First off, I just want to apologize to everyone who's still keeping an eye on this story. I have no intentions of letting this piece die out, but some times real-life has a way of kicking us around a little bit, and with a little bit of luck and some more elbow grease, delays like this should be the exception and not the rule.
Chapter 11
Ruffin Biggs stopped short at the bottom of the train platform, and swung around to see whatever was visible in the light of the dim and fluttering lamps from the train station. "This here's Rivington?" he asked disbelievingly. Like Henry Pleasants, he'd fallen behind during the last mad scramble through the folding lines of the Rivington men, and had never seen the town itself.
"You believe it, Ruffin," Mollie scolded him. She knew she sounded defensive, but when she reached the ground, and got a good look around for herself, she instantly regretted snapping; even sympathized with his comment.
"Sorry, Mol… ah, Melvin, but this ain't quite what I was expecting," Ruffin replied with a chastised expression. "I sorta thought I'd see… hell, I don't know."
Caudell understood what he meant. "You thought maybe the streets would be paved with gold, is that it?" When Biggs nodded sheepishly, he said, "I was expecting the same thing when I first came by here, back in sixty-four."
Henry Pleasants had a more important realization though. "I don't know abut paved with gold, Nate, but where are the factories?" He squinted into the darkness, and shook his head. "How in the hell did they build more than a hundred thousand repeaters and all those munitions without any kind of factories?"
Nate and Mollie shared a knowing glance, but Ruffin Biggs turned to Pleasants in consternation. "Maybe we just cain't see 'em behind the trees," he suggested doubtfully.
Sensing the conversation taking a dangerous turn, Mollie suddenly pointed into the chill darkness where the town met the edge of the encroaching woods. "There they are!" she exclaimed suddenly, pointing.
Pleasants squinted in the direction she indicated, and said, "The factories?"
"The Rivington men," she clarified, using her outstretched hand to guide his eyes down below the tree line. Squinting into the murk, they could see that she was right; four figures were shuffling amid the rubble directly across from the train station. As they watched, one of them stooped and hefted a shard, pointing it out to his companions. Their voices were muted by distance and the oppressive air, but Caudell felt a chill working up his spine nevertheless.
That's the building the time-engine was in! he realized with a start. Several dire thoughts wormed their way through his brain at the same time, but the predominant one asked, What if those are more Rivington men, come to learn the whereabouts of their friends? By Mollie's expression, he could tell the same idea was gnawing at her.
Biggs glanced at the ground and scuffed his shoe impatiently against the bottom step of the station platform. "So Henry… err, Colonel Henry, what do we do?"
Pleasants turned and stared at him blankly for a moment before blinking and shaking his head. "We follow them, what else?" he said, waving them forward. He led them slowly at an angle towards the center of town, bringing them obliquely closer to their quarry as they moved. There was no sense in alerting the Rivington men here, in their own lair.
He slowed further though, holding up a hand to emphasize his point when one of the four strangers – the woman, by the bulbous silhouette of the dress – pointed into the forest beside where a neatly-laid road had once been. She said something inaudible, gesturing with some object in her left hand. The tallest of them, whose height and wide-brimmed leather hat identified him as the one called Sheridan, nodded, replied, and led his own team towards the woods.
Watching their careful movements, and the way they were picking their way across the debris beneath their feet, Caudell tensed. What made him more nervous though, was the way they weren't reacting to their pursuers. He was being as silent as possible – they all were – but even so, they were making no small commotion crossing the charred rubble of the old warehouses. They had to have heard us by now, he thought uneasily.
Still, there was no reaction.
When an angry wasp buzzed past his ear, he only spared one hand to brush at that side of his head. The briefest of moments passed while the sound drifted through his mind, and in the depths of memory, connected with something. The adrenaline rush clubbed him right between the eyes just as the second bullet whistled past directly between him and Henry Pleasants, who was already throwing himself to the ground. The unmistakable wet smack of a bullet into flesh reached his ears at the same time as the third and fourth bullets whined by – overhead now, with his face pressed into the cold, wet ash on the ground.
