TW12 The Six-Gun Solution NEW (9 page)

"Very cute," said Lucas. “All right, really, let's get serious here."

"What makes you think I'm not serious?"

"Come on, Andre, that's enough. We've got work to do."

"Hey, you proposed. Finn heard you. He's a witness."

"Okay, you guys have had your joke. . ."

"I wasn't joking," Andre said, with a look of wide-eyed innocence. "Were you joking, Finn?"

Delaney shook his head. "Not me. Hell. I even offered to flip him for it, but he sat right there and asked you to marry him. I heard it."

Lucas rolled his eyes. "I meant only for the mission. Come on. guys. . ."

"Did you hear him say anything about it being only for the mission?" Andre asked Delaney.

"Nope. He said, and I quote. ’Lt. Cross, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?' Granted, he didn't go down on one knee, but I don't think that's required. Not very romantic of you, Lucas. And you didn't even give her an engagement ring. Jesus, how cheap can you get?"

"Are you through?" asked Lucas, with exasperation.

"Now if he doesn't go through with it, I've got grounds for a breach of promise suit, isn't that right?" asked Andre.

Delaney nodded. "I'd say so. I'm a witness. And if I'm called to testify, I'll be under oath to tell the truth. I'm sorry, Lucas, but as an officer and a gentleman, what else can I do?"

“As an officer, you leave rather a great deal to be desired," said a deep, Continental-sounding voice behind them, "and if you're a gentleman, then I'm Queen of the bloody May."

They turned around to see what appeared to be a ghost sitting at the table just behind them. The speaker was a tall, slim man with gaunt, aquiline features; dark, wavy hair; brown eyes and a neatly trimmed moustache. He was dressed in brown wool flannel slacks and custom-made, conservative tan shoes with toe caps, a white button-down Oxford shirt that was open at the neck to display a brown and gold paisley silk ascot, and a brown tweed Norfolk jacket. He wore a brown felt fedora tilted at a rakish angle and carried a blackthorn walking stick with a sharp brass tip. He was sitting in the chair, sideways to the table, turned toward them, with his legs casually crossed and his walking stick held across his lap.

They could see right through him. His form seemed to flicker, appearing almost completely solid one instant, then transparent and insubstantial the next.

It was an effect of the process that had permanently tachyonized his body, rendering him trapped forever by the immutable laws of physics which he had sought to tamper with. His name was Dr. Robert Darkness. He was, in every respect, as flamboyant and eccentric as his name. Little was known about him. For years, he had been a mystery man, first coming to prominence as a research scientist who had stumbled upon the principles that led to the invention of the warp disc and the most devastating weapon ever known to man—the warp grenade.

It was the latter that had led to the current crisis. A portable nuclear device and time machine, the warp grenade was so named because of its resemblance to old 20th-century hand grenades, about the same size and shape as a large egg, easily capable of being held in one hand. Its built-in chronocircuitry enabled pinpoint adjustment of its nuclear explosion. It could be set to destroy an entire city, or just a block within that city, or a building on that block, or a room within that building, or even a small area within that room. It could be adjusted so that whatever surplus energy released by the explosion was not required for the task would be clocked through time and space, to explode harmlessly in the far reaches of the cosmos. At least, the ordnance experts who had constructed it, based on the work that Darkness did, had believed that it would work that way.

In practice, such massive amounts of energy clocked through Einstein-Rosen Bridges, "wormholes" in space and time, had brought about a shift in the chronophysical balance of the universe. At least, that was the theory. It was also possible that the actions of the Time Wars had brought about increased instability in the timestream and contributed to the imbalance. Whatever the cause, a parallel timeline, an alternate universe, had been brought into congruency with our own and the proximity of the two timelines had brought about the Confluence Phenomenon, wherein the timestreams rippled and, at various points in space and time, intersected. At those confluence points, it was possible to cross over from one universe into the other.

