank McLaury in the stomach, and Morgan fired a split second later, at Billy Clanton. But there were only two shots right at the beginning, not three.”
“In the other universe, there were three,” said Lucas. “There was somebody firing from cover on the porch between Fly’s Boarding House and the Photo Studio. It could have been Johnny Behan. But when Jenny called out, Wyatt and the Montana
Kid both turned around. Somebody fired first, maybe Holliday, and then the next two bullets got Wyatt and Scott. So, in the other universe, both Wyatt and the Kid died in the shoot-out.”
“Drakov was trying to match the events in our universe to what happened in the parallel timeline,” Andre said. “As Darkness explained it to us later, the temporal confluence at that point was so strong that it could have gone one way or the other. The instability had reached the breaking point. If the exact same thing happened in each timeline at the exact same space and time, with the powerful confluence effect focused on that specific point, both timelines would have come together and the force of the temporal inertia in both timelines would have created a massive timewave that would have traveled down the timestream, building in intensity, disrupting history all the way down the line, until..”
“Until what?” asked Forrester.
“Who knows?” said Lucas, with a shrug. “Darkness wouldn’t tell us. A massive timestream split? A chain reaction? Ultimate entropy’?” He sighed. “Frankly. I’m not even sure I want to know.”
“So then Jenny Reilly was the key,” said Forester.
“In a way, she was,” said Lucas, but in another way, it was Scott. If she hadn’t fallen in love with him… but then, that was probably what she’d been programmed to do by Drakov, who kept manipulating her, keeping her off-balance and never letting her know what her real purpose was. He needed her emotions to be in turmoil, so she’d be driven to do what he meant for her to do. After she pulled a gun on Wyatt Earn and rescued Scott. Wyatt had to figure Scott had crossed over the line and had chosen to become an outlaw. When, in our, timeline. Jenny saw Scott moving toward the scene of the gunfight, she was going to call out his name, just as the other Jenny had in the parallel universe. Wyatt would have heard it and, maybe thinking Scott was about to shoot him, he would have turned around just as Doc and Morgan fired and then Billy Clanton would have shot him in the back.”
“And that would have been the third shot,” said Forrester.
“No.” said Lucas. “The third shot would have been Drakov’s. When he shot Finn, to keep him from killing Jenny before she could call out Scott’s name.”
“Why didn’t he just shoot Wyatt Earp?” asked Forrester.
“And lose the chance to kill at least one of us before he ceased to exist?” Delaney said. He shook his head. “He couldn’t pass up that opportunity. He knew Billy Clanton was quick with a gun and a good shot. The only reason Wyatt wasn’t hit was because he shot Billy in the wrist as he was drawing, a second after Morgan shot him in the chest. And after he shot Delaney. Drakov would still have had the time to make sure of Wyatt with his second shot and Scott with his third, in the event the others missed them.”
“Darkness knew about the temporal instability and the surge in temporal inertia that was going to take place right at that point and he wasn’t sure if his unstable subatomic structure would maintain its integrity or not.” said Andre. “He didn’t want to warn us specifically about what was going to happen because he wasn’t sure if that would influence our actions and affect the outcome. It all had to be done at the last minute and he had just one shot at it. Even then, it was a gamble. He didn’t know if he’d survive it. If he’d been caught in the same temporal vortex as me and Lucas, he may have discorporated.”
He also knew that everything depended on my immediate response.” said Delaney, “because he’d essentially have to be in two places at the same time, and even at faster-than-light speed, that’s quite a trick. He knew he had a chance to tell me to shoot the girl, to keep her from distracting Wyatt at the last possible instant, and he knew that if I reacted immediately, he could stop Drakov from firing more than one shpt. But he didn’t know if he could stop him from firing that first shot. He was gambling that on seeing me, Drakov would immediately try to shoot me first, instead of Wyatt. He wasn’t sure if he’d have a chance to save my life by taching to where Drakov was and deflecting his shot at the last possible second. Even traveling at faster-than-light speed, he had to play it close, so that the temporal inertia in both timestreams would be at its strongest surge and then, when the events in both timelines did not match up, the strength of that surge forced them apart, once and for all. Without him, it never would have happened. But thanks to him, the Temporal Crisis is over. Darkness changed the past and saved the future.”
“Only Jenny had to die,” said Scott.
Delaney looked at him with pain written on his features. “I’m sorry, Scott. I had no other choice.”
