Argonaut Affair

13

"I'm disappointed in you, Mr. Delaney," Drakov said, mockingly. "Here I am helping you complete your mission and you were going to sell me out."

"Some help," Delaney said.

Andre was staring up at the immobile bronze giant. "You made this?" she said.

"I thought you'd be impressed," said Drakov. "Actually, an old friend directed the construction process. The laborers who performed the bulk of the less sophisticated tasks thought they were working for Hephaestus, the Greek god of the fire and the forge. Santos found it all very amusing, being a god."

"Santos Benedetto?" asked Steiger.

"The last of the Timekeepers," Drakov said, "except for myself, of course. If you care to wave hello, he's sitting up there in the helmet, at the controls of what I believe is the largest robot ever built. As I told you once before, the game continues. And we are still a long way from the endgame. The problem is what to do about you in the meantime."

Drakov glanced out over the water at the Argo, receding in the distance. "I'm afraid you've missed your ship. No doubt they think you died here on the beach. Pity. That will make it difficult to explain your reappearance."

He looked sharply at Andre. "Please, Miss Cross, leave your hands exactly where they are. If you make one more move toward your warp disc, I shall have to kill you and I would prefer it if you stayed alive awhile longer."

"Why? "she said.

"Because a quick death for you would provide me with little satisfaction. I have far more interesting plans for your demise. You can imagine how alarmed I was when I realized that the Special Operations Group was about to cheat me of my revenge. Interesting how they used the hominoids as preprogrammed zombies. Very creative. It never occurred to me that their cybernetic augmentation could allow them some limited function after their organic life processes had ceased."

"We thought you were responsible," said Steiger.

"An understandable mistake," said Drakov. He looked down at what was left of Kovalos. "Clever fellow, whoever he was. Apparently, he decided that since you were using the myth to create your disruption, he'd also use it to eliminate the threat. The idea might well have worked, only he underestimated the Argonauts. They didn't panic. An admirable man, that Theseus. Utterly fearless. Now, Miss Cross, if you would be so kind, please raise your left hand high overhead and remain completely motionless."

He gestured at her with the plasma pistol and she complied. A huge shadow fell over them as the bronze robot slowly bent at the waist, reaching down with a huge hand that closed around Andre's body so only her head and shoulders and her raised left arm, with the warp disc bracelet on her wrist, were free.

"Now if you gentlemen will each hold out your hands," said Drakov, "I will relieve you of your warp discs. If either of you attempts any heroics, Santos will close the fist completely and Miss Cross will experience a most unpleasant death."

They did as they were told and Drakov carefully removed each of their warp discs, then stepped back. He looked up at Benedetto, out of sight inside the robot, and nodded. The giant fist opened, releasing Andre. "Now, Miss Cross, carefully remove your own disc and toss it here. Don't try to clock out or you will force me to kill your friends."

Slowly, Andre removed her warp disc and threw it down at Drakov's feet. He bent down, keeping his eyes on them, and picked it up.

"Thank you. Now turn around, please."

They turned and faced the robot. There was a loud metallic click and then a low whine as a small door opened just beneath the giant's right ankle.

"After you," said Drakov.

One at a time, they went through the door into the giant robot's foot and Drakov followed them, carefully allowing some distance between them. He had learned the hard way once before that the temporal agents were far from helpless without their warp discs. He didn't take his eyes off them for a second, which was why he failed to see two figures sprint toward the bronze giant and slip through the small door behind him just before it closed.

They climbed up the metal stairs past a number of landings beside the complex hydraulics in the robot's joints and into the giant's face. They came out through an opening in the floor into a carpeted room containing several beds and a number of bookshelves. With the exception of the monitor screens and several banks of electronic equipment, the inside of the giant's face resembled the bedroom of some 19th century English gentleman, complete with sideboard and gasogene, as well as several oil paintings. There was something of a shipboard flavor about the room as well in the way that everything was secured so that it would not be displaced by movement. Drakov had the ability to move through time at will, but he had never been able to abandon the aesthetic sensibilities of the late 19th century, the time from which he came.

