“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 pinholed 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 co-ordinates 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.