TW09 The Lilliput Legion NEW (25 page)

He entered the office and Savino shoved Andre in after him. The two large wooden crates stood open on the floor. They were empty. Manelli's desk and chairs had been moved back, against the wall and in the center of the floor, glowing faintly, was an activated chronoplate.

Lucas huddled in the trunk of the Cadillac limo, feeling nauseous and trying to ignore the pounding pain in his temples. The trunk was roomy, so he wasn't painfully cramped, but the motion of the car over the potholed streets didn't do much for his disposition. Several times, the car stopped for traffic lights, but this last time, he felt the car pull over to the curb and after a moment heard the doors slam. He hesitated, and then he felt the engine start up once again and the car started to pull away. He tached.

Someone leaned on a car horn and Lucas quickly rolled underneath a parked truck as the yellow cab sped by, missing him by inches. Fighting the dizziness and the painful pressure in his temples and chest, he quickly scanned the sidewalks from his shelter beneath the van and spotted Drakov and Savino shepherding Andre into the nightclub. His head was throbbing and he felt as if he were going to throw up. It was worse than the worst hangover he'd ever experienced, much worse. All he wanted to do was simply lie there on the filthy street and wait for it to go away.

His worst fear was that what had happened to Darkness would somehow happen to him. Although the process that each of them had undergone was different, the principles were essentially the same. Darkness had, inadvertently, permanently tachyonized himself with the result that his atomic structure was unstable. The particle-level telempathic chronocircuitry that had become a part of Lucas was designed to prevent tachyon translation from upsetting his atomic stability, at least that was what Darkness claimed, but there was no denying the side effects he was experiencing. And they seemed to be getting worse. What would he do if he eventually became permanently tachyonized, like Darkness? Would he be able to retain his sanity, knowing that he could discorporate at any moment? What the hell, thought Lucas, by rights I should have died back in the 19th Century. Any way you look at it. I'm on borrowed time.

He heard heavy footsteps above him in the truck, then the sound of something heavy being moved across the truckbed. Ignoring the stabbing pain in his head, he tried to focus on the booted feet that stepped down to the street from the rear of the truck.

“Easy... easy... okay that’s got it. Go ahead, jump down, I’ll hold it.”

A moment later, another pair of feet, shod in running shoes, jumped down from the truck bed and Lucas watched as two leather-jacketed roadies manhandled a PA column speaker into the club. He listened for a moment, heard nothing more above him, then slid out from beneath the truck. He looked into the back and saw that the truck was just about completely unloaded. Nothing remained except some tool boxes, several coils of cable hung up on the walls, and some spare mike stands. Lucas jumped up into the truck and grabbed several coils of insulated cable.

"Hey!
What the hell are you doin' in there?"

A spikey-haired young man in a red leather jacket and black jeans stood at the back of the truck, a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth.

"Get the fuck out there!"

"Hey, back off!" said Lucas, angrily. "I'm the club electrician, awright? There's a problem with the fuckin' wiring and they sent me out to get some more cable. Is this garbage the best you guys got?"

"What's wrong with it?" the roadie said, defensively.

"What's wrong with it?" Lucas echoed him, sarcastically. "It's the wrong gauge, the damn insulation's frayed ,no wonder we're shorting out in there. Ah, to hell with it. I'll patch something up." He jumped down from the truck. "You guys oughta be more careful about this stuff. Someone could get a nasty shock. It ain't even code. Got a spare smoke?"

The roadie reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out a pack of Marlboros. He shook one out and offered. Lucas took it and the roadie lit it for him with a cheap, disposable lighter.

"Well, is it gonna be all right?" the roadie said.

“Yeah, if I get to it sometime tonight." said Lucas. "Thanks for the smoke."

He went into the club, carrying the coils of cable.

“You sure you know where you're going?" Hunter asked Delaney.

"If Darkness says Andre was taken to a place called Il Paradiso on West 11th Street, then that's where she is," Delaney said.

"Right, I understand that," Hunter said. "What I don't understand is
how
he knew that."

