brilliant. They came here on a suicide mission!”
“No, they didn’t.” Lucas said quietly.
Travers glanced at him. “But then, how …”
“They just came here on a one-way trip,” said Lucas.
“They can never go back. But they can go anywhere they wantto in our timeline.”
“A guerrilla disruption team,” Steiger said. “They can spendthe rest of their lives clocking through our timeline. disrupting our historyeverywhere they go. And since they can never go home again, they’ve got nothingleft to lose.”
“Which means that we not only have to stop them from preventingCaesar’s assassination,” added Delaney, “we’ve got to make sure we find everysingle one of them. And kill them all.”
“You’ll need to do much more than that,” said Darkness. “Keepin mind that they’re in a position to affect the lives of at least
“Cleopatra,” Andre said.
“Precisely. If they fail in their objective to preventCaesar’s murder, they can still affect the course of history by killing Cleopatra.Or Marc Antony. for that matter. Or even Octavian. who will become CaesarAugustus.”
“Hell. I knew I was going to hate this mission,” saidDelaney.
“We can have Antony and Octavian covered.” Lucas said, aworried look on his face, “but they’ve already got Cleopatra.”
“Which is why I’ll have to kidnap her.” said Darkness.
10
Capt. Zeke Hollister of the Special Operations Group sat ona couch in his room at Cleopatra’s house, scowling and smoking a cigar. He wasscowling at the men standing before him, dressed in white cotton tunics andsandals. They were all standing at attention, their eyes firmly fixed on apoint somewhere above his head.
“At ease “ said Hollister in a voice that was quiet, yetlaced with barely suppressed fury.
The men assumed a position of parade rest, their eyes stillfocused on a point somewhere above him. They did not look at all at ease.
Hollister looked up at his platoon sergeant. “All right,Maselli,” he said, around his cigar, “what the hell went wrong’?”
Sgt. Robert Maselli’s jaw muscles tightened for a moment beforehe replied. “We got hit, sir.”
“I know you got hit. God damn it, what I want to know ishow? And by whom?”
Maselli swallowed nervously. “We don’t know, sir.”
Hollister stared at him for a long moment. He took a deepbreath and let it out slowly in an effort to control his temper.”Tell me whathappened.”
“We took three squads.” Maselli said. “Petrone led thefirst. Morton the second. I took the third. I figured we had plenty of time toconduct the operation. I knew we had at least a couple of hours once they wentinto the bedroom and I figured half an hour at most would be enough, plenty oftime to get the A team back before Caesar was ready to leave.”
Their platoon was divided into three squads-A team. B team.and C team. The A team was Caesar’s bodyguard. with Sgt. Morton in charge. Bteam, under Cpl. Petrone, remained stationed at the house with Hollister. Cteam. under Maselli, was recon and surveillance.
“It was going to be a fast operation,” Maselli continued. “hitand run and get out quick. Petrone led the detachment from B team againstSeptimus and the others. They set up an ambush on a quiet side street a shortdistance from their baseops. Morton led the group from A team against thatSabinus character and I went in with four men from C team to get Marcian. Iknow the idea was to take him alive for interrogation. but he was already deadwhen we got there.”
“Dead how?”
“Shot through the heart with a laser.” said Maselli. “Andthere’s one more thing. A guy was watching his house.”
“What guy’?”
“I don’t know, sir. I never saw him before. He was takinggood cover and we almost didn’t spot him. We took a risk and clocked straightin from the coordinates I picked up when we were at that orgy Marcian had acouple of weeks back. We found him dead in his room, with the door locked fromthe inside.”
“Suicide?”
“No chance,” Maselli said. “Whoever killed him had to haveclocked out.”
Hollister frowned. It wasn’t making any sense. “Go on.”
“We decided not to do anything about the guy keeping Marcian’splace under surveillance. Apparently, he didn’t know Marcian was already dead.so I doubt he was involved. For all we know, maybe he was just a burglar.casing the damn place.”
“You should have taken him.” said Hollister.
“I’m sorry, sir. I guess I made the wrong decision. It’sjust that finding Marcian dead really threw me. It simply didn’t make sense andI didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances.”
“All right.” said Hollister. chewing on his cigar. “What thehell happened with the other two assault teams?”
“After we found Marcian dead, we clocked over to back up Petrone’steam,” said Maselli. “Only we were too late. They’d already been hit. Nosurvivors. I left Church behind to take their discs and clock the bodies outand the rest of us clocked over to check on Morton’s group. They’d been hit, aswell.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Hollister. All right, Morton. let’shear it.”
Sgt. Morton picked up where Maselli had left off. “We clockedover to the Argiletum, where Sabinus had just moved into a small apartment. Wefigured he was only one guy, we’d have no trouble. We could probably take himalive for interrogation. Only there was someone keeping him under surveillance.We held back and while I was trying to figure out what the hell that meant.Sabinus came out and started walking down the street.”
“Alone?”
“Alone. And this guy started tailing him. So we startedtailing them both. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. But after a coupleof blocks. I was pretty sure that Sabinus or whoever the hell he really isspotted the guy who was tailing him so we decided to move in. Only before wecould, somebody opened up on our tail with lasers.”
Hollister frowned. “What the hell.
“That’s just what I thought, sir. And right about the sametime, we got hit. as well. I don’t know where the hell they were. I never evensaw them. Randall and Biers were down before we knew what hit us. Sabinus andthe guy tailing him both clocked out to who knows where. Then we got the hellout of there ourselves before we all got wasted. That’s all there is. sir.”
“Son of a
“What the fuck is going on? how many sides are there to thisthing’?”
“The only explanation I can think of is that it’s their Underground.”said Macelli. “They must have an entire cell back here. They’ve caught on to usand started backing up the T.I.A. team to prevent a disruption on their hometurf.”
Hollister nodded. “That would fit,” he said. “They could becovering the T.I.A. people, but that doesn’t explain the hit on Marcian. We’repretty sure that he was either in their Underground or another L.T.O. In eithercase, why take him out’? It doesn’t make any goddamn sense!”
“There’s obviously something going on that our Observers weren’taware of,” said Maselli.
“We allowed for the possibility of a T.I.A. adjustment teambeing clocked in,” said Hollister, “but we didn’t count on members of theUnderground coming to their aid. We should have foreseen that possibility. Butit’s still not necessarily a problem.” He got up and started pacing back andforth. “Marcian’s murder bothers me. It simply doesn’t fit. Why would they wantto take out one of their own people?”
