One Helluva Bad Time- The Complete Bad Times Series

by Chuck Dixon

  “I mean from this whole fucked-up situation. We get this thing for Taan and bring it back. What does he need us for?”

  “Not a damn thing. We need an exit strategy for our exit strategy.”

  “Exactly. We’ll be away from him and his hired goons, out of reach back in The Then. That’s our leg up on him, that’s the variable. That’s where we make our move.”

  “What move?” she said and raised her head to look into his eyes, her chin on his sternum.

  “That’s what we need to think of,” he said, eyes on hers.

  “Well, for right now you need to think of your current tactical circumstance,” she said, smile lazy and eyebrow arched.

  “Which is?”

  “Which is, the only way out of this room is to get past me. You can advance or retreat, Ranger, your choice.” Bat levered herself up to slide a leg over to come to rest atop him.

  “Retreat, hell,” he said and reached up to take her hips in his hands.

  10

  Geeks

  “Because I’m a physicist and an engineer, that’s why!” Dr. Morris Tauber was banging a fist on the chart table and shouting, red-faced, at Li Chen and his two constant companions. They stood regarding his tantrum like unblinking sphinxes.

  “I am a doctor of engineering. Your wiring diagrams make no sense,” Li Chen insisted, finger stabbing the sheets spread on the table.

  “That’s because you don’t understand how my device operates, and I’m not about to explain it to you,” Morris said, taking deep breaths. “Just wire it like I showed you.”

  Li conferred with his comrades in rapid-fire Cantonese. They shook their heads with vigor, glanced at Morris’ reddening face and narrowed eyes. They slowly nodded their reluctant consent.

  “Good. Have it done by this time tomorrow,” Morris said and folded the thick sheaf of wiring schematics and shoved them into Li Chen’s hands.

  The men retreated through the hatch. Morris followed a few moments behind to step up to the navigation deck. He observed with satisfaction the joists of carbon alloy bolted in place high above the ship’s deck. Crews were working with cranes to secure the fiberglass sheets to the walls and angled roof. By the end of the week, the Raj would be fully covered and concealed within the floating boathouse built to his specifications.

  His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Yesterday. He stepped into the galley to nuke a frozen pizza and wolfed three slices washed down with a Diet Coke. He snatched a bag of rice chips to eat on the way down to his lair beneath the foredeck. Whatever else he could say about his host Jason Taan, he couldn’t complain that they weren’t well-fed. They couldn’t leave the Raj, but they could send guards for takeout from any one of hundreds of great restaurants in Shanghai.

  He made his way forward, skirting the basketball court where Lee and Bat were challenging Jimbo and Byrus to a game under the eye of guards seated in lawn chairs under an awning. Parviz and Quebat were resting in sun chairs, stripped to swim trunks and gleaming with oil. Iced buckets of beer were by their sides.

  Morris let them be. The pair of nuclear technicians wouldn’t be needed until the days running up to insertion. They spent eight hours a day fussing over their mini-reactor. The pair was professional and diligent and, like everyone else on the Raj, bored to agitation. Morris was the only one who felt like time was passing too quickly. The design and construction of the massive boat shed took up a lot of his day as did the modifications to the Tube chamber and work on new algorithms and computer models. Add to that all of the delay and arguments with the Chinese engineers and construction crew, and he had little time to be bored.

  The smell of hot metal filled the below decks passageway that led forward to the Tube. Geteye was leading a work team of welders from the Raj’s crew. They had greatly expanded the enclosure constructed of Conex container panels which formed the Tauber Tube’s manifestation chamber. It was now a five thousand square foot chamber with a forty-foot ceiling. The crew reinforced it with steel beams as well as building a broader approach platform into the Tube itself. From the outside, it still looked like the hold was filled with stacks of steel cargo containers.

