Chase (ChronoShift Trilogy) (34 page)

Please, God, help me fix this.

***

One day earlier

The grey mist parted briefly, and she caught a glimpse of the shadowy figure as it flitted back and forth between the distant trees and brush.  Curt, muffled cries echoing in the cool morning air accompanied it wherever it went.

Abbie had left home quite early this morning in search of quail, turkey, or whatever other game she might find.  A good tracker knows when they are being followed, and she'd noticed right away.  In these times of war, she had no doubt as to the nationality of the man, and surely it had to be a man, on the trail behind her.  Of course, he had to be Wampanoag.

She'd set a few traps hoping to warn him off, or at least slow him down, but he'd avoided them and closed in further.  She should have stopped to mount an ambush, or made some kind of attempt to dig in and defend herself.  Instead, she'd stupidly walked into this clearing and was now exposed and vulnerable.

She’d walked in a trap of her own making.  Imitation bird calls sounded from the brush on all sides.  Her follower had not been operating alone.

He had creatively herded her into this clearing where his friends waited in ambush, and she was hopelessly surrounded.

She notched an arrow and dropped to her stomach in the grass, which really didn't provide much cover, but it was better than nothing.

That was when she first saw the shadowy figure.

One Indian had stood, ready to release a shot her way, when the strange form appeared suddenly, slaying the would-be attacker, and then disappeared just as quickly.  The thin grey fog that ebbed and flowed with the breeze made positive identification impossible from this distance, yet she suspected it must be Hardy.  Who else knew she was out here that could appear and disappear at will?

The shadow darted silently between groups of hidden Wampanoag, eliciting without mercy weakened death cries from those it attacked.  She moved closer, wiggling her way through the grass, partly desiring to help, partly wanting to confirm it was indeed Hardy.

The sound of static from the path behind her followed by a heavy thud startled her.  She whipped her head around and saw the shadow man had just killed the Wampanoag who'd been following her.

It
was
Hardy.

She got a good look at him before he shifted back out, though she'd never seen such tight anger in his face before.  Mark, yes, but not Hardy.  Hardy was always so much more at ease.

When she reached the far side of the clearing where most of the fighting was taking place, several shocking realizations hit her at once.  First, she had apparently been surrounded by a war party of about thirty to forty painted warriors lusting for white blood.  If it weren't for Hardy and his unnatural ability to shift through time, she most certainly would have been killed.

Second, Hardy was not quitting.  He was like a man possessed.  The warriors were already in full retreat, fleeing as fast as they could from the deadly phantom.  Yet, he did not let them go, but pursued them in whatever direction they ran.

A warrior in his early twenties rushed to escape the killing ghost and twisted in a panic at the sound of static behind him.  He stumbled, fell back, and raised his hands helplessly in a fruitless gesture to fend off the phantom, his face morphed with fear.  Hardy dispatched him.

He should stop.  The will to fight had left the warriors.

"Hardy!"  She called.

He didn't waver.  Another warrior fell and the phantom vanished once more.

As soon as she saw him appear again, she yelled louder, "Hardy, stop!"

He paused and turned toward her.  She didn't recognize the distant, pained torment in his eyes.

"It's okay, Hardy.  Stop.  They're leaving.  I'm safe."

She understood they must have originally killed her and he'd found her body.  That was the source of the ferocity in him now, which was thankfully, and finally, melting away.

He came to her.

"I've been fighting for four days," he mumbled to no one in particular.

Of course, he could only shift six times before his shifter shut down.  As many times as she'd seen him shift just now, he must have spent several nights sleeping in the damp forest waiting to resume the attack.  Abject weariness showed now where the anger had been.

She laid her fingertips lightly on his cheek.  "They're gone, Hardy."

"They'll be back."

"No, they won't.  Let them go."

Bending down, he kissed her softly on the lips.

And she let him.

May 18
^th
2014, Boston, MA

Randall Cook wiped a strand of greasy hair out of his face.  "So who are we gonna test it on, Cap'n?"

Even in modern society, the man avoided baths far too often and he stank.  Rialto never thought he'd have to make rules about hygiene, but it was getting out of hand.  "I thought we'd test it on you, Cook," he replied dryly.

"Uh-uh."  He shook his head vigorously.  "I ain't vol'teerin' for no electric'ty test."

"Plageanet?"  Rialto motioned to the former plantation owner, who stepped up behind Cook and promptly slammed his weapon into the back of the sailor's skull.  Cook collapsed to the floor unconscious.                                

"There ya are."  Plageanet looked disdainfully upon the fallen man before turning away. 

Graves and Torino stood like silent sentinels in opposing corners of the room.  They weren't about to let anyone sneak up behind
them.
  Laura merely watched, a blank facial expression denying any observer insight into the thoughts running behind her eyes.  DeCleary had refused to participate; he wasn't even in the room.

Rialto dragged Cook onto two metal plates Stanley Irvine had designed just for this test.   He'd asked Irvine to study the taser and any way they could use electricity to make a shifter inactive.  He knew that tasers had a potential of anywhere from 50,000 to 400,000 volts, but Irvine had explained that voltage wasn't as important as amperage when it came to electrocuting somebody, and that when a person was being tased, only about 2 milliamps would be flowing.  It was enough current to cause a lot of pain and incapacitate, but not to kill.

So, they designed a plate system where they could test the actual amperage necessary to shut down a shifter, and Cook was now on them, fully clothed to match the electrical conditions that would likely be present when they needed to use such a set-up.   They attached electrodes at different points on Cook's skin to measure the current flowing through him.

