"Remember that emergency we were saving the warp discs for?" said Andre. "I think this is it, guys."
"I think you're right," said Finn. "Creed?"
"I'm not about to be cut up by a remote controlled cadaver," Steiger said.
He glanced over his shoulder as the main body of the Argonauts came leaping over the side of the ship to join the battle while a few remained behind with Argus to push the ship off from the shore and hoist the sail. He looked back toward the crest, where Kovalos stood watching with his soldiers.
"We'd better do something about that group up there or no one's getting out of here," he said.
"Fugue sequence?" said Delaney.
"You know any other way three can take on about fifty?" Steiger said.
"All three of us fugue clocking at once?" said Andre. "The three of us could wind up being one of us if we accidentally synchronize our fugue patterns. That could get real messy."
"Don't take this personally," said Steiger, "but I have no intention of sharing my space with you. We'll use a three/six staggered fugue sequence, zero-three-six initiation with me first, you second and Finn third. Estimate your best coordinates for about fifteen to twenty yards behind our friends up there on the crest and make every arrow count. Got it? Now stage, and fast!"
As the corpses tottered toward them, swords raised, Theseus gave out a yell and charged them. Hercules picked up the golden fleece with one arm and hoisted the hysterical Medea with the other and started sprinting toward the ship as the other Argonauts joined -Theseus and Jason in their charge.
"Staged!" shouted Delaney, left wrist cocked in front of him, right hand on the control studs.
"Staged!" shouted Andre, in a similar position.
Several of the corpse soldiers were getting dangerously close.
"Staged!" shouted Steiger.
One of the corpses was less than three feet from Delaney, but he could spare no time to deal with it. It swung its sword down in a swift arc toward his head.
"TIME! "yelled Steiger.
The sword came down, but it slashed through empty space. All three of them had disappeared.
Meleager ran a corpse through with his sword. It didn't even slow it down. It slashed at him as he pulled his sword free of the soggy flesh and only by falling quickly and rolling aside could he avoid the killing stroke. Jason parried a sword thrust, then quickly brought his blade up and around and severed a rotting arm from its shoulder. The arm, hand still holding the sword, fell to the ground, but the corpse kept coming at him. Jason ran it through. It lurched forward, impaling itself even further on the blade as its one remaining hand, fingers like talons, reached for Jason's throat. He batted the hand away and struck at the corpse's face with all his might. The head flew off and landed in the sand several feet away. As the body collapsed to the ground, the head continued to twitch slowly from side to side, moving with the spastic motion of a windup toy.
Theseus wasted no time in engaging any one of the corpses in single combat. He moved like a whirling dervish, slashing quickly at one and immediately twisting away and slashing at another. Holding his sword with both hands as if it were an axe, he spun through the grisly army like a buzz saw, taking advantage of their slow "reactions" to inflict as much damage as he could to as many of them as he could, aiming always for the extremities and putting all his power behind every stroke, accompanying each one with a grunt of effort, like a butcher laying about him with a maul.
Up on the crest, Kovalos watched the combat, his soldiers staring with horrified fascination at the army of the living dead their captain had raised. They had both feared and respected him before, but they had never dreamed he was a sorcerer and now they regarded their commander with a terrified awe. When the corpses had first started to claw their way free of the earth, not a few of them almost ran in abject panic from the sight, but they were rooted in their place both by the hypnotic aspect of the spectacle and their terror of what their commander might do to them if they showed fear. What chance would there be to flee from a man who could raise the dead?
Kovalos stood before them, watching as the corpses closed with the Argonauts, but when he spotted Hercules sprinting back toward the ship with Medea and the golden fleece, he pointed and shouted to his archers, "There! That one, Hercules! Shoot him down! He must not reach the ship!"
As one of the archers shifted his aim to the massive, running figure, an arrow came whistling between the ranks of cavalry behind him and thudded home into the base of his skull. He toppled forward and fell onto the rocks below. Several of the archers had time to loose their arrows, but they had failed to properly estimate the speed with which Hercules ran, not thinking that a man so large could move so quickly, so they did not lead him well when they had aimed. When their fellow archer fell over the edge, they hesitated and in that time two more arrows passing between the horses behind them claimed two more of their number.