For the people in the parallel timeline, the disaster had been magnified because each time a warp grenade had been exploded in our universe; its surplus energy had been clocked into theirs. Most of those explosions had occurred in outer space, yet some of them had caused untold destruction. Several space colonies in the parallel universe had been utterly destroyed, with cataclysmic loss of life. It had brought about a war.

The war was, of necessity, a limited one. Strategic weapons were not used, because the moment the Confluence Phenomenon had been discovered, it quickly became apparent to the people in both timelines that attempts to clock strategic weapons into the other universe could backfire. With the instability in both timelines, there was no telling exactly where or when a detonation could occur. As a result, the conflict had become the ultimate Time War, one timeline against the other, with each seeking to cause temporal disruptions in the opposing timestream.

In the parallel universe, commandos and agents of the strike force known as the Special Operations Group were dispatched through confluence points with missions to interfere with history. Their scientists believed a timestream split would serve to overcome the Confluence Phenomenon and separate the two timelines once and for all. The scientists of the Temporal Corps believed the opposite. They were convinced that a timestream split in either universe could set off a temporal chain reaction that would have disastrous consequences. It could bring about ultimate entropy, an end to all of time. It was therefore necessary to locate as many confluence points as possible and to patrol them for their duration. At the same time, it was imperative to preserve temporal continuity and prevent disruptions caused by infiltrations of the S.O.G. while attempting to bring about minor disruptions in their timeline, thereby tying up their manpower and their resources while they attempted to adjust them.

It was a situation with unlimited potential for disaster, with a Sword of Damocles hanging over everyone. What Dr. Darkness thought of all this had not been known. Shortly after the warp grenade had been developed, he had disappeared. He had gone off planet, to some secret research base he had established somewhere in the far reaches of the galaxy. It was there that he began his experiments with tachyon translocation, temporarily converting the human body into tachyons in order to achieve the ultimate in transportation. Only, in his calculations, he had overlooked a little known principle of physics known as the Law of Baryon conservation, by which his tachyon translocation process was ultimately restrained.

The result was a permanent alteration in his subatomic structure, rendering it unstable. He became the man who was faster than light. He could move through time and space in less time than it took to blink. Yet, upon arrival at his destination, he could not walk so much as one step. The only way he could achieve anything resembling normal mobility was to “tach," to translocate from one spot to another. It could be highly disconcerting. What was even more disconcerting was what Moses Forrester, Lucas Priest. Finn Delaney and Andre Cross had recently learned about him. And they were the only ones who had that knowledge.

Dr. Darkness was from the future. A future in which, it seemed, some cataclysmic temporal disaster had occurred. He would not reveal what it was, nor would he reveal if he'd been sent out on a mission by people from the future or was simply working on his own. He revealed very little, but it was obvious that he was trying to effect a complex temporal adjustment in an effort to avert whatever disaster had occurred in the time from which he came. And the three of them were somehow a part of the mission he was on.

Delaney groaned and shut his eyes. “Oh, God. Don’t tell me. He isn't really here. I'm just having a bad dream.”

“I'm equally pleased to see you, too. Delaney," Darkness replied, wryly. "I'd sooner have a case of indigestion. Regrettably, one has to make do with the tools one has at hand. And you, Delaney, are unquestionably a tool.”

“Doc, I'm almost afraid to ask,” said Lucas, "but the last time we saw you, you said something about one more key mission we'd have to perform."

Darkness nodded "That's right, Priest. This is it.”

“Shit," Delaney said. “I knew it. We're all going to die."

"I sincerely hope that none of you is going to die," said Dr. Darkness, toying with his walking stick. "Otherwise all the work I've done will have been wasted."

Suddenly, there was a drink in his hand. He had tached over to the bar and helped himself, then tached back, faster than the speed of light, so that it seemed as if a glass of Scotch had simply appeared in his hand out of thin air. He took a sip. "Ahh. That hits the spot."

"I'm touched by your concern for our lives," said Lucas, wryly.

"Spare me your sarcasm, Priest," Darkness replied. "You owe your life to my concern, as you may recall."

"I haven't forgotten," Lucas said. “And I'm grateful. However, I'm also apprehensive. It has to do with your irritating habit of not telling us your plans."

