19

Rescue

“Everyone,” Agent Hessman called out, “roll aside! Robert, your stun gun now.”

Agent Hessman rolled to the left while reaching for something in his pocket, and Captain Beck rolled right, pulling out his Taser. Ben grabbed Claire and rolled with her away perpendicular to the other two just as one of their slowly gaining pursuers fired off an electrified bullet. The shot narrowly missed Agent Hessman as he threw out that which he had drawn out from his pocket. It was a small bottle of liquid.

Still descending in slow motion, Captain Beck spun around to face up, so that he was now falling backward, and fired his Taser. He was not, however, aiming for either of the two time cops. The twin darts shot out for the bottle, trailing long wires back to the pistol. It was a solid shot that hit the bottle dead on, but what might stun a person cannot shatter a bottle.

The other gunshot did.

The contents of the shattered bottle continued up along the bottle’s original trajectory, but now spreading out into a wide spray that caught the pair of time cops full in the face. Nearly immediately their reactions began slowing. One of them tried to stay awake with a shake of his head as he fired off a shot from his pistol, a shot that went wild when his other hand sleepily brushed his jet-belt control, sending him spinning slowly around and his charged bullet homing in on another ventilation grid they were passing by.

Agent Hessman gave a satisfied look back before returning his attention to their course. “That chloroform should keep them busy for a while, but where did that gunshot come from?”

A guilty-looking Claire was falling backward a little faster now, with Ben holding her from behind; in her hand, a small derringer.

“My other things were in my hat, but I had this wrapped up in my scarf,” she confessed. “I know it may be a bit outdated, and it was supposed to be nonlethal, but I thought maybe . . .”

“No time to argue with results,” Agent Hessman replied. “Now let’s see about our course.”

While Ben tried to correct his and Claire’s course, which had been altered by the diminutive kickback of the small pistol in near-zero gravity, Agent Hessman had his tracker in hand for a quick glance. Captain Beck pressed a small knob on his Taser to reel in the wires, then pocketed the weapon. Above them the pair of time cops were trying unsuccessfully to stay awake while absently fumbling at the controls of their jet belts.

“Just down a bit more,” Agent Hessman said after a moment. “Follow me.”

Kicking off against the side wall of the wide shaft, he shot down, leaving the two drugged time police well behind him. Ben and Claire did their best to roll down after him, while Captain Beck didn’t seem much more skilled at the art of zero-gravity tumbling than they were. Agent Hessman aimed himself like a bullet, speeding down straight for another vent. As he neared it, he reached out his right hand. Counting down silently to himself, when he was nearly upon it, he rolled to his right and slammed out his hand.

He caught on to the inside of the shaft, his lower body arcing on past the rest of him until he was hanging by his arms from the edge of the adjoining vent. Only for a moment, though, as his legs kicked against the wall of the main shaft, his momentum then spent. As he proceeded to pull himself into the connecting shaft, Ben came up right behind him, one hand reaching out, the other wrapped around Claire’s waist. Agent Hessman had pulled himself halfway in when he felt a sudden weight tugging on his right leg. He braced against it for a moment until he heard the sound of two joined bodies hitting lightly against the side wall of the main shaft, then finished pulling himself and now his two passengers all the way in.

Captain Beck came barreling straight into the shaft just as Ben was helping Claire in ahead of him. He came feetfirst into Ben’s rear, and soon the lot of them were spilling through the vent until narrowing confines allowed them to stop their tumbling.

“Sorry about that,” Captain Beck apologized, “but it’s not like I had astronaut training.”

“That was still a pretty good pool shot—right into the pocket,” Ben replied. “Lou, how are we looking?”

Agent Hessman crawled on a bit before briefly consulting his tracker, giving room for the rest to space out. “On the right course,” he announced. “Try and crawl as quietly as you can. No sense in alerting whoever may be up ahead.”

They crawled as quietly as four grown adults could in a confined ventilation shaft, Ben coming up behind Agent Hessman for a quiet word.

“We really lucked out back there,” he said. “I’m surprised those time police didn’t manage to catch up with us with those jet belts before you got that bottle of chloroform off.”

“Not too surprising, though a calculated risk,” Agent Hessman admitted. “You saw the displays on the booth selling them, the kids and families playing around with them. They’re toys, not designed for any sort of serious velocity even in such low gravity. True, it allowed them far better control of their direction, but we could gain better acceleration by pushing off against the walls.”

“I never would have thought of that. Guess that’s why you’re the leader.”

“And as your leader, from what my tracker is telling me as to the distance ahead, we should be feeling some gravity returning by the time we get there. So please warn Miss Hill back there that the time for giggling like a kid is coming to an end.”

A glance back did indeed show Claire quite enjoying herself as she pretended to be a fish swimming through the sea of zero gravity. Ben dropped back and placed a finger to his lips to quiet her, but while she did come to a halt and resume a more normal crawl, she pulled his finger away from his mouth and replaced it with her own lips in a quick kiss.