Neilson nodded. “I understand. And I’m not blaming you. But that still doesn’t make her death any easier to bear. I loved her.”
“Yeah, kid,” said Delaney, softly. “I know.”
“So Drakov had it all planned out in advance,” said Forrester.
“That’s right.” said Lucas. “He knew about it because he had done the one thing no one else had ever done before. Not even the Network, because it was so risky. He clocked ahead to the future. He clocked ahead far enough to study the history of the Temporal Crisis and he found out about what happened in the Tombstone scenario. Then he clocked back there, located the crossover points, established the scenario in each timeline and set out to try and make them match exactly, so that the temporal currents would flow together instead of being forced apart. And, apparently, from the standpoint of the future Darkness came from, he succeeded. Darkness had to come back and try to stop him.”
“Amazing,” Forrester said.
“The one thing Darkness never did explain was how he knew that Drakov would cease to exist if he succeeded.” Andre said. “Apparently, somehow, the result of what he did would affect your life, sir.”
Forrester nodded. “Indeed, it would have,” he said. He got up and went to the secret panel that led into his private sanctum. He opened it, went in, and came out a moment later, carrying a framed photograph in his hand.
“Wyatt Earp had a daughter.” he said.
“That’s impossible.” said Scott. “Wyatt and Josie never had any children.”
“No. not Wyatt and Josie,” Forrester replied. “Wyatt and Nadine McCain. A prostitute he met in Gunnison. Colorado, after he left Arizona. As far as I know, he was only with her once, but he left her pregnant and she gave birth to a daughter that he never knew.” He held up the old, faded photograph in the silver frame. “Angie McCain. Who grew up and married a silver miner named Michael Forrester. She was my great, great, great, great, grandmother.”
“I’ll be damned!” Delaney said.
“Then you knew you were descended from Wyatt Earp?” said Andre, stunned. “Why, the hell didn’t you tell us?”
“For the same reason Darkness didn’t,” Forrester replied. “I was afraid it would affect your actions. I couldn’t afford to take that chance, no matter how things turned out.”
“Well, thank God, they turned out all right,” said Lucas.
“Cooper’s Rangers went in afterward and picked up the Network men. And we were able to bring Drakov back alive for interrogation and he revealed the location of all his clones and hominoids. What’s going to happen to them?”
“They won’t be harmed.” said Forester. “The mutations, of course, we have no choice but to eliminate. And that will be doing the poor brutes a kindness. As for the others, and my son’s own clones, they’ll be conditioned, then temporally relocated and allowed to live out normal lives. Most of his clones we were able to pick up while they were still children. A few we got as adul
ts, after they’d already been programmed with his mental engrams. Those will require therapy conditioning. They’ll be placed in different modern time sectors, where they’ll never run into each other and where their increased lifespan won’t make them freaks. As for my son himself..”
“I hear he’s going to be all right,” said Lucas, gently. “They say that they can rehabilitate him.”
Forester nodded. “The results are already beginning to show.” he said. “I went to see him in the hospital this morning. He called me ‘Father.’ Then he broke down and cried.”
Forrester had to turn away for a moment. He cleared his throat.
“Well, it seems as if promotions and decorations are in order,” he said. “I thought about making it a formal ceremony, but I know how you feel about such things…” He produced small boxes with new insignia in them and passed them out. “And I thought, Lucas, that you might want to wear your stars at your wedding.”
“My stars?” said Lucas, staring at the little box with disbelief.
“Congratulations.” Forester said. “Andre, looks like you’re going to be marrying a general.”
“But… but…” Lucas stammered.
“I’ll need someone to take over for me as Director,” Forester said. “I’m retiring. My son is going to need me when he gets well and I want to spend some time with him. Maybe give him a chance to get back something of the life he never had.”
“But… Director?” Lucas said. “Me?”
“I couldn’t think of a better man,” said Forester. “Don’t you agree, Colonel Delaney?”
“Yes, sir!” Delaney said, with a wide grin.
“Major Cross, congratulations.” Forrester said, kissing her on the cheek. “I wish you both all the happiness in the world.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He turned around, “Lieutenant Neilson?”
He handed him the box with the new insignia, and then took another box out of his pocket.
“The President is supposed to make the formal presentation, so you’ll have to give this back to me,” he said, “but I thought I’d make sort of an unofficial one myself. On behalf of a grateful government, I’d like to present you with the Medal of Honor.”