Chapter 12
Nate Caudell gasped. He'd entertained the same thought, even began to expect this. But hearing it spoken out loud… he stared at his wife, once again awed by her forthright bluntness. She had never been one to be less than perfectly direct with her opinions, but even after what they'd witnessed together during the war, they'd never actually talked about it. It was if they'd both harbored a hidden belief that the very idea of people traveling between years as one might travel between towns would be seen as lunacy by the other.
To hear Mollie not only speak the idea out loud, but to directly accuse one of the people they both suspected of being among the most dangerous in the Confederacy, momentarily stunned him. Stunned him long enough in fact, to notice that Mollie herself suddenly seemed taken aback by her own brashness. More unnervingly though was the other woman's shocked reaction. Relief followed that – Henry Pleasants was several paces away, and plainly devoting his entire attention to the eerily silent gunfire still erupting from the forest. He'd given no sign that he'd heard Mollie's incredible claim.
Beverly Crusher startled so badly that she almost dropped her tricorder. For her part, she'd come to expect some surprises when dealing with alien cultures. Some were simply more perceptive than others, or more aware than they seemed. But none of her experience had prepared her to expect this kind of reaction here in the environs of primitive Earth, though her experiences with Samuel Clemens had left her with a new appreciation for the intellect that could thrive even in this day and age.
"What makes you say that?" she asked, trying to sound merely curious. Crusher knew she was treading on thin ice, and feared that she'd already cracked it beyond repair.
Mollie's momentary bout of second thoughts was erased by the perceived challenge. "We've been on to you this whole time. You're the first Rivington woman I ever saw, but except for the clothes, you and your friends over yonder are just like the others were." She tilted her chin up defiantly. "Seems like someone else got the drop on ya'll this time though."
Crusher stared at her, and wondered just how she was supposed to reply.
*****
Data paused suddenly in his scans. He'd been running a series of topographic and climatologic sensor sweeps, recording his findings for both historical comparisons and dimensional similarities. So far, what he'd found was relatively minor – a few coastal areas with slightly different shapes than what would be expected for this same year in his own universe, a minor variance in the Gulf Stream, and Mount Everest was eight meters taller than predictions from his own universe would have led him to believe. They were curiosities, but he absorbed the staggering amount of detail flowing across his screen with great interest. At the same time, however, he'd kept a watch over the area where the away team was currently located, and something in that screen had caught his attention. Taking several milliseconds to evaluate a closer scan, and determine a course of action, he swung his chair around purposefully from the console at the rear of the bridge.
"Commander Riker," he said without preamble, "I appear to be detecting emissions consistent with energy weapon discharge from the away team's location."
Riker swung around in the captain's chair, his silent brooding replaced with concerned alertness. He grimaced as he heard Ivanova catapult from the seat she'd claimed – Troi's seat, under normal circumstances. He was oddly glad that it was no longer right beside the captain's chair as it had been on the last Enterprise. "What?" he asked. "Can you confirm that?"
There was a tiny, unquantifiable delay before Data replied, "Yes sir, now reading two distinct sources. Discharges appear to be helium plasma."
"Those are PPG's!" Ivanova exclaimed.
"Are you sure about that?" Riker asked.
Ivanova glared at him. "I'd stake my rank on it."
Grimacing again, Riker growled, "If you're wrong, we just might." He turned away, and snapped, "Hail Captain Sheridan!"
The fresh-faced ensign who'd replaced Boral at tactical stiffened, and said, "Aye sir!"
Riker was already spinning on his heel, bypassing an impatient Ivanova, who looked as though she were about to speak. "Data, can you tell what they're shooting at?"
"Unknown, sir," Data said with a small frown. "I am not detecting any humanoid life-signs or traces of mechanical activity in the direction they are firing in."
Riker's brows knitted in a mixture of apprehension and vexed curiosity. "Tell Captain Picard what's going on, and have sickbay send a team down to Transporter Room Three, in case we have casualties. Commander Ivanova and I will meet them down there. You have the conn."
"Understood, Commander," Data said, his flat tone a clear indication of his increasing proficiency at controlling his emotions.
Glancing finally at Ivanova as he strode to the turbolift doors, Riker said, "Coming, Commander?"
