Time War: Invasion (22 page)

"All my life, Sir," he replied.

"I would very much like to inspect your team."

Corwin opened his mouth to speak, but Williams got in ahead of him.

"They are already formed up outside awaiting you, Sir."

Corwin was not impressed, but he knew he had to go along with it.

"Lead the way, Captain," said Dorey.

He begrudgingly got up and did so. They stepped outside to find his squad were formed up for inspection, and not one of them looked happy about it. They stood casually in line and were in a mix of clothing that made them appear the ragtag bunch they were. The Brigadier stopped dead at the first sight of them.

"This is really the team you took with you, Colonel?" he asked Williams.

"Yes, Sir, they may appear a little rough around the edges, but there are no soldiers I would rather have by my side when the shots start flying."

"And women? You take women into combat? And your country allows such a thing? I have never heard of it."

"Not typically, but we are no ordinary outfit, Sir," replied Corwin.

"Then what exactly are you?"

"A specialist team, with a broad set of skills."

"In what exactly?"

Corwin shook his head. "Sir, I must emphasise the importance of secrecy in our operations. We are far more than the sum of our numbers, and we can achieve what you would need hundreds, if not thousands to do. We do things our way, and we get results."

Dorey nodded, not quite sure what to make of it all.

"Well, then, while you get results like this, I suppose I can live with the oddities of your team. Keep it up, Captain!"

With that, he turned and left. He climbed into a staff car and was driven away without another word.

"I'm sorry about that, but we must all answer to somebody," said Williams.

Corwin turned to the Colonel with a look of exasperation on his face.

"We might wear your uniforms, but my people are not for you to mess with and drag around like toy soldiers on parade."

"I think you forget to whom you are talking to..."

But Corwin stepped closer into his personal space in an intimidating fashion.

"No, you forget, Colonel. You forgot what our arrangement was. I promised to help you in any way I could, but that doesn't make any of us yours."

Williams nodded; thinking back to how Corwin had saved his life, and that alone was enough for him to back down. Corwin turned to leave, but the Colonel called him back.

"That was fine work last night, and it warrants a celebration. None of us get much to look forward to in life in these times, and we all need something. Be sure you come along. You are already heroes to us."

Corwin gave barely a nod and left.

"A party? There is too much to be done," Beyett appealed.

"Got to learn to let go," replied Porter, happily thinking about the prospects of a late night celebration.

* * *

Three days later.

The sun had long gone down as they lay about their bunkroom. Half of the Luckers were huddled around a table playing a game of cards while the others were scattered about the room. Corwin sat alone with a bottle of whiskey by his side and smoking the cheap ration cigarettes. They passed the time, even if they did taste foul. Lecia approached and sat down beside him but said nothing, as if expecting him to initiate a conversation with her.

"Slow isn't it?" she finally asked when he did not respond.

Her voice was slightly slurred from the amount she had drunk, and she swayed a little in a manner that was unlike her usual precise self. He smiled at the irritatingly vagueness of the question.

"What is?"

"Everything. Were we back home; we would be darting around the world getting shit done. But here we wait and plan, and scheme, and try to lie our way through it all."

"What's your point?"

"That every single day goes by, the less Villiers even matters."

Corwin looked at her and scowled, trying to understand what she meant. Villiers had been all that was on his mind since long before they arrived.

"How can it ever be anything but vital?" he asked her.

"From what Beyett says this is not even close to the way things should be. The Nazis are winning. Villiers might have provided some of the information and tools to get them this far, but say he died tomorrow, has he not done enough already?"

Corwin laid his head back to rest and think about it. He felt her snatch the whiskey from his hands, but he made no attempt to stop her. He knew exactly what she meant, and he had felt it himself, but tried to ignore the fact and focus on their mission to take Villiers down.

He looked over and noticed tears running down her face as she threw back the bottle. It was the first time he had ever seen it, and it shocked him to the core. She had never been anything but confident and resilient to everything that had been thrown at them. He didn't understand it.

"What's wrong?" he asked quietly, so as to not alert the others. Although he could see Frasi at the other end of the room could hear every word.

"We almost had a chance. It was so close, in the palm of our hands. It's a cruel fate that it was snatched away from us, and now we face a life ten times as difficult as the last."

"A chance at what?"

"Peace," she said through the tears.

She lay her hand down on his thigh and looked deep into his eyes. It spoke far more than her words and struck deep to his heart. It had never even crossed his mind that it was ever a possibility, or that any of his squad would desire it so much. Their training and their enhancements were intended to make them unstoppable war machines that could forgo unnecessary emotion, but it now seemed that had been more effective on some than others.

"What would we even do without a war to fight?"

"I have no idea, but I'd have liked the chance to find out."

Corwin opened his mouth to respond, but before he could get a word out, they felt the floor beneath them shake, and an immensely loud crack and explosion. The windows burst in on them. The tapes reduced the amount of shatter, but Corwin still felt a large shard brush past his cheek and cut him slightly as he dropped to the ground. Several other large explosions rang out nearby.

