One Helluva Bad Time- The Complete Bad Times Series

by Chuck Dixon

  “1871. Winter,” Samuel said.

  “We transited through time without a waystation step between,” she said.

  “I will explain more later. For now, we must move to cover.” He took her elbow and walked her across the courtyard, leaving the icy cloud to dissipate behind them.

  He hurried her along cobbled streets empty of all but a few high-wheeled carriages and small columns of marching men. She wore a cap pushed low on her head, and he warned her to keep her face down as they moved swiftly from shadow to shadow.

  “There is a curfew,” Samuel said, holding her hand to guide her across the street.

  “Is that usual?” she said and clutched the baby closer.

  “Paris is under martial law. France is at war.”

  “And you thought this was a good place to bring Stephen and me?”

  “War is the best place to hide,” he said and drew her under the awning of a hotel. He placed his shoulder to the door and popped the lock with a sudden thrust to swing the doors open.

  They hustled into the dim lobby of a middlebrow hostelry that brazenly called itself Hotel Exemplaire. She sat cradling Stephen in a shady corner while Samuel banged on the desktop to rouse the registrar. Caroline heard him explain in fluent French that they were traveling from Canada on business and their luggage had been stolen. There was an argument too swift for Caroline to follow that ended with Samuel producing a thick sheaf of bills.

  The registrar went silent at the sight of all the franc notes. Money changed hands, and Samuel returned to the lobby to take her upstairs. At this late hour, there was no bell staff to take them to their room. All as Samuel had planned, she imagined.

  The room was a cramped suite with a sitting room and boudoir with a vestigial balcony over the street. There were no closets, as was the custom of the day, and no private bath or toilet, as was also the custom in bourgeois establishments such as this. There was a bowl of fruit on a table in the sitting room and wilting flowers from the day before drooped in a vase.

  Caroline couldn’t help but think what the furniture in this room would be worth back in The Now. Here they were common tat. One hundred and fifty years hence, they were valuable antiques.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?” Samuel said.

  “I have a baby, no diapers, no change of clothes for either of us and no clothes that are in period anyway,” she said. “I need basic toiletry items for me and Stephen. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m starving. And if I don’t eat, then Stephen goes hungry too. That’s how that works.”

  “I am sorry you’re hungry,” he said. “I will pick up things in the morning if you make me a list.”

  “You’ll steal? What if you’re caught? We’re stranded here, Samuel,” she said with irritation. She was losing her patience with all this mystery and intrigue.

  “I have enough currency to see us through for a long period,” he said. “I can draw more from a bank account in Toronto should we need it.”

  “So, you knew we were coming here, to this place, and this time,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “And you couldn’t share that with me?”

  “It was easier to convince you to cooperate closer to events.”

  “Bullshit. It was easier to manipulate me,” she said and moved to the hallway door and turned the key in the lock. She removed the key and twirled it on her finger.

  “I did what was best for you both and for Dwayne.”

  “Fine. Noted and appreciated. But now you’re going to answer some questions, even if it’s only to take my mind off my growling tummy,” she said, taking a seat at the table and gestured for him to do the same.

  26

  The Testing of Tacitus

  The scopes revealed that the column marching south toward them numbered around two hundred men. Two centuries. Using the NODs gear allowed for a digital view that cut through the veil of dust.

  The marching men in the front were dressed in belted tunics and wore hobnailed boots. They carried packs suspended from poles held over their shoulders. Most were bareheaded. Some wore broad-brimmed reed hats or sweat-cloths tied about their heads. A marcher in the lead walked with a cloth-covered object cradled in his arms; the aquilifer that identified their unit, commander, and legion number. They were Romans.

  Following behind was a more ragged formation of men in long, kaftan type garments belted at the waist. These men wore their hair in long braids and carried what looked like thin curved rods over their shoulders. These were unstrung bows.

  “Assyrian archers,” Jimbo said. “Auxiliary troops.”

  “They’re coming the wrong way to be our guys,” Lee said.

  “A regular patrol? Maybe just a coincidence?”

  “Or reinforcements for the fort the Twenty-third is building?” Lee mused, squinting at the approaching force through the scope atop Jimbo’s rifle. They were three-quarters of a mile to the north and coming on at a steady mile-consuming pace.

  “Not good news either way.”

  “What’s that behind them?” Lee said, handing the rifle back to its owner.

  Jimbo fixed his eye to the scope cup. The rectangle of men four across and twenty deep came into sharp focus. He tilted his view and adjusted the range to take in shapes moving behind them. He wiped sweat from his eyes and fixed his eye on the shapes.

  “Pack animals. Mules or donkeys,” Jimbo said. “This is no patrol. They’re mobilized. They’re fully tactical for a long deployment.”

  “Shit,” Lee hissed. “What are our options?”

  “We test Tacitus to see if he was right. Nail a few and see if they turn tail.”

  “From our perspective, they’ve all been dead for two thousand years anyway, right?” Jimbo smiled.

