by Ghost Rider
MISSION REPORT: AFTER FRAGMENTED INTEL REPORTS OF RUSSIAN ATTEMPTS TO
CREATE SPACE-TIME DISPLACEMENT EQUIPMENT AND DISRUPT THE TIME LINE, U.S.
DELTA FORCE TEAM SENT IN TO INVESTIGATE.
ALL NON-ESENSHAL EQUIPMENT
POWERED DOWN TO REDUCE INFRA-RED HEAT SIGNATURE, INCLUDING SPELL CHECKER.
MASSAGE ENDS...
Dry powdery snow filtered slowly down from the dark night sky above.
Below, a small group of figures picked their way slowly down a steep slope
covered with pine trees. At the head of the group was Major Howard Forbes.
Gripping the weapon in his hand tightly, he moved like with infinite care,
even a shadow made more noise. The whole landscape was as quiet as only a
winter night can be, broken only by the occasional sigh of the
wind.
Their target was just ahead, a small cluster of drab concrete
buildings in the base of this remote Siberian valley. They had been
painted light grey in order to blend in well with the snow which mantled
this area throughout most of the year.
There was little light, but
that did not matter to him, for he was wearing night vision goggles. The
night world to him was like day, only green. Like the men behind him, he
was clad all in white several layers deep in order to protect his body
from the cold.
The compact field radio in his ear beeped quietly so
that only he could hear it. He held his hand up to halt the men behind him
and knealt down beside a fallen tree trunk. "Wolf Man, this is Little Red
Riding Hood, come in, over," came the low voice of the other assault team
approaching from the north in a pincer movement.
"Little Red Riding
Hood, give me a sit rep," Forbes said.
"We have two guards patrolling
on the west side, looks like they're headin' towards you. Apart from that,
everything's quiet, sir."
Forbes looked towards the west side of the
compound. Sure enough, there was a pair of guards walking slowly around
the perimeter armed with AK-47's. "Prepare for assault. We'll move in,
take out the guards. Go on my signal."
"Rodger. Out." The radio went
silent. Forbes continued to move forward once more.
General Vladimir Kourkov leaned back in his chair and took a sip of
vodka, admiring the taste of the potent liquid. On the other side of the
room, the television - still considered quite a luxury in Russia - was
playing away to itself.
Some movie was playing, which annoyed the man
when he realised it was American. The Ruusian networks were screening
anything they could get their hands on, mainly because they had neither
the finances or the imagination to make their own. Communism had left it's
mark.
A young blond woman - why were American women always blond? -
dressed in animal skins was fighting with a man bare to the waist. A movie
about cavemen, Kourkov thought with distaste. Apparently the woman had
learned some form of martial arts and had no problem with using it because
she gave the man a resounding kicking. As the defeated man lay on the
ground, an old man came forward and took his necklace while the blone
woman looked on smugly.
"Damned stupid Americans," Kourkov muttered as
he reached for the remote and turned the TV off.
Well, he still had a
few tasks to attend to. He lifted up his to-do list for today and studied
the comments.
1. Pick up bread and milk from the shops.
2. Phone the wife.
3. Get a haircut.
4. Begin secret operation to change the course
of history and destroy the free world.
"Hmmm." He put a tick beside the first three and replaced the list on
the table beside him as he reached for a phone.
Forbes crept silently forward, clutching his MP-5 tightly. The guards
were facing away from him, chatting as they smoked to keep warm. He could
even smell the cheap Russian tobacco.
He was almost there, this was it.
He eased the safety catch off.
Suddenly there was a loud and urgent
beeping noise coming from his person, it seemed to be some kind of music.
The guards turned around instantly at the noise, a look of blank surprise
on their faces. The AK-47's began to rise up toward him.
There was no
time for him to fire. Retreating several paces to the tree line, he threw
himself behind a fallen trunks as the guards opened fire, the bark of
their big calibre rifles filling the air. They were answered by the
crackle of his own men returning fire.
As rounds pattered into the
ground around him, Forbes reached into his jacket and removed the source
of the noise. He found to his astonishment a mobile phone playing the
theme tune to William Tell. Where the hell had that come from? He pressed
the OK button and held the phone to his ear.
"Hi there," a voice said.
"I'd like two cheese and peparoni pizzas, four Cokes and a pack of
Nacho's." Music was playing in the background.
"Who the hell is this!"
Forbes demanded.
"Hey, easy man! What's goin' on there, you got an
action flick on or what?" There was a pause, Forbes could almost hear the
rusty cogs turning. "This is Ray's Pizza Parlour, isn't it?"
"Asshole!" Forbes smashed the phone against a tree.