Above them was an open space, domed at the top of the giant's war helmet and ringed by a metal catwalk. Looking up, they could see the control station of the robot, with Santos Benedetto seated before a large monitor screen and instrument panel. He got up from his chair, walked over to the edge of the catwalk and stood looking down at them with his hands resting on the guardrail. Above him, suspended below the domed ceiling, was a V-20 temporal transponder, the largest size in the classification of warp discs, part of a shipment Drakov's time pirates had hijacked from the top security manufacturing facility of Amalgamated Techtronics. Drakov had once used a similar disc to equip a Soviet nuclear submarine for time travel. Now, it performed the same function for the robot inspired by Talos, the bronze giant of Greek mythology.

"It seems to be old home week," Benedetto said, looking down at them and grinning wolfishly. He looked older and even thinner, but beyond that, he hadn't changed. He still dressed habitually in black and his sharp features and neatly trimmed black beard gave him the look of a Renaissance assassin. His knowledge of cybernetics combined with his training in psycho-conditioning made him doubly dangerous and he had no scruples whatsoever. Once a passionate moralist, a scientist who had enlisted in the Temporal Preservation League out of a genuine concern over the Time Wars, he had gravitated toward the radical militants who had made up the Timekeepers. Terrorism had destroyed his ethics and he was reborn a consummate cynic without any hope or optimism. Drakov conceived his mad plans in deadly earnest, but to Benedetto, they were merely fascinating games, complex entertainments for his jaded appetites.

"We're going home, Santos," Drakov said.

"Before or after we take care of our intruders?" Benedetto asked.

"Our guests will accompany us," said Drakov. "I think they'd enjoy meeting the professor."

"I wasn't referring to our commando friends," said Benedetto. "I meant the two men who came in after you."

Drakov glanced up at him sharply. " What two men?"

"Really, Nikolai," said Benedetto, "you're becoming careless. Two men managed to slip inside before I could close the door. Talos isn't exactly state-of-the-art design, you know. Certain operations are cumbersome and they take some time. I told you we should have used nysteel construction."

"Translocate, Santos! Immediately!"

"As you wish."

He turned around and returned to the controls. A moment later, the V-20 warp disc suspended overhead started to glow. Drakov motioned the three agents over to the bed and indicated for them to sit down, then he sat in a chair across from them, in a position where he could keep them covered and at the same time observe the opening in the floor.

"If we've been penetrated by agents of the Special Operations Group," he said, tensely, "things might become a bit more interesting than I care for. We'll be better able to deal with the threat when we reach our home base."

"Our home base?" said Finn.

"Certainly," said Drakov. He smiled. "We are working together in this venture, are we not?"

"Where is 'our' home base?" said Andre.

"On a small island in this very time period, Miss Cross," said Drakov. "We shall arrive at the Greek islands well ahead of your former shipmates."

"How do you manage to hide a robot of this size on a small Greek island?" asked Delaney.

Drakov smiled. "I don't bother to try. I keep Talos right out in the open, standing astride the entrance to the harbor of Rhodes."

"The Colossus of Rhodes," said Steiger. "One of the ancient wonders of the world. Very nice. Only how does the population of the island react when he disappears every now and then?"

"They never notice," Drakov said. "A careful log is kept of each temporal transition Talos makes. We merely clock back in a fraction of a second after we have left." He frowned. "Whoever our friends below are, they are apparently hesitant to join us. They think to catch us as we go back down. So much the better. They will shortly find themselves caught squarely in the middle.."

"In the middle of what?" said Delaney.

Drakov smiled. "You shall see. Santos, have we arrived?"

"We're here," said Benedetto, from above them. "I've got the hominoids standing by. Want I should let them in?"

"By all means," said Drakov. "We mustn't keep our two guests downstairs waiting."

Benedetto threw several levers and opened the door in the giant's ankle.

"This should prove to be amusing," Drakov said. He beckoned them to the opening in the floor with his pistol. "Why don't you lead the way?"

Delaney went down first, followed by Steiger and then Andre. Drakov went behind them, keeping them covered with his pistol. Benedetto remained behind. They descended the metal stair to the landing inside the hollow of the giant's chest. Below them, they could hear the sounds of battle. The report of plasma weapons being fired echoed up to them, accompanied by the screams of frenzied hominoids attacking the two men below them. Steiger ventured a quick glance over the metal guardrail. Below him, the interior of the robot lit up several times with the reflections of plasma blasts and he could see blue flame down there as figures burned, but as those who pressed the two intruders died, others replaced them. They heard more screaming and shouts and then the sound of booted feet on metal as someone came running up the steps toward them, moving fast.

"Drakov!" shouted Delaney. "We're going to have company in a minute."

"I can hear," said Drakov, calmly.

"So what the hell are we supposed to fight with?" said Delaney.

"Think positive, Mr. Delaney," Drakov said. "Perhaps my hominoids will catch up with whoever it is and kill them before they reach you. If not, why then you'll have to use your ingenuity. Don't be concerned, I'll cover you."

"Somehow I don't find that very reassuring," said Delaney. He glanced back at Steiger and Andre.

"Nowhere to go," said Steiger. "Someone's coming up toward us with plasma weapons and Drakov's behind us with a plasma pistol of his own. We're caught between a rock and a hard place." He glanced over the side. "And it's a long way down."

The running footsteps came closer, followed by the sounds of others pursuing from below. There were no more plasma blasts. Whoever was coming toward them wasn't wasting any time stopping to fire at those below.

"They're coming fast," Delaney said, tensely.

A figure came running up onto the landing just below them. Drakov fired over their heads and the heat of the plasma blast singed their hair as it passed above them and slammed into the inside wall of the robot, just ahead of the running man below them. He jerked back from the wash of flame as melted bronze dripped down the wall and the superheated guardrail just ahead of him started to sag.

"Drop your weapon!" Drakov shouted.

The man started to raise his pistol, then saw Delaney standing just above him and he froze.

"My God, "he said.

"Drop it, I said!" Drakov repeated.

The pistol clattered to the metal floor of the landing, bounced, and skittered over the side to fall to the bottom of the robot's leg. Drakov kept his pistol pointed at the man, but it was Delaney that the soldier stared at.

"Jesus Christ," said Delaney, softly, staring at the man's face.

Andre didn't say a thing. She stood frozen to the spot, speechless, staring at the face of a man who couldn't possibly be alive, the face of Lt. Reese Hunter.

"The sight of you took about ten years off my life," said Hunter. "I saw you killed, torn to pieces, then some thirty seconds later, there you were standing right in front of me."

They were locked in a room in the cellar of Drakov's palace on the island of Rhodes. They were in almost total darkness, with the only light coming from a small barred window high above them, level with the ground outside. The window was out of their reach and too small to squeeze through, even if they could have reached it and defeated the iron bars.

The man who spoke, addressing his comments to Delaney, was Reese Hunter, and yet he wasn't Hunter. The Reese Hunter Finn and Andre knew had been killed in 17th century Paris, assassinated by the Timekeepers. This was his doppelganger, his twin from the future of the congruent universe. The face, the name, everything about him was the same, except that he was a captain in the S.O.G., the Special Operations Group of the Temporal Army of the congruent universe, their elite commando force assigned to deal with temporal disruptions, specifically to conduct the war against the universe from which the temporal agents came. They knew him, and yet they didn't know him. And he "knew" them, as well.

Finn Delaney's twin had been a member of the adjustment team, along with Captain Hunter, commanded by Major Kennedy, the man the temporal agents had known as Kovalos. They had been attempting to adjust the temporal disruption, thinking that the temporal agents were responsible, never suspecting that Drakov was behind it all. They had clocked several teams back and now only Hunter was left.

"Kennedy was going to signal the assault the moment the Infiltrators we had buried on the beach engaged the Argonauts," said Hunter. "We were going to hit from both sides. We were waiting for his signal when all hell broke loose. That damn giant robot clocked in right on top of us." He took a ragged breath. "The poor bastards were crushed. Finn and I were the only ones who got away. We tried to get back to Kennedy, up on the crest, and clocked in just in time to see him buy it. We couldn't see your faces from where we were. We didn't know what the hell was happening. We had no idea what Drakov was doing here. He was supposed to be working for us. Last time I saw him, he was updating the C.I.S. archives."

