TimeRiders 05 - Gates of Rome (35 page)

He walked them past the guards, out of the afternoon sun and into the cool, dimly lit labyrinth of Caligula’s palace, past marble columns and intricate, vividly coloured designs in mosaic tiles on the floor.

‘Wow, this is totally bindaas,’ Sal whispered softly, almost silently. Even so, her whisper echoed across the cavernous interior.

‘The palace should be entirely empty now, except for the three Stone Men,’ said Cato. ‘The slaves of the palace have been confined to their quarters; my men are all stationed outside the building watching the entrances. The gardens. It is just
us
inside.’

‘Which way?’

Cato nodded ahead. ‘This leads to the main passageway.’

The tribune led the way, with Bob by his side, a short sword clutched in each fist. Behind them Maddy and Sal, hands clasped anxiously. Bringing up the rear Liam and Macro, warily glancing behind them and into the shadows between columns. Their breathing echoed in the gloom, the tap of their feet sounding precariously loud.

Presently they looked out on to a broad passageway, almost as broad as any Roman thoroughfare. The walls towered to meet a ceiling of murals that depicted heroic scenes of – presumably – Caligula. It was punctuated every now and then with small skylight openings that allowed meagre shafts of sunlight to pierce the gloom and angle down on to the mosaic tile floor like muted spotlights.

Cato indicated to the right and cautiously led the way.

They walked slowly along the broad passage until finally Cato stopped and pointed at a gently shifting drape.

The others nodded.

Bob crossed the passageway until he stood beside the drape. A draught of cool air was teasing it. Liam could feel it on his skin as he, Macro and Cato stood, weapons ready, beside him.

And there it was again, the same thing that cursed him every time he faced the possibility of imminent violence, his legs trembling like the whiskers of a rodent. His mouth as dry as parchment.

He glanced quickly at Macro, his dark beard splitting with a grin of excitement. Beside him Cato, a foot taller, poised with a face almost as stone cold and impassive as Bob’s. Both men seemed utterly used to this – that moment of readiness before a fight. That final breath, that heartbeat before the calm became a bloody, thrashing chaos.

Liam sighed.
Why can’t I ever look as ready as that?

Cato checked the others were ready then quickly leaned forward and pulled the drape aside.

Maddy gasped at the sight of it. Standing there, legs planted astride, sword drawn almost as if it had been patiently waiting for them.

But it was the thing’s appearance that surprised her: the breathtaking historical contradiction. Standing there, in the flickering light of a pair of oil lamps with a gladius held ready in one hand and a gladiator’s shield in the other, was something quite unmistakably from the twenty-first century. A soldier in military olive green. A soldier wearing a polygraphene torso plate, shoulder and forearm armour plates, thigh and shin plates and black combat boots. At a glance – except for the sword and shield, that is – little different from the kind of special-forces guys she was used to seeing in grainy night vision sliding down ropes on to the terrace roofs of Al Qaeda hideouts.

‘You are not permitted beyond this point,’ it said almost politely. ‘Leave immediately.’

Bob met its gaze. ‘You must step aside.’

The soldier studied Bob for a moment. A flicker of recognition, comprehension in his eyes. ‘You are a Heavy Combat Model.’

Bob nodded. ‘Affirmative. You are a Multi-role Reconnaissance Model. A later version?’

‘Yes, I am.’ He smiled. ‘Same manufacturer.’

Maddy could have sworn both clones nodded a quick ‘nice-to-meet-you’ greeting at each other.

‘You must step aside,’ said Bob finally.

‘You are not permitted beyond this point.’

‘Our priorities conflict.’

‘Agreed.’

Both units’ eyes flickered for a split second as they processed the same conclusion, but it was the soldier-unit who reacted first. He thrust his sword at Bob’s neck – with the speed of a snake bite. Bob dodged to one side, but not fast enough to avoid the tip skewering him deeply just above the collarbone.

Bob retaliated with a roundhouse swing of the sword in his right hand. The soldier parried the heavy blow with his shield; a clatter and ring that sounded deafening. Bob thrust with his other sword at the unit’s midriff. Its reaction time, or perhaps it was a module of combat-prediction code,
anticipated
the move and sidestepped it with an almost Becks-like ballerina grace, as it yanked its blade free from Bob’s shoulder.

Macro took a step forward and thrust his sword at the unit. It swept its bloody blade down from Bob and effortlessly blocked Macro with a jarring rasp of clashing sword edges.

Bob tried again with his right sword: this time a thrust not a swing. The shield snapped down to intercept it; another clang filled the passageway.

This time, though, the guard of Bob’s sword caught on the curved edge of the shield. Leverage for him; a chance to use his brawn. Bob flung his sword arm to the right, wrenching the small gladiator’s shield out of the unit’s grasp and hurling it against the passage wall.

The soldier-unit backed up a step. Eyes flickering from Bob to Macro, and now Liam as he took a faltering step forward to help them out.

‘Liam! No, don’t!’ hissed Maddy.

‘You will lose,’ rumbled Bob. ‘Stand down.’

‘He’s right,’ snarled Macro.

The unit was crouched like a rattlesnake ready to strike, passing its sword deftly from one hand to the other. ‘You do not have security clearance to pass. Please leave immediately.’

Macro and Liam were edging round either side of it, Cato warily holding his ground in front of it: a three-sided confrontation for the unit. But Maddy suspected it had already identified Liam’s as the weak side. He was no soldier.

‘Liam!’ she cried. ‘Please get back!’

‘I’m fine, so I am, Mads!’ he called back over his shoulder.

The soldier-unit took advantage of that – the split second of distraction.

It took a quick step in Liam’s direction and thrust its sword at his gut. The blade disappeared into his linen tunic and Liam yelped in pain. The unit quickly pulled the blade back, the tip spattered with blood.

Liam clutched his side, a blossom of crimson spreading through the material as he dropped to his knees. Macro thrust his old sword into the unit’s flank, exposed by the lunge towards Liam. Once again the unit’s mind, working in nanoseconds of prediction, anticipated that and successfully dodged the thrusting blade.

With both arms committed now, however, one withdrawing from Liam, the other blocking Macro’s thrust, the unit had nothing left to counter Bob’s sweeping downward stroke. His blade bit deep into the unit’s head – through the skull, deep enough to cause catastrophic, irrevocable damage to the organic-silicon processing centre inside.

Stern teetered unsteadily on his feet for a moment, a look of complete incomprehension in his grey eyes. A small trickle of
dark blood ran between his brows, down the left side of his nose and on to his cheek.

He gasped something incomprehensible before falling forward, flat on his face. Quite dead.

‘
LIAMMMM!
’ screamed Sal, starting forward. She raced across the passage and scooted down beside Liam, still kneeling, holding his side. His face had turned grey, his skin waxy with beads of sweat.

‘Ahhh Jay-zus!
This hurts!
’

Maddy was next to him. ‘Liam?’ Her voice was shaking. ‘Liam, how bad is it?’

He grimaced with the pain. ‘Do I look like a bleedin’ doctor? I … I don’t know!’

Macro and Cato joined the girls. ‘Macro’s looked after enough of his boys on the field.’

Macro nodded. ‘Let me take a look at you, lad.’

Bob grasped Maddy’s shoulder. ‘We do not have much time, Maddy. The other units are nearby somewhere.’

‘Your Stone Man is right,’ said Cato. He nodded at the door in front of them. ‘If whatever you seek is in there … then perhaps we should hurry?’

Maddy looked back down at Liam, now sprawled on the mosaic tiles, looking ashen, Macro ripping open the bloodstained tunic to get a look at the wound.

‘Sal …’ she said.

She nodded. Understood. ‘I’ll keep an eye on him. You go on.’

Maddy got up and followed Bob and Cato towards the door. A thick, iron locking bar ran across both doors and Bob easily slid it back with a heavy rasp that filled the short secret passageway. Maddy reached for a handle.

‘Be careful,’ said Cato. He tapped the heavy doors with his
knuckles. ‘These seem like doors built more to keep something in than keep intruders out.’ The tribune took a deep breath, a sign perhaps that despite his rational mind, a part of him still held a wary suspicion that the supernatural realm of gods might just exist.

Maddy grasped the handle and pulled. The thick oak door rattled heavily, but didn’t budge. She cursed. ‘After all that, it’s freakin’ locked!’

Bob gently pushed against the other door. It swung inwards with an ominous creak.

‘Negative. You just need to push, not pull.’

Maddy reached for a tallow candle and stepped inside the dark room. The candle’s guttering flame picked out little detail. A vast room that echoed like a cavern. She could see a ceiling above, faintly. Frescos and decoration left for so many years in complete darkness. Bob and Cato entered behind her, another two candles marginally increasing the light in the room.

She took a dozen steps in until finally the candlelight glinted on piles of objects on the floor, laid out on several wooden tables. She went over to the nearest table and set her candle down on it.

‘Bob! Over here!’

The support unit and tribune joined her. Bob studied the items on the table. ‘Hydrogen cell powered pulse rifles,’ he said drily.

‘What are these devices?’ asked Cato.

‘Weapons,’ Maddy replied. ‘Weapons from the future.’

Cato’s eyes widened. ‘The stories of the Visitors … Cicero once mentioned they had “spears that roared”.’ He looked at them. ‘These?’

‘I doubt they’ll “roar” any more,’ replied Maddy, picking one of them up, blowing the dust off it and inspecting the weapon more closely.

‘Information: without maintenance, the hydrogen cells will be dead by now.’

Maddy looked across the wooden table. There were other things, supplies of all sorts: medicines, emergency food packs, tools. ‘This wasn’t just a field trip …’ She gasped. ‘Those Visitors came here to stay! Do you think? To … to
colonize
Roman times?’

Bob nodded. ‘That appears to be a plausible conclusion.’

She picked up her candle and wandered towards a pile of objects on the floor nearby. She squatted down and inspected them. Clothes. Shoes. Glasses. Some of them spattered with faded bloodstains. By the look of the mound of items of clothing there must have been a lot of them, perhaps hundreds.
And all of them massacred?

‘And this, then,’ uttered Cato almost reverentially. ‘This must have been one of the chariots they arrived in.’

Maddy turned to look. He was on the other side of the room now, holding his candle up to inspect something large that glinted dully in the gloom. She and Bob hurried over and a moment later, the three of them were inspecting the dusty, slanted metal sides of a large vehicle. To Maddy’s eyes it looked like a cross between a Humvee and a hovercraft.

‘Multi-terrain personnel carrier. With anti-grav thrusters for a limited-altitude vtol capability,’ said Bob. ‘This appears to be a more advanced model than the prototypes being field-tested by the US military in 2054.’

Maddy shook her head. ‘This is completely crazy! The scale of time contamination … I mean this is insane. What the hell were they thinking?’

‘Maddy?’ It was Sal.

She turned round and saw her silhouette in the doorway. ‘How is he?’

‘Macro’s bound him up.’ She managed a relieved smile. ‘Not serious, he said. Just a flesh wound.’

‘OK … OK.’ She sighed. ‘That’s good.’ She looked round the room. There were plenty of other things to inspect. Perhaps, somewhere in this room,
please God
, a time machine of some sort. Something to get them back home. Now.

‘Bob, if they’ve brought with them some sort of a time-displacement device, and it’s in here somewhere, we need to find it.’

‘Affirmative. But there is unlikely to be a viable source of power still.’

Bob clambered up on to the slanted metal hull of the vehicle. ‘I will look inside the personnel carrier.’

‘You do that.’ She turned to Sal. ‘We’re going to find a way home, Sal. I promise. Stay with Liam, OK?’

Sal nodded and quickly disappeared out of the doorway.

A time machine. Please tell me you idiots brought with you a means to get back home. Please. You guys can’t have been that stupid. Right?

Perhaps they weren’t stupid. Just desperate.

She returned to the tables stacked with guns and ammunition cartridges and webbing and field equipment, hoping to find some first-aid packs. Anaesthetic for Liam, more importantly something antiseptic to cleanse the wound. Antibiotics to fight any potential infection. He wasn’t going to make it if that sword wasn’t clean. In this pre-penicillin time even a paper cut could finish you off if you got unlucky. She found a first-aid pack, unzipped it. It was fully stocked.

‘Sal!’

Sal came back in. ‘Here … unwrap Liam. There’s an antibiotic spray in here. Use that and use these bandages; at least they’re clean.’

Sal took the first-aid pack and hurried back outside. Maddy resumed looking round the vast room. Her candle picked out a large object in the middle. A box, a crate of some kind.

Crate? A protective crate?

She made her way quickly towards it, doing her best to stifle the growing hope it might actually contain a machine eagerly waiting to be switched on and ready to conveniently whisk them back home to 2001.