Ivanova matched his pace instantly, her face dangerously set. "Try and stop me." Her tone of voice, more than her narrowed eyes, invited everyone in her path to clear the hell out of her way or else.
Within the uncomfortably close confines of the turbolift, he studied Ivanova under the soft overhead lights, and wondered what they'd all gotten into. He hadn't met Sheridan, but from what he'd seen, the Earthforce captain didn't seem to be the type to start a shooting war over nothing. Particularly after Picard had made it very clear that they were not to use their weapons except under dire circumstances. And if they weren't responding to their comm-badges, he could only begin to guess what was actually going on down there.
Ivanova remained silent during the short ride, and preceded him out into the corridor the instant the lift doors swished open. Riker sprung to catch up to her near-jog, and discreetly pulled ahead to make sure she didn't make a wrong turn.
They rounded the last corner in tandem, just as Riker's badge chirped for attention. "Picard to Commander Riker," it said in Picard's tinny voice.
Riker slowed without glancing up, and replied, "Riker here, Captain. I take it Data told you what's going on?"
"You can," the captain said humorlessly. "We've also just received a communication from Doctor Crusher. She's beamed directly to sickbay. We still have no word from Captain Sheridan."
"Understood sir," Riker said, stepping through the transporter room doors.
The crewman behind the console there was engrossed in his station, already finishing his work, and didn't glance up as they entered.
"Myself and Commander Ivanova were just about to beam down to investigate," Riker added. "I didn't want to bring them up if they were visible to any of the locals."
"Belay that, Number One," Picard said shortly. "We still don't know what's going on down there. Captain Sheridan is not responding to hails, and we already have wounded. Apparently I wasn't clear enough with him that they were not to discharge their weapons without extreme provocation."
"Now hang on just a damned minute!" Ivanova snapped, whirling away from the transporter pads, and glaring at Riker for lack of a better target. "Captain Sheridan knew how important this mission was, so the only reason he'd fire is if he were under attack." Her fury was palpable, but a shadow of concern in her voice transmitted over the comm-link.
"Be that as it may, Commander," Picard said, trying to bring his temper under control, "that appears to be…" His voice dropped off suddenly, and Riker and Ivanova glared at each other for the long seconds before the captain's voice returned.
"Commander Ivanova," Picard said softly, sounding contrite, "It appears I owe you and Captain Sheridan an apology. Doctor Crusher just informed me that they did come under attack. Primitive projectile weapons, apparently."
Ivanova glared at Riker with a mix of fading anger and no small amount of vindication. "Not to sound ungrateful, Captain, but while I appreciate the vote of confidence, primitive weapons can kill just as well as a PPG or one of your phasers. Request permission to beam down and bail them out."
"Permission denied." Before she could protest, as they both knew she would, Picard went on, "I think we've found what we were looking for. I appreciate your concern for the Temporal Prime Directive, Number One, but I think a situation like this warrants bending the rules a little. Transport them all up now: I'll be there shortly."
Uneasy still, Ivanova grudgingly nodded, then said, "Understood," when she remembered that Picard couldn't see her face. She guessed that Picard wanted to hold another meeting – and consideration didn't sit well with her, especially when her thoughts drifted back to what she imagined might be going on back at Babylon 5. As long as they were bringing back the Captain, Garibaldi, and even Marcus, she wasn't inclined to complain too loudly though. Yet.
The doors hissed open again, and Nurse Ogawa entered leading a pair of sickbay orderlies, and soundlessly motioned them to move their grav-gurney into an out-of-the-way place along the far wall, acknowledging Riker's grateful look with a curt nod.
Will Riker gave the command, and on the soothingly-lit alcove in front of them, two shapes began to appear in a haze of sparkles.
Staring at each other before the figures within became discernable, the two first officers shared a moment of sudden panic. Two?
*****
Rolling hard, Marcus Cole felt more than heard the bullet that sparked as it struck his pike. Above him, his hat was lifted from the top of his weapon as if by a sudden current of air. He was already retracting the pike as the hat drifted down to nurse his stinging palms, and he gave the hat a mournful once-over as it touched down. Several holes punctured the fabric, and the silk inner lining was a shredded mess. A quick inspection showed that his pike sported no matching dents, though it still irked him. "Have you any idea how old this is?" he called to his unseen attackers.