“That's unavoidable," said Darkness. "I'm afraid it's necessary for you to function on what you'd call a 'need to know' basis. You have to realize that from my perspective, this is the past and I need to be very careful not to interfere with certain actions you must take. At least, not until the proper time."

"So why bother telling us at all?" asked Andre.

"Because Forrester deduced the truth about me. And, as a result, it's necessary for me to impress upon you the importance of what I have to do,” said Darkness. "The fate of the future rests almost entirely in your hands. When the time comes, I cannot afford to have you hesitate. You will have to do exactly what I tell you, exactly when I tell you. Without question."

"That's asking us to take an awful lot on faith," Delaney said.

"Yes, it is. However, I had hoped that by now, you would trust my motives."

"Don't get us wrong, Doc, " Lucas said. "It's not that we don't trust you. You've saved our bacon in the past, no pun intended. You even brought me back from death. I think. I'm still not entirely sure what happened. But the point is that we've got a job to do and it's hard enough doing it without your doing a job on us."

"What Lucas means is that what we do requires peak concentration," Andre said. "That's hard enough to achieve without knowing that at some point, you're going to show up and yank the rug out from under us. You're asking us to trust you. And we'd like to do that. It doesn't seem unreasonable, under the circumstances, for you to trust us, as well."

“I see your point," Darkness replied. "And I appreciate your position. But I need you to understand mine, as well. When you clock out on one of your temporal adjustment missions, one that involves your interacting with significant historical figures, you can't very well approach them and tell them who you are and what you're doing, can you?"

"Of course not," said Delaney, "but that's different. They wouldn't believe us. They'd think we were insane. This is hardly the same situation. We know about time travel. We know you're from the future. And we know that, somehow, we're involved in something—or we're going to be involved in something—that's going to have a significant impact on what happens in the time you came from. We can understand and accept that. And we'd like to help you. But we could do a better job of it if we knew just what it was we were supposed to do."

"I'm not convinced of that," said Darkness. "In fact, I've already told you a great deal more than I should have, much more than I had planned to. My hand was forced when Forrester realized that I was from the future. The fact that you know that alone could jeopardize what I must do. It could affect your actions in a way that would sabotage my mission."

"So then you are on a temporal adjustment mission," Andre said

"That much is obvious," Darkness replied. "However, that isn't what you're asking, is it? You want to know if I'm your counterpart from the future, if I've been specifically sent back here on a mission or if I'm working on my own. And that's something I'm not in a position to tell you. I can't stop you speculating, of course, but I can assure you that it would be pointless. It really makes no difference, either way"

"Damn it, Doc, you've got to tell us more than that!" exclaimed Delaney with exasperation. "What happens in the future, where you came from? Does it happen because of something we did, or something we didn't do?"

For a moment. Darkness did not reply. He seemed to be considering. Finally, he sighed. "It really was unfortunate that Forrester discovered the truth about me. I should have anticipated that, only I didn't. I underestimated his resourcefulness. As a result, without meaning to, he's endangered my mission. That's why I had to tell him that I would have no further contact with him. It would have been too dangerous. If you hadn't known . . . only you do know. And that knowledge could affect your actions. A moment's doubt or hesitation at the crucial time . . . “ He drained his glass and set it down on the table.

"I can tell you this much," he said. "Nothing that you have done—and I'm speaking from a future perspective, of course— served to bring about what I'm trying to prevent. However, you are going to be in a position where you will be able to do something to significantly alter the scheme of events in the future. I have seen to that you were chosen very carefully. Telling you much more at this stage would be risky. You are approaching a key focal point in time. And when that time comes, you must do exactly as I say. Without even a second's hesitation. I had tried to improve your odds for success with those particle level implants that I gave you, but unfortunately, I was unable to perfect them and they ultimately failed. Perhaps that was my fault, perhaps it was the influence of the Fate Factor. It's like trying to swim against the current. I'm struggling to overcome temporal inertia at almost every turn."