It was obvious
that his men were vastly outnumbered, Russian troops were pouring in from
all directions. Suddenly a search light fixed on Forbes and his men and a
voice blared out over a loudspeaker. "Cease fire! Cease Fire! Lay down
your weapons and we promise not to hurt you... much."
Forbes looked at
the weapon in his hands and sighed in defeat.
25,000 YEARS EARLIER.
It was a warm and pleasant night in the summer, the stars overhead
could be clearly seen. It was quiet, broken only by the light breeze that
wafted in from the west, bringing with it traces of the great ocean not
far away. Nearby, a small collection of earth lodges was grouped around a
river.
Suddenly the peace and quiet was disturbed as flickers of blue
light began to dance in crazy patterns. A breeze suddenly sprang from
nowhere, causing the dry grass to sway back and forth.
The flickers of
light came together and suddenly a large bright sphere of white light
could be seen. In a bright flash, the sphere was gone, revealing the
figure of a man kneeling on the ground at the base of a round depression
that smoked and sizzled with heat.
The man stood up slowly and looked
around. He was tall, well over six foot and heavily slabbed with great
powerful muscles. His dark hair was short and combed back, but sticking up
top a little. He stood completely naked and completely unconcerned for all
the matter.
His impassive face turned toward the buildings as he
assesed the situation.
INIT SYS STARTUP
LOAD BIOS, CONFIRM MISSION STATUS... OK
COMMAND
PRIORITY... OK
PRIMARY MISSION: OBTAIN SUITABLE CLOTHING AND MEANS OF
TRANSPORTATION.
With deliberate steps, he made his way toward the buildings, aiming for
the largest one.
The festival was going well, music was playing from the simple band
that had formed in one corner. The alcahol that had been specially
prepared had gone down well and everyone was becomming quite merry. Even
Joplaya was starting to enjoy herself, she had learned to respect Echozar
for what he was, no man could love her more.
The door to the lodge
opened and the man walked in slowly. Joplaya gasped in surprise and
amazement when she saw him, standing there apparently unconcerned about
his situation. The music stooped abruptly.
He turned his emotionless
gaze toward her.
FEMALE
APPROX: 108LBS
HEIGHT: 169
PROBABILITY: 012%
Satisfied that she was not compatible, he looked toward Echozar, who
had put his arm around the woman he loved protectively.
MALE
APPROX: 186LBS
HEIGHT: 158
PROBABILITY: 008%
Then he spotted Dalanar and made towards him slowly.
PROCEED TO LEVEL 4 SCAN
SUITABLE MATCH. ACQUIRE.
He stopped just before the startled man and looked him over. They were
close to the same height, but the stranger was far more muscular. "I need
your clothes, your boots and your floppy hair," he said in a deep and slow
paced voice.
Suddenly several people began to laugh at the stupidity
of this situation. "I come with many Gifts tonight, friend, but I assure
you, my clothes are not amongst them," Dalanar said with a laugh.
"What are you? Some kind of wise guy?" the man asked.
Dalanar
smiled. "Well, yes, actually I am."
ASSESMENT: ASSHOLE
RECOMMENDATION: TERMINATE
Drawing back his fist, the man landed a solid punch on Dalanar's jaw
that sent him flying back. At that, all kinds of commotion began. Mothers
began screaming and herding their children away from the scene.
Echozar
leapt forward and, grabbing a smouldering branch from the fire, thrust it
into the stranger's back. There was a sizzling as flesh burned.
The
stranger turned and grabbed Echozar, lifting the sturdy man off the
ground. With a powerful thrust, he was thrown clear across the room,
falling through the door. The man turned his attention back to
Dalanar.
Lying on the ground, still dazed from the punch, Dalanar
pulled off his tunic. "Here, take it!"
The stranger emerged a short
time later from the building now fully clad. He reached into his pocket
and pulled out a pair of sunglasses, then put them on.
PROCEED WITH PRIMARY MISSION.
"Hasta la Vista, Ayla."
THE PENTAGON, THREE HOURS LATER
The Situation Room was a specially constructed, strike-hardened nuclear
command centre located deep beneath the Pentagon in Washington DC. In the
event of a nuclear war, this was where Emergency Action Meetings (the
military equivalent of a group hug) would be held.
Today the big
conference room was filled almost to capacity, always a sure sign to
employees not 'in the know' that something was up. It was.
An woman
strode into the room in military uniform which proclaimed her a major. Her
name was Samatha Dawson. Tall, brunette and attractive, she carried
herself with the confidence that only beauty can bestow. Talk that had
pervaded the air in the room ceased once she entered. She walked up to the
small presentation podium at the end of the room and halted.