"C.I.S.?" asked Steiger.

"Counter-Insurgency Section," Hunter said. "New branch of our Intelligence service."

"The ones in charge of intelligence concerning us," said Andre.

Hunter nodded. "Anyway, we were trying to figure our next move when Drakov herded you three inside the robot. The minute I saw that, I knew he was the one responsible for hitting us, not you people. And we still didn't know who you were. Delaney decided to make a try for the door before it closed. Worst damn decision that fool ever made." He glanced at Finn. "Nothing personal."

Delaney smiled wryly. "Yeah, right."

Hunter leaned back against the wall and gave out a small groan. "Damn. Everything went wrong. We were going to jump you people as you came back down. We thought there was a chance we might have been spotted, but we figured what the hell, you had to get by us anyway, so it was worth a shot. We never put it together that Drakov was the one who stole the Infiltrator Project. The next thing we knew, that door was sliding open and they were coming in behind us, rushing up the stairs like an army of ants. We fired and fired and they just kept on coming. Delaney ran out of plasma charges and they got him. Tore him apart with their bare hands. I never saw anything like it."

Delaney shuddered at the thought of his twin from the congruent universe being slaughtered while he was standing on the stairs just overhead.

"I would've burned him to save him from that agony," Hunter went on, "only I had run out of charges, too. There was only one way left to go and that was up. I had an empty gun, but I thought maybe I'd have a chance to bluff you and get those horrors called off. And then I ran smack dab into you. I thought I was hallucinating. Christ, you're his spitting image. And Andre. Jesus, you were dead as well, and there you were."

"What happened to 'me' in this universe?" Andre asked, hesitantly.

"You bought it on an adjustment mission," Hunted said. "Priest never got over it."

"Lucas?" Andre said, feeling as if a cold hand were closing around her insides.

"Your husband," Hunter said. "Or rather, her husband. Our Andre Cross, that is. Only she wasn't Andre Cross in our timeline. Her name was Andre de la Croix."

Andre swallowed hard. "That used to be my name," she said. "I changed it."

Hunter nodded. "Hell of a thing, isn't it? And you have a Lucas Priest, as well?"

"Had," Delaney said. "He died on our last mission."

"So did ours," said Hunter. "He was waiting for it, I guess. He never came back from the last one. From what I heard, it was a real killer. You people got us good."

Delaney had no response. What could he say, that he was sorry? The situation was difficult enough as it was without his telling Hunter that he was the one who had killed their Lucas Priest. Andre felt numb. In their own timeline, she had always felt very close to Lucas Priest. In the congruent universe, her twin and that of Lucas had married. It might have happened to them, too, had her Lucas lived long enough. She could not get the image of Hunter's Lucas Priest out of her mind as he stood before her in 19th century Afghanistan, pointing a laser at her chest. She was the enemy and he should have fired, but he had hesitated. There had been a tortured look upon his face as he had briefly lowered the laser, then raised it once again, resigned to what he had to do. That moment's hesitation was what killed him. He had said, "Forgive me, Andre," then just as he was about to fire, Delaney had bayoneted him from behind. She hadn't understood what happened then, why he had hesitated. Now she knew and she wished she didn't.

"So there's a Reese Hunter in your timeline, as well," said Hunter.

"Was, "said Delaney.

"Was?" said Hunter. "I see." He shook his head. "Man, that's strange. It's like being told I died."

"Tell me about it," said Delaney.

"Yeah, it's a macabre situation, pilgrim. 1 keep having to remind myself that you're really not my partner, just like you're probably having a hard time remembering that I'm not the Reese Hunter that you knew. What was he like?"

"He was a lot like you," Delaney said. "Hell, he was you, only his history followed a slightly different path. He was an officer in the Airborne Pathfinders who became separated from his unit in 12th century England."

"Christ," said Hunter. "The same thing happened to me."

"Only you apparently came back," Delaney said. "Our Hunter decided to go underground."