The cavalry soldiers wheeled their horses as soon as they realized there was an enemy behind them, but instead of a force of opposing archers, they were confronted with a sight that baffled them completely. Seve
ral of the horsemen near the center of the formation caught what they thought was a glimpse of a bowman, but in the next instant, he was no longer there. Several others on the right flank caught sight of a woman archer pulling back her bow, but just as they were about to charge her, she seemed to vanish. There was a shout from the left flank of the cavalry as someone spotted yet another archer shooting at them, then confusion when the man who saw him found himself pointing to a spot where no one stood.
The mercenaries of Kovalos found themselves confronted with a phenomenon beyond any understanding. It was the most dangerous maneuver in temporal warfare, dangerous to both the attacked and the attackers-fugue clocking. With the proper skill and a great deal of luck, one man using a fugue clocking sequence could become an army. Yet one mistake could result in utter disaster, trapping the temporal soldier in limbo forever in the dead zone of non-specific time or causing him to clock in at the exact time-space coordinates as those occupied by another mass, either living or inanimate. Several temporal soldiers fugue clocking at the same time, using a hastily programmed fugue sequence, could conceivably materialize in the same place at the same time, resulting in an instant and agonizing death. For temporal soldiers, the options regarding fugue clocking were clearly and rigidly defined. It was a worst case scenario option, a tactic of last resort.
The three/six staggered sequence program with a zero-three-six initiation Steiger had called for was one of the standard drills among temporal adjustment teams. They were frightening, but necessary drills, necessary because in a situation that called for such a desperate maneuver, there could be no time for thought. The programming had to be accomplished quickly, almost by instinct, and whoever called the sequence was immediately and automatically in charge, not to be questioned under any circumstances. Later, if the team concerned survived and the tactic was found to be unnecessary, they could exercise the option of beating him to death.
Three/six: Three seconds in, six seconds out. Three seconds during which to act in real time, six seconds spent in temporal limbo. Zero-three-six initiation: the moment all three team members were "staged," fugue sequence programming locked in, zero-three-six designated the initiation of the sequence for all three of them. On the command, "Time," the zero-designated team member would start the sequence with three seconds in real time, zero initiation gap. The three-designated team member would start the sequence with three seconds in temporal limbo, clocking in to real time the second after the zero-designated team member clocked out of real time for six seconds in limbo. The six-designated team member would begin the fugue with six seconds spent in temporal limbo, clocking in to real time the second after the three-designated team member clocked out, three seconds after the zero-designated team member had clocked out with three seconds left to spend in limbo.
The staggered fugue sequence was designed to eliminate the possibility of any two of them materializing simultaneously in the same location and once it was locked in for a set time corresponding to a given sequence order, it was irreversible for that length of time, completely automatic. It left each team member with three seconds in real time during which to fight, but those three seconds were a slim margin in real time combat situations, where remaining in the same place could easily prove fatal. Constant movement in real time was essential.
As Steiger began the sequence by clocking in approximately sixteen yards behind the soldiers, he aimed his bow quickly and fired, drawing another arrow and nocking it as he ran quickly to his right. He vanished into temporal limbo before taking two steps and Andre clocked in, shot her arrow, drew and nocked while moving and likewise disappeared. Delaney clocked in and followed the same procedure, clocking out as Steiger materialized already running. A quick halt, an arrow flight and the procedure was repeated.
It was an exhausting, taxing strategy, leaving no room for error and almost no time in which to aim, but the result was that the soldiers of Kovalos were confronted with three archers who appeared in lightning sequence out of thin air, shot, killed, and disappeared, only to reappear elsewhere and shoot again. Their first response was one of confusion, then came disbelief, then the realization that they were under attack by what seemed to be a phantom army of bowmen, which led quickly to blind panic. Every three seconds, a soldier fell dead, killed by what seemed to be ghosts shooting very real arrows. After what they had already witnessed on the beach below them, this was too much for the soldiers. They broke and ran, screaming with terror, posing an immediate danger for the three temporal agents.