Carpenter, now a four-star general, scrutinised her closely for a
moment, trying to detect meaning in her impassive face. "Well major, I was
wondering if you could tell us what the hell happened?" he said cynically.
Dawson looked down at the folder now open on the desk in front of her
for a moment. She looked up and spoke in a clear voice. "Well, as you
know, the Delta Force team we sent in to investigate the Russian base was
intercepted." She paused for a moment, the next bit wasn't going to be
pleasant. "We have reason to believe that the mission was sabotaged, we
don't know by whom." There was a flurry of conversation at that, but
Carpenter silenced them with a raised hand. "That's not all. Approximately
one hour ago, our monitoring equipment at White Sands detected a quantum
anomaly consistent with that used to open a wormhole."
"You mean,
they've actually done it? The Russians have their own time machine?"
Carpenter asked. Something like this was bound to happen sooner or later,
nothing can ever remain classified. "Where did it go?"
Dawson reviewed
the briefing documents before her. "Initial estimates put it about
twenty-five thousand years in the past, the Pleistocene epoch. Around the
end of the last ice age."
"What else do we know?"
"Well, the
wormhole opened does not match the type of energy emissions used by us,
it's much morelow powered."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that
the Russians could not have sent a ship back in time," she said. "It would
have to be something small, just a human body, using the body's own
electromagnetic field to power the jump."
"So what exactly did they
send back?" Carpenter wondered.
"I think that Captain Boone here would
be of more use," she said, indicating a man standing just to one side of
the podium. He was black, of average height and well built.
Boone took
the podium. Pressing a button to activate a projector unit at the back of
the room, the wall behind him was suddenly covered with blue-print
schematic drawings of what looked to be some kind of skeleton. "This is
what our spies managed to recover, we believe this is what was sent back.
It's called a terminator, ultra high-tech. It consists of living human
bio-engineered tissue superimposed over a metal ento-skeleton. It's fully
armoured with titanium plating and kevlar inner housings, infra-red
detectors, night vision, radio isotope thermo-nulcear power
cells..."
Dawson stepped in for a moment. "It's like a microwaved hot
dog, sir - soft and warm on the outside, and one tough and cold son of a
b*tch on the inside."
"Why is it there anyway?" Carpenter wondered.
Boone took over again. "We believe a woman named Ayla has been
targetted for termination." He looked down at his own folder. "Erm...
female, aged nineteen, blonde, about 130 pounds, well tanned, voluptuous,
firm rounded buttocks..." Around the room, men crossed their legs.
"That's enough," Carpenter interrupted. "How can we stop
this?"
Boone looked up at the room. "Well sir, we have a new SOP from
the CIA and the FBI. Sit-Rep from the NSA, DIA and SAC NORAD suggests an
armed incursion -"
Dawson stepped in once more. "What everyone says is
that we get together a team armed with lots of big guns, go back there and
blow the sh*t out of this terminator before it gets Ayla, thus saving the
day."
"Yeah, that's pretty much it," Boone agreed.
"Why don't we
just stop the terminator before it was even sent back?" Carpenter asked.
She shrugged. "It's more exciting this way."
"Oh." He leaned back
in his chair. "Who's going to head the team?"
Dawson looked up.
"There's only one man in the world who's actually been to that time period
and not been killed. He's not currently listed under active service, but
we managed to track him down to Anchorage, Alaska."
"Well let's go!"
Carpenter barked.
The cold silence of the Alaskan day was broken suddenly by the
high-pitched chopping noise of the Huey's main engines as it sped towards
it's destination. The weather was fine for November and the deep blue sky
was free of clouds.
Carpenter, Dawson and an MP were sitting in the
rear compartment, staring out at the snow-covered mountains and ice fields
whipping past below. Suddenly the pilot's voice came over the intercom. "I
think this is it," he said simply. Before them in the middle of a small
clearing was a simple wood lodge. A Ford jeep was parked out front, but
apart from that, there was no sign of activity.
Reducing collective
power, he set the aircraft about thirty yards from the front porch,
kicking up a cloud of snow in the process. Once they were set firmly down,
he cut power to the engines and the blades came to a halt. There was a
silence once more.
The three passengers stepped out of the aircraft,
donning sunglasses to protect their eyes from the sun's harsh glare.
Carpenter gazed around, wondering why nobody had come out to meet them.
"You sure this is the place?" he wondered out loud.
Dawson nodded.
"According to our intel, yes." People involved in such high security
projects never really became civilians again. Well, not until they died.
"Let's take a look." Carpenter walked forwards toward the lodge and
then angled toward what passed as the back yard, he thought that he could
hear a noise.
