Time Salvager, page 4
Levin willed the fourteen bands clinging loosely against both of his arms—six on his left, eight on his right—to tighten. He didn’t bother masking them with his paint band, instead passing them off as iron rings, commonly used by mercenaries as a blocking bracer. Like most operatives, he preferred to use as little of the paint as possible when on a job. Assuming his paid sources were correct, he would have need of those bands very soon. Levin walked up a short flight of stairs and swung open the red double doors that led him into the Hong Jiu Inn.
It was a busy night, filled with patrons, but not more than the usual that he had observed over the past two days. The eating area was packed with merchants, locals, and soldiers. A group of drunken Uyghers filled three tables on the far left, caravan troops by the look of them. The table adjacent to theirs seated a group of Mongols. The guards kept careful watch over that entire end of the inn. It wouldn’t take much to ignite a confrontation.
To the right of the door were at least three of the city’s gangs. Levin recognized two of them: the Yellow Snakes and the Dirt Dragons. Levin frowned; none of these people looked like any of Cole’s men. Then he noticed a scrawny ruffian walk up the stairs to the second floor and disappear into one of the rooms.
Of course. Cole was a big man now. These grunts weren’t worth his time. Levin walked through the crowded area, slipping between benches and chairs filled with toughs, traders, and pleasure girls. Doing this quietly probably wasn’t going to be an option, but he’d have to try. It had taken him two weeks just to locate the feared and infamous Fist of the Low Laying River, or whatever the hell he was calling himself here. It’d be another month to find him again if he left this inn without Levin’s hands around his neck.
A bouncer standing at the base of the stairs stopped Levin with a hammed fist and shook his head. “What’s your business, pig?”
“I have business with big brother up top,” said Levin, his comm band translating his words into Han.
The bouncer looked him up and down, and grunted. “A pig like you belongs down here with the other swine. Go away before I beat you so terribly your mother feels it.” He shoved Levin on the chest.
Levin caught the shove nonchalantly with his left hand and twisted the bouncer’s thumb at an odd angle. He tried to pull away but Levin’s exo held his grip like a vise, and he squeezed until the bouncer’s knees buckled.
“Are you sure you wish to block my path, friend?” Levin tightened his grip. “The Jiang Hu is vast. Do you know all its masters?” He squeezed even tighter.
The bouncer quivered and bobbed his head up and down several times. “I’m … I’m sorry, Sifu, Please forgive me.”
Levin let the bouncer go. The fewer ripples the better, though he didn’t worry much about that here. The odds of a time chronostream self-healing in this cesspool of an inn were high. Still, best not to take chances. That boy had already made enough ripples for both of them, running away from the present. The poor fool knew better. No one ever escaped the auditors.
“Next time, know who you disrespect before you are taught a permanent lesson,” he said.
The bouncer scurried to the side and let him pass. Levin continued to the top of the stairs, which opened to a hallway that overlooked the eating area on the right and had a row of doors on the left. He went to the door on the far end, where the sounds of revelry were loudest. Cole would want easy escape routes out of the building, and the window overlooking the eating area below gave him a clear view of people coming into the inn. Not that it would help him much in this instance. Levin’s paint made him look like the other thousands of Han walking in the city.
Levin slid the double sliding panels outward and intruded on the private dinner of two dozen scruffy-looking men at a pair of long tables on each side. Two men and a girl sat at a smaller table on a raised platform on the far end. The one on the left looked the part of a Low River gang member, possibly a lieutenant or a second lieutenant. The one on the right was a pleasure girl draped over the man in the middle.
“I seek Ko Li,” he said formally.
All eyes turned toward him. Levin stifled a grunt. Of course Cole would make himself look like a god among these men. The real Cole looked ordinary in every way possible, save for a pockmarked face from a childhood disease that had ravaged his body. This paint job he now wore made him look like an Adonis. No wonder he was causing ripples. Vain and stupid. At least Cole had made himself look indigenous enough; just taller, more beautiful, better fed, and built like a giant. Definitely not the best way to remain inconspicuous. Well, if the guy was going to try to live a fantasy, he might as well have gone all the way.
