“So he left you there,” Lucas said, “to kill us when we arrived.”
The lilliputian nodded. “He said that our only chance to stay alive would be kill you. We’d have all died anyway. Our commanding officer was killed.. A snake got him. I was the exec.” He snorted. “Some great commandos we turned out to be. There were five hundred of us in the first generation. We’re all that’s left.”
“Well, Lieutenant, regardless of whatever Drakov told you, you’re not going to be killed,” said Lucas. “We’re going to dock you to our headquarters in the 27th century. And you’re going to be treated humanely, like prisoners of war. Special arrangements will obviously have to be made for your detention, but nobody’s going to kill you. I guarantee it.”
“Wait, Lucas,” said Delaney, “let’s think about this for a minute.”
Lucas frowned. “What do you mean? What’s there to think about? We have to deliver the prisoners. Surely, you’re not suggesting that we—”
“No, no, of course not,” said Delaney. “You know me better than that. I was merely thinking that we might be overlooking an opportunity here.” He glanced at the Lilliputian leader. “Lieutenant, how’d you like a crack at your old friend, Drakov’?”
“Finn, no!” said Lucas. “Absolutely not! I know what you’re thinking and you can just forget about it!”
“Why?”
“Why? Are you serious? We can’t simply dock to the 20th century with a suitcase full of Lilliputians! It’s too risky! How do we know we can trust them?”
“When you get right down to it, we don’t,” said Finn. “But I believe him. Everything he’s told us fits with what we already know about Drakov. And if the Network is involved, we’re going to need help. We can’t ask headquarters for backup because we don’t know who we can trust back there.”
“Maybe not in the T.I.A., but we can trust our own people, the First Division,” Lucas said.
Delaney shook his head. “They wouldn’t have anyone to spare. You don’t know what it’s been like, Lucas. Ever since Forrester uncovered the Network and set out to break it, it’s been all-out war. ‘The only people he can trust in the entire agency are our old First Division people and there simply aren’t enough of them to go around. Most of them are on adjustment duty, just like we are, and most of the rest are engaged in ongoing undercover work, trying to help expose new Network cells and break them up. We’re not only trying to preserve the continuity of the timeline, we’re faced with hostilities from the parallel universe and from within the T.I.A., as well. And with the old man in the hospital, Steiger’s going to have his hands full. We can’t ask him to spare us any reinforcements, Lucas. And even if we could, there’ll be no way to be sure that word of their clocking out to help us wouldn’t leak out and someone would clock back ahead of them and warn Savino. “
Lucas nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. I guess it’s going to have to be just you and me, like in the old days. Only this time, we’ve got the Doc along to help us.”
“Just one moment,” Darkness said. “When did I become a temporal agent? Somehow, I don’t recall enlisting.”
“Don’t hand me that, Doc,” Lucas said. “I don’t recall asking to be brought back from the dead and made into an experimental human time machine, either! Now if you want to see how your prototype functions in the field, then I suggest you come along and help, otherwise I’ll just go and, do it myself!”
He disappeared.
“Lucas! What the … where did he go?” Delaney said.
“Oh, hell,” said Darkness. “I’m afraid he translocated to the 20th century. “
“You mean—”
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” Darkness said, with a sigh. “He was thinking about going and doing it himself and that’s precisely what he did. I fear I didn’t quite get all the bugs out of system. It does tend to interpret one’s thoughts rather literally.”
“Well, don’t just sit there, for God’s sake! Go and help him! He could be in trouble!”
“Not if he keeps his wits about him,” Darkness said. He grunted. “That’ll be the day. I’d better go and help him.”
He vanished.
Delaney quickly programmed new transition co-ordinates into his warp disc. He glanced down at the Lilliputians.
“If the offer’s still open,” said the lieutenant, “we accept.”
Delaney threw open a closet door and took out a brown leather valise. He grabbed several shirts out of the closet and stuffed them down into the bottom. “All right,” he said, setting the valise on the table and carefully cutting the lilliputians’ bonds. “Get inside. But if you try anything, so help me, I’ll do the Mexican hat dance on this bag. Let’s go.”
For a moment, Andre was too stunned to move. First Lucas had miraculously come back from the dead, and now Reese Hunter. But then she realized that this man couldn’t possibly be the Reese Hunter she had known, the one who had been brutally murdered by the Timekeepers in 17th century France. This could only be his twin from the parallel universe, an officer in the Counter Insurgency Section — their counterpart to the Temporal Intelligence Agency.
They had met when Forrester had sent them on a mission through a confluence, into the parallel universe, where Nikolai Drakov had pretended to defect only so that he could hijack the S.O.G.‘s Project infiltrator along with its brilliant director, Dr. Moreau. It was from Moreau that Drakov had learned how to create his deadly hominoids. Capt. Reese Hunter had been sent out to stop him and he had met the Time Commandos when they were all taken prisoner by Drakov and his homicidal henchman, Santos Benedetto.
They didn’t really know each other, and yet, in another sense, they did. This Reese Hunter was not the same man who had helped Andre to avenge her brother’s death, but he was identical to that Reese Hunter in almost all respects, as if they had been cut from the same mould. He, in turn, had also known an Andre, although the Andre he had known in his own universe had been killed while on a mission, just as the Lucas Priest and the Finn Delaney he had known had died. During the time they had shared the same prison cell at Drakov’s headquarters on the island of Rhodes, they had discovered that they “knew” each other well through having known their counterparts. It was an eerie sort of intimacy.
When they had escaped, they had taken Hunter prisoner. There had been no choice, of course. He was the enemy. But once they had crossed over back into their own timeline, Hunter had escaped with a stolen warp disc and they hadn’t seen him since. N