Time Salvager (19 page)
After he had cleaned out the armory, he checked each of the five bodies on the ground. Smitt and one of the monitors were still unconscious, two were dead, and the last one was coming to. James slammed his head to the ground once more for good measure. He briefly considered using the paint band on one of the monitors to sneak out of Central but decided against it. It would take a paint band too long to accurately scan and duplicate a person’s face, and time was of the essence right now.
James took off from the armory at a brisk walk. Any faster would attract undue attention. Luckily, the melee in the armory had occurred so fast that none of the monitors had a chance to sound a general alarm. Monitors weren’t issued comm or AI bands, for the same reason they weren’t given exo bands. These were high-tech bands that were too resource-prohibitive to allocate to common soldiers. Right now, this worked to James’s advantage and bought him precious minutes. However, an operations handler would probably expect the team to check in shortly.
The first thing he had to figure out was a place to lie low. Chicago and any of the large cities would be dangerous to hide in; ChronoCom had too much influence over the more civilized settlements, which wouldn’t hesitate to hand the fugitives over. That left the wildland settlements or possibly the wastelands.
James headed off toward the hangar. As usual, Earth Central was lively even late into the evening. Planetary salvages occurred at all times, and the exporting of the recovered materials continued around the clock. This made the hangar the busiest place in the entire base. He kept his face neutral and his gait steady as he made his way down the crowded hallways. Most of the personnel steered around him as he walked, paying him no more attention than usual.
He estimated he might have ten minutes before someone sounded the alarm and all of Central went on lockdown. James was sure the hangar was already being watched, but he had to take the chance. If it was unguarded or lightly guarded, he could quickly overpower the monitors and escape in the collie. If not, well, there was always Plan B. James reminded himself to think of a Plan B.
He would also want to rethink what was considered lightly guarded. With an exo, James was confident he could take on ten monitors dug into defensive positions. Maybe even fifteen, though he wouldn’t expect to come out of that unscathed. If there were other chronmen around, his odds decreased dramatically. James was good at what he did, and maybe he could take on a chronman with a team of monitors, possibly even two. Any more was a guaranteed loss. If there was an auditor there, all bets were off.
He reached the south wing hallway leading to the hangar. The traffic was thick as a constant stream of personnel and shipments passed in both directions. It allowed him to blend in with the crowd, but slowed his progress to a crawl. This delay was unusual and seemed like a suspicious coincidence. James didn’t believe in coincidences.
He left the slow-moving line and looked over the crowd still working its way into the hangar. Two monitors manned the doorway, waving people through. On the surface, everything seemed normal. Maybe the alarm hasn’t been raised yet. Maybe James could get past the checkpoint and out on the collie before anyone was the wiser. There was only one way to find out.
Not believing his good luck for a second, he pushed his way to the front of the line, preferring speed over subtlety. No one was going to argue with a chronman about cutting. He was now less than fifty meters from his escape. He could be out of here with no one the wiser. And just when he was starting to believe his good fortune, Central decided to burst his bubble.
His face popped up through the emergency channel of his AI band, and he saw several more images of himself appear across several of the security monitors. At first, he didn’t recognize the man on the screen; it had been a while since he had looked in a mirror. He didn’t look well.
James considered retreating back into the hallway, but he was already halfway to the hangar entrance and had brought too much attention to himself, pushing his way to the front. It would seem conspicuous if he backed out now. Besides, there was nothing behind him except more monitors and auditors. This was his best chance.
James lowered his head and continued walking. The two monitors up ahead wouldn’t pose much of a threat if they tried to stop him, but he’d rather not kill them if he could help it. The rest of the personnel in the hangar shouldn’t be too worrisome. The hangar chief didn’t tolerate monitors and auditors lounging in his domain.
The amount of traffic flowing into the hangar didn’t waver with this new security warning. Most people just glanced at it and continued on their business. The two monitors manning the door hardly seemed to notice either. Maybe he could just keep his head low and sneak through. It was his best shot.
James glanced at the monitor on the right side of the doorway and cursed. It was Beaulieu, whom he had run jobs with in the past when he had needed backup. James didn’t consider him a friend; he didn’t have any friends other than Smitt. Well, Smitt was no longer a friend either, but Beaulieu was one of the few monitors in ChronoCom whom James would greet if he passed him.
He shifted to his left and picked up his pace. Ten meters now. James powered on his exo to a low level, but kept his hands to his sides. He looked through the opening and saw his collie parked on one of the left landings, elevated third row up from the ground level. He quickly formulated a plan. Just as he passed the two monitors and dared to hope he had avoided detection, Beaulieu ruined everything.
“Chronman?” he said uncertainly.
James turned to face him, hoping desperately that the guy just wanted to say hello. “Monitor,” he nodded. “What can I do for you?”
Beaulieu frowned. “I’m sorry, Chronman, but there’s been an alert for you. Please come with—”
Before Beaulieu could finish his sentence, James lashed out with his exo and struck him across the side of his face. Beaulieu flew into the crowd and barreled several of them to the ground. James spun to his left and speared the other monitor with an exo-powered punch, striking him in the chest and most likely breaking several ribs.
The people around him screamed and scattered, making it easier for him to take off. Most of them were support personnel. They were all innocent; he should do his best to avoid hurting them. But then, Beaulieu and the other monitor were innocent as well. He pushed those thoughts out of his mind. He had to get to Elise. That was the only thing that mattered.
A second later, an alarm blared across the entire base, its scream echoing in the massive hangar. James noticed another monitor rushing toward him from the right, and a chronman flying in from the far side of the hangar. The two would have to be taken care of before he could escape with this collie. A chronman could easily disable a collie.
The foolish monitor got to him first, and was dispatched with ease as James cut him across the ankles with a kinetic coil. He picked the monitor’s body up and threw him at the approaching chronman. The chronman made a wide gesture with his hands and deflected the poor monitor’s body to the side.
James recognized Tassin, a Tier-4 two years out of the Academy. He was a bit of a hothead and still green, which was clear from his penchant for hand gestures to direct his movements.
“Stand down, Tassin,” he said when the younger chronman got within earshot. “This won’t end well for you.”
Tassin looked eager to engage him. “It was only a matter of time before you cracked, James. Everyone knows that. Guess it’s just my luck to be the one to put you down. It’ll earn me another tier for sure.”
Tassin launched himself into the air and dove downward at him. James adjusted his exo field to allow him to see the chronman’s coils, three writhing lines growing out of Tassin’s body. He waited as one of the coils swung downward at him. James juked to his left at the last moment as the coil slammed on the hangar floor hard enough to crack the cement.
James knew right away Tassin was inexperienced with exo-against-exo combat. Fighting between exo-powered combatants was not sanctioned by the Academy during training. The last thing ChronoCom wanted was their precious salvagers to injure each other. Only auditors were given military-level exo-combat training. However, during their years at the Academy, most initiates engaged in friendly matches to hone their skills. Trainers at the Academy recognized its learning benefits and tended to turn a blind eye to these underground events. Still, those Academy exo melees were a pale comparison to the real thing.
The only other way a chronman learned how to fight another with an exo was through actual combat. Over the years, James had had plenty of opportunity fighting exo-powered pirates in the Ship Graveyard while Tassin had practically none, though that didn’t stop the younger, overconfident man from charging in.
James countered the attack, latching his own coil to Tassin’s and snaking it up toward its source. Tassin tried to dissolve that coil but James had locked it in place. It became a match of wills and mental coordination as a dozen kinetic coils grew out of both James and Tassin, each pushing, chopping, and squirming, constantly trying to reach the opposing chronman.
Tassin was quick with his coil creations and his precision was commendable. James had to duck out of the way a few times before he could neutralize Tassin’s coils with his own. Still, Tassin’s control was raw. All of his coils tended to move in unison, and seemed to waver and lose purpose when he actively controlled only one. None of the kinetic coils seemed truly autonomous.
Not like James’s coils.
James created nine coils simultaneously and shot them toward Tassin from every conceivable angle, all seemingly random. Tassin was only able to control five at a time and to direct four of them to block James’s attack. He leaped backward to open up space, but then James had superior range control as well. As Tassin tried to slip out of reach, two of James’s coils wrapped themselves around his ankle and knee, and slammed him to the floor.
Tassin’s shield blistered yellow, protecting him from the brunt of the damage, but the rest of James’s coils joined in, slithering around Tassin’s body, squeezing until the yellow barrier protecting him cracked and began to break down. James gritted his teeth, pulling the coils tighter, slowly crushing the shield. Once it fell, the soft flesh it was protecting would explode from the pressure.
What’s another death?
the Nazi soldier’s voice echoed.
After all, he’s just another poor victim already gone.
There was a pause.
Oh wait, he’s not.
The Nazi soldier was right. Tassin wasn’t a ghost. This actually was murder. James stared at the young chronman’s terrified face. He couldn’t be any older than twenty-three. He probably still believed in ChronoCom’s cause, that he was saving humanity one jump at a time. The young fool probably thought he was just doing his duty. He was an innocent.
With a guttural growl, James released his grip on Tassin, wrapped a small coil around his bands, and tore them apart. Tassin collapsed onto the ground, chest heaving as he struggled for air.
It was too bad James couldn’t procure Tassin’s bands for himself. All bands were designed to link to their user once worn unless actively released. If the user died, the bands were worthless. This safety precaution was initially designed for when chronmen died on jobs. If their futurist technology fell away during a salvage and someone from the past was able to use the bands, it would be disastrous.
James grabbed the young man by the collar and pulled him up. “You’re out of your league. I let you live, boy. Remember this.” Then James leaped up to where his collie was parked and pulled out just in time for Levin and a platoon of monitors see it jet out of the hangar.
Elise waited for Salman or James or whatever his real name was—time-traveling liar—to leave the room before she let herself succumb to the grief that had been welling up in her since she first came to this horrific future. For some reason, she wasn’t sure why, she didn’t want to cry in front of him. It was all she could do to hold it together until he was gone, and then once she was sure she was alone, she allowed herself to break and grieve properly.
For a while, she stayed huddled in a fetal position on the bed, sobbing, her tears streaming freely down her face. The pent-up horror at what she’d seen in the past day—from the awful last morning on the Nutris Platform to the horrific future in which she was now trapped—were too much for her soul to bear. She wept for the people who had died horribly on the platform. She cried for her parents and the family she would never see again, people she loved that were now hundreds of years dead. She grieved for the Earth and the scarring of this once beautiful planet.
In its place was this worst of nightmares, a poisoned, ugly future that seemed twisted and dark. The beautiful ocean in which she had spent hundreds of hours was now a tainted pool of sickness. Even the sky seemed wrong, at least to her twenty-first-century memory. Something was very sickly about the clouds and the sun. It was all a giant bad dream, one from which she couldn’t awake.
And Elise wept for herself, for all that she had lost in an instant. Yesterday, she had friends and family and a life. Today, it was all gone, and she would have to start over. Oh hell, who was she kidding? There was no way she was going to survive this apocalypse. She might as well have died on Nutris. Except she didn’t, and now survivor’s guilt overwhelmed her.
She cried until her body couldn’t squeeze any more tears out, until she was too exhausted to cry anymore, but her mind was too terrified to sleep. Finally, after an hour, Elise decided that she had had enough of her own stupid little pity party. She sat up on the bed, wiped her face, and took several deep breaths. “Get it together, Elise. You had your cry, now woman up. Crying isn’t going to make anything better. You’ve been in worse spots before.”