  The work was near completion, but the chamber containing his and his sister’s field projector looked like a cyclone had been through it. Scaffolds and ladders, stacks of steel beams, all kinds of tools, tanks, hoses, and debris. But Morris knew well the speed and efficiency with which Geteye and his crew worked. He was confident they’d finish ahead of the Chinese contractors. In one corner of the chamber, Boats, the giant red-bearded former Navy SEAL was finishing work on a wooden boat. It was a recreation of a Nineteenth Century longboat that had been fabricated at a furniture plant in Vietnam from old blueprints. The plant was owned by a subsidiary of Tee-Han Home Furnishings, a company wholly owned by one or another arm of Jason Taan’s financial empire. Boats was applying a fresh coat of paint to the hull with a thick brush.

  “Is that your paint I’m smelling?” Morris shouted to be heard over the construction noise.

  “Yeah. Second coat. It’s got lead in it. Fucking Chinese, right?” Boats said, lowering his face mask to reveal a broad grin.

  “That’s toxic, isn’t it?”

  “Chronal integrity, brother!” the SEAL said, grin growing broader.

  Morris covered his mouth with his hand and hurried back toward the command console set at the front of the room. He pulled the plastic tarp from a terminal box and set to work on the complex rewiring job ahead of him.

  Caroline had given Morris a wealth of advanced books and papers and equations that came from the mysterious Samuel Renzi. They were works certainly from the future and, as she hinted, possibly from an alternate future from the one that lay ahead of them. In any case, the work was an eye-opener for Morris, and he devoured it all. Particularly a slim little volume called Mica Prima by Kosimo Trivenchy. He wasn’t certain, but it seemed like some of Trivenchy’s ideas were based on Morris’ own, though there was no direct mention of the Tauber Tube.

  Thinking about how his work might have influenced scientific advancement in a parallel timeline was too much all at once for Morris to deal with properly. In any event, Morris was able to use the calculations and theorems to streamline the Tube’s operation and increase energy efficiency. He could think bigger now; see beyond his own thinking to expand the functions of the Tube both literally and figuratively. Other than supervising the work of others, Morris’ main task was assembling a larger Tube channel along the configurations described in the Mica Prima and by his sister who had actually seen a much larger scale manifestation chamber during a brief sojourn into an alternate future.

  The Tube’s arches were much higher and wider now. A hundred feet in circumference with clearance for a forty-foot wide approach platform. The chamber containing it nearly filled the entire forward hold of the Raj and the hollow tower of container shelves above. The control console was moved farther aft, separated now from the main Tube chamber by a wall of tempered glass. They learned from past experience that the team might be returning in an urgent rush with God alone knew what in close pursuit—like the mass of man-eating primates that invaded the first Tube chamber back in Nevada. The control room needed to be protected.

  Morris spent late into the evening working on the complex array of cables for the massive jolt of electricity needed to power the Tube, punch a hole through time and maintain the tenuous opening for the minimum thirty minutes needed for the team to safely travel through the manifestation field.

  He was absolutely certain this new, rebooted Tube would work as designed once completed. After all, it was the same Tube he and his sister had constructed in their desert laboratory back in Nevada, only bigger. What concerned him more were the thick bundles of wiring that would run out to the support arches of the new boat shed going up over the Raj.

  Though he made an issue of their ignorance, Morris Tauber was very, very grateful that Li Chen and his team were only enginee
rs and not physicists.

  11

  Incognito

  “Do we have to wear the hats?” Chaz asked, frowning in deep disapproval at the butternut-brown cap in his hand.

  “It’s called a kepi,” Jimbo said, fitting his to his head after working a curve into the leather bill.

  “We going to Nanking or Gettysburg?” Bat said, admiring herself in a hand mirror, her own cap worn at a jaunty angle.

  “Same period. We’ll be dropping back close to the same date two years after Gettysburg. These are standard issue army combat wear for the period. North and South. The French and Brits wear similar tops,” Jimbo told the team gathered in the galley to try on the uniforms that arrived on board that morning.