“What was that for? Not that I mind, of course.”

“For being you,” she replied, “for being here for me. These past few months I’ve been feeling out of place, away from everything and everyone I’d ever known. But you’ve been making me feel like it’s perfectly normal for a girl to be wandering through time with her fiancé. I wouldn’t have survived without you, and a ventilation shaft in some futuristic space station seemed as good a place as any to reward you. You are my knight.”

“Well then, my lady, might I return the favor?”

“You may,” she giggled.

While Ben and Claire made their exchanges, in the lead Agent Hessman had his eye on his tracker. Two sets of branching shafts he ignored, and as they crawled, they all could indeed feel a portion of their weight gradually returning. After what seemed like an interminable length of time for crawling, he waved a hand back, motioning the others to stop, then pointed ahead of himself. Twenty feet ahead their small shaft came to an end at a grid.

He placed a finger to his lips, the others quieting in response, then led the crawl with far more silent care. When he was a few feet away from the grid he carefully looked through, then backed away and lay down on his back with feet drawn in and aimed at the ventilation grid, hands pushing against the sides of the shaft ready to launch himself forward.

A sharp kick and the grid flew off. He then launched himself into the room beyond, whipping out his Taser after landing.

It looked to be a small control room, with computers, monitors,
displays, and one large shaded window off to his right. A couple of
the displays were showing what appeared to be bio-sign readings, from a

heart-rate monitor to a brain-wave pattern. There was one tech sitting at the controls, his attention fixed on the view through the window, when Agent Hessman burst in. The man had time enough to turn and gasp at the entry before two electrified darts trailing wires stuck into his body and had him briefly spasming before slumping into unconsciousness. Agent Hessman was just reeling the wires of his Taser back in when Ben slipped out of the shaft behind him, followed by Claire and Captain Beck.

Clair & Ben Kissing while floating

“So where are we?” Ben asked.

Agent Hessman gestured in the direction of the window, then leaped toward the one door leading into the room beyond. Ben stepped forward to see, then beside him heard Claire gasp at the same sight. It was an operation room, at the center of which was Samantha Weiss strapped down to a table.

“What are they doing to her?” Claire wondered.

The end of the room had two doors out: the one into the operation room and another. As Agent Hessman burst through the one into the operation room, Captain Beck charged forward to hold the door open behind him and give the other door a hard look. Ben took the hint and hurried over to examine the other door.

There were two men in medical whites in the room, one of whom received Agent Hessman’s fist in his face. They were hovering around some equipment by the operating table, preparing their unconscious patient for . . . something. The other man said something in Russian, while making a grab for something on a handy operating tray, and received Agent Hessman’s other fist as he turned back around. This was followed by a swift kick.

Claire was observing through the two-way mirror that was the control room’s window, watching Agent Hessman thrash the pair of Russian medical staffers, and could not help but smile. “He really loves her. I just hope he doesn’t wait too long before asking her on a date. A girl will wait only so long.”

Ben, meanwhile, was finding that the other door out operated with a simple button to open it, no hand scanner required when leaving from the inside. He soon had the door open a crack to see what was outside, then held it closed.

With both men on the ground, Agent Hessman turned his attention to Samantha. She lay on the large plastic slab, restraints holding down hands and feet, eyes closed. Working quickly, he undid the straps, then propped up her head with one hand while gently slapping her face with the other.

“Samantha, come on, wake up. It’s Lou Hessman.”

Her eyes flickered briefly, adjusting into a look of recognition, then a brief smile before faintly whispering, “Back of neck.”

He felt around, found the chip-like device pinned into her neck, and pulled it out. Immediately her limbs seemed to relax while the bio-monitors all flatlined.

“Lou,” Captain Beck called in, “no telling how much time we have.”

Agent Hessman helped Samantha to sit up, then carefully to her feet.

“Can you walk?”

“I can run if it’ll get me out of here,” she countered. “Though it may be a few moments before I can figure out which nerve works which leg.”

“Fireman’s carry it is.”

Heaving her up across one shoulder, Agent Hessman then hurried as best he could back to the sliding door that Captain Beck was holding open and entered back into the control room. At the other door Ben was already getting it opened while Claire crowded in with the rest.

“Long hallway beyond,” Ben reported. “From the looks of some of the hallway signs, we’re in some sort of medical wing. This room is labeled as ‘Op-Control C.’”

“First map of this place you see, grab it,” Agent Hessman ordered. “We’re winging it on the run here.”

“Samantha, are you all right?” Claire asked as Ben flung the door wide and hurried out, holding it open for the rest.

“Upside down and light-headed,” came the response, “but feeling a lot better. Just get me out of this chamber of futuristic horrors.”

With Samantha carried over one shoulder, Agent Hessman led the charge down the medical hallway, the rest clustered around him, the other two men pulling out their respective Tasers, while Claire held on to her scarf as they ran.

“Always a chase,” she remarked with a growing grin. “I think I’m going to like that part.”