In a move that he knew was foolish, Caudell lifted his head and tried to process as much as he could see in a brief, sweeping glimpse. The four Rivington men were down, he could see: whether or not they'd been killed or were simply lying low the way he was, he couldn't say. He hadn't heard any shots, but the bullets were unmistakably real, and he could only guess at the direction they had come from. To his right, he saw Henry Pleasants crawling into the dubious shelter of a fire-blackened stump of building support. Almost immediately, a sense of blinding panic caught him as the sound of lead striking home replayed itself in his mind. Heedless of the risk, he lifted himself far enough off the ground to turn around, dreading the thought that Mollie had once again stopped a bullet.
But she was crouched behind what might once have been a section of roof, peering intently in the general direction from which she thought the shots had come. When she noticed his relieved gaze, she waved shortly, ducking quickly when a bullet thudded into the wood above her.
Swiveling his head farther around, Caudell spied Ruffin Biggs lying sprawled across a jagged pile of splintered beams and charred foil of some metal he couldn't begin to identify. He whistled and waved to get Biggs' attention as best he could, but the other man didn't look up.
Biggs was swearing actually, quite profusely too, by any standard. "God damn it to hell," he finished. Finally, he glanced up and saw Caudell, staring at him. "Sorry, Nate," he said, sounding sheepish now. "It's this damned bum leg o' mine. It don't take kindly to all this scrap on the ground, and…" he trailed off suddenly as he glanced down at himself. Even through the darkness and the gloom, Caudell could see his face go completely ashen.
Fighting the urge to scream or panic, Biggs stared fixedly at his right thigh, which was actually squirting bright red blood, colored a deep burgundy in the darkness, from the big artery the bullet had severed there. It was a funny thing, he would think later: as though his brain didn't know what to make of the damage until he saw it with his own two eyes; his leg only felt dead and numb for a brief moment after he got an eyeful of it. Then the pain blindsided him, and he retched, too stunned to scream, while his vision darkened and the world become a dim, colorless shadow at the far end of a black tunnel. Part of him knew that he needed a tourniquet right away or he'd bleed to death right there on a rubble heap in Rivington. His fingers wouldn't cooperate though, and slicked with blood, their feeble attempts to unfasten his belt weren't going to be fast enough. "Aw shitfire," he slurred before his vision went totally black, and consciousness fled.
*****
Michael Garibaldi was never certain about his first warning came from. It might have been a flicker of light in the forest, a suspicious shadow, or the snap of a twig crunching beneath a foot. Whatever it was, his instincts were suddenly screaming at him: the same instincts that had kept him alive for more than three years on Babylon 5. They had only failed him once, so he was in motion almost before the first bullet buzzed past. His momentum carried him straight through Sheridan, who was sent sprawling with an indignant curse, and into Beverly Crusher, shoving her to the ground none-too-gently. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Marcus hesitate for a split-second before he also made a headlong dive for the cold, damp ground.
Glaring at the twisted piece of metal protruding from the rubble six inches from his face, Sheridan pushed aside the throb in his left shoulder where he'd hit something hard on the way down. "Mr. Garibaldi," he came close to snarling. He rolled himself over, and started to sit up. "What the –" He threw himself backwards instantly, cutting off his own words when he heard a ricochet from that scrap of metal, and saw it spark. Somehow, his hat had managed to stay on, and he yanked it off violently to clear his vision, and make himself a smaller target.
The initial surprise wore off quickly, his heart slowing its racing, and his first coherent thought was to wonder about the source of that fire. He rolled, and squirmed sidewise, so he could look back towards the train station, and the four figures who'd been a few dozen yards behind them just moments ago. He couldn't see them anywhere.
When Garibaldi saw the direction of Sheridan's gaze, he tugged the other man's sleeve with the hand that wasn't gripping his PPG, and shook his head when he was sure he'd gotten Sheridan's attention. "It's coming from in front of us," he hissed, pointing to some indefinable spot in the woods. There were no reports giving away the location of the shooter – or shooters, as the case might be – but the pattern of strikes gave him some idea about the origin of the shots.
Sheridan nodded, understanding. Those four either hit the dirt when we did, or they're already dead, he thought, sparing one last backwards glance. He thought he heard voices back there, but couldn't be sure. His attention quickly turned to his own team, though. "Is everyone all right?" he called out. That was mostly for Marcus's sake – he couldn't see the ranger from where he lay, but Crusher was pulling herself into a better vantage point, and Garibaldi was clearly not injured. The intermittent bullets still whistling overhead were a constant reminder that the current state of affairs couldn't go on for too much longer.