As the minutes had dragged by after Sheridan had given him his chore, Marcus had begun to strike up a one-sided conversation with them gunmen in the woods. It wasn't much of a debate, but he kept it up, since it kept their bullets focused in his direction as Sheridan intended it to, and more importantly, allowed him to vent his spleen at them. Several more bullets stitched their way along the top of the incline he was concealed behind, and lying on his back, he absently pondered the loosened dirt, rocks, and ash that slid past him. "If that's how you always shoot, it's a bloody miracle you haven't put a bullet through your own foot yet!"
The distinctive rippling hiss of a PPG discharge brought his head around swiftly, and creeping back to the top of the low rise, he watched as from several dozen meters to either side of him, sizzling orange pulses began to pepper the suddenly visible forest. Almost immediately, several trees began to crackle and burn, lighting the gloom beneath their branches as tongues of flame danced outwards from PPG burns on branches and trunks. In a few places, small fires crackled cheerfully among damp leaves and undergrowth.
The moment the afterimages of the sudden light cleared themselves from his eyes, Marcus could see that as quickly as they had tried to move, their mysterious assailants had moved faster. Not so much as a squirrel stirred in the considerable area now touched by the light. More importantly, the intermittent gunfire had ended completely.
A strange, faint burst of sound reached his ears then, like the trill of some alien bird as heard through a synthesizer. Unable to place the sound, or pick out a direction, the Ranger shrugged and glanced behind him. There was still no sign of the four people that had been tailing them, or of Doctor Crusher. After almost a minute passed with no further sound to disturb the close, muggy silence, he called upon all of his training to rise to his feet as noiselessly and motionlessly as possible. Almost unaware he was doing so, released a pent-up breath.
"I think they've had it. Good show!"
More silence greeted his words.
His mind raced. I was just speaking with the captain a moment ago. Surely they couldn't have wandered out of earshot already! "Captain Sheridan?" he called, nearly shouting. "Mr. Garibaldi?" He bit his lower lip, glancing around rapidly, and unconsciously dropping into a fighting stance.
Nothing.
"Dr. Crusher?"
For a moment, he came perilously close to wishing that he had been issued a handlink. Sure, the annoying little critters always seemed to be beeping for attention when they were latched on to Sheridan, or Ivanova, or Garibaldi, but… It'd certainly come in handy right now, his mind insisted forcefully. Remembering something else, he searched his pockets for the Starfleet chevron pin he'd been given before beaming down, but came up empty. It must have fallen out somewhere while he was scrabbling around in the gritty black ash of the rubble they'd been sheltering in.
Shaking his head, Marcus elected to put that mystery aside just for the moment, in favor of the original one. Staying low, he moved into the smoky light of the still-smoldering trees as quickly as he dared. His eyes picked out the spot their attackers had been holed up in almost immediately. Atop a squat earthen bulwark, branches had been piled to obscure a shallow dip in the ground that could easily fit several people, as long as they didn't mind being cozy. Some of those branches looked dry and wilted, as if they'd been cut down at least a few days earlier, Marcus noted, examining the site. Unfortunately, other than scuffed earth at the bottom of the makeshift gunner's nest, there was literally nothing else to indicate who the occupants might have been. Nothing else at all, in fact. "Damn," he murmured, fingering the dirt around a few partially wiped-out footprints.
Stooped over and concentrating on what clues the ground might yield, he almost ignored the sudden imperceptible feeling that raised the hairs along the back of his neck. He'd been a Ranger too long to ignore something like that, however, and he was almost instantly behind a tangle of undergrowth, hidden in the increasing darkness as well as his unsuitable clothing allowed.
The same strange shimmery sound he'd heard right after the firefight had ended tingled in his ears once more, only this time, it was much, much, closer… and indefinably familiar. Deciding that patience was the better part of valor in this case, Marcus crouched lower into the surviving greenery, and restlessly fingered the haft of his fighting pike.
*****
John Sheridan's hand was still at full extension, with a gently smoking PPG clenched in his fist. The only difference after a moment of vertigo and a now-familiar tingling sensation was that the muzzle of his gun was pointed right at his own first officer. It wasn't until afterward that he had a chance to be thankful for the subdued lighting in the transporter room that allowed him to see anything at all in the sudden illumination.
