Alex Scarrow - Time Riders

He felt a cold stab of fear and desperation run down his spine.

They’ll expect Bob to herd us over there. And once I’mdumped with the others I’m going to be stuck.

As if overhearing his thoughts, a German officer, his black rubber jumpsuit rolled down andtied round his waist, revealing his grey Wehrmacht uniform, pointed to the prisoners and gaveBob an order.

Bob nodded, replied and steered them towards the holding area.

‘I have been instructed to leave you there,’ the support unit uttered quietly.‘What are my orders, Liam O’Connor?’

‘I really don’t know. What do you suggest?’

‘Suggestion: I can attempt an attack on the soldiers among the trees. But I estimate apoint-five per cent chance of success in taking and holding the position until our extractionwindow arrives.’

They were running out of time and options. The gathered prisoners sat in a cluster only a fewdozen yards away, and no matter how slowly the three of them walked towards it, that’swhere they were headed.

‘Suggestion: I leave you here and attempt a rescue when the percentage chance ofsuccess exceeds ten per cent.’

Liam gritted his teeth.

No, both he and Bob would be riddled with rapid-fire high-calibre rounds before he could getthem both halfway across the lawn to the trees. Bob might well be able tosurvive several more shots on target, but Liam didn’t fancy he’d surviveone… given the ragged wounds he’d seen the pulse carbines inflict.

‘There’s nothing we can do right now, Bob. It looks like we’re going tomiss this window,’ he hissed out of the side of his mouth. ‘And I don’tfancy having my head blown off trying to make it. How long now?’

‘In one hour and fifteen minutes, precisely.’

‘But there’ll be another, right?’

‘Correct, an hour later. And twenty-four hours after that.’

‘So,’ said Liam, now just a few yards away from the seated prisoners and thenearest guards, ‘leave me here. If you see an opportunity to get me, take it. But, forChrissakes, don’t get us both killed doing it.’

‘What percentage chance do you authorize me to take, Liam O’Connor?’

‘I dunno!’ he uttered under his breath. ‘Just take your bestshot.’

One of the German guards called out something and pointed at Liam and the man with him.

‘I am being told to leave you here,’ said Bob quietly. Liam thought he detectedthe slightest note of anxiety in the unit’s deep flat-toned voice.

‘Then do it. If they take us from here, then follow me… wait for a chance and getme out of this fix, all right?’

‘Mission priority: primary duty is to observe and report back.’

‘What? You are not leaving me here, Bob! Do youunderstand?’ Liam snarled under his breath. ‘That’s an order!’

A guard stepped forward and roughly grabbed Liam by the shoulder.

‘Be quiet!’ he snapped in accented English. ‘Join the others!’

Liam staggered forward and then slumped to his knees among the group ofprisoners. He watched as Bob stood perfectly still, face still hidden by the mask and hood,and looked helplessly on.

An officer called out to Bob from across the lawn to help with dragging and stacking thebodies for disposal.

The unit turned hesitantly.

Behind the glass plates of the gas mask, a complex computer loaded with AI that was still inthe process of learning, still almost childlike, was desperately juggling mission prioritiesand variables, calculating a million different ways to proceed.

Liam watched the lumbering figure move away.

Oh blimey. What kind of a mess am I stuck in now?

2001, New York

‘How long until the return window, Madelaine?’ asked Foster.

Maddy looked up at a screen. ‘We’re counting down the last two minutes,’she replied.

‘All right, then. We’ll find out what the boys have seen and work it out fromthere.’ He smiled thinly.

The sudden erasure of history before 1956 made it almostimpossible to identify exactly when and where things had begun to change — and to zero in on that. While the wipingout of historical records may well have been on the whim of some insane Nazi dictator, toappease his ego no doubt, it also had the additional effect of completely hiding the tracks ofwhomever had instigated this time shift. If that’s what some time traveller hadintended, then he was being very, very clever. Leaving no trace, no tracks… nothing forthem to identify the moment they’d arrived in the past.

Very clever.

Maddy interrupted Foster’s train of thought. ‘Uhh, Foster… a warningdialogue box has come up.’

He looked at it.

LOCATION POINT PHASE INTERRUPTION

ABORT OR CONTINUE?

‘The computer’s picking up varying density packets inthe pick-up window.’

‘Meaning?’

‘The computer monitors the area inside the target window for the minute before we’re due to send back our operatives. If there’s alot of unexpected movement through it, we can assume there are unwary people or perhaps ananimal walking across it. If it’s persistent enough, the computer flags awarning.’

‘What do we do?’

‘Wait and see if it continues,’ he replied, pointing to a graphic display on thescreen. ‘There’s a density packet spike. Someone or something walked through aboutten seconds ago.’

‘We aren’t going to leave them?’ asked Sal, her voice brittle withworry.

Foster shook his head. ‘That won’t happen,’ he reassured her. ‘If weneed to abort this window, we’ll try again in an hour.’

He looked at the display. There were no more density spikes.

‘It looks like a one-off,’ he said. ‘Could easily have been a bird flyingthrough, or rubbish blown across. It happens quite often.’

Sal managed a wan smile. ‘OK.’

‘Thirty seconds,’ said Maddy. ‘We aborting or continuing?’

The display looked flat. Whatever had passed through didn’t look like it was comingback. In all likelihood it was Liam accidentally stepping in too early. The support unit hadprobably advised him to stand clear and now they were both waiting patiently to come home.

‘Continue,’ said Foster.

Maddy clicked the mouse and the dialogue box winked off screen.

‘Ten seconds.’

Sal turned towards the middle of the archway’s floor, ready to welcome them bothback.

‘Keep well clear, Sal,’ said Foster, pointing at a faint circleof yellow chalk on the concrete, scuffed and in need of a refresh. It marked out the dimensionof the return window. You really didn’t want to be standing there when it opened.

‘Five seconds.’

The generator hummed, the lights momentarily flickered and dimmed. Foster looked at thegraphic display, expecting to see the graph spike as Liam and Bob stepped in together. But itremained flat.

Come on, boys… stop messing around.

‘And three… and two…’

The graph suddenly spiked.

The lights went out completely.

As they flickered back on, he was about to turn round and give them both a telling-off forcutting it so fine when he heard Sal’s scream.

A young man stood there, staring at them, eyes widened with fear and incomprehension — a young soldier, perhaps no more than a couple of years older than Liam, blond hair croppedshort, his pale choir-boy cheeks smudged with dirt and flecks of dried blood. He wore a blackrubber boiler suit, rolled down to his waist. Beneath it was a grey army tunic with oak leaveson the collar and an eagle emblem on the chest.

His eyes darted from Sal, to Maddy, to Foster… and then to someone else’sdismembered leg and arm lying at his feet amid a scattering of dried leaves, twigs and acircular tuft of blood-spattered grass and soil.