The Fourth Rome

by David Drake

  “And Orlov knows he can’t get back?”

  “Ha! I do not think Orlov knows this. Only real scientists know this. Boys and show scientists think that anything is possible, including travel to future. It would be amusing to tell Orlov this, if he will be free with Etkin and Lipinsky at the same time and place.”

  Once a Russian senior official, always a Russi.in senior official.

  “I—Sasha, that implant doesn’t automatically trigger a displacement, right? Orlov’s not going to disappear into the past before our eyes, is he? You have an enabler—a piece of hardware, right, to trigger the system?” Grainger was poised on the balls of his feet, ready to push by Matsak and warn Roebeck that they’d better get that implant out of Oriov before they lost their captive.

  Matsak said, “Nyet problema. The enabling technology is among the artifacts you captured.”

  So the ARC Riders had it all. The implant. The enabler. A bag full of advanced UTL technology. Etkin. Orlov. Neat. And Matsak, a bonus. Finally, Grainger relaxed. His whole body seemed heavy. Tired. His head hurt. His bruises throbbed. His ribs ached where Iipinsky had beaten him. But despite it all, he felt pretty good. Satisfied. “Spacebo, Sasha. Thanks for the overview. I owe you one.”

  “You are giving me one—a new hope for future. So sorry, my country is broken. We are fixing it. You will see. Someday Russia will be great once more.”

  “Yeah. I know,” Grainger replied thickly. Luckily, that day wouldn’t be hastened by Etkin, Orlov, Lipinsky, and a bunch of unwitting kamikaze revisionists. That day would come soon enough for a lucky Russian kid who Roebeck was adopting. And for Matsak, the ARC’s new agent in place. “Guess I’d better start explaining how you file reports with the ARC. How to contact Roebeck about her kid when you’re ready. Or us. Whenever you need us.”

  “This is very well,” said Matsak with a smile. “Very well indeed.”

  Under Grainger’s feet, the bulkhead shivered slightly as Chun took the TC out of phase, displacing to 50K.

  Vetera, Lower Germany

  September 7, 9 AD

  Pauli braced one foot on the bear’s shoulder ;ind drew up on the javelin with all his considerable strength. The point was deep in a neck tendon. When it released, the iron came out kinked just as it was designed to do.

  Archers walked skittishly toward the team, obviously nervous. Beckie eyed them and said, “Is there any chance the capsule will arrive in—”

  She corrected herself. “Soon, that is?” Her voice was steady.

  “No,” Pauli said. “They’ll arrive next week as we decided. They can’t view the horizon without shifting the revisionists.”

  He threw down the useless javelin. The base of the blade was tempered soft so that it bent on impact. An enemy couldn’t throw the javelin back or even pull its weight out of his shield.

  What it meant at the moment was that Patli Weigand couldn’t threaten the oncoming archers with the javelin. It wouldn’t have been much of a threat anyway, jut you use what you have.

  Gerd Barthuli seated himself on the sand. “Neil her Nan nor the automatic systems could hold the capsule sufficiently far out of phase to view the horizon without displacing the revisionists,” he said. “Quo on occasion has demonstrated quite remarkable delicacy with the controls, however.”

  “I didn’t think I could get Svetlanov’s gun,” Beckie said. “I thought I’d be more use here.”

  The only thing she could do here in the arena was die with her teammate. Pauli’s conscious mind wanted that less than anything else in the world, but a part of his subconscious was glad of the company.

  “I was creche-raised,” said Gerd as he sat cross-legged, bending over his sensor pack. “I suppose you were also, Pauli. I’ve always found it interesting to view earlier time horizons in which family groupings are the norm.”

  “Trust me,” Beckie said dryly. “This team works better than any family I knew when I was growing up.”

  “Gerd, let me have your pistol,” Pauli said. “Can you make a hologram to draw their attention?”

  “I’ve been trying,” the analyst said. His right hand continued to key the air as he reached across with his left to give Pauli the microwave pistol. “In daylight I can’t get sufficient contrast in an image large enough to be seen at a distance.”

  A waver at the corner of Pauli’s eye hinted that a giant figure stood beside them. Except for Gerd’s statement, even Pauli would have thought it was a heat shimmer.

  “All right,” he said. It was what he’d expected. He’d also expected that Gerd would be trying.

  The archers halted a hundred meters from the team. They’d spread out just as the pack of dogs had done, facing the team in a broad arc.

  Pauli raised his hand and called, “Halt or feel my power!”