Grateful that he didn't have a twitchy trigger-finger, Sheridan dropped his arm the moment his brain could put together a coherent nerve impulse. "Susan? What the…"
"Sorry about that, Captain," she said, chagrined, "but it wasn't my call." She tossed a sharp look over her shoulder, and Sheridan spotted Commander Riker a few feet behind her when he stood up.
"Commander," Sheridan said, clearly aiming his scowl at the man in the Starfleet jumpsuit, "I hope you've got a damned good explanation for pulling us out of there like that."
"More importantly, where are Marcus and your doctor?" Garibaldi cut in, nodding towards the circular transporter pad beside him that held only a single Starfleet chevron pin.
Riker worked his jaw, and ticked off each question on his fingers. "Captain Sheridan, bringing you back was Captain Picard's call. Doctor Crusher is already back in sickbay, and since that comm-badge is sitting there by itself, I presume your fiend dropped it."
Sheridan's scowl deepened. It'd been a while since anyone had questioned his judgment, and that was obviously just what Picard had done. This was ten times worse than being questioned by a junior officer on a command decision – Picard was his equal in rank, and had not merely questioned his choices, but compromised his mission in the process. He wanted answers. He wanted an apology. More importantly, he wanted to get back to Earth and show whoever'd fired at him and his people how big a mistake that had been. Preparing to give Riker a taste of captainly wrath, he was interrupted by the hiss of the doors behind the man… and the person who came through them.
"Captain Picard, I demand an explanation for this, and it had better be good!" he belted out.
The older man stepped in front of Riker and went toe-to-toe with his counterpart, glaring fiercely when he said, "Captain, I thought I had made myself clear. What were you thinking when you started firing off energy weapons down there? I realize you were under fire, but the Temporal Prime Directive –"
"Doesn't apply to us!" Sheridan snapped. "As for what I was thinking – I was thinking that we were being attacked, and that the lives of three people I was responsible for were in danger! Including your own CMO… Captain." He bit the word off, reminding himself that there was still work to be done. "Right now, we're going back down there, and finishing what we started."
"Very well," Picard granted politely, though a muscle at his temple twitched in rhythm with his tightly controlled breaths. "Next time, I'd appreciate it if you would be so kind as to answer a hail. Chief Styles, transport Captain Sheridan and Mr. Garibaldi back to their original coordinates."
Sheridan's face reddened, realizing now what the muffled chirp from within his vest, compressed between his body and the ground, had been. In the muted light of the transporter room though, his complexion simply appeared to grow ruddier. Not that he was about to give Picard the satisfaction.
Garibaldi cleared his throat loudly. "Hold on, I've got a better idea. Uh… Captain. Captain." He squeezed past the two furious men, giving each a sidewise wary glance as he passed. He didn't know too much about Picard yet, but he knew better than to be in the line of fire when Mount St. Sheridan cooked off. Crossing to the transporter console, he tried to make sense of the readouts, but finally gave up. Turning to the younger man behind the console, he asked, "Can you bring up an overhead view of where you picked us up from? Styles, was it?"
"Yes sir." A few motions that made no sense to Garibaldi followed, and several screens on the panel cleared away entirely, so that it could accommodate a larger window. Within, Garibaldi could make out a line that could only be the railroad tracks, and with that as a reference, the train station, the warehouse ruins they'd sheltered in, and the woods beyond. A series of moving dots showed in the town and surrounding woods, ranging in size from some the size of a pinhead, to some barely the size of a grain of sand. The larger ones were clustered in the town buildings, one in the train stationhouse, three in the rubble, and one in the woods, right in the area where he expected the shooters were.
"What are those dots?" Garibaldi asked. He had a pretty good idea, which was quickly confirmed.
"Animal life-forms, sir," the crewman replied. "The larger the signature, the larger the life-form. I can call those up in more detail, if you need that."
Garibaldi shook his head, ignoring the sudden silence that had fallen on the four other people in the room as they watched him, trying to guess what he was thinking. "No, no, that's fine," he assured the transporter operator. "Can you zoom in a little further? Say, focus on that one there?" The screen drew inwards quickly, and he held up a hand to stop it. "That's perfect." He then pointed at the lone prick of light in the forest. "That's our guy then. Can you put us down… here?" he gestured to a spot nearby that was further from the town, and deeper in the woods.
Styles nodded easily, saying, "Yes sir, not a problem."
Garibaldi startled the man by giving him a slap on the back, then he was crossing the small room back to the transporter pads. "As much fun as this is," he said, taking his place back on the pad he'd arrived on, "we've got a Ranger to save, and butts that won't kick themselves."
"Captain, we'll discuss this further when you return," Picard said stiffly, the anger cooling after Garibaldi's interruption.
"Count on it," Sheridan shot back, still seething.
The transporter whisked them away before something Picard might have regretted later reached his lips.
*****
Suddenly back in the damp, chilly darkness that seemed to pervade this formerly sweltering portion of North Carolina, Garibaldi instinctively crouched low until his eyes once again readjusted themselves. It was quicker this time, he noticed, between the low light in the transporter room, and the small fires still smoldering in the branches and thickets in front of him. Sheridan, he could tell, was still obviously seething – there was no stealth or subtlety in his behavior this time around as he bulled ahead through the grasping greenery. Hurrying to catch up to his erstwhile captain and charge, Garibaldi scanned the surrounding foliage as best he could manage at that pace, and involuntarily twitched at the normal night sounds that reached his ears. He had no intention of allowing their assailants to get the drop on them just because Sheridan was in a bit of a pique.
As a result, once within the fading orange glow of the PPG-generated embers, only he heard the metallic hiss from a deeply shadowed thicket that Sheridan was nearly on top of. "Captain, look out!" he warned urgently.
Preoccupied, but not totally inattentive, Sheridan's weapon swept up in a suddenly alert firing posture. Garibaldi's own PPG was already at shoulder height in his outstretched hand, but the combination of the shadows, foliage, and Sheridan's body combined to block any shot he might have had at the object that suddenly lashed out from behind one of the trees and sent Sheridan's PPG flying from his hand. It spun off just far enough to land out of sight – not that a staggered Sheridan would have noticed.
"Captain!" Garibaldi lunged forward, smashing through the undergrowth with a rending crash that abruptly silenced the normal chirpings and buzzings of nocturnal insects and small animals.
"Captain?"
A second metallic hiss followed, and Garibaldi placed the sound this time, lowering his PPG warily.
Marcus didn't so much step into the half-light as just appeared there. "Ah, terribly sorry," he said to Sheridan, who was nursing a stinging right hand. "No hard feelings I hope?"
Sheridan shook his hand and waggled his fingers experimentally before glancing up and smiling ruefully. "I guess I was a little more distracted than I realized." With his left hand, he reached into a pocket on his vest and withdrew a comm-badge. "I think this is yours."
Shrugging, Marcus accepted the pin and tucked it into some pouch on his belt. "At least Ranger brooches can stay where they belong in a bit of a tussle."
"Did you see who was shooting at us?" Sheridan asked. He picked out the metallic glint of his PPG amid the leaves on the ground, and stooped to recover it.
Marcus grimaced, and swept a hand across their rapidly darkening field of vision. "'Fraid not. It seems they didn't feel like waiting around. I did find where they were sitting, but there's not so much as a footprint worth mentioning. Whoever it was didn't want to be found out, that's for sure."
"Nuts." Garibaldi irritably kicked at the ground. "Captain," he said, turning to Sheridan, "this doesn't add up. If something's going on here we're supposed to stop, how did we get found out that quickly? No one but us is supposed to know we're even here. But if they do know we're here, why this half-assed ambush? Why not just take us out when we came off the train? It doesn't add up."
"I don't have an answer for you, Michael," Sheridan softly replied, shaking his head. He stared into the formless dark around them for a moment. The fires were all but out now, and the brief light they cast was virtually gone, casting the three men into a gloom nearly as dense as that which surrounded them. "C'mon," he said, marching back towards the faint lights of the town, "there's no point in standing around out here giving our friends out there a chance to finish the job."
Garibaldi grunted agreeably. "So what's the plan now?"
"Well," Sheridan began, the outlines of just such a plan taking shape in his mind, "from what we heard up on the ship, it sounds as though one of our four tails was hit, and they brought him up there." He hesitated, getting his bearings, and then picked out the ragged form of the rubble they'd been holed up in, and began picking his way purposefully towards it. "That leaves three, and I don't know about you, but I want some answers."