  Brown tunics and trousers with brass buttons and epaulets and high choker collars secured by eye-hooks. They were all roughly sized for each team member down to the underwear, socks, and boots. Everyone on the team, except for Byrus who had never worn so much clothing in his life, was used to adjusting military issue clothing. But the bitching went on anyway.

  “Heavy,” Boats said, testing his ease of movement in the uniform.

  “Check this out,” Chaz said, “These things are lined.” He held his tunic up to show the others a white linen lining inside.

  “They made it that way, so the Yankees could turn it inside out to surrender,” Lee said.

  “Just be glad we didn’t have them made in serge wool. We had these done up in cotton because we’ll be deploying in the summer heat,” Jimbo said, pulling Byrus’ tunic closed to show him how the buttons worked. The Macedonian shifted his feet like a kid being fitted for school clothes.

  “Won’t they look too new?” Bat said. She was admiring herself in the uniform, pinching in the sides of the tunic to judge how much, or how little, tailoring was needed.

  “We can run them through the dishwasher in the galley to fade them a little, tarnish the buttons,” Boats said. “Take some sandpaper to the seams.”

  “There’s a box here of patches and brass,” Chaz said, rooting through the bottom of a cardboard carton.

  “How are we ranking ourselves?” Jimbo said.

  “I’ll take the captain’s bars if nobody minds,” Lee said, taking the double bars to pin to his collar.

  “And the sergeant chevrons are mine,” Chaz said. “The black man takes a lot of shit back when we’re going. I might take less if I’m a top kick.”

  “How are we planning to explain ourselves? White guys, a black, an Indian,” Jimbo said.

  “A midget,” Chaz said, glancing at Byrus.

  “And a Jew who’s also a girl,” Bat put in.

  “You’ll need to man up for this op, honey,” Lee said with a sly smile.

  “I’m going yentl?” she said perplexed. The reference was lost on the others.

  “You either go as a boy or go as a camp follower,” Jimbo said. “Is there something wrong with being a camp follower?” she said.

  “Females tagging along after armies were usually prostitutes,” Jimbo said.

  “Okay, yentl it is.” Bat shrugged. The others looked blankly at her.

  “None of you have ever seen a Streisand movie?” She smirked.

  She decided to leave the tunic as it was, to allow it to fit a little baggy. Better to hide her breasts.

  “You’re going to need to cut your hair short,” Lee said, touching the mane of black curls that reached her shoulders.

  The door of the galley swung inward, and security chief Binh entered followed by the Bruise Brothers, who sneered sullenly at the costumed men and woman.

  Binh waved a hand at the Bruise Brothers.

  “They go with you,” Binh barked to the room at large. “Go with us where?” Lee said, stepping up to the chief. “Where you go. Nanking. On mission.”

  “The hell they do,” Lee said, moving closer, voice lowering. “There’s two extra uniforms here,” Jimbo said, holding up a pair of spare tunics.

  “Boss Taan’s order. You will follow. They speak for you. They fight with you,” Binh said, glaring at Lee Hammond whose hands fisted in reply. An immovable object and an unstoppable force.

  “You mean they’ll fuck us,” Lee said through his teeth.

  Binh blinked at that. Then his eyes went black with suppressed rage.

  “Master Taan says they go with you. That is all. It is done,” Binh said, biting off each word.

  “You said they’ll speak for us. Can they speak to us, chief?” Jimbo said, stepping forward.

  “I speak good enough English,” the horse-faced one of the pair said.

  Lee let out a breath and studied the man. “What are your names?” he said.

  “I am Shan,” Horse Face said and jerked his head at his shorter partner. “He is Wei.”

  “We’re stuck with them,” Jimbo said to Lee.

  “You going to fuck us?” Lee said to Shan.

  “We will not fuck you. We are good soldiers. You will see,” Shan said.

  “For shit sure we’ll see,” Lee said and stepped back from Binh.

  The room took its first breath in what felt like minutes.

  “Try these on,” Chaz said and spun a pair of kepis to their new team members.

  12

  Deployment

  A monsoon rain fell on the Szechuan coast under a moonless night sky.