  A brawny, black-haired man in leather vest and breeches nocked an arrow and drew it back. From the look of him, he didn’t even understand the Latin words. He probably couldn’t hear Pauli’s voice over the crowd noise anyway.

  Pauli aimed with the grace of long practice and squeezed his pistol’s trigger. The arrow twisted away from the bow and fell to the sand. The microwave pistols couldn’t seriously affect a human being at this range, but a pulse could flick a few ounces of wood to the side.

  The archer’s mouth opened in amazement. He reached for another arrow, then dropped his bow and backed away from it.

  A man on one end of the line drew and loosed with a convulsive jerk. The arrow flew so wildly that he must have dosed his eyes at the moment of release, but his attempt broke the spell. The fact he could shoot without being siiuck down by magic encouraged a dozen more to raise their bows.

  Pauli swept his pistol across the line; beside him, Beckie was doing the same thing. It didn’t help. An arrow spiked so close in front of Gerd that it kicked sand onto the sensor in lus lap.

  A spot of vivid yellow light appeared in the middle of the arena and grew instantly into a ball ten meters in diameter. The archers ran back, stumbling and spilling arrows in their haste.

  The ball became paler as it formed into a woman twenty meters high. You could vaguely see the seats on the other side of the amphitheater through her, as if the image wfis a sheet of colored glass.

  “It’s Nan!” Beckie cried.

  “They’re copying the apparition that came to Drusus just before he died on the Elbe seventeen years ago!” Gerd said in delight. “Brilliant! A brilliant thought!”

  “Come on!” Pauli said. “Gerd, you were sure right about Quo being able to handle the capsule!”

  He grabbed the analyst to help him up. TC 779 shimmered into phase beneath the giant image. Tim Grainger stood in the open hatchway with a fléchette gun ready to cover F’auli’s team.

  Pauli knew the giant figure was a hologram of Nan Roe-beck, but he could still feel awe at its translucent majesty. The figure pointed its forefinger at Tiberius.

  “Oh, rash man!” its voice thundered. “Know that if you attempt to conquer Germany, your life shall end there as surely as your brother’s did!”

  That would put paid to any chance of Rome mounting a major invasion of Germany for the next generation. After that Rome’s opportunity would be lost forever. Nan wasn’t one to do a job halfway.

  None of them were. They’d done the job with minimal resources and by heaven! they’d done it.

  Pauli Weigand shouted in triumph as his team sprang aboard TC 779. Behind them the emperor-to-be stared without expression at the team that had saved his life and their own future.

  DAVID DRAKE was born in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1945. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Iowa, majoring in history (with honors) and Latin. He was attending Duke University Law School when he was drafted. He served the next two years in the Army, spending 1970 as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th Armored Cavalry in Viet Nam and Cambodia.

  Upon return he completed his law degree at Duke and was for eight years Assistant Town Attorney for Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He
then drove a city bus for a year and, since 1981, has been a full-time freelance writer.

  Drake has a wife, a son, and various pets. He lives in a new house on 22 acres in Chatham County, North Carolina, where he feeds sun-flower seeds to the birds.

  JANET MORRIS is Vice President of Morris & Morris, a private consultancy specializing in new defense technology and non-lethal warfare. She is a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. She has participated in several unprecedented U.S./Russian technology exchanges, in collaboration with David Drake, she has written Active Measures and Kill Ratio, among other novels. With her husband, Chris Morris, she has written The American Warrior and other titles. She is also the author of the Tempus series.

  “FIRST RATE. A THOROUGHLY ENJOYABLE, ROUSING ADVENTURE OUTSIDE TIME.”

  —Science Fiction Chronicle on Arc Riders

  Elite 26th-century commandos, the ARC Riders patrol time to protect all human history…

  WE WILL BURY YOU

  As the USSR crumbles, Russian hardliners jump from 1991 to A.D. 9, when their modern weapons can warp the course of the Roman Empire and create a world ruled by the Kremlin—using time technology that doesn’t exist in the 20th century…or the 26th!

  To solve the mystery, the Riders must split into teams separated by millennia. And while three Riders are trapped between the Roman legions and a blood-maddened barbarian horde, their comrades are at war on the Moscow streets. And fighting an inconceivable enemy.

  DAVID DRAKE, author of Hammer’s Stammers, and JANET MORRIS, Adjunct Fellow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and author of The American Warrior, join talents for Arc Riders, the most exciting time war series in years.