*****
Nate Caudell swallowed hard, wringing his hat with two hands in the fading glimmer of light that had just swept away the strange red-haired woman, his friend, and most importantly, his wife. It was too late for second thoughts now, but he knew his inaction would haunt and torment him for as long as he lived if Mollie didn't return. Intellectually, he knew when she had her mind set on something, there was no way to dissuade her, and he knew also that her simple logic was impeccable, as usual. Someone had to go with Ruffin Biggs to keep an eye on this new breed of Rivington man – Caudell just wished it had made less sense for that someone to be her.
Perched slightly above him on the gritty slope of ash, Henry Pleasants watched the hat go limp in the white-knuckled grip. "I think it's dead, Nate," he said dryly. He was still wide-eyed over the insubstantial sparkles that had spirited away three people right in front of his own face – to say nothing of what the woman calling herself Doctor Crusher had given as their destination. Only after he'd spoken did he realize how callous he sounded, and winced sympathetically. The other man never looked up, and Pleasants sighed. "Look, Nate, you know I'm not one to go prying, but you can't start second-guessing yourself now. Hell, I always knew there was something… out of place, about the Rivington men. I was an engineer years before the war, and I never saw anything like those repeaters of theirs. But a fancy gun is one thing, and a… well, whatever the hell that was… that's something else altogether."
He knew he was babbling, but pressed on. "The way I figure it, whoever that lady and her folks are, they've gotta be as far ahead of the Rivington men as the Rivington men are from us." A sudden unpleasant image of a mounted medieval knight charging a modern battle line sprang into his head, and Pleasants' equally sudden shiver had nothing to do with the increasingly chilly night air. "Point is, Nate," he continued, "this whole mess just got a whole helluva lot bigger, and one of us had to go with Ruffin – and frankly, I need you right here." He paused uncertainly when Caudell finally looked up, and seemed to be processing some of what he was saying. "You were – are – a First Sergeant, Nate. During the war you must've given her orders that you knew could kill her, same as any of the men under your command. Same as I did. Same as any man higher ranking than a buck private. This is the same thing."
Caudell's hollow eyes, nearly black in the deep shadows and night, finally focused on his friend's fervent face, and he shook his head spasmodically. "No it ain't," he said it a voice barely above a whisper. He looked as though he wanted to say more, but instead lapsed into a gloomy silence. Pleasants was right of course – and he was also absolutely wrong. Caudell had given Mollie orders that could have killed her, just as he had to other men in his company. She hadn't been his wife then, and that made all the difference in the world. He went back to studying the ground where she had been squatting, taking in the scuffed ground, the black smears of dried blood; even the small stones that had been dislodged by Crusher's movements to Ruffin's side caught his –
A sharp, yet strangely muted sound reached his ear then, and of its own accord, his head cranked around to follow the noise. It seemed to him like the sound of a person letting loose with a deep gasp at the same moment as spitting through a metal pipe. The alien combination of sound was so out-of-place that it riveted his attention – both of their attentions he saw, glancing at Pleasants – to the source in front of them.
Wide-eyed, both of them watched as a whole volley of fireballs began hurling themselves from two flanking outcroppings, each accompanied by a repetition of the sound. Within seconds, a portion of woods before them was alight with a series of small fires, the flickering light visible even through the afterimages of the fireballs.
Pleasants narrowed his eyes as the rain of fireballs cut off suddenly. He'd nearly managed to convince himself that the impossible sparkling columns were merely some kind of incredible technology – but this was starting to get out of hand! Silhouetted by the fires in the thick quiet that fell, a lone figure stood up from the ruins in front of them, rising silently from the ground. It called out several times, and though Pleasants could not make out the words, it was obvious than the figure was not receiving the answer it clearly wanted. And then it was gone. Pleasants blinked to make sure, but there was no mistaking it – the three remaining time-travelers (for that was unmistakably what they had to be) had vanished right along with the gunman in the woods.
"Well," Caudell said at length, still nervously pale, "we won't get any answers just lying here in the dirt. And right now," his voice turned harder, "I have a lot of questions."