  The armored limousine arrived at a boat pier along the western bank of the Yangtze. The SUVs, in front and behind the long black stretch, belched out men in black raincoats who spread out to establish a perimeter. The limo unloaded a passenger concealed under a trio of umbrellas held by a phalanx of more men in black coats. They provided cover for the passenger all the way down to a dock where a launch was waiting.

  After a harrowing ten minute journey over storm-tossed waters, Jason Taan arrived under the sheltering roof of the lofty boathouse that housed the Ocean Raj. He gripped the rail and looked up the rust-streaked hull of the slab-sided ship with an expression of disdain.

  He sighed. “I built a palace to house a pig.”

  “Sir?” said the armed man closest to him on the heaving deck. Taan ignored the question and watched the launch reach the pier at the foot of the ship’s gangway. He batted away an offered hand and stepped from the swaying deck of the launch to the swaying surface of the dock without mishap.

  His patience was wearing thin. He heard nothing but requests, complaints, and excuses from Dr. Tauber. The latest was a delay until weather conditions were right to operate the miraculous machine hidden in the bowels of this scabrous scow.

  Taan was weary of the American explaining that delays in the present time did not represent a delay in their arrival in 1865.

  “The past has already passed,” Tauber would remind him, as though speaking to a backward child. “It will be there no matter how long preparations take here.”

  Tauber swore that the collateral effects of powering up the Tauber Tube would draw attention unless they activated it under conditions that would conceal an electrical flash that he promised would be seen in the city. The waiting was necessary unless Taan wanted more attention from the government in Beijing than even his wealth could paper over.

  Tonight would certainly seem to fit his proscribed conditions. Visibility was limited to the hand before one’s face in the driving rain. And anvil lightning flashed in the belly of the cloud cover from horizon to horizon. Even now the roof above the top of the Ocean Raj’s superstructure rattled under the assault of a long peal of rolling thunder.

  He climbed the gangway to find Binh Ho waiting at the top to escort him below decks. He looked up to see that a section of the boathouse roof above the rear of the ship was left open. Rain came down in torrents through the opening to lash the aft deck. He could see men moving on the raised bow deck.

  “I’m glad you could make it,” Morris Tauber said without a trace of sincerity as Taan entered the control cabin with his mob of glowering bodyguards.

  “I like to see what I am paying for,” Ta
an said, shrugging from his drenched coat with the help of Binh.

  “We’ll be opening the manifestation field as soon as the team is ready,” Morris said and went back to his array of monitors and keyboards. One monitor showed an interactive computer graphic of the Tube. Another showed an animated Venn diagram with floating circles intersecting and retreating in an indiscernible pattern.

  A third was filled with racing columns of numbers, letters, and symbols scrolling and changing with dizzying speed.

  Past the control array and through a Plexiglas window wall, Taan could see the Tube itself. It looked simple enough, too simple to perform the extraordinary tasks promised of it. A ramp led to a platform with rollers installed in its floor. This led into the center of a row of concentric rings of black steel. These rings were covered in a thick rime of white ice that dripped clumps of frost. The frigid air was creating a mist of fog that clung to the floor around the base of the Tube. There was a humming sensation coursing through the deck that he could feel through the soles of his feet. Taan was reminded that there was a mini-nuclear reactor operating in a shielded chamber somewhere nearby.

  At the foot of the ramp before the Tube was the anomalous sight of eight figures dressed as though for a costume party or, more accurately, movie extras. They were loading wooden boxes into the bottom of an open wooden boat perhaps fifteen feet in length. Across the bow of the boat, Taan could see the word Pennock painted in neat lettering.

  “Pennock? What does that mean?” Taan asked.

  “According to your Dr. Fong, the USS Pennock, a Yankee clipper, was anchored in Shanghai during our operational period,” Morris answered without taking his fingers from a keyboard or eyes from the screen of rapidly scrolling numbers.

  “Isn’t there a strong chance our expedition might run into crewmembers of the same ship?” Taan asked.