about the stolen shipment, they didn’t dare report it until they’d had a chance to tell the Doctor. They couldn’t exactly call him. No one knows where he is. He just sort of… appears from time to time. Fortunately, he was due in to check on a shipment of weapons prototypes they were building for him. It’s a lucky thing Drakov didn’t steal those.”
“What sort of prototypes?” said Lucas.
“Disruptors,” Martingale said. “The Temporal Corps doesn’t even know about them yet. You’d better hope they work, because they’re probably what we’ll be using against Drakov’s base when the time comes.”
“What’s a disruptor?” Finn said. “Or shouldn’t I ask?”
“I haven’t seen one yet,” said Martingale, “but they sound impressive. It’s a sort of warp gun. Its transponder taps into the energy field of a neutron star by means of an Einstein-Rosen Generator link. A limitless supply of ammunition in the form of energy, leeched from a star through a time warp. Sounds like a lovely little sidearm, doesn’t it? You squeeze the trigger and you get a stream of neutrons.”
“You’re kidding,” Finn said.
“Just the thing for plinking, eh?” said Martingale, with a grin. “Bad analogy. There wouldn’t be a ‘plink.’ The target would be atomically disrupted. Disintegrated.”
“Jesus,” Finn said. “How the hell do you control a stream of neutrons?”
“Very carefully, I should think,” said Martingale. “I sure hope it works, otherwise we’re liable to have a very interesting experience.” He chuckled. “Sort of makes you want to think about gun control, doesn’t it? ‘If warp guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have warp guns.’ Make a great T-shirt.”
“What about radiation?” Lucas said.
“Most of it is supposed to be warped elsewhere, like with the grenades,” said Martingale. “At least that’s what the Doctor said. They haven’t been tested fully yet.”
“And we’re going to field-test them against Drakov’s base?” said Andre.
“I’d say that’s the least of our problems,” Martingale said. “Drakov has set up an impressive organization. He used time fugues to do it. Before your people even learned he’d hijacked a Soviet sub, he’d done something like ten years worth of organizational work. He learned a lot from the Timekeepers. He has everyone divided into subgroups. There are the Russian sailors on the sub. Then there are the crew of the Valkyrie.”
“Aren’t they part of the base personnel?” said Lucas.
“Is that what Drakov told you? Don’t you believe it. The Valkyrie hardly spends any time at the base. The crew has their own agenda, but I have no idea what it is. There’s also the fact that the base is rarely at full strength. A lot of them are always clocked out somewhere, doing God knows what in some other time period. I don’t know where. On top of that, there are the slaves Drakov got from Lafitte. They’re used as labor and a sort of ‘hostile native’ security force. Very showy. He has them dress up in loincloths and feathers and war paint, playing cannibals. They do a good job of keeping the curious away. Drakov is a real stickler for security. He hasn’t forgotten that the TIA managed to infiltrate the Timekeepers. No one is allowed to talk to anyone else about what they’re supposed to be doing. I have no idea how much von Kampf knows. I’ve tried to pump him, but he won’t talk. Santos doesn’t know all the details or at least he pretends not to. He genuinely doesn’t seem to care. He’s a burnout. Maybe Shiro knows the whole story, because Drakov has practically adopted him, only Shiro can’t talk and he’s about as easy to approach as a king cobra.”
“You said Drakov recruited people from different times,” said Lucas. “How many? What kind of people?”
Martingale shrugged. “I don’t know how many, exactly. At least several hundred. He’s got Celts, Huns, Romans, Spartans, Indians, Afghanis, Samurai, a regular melting pot of human savagery, all working together as a unit.”
“That’s bad,” said Finn.
“Not if the warp guns work out okay,” said Martingale.
“That’s not what I meant,” said Finn. “Drakov is smart.
He’s set it up so that we not only have to neutralize him and his submarine, but we have to take out the Valkyrie, as well, plus the base and all his personnel. And if what you say is accurate, then none of them are ever all there at the same time. If that doesn’t cheer you up, he’s got a force of temporally displaced persons. You want to talk about what the odds are of their removal from their natural times not affecting history? The cumulative effect, at least, would be bound to show up somewhere in the timestream.”
