Paratime Police Chief Verkan Vall watched as Fourth Level farms, airports, cities and battles flickered overhead through the paratemporal silver mesh as the conveyer approached Fourth Level Aryan-Transpacific, Kalvan's Time-Line. Maybe Kalvan's Time-Line was a misnomer after the events of the past ten-day. Styphon's House's Grand Host, at the Battle of Ardros Field, had broken the outnumbered army of Hos-Hostigos and possibly killed Kalvan along with his friends and dreams. Dalla had wanted to accompany him, but the ominous silence from the Foundry paratemporal depot convinced him it was too dangerous, probabilities too fluid, to risk her life.
Verkan had been by Kalvan's side just a few days ago, before he'd lost the Mounted Rifles, and almost his life, to an overwhelming force of Styphon's cavalry. Dalla was calling it Verkan's Greatest Folly; it had almost been his last. His chest ached every time he thought of the gaping wound he'd taken from a point-blank pistol shot by some enraged Harphaxi trooper. Thanks to the miracle of First Level medicine he was feeling as well as ever, with only an occasional nagging chest pain to remind him of his lung wound and the six-hour wait for the med team.
Unfortunately, he had more to worry about than the fate of his friends and the dismemberment of Hos-Hostigos and Hostigos Town. The biggest of those headaches was the Dhergabar University Kalvan Study Team caught in the rout of the Hostigi army. Like all outtime researchers, they worked under the Paratime Police umbrella. That might not be enough to protect them on the kind of Fourth Level time-line where civilians were likely to end up a part of the body count when a victorious army swept through hostile territory. The entire University Team was unaccounted for; every casualty among them would be a gift to the Opposition Party.
Kalvan would have to fight his own battles for a while, against much longer odds than before. It would take all Kalvan's skill, as well as luck, to save his life and Queen Rylla's, never mind re-founding his empire.
Already the Grand Host's cavalry scouts had raided almost to the outskirts of Hostigos Town. Its main body could hardly be more than a day or two behind. One of Kalvan castellans might be able to hold Tarr-Hostigos for a few days. If the Grand Host had to stop and lay siege to the castle, Kalvan still might escape. While he would never rule a kingdom again, he and Rylla could flee westward to sell the services of their army in the Middle Kingdoms.
The conveyer dome shimmered into material existence inside the Foundry basement. The sensors read that it was empty of life and everything was in its place. Nevertheless, Verkan checked his personal equipment, pulled his pistol out of his sash and headed for the hatch. Somehow four Paracops reached it before him, all with drawn pistols and palmed First Level sigma-ray needlers.
"Sorry, Chief," Kostran Garth said. He didn't sound sorry. Garth was his brother-in-law, and one of a handful of good friends and completely reliable Paracops. Like Skordran Kirv, Andron Veral and Ranthar Jard. Verkan looked behind and sighed. The other eight men of his personal guard had closed tightly around him from the rear. Swaddled in bodyguards like a baby in cloth, Verkan stepped out into a large basement, where there was a large wall screen at one end showing an overhead of Hostigos Town. The streets were uncharacteristically empty and Verkan could see no sign of either the Hostigi army or Styphon's Grand Host. The rest of the conveyer-load of Paracops followed, lugging sensor gear or pushing anti-grav lifter pallets to ferry the dead.
The room before them held a desk, some First Level monitoring equipment, racks of muskets, barrels of unopened fireseed and hundreds of baskets of barley and corn. No sign of the small Hostigos Paratime Police garrison, five men-including his friend, Inspector Skordran Kirv.
No good to anybody except maybe the Grand Host was Verkan's thought as he strode across the room. Like the other Paracops, he held a flintlock pistol nearly two feet long, loaded and cocked. On his head he wore a high-combed morion helmet; his clothes were a sleeveless buff jack, dark blue breeches, a bright blue sash, and thigh-high boots. Nobody from Kalvan's Time-Line would have thought him anything but a Hostigi light cavalry officer-"General Verkan of the Hostigos Mounted Rifles, at your service, sir."
He opened the keyed magnetic lock to the door that led to the Royal Foundry of Hos-Hostigos, stepped back, let the four point men go first, then followed at their hand signals of "All clear."