"Well, it's a long—"

“Don't say it." Hunter shook his head with exasperation. "Hell, forget I even asked. I'm just along for the ride, right?" He took the Browning Hi-Power out of his waistband and racked the slide, chambering a round. "Wish I had something with a bit more firepower, though. Don't suppose you'd have a spare laser or an autopulser in that bag of yours?"

The cabbie glanced nervously up
at
the rearview mirror. Why? Why did these things have to happen to him? There he was, sitting at a light and minding his own business, anxious to get the cab back to the garage and go home for the night, have a few beers and go to bed, when this big red-haired guy walks right up to the cab and sticks some kind of weird looking cannon right through the driver's window. The cabbie glanced up into the rearview mirror when he heard the sound of the slide being racked. He saw the gun and the taxi swerved, almost hitting a bus.

"Never mind what's in my bag," Delaney said. "And you . . ." he glanced at the name on the hack license, ". . . Emilio, just keep your eyes on the road and everything will work out fine. Got it?"

"S-sure thing. mister! Anything you say!"

"Shut up and drive."

"Y-yes, sir!"

For this I left Miami, the cabbie thought. Drunks throwing up in the back seat, muggings, punks spraying graffiti on the inside of the cab, irate truckers smashing his windshield with tire irons because they thought he cut them off, and now gunmen hijacking him to the West Village. To hell with it, he thought, this was the last straw. If he managed to live through this night, he was quitting and going back to bussing dishes in Florida. New York was crazy!

Steiger stood in the hospital corridor with Forrester, surveying the damage.

It was extensive. The walls were pin holed by laser fire and scorched by plasma.

The ceiling was coming down in places, there were gaping holes in the floor and the hospital personnel were still removing bodies. But that wasn't what concerned them most. A cordon of armed men stood around an open briefcase lying on the floor, by the lift tubes. Inside it, assembled and glowing faintly, was an activated chronoplate.

"Did any of them get back through?" said Steiger.

“Yes, sir." said the corporal in charge of the men standing guard around the plate. "A bunch of them that got caught in a crossfire down here broke through and escaped through the field. I thought it best to secure the chronoplate and not disturb it, sir."

"Well done, Corporal." Steiger said. He crouched down over the plate.

"The screen's been damaged," he told Forrester. "On purpose, it looks like. Whoever assembled this was pretty clever. They rigged it so you couldn't read the transition coordinates off the screen and they modified the border circuits so the plate could be assembled inside the case, instead of taking it out like you're supposed to. Cute. That means there's no way we can find out where they came from. And it also means the temporal field has to be smaller than normal. But the question is, how much smaller?"

Forrester gave Steiger a sharp, look. "If you're thinking of going through there, Creed, you can forget about it," he said. "It's much too dangerous. It could be a trap. Besides, as you just pointed out, we don't even know if the altered field will be large enough to transport a full-grown man."

"Yeah, you're probably right," said Steiger. "It would be much too risky."

He straightened up, turned, then quickly snatched the corporal's autopulser rifle and, holding it close against his body, hopped into the open case.

"Steiger!"
Forrester shouted, but it was too late. The border circuits of the chronoplate flashed and Steiger was briefly bathed in the eerie, bright green glow before he disappeared from sight.

"A chronoplate?" said Andre, glancing down at the softly glowing border circuits assembled on the floor. She looked up at Drakov. "Don't tell me the Network couldn't spare you any warp discs, Nicky. I thought you were on such good terms with them."

Drakov gave her an acid look. "I detest that name," he said. "And if you are seeking to provoke me, Miss Cross, it won't work, no matter how irritating you become."

He jerked his head toward the desk and chairs on the far side of the room. Savino pushed her over to one of the chairs and roughly shoved her down into it. Drakov pulled back his sleeve and glanced at the warp disc on his wrist.

In relatively modern industrial time periods, it was simplest to disguise a warp disc as a pocket watch or a multifunction wrist chronograph, which it most resembled. More primitive time zones demanded that a warp disc be disguised as some piece of ornamental jewelry, such as a pendant or a bracelet, with its face and control studs concealed.