  Bat joined Jimbo on the ledge and both lay prone with rifles trained downrange at the slowly closing figures there. The rest of the team packed up and were ready to move depending on the initial outcome. Lee stood, aiming binoculars at the dust cloud.

  “The aquilifer’s mine,” Jimbo said and swiftly adjusted his scope for the angle and drop.

  “Show off,” Bat said and settled in with the butt of her Winnie braced snug to her shoulder. She found a man in the second row of the column and sipped in a lungful of air. She was letting it out slow when Jimbo’s rifle boomed beside her. She squeezed and rode the recoil of her own weapon then brought her scope down to check out the results. Her man was down, and the men directly behind him were halting mid-step. The rest moved around the stalled group like a stream of water around a rock. She saw some of the men look up suddenly, eyes betraying alarm.

  The report of Jimbo’s rifle reached them now like thunder from the hills. The men flinched again as the crack of her shot echoed the first. A few were trying to rouse their fallen comrade. Bat swung her aspect to take in a similar drama as men stood about the Pima’s chosen target. One man stood holding up the cloth covered banner while others knelt by the fallen man.

  “They’re not stopping,” Jimbo said and jacked a fresh cartridge home.

  “Maybe they never read Tacitus,” she said, driving her bolt back in place and sighting through the scope.

  “How could they? He hasn’t been born yet.”

  “Man, this shit does mess with your head,” Bat said, laying the crosshairs on the head of a marching man. The drop, the descending arc of her bullet as it responded to gravity, would make for a center shot through the chest.

  Boom. Jimbo’s rifle.

  Bat dropped her man. She jacked a new round and took a survey. The column was at a full stop now with knots of men gathered around the fresh victims sprawled on the road. There was no way to know what they thought was happening; men among them falling under an invisible weapon, the sharp roars reaching them off the surrounding rocks, no enemy in sight.

  “They need further encouragement,” Jimbo said and let out his wind to steady his eye. Bat did the same.

  Their shots were nearly si
multaneous. Two marchers were thrown to the road as if struck by the same hammer blow. That was enough for the rest of the legionnaires. They threw down their poles and packs and ran in a ragged mob back the way they came.

  Jimbo stood and watched through the scope as the routed infantry raced back to mix in with the column of pack animals. Mules reared and broke from their handlers to join the retreat. Some of the cargo carried by the animals broke free of the racks and spilled to the ground from leather sheaths. There it was trampled by panicked men and beasts. All was soon lost in a thick pall of rising dust.

  “You see what those mules were carrying?” Jimbo said.

  “Arrows,” Bat said, lowering her rifle. “Thousands of them.”

  “These guys are reinforcements,” Jimbo said. “And those arrows are for us.”

  The third century of the Thirtieth, the Boars, was in shambles. The fourth century had stalled on the road as the column on the march before them dissembled into a rabble. Centurion Marcus Rupilius Pulcher was enraged.

  His second optio and five others were dead, struck down by some invisible force. His men fled like women in a sudden rain. He strode among them, striking them with his staff. Gaius, his first optio, screamed himself hoarse to get them to retrieve their dropped gear and form back into ranks.

  Adding to Pulcher’s rage was the delight on the faces of the auxiliaries; the Assyrian bowmen. The black scum were amused to see a mighty Roman column turned to craven wretches at the sight of a bit of blood.

  More than a bit, as it turned out.

  The downed men showed wounds much like the lead projectile of a slinger might make: a neat round hole punched through the flesh. But in addition to the puckered blue puncture was a matching wound far more catastrophic where the projectile made violent egress. An insult the size of a man’s fist betrayed the final destination of the pellet, gaping tears through which the white of bone gleamed. One of the men, the aquilifer named Albus, was missing half his head. The pellet entered just under his nose and sprayed the men closest with blood and brains.

  The messenger had arrived by foot at their fortified castra three days before with orders from the prefect as relayed through Bachus of the Twenty-third. They were to send a force along the road into Judea to serve as an adjunct to a cohort of the Twenty-third encamped at a nameless village fifty mile markers to the south.

  Their tribune decided a token force was all that was needed to meet the letter of the prefect’s request, and so sent two centuries and the auxiliary force of archers.

  Pulcher dug with his fingers in the gravel beneath one man and found a misshapen lump of lead that was hot to the touch. It was like the pellets flung by slingers. But what man could send a simple ball of lead with such speed and force? And what was the sound of thunder that reached them from the slopes all around? It was unsettling indeed. He could understand but not forgive the cowardice of his men. There would be punishments. Not here. Not now. Later, when they reached the camp of the Twenty-third.

  The centurion ordered the Assyrians to climb to the ledges above and give chase while he moved the centuries down the road in full kit.

  In helm and armor, with scutums gripped before them, the Boars trudged south. The bodies of their slain were left for the foxes, wolves, and buzzards. If prayers were to be sent to Zeus or Mars or Mithra in their names, then those prayers would be muttered on the march. The hired boys cautiously led the mule train on in their dusty wake past the dead Romans already black with clouds of flies.

