The Khyber Connection (TimeWars 6)

The scene below where Court lay in the sangar, resembled a painting by Heironymous Bosch. Bodies were scattered everywhere. British soldiers and khaki-clad Sikhs of the Indian Army, Gurkhas, kilted Highlanders, corpses torn and bloodied, pack animals wandering about untended, riderless horses, camels oblivious to the death throes all around them; it was a scene of mind-numbing carnage through which the ghostly, white-clad Ghazis moved like wraiths, brandishing their charra knives. The grisly, swordlike blades rose and fell on those luckless enough to have survived. As the hour grew late, the screams became fewer, though no less hideous.

Court shivered and cursed the sadists in the Referee Corps who had selected this particular horror as an historical scenario within which to stage a temporal confrontation action. He had survived the trench fighting of the First World War, been wounded in a naval action off the Barbary Coast, and had made it back from the death march at Bataan. He had served as a Roman legionary, an Indian scout in the American southwest, and a Spanish conquistador under Pizarro, but nothing in his career as a soldier in the Temporal Army Corps could compare with this bone-chilling nightmare. Nothing he had ever seen had terrified him as much as the sight of hundreds of screaming Ghazis pouring down out of the rocks, descending upon the regiment like locusts under the black flags of the jehad. Never before had he encountered fighters like the Ghazis. When the Pathan tribes went Ghazi, it made no difference whether they were Afridi or Mohmand or Yusufzai. Any feuds between the Orakzais of Tirah and the Mahsuds of Waziristan became forgotten as they united in jehad and became Chazi, Muslim fanatics in the grip of a religious fever, kamikazes without planes who believed that the slaughter of the infidels would open up the gates of paradise to them. With such an incentive, they knew no fear. They could not be turned. The blessings of the Prophet were upon them, and death in combat was but a passage to Islamic heaven. The British soldiers had fought bravely, but they were outnumbered ten to one. They had been softened up by sniper fire and rock bombardment from the cliffs, and then the human wave engulfed them and they died. And died. And died.

Court held onto his MartiniHenry as if the rifle were his lover. He had one round left. Only one. If the Ghazis found him, he would write his own name on that bullet. If they didn’t find him, if he could hang on long enough, the Search and Retrieve teams would clock in from the 27th century and home in on his implant. If he was still alive then, they would clock him back to his own time and he would be treated for his wounds in an army hospital. The referees would then add his survival into the point spread that would guide them in reaching a decision in the arbitration action that had sent him back to the year 1897, to fight in a war within a war. If he survived, he would never know who won. He would never know how many other soldiers of the 27th century had died in the Khyber Pass, slaughtered by the Ghazis. He would never even know the details of the events in his own time which had led to the arbitration action. He would only know that he had survived, that he had beaten the odds in a game in which the mortality rate was astronomical. He would know that he had survived to fight again and that the next time, perhaps, the odds would finally catch up to him. Maybe they already had. He thought about his one remaining bullet. His entire life began to revolve around that tiny piece of lead.

It was growing dark. Vultures wheeled overhead. Court’s teeth were chattering. His wounds no longer pained him. He knew that was a bad sign. There was nothing he could do. There were no longer any screams coming from below him. Nothing lived down there. The Ghazis had melted away into the mountains, taking with them the spoils of the battle—the guns, supplies, and animals. He had been spared death by dismemberment, but now it seemed only a matter of what would kill him first—exposure or his wounds. He thought about that precious bullet. It was a tempting thought, a secure and quick solution. Yet, on the other hand, the instinct to survive was strong within him. The S&R teams would arrive soon, they had to. Like the mythic Valkyries, they would bear away the bodies of the dead soldiers from the future and sweep the battlefield to cheek for possible survivors. All he had to do was stay alive.

He heard a flutter of wings. Large wings. For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating. It seemed entirely too melodramatic to be dying in a mountain pass, in a savage wilderness at the ceiling of the world, and to hear the flapping of the deathbird’s wings approaching. And it was a deathbird, only a prosaic one, a vulture. The ugly bird alighted on the sangar wall not two feet away. Its scrofulous face stared at him indifferently.