"It's almost time," said Drakov.

"We going somewhere?" Andre said.

"Eventually, Miss Cross, eventually. And for your information, you may be interested to know that I still have a plentiful supply of warp discs of various size classifications left over from that shipment I hijacked from Amalgamated Techtronics." He smiled at the expression on her face. "You thought you recovered most of them, didn't you? Shall we bet that according to the invoices you were given by the factory, most of the missing warp discs were accounted for?"

"How could you know that?"

"You would be surprised, Miss Cross, at how often there are so-called 'accidental overruns' on Temporal Army contracts. Very inconvenient for the management. It upsets the accountants no end and creates a problem of cost efficiency, especially since the Army will only pay for what it ordered and no more. Fortunately, there are 'independent contractors' who are quite willing to assist in liquidating accidental overruns."

Andre stared at him with astonishment. "Are you telling me they sell restricted ordnance under the table, on the black market?"

"Yes, rather amusing, isn't it? I discovered that quite by accident. Imagine, I went to all the trouble and risk of hijacking warp discs when all I had to do was buy them direct from the manufacturer." He chuckled and consulted his disc once again. "In any case, a chronoplate was precisely what I needed in this particular instance. I required a temporal transit field linked through two terminals, each of which would be destroyed as it fulfilled its function. And that sequence is due to be initiated any moment now . . ."

The border circuits of the chronoplate began to flicker brightly, then they flashed with an emerald glow and tiny soldiers wearing miniature floater paks started to materialize just above the border circuits. They rose up into the air, still within the transit field, and as more flying Lilliputians appeared below them, the ones rising up toward the ceiling peeled off and flew in a counterclockwise circle around the room. Drakov watched them, smiling to himself, then his smile abruptly faded as the last Lilliputian peeled off from the formation.

"What is it?" said Savino, seeing the expression on his face.

"Where are the rest of them?" said Drakov. "That's only a fraction of the number I sent through."

They waited, but no more Lilliputians came through. The ones already in the room continued to circle just beneath the ceiling, like bees buzzing around a hive.

"Maybe they didn't make it," said Savino. "We figured there'd be losses, didn't we?"

Drakov shook his head, frowning. "Yes, but not so many."

He licked his lips nervously and checked the time again.

"Come on, come on, where
is
it? That damn plate should have blown by now!"

He was watching the glowing border circuits, waiting for the glow to disappear, which would mean that the link on the other end had been broken by the chronoplate being destroyed. Andre couldn't take her eyes off the circling Lilliputians, flying round and round just beneath the ceiling like miniature airplanes in a holding pattern. Circling around the chronoplate, almost as if they were waiting for something.

"Damn
those little bastards!" Drakov shouted. He looked up at them with fury. "You were in full retreat! And you forgot to blow the terminal, you miserable, little . . ."

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a plasma pistol. He raised it, aiming at the chronoplate, and at the same instant, the border circuits flashed once more and Steiger came tumbling through, onto the floor.

"Creed! Look Out!"
Andre shouted. She came out of the chair and launched herself at Drakov in a running dive. Drakov fired.

The band had set up on the stage and the musicians were running through a final sound check with all the instruments and mikes. There was a massive wall of amplifiers stacked behind the band and everything was turned up full.

There was a bank of synthesizers, two electric guitars, an electric bass, a gargantuan clear plastic drum kit with two huge basses, rows of acoustic and electric tom-toms, cymbals and an array of gongs and bells, and the ensemble was rounded out by the lead singer, an androgynous young man with snow white hair down to his shoulders and a strut a 7th Avenue hooker would have envied.

He paraded back and forth across the small stage, prowling like a panther in a cage, shrieking into the mike with such abandon and such force that Lucas winced, wondering how he could possibly sing like that and not scream himself hoarse. The sheer volume of the band was deafening. With his roadielike appearance, no one bothered to approach him. And with the volume of the music, conversation would have been impossible.