"I'm fine," the Starfleet doctor answered immediately. "Just a little shaken. Who would be trying to shoot at us?" she sounded more baffled than worried, which reassured the two Earthforce officers slightly. Despite Picard's recommendation, she was still an unknown quantity as far as they were concerned – as was Picard himself. So far though, she was living up to the Starfleet captain's glowing report.
"I'd say that's an academic point now, don't you think?" Marcus said, his disembodied voice sounding almost conversational. "And in case anyone's wondering, I'm fine too, thank you."
Garibaldi rolled his eyes, then scooted sideways until he was beside Crusher. "Yo, Doc, not to sound impatient here, but this would be a great time for another one of those scans," he told her, resting his PPG hand against an eye-level outcropping in front of him, and sighting into the inky murk beneath the trees where he was certain the shots had come from – were still coming from.
To Sheridan's surprise, Crusher glanced his way, waiting for a confirming nod before she once again withdrew her tricorder, and started tapping away at the controls. Almost a minute passed, slugs still striking the ground with muffled thumps, and hissing overhead with almost monotonous regularity.
"Any time now," Garibaldi chimed in helpfully.
A sound escaped Crusher's throat that might have been a growl or a frustrated sigh. "I'm doing what I can, Mr. Garibaldi, but this is a medical tricorder. It isn't meant for tracking people in these kinds of conditions." So if you'd be kind enough to keep your mouth shut… she might have added.
Garibaldi took the hint, for a change, and went back to scanning the impenetrable blackness behind the nearest trees. That it was a slugthrower being fired their way wasn't a question. But why there were no gunshots, no muzzle flashes, and only a random stutter of shots merely joined the list of questions he did have: a list that was topped by whoever was taking potshots at them, and why they were doing it. Garibaldi needed answers. He needed to be able to at least see the enemy, even if just for a moment. He needed light.
"I've got something," Crusher said then, reflexively flinching as a bullet kicked up a puff of ash and dirt inches from her face. "The four life-signs behind us are the same ones who were trailing us back before we boarded the train. But there are two more in the woods in front of us. They're together, about seventy meters… that way." She aimed her tricorder in front of her, and slowly swept it to her left by several degrees before stopping. "Right there."
Sheridan couldn't see any visible distinction about the area Crusher was indicating, but she did seem to know what she was doing, so he nodded soberly. He mulled over his limited choices, and made the kind of decision he'd become accustomed to in his tenure on Babylon 5 – a spur-of-the-moment choice with too little time and information to work with. "Garibaldi, what do you say we get a good look at who we're dealing with here?"
Garibaldi grinned. "You read my mind, Captain." His flashlight would give away his position, and probably wouldn't penetrate far into the gloom anyway, and none of them were carrying flares. But there's easier ways to shed a little light on the subject than that, he mused. Some poor, slug-throwing gunman was about to get one hell of a shock.
"All right, wait for my order. You take the left, I'll take the right." Sheridan put action to the words, shuffling sidewise to his right side, taking care to keep pieces of scrap and debris between himself and the shooters. There was no sense in giving them a better target. He spared a glance back the way he'd come, and saw Garibaldi likewise crawling away. He started to turn his head in the direction he was moving, then did a double-take. He hadn't even noticed at first glance: Crusher was gone.
He jerked his head around, a split-second of panic gripping his chest. Had she left? Betrayed them? Then he spied her, and swore colorfully. She was creeping backwards as fast as she could with her formerly billowy dress bunched up around her ankles. Sheridan resisted the urge to call out, and bit his tongue, reminding himself that giving away his position could be fatal.
Crawling between the blackened stumps of two beams, near what might once have been a wall, he nearly collided with Marcus.
"So what's the new plan?" the Ranger asked, causing Sheridan's heart to skip a few beats. He was at least keeping his voice low – barely audible, in fact – but most of his good humor had drained away with the first bullets. "Anything I can do to help?"