Rounding the corner, he found what he was looking for -
a man in a red shirt and jeans standing there chopping wood. Beside the
lodge, several haunches of venison were hanging from wooden racks, the
cold air helping to preserve the meat. Swinging the axe easily over his
head, he brought it down with expert precision upon the wooden stump,
slicing it cleanly in half. "I see you haven't lost your touch, Jack,"
Carpenter said with a smile.
Taylor allowed the axe head to rest
against the ground while he took a breather, then turned around slowly to
face the three visitors.
He had let his hair grow longer in the five
years he had been out of the military, and there was a distinctive dark
stubble around his jaw. There were a couple of lines on his face that
hadn't been there before, but his eyes shone as vividly green as ever. He
smiled and dropped the axe when he recognised Carpenter, then strode over
and shook hands with him. "It's been a long time, general." Dawson and the
MP stayed back, allowing the old friends to greet each other.
"Too
long," Carpenter agreed, returning the hand shake. "You're looking good,
Jack."
"Thank you." They started to walk towards the lodge, Taylor felt
a little uneasy around the strangers. He didn't get many visitors out
here.
"So what brought you way out here?" Carpenter asked.
Taylor
shrugged. "Oh, I just needed to get away from everything for a while,
after what happened with -"
"Don't talk about that, Jack," Carpenter
cautioned. "That's for one of the Out of Time stories, not this." Taylor
nodded understanding. "So what have you been doing for the past five
years?"
"Well, I've started writing novels. It's not much, but it
keeps food on the table," Jack explained.
"And the deer hunting?"
Taylor shrugged again. "Oh, I just do that for a laugh." Taylor turned
serious. "So why are you here, general? Who are these people with you?" he
asked abruptly.
"Something's happened, Jack," Carpenter said gravely.
He pointed to Dawson. "Her name is Samantha Dawson, she's with military
intelligence."
"Who's the guy?"
Carpenter shrugged, "He's just an
extra."
Dawson joined them a moment later. She looked Taylor over, as
if assesing him. Finally they shook hands. "Major Taylor, it's a pleasure
to meet you at last. Your mission debriefings made for some interesting
reading."
"Likewise, Major Dawson," Taylor said. "I understand you
have something to tell me?" She nodded. "Maybe we should take this up
inside?"
"So let me get this straight," Taylor said as he began to pace the
room. "The Russians have sent a machine - which looks like a man - back in
time to change the course of history, and you want me to lead a crack team
of commando's to go back and kill it?" He looked down at Dawson. "Are you
currently under the care of a physician, major?"
She shook her head in
irritation. "Taylor, everything I've told you is true. But there's
something else."
"What?"
"The target for termination is Ayla, a
woman we believe you have some knowledge of."
His face turned pale as
the name from long ago hit him with the force of a sledge hammer. Ayla!
She was going to be killed? Surely that could not be, after everything she
had already been through. It was a long time before he spoke. "I can't do
it." He sighed. "I've put in my time already. It took me a long time to
get over Ayla and it wasn't easy. I can't go through all that again,
you'll have to do this without me. I'm sorry."
Dawson stood up. "We're
wasting our time here, we might as well go." She walked out of the room,
heading for the Huey.
Carpenter did not leave so quickly, however.
"Jack, when are you going to come full-circle?"
"What the hell are you
talking about?" Taylor asked, wondering why Carpenter just couldn't let
him be.
"Jack, let me tell you a story. One day there was an egg
called Humpty Dumpty, he sat on a wall. His friends told him not to, but
he always did his own thing. Do you know what happened to him, Jack?"
"No." Taylor leaned forward, eyes wide open as he listened to the
story.
"He fell off the wall, Jack. He broke into so many pieces that
all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put him together
again. Humpty Dumpty didn't accept what he was - an egg. And it destroyed
him." He looked directly at Taylor. "We didn't put you on this wall, you
did. And if you don't come to terms with what you are - if you don't come
full-circle - you might just fall off. You're a combat soldier, Jack, it's
a part of you. The best part."
Taylor looked down. "I guess I'm not
ready yet."
The old general sighed. "Alright." He turned to leave, but
halted at the door. "Look me up when you get back to the proper United
States, will you?"
"I'll do that, General."
Carpenter nodded in
gratitude and left, leaving Taylor alone.
He stood there for some
time, tearing away at himself as he questioned his decision. No, he
couldn't do it, could he?
He walked slowly through into the kitchen
where the TV was still blaring away. Suddenly music started up as the
commercial break ended. "I'll be there for yooooou!"
Suddenly
Taylor looked up. "To hell with this. Let's do it!" he said as he rushed
out of the kitchen and toward the Huey outside.