Rialto flipped the switch allowing electricity to flow through the plates and then slowly turned a knob which controlled the voltage differential between them.  They immediately registered .5 milliamps flowing between the electrodes on Cook.  Rialto stepped it up from there.  There was no need to cause his man any more pain than necessary.  Laura's job was to monitor the shifter and signal as soon as the face of it turned red.

She did at just a little over 1 milliamp.  That didn't seem like a lot, but there it was.  He shut the over-sized equipment off.

"Wake him up," he ordered.

Plageanet threw water from a glass in Cook's face.  It was a good thing Rialto had already turned the shock plate off.

The sailor began to roll about, cursing.

"When he's got his senses back, tell him to take a bath," Rialto called over his shoulder.

***

September 12
^th
1675, Swansea, MA

The romance proceeded unusually, and Hardy had not expected anything different.  For starters, Abbie called it a courtship, not a romance, or dating.  She had let him kiss her, but just that once, and the kiss had been almost platonic in nature.  Still, it lingered in his mind like none other.

He was in love with her.  She did not deny having feelings for him as well, but informed him flatly that things could not progress until she was sure of his religious piety.  In the back of his mind, he'd always known it would be this way.  He knew she was waiting for him to shrug off his agnosticism once and for all and make a final decision to follow her Lord.  She'd made that perfectly clear.

Still, he resented it.  He shouldn't, but he did, even though he understood her and her reasoning.  The idea of making such a tremendous decision under pressure to continue a "courtship," well, it just rubbed him wrong. 
If
he were to make such a decision, he wanted it to be genuine.  He would decide independently of her, of his desire for her, and he would decide such a thing when
he
was ready.

"Hardy, I hate to ask...but I need help."

"You?"  He laughed.  "You never need help."

"It's my young cousin, Nathaniel.  Metacomet attacked a small hamlet nearby and little Nathan was killed.  I just found out. He was only seven."

"I didn't know you had any family left here."  He knew her mother, father, and brother were all dead.

"I've a few scattered here and there.  Nathaniel is the son of one of my first cousins.  His parents died of the fever a few years ago.  Some neighbors took him in."

"This war has really been devastating, hasn't it?"

"Thankfully, Metacomet and the Wampanoag are beginning to lose more than they win.  I spoke with one of the colony's officials a month ago.  They think they'll have him on the run shortly, but he estimated we've lost almost half our brothers and sisters in Christ in this bloody war.  They don't know for sure, but the Wampanoag may have lost as many as seven out of every ten.  It's so senseless."

"Yet many times unavoidable."

"Will you help?"

He couldn't resist her large blue eyes.  The beginnings of unwanted tears made them shine even more crystalline.  "Of course, Abbie."

***

September 7
^th
1675, Hadley, MA

He was all too familiar with the scene.  Puritan village.  Indians attacking.  From the first time when they'd saved Abbie's life to his latest foray with her to save fellow colonists from Metocomet's hatchet, Hardy had become an unwitting veteran of King Philip's War which took place three hundred years before he was even inducted into the U.S. army.

He sat with his back to the wooden wall of a home on the outskirts of the village.  The battle had already begun.  Hardy tamped the tobacco down in his rustic 17
^th
century pipe and relit it, taking a deep breath of smoke.  He reclined his head against the weather-worn planks, his posture relaxed.

Abbie was a bit more tense than he.  The boy
was
her cousin after all, but this wouldn't be any different from other extractions, he reasoned.

The boy was fine for the time being.  He was cowering in some brush about fifty yards away.  Hardy could even see the Indian who would kill him walking slowly toward the little guy's hiding place.  There was plenty of time.

Hardy laid down his pipe, steadying it to make sure it wouldn't tip over.  He loved this Puritan tobacco.  It had a certain kick to it modern tobacco lacked.

He raised his bow, notched an arrow, and centered his sights on the warrior's chest.  He pulled the string back to his cheek and waited for the perfect moment to release.

Then, the string snapped.

Abbie let out a low moan of distress as she scrambled to get her own bow ready.  While Hardy was busy restringing his bow, Abbie swiftly loosed three missiles at the attacker.  Each shaft sailed true, only to veer off sharply at the last minute as if blown by some unfelt wind.  That got Hardy's attention.  Abbie was not one to miss.

Tension now coursed through his veins.  This was not going to be an easy extraction after all.  Abbie dropped her weapon and ran to rescue the boy, but she tripped on a rock and slammed shoulder-first into the ground.

It was too late.  Hardy grabbed Abbie and turned her head away from the carnage, covering her eyes with his hand.  He immediately shifted them back to several minutes before the attack.

Distress in the eyes of someone you love is an excellent motivator and Hardy redoubled his efforts.  Abbie was bordering on frantic.  He'd never seen her like this, but this was family, and she was afraid.  She was afraid this was
one of those times.
  One of those times they didn't like to talk about, but one of those times where the unseen hand prevented their interference.

This time, when the boy hid himself, Hardy hunkered low and ran toward him, hoping to grab the boy and whisk him off to safety.  However, the boy heard the noise of Hardy's approach and panicked.  Without looking and fearing it to be an Indian, he ran off in the opposite direction.  This accelerated the inevitable, driving him right into the hands of his killer.  Hardy had a few more seconds to try something else, but his bowstring broke again and his rifle misfired twice.  He shifted out of the unpleasantness once more.