“How dare you?” A skinny bandit at the end of the table stood up and snarled, puffing out his chest. He must be the lowest among them.
Levin kept his eyes on Cole, half-expecting the fugitive to take off at any moment. Instead, Cole nodded at the skinny bandit.
The bandit stomped up to Levin and pointed at the ground. “You address Sifu Li as ‘master,’ you insolent dog.” The bandit tried to slap Levin.
Levin didn’t bother using his exo. Doing so could give him away to Cole. Besides, he didn’t need to use it against this scrawny thing. Levin slipped forward, spun, and used the bandit’s momentum to send him sprawling into the center of the room. The rest of the bandits stood up, cleavers and broadswords drawn.
“I wish to speak with Sifu Ko Li, better known as the Fist of the Low Laying River,” Levin repeated, his voice low and measured. He waited for Cole to make his next move.
There was tension in the air, the calm right before hell cracked open and brimstone spewed forth. Levin was content to wait. Cole’s next move would determine what the fugitive was thinking. If he fled, then he already knew Levin was an auditor. If he sent his men to attack first, he was insecure of his position here. If he was …
“Please join me,” Cole said, standing and clapping his hands. “It is always an honor to have another master in the room. Please sit. Sit.”
Levin kept his face on his prey as he walked into and through the group of thugs with their weapons still drawn. He stopped just opposite Cole at the end of the table. Once there, both sat at the same time.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” said Levin.
“Who do I have the honor of sharing this table with, Master?” Cole asked.
“I am a master of nothing.”
Cole chuckled. “How true. Are we not always students thirsty for more?” He gestured to the woman, who picked up the teapot. “So you wish to see a test among skilled students of the world then. But first, my table is yours. Would you like some tea?” She poured Levin a cup before he had a chance to respond.
“They don’t have tea where I come from.”
Cole raised an eyebrow and his hands froze. The two stared at each other long and hard before Levin finally leaned forward and spoke Solar English in a low voice. “There was some real genius in your plan. Forging your requisitions to obtain a solar charger. Poisoning your handler. Corrupting your jump records so we couldn’t pull you back. Fleeing to a time and place where you can mask the use of your bands as mystical martial arts. You had this planned out pretty well.”
The blood drained from Cole’s face. His gang looked on with interest, no doubt thinking there was some mental battle passing between two masters. They were a superstitious lot, which of course was why the fugitive chronman had fled here to begin with.
“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” Cole finally said, recovering from his initial shock and pretending to shrug it off.
Right there, Levin knew he had made up his mind and was going to try to make a run for it. He leaned forward. “Tell me. Is it Past-Era Addiction? If it is, we can help you.”
Cole threw his head back and laughed. “No, you fool. I’m not addicted. I just hate the present. Any sane man would.”
“That’s unfortunate,” said Levin. It really was. If it was Past-Era Addiction, he could use that to argue leniency for the boy. Instead, Levin would now have to apply the full force of his directive.
“So now what?” said Cole.
Levin picked up the small teacup and took a sip, curious to try it. Bitter but aromatic; he kind of liked it. “Depends on you,” he said. “You can surrender, and we can return peacefully, and I’ll be sure to note that in my report, or you can try your odds fighting with an auditor.”
“If we war, won’t it create large ripples?”
Levin shrugged. “Perhaps, but in this time and region, I have little doubt the chronostream will self-heal. The question is, will you survive? Is that something you’re willing to risk?”
Cole spat on the floor. “As opposed to die in the present? What kind of a question is that? Listen, Auditor, no matter what you think, I’m not going back. The only thing you’re taking back to that shit hole is my dead body.”
“Technically,” Levin said, “I don’t need to care how you are brought back.” He took another sip of the tea. He was really getting used to this bitter drink. Maybe he could take some of it back with him to the present. “Tell me, Cole, why didn’t you just hide here and keep a low profile? Why did you have to use your bands and make a name for yourself as some master?”