The door was intact, as he had expected. Under local oak planking, it had a collapsed-nickel core. Nothing local could dent that, not even a two-hundred-pound iron ball from a big bombard. The door at the other end of the short stone stairway was similarly protected. It opened to the inside to show a shifting pile of stones, timber and metal rubble. While Paracops skipped out of the way, stones and timbers tumbled down the stairwell. Suddenly patches of sunshine were breaking through the up-ended timbers. Outside was the chirping of birds, but no human noise.
The rubble was a nuisance, but nothing that could stop five determined Paracops: so where were they?
"Step back, Chief," one of his protectors ordered.
The debris was quickly shifted aside and a passage was made through the wreckage into the badly damaged Foundry. Forges were overturned and big anvils squatted like toadstools amongst the rubble. Two walls were gone and the roof was mostly on the floor. The Paratime Police, with guns drawn, carefully navigated their way out of the Foundry into the courtyard.
Nothing else in sight had been as lucky. The main storerooms had all been demolished, as if someone had set charges-maybe Kirv. Had things gotten that bad? Some had collapsed. Most of the outer buildings also showed battle scars, and bodies lay everywhere. A flock of birds, mostly ravens and vultures, and one eagle, squawked angrily and glided into the air, only to hover over their heads.
The farmhouse had fallen in on itself, the upper floor and roof gone. Not even a slight wisp of smoke rose from the Team's quarters. That confirmed Verkan's guess that the attack had come at least two days before. There didn't appear to be any survivors. The dead had already been stripped, not only of valuables and weapons, but their armor as well. The birds had removed eyes and other soft tissue.
Several of the dead still wore the red cloaks of Styphon's Own Guard; no one wanted those telling garments, although their silvered armor was fair game.
"Too many tourists," a Paracop said.
Verkan nodded. The University had insisted on doing its own study of Kalvan's Time-Line. Short of imposing quarantine, there'd been no way to stop them. For a moment Verkan wished himself back as Chief's Special Assistant, where he could do the sensible thing without having a dozen political potentates baying at his door.
The Paracops spread out, leapfrogging from building to building, covering one another until they'd reached the edge of the Foundry on all sides. Then they posted sentries, sent a miniature sky-eye to hover a thousand feet up and began the grisly task of recovering the bodies.
Verkan turned over the nearest civilian casualty with his sword. It was the Team's expert on pre-mechanical sociology, Professor Lathor Karv. He had a gaping hole in his forehead and several stab wounds in his torso, but no signs of torture.
First good news all day.
No signs of torture meant that none of Archpriest Roxthar's 'Holy' Investigators had ridden with the cavalry, or not enough to conduct one of the torture fests they called an Investigation. Hypno-mech conditioning or not, it was asking a lot of anyone to resist the kind of torture the Investigators handed out. Not that they were as efficient as the Second Level priests of Shpeegar or some Europo-American secret police agencies, but they would improve with time and practice. The Grand Host's victory had bought them the time, and Roxthar's fanatical determination to find and extirpate heresy everywhere would guarantee the practice.
"Chief-over here!"
Verkan walked back to the farmhouse. One of the men was dragging out a horribly mutilated body in what appeared to be the remains of a white robe.
"The scavengers didn't like this one at all!"
"It looks like one of Roxthar's Investigators. Can you find the killing wound?"
"No. The body's all carved up. I guess word about the Investigation has spread throughout Hos-Hostigos."
"Like a foul odor," Kostran Garth added.
Of the sixty-odd bodies in the open, some were here-and-now Foundry workers, others house servants-the proverbial innocent bystanders. About thirty were mercenaries or undercover Paracops, the rest members of the University Team.
'Fiasco' is a mild term for this was Verkan's thought. Nobody is going to be happy about it.
"Chief!" Kostran called. He ran up and lowered his voice. "We've found Inspector Kirv. Over here by the farmhouse."
Nobody, starting with me.
Kirv's dead mouth was twisted into the parody of a smile, but it looked as if he'd fought as well as he'd lived. Five troopers in yellow Harphaxi sashes and lead-splattered back and breasts lay dead and bloody around him.
Verkan cursed out loud. There went an old friend and one of the few Paracops he could still trust absolutely.
The lifter teams started loading bodies for shipment back to First Level, while the rest began the house-to-house (or ruin-to-ruin) search. In spite of the danger from smoldering embers and falling beams, they turned up twelve more Paratimer bodies, three of them Paracops. Seven skeletons too badly burned for field identification made the last load before the conveyer headed back to Fifth Level. Paratime Police Fifth Level HQ had a full-medtech team on standby, for DNA identification.
Verkan spent most of the time before the conveyer's return wandering aimlessly among the ruins. Every Paracop on this team knew when to steer clear of the Chief, who knew he was being guarded, but so tactfully that he couldn't complain.
One thought dominated Verkan's mind. He'd thought he had a crisis, with an alliance of Opposition Party chiefs and outtime traders after his scalp over the anticipated closing of Fourth Level Europo-American. Still, he and Dalla would live through it even if he couldn't persuade anyone else.
Kalvan and Rylla were running for their lives, which might not be very long if his castellans couldn't hold Tarr-Hostigos for at least a few days.
As the day wore on, Verkan began to hope that the Grand Host's scouts would reappear. It was out of the question to seek the main body and tear it apart with First Level weapons. A few hundred dead cavalry troopers, however, could be labeled 'non-contaminating self-defense' in an Incident Report. Their demise would make the Grand Host only a little less strong but a lot more cautious.
Or it might make people genuinely believe that demons fought for Kalvan, and create enthusiastic support for Roxthar's fifty-times-cursed Investigation! That was the problem with contamination-you couldn't control how people would interpret your intervention. Good Paracops always remembered that.
Verkan Vall gritted his teeth and decided to be a good Paracop again. He hoped his present set of teeth would survive the experience!
"Vall?"
He started to glare at the interruption, and then recognized Kostran. The conveyer must have returned with the lab test results-although from the look on Kostran's face, he was not the bearer of good news.
"What are the autopsy results?"
"No Police survivors."
"Damn this bloody Styphon's House crowd! This must have happened fast, or Kirv wouldn't have been caught out in the open like this…"
"I'm sorry, if that helps any," Kostran said.
"Some. Better security would have helped more. Dralm damnit, we could have had it!"
"By Xipph's mandibles, Chief, you did all you could!" He added several more curses from a particularly vile Second Level timeline where spiders and beetles were sacred fetishes. "The damned Study Team sabotaged every security measure you and Kirv tried to establish. Ten good Paracops died trying to defend this cock-up!"
"The Study Team paid for it, too." But keeping that from happening was ultimately the Chief's responsibility. My responsibility. Verkan managed a wry grin. "Wasn't it Kalvan's own Great King Truman who said, 'The buck stops here'?"
The grin faded, but Verkan managed not to sigh. "All right. Who else among the Study Team did the lab find?"
"Lathor Karv and SankarTrav; the Team medic."
"We found Varnath Lala and Voldon Andar. That leaves Danar Sirna, Gorath Tran and Aranth Sain unaccounted for." The two Paracops' eyes met. If the missing people were prisoners, they were probably on their way into the hands of the Investigation. Then they'd soon wish they had burned to death instead.
Kostran whistled. "Gorath Tran, the nervous Assistant Director. Too slight for the slave auction block. Maybe he got lucky and bugged out with Kalvan's refugees."
"Danar Sirna. Doctoral candidate in outtime history?" Verkan asked.
Kostran nodded. "Right. Tall woman, good figure, auburn hair. The one Eldra identified as Tharn's patsy."
"Wish her better luck in her next incarnation," Verkan stated. "The soldiers here-and-now have rough-and-ready notions about dealing with female enemy captives. What about Aranth Sain?"
"He's ex-Strike Force, one of the few Team people with survival skills. He was their expert on pre-mechanical military science." Kostran hesitated. "I wonder if he was forced to try putting some of his skills into practice?"
"You mean, take an unscheduled field sabbatical?"
"Exactly. His cover is an artillery officer from Hos-Agrys and you can bet he won't break it by accident. If he catches Phidestros' eye, he may even be safe from the Investigation."
The possibility of owing anything to the man principally responsible for Kalvan's defeat rubbed Verkan the wrong way. Still, if Aranth had survived and was masquerading as a native, Verkan could only wish him luck.
It was time to return to Fifth Level Kalvan's Time-Line Depot to try and make sense out of this mess. No time for him to resume his cover as General Verkan; he'd have his Paratime HQ brain trust figure out a cover story that would convince Kalvan, if and when he had time to visit here again. With the political fallout this debacle threatened, it might be a while.
He suspected Kalvan would be so busy he wouldn't have time to send out a search party for missing officers, even friends. He wondered how Tortha was doing. Well, the old dog was a survivor and if anyone could come out of this disaster smelling like a rose in a manure pile, it was ex-Paratime Police ChiefTortha Karf