“What difference does it make?” asked Andre, impatiently.
“I think it makes a great deal of difference.” said Forrester. “Neilson is the perfect man for this assignment He’s got all the right qualifications. He’s well versed in the history of the period and he’s an expert with the weapons of the period, as well. His cover as a gunfighter couldn’t be more perfect. He’s tailor-made for the role I’m against pulling him out. I’m with Finn and Lucas on this one. Andre There’s a risk, but I think it’s justified. I’m leaving Neilson in.”
“Thank you. sir.” said Scott.
“You sure you’re up to this, son?” asked Forrester. “You look a bit worn out.”
“I, uh, didn’t get much sleep, sir. I’ll be fine. I can handle. it.”
Forrester nodded, “All right. What about this situation with you and Wyatt Earp? Is that going to be a problem?”
“I hope not, sir I think he’s just concerned about keeping order in town and I look like a disruptive influence to him. But Doc Holliday said he’d try to intercede for me and the two of them are very close. Bat Masterson also seems to like me. Of course, he won’t be in Tombstone much longer after I get back. He’ll be called back to Dodge City to help out his brother. And the Earps are going to have their hands full with other problems before long. I don’t think they’ll have a lot of time to worry about me. Especially if I keep my nose clean.”
“That’s just the question.” Andre said. “Keeping out of trouble might be hard to do with the rustlers out gunning for you
“Maybe,” Neilson said. “But I’ll do what I can to stay out of their way. And I’ll try to ingratiate myself with the Earps in any way I can. The way things are developing in Tombstone back in that scenario, they’re going to need all the help they can get.”
“The only trouble is you may wind up giving them more help than they’re supposed to get.” said Andre. “And you’re also faster with a gun and a much better shot than just about anyone who lived back then. How do we keep you from becoming famous as the Montana Kid, fastest gun in the West?”
“That’s the very least of our problems,” Forrester said, before Neilson could reply. “It’s nothing Archives Section couldn’t handle. It would be time consuming, but we could easily assign a team to make sure that the Montana Kid remains unknown to history. Our first priority is to determine the nature of what’s happening back there. Is it the Network, engaged in one of their clandestine operations, or is it an infiltration through an undiscovered confluence point by agents of the S.O.G.? If that’s the case, we could be faced with a situation similar to what happened in the Khyber Pass in 1897. It could be a prelude to a full-scale invasion from the parallel timeline. Compared to that, any minor disruption Neilson’s presence could bring about would be insignificant. “
“Let’s not forget Drakov.” Lucas said, softly, feeling that he had to bring that up, but hating to. Forrester was plagued with guilt and self-recrimination over what his son had become. “He’s always the Wild card. And we still haven’t tracked down all his clones, or the genetically engineered hominoids he’s scattered throughout history.”
Forrester nodded, grimly. “Yes, we can’t afford to overlook him, either.” He took a deep breath and let it out in a heavy sigh. “The trouble is, we need to capture him alive, so we can track down all his clon
es. That won’t be easy, but it’s the only way we can be certain that we’ve got the original Nikolai Drakov. Only the original would know where all the copies are.”
Forrester never referred to Drakov as his son. Privately, it had to be an agony for him. Years ago, when Forrester had been a rookie serving his first hitch in Minus Time, he’d been injured and separated from his unit. Unable to clock back, he had believed that he was trapped forever in the past. He had been found and nursed back to health by a Russian gypsy girl with whom he fell in love. He was later found and rescued, but by that time. Vanna Drakova was already pregnant with their child.
Forester had broken all the rules and he had made the situation worse by keeping Vanna’s pregnancy a secret, he knew if he reported it, it would have been necessary for the child to be aborted and he had not been able to bring himself to do that to the girl he loved. Or to the child. The result was that he went back to the future, after trying to explain to Vanna as best he could exactly who and what he was and why he had to leave her, and the necessity for her never to reveal that knowledge to anybody else.
But the simple gypsy girl had not been able to grasp the meaning of everything he told her. The concept of temporal physics was beyond her and when young Nikolai became curious about who his father was, the story she had told him was a bizarre mixture of truth and fantasy, richly embroidered with her colorful imagination. The poor boy hadn’t understood and was left believing that he was the result of a supernatural union between his mother and some kind of demon. Unknowingly, his mother had traumatized him deeply and the harsh lives that they led as Nikolai grew up had only served to make things worse.
They were taken in by a young Russian officer and they had lived through Napoleon’s invasion and his disastrous retreat. Then Nikolai’s adoptive father had been arrested as a Decembrist and exiled to Siberia. They had followed him there and it was in that harsh, forbidding country that Vanna met her death at the hands of a savage rapist, who had given young Nikolai the knife scar on his face when he tried to go to her defense. With her death, Nikolai Drakov had been left all alone in the world, frightened and tormented by the question of his own existence.
He never became sick. He didn’t seem to age. He did age, of course, but at a rate that was far slower than normal. He had inherited a strong constitution, with an immunity to all known diseases and a lifespan that was far greater than normal for people in his time. And he did not know why or how. It had unhinged him. Then, when he encountered the notorious Sophia Falco, alias The Falcon, one of the leaders of the crosstime terrorists known as the Timekeepers. she had recognized him for what he was, seduced him and recruited him into the organization. She took him to the future with her, where she had further poisoned his mind against his father and obtained a biochip for him. Drakov was then given the benefits of an implant education through computer downloads directly to his brain. Already born with an amazing intellectual capacity, the implant programming had turned him into a genius. An insane genius. And when he found out the true story of who his father was and how he came to be, the hate he felt for Moses Forester completely overwhelmed him. He embarked upon a course that not even the Timekeepers would have dared to contemplate.
What Drakov sought was nothing less than the complete destruction of the future, a savage revenge against his father and the world and time he came from. His goal was to bring about a massive temporal disruption that would result in a timestream split, the ultimate temporal disaster.
He had at first allied himself with the Timekeepers and eventually became one of their leaders, but after the Timekeepers were defeated. Drakov managed to escape into the past and continue with his mad plan of revenge. With his own expertise and the assistance of the infamous Dr. Moreau, Drakov had created the hominoids, genetically engineered and biologically modified humans, some appearing normal in every respect, others mutated into frightful creatures, all with an unswerving loyalty toward him, obedient to his every command. His crowning touch had been to replicate himself, to create a series of clones that he had planted throughout time, in the care of devoted hominoid parents, children that at a certain stage of their development would be programmed with his own mental engrams, so that they would all be the same in every last respect. They would all share his memories and his feelings. his experiences and his warped personality. They were surrogates of himself that he could send out against his father’s agents.
“Priest is right.” said Forrester. “We can’t overlook the possibility that Drakov might have been responsible for those Observers deaths. In which case, your covers will be blown the moment you arrive, because he knows you.”
“I can anticipate you. sir.” said Lucas. “I’d be against our going in for any cosmetic surgery on this mission. Either way, if it’s Drakov or the Network, our being recognized would help draw them into the open. And Scott shouldn’t be the only one to bear the risk.”
“All right.” said Forrester. “It’s your call. I want the three of you to report for mission programming immediately. And then take the rest of tonight to come up with a mission plan. I want you to present it to me by 0900 tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll have Operations select a backup team and I’ll alert Colonel Cooper to stand by with a Ranger strike team, just in case you encounter the S.O.G. in force.”
“He turned to Neilson.” And you get a good night’s sleep,” he said, “then clock back to Tombstone first thing in the morning. Make sure you arrive soon enough after your departure so that you won’t arouse any suspicion.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That will be all, people. Dismissed.”
As Neilson checked into some transient quarters to wash up and get some rest, the others proceeded down to Archives Section and the Mission Programming labs, where they reclined on contoured couches while the technicians pulled the necessary data files, accessed their cerebral implants and programmed them with all the information they would require on their mission, everything that was known about the time sector they would be departing to, as well as the pivotal events and characters in the scenario. They then repaired to the First Division Lounge to discuss their strategy and come up with a mission plan.
It was late, but the First Division Lounge was one place that never closed. It was about the size of a briefing room, with a long bar and round tables with comfortable chairs placed around the room. The entire far wall was one huge floor to ceiling window, looking out over the base from sixty stories up. The lounge did not have the ambience of a bar. There were no hanging ferns or potted plants, no pretentious decor, little in the way of decor at all, in fact. One wall was hung with a large plaque of the division insignia, a number one bisected by the symbol for infinity, which resembled a slightly stretched out, horizontal figure eight. Next to it was another large plaque, solid gold mounted on mahogany, a small replica of the Wall of honor downstairs in the lobby of the building. It listed the names of all those members of the First Division who had died in action. Another plaque had recently been added. It was the insignia of the Temporal Intelligence Agency, the symbol on it represented an infinitely repeating number and, as such, it had been an appropriate selection.
The resources of the T.I.A. indeed seemed infinite, as did the number of its personnel. Its budget had been staggering from the days of its inception and the highly classified nature of the work the agency performed was such that section chiefs had never needed to justify their budgetary requisitions or fully document their subsidiary personnel. Section chiefs often recruited from among the locals in their time sectors, none of whom, of course, knew whom they really worked for. And just as journalists zealously protected their sources and police officers carefully guarded their informers, so did the section chiefs of Temporal Intelligence protect their field agents and collaborators.