The Tier-4 chronman shrugged. “Tried that for the first couple of weeks. Got tired of being nobody with no money. Couldn’t take it anymore. Used a little power. Then had to use a little more.”
Levin nodded. A common story among runaways, which was why fleeing into history almost always failed. The path to becoming a chronman was long and difficult. Survivors of the Academy often wielded their power not only as a status symbol but a badge of honor. Power like that was hard to relinquish after a person was used to it for so long.
“But to become a famed master of the east?” Levin chuckled. “That’s a little much.”
The last comment earned a grin from Cole. “What can I say? Word spreads fast in these parts. Show some power, attract a few more masters to challenge me, and before I knew it, I’m big-time.” He leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “I’m so good, even I can’t suppress myself.”
Levin eyed the two dozen men seated behind him with their hands still on their weapons. He turned his attention back to Cole. “Why don’t you send your men away? We’ll go find a nice open area with no one around to conclude our business.”
Cole stood up and waved his arms magnanimously at his gang. “Now, why the fuck would I want to do that? As long as there are witnesses, I know you’ll hold back. I won’t have that problem now, will I?” He looked past Levin’s shoulder and shouted in Han, “Brothers, teach this dog some respect!”
Levin stood just as the first of the idiots behind him charged in with a cleaver. Levin’s exo-powered movements and shield kept him out of danger, but Cole wasn’t wrong. It was Levin’s duty to display as little superhuman power as possible. It was important to him to minimize the casualties as well. Still, it didn’t mean he had to be gentle.
The edge of the cleaver struck his shield, sparking orange stars into the air around him. In a second, Levin had grabbed his assailant by the armpit and hurtled him toward two more of the thugs. The crowd descended on him, swinging bats and blades as Levin joined the fray, using his natural skills as well as his exo to slice through them, seeming to move just out of their reach, dodging their swing as he mowed down three to four at a time.
Cole joined in the melee, powering his exo to full and launching himself at Levin. The Tier-4 had only four kinetic coils active. Levin doubted he could produce any more than that at his capabilities. In this situation, Levin made sure to fight down to Cole’s level in order to keep up the pretense of an actual hand-to-hand fight. He sprouted four of his own coils to lock down Cole’s and proceeded to beat him down with his exo-powered fists.
Cole struggled to break free even as more of his gang joined in the fight, adding to the chaos. Every time their weapons struck his exo, small sparks glimmered into the air. Levin scolded himself for being so obvious. He continued to fight by hand, kicking any thugs in reach and battering at Cole’s shield.
The number of bodies became overwhelming as a surge of the gang distracted Levin long enough for Cole to shake free. The fugitive chronman jumped out of the window overlooking the main room and landed on one of the long tables below, shattering it and scattering the patrons.
Levin gritted his teeth. There went any hope of doing this quietly. He followed suit and jumped out the window as Cole ran from the building. Levin landed with a thud on top of the shattered remains of the table and sprinted after the fugitive. Hopefully, the damn guy had enough common sense not to exercise his exo to its full extent.
Levin ran outside just in time to see Cole leap atop a tile roof and sprint down its length. Well, so much for that. The sooner he got Cole out of this time, the better, regardless of the consequences. He followed suit, shooting up to the roof, to the gasps of the crowds nearby, and gave chase, using his superior bands to catch up.
The game of rooftop cat-and-mouse continued for nearly a minute as the two bounded across the city’s skyline. This was the opposite of keeping things low-key, but the trap has been sprung. One way or another, Levin was going to haul Cole in.
He was making ground step by step until they were only half a building length apart. He was just within reach of Cole’s coils when he struck, shooting out with two of his own coils, one that tied down the coil Cole used to push off, and the other to grab Cole around the waist. Cole’s momentum tripped him midair as Levin reeled him in. The fugitive chronman sliced off the coil around his waist, only to have six more of Levin’s wrap around his body until he could no longer move. He struggled and jerked back and forth against the invisible bonds as Levin floated him closer. As a final precaution, Levin slipped two small coils down the length of Cole’s arms and snapped all eight of the fugitive’s bands.