"What the hell is going on?" Nylund shouted.

"It's an air raid you, asshole!" Porter yelled.

"Everyone stay down!" Corwin ordered.

He crept to the doorway. The door itself had broken off its top hinge and was jammed open. He looked out; bombs were exploding all over. Five bodies lay scattered outside the structure where they had been caught by surprise. Fires were already raging in the main building. Their humble quarters were on the fringe of the base, and so they were having it easier compared to much of the rest.

"We can't stay here!"

"We go out there, and we'll be blown apart, Beyett," said Rane.

“What are you, a pussy?” asked Porter.

They looked to Corwin for answers. He could see the base was being engulfed with flames, and it only appeared to be getting worse.

“No, we can’t stay here.”

“At least we have a little shelter here,” said Vi.

“Yeah, and that ain’t gonna do shit when one of those bombs comes through the roof. Go as light as you can,” he said, grabbing his Colt pistol from his bed.

He then stepped back to the doorway ready to leave. He peered around the corner to the edge of the base where woods stretched out beyond the outer fence.

“We’re going for the tree line, as fast as you can, okay everyone?”

He turned back to the door, but a soldier pushed through and into him. It surprised him for a moment, and he lifted his pistol to shoot, only to realise it was Hotwell. His clothing was cut up at the shoulder, but he seemed relatively unharmed, though he was in total shock.

“Stick with me. Just follow me!”

He nodded, but he was dazed and aloof. Corwin slapped him across the face.

“Hey, stick with me!” he yelled again.

He looked back to the others who were ready to go. Most of them had just a side arm, but Rane was holding on dearly to his Vickers machine gun, and Lecia had her rifle slung on her back. Corwin grabbed Hotwell’s arm.

“Go!” he screamed at him.

He rushed out the door and ran as quickly as he could towards the fences. Explosions seemed to trace their footsteps as they hunkered down low. Rane was at the front and crashed into one of the fence posts. It snapped at the base and collapsed before him. They rushed on into the cover of the foliage. Finally, they stopped and ducked down to watch the devastation that they had fled from.

The carnage went on for another five minutes when at last they heard an aircraft sweeping in low. It buzzed overhead at little more than fifty metres above them. It was a single prop engine fighter.

“They’ve seen us,” said Nylund in a panic.

Corwin watched carefully, and the aircraft banked as it went past. Even though he lost sight of it in the darkness of night, he knew exactly what the pilot’s intentions were. He looked over to Rane and signalled for him to prepare. He took a few paces forward and waited as the sound of the bombings faded away.

They heard the sound of the fighter approaching from the same direction as before. Just as it came into view, Rane pushed the trigger, and the Vickers exploded into life. Its slow and monotonous rate of fire thumped out the .303 rounds. A few shots hit the ground around him, but Lecia watched the aircraft through her scope, and a hail of gunfire from Rane hit it. The volley ripped through the engine and fuselage. A fire broke out, and the fighter banked hard, going into a dive and crashing out of sight. A burst of flames arose from the crash to light up the night sky, and then there was silence.

* * *

Daylight had finally arrived, and they walked through the wreckage of the base in astonishment. Two thirds of the buildings had been reduced to rubble, and bodies were still being drawn from the rubble. Hotwell was white with shock.

“This was all because of you, because of us, wasn’t it?” he asked, his voice ragged.

“A whole fucking war going on, and it’s our fault when we get bombed?”

“No, he’s right, Vi.”

“How’d you figure that, Boss?” Chas asked.

“Because Villiers knows we are here now. Because this target is of no strategic value to the Germans, unless they knew we were here. This was an attempt to take us out before we could put any more spanners in the works.”

“I never wanted this,” said Hotwell.

“No one did, but there is a price in war. No one wants to pay it,” added Corwin.

“Easy for you to say, you lost nothing in this.”

Several vehicles were approaching, and one was Dorey’s personal car.

“The Brigadier will want answers,” said Hotwell. He sounded very worried.

“You made it!”

They turned to see Colonel Williams. He had a bandage running around his head and down his face covering one eye. His left arm was in a support slung around his neck, and there was dry blood across his face and neck.

“All this devastation and you came out of it with nothing to show for it,” he stated.

“Are you okay, Colonel?” Corwin asked.

But he only pointed to the approaching vehicles. They watched and waited. But Corwin already knew it wasn’t going to be good news. When they came to a standstill, the Brigadier stepped out with a number of MPs at his back. His expression and tone was entirely different to when they last met. He looked confrontational from the moment they saw his face.

“Captain Corwin!”

Corwin stepped forward. He already knew he was not going to like what he was about to hear.

“Captain, this is just enough. We both know that this would never be a target of the Luftwaffe unless there was a major strategic target here. Nothing has changed here recently, except for you!”