"As a matter of fact, there is," Sheridan replied in the same faint whisper. He paused, glancing backwards to check on the progress of both Garibaldi and Crusher, then returned his attention to the expectant Ranger. "I want you to talk."
Marcus blinked, unsure he'd heard right. "You want me to talk. While we're being shot at. I think I should feel insulted, though I don't know quite why." He seemed to roll the idea around in his head as he spoke, and Sheridan finally scowled.
"Talk, sing, make noise; I don't care what you do," Sheridan told him pointedly, "just make sure that our new friend out there is looking right here when Garibaldi and I make our move."
Mulling that over for a moment, Marcus murmured, "It'd be nice if I knew what that move was going to be," as he watched Sheridan crawl away.
"You'll know it when you see it," Sheridan shot back over his shoulder, before disappearing into the debris.
Marcus scratched his beard distractedly. "So I'm a diversion," he said to no one in particular. "That's all right, I can do that. It wouldn't be the first time. I just need to think of something… diverting." He looked around as carefully as he could manage while keeping his chin barely an inch off the ground, and took stock of what was available. Not much. Involuntarily, his fingers closed on his pike, and in another flash of thought, his road-beaten derby. "At least I won't miss this dratted thing," he said, removing the hat. "I'd better be more careful though. If I keep talking to myself, people will start to think I'm taking after Ivanova. Now there's a cheery thought."
*****
Beverly Crusher swore silently at the ridiculous clothing that was slowing her pace so considerably. As she crept forward, the fabric of the large-bottomed dress crumpled and caught beneath her ankles, and she tried not to imagine the difficulties she'd have extricating herself from the garment once the away mission was over. Instead, she kept one eye fixed on the display of her medical tricorder. The small screen gave her only a basic understanding of what was happening. It still showed the two life-signs in the woods – obviously the gunmen – and Sheridan's people, two of whom were in motion, and the four she was making her way towards. Almost immediately after the first shots, she'd watched, horrified, as one of those four suddenly began to fade. It was bad enough to be shot at by parties unknown, but if their explorations had just resulted in the death of an innocent… She pushed the guilt aside, reminding herself that she didn't actually know what had happened, but even so, their whole operation stemmed from her idea, and she knew exactly who she would blame if that idea had just resulted in someone's death.
Those thoughts nagged at her as she moved, and another joined it after a moment. If she helped, she could be violating the Prime Directive… possibly both of them. She bit off that line of thought furiously, with a sharp inhalation. Cross that bridge when you get to it, Bev, she scolded herself.
When she'd glanced behind her right before the shooting began, she'd been certain that their followers were no more than thirty or forty meters away… now, crawling on her stomach on jagged piles of burnt wood and dodging bullets, that distance seemed to have become ten times longer, despite the reassurances of her tricorder.
Over the top of one especially large piece of what might have been a crate, she spied movement finally, and crossed her fingers.
"Hold it right there, missy!"
The shout was authoritative, if tinged with more than a little apprehension. More importantly, she realized, as she located the source, that hurried command was enforced. Even from what had to be another ten meters, the bore of the pistol aimed at her face was a terrifying cavern. "Don't shoot!" she called out, dropping the tricorder, and holding out two empty hands. "I'm here to help! I'm a doctor."
The muzzle of the stumpy black pistol never wavered, and she could hear the sounds of a muffled conversation the man at the other end of the weapon was having with someone else she could not see. The discussion was whispered, but heated, and while she waited, Crusher discreetly slipped her tricorder back into her handbag. She was acutely aware, however, that every passing second meant that the wounded man would be that much harder to save. As it was, she knew it was entirely possible that she was already too late, and found any further delay unbearable.
Finally, though, the muzzle of the gun dipped to the ground, and the lean, bearded man behind it waved one hand in a beckoning gesture. "All right, but keep low and move slowly." His companions remained hidden in the shadows, but Crusher could hear a whispered argument still taking place.
Moving closer, which was a difficult prospect on her stomach, with both hands outstretched before her, Crusher took the opportunity to examine the gun that was still being held at the ready, if no longer aimed at her. It wasn't easy to see in the faint illumination cast by the sickly yellow lamps in the windows of the town and the railroad station, but its basic shape and color, stubby and black, respectively, were clear enough. The grip looked unusual as well, but wrapped in a hand, and held in the shadows, that was all she could tell. She shook her head irritably – she wasn't an expert on firearms of any kind anyway, preferring the utility and non-lethal options of a phaser – so even if she could get a better look, it would likely be meaningless to her.