“It’s over. We’re going home,” he said.
“Just kill me then, Auditor,” Cole begged. “I can’t go back.”
“You need to be brought to justice for violating the fifth Time Law.”
“Please,” tears poured down Cole’s face, “you can’t take me back. My uncle is an auditor. I can’t shame him like this.”
Levin dropped the paint image and stared stone-faced at his prisoner, ignoring the look of shock on Cole’s face. “The only additional shame that could have been heaped on me is if I didn’t bring you back. Come, your mother will want to say good-bye.” A second later, there was a flash of orange light, and the two figures that moments before were dancing on the rooftops of Luoyang were gone.
Gossip of the two mysterious masters spread over the years, with witnesses swearing they had seen the two fly through the air. Gossip became stories; stories became facts; facts became lore. Eventually, the tales grew and the actions more fantastic until it became part of the region’s martial arts legend, which to this day could be found in ChronoCom’s databases.
It was the worst blemish on Levin Javier-Oberon’s career up until the day James Griffin-Mars walked into his office.
FIVE
1944
A week later, after hitching his collie to the transport JE Pheelrite from Himalia Station to Earth via Mars, James could just make out the circular brown outline of his species’s birthworld. Almost every chronman at one point or another had had to run jobs on Earth. Like the majority of people with means, James avoided the planet as much as possible. Luckily for him, most of the times he spent on the planet were in the past, during better days when it wasn’t such a toxic mess.
No government or corporation claimed dominion over Earth anymore. Why bother? There were few resources left to exploit, and parts of the atmosphere were so poisonous that it might as well have been Uranus. That left each of the hundred or so remaining large cities to form their own states alongside the few thousand scattered remnants of the population that now lived in the wastelands or deep underground. There hadn’t been a census taken of Earth for over a hundred years, but ChronoCom estimated there were now fewer than a hundred million people living on the planet of their origin.
Without a megacorporation based here, the only global entity with any semblance of power was ChronoCom, which acted as a policing force when the situation warranted. Earth Central, their base in Chicago on the Northern America continent, was the largest of all the ChronoCom facilities, because the planet still held the richest quarry of time salvaging in the solar system. Otherwise, much of the agency’s administration would have moved off the mud ball to Europa or Callisto years ago.
Smitt walked up next to James and watched the planet slowly grow larger. “They say the water used to be so blue you could see it from space.”
James looked at the brown swirling oceans and grunted. “I don’t believe it. They say a lot of dumb things. Last time I saw the ocean on Earth was back in the mid-twenty-third century in a place called Tokyo, two days before the entire city sank into it. Even then the water was just a lighter shade of shit. I remember some clown declaring that humans would be setting foot in the next solar system by 2350. Imagine how disappointed he’d be if he was around today.”
Smitt’s eyes glazed over, and then he glanced at James. “We’re running behind schedule. Need to get you into position during Earth’s rotation or we blow it. I’ve just ordered the captain to detour to Europe first and drop you off from the Pheelrite. We’ll dislodge the collie separately and have her maintain orbit for you. I’ll handle a remote link until I get to Hops at Earth Central. This should be a pretty easy smash-and-grab job for you anyway.”
“You call zipping down to a burning castle while it’s being bombed an easy job? And I have to cut the room apart in how long? Thirty minutes? You’re a crap handler if you think this is easy.”
Smitt grinned. “I’ve just got faith in you. Remember, it’s a rich patron. Funds you, ChronoCom, and most importantly, me. We can’t live without these guys.”
“What does he want with the Amber Room anyway?” James asked. “Humanity is teetering on resource starvation and this rich Europian pays for a Tier-1 chronman to risk his life to go back in time for a silly piece of art? Of all the self-indulgent and wasteful expenditures…”
