Acme Time Travel Incorporated - Volume 2

Their starship was hovering six yards away from Dmitry’s office window. Wind turbulence from the huge building was making the starship rock slightly. Its small fore and aft thrusters were working continuously to keep it stable. The ship was cloaked ... invisible to the human eye. They had full visuals and audio from the recon bolt they had shot onto the office’s plexi-glass window. Gabriel and Ginny watched and listened via their heads-up display.

“It’s the two men from Switzerland,” Ginny said.

“They don’t look happy,” Gabriel observed.

The two men were standing in front of Dmitry. He was pacing backwards and forwards in front of them.

Ginny gestured at the display, which zoomed in slightly.

“They’re called Flynn and Matthews,” she said. “Flynn’s on the left.”

Gabriel nodded.

Ginny zoomed back out. Dmitry was talking.

“So, Flynn, you’re telling me that you don’t know where the fucking med-bay people are,” Dmitry said. “Is that fucking correct?”

“They only had the one STU with an active tracer on them,” said Flynn, apologetically.

“We could have downloaded the memory from that STU,” Matthews, said. “You know, the one they put on the cow, but ...”

“But you shot the fucking STU,” Flynn said. “Blew the fucking thing to pieces. No way then that we could tell who was carrying the STU, who put it on the ...”

He stopped, suddenly horrified at his own impertinence.

Dmitry stopped pacing. He looked out of the plexi-glass screen. He looked down to the people scurrying about in the plaza 47 floors below.

He turned back to Flynn and Matthews.

“Right then. What do we know?” he asked them.

Flynn looked over to Matthews, as though his colleague might know the answer to this frighteningly tricky question.

Dmitry scowled.

“We know that the fuckers are still alive,” Dmitry explained, striving to retain his composure ... trying to stop himself from un-ravelling and beating the shit out of one or both of these fucking imbeciles.

The two guys nodded.

“Don’t we ... fucking don’t we?” he snarled.

The two guys kept nodding. They didn’t seem to know what else to do.

Dmitry turned to his desk and pounded his fist on the desktop.

“Like fucking nodding dogs ... like two fucking nodding dogs,” he said.

“I think Matthews looks like he’s going to cry,” Gabriel said.

“Or maybe wet himself,” said Ginny.

Gabriel looked over at Ginny.

She wasn’t smiling.

He imagined that she was feeling sorry for them. Alright, they were Dmitry’s hired muscle, but he wasn’t aware that they had killed anybody. And they certainly hadn’t fired a shot at their cow.

Dmitry turned away from Flynn and Matthews.

He strode over to the window, staring into the distance. He was looking directly in the direction of the starship.

He turned back to the two men. He stood up straight ... talking calmly now.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “You were employed by ACME-TOURS as security professionals. You have a case in front of you. You have a case of two people who you need to find. We know what they look like. We know where they were a few days ago. I am sure that two professional gentlemen such as yourselves can set about this task and carry it through to a successful conclusion. I am very much hoping that within a very short space of time, that you will have found these two people and ... and executed your contract. Would you not agree, gentlemen?”

Flynn and Matthews nodded nervously.

“Would you not fucking agree?” Dmitry snarled.

“Yes,” they both said, nodding vigorously.

“Right, well go and fucking get on with it. Get out. Get out now. There’s the fucking lift.”

Both men turned and walked over to the lift.

Flynn punched the lift button ... it lit up ... it was on their floