TW10 The Hellfire Rebellion NEW (3 page)

"
Exitus Acta Probat
" (The End Justifies the Means). Adams was not above utilizing any means he felt were necessary to achieve the end he had in mind. but he fully understood the subtleties of propaganda.

Macintosh did not appreciate such tactics. "We taught that royalist bootlicker a proper lesson!" he shouted, slapping his palm down on the table and upsetting his glass of wine. "I say he had it comin'!" And now Sam Adams goes to him with hat in hand and humbly begs his pardon. sayin. 'Please, Yer Worship, forgive us all the trespass and kindly accept these monies by way of reparation.'

Apologizin' to the likes o' him!"

"It's not like that at all Mac," Edes reassured him. "Sam Adams knows what he's about. What's the point of all we're doing if public opinion turns against us? This way. Sam, stands by his principles and the Sons of Liberty have demonstrated that while our zeal is undiminished, we still have a concern for justice. And the lesson on Tom Hutchinson isn't lost, believe me.”

"Well, maybe so," Macintosh admitted grudgingly, "but I still say we shouldn't give the bastard one damn shilling! Tom Hutchinson is Massachusetts born an’ bred an' I say he's a traitor to his own! An' I dare any man who thinks I'm wrong to stand up an’ say so to my face!"

At that precise instant. something came crashing through the window of the tavern. struck Macintosh full in the chest, and knocked him and his chair backward to the floor. Stunned. Macintosh sat up and stared at the object that had felled him. It was a pumpkin carved into a jack-o-lantern. Its smashed and pulpy pieces lay splattered all around him. Chairs fell to the floor as the Sons of Liberty leapt to their feet and a bellowing Macintosh led the charge outside.

For a moment, they saw nothing, but then they heard the rapid beat of iron-shod hooves on cobblestones. A black-clad rider with a long, billowing cloak came hurtling at them from the shadows, scattering the group. He turned, reining in sharply, and the handsome, jet-black stallion reared up. its forelegs pawing at the sky as the rider's screeching laughter filled the air.

He had no head.

His keening laughter echoed through the night as he came thundering at them once again. His horse struck a gaping Jebediah Stiles and sent him sprawling as the rider plowed through them like a juggernaut, wheeled around, pulled in his reins, and reared up once again. Ransome Howard swore. pulled out his sheath knife, and hurled it at the horseman.

It went right though him.

With a maniacal screech, the rider bore down upon them once again and as the others scattered. Hunter stood and stared. astonished, as both the horse and rider vanished right before their eyes. leaving behind nothing but the echo of the horseman's wild laughter.

"Holy Mary Mother o' God!" breathed Macintosh, his eyes wide with disbelief.

"Is it the drink. or did I really see that?

"I saw it. too!" said Dudley Brenton. "He had no head!
The rider had no
head!
"

"Your knife went right through him!" Eli Cruger said to Howard.

"No, he missed," said someone.

"I didn't miss." insisted Howard. "I never miss." He swallowed hard and crossed himself. "It was a ghost, sure as I live and breathe! A demon straight from hell!"

" You saw it. Reese!" said Macintosh. his eyes bulging. "You saw! He vanished straightaway, before our very eyes! That was no man, Reese! Men don't just disappear! It was a ghost! You saw!"

"Yes. Mac, I saw," said Hunter. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out.

"A haunting!" Macintosh said hoarsely. "A haunting. that's what it was! You all saw it same as I did, every man jack of you!”

Hunter bit his lower hp. His fingers felt the warp disc on its bracelet, concealed under his left sleeve. He turned and started walking quickly down the street.

Macintosh ran after him. "Reese! Wait! Where are you going?"

"Go back, Mac," Hunter said. "I have to go and see someone."

"I'll go with you!"

"No, Mac, I must go alone."

"You're going to tell Sam?"

"No, you go and tell him if you wish." said Hunter. "But you'd best take some of the others with you, for I'm afraid he's going to need a good deal of convincing. I have to go see someone else." He paused. "They'll take some convincing. too, but somehow I must make them believe me."

He turned and walked away from the bewildered, frightened Macintosh and entered a dark and narrow alleyway. He looked around, pushed back his sleeve, and quickly programmed a sequence of transition coordinates into the warp disc. He took a deep breath and exhaled heavily.

"I sure hope I know what the hell I'm doing," he said.

A moment later. Macintosh came running after him into the alley. "Reese, wait!" he cried. He stopped suddenly and looked around. "What the devil . . ."

The alley ended in a cul de sac. hut Hunter was nowhere in sight.

Lucas Priest was tired of being poked and prodded. For the past two weeks, he had been subjected to just about every type of medical examination known to man. He had been psychiatrically evaluated, biochemically analyzed, and holographically scanned until he couldn't stand it any longer. Tall, slim, handsome, and muscular, with a bionic eye replacement as a result of being wounded on a temporal adjustment mission, he was in excellent physical condition, but the tests had worn him out. It seemed to him as if his mind and body had generated enough medical and psychiatric data to keep an entire team of doctors busy for a month. But then, he thought, that's what you get for dying.

“Hey. Doc. are we going to be finished anytime this year'?" he asked, wearily running his hand through his thick brown hair as he sat up on the lab couch.

“Well unless someone upstairs thinks up anything else that we can put you through, that was it." said Capt. Hazen, entering some data into her hand-held terminal "You're all finished."

"You’re kidding. Really?"

"Really. You can put your clothes back on."

"You know, I never thought I'd be so glad to hear an attractive woman telling me to put my clothes back on," said Lucas. with a grin.

She arched an eyebrow at him. "You never know. I just might ask you to take them off again sometime." She grinned. "On the other hand, maybe not. I wouldn't want to be accused of necrophilia."

"Very funny."

"Sorry. It's just that I've never flirted with a dead man before."

He gave her a wry look.

She chuckled. "Okay, I'll stop, but you might as well get used to it. After all, you're the only soldier in the history of the Temporal Corps who ever came back from the dead. Something like that is bound to cause a little comment. Anyway, that's it for now You're free to go. We should have all the test results in about another week or so."

"Just what do you expect to find?" asked Lucas.

“I haven't got the faintest idea." she said. "I'm just following orders. Maybe they expect me to tell them that you don't really exist, that you're nothing but a ghost."

"There's no such thing as ghosts."

"Tell that to your buddy Dr. Darkness: she said.

"There's a lot I could tell him." Lucas said, with a wry grimace. “That man's got a lot to answer for."

She gave him a questioning look. "Are you saying you're not grateful that he saved your life?"

Lucas shrugged. "I don't know. I wish it were that simple. I can't help having the feeling that maybe I was supposed to die. Sounds kinda crazy. doesn't it?"

"I don't know," she said. "A bit fatalistic perhaps, but crazy? You're one of the sanest men I know. People who have survived near death experiences have often come away feeling profoundly changed, sometimes even a bit regretful. Of course, this isn't quite the same thing, is it? You don't really remember the experience."

Lucas shook his head. "How can I? Darkness went back into the past and altered the conditions of my death. Or of my life. Hell, even the semantics of the situation are impossible. I can't remember something that didn't happen because the past was changed."

"I'm still not exactly clear on that." she said. "How could he have changed the past without bringing about a temporal disruption?"

“You’re asking me to answer a question that’s giving out top temporal physicists a lot of headaches." Lucas said. "One possible answer is that it wasn't a change significant enough to bring about a temporal disruption, though Lord knows, it
was
certainly significant enough for me! On the other hand, maybe it
did
cause a temporal disruption, only we’re not aware of the consequences yet. That's one of the things that worries me. What if something terrible happens in the future simply because I didn't die when I was supposed to'?"

"I never did hear all the details. What exactly happened?"

“Well, we were on a mission in 19th-century Afghanistan." said Lucas. "We were with the British headquarters command of the Malakand Field Force, standing on a rock cliff overlooking a valley where the Bengal Lancers were fighting with the Ghazis. It was a bloody slaughter. The commanding general was there, watching the action, as well as the regimental surgeon and a young war correspondent whose name happened to be Winston Churchill. We were on the lookout for a temporal disruption that we knew was going to occur and we expected it to center around Churchill. who was the most historically significant person there. The rock we were on had just been captured from the Ghazis. They had sniper nests all over it and the infantry had charged and driven them all out. Only they had missed one.

