ttention as they passed, quickly palming several tiny metal sniffers which they had been passing back and forth. On past a group of Crusaders, with red crosses on their chests, among whom was an obvious green recruit who, in his nervousness, had been swinging a short mace about. At the sight of the shuttle, the recruit snapped to attention and, without thinking, tried to toss off a sharp salute. Unfortunately, he had tried to salute with the hand that held the mace and the resulting “bong” as he coshed himself and fell to the floor with a clatter of metal brought about hysterical laughter from his companions.
The ground shuttle brought them to the gate of the departure grid, a large, permanently installed chronoplate that differed from the portable personal units in that it could transport whole platoons of soldiers at a time. The Barbary pirates standing by to clock out next hurriedly made way for them as they walked through the gate to report to the grid transport detail. The OC came to attention and saluted. Lucas returned his salute, then removed his armband with his rank insignia upon it, surmounted by the divisional pin, and handed it to the OC along with his silver dog tags. Andre did the same.
The Officer in Charge separated the dog tags, taking one each off the chains and then placing the single tags with the chains along with their armbands and insignia in separate plastic boxes. With a “By your leave, sir,” he then proceeded to search Lucas quickly and efficiently, as per regulations, to make certain that no unauthorized effects would be clocked out along with him, either intentionally or unintentionally. Another member of the detail observed the same procedure with Andre. The man who searched Andre came up with her credit disc, to her embarrassment. She had forgotten all about it.
“Sorry, sir,” she said to the sergeant. “I must have transferred it to my pocket without thinking when I changed.”
“Don’t worry about it, soldier. Happens all the time.” He placed the computer disc into the same plastic box containing her armband and dog tag.
The OC then took the two tags that he had separated from the neck chains, each containing their respective codes, and inserted them one at a time into a tiny slot in the grid control bank. He waited for a moment, watching the readout screen then nodded.
“Stand by, sir,” he said to Lucas.
A couple of seconds passed and the borders of the grid began to glow softly.
“Staged, “ said the OC. “Good luck, sir.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Lucas said. “All right, Andre let’s go.”
They walked forward into the field generated by the grid and disappeared from view.
Delaney stepped out of limbo and onto soft, damp grass. An old veteran of time travel, the chronoplates did not affect him as profoundly as they did most soldiers, who usually vomited upon arrival and suffered from temporary bouts of vertigo and myoclonus, as well as double vision and ataxia. He did, however, feel slightly disoriented and off balance. He staggered momentarily, taking several uncoordinated steps and swaying in a drunken fashion until he was able to shake off the effects and become orientated to his new surroundings
He saw that he was in a small clearing in a forest, more properly, a wood, since he knew that he was not far outside of Paris and he could see the road leading to the city through a clump of trees. The Pathfinders had cut it fairly close with the coordinates. Still, Finn had clocked in with much less room to spare before. One of the nightmares every soldier had from time to time involved a vision of clocking in at the same time and location at which another person or object occupied that space. The Pathfinders were usually extremely efficient at avoiding such occurrences, but there were still the inevitable accidents. The closest Finn had ever come to one was when he clocked into a forest clearing much like the one he now found himself in. The instant before he had materialized, a rabbit had run across the spot. As Finn clocked in, he had stepped forward and his foot had come down upon the running rabbit, crushing it. It gave off a pathetic squeal, a sound strikingly similar to a baby’s cry, and for a horrifying moment, Finn had thought it was an infant. It had been necessary for him to kill the poor animal to put it out of its misery and ever since, he had felt jumpy at the moment of materialization.
This time, however, it had gone well and as he looked around, he saw the Observer, disguised as a peasant, approaching him. There was nothing to distinguish the Observer from any other peasant of the time; but the fact that he had just seen a man materialize out of thin air and was approaching him purposefully, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, marked him for what he was. He was leading a chestnut mare on a rein as he approached.
“Major Fitzroy,” he said.
“Sergeant Delaney.”
The Observer nodded. “The coach is about two hundred yards down the road, off to the side,” he said. “You can’t miss it. It was stuck, but we’ve taken care of that. Now pay attention, this is where it stands. We’ve removed Corderro’s body. Lady Marguerite Blakeney is all right. The pistol ball grazed her skull, but it was only a scratch and we’ve patched her up. We applied some plastiskin to her forehead and she’ll never know that she was hit. There’s a hole in the inside of the coach where the ball went after passing through the window and skipping off her skull, so if she has any memory of being shot, show her where the ball went and tell her that she must have fainted and struck her head. That will account for any pain that she might feel later when the dope wears off. The coach horses must have bolted when the shot went off, so it’s highly unlikely that she saw what happened to Blakeney, even if she was still conscious at the time. Your story is that you were knocked down by the horse, but only winded. You took the captain’s horse and chased after the coach as soon as you got your breath back.”
“What about Corderro?” said Delaney. “What do I tell her if she asks about him?”
“Chances are she won’t,” said Fitzroy. “She was probably already unconscious when he jumped onto the coach. If she does remember anything about that, you saw him leap from the coach and take off running into the woods as you were riding up. That same story will serve you if there’s any pursuit from the city that catches up with you. If that happens, they won’t have any reason to detain you, but you might advance the theory that Corderro was a disguised aristocrat. That should spur them on to look for him and let you continue on your way.”
“Got it,” said Finn. “We’re heading for Calais?”
“Right. Blakeney’s yacht will be there to take you across to Dover. You’ll be picking up your support team at an inn called The Fisherman’s Rest in Kent. Let’s just make sure you’ve got their cover straight.”
“They’re family servants who were looking after my property in Rouen and they’ve been sent ahead to England to make things ready for us at the estate now that my land in France is forfeit to the government.”
“Good. You’ll want to be very circumspect with Lady Blakeney,” said Fitzroy. “Several months ago, she denounced the Marquis de St. Cyr for seeking support from Austria to put down the Revolution. He was arrested, tried, and guillotined along with his entire family.”
“Nice lady,” said Finn.
“Blakeney seems to have shared your sentiments,” Fitzroy said. “He only recently found out about it and when he did he turned off to her completely. Their relationship has been a little strained since then, to say the least. Blakeney’s been attentive and polite to her, but evidently that’s about as far as it went. She’s taken to sniping at him in public lately.”
“So much for Lady Blakeney not being hard to take,” said Finn.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, really. Just thinking about something my CO said.”
“Just be very careful around her,” said Fitzroy. “Remember that she’s a Republican and not to be trusted. If she finds out you’re smuggling aristocrats out of France, there’s no telling what she might do.”
“Terrific,” said Finn. “Got any more good news for me?”