“That’s probably why he did it that way,” Lucas said. “Even if we can stop him from changing history, we’re liable to change history ourselves by changing the history of the people whose history he’s already changed.”
“You want to run that by me again?” said Martingale.
“Better not,” said Finn. “It sounded confusing enough the first time. Martingale’s right. The whole thing is a joke. No wonder Drakov isn’t worried about us. We might as well just kick back and get drunk.”
“How did you manage to get on the inside?” Lucas said.
“The Underground has something similar to a Code Red,” said Martingale. “We’ve all been on the watch for the surviving Timekeepers ever since we heard their leaders got away. Some of us almost got Falcon one time, but she slipped away. Well, now that she’s dead, that leaves only two of the original group. Drakov and Benedetto. Santos is harmless by himself, but Drakov is another story. We always figured it would be Falcon who would start it up again. We got hold of their dossiers and circulated them through our network of contacts. We’re not as well organized as the TIA, but we got the word out. We didn’t want the Timekeepers starting up again any more than you did. They were scary enough the first time.”
“So you had the entire Underground on the watch for them?” Andre said.
Martingale nodded. “When Drakov started recruiting his mercenaries, one person got in and put the word out. We had no idea where he’d be recruiting or in what time periods, so everybody kept their ears open. I got a lead from a soldier who managed to get in and I clocked over to sign up, as well. We thought we ‘d try to get as many of our people on the inside as possible, find out what the story was, then contact the Temporal Corps. But we had some bad luck. First off, we were only able to get five people in. Drakov moved very fast. Of the network people, that is, the ones who have the homing grafts the Doctor can trace, I was the only one who got recruited. Stroke of luck there. But we failed to take an important thing into consideration. One of the people who got in was recruited in ancient Rome. Another in the 14th century, another in the 16th and so on. Drakov put most of the primitives through reeducation, so they would be able to accept 27th-century science. We should have thought about that. Can you imagine trying to explain time travel to a Thuggee?”
“So you lost your people when they went through the conditioning process,” Lucas said.
Martingale nodded. “They’re now part of Drakov’s loyal crew. I was the only one who didn’t get brainwashed. I was put through Benedetto’s little head game, too, but it didn’t take for some reason. I had a real bad moment there.”
“It doesn’t always work on everyone,” said Finn. “Geniuses are supposed to be difficult to condition. So are hardcore sociopaths. But when it doesn’t take, it usually results in a complete mindwipe.”
“I heard that,” Martingale said. “The Doctor said the reason I survived it had something to do with my brain waves being altered somehow by the homing graft. He said he anticipated that when he designed it.”
“I can’t wait to meet this guy,” said Finn.
“You will. He’s already overdue. He could pop in at any moment.”
“Why haven’t you been able to get the word out about the location of the base?” said Lucas.
“Because for a long time, I didn’t even know where it was,” said Martingale. “You’ll understand what I mean when you see it. Besides, I had no way of getting in touch with anybody. See, all of Drakov’s people were issued warp discs, but nobody knows how to use them. I’m okay with a chronoplate, but there was no way I could take one with me. Too damn bulky. If I brought along a remote unit, it would have been turned up in a search. Drakov wants to be able to control his people’s transitions.”
“You mean the destination coordinates are pre-set for them?” said Lucas.
“That’s right. Take the submarine crew, for example. Should anything happen to the sub, their discs are pre- set to clock them back to the base. That way, at least, Drakov won’t lose any personnel. That’s if they react quickly enough. Ditto the crew of the Valkyrie. Anytime he sends people anywhere, they have to report to get their discs set for destination and return. They know how to activate them, but that’s it. He provides the coordinates. He programs the discs. I never even saw a manual on these things. I never even heard of warp discs until Drakov gave me one. They’re too damn new.”
“Couldn’t Darkness have shown you how to program them?” said Andre.