  After two miles of fast marching, a pair of Assyrians slid down a rocky slope to report to Pulcher. They reached a place ahead where the ravine turned only to see a number of riders galloping south along the ledge.

  “Was there sign of a machine of some sort?” Pulcher asked them.

  “Machine?” One of them shrugged, nose wrinkled.

  “A ballista!” Pulcher gritted his teeth. “Some devilish instrument of some kind!”

  “No machine. Just men on horses,” the little bowman said in his gutter Latin.

  “Did you see them?”

  “Only horses’ asses and dust.”

  “Were they Jew rebels?”

  “Did not see. Bandits maybe.”

  “What bandit has the balls to face a Roman army on the march?” Pulcher seethed.

  The bowman thought of the Romans pissing themselves in fear and the six dead legionnaires lying in pools of their own blood. He said nothing.

  Pulcher stood squinting into the glare off the roadway.

  “You have orders, sir?” the bowman asked after a while.

  “Go back to your own optio and tell him that he will divide your force into two units. You will move ahead of the infantry as a screen.”

  “They are on horses. We cannot catch them,” the bowman said.

  “If they stop, if they attempt to strike us again, you will engage,” Pulcher said, red-faced.

  The bowman thought again of the thunder and the Romans struck down as though by the gods.

  “Go!” Pulcher roared and sent the pair of Assyrians on their way with a kick.

  The century, sweating under the weight of layers of leather armor, hefted their javelins and shields at the bark of the optio. They hove forward at a trot, eyes on the ledges above, searching for they knew not what.

  27

  Questions Beget Questions

  Samuel left the hotel the following morning to purchase the list of items, or their nineteenth-century equivalent, at the local shops. His clothing was odd, but not so outrageous that it couldn’t be explained away by his being a foreigner. Caroline’s appearance would be scandalous, with her denim maternity jeans and shoes that allowed her ankles to be seen.

  Caroline was exhausted from hunger, stress, and the lack of sleep the night before. She’d given birth just two days before, relative to her anyway, and this was not any kind of recommended course of recuperation. Reminding herself that her female ancestors probably dropped babies and went right back to work in the fields, as the cliché goes, did little to comfort her.

  She dozed on and off as she nursed Stephen with what had to be the last of her milk. She thought about what Samuel revealed to her the night before as she faded in and out of a restless sleep.

  Her first questions were about the means of direct travel they made between the present and the past without an intermittent stop at a tube chamber of any kind. He explained that there were set places on the planet where through-field generators were in place and programmable by anyone with a calibrating device. The field openings could be pre-programmed, but the target destination had to be chosen with a generous allowance for variations. Calibrations in the field were simply not as exact as those made in the more stable laboratory environment of a tube chamber.

  Locations for the field generators were chosen for the length of time their locales had remained unchanged. The alley they traveled through had remained virtually unchanged for centuries. They were safe as long as the target date was kept within the time frame in which the unnamed alley existed as they found it. If not safe, then at least within an acceptable level of risk.

  “That sounds like shooting blind,” she said. “What if we came out in broad daylight in the middle of a garden party?”

  “The mist helps to mask any sudden arrivals,” he said with a bland expression.

  “Then it’s all fast talking and a hasty exit?”

  “That is what it often comes to.”

  She coaxed him into showing her the calibration device. It was a smooth metal band that covered his right wrist below his bandaged forearm and above the leather gloves that he never removed. It was perhaps four inches at its longest point and fit snugly to the skin. Frankly, she found it a letdown. There were no details on the surface, no visible controls, no displays, no way to discern how it operated. He told it worked on touch and was directly keyed into his own physiognomy.

  “Each calibrator is customized to the individual user,” he said.

  “How
can you make such complex calculations by touch alone?”

  “I did not say touch alone.”

  “Is there a telepathic component?” she said, aching to touch the mysterious metal wristlet. “You think about your temporal destination?”

  “It is more complicated than that, more of a symbiosis. The device reads the chronal patterns created by my unique physical structure. There’s really no language to articulate it. It just seems to happen.”

  She wasn’t sure if he was humoring her because he thought she was out of her scientific depth or if she really was out of her scientific depth. Or perhaps the technology was so intuitive for him that there was simply no way to explain it to her. Like a five-year-old who can use a pad device but cannot convey how what does it to grandpa, who didn’t grow up with such devices.

  “The future you come from, the world you were raised in, is different from ours,” she said.

  “It doesn’t do to talk about it,” he said without expression. “If our work succeeds that world may not exist. Nothing is written in stone, and nothing is inevitable.”

  “But what is it like? You can’t blame me for my curiosity, Samuel.”

  He sat a moment regarding the baby cooing and squirming gently in her arms.

  “It is a bleak place without choice. It is an anthill where each day and each year marches by without change, without love and with nothing to look forward to. Some are mollified by simple comforts and enforced stability. Others live out their lives as drudges, slaves—drones in a hive. It is a place where the flame in the human heart has been exchanged for a cold light.”