The Khyber Connection (TimeWars 6)

Din froze, petrified with fear.

“They’re not dead,” the twin Priest said. “They’ve just been put to sleep for a while. You have nothing to fear if you obey instructions.”

Swallowing hard, Din came forward. The twin Priest looked at him hard. He spoke to Delaney. “This one’s not a soldier. He with you?”

“He’s just a Hindu attendant we hired,” said Andre. “He’s no danger to you.”

The twin Priest looked at Din uncertainly for a moment. “Perhaps. I think we’ll bring him along, just the same.”

He turned and spoke b

riefly in Pushtu to the Pathans, telling them that he was leaving one of his men in charge and that the British soldiers were to be brought to the temple unharmed or else there would be dire consequences. He then addressed the two commandos. “Your warp discs, if you don’t mind. Carefully. Don’t try anything or the others die.”

Reluctantly Finn and Andre surrendered their warp discs. The twin Priest glanced at Din, who stood quaking.

“He doesn’t have one,” said Andre. “I told you, he’s only a—”

“Search him,” said the twin Priest.

After a thorough search yielded no warp disc, he was satisfied. “Right. Follow me.”

They went off a short distance into the rocks, to a spot where three Afridis stood guard with one gray-uniformed soldier over a warp disc about the size of a dinner plate. It was large enough to generate a field that could transport a platoon of men at one time. They took up position around it, within its field radius, and the uniformed man activated it. The Afridis dropped to all fours, pressing their foreheads to the ground as the disc began to glow. A moment later they disappeared.

A thorough search had divested Phoenix of his weapons and his warp disc. He sat cross-legged on a small cushion in a room on the upper floor of the small palace. Two muscular, armed guards stood by the door behind him, tulwars held across their chests. Four guards flanked Drakov, two on either side. Under other circumstances Phoenix might have found the scene amusing, reminiscent of The Arabian Nights. Drakov reclined before him on an elevated, cushion-covered platform. They were surrounded by rich silks and tapestries. Incense made the air fragrant. Drakov smoked a water pipe, adding the pungent odor of latakia to the smell of burning incense.

Beautiful young girls with diamond nose studs, emerald and ruby ornaments in the centres of their foreheads, and bracelets of hammered gold and silver on their wrists and ankles, waited on them, gliding in and out of the room in their flowing, silky costumes, bringing them platefuls of fruit and sweetmeats. One dark-eyed young beauty lounged on a cushion by Drakov’s side, staring at Phoenix as Drakov absently fondled her breast. It was a fantastic scene, surreal except for the horrifying image of the guards plunging their knives into Fox and Sable.

“You’re not eating, Martingale,” said Drakov in English, so that they could converse in privacy.

“Did you expect me to have an appetite?” said Phoenix.

“After all we have been through together, I certainly did not expect you to be squeamish. Or sentimentally moralistic. I should have had you killed as well, but that would have left a lot of unanswered questions. Our meeting like this only serves to prove what I told you once before, that our destinies are linked. I gave you a position of power and responsibility. You betrayed me. I would like to hear your reasons. What did the Time Commandos have to offer you that I could not?”

Phoenix snorted. “Sanity, for one thing.”

Drakov’s eyes widened slightly. “You truly think I am insane? Could an insane man have accomplished what I have?”

“It’s been done before,” said Phoenix wryly. “I could name examples, but I don’t think you’d care for the comparisons. On the other hand, you might be flattered.”

Drakov smiled. “You don’t understand. That much, at least, is clear. I suppose that was my mistake. As a leader, I should have motivated my men, imbued them with a sense of purpose. I failed with you. As you can see, I have not failed with these. “He swept his arm out to indicate the guards.

“What’s it all about, Nikolai?’ said Phoenix. “What are you trying to do here?”

“Finish what I began,” said Drakov. “More to the point, what the Timekeepers began and were never able to see through to the end. Before a new order can be established, the old one must be torn down, destroyed completely. That is the first principle of anarchism. As in the karmic cycle, death must come before rebirth. Only in this case the cycle has been interfered with. Mensinger’s warnings went unheeded, and what he feared most has finally come to pass.”

“The alternate timeline,” Phoenix said.

Drakov raised his eyebrows. “You surprise me. I am forever underestimating you. How much do you know?”

“Only that temporal interference has resulted in massive fluctuations in the timestream,” Phoenix said, “bringing about a confluence between two separate timelines. Where do you fit in?”

“I am an integral part of it,” said Drakov. “I may even have helped bring it about. When your treachery caused my submarine base to be raided, I escaped along with Benedetto. We had a contingency plan. We had preset our coordinates to the 27th century, the last time period in which anyone would think to look for us. But fate had a surprise in store for us. Somehow we clocked forward into a different timeline, almost identical to this one, a virtual mirror image, only with some significant discrepancies. We did not realise this at first, which led us to make mistakes that resulted in our being apprehended. Their surprise was as great as ours. Both Benedetto and I were exhaustively debriefed. They wrung us dry to get information about this timeline, which they had been unaware of. What they learned from us explained a great deal about certain phenomena they were experiencing.

“They had a Mensinger as well,” Drakov continued, “one very much like ours. Only they listened to him. They possessed the sanity to stop their Time Wars. But we have forced them to begin again by making war on them.”

“What are you talking about?” said Phoenix. “No one’s made—”

“What do you think happens when someone sets off a warp grenade?” said Drakov, “such as when Lucas Priest exploded one in 19th century Ruritania to break out of Zenda Castle?”