Hunter chuckled. "I thought about it. Almost did it, too. It was tempting as hell. How'd your boy make out?"

"Pretty well," Delaney said. "He had quite a setup for himself back there in Sherwood Forest. Built himself a cabin and stocked it with all sorts of goodies from various different time periods. He had all the conveniences. Sound system, generators, microwave oven, briar pipes, smoking jackets, various kinds of ordnance, fine wines… The locals believed he was a wizard and he played up the idea to keep them from bothering him. Grew his hair long and dressed up in some kind of crazy silk robe from Japan with dragons on it. Then he got mixed up in one of our missions. Complicated story."

Hunter glanced at Andre. "He bring you back from the 12th century?"

"Yes," she said. "How did you… oh, of course. But we went to 17th century Paris first. That was where he… died."

Hunter sighed. "Glad I never went to Paris," he said. "We clocked straight back home. Christ, it's really something. Alternate universes, almost exactly identical. And we're at war." Delaney remained silent.

"Look," said Hunter, "if you don't want to answer this one, just forget I asked, but I've always wanted to know something. Why'd you people start this? I realize you're only grunts, like I am, so maybe you don't really know, but it strikes me that there had to be a better way. All right, so the confluence phenomenon was endangering both our time-streams, but maybe if we got together, we could've figured out a way to lick this thing. But after what you did-"

"We didn't know," said Steiger.

Hunter sighed. "Well, I guess I sorta figured that. Hell, it wasn't your decision. You people are just soldiers, like me."

"You don't understand," said Steiger. "I meant we really didn't know. Until your people attacked us in 19th century Afghanistan, we didn't even know that you existed."

"Come on," said Hunter. "Is that really the line they fed you? Your people bombed the hell out of us. You wiped out entire colonies, killed millions of people-"

"And we didn't even know we were doing it," Delaney said. "He's telling you the truth. We have a temporal nuclear device known as a warp grenade. It allows you to utilize a specified portion of a highly controlled nuclear explosion and it clocks the surplus energy through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge out into space somewhere. We thought we were disposing of the surplus energy in the Orion Nebula, but apparently sending such massive amounts of energy through space warps somehow affected chronophysical alignment. We were clocking nuclear explosions into your timeline and we didn't even know it."

Hunter stared at him. "Are you serious?"

"I can't make you believe me, Hunter, but what I told you is the truth, I swear it."

Hunter sat silent for a long moment. "Hell, ain't that a kick in the head?" he said, his voice heavy. "The most dangerous war in the history of both our timelines and it got started by accident."

"Well, we were the ones to start it, even if it was an accident," said Steiger, "but your people are the ones who have a chance to end it."

Hunter snorted. "Not bloody likely, pilgrim," he said. "You want to know what kind of hatred the people in this timeline have for you? You know what kind of image you people have here? You guys are the living incarnation of evil, according to the politicians and the media. Mass murderers without a conscience. Imperialist warmongers determined to drive us straight into temporal chaos or oblivion to safeguard your own timeline. The only way to deal with you is through force, because that's all you understand. Nobody believes you'll negotiate. And nobody really wants to try."

"Is that how you feel?" Andre said. "I'm not hearing any hatred in your voice."

"Yeah, well, I'm not a civilian," Hunter said. "And I didn't have anybody in the colonies that were destroyed. I'm just a military man." He paused. " 'War is much too serious a thing to be left to military men.' A fellow named Talleyrand said that and everyone believed him. Unfortunately, Talleyrand was an asshole."

"Politician, wasn't he?" said Steiger. "I think I met some of his relatives."

"For what it's worth," said Hunter, "I don't hate you people. That would be something like hating your own reflection in a mirror. But then, nobody consults me about things like that. Anyway, I guess it's over for us now. It's just as well. I've had about enough."

"It isn't over yet," said Steiger.

"Isn't it?" said Hunter. "Take a look around you, pilgrim. I don't think we'll be getting out of this one. Compared to the head of Project Infiltrator, Drakov is downright civilized. You think Drakov's got toys in his attic? Wait 'til you meet Dr. Moreau."