When she was close enough, another bearded man she assumed had been one of those talking leaned over the pile of rubble they were sheltering behind, and helped her over the top. It was a friendly gesture at odds with their still-hostile attitudes, but she thanked them all the same.
"You say you're a doctor, ma'am?" the second man asked, sounding dubious.
Her eyes narrowed involuntarily at his tone. "As a matter of fact, I am," she told him. "Now where is he?"
"Wait a moment," the first man said suspiciously. "How'd you know we have wounded?"
"I saw it happen," she said half-truthfully. I did, in a manner of speaking. She asked again, "Where is he? We don't have much time." When she saw them hesitating still, she stuck out a hand. "I'm Beverly Crusher. Doctor Beverly Crusher," she emphasized.
Her action seemed to perplex the both of them, but the one with the gun slipped the weapon back into his jacket, and after a beat, took her hand and shook it gingerly. "I'm Henry Pleasants, Doctor Crusher. This here is Nate Caudell," he said with a surreal politeness, given the occasional bullets still zinging overhead.
Caudell seemed more lost about how to handle the introductions, and instead of taking her hand, he doffed his hat and ducked his head as low as he could manage from four inches off the ground. "Ma'am. Uh, I mean, Doctor." The name connected then, and she recognized the man she'd seen briefly back in the general store, that same afternoon.
Pleasants lifted his head suddenly, and glanced back in the direction from which Crusher had come. "We should be able to move a little more freely now," he commented. "Looks as though your friends out there are drawing most of the fire."
Curious, and not a little alarmed, Crusher took a look for herself, and was startled to see movement in the darkness. As her eyes picked out the details, she blinked to be sure that she was actually seeing a pole with a round hat atop of it moving to and fro amid the rubble. Frequent flashes of light there marked where bullets were striking stone and pieces of metal in the rubble. As she watched, the hat suddenly bounced into the air, and fell. The pole followed it down, and a brief moment later, the pole was raised again with the hat still stubbornly draped over it.
"It would seem that way," she murmured, then ducked back to the ground, and said, "Let's go."
Pleasants nodded with some consideration, and led her in a rapid scuttle to the shelter of a large wooden crate.
A third person looked up from the wounded man there, eyes wide. In spite of the battered forage cap and tunic, and the wary eyes, the feminine lines of her face were unmistakable. "Nate, what're you bringing one of them here for?"
"Take it easy, Mollie," Caudell said. "Says she's a doctor, and you know as well as I do that them Rivington surgeons could patch up damn near anything."
Crusher hurried over to the fallen man, and noticed grimly the amount of blood pooling on the ground, black under the night sky. Without speaking, she checked the man's pulse and respiration the old-fashioned way, before turning her attention to the wound itself. If she could avoid breaking the Prime Directive, she would, though that was appearing to be less likely as she probed the bullet hold, and the severity of the damage became apparent.
"He's lost a lot of blood," she told the two anxious faces in front of her. Pleasants had already shuffled off to his original position. As she worked, Crusher talked to try and reassure them. "I think the bullet hit the femur, and deflected out through the back of the leg. That's good in a way, since we won't have to remove the bullet. Unfortunately, it chipped the bone, and we can't close up the wound until we can remove those fragments." Another glance at Caudell and Mollie told her she might as well be speaking Greek, and she sighed.
Crusher resigned herself to her next decision. "What that means," she told them, "is that I can't save him here. I've got to operate."
"You can save the leg though, can't you," Caudell said quietly. It wasn't a question, but the doctor was too focused to notice.
"Of course." Now Crusher was momentarily confused. "Why would I have to amputate?"
Caudell and Mollie shared a meaningful look. "You're like them, ain'tcha? Ya'll are just like the Rivington men," Mollie said, almost accusingly.
Crusher's confusion grew, though a suspicion that had been running through her mind for a while now was beginning to crystallize. "Rivington men? What do you mean?" she asked cautiously.
Mollie leaned forward, and fixed her in a deep, intent gaze. "You're from the future!"