“Beat it, damn you,” Court said. “I’m not dead yet.”

The ugly bird opened and closed its beak with a snap, as if to say, “That’s okay, I’ll wait.”

Court pegged a rock at it and missed, but the vulture vacated its perch above him with an irate squawk. He heard the rock bouncing down the slope, starting a brief, miniature avalanche as it dislodged smaller stones which skittered down with a pattering sound, and then all was still again. But only for a moment. Court froze as he hea

rd the sounds of somebody or something climbing up the slope towards him. It could be animal or man. Please, thought Court, let it be an animal, even a hungry tiger, anything but a Ghazi tribesman. He only had one bullet. It might be enough to stop one Ghazi, but its sound could bring others. He lay perfectly still, afraid to move, unable to. He heard the sound of labored breathing.

His sweaty hands clenched around the stock of his rifle, bringing it around in front of him, bayonet pointed toward the sound. The white-robed figure stepped into view. Court held his breath. The face beneath the turban was in shadow, but as the Ghazi turned toward him, Court gasped involuntarily. The moonlight revealed the dark skin of an Afridi tribesman, but the features were his own. In the same instant, his doppelganger’s breath hissed out and he muttered a most un-Islamic oath.

“Sweet Jesus!”

Half convinced he was delirious, Court kept the rifle pointed at the apparition and said, “Who are you?”

The Ghazi stared at him. “Thomas Court,” he said. “Sergeant, U.S. Army Temporal Corps.”

“Yes, I’m Court, but how—” and somehow he suddenly knew that the man had not recognised him, but rather had answered his question. Just as suddenly, he realised the man was going to kill him. They both fired at the same time. The echoes of their shots rolled against the rock walls of the Khyber Pass and died away in stillness.

Chapter 1

Colonel Moses Forrester, commander of the First Division of the United States Army Temporal Corps, was unaccustomed to wearing his full dress uniform in his own quarters, but the status of his visitor demanded it. It was the first time Forrester had ever met face to face with the director general of the Referee Corps. If the fact of the meeting was unusual in itself, the circumstances of it were even more so. The meeting was top secret and there were armed guards stationed outside in the corridor and by the lift tubes. The entire floor of the Command Staff BOQ where Forrester was quartered had been sealed off, and the other officers billeted there had been given orders to be elsewhere between 1900 and 2100 hours. The director general had been supplied with the coordinates to clock directly into Forrester’s living room. He arrived with his personal bodyguards, who took up stations just inside the entrance to the living room and in the foyer, by the front door.

The man who merited such treatment was thin frail, his aged face deeply lined, his head bald, like Forrester’s. He wore a simple, two-piece white suit with the small gold and platinum medallion of his office worn as an amulet around his neck. Compared to Forrester’s bull-like physique, the director general’s frame looked emaciated, but his light gray eyes were bright with vitality and intelligence.

“Colonel Forrester, I’m pleased to meet you. I am Director General Vargas.” His voice was soft and low, with a flowing, soothing quality.

“Sir!’ said Forrester, snapping to attention. “This is an honour.”

Vargas nodded once, accepting the compliment. “Please, Colonel, stand at ease. We shall dispense with protocol henceforth. We have important matters to discuss. Do sit down.”

Forrester waited until Vargas sat down on the couch before he took the chair opposite, across the low glass coffee table. “May I offer you anything, sir?”

“No, thank you,” Vargas said. “I will come right to the point. The conversation we are about to have is, of course, classified.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Which personnel make up your best historical adjustment team?” said Vargas.

Forrester replied without hesitation. “That would be my executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Lucas Priest; Lieutenant Finn Delaney, and Sergeant Andre Cross.”

Vargas pursed his lips and nodded. “If we may speak candidly, strictly off the record, I would like to ask you some questions about these personnel.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Their record speaks for itself, yet I am struck by the incongruity of Lieutenant Colonel Priest’s being a model officer and Lieutenant Delaney’s disciplinary record.”

Forrester said nothing.

“You have no response?” said Vargas.