"While everyone was busy watching the fighting down below, this one Ghazi sniper got up from the rocks where he was hiding and drew a bead on the surgeon, whom he Probably mistook for the commanding officer. I just happened to glance over and see him bringing up his rifle. I yelled, 'Hugo. look out!' The surgeon was a veteran who'd just spent weeks pinned down by severe enemy sniper fire and he reacted instinctively by immediately dropping flat to the ground.

"In an instant. I saw what I'd done by warning Hugo. The moment he dropped, he left Churchill directly in the line of fire. I made a dive for Churchill and at the same moment, the Ghazi sniper fired. Instead of hitting Churchill, the bullet struck me in the chest." He took a deep breath. "Now this is where it starts getting very complicated."

“I don't remember the bullet hitting me because, as a result of what Dr. Darkness did, that bullet never did actually strike me. The others saw the bullet hit me and they saw me fall to the ground with a big hole in my chest. Only it
wasn't me.
See. during that mission, we encountered a commando unit of Special Operations Group from the parallel universe. They were the ones involved in the attempted temporal disruption. Among that unit was an officer who was my twin from the parallel timeline, my exact duplicate right down to the DNA. No way to tell us apart at all. Finn Delaney killed him, only that didn't happen until
after
I was shot. What Dr. Darkness did was go back into the past and snatch my double's corpse. He then clocked to the moment of my 'death.' and moving faster than the speed of light, he took me out of the bullet's path and teleported me away. Then he put my double's corpse directly into the path of that bullet, so that it would impact in the exact same spot left by the wound inflicted when Delaney killed him. An autopsy would probably have revealed that there were two wounds in the same place. but the point was that no one had any reason to believe it wasn't me. Darkness had snatched the corpse seconds after death: the blood hadn't coagulated yet and the body was still warm. And I was officially reported killed in action."

"So then you never really died at all." she said. "The past
wasn't
changed."

"Yeah, well, unfortunately that's the part no one can figure out." said Lucas. with a sigh. "Looking at it logically. I
did
die, because you'd think there had to be a moment when my death actually occurred,
before
Darkness went back and altered the scenario, but when it comes to temporal physics, all logic breaks down. By doing what he did. Darkness changed the
past so that the bullet struck my double's corpse, not me. and
that
became the past. Or maybe it didn't
become
the past, maybe it
was
the past, because what Darkness did was part of the temporal scenario. Or maybe what he did was create a sort of temporal loop, in which there was a kind of . . . a kind of skip or something in my own personal history, but not the history of the timeline. Maybe, somewhere in time, there exists an instant in which I actually died . . . only nobody knows for sure and chances are no one will ever know, no matter how many damn tests they run on me. How the hell is something like that supposed to show up on some test?"

"Good question." she said. "But as the saying goes, why look a gift horse in the mouth? You're alive. That's all that matters, isn't it?"

"Maybe." Lucas said, “But how'd you like to go through life knowing that somewhere in time, there could exist a moment when you'd died, only you can't remember it because in a certain sense it never really happened? How'd you like to be the only person in the world who ever experienced a temporal paradox. but has no memory of the experience? And what if ifs some sort of temporal ripple that could, at some point in the future. somehow catch up with me?"

“Do you really think that's possible?"

"I don't know," said Lucas. “That's the exasperating thing about it! I don't think even that Darkness knows and he understands temporal physics better than anyone alive. The thing that really gets me is that he didn't give a damn about me one way or another. He only did it because he'd implanted me with the only existing prototype of his new telepathic temporal transponder and he didn't want to lose the only working model. I've got what amounts to an ultra-miniaturized, thought-controlled warp disc implanted in my body, bonded to some molecule somewhere, and any stray thought is liable to send me on a trip through time. Its already happened several. times. You have any idea what it's like to go to sleep and dream you're back in ancient Rome, then suddenly wake up to discover that you're actually
there
?"