of fear and partly out of a self-serving justification-it was all right to treat them as sub-human so long as they were not fully developed.
The hominoids were never allowed a chance to stand on equal footing with humans and now they never would receive that chance. It was over. His life's work, wasted. 'That will be enough, Moreau!'
Moreau turned to see Drakov standing at the entrance to the clean room, a laser pistol held in his hand.
'You're too late,' said Moreau. His voice broke. 'I've destroyed them all. I began with the gestation room and once I smashed all the artificial wombs, I finished the task here. There is nothing left. Nothing.'
'You're wrong, Professor,' Drakov said. 'I told you before, I learned long ago not to put all of my eggs into one basket. Did you think this was my only laboratory? You have destroyed all of your own work. My own creations are being kept elsewhere. In fact, the one you were so concerned about has already been born. Even as we speak, it is in its time cycle of maturity. You are the one who is too late, Professor. When the Special Operations Group arrives, they will find three dead temporal agents and the corpse of one of their own people. Your body shall be here, as well. I imagine that Capt. Hunter will receive some sort of posthumous decoration for having single-handedly, at the cost of his own life, eliminated the threat to this timestream. You see, Professor, it all dovetails neatly. What you have done here will only lend credibility to the scene I will create.'
'Only it doesn't dovetail quite so neatly, Nikolai,' Moreau said. 'You will not have any corpses with which to stage your scene because I have released the prisoners and they are long gone.'
'You've done what?' said Drakov.
'They'll know now who was responsible for this,' Moreau said, 'and the only corpse they find here will be yours!'
He hurled a glass specimen jar at Drakov. Drakov jerked his head aside and fired as the jar smashed against the wall behind him, but his shot went wide and Moreau was on him in a flying leap. The laser flew out of Drakov's grasp and skittered across the floor, beneath one of the counters. They fell to the floor, Moreau on top, his fingers digging into Drakov's throat. Drakov dislodged him effortlessly, rolling him over and reversing their positions.
'You fool,' said Drakov, pinning him down. 'I have three times your strength!'
Moreau's hand clawed for Drakov's eyes. Drakov grabbed it, twisted Moreau's wrist, and broke it. Moreau cried out with pain. Drakov drew back his fist and smashed it into Moreau's face, once, twice, three times-and then the wall exploded.
The Rangers fanned out as they clocked in, circling round the palace complex from both sides and firing their weapons as they ran. The plasma blasts whumped against the walls, imploding them and bursting into washes of blue flame. A black garbed figure came diving out of one of the second-story windows as the palace erupted into flame. He hit the ground in a hard and awkward roll and came up running, favoring his side and holding his left shoulder as he ran.
'Benedetto!' Delaney shouted. 'Come on, he's heading for the robot!'
'For the what?' yelled Curtis, but Delaney was already sprinting after Benedetto with Andre running behind him. Deciding that two of them were sufficient to catch one man, Curtis turned his attention back to the assault. They were only a handful, one small unit, and they had to hit hard and keep on hitting hard until the Temporal Counter-Insurgency battalion clocked in from Galveston and came through the confluence to reinforce them. With any luck, they'd already have the job done by the time the T.C. I, strike force came on the scene. They had to get in and get out fast. The last thing they needed was for S.O.G. units to show up.
As Curtis and his squad moved in, a howling mob of half-naked men came streaming out from the compound, bearing down on them. Curtis blinked several times. They seemed to have about six arms apiece.
'Fire!' Curtis shouted.
His squad opened up on the attackers. They kept on coming, living torches running at them until they fell to the ground as lifeless hunks of charred meat. 'Sir,' said one of his men, 'did those guys have-'
'Never mind,' said Curtis. 'Just fry anything that moves.'
'Or flies?' the soldier said.
Curtis looked up. 'What in the name of…'
Screeching like banshees, the harpies came diving down, talons extended.
Moreau struggled to his knees, his face a mask of blood. Drakov was gone. The entire side of the building was demolished and the laboratory was in flames.
'All for nothing,' Moreau said, wiping the blood away from his eyes with his one good hand and gazing about him through the smoke at all the ruin. 'Drakov!' he shouted. 'Drakov!'
The flames were coming closer and he crawled away, coughing from the smoke.
'You should have killed me, Nikolai,' he said. 'You should have killed me while you had the chance.'
He struggled to his feet and lurched out of the laboratory into the hall. He could feel the plasma blasts slamming into the building and he knew there was very little time left. He staggered into Drakov's quarters and half collapsed onto his desk. He pawed through the papers, finally finding what he sought. He tucked the files beneath his arm and rummaged through the drawers, seeking the spare warp disc he knew Drakov kept there for emergencies. He knew it would be programmed with escape coordinates. He had little doubt that Drakov had already made good his escape. Wherever he had gone, Moreau would follow.
The entire room shook as a plasma blast hit the outside wall and the ceiling fell in. Moreau's hand closed around the warp disc as the debris struck and knocked him to the floor. The whole room was in flames. Half buried under the wreckage, wincing from the pain in his broken wrist, Moreau reached for the controls.
The fall had broken Benedetto's shoulder, but it hadn't slowed him down much. He knew well what to expect from the soldiers of the Temporal Corps and there was no chance to clock out. When the plasma blasts had hit the building, he was blown right through the window and the fall, in addition to breaking his shoulder, had shattered his warp disc. The only chance he had left now was Talos.
Trying to ignore the pain, he sprinted hard for the harbor. He glanced over his shoulder and saw two figures running after him. He swore and redoubled his efforts, but they were gaining on him. A plasma blast exploded on the ground to his left. Seconds later, another one hit to his right, directly ahead of him. They had him bracketed. The next one would find its target. He started to run serpentine to throw off their aim. It was the only thing to do, but it resulted in their closing the distance between them.
He reached the giant robot straddling the harbor, with plasma fire exploding all around him. One blast hit right next to him, close enough to throw him to the ground and set his clothes on fire. Gasping with pain, he ripped off his burning shirt and threw himself through the doorway in the robot's ankle, stabbing with burned fingers at the controls which would shut it. As it started to slide to, two plasma blasts struck it in rapid succession, the wash of blue flame coming through the slowly closing opening. He threw himself back just in time. Several more blasts hit the door and he saw molten bronze flowing at the bottom of the crack. There was no way out now. He was sealed in.
He half ran, half staggered up the metal stairs toward the control room, pulling himself along with his right hand grasping the railing. 'Bastards!' he swore, as he climbed the stairs, 'fucking bastards!'
Finn and Andre fired charge after charge into the door in the giant robot's ankle. They saw the bronze soften and start to flow, but even the intense heat of the plasma charges was not enough to blast the door open.
'It's no good,' said Delaney. 'The door's melted shut.'
'Then he's not going anywhere,' said Andre.
'Don't bet on that,' Delaney said, tersely. From inside the robot, they heard the sounds of machinery and hydraulics starting to move.
Curtis had posted guards around the perimeter of the transit area, but he needn't have bothered. The terrified population had fled in terror from them. The ground was littered with the corpses of Moreau's creatures and with the bodies of several of the Rangers who had been killed in the suicidal attack of the harpies. Drakov's ruined palace was ablaze. It was all over by the time the first wave of the T.C. I, strike force battalion started to clock in. Curtis approached Col. Cooper, the commander of the strike force.
'Looks like you people didn't need us,' Cooper said. 'You seem to have the situation well in hand.'
'We had no idea what kind of resistance we might have encountered, Colonel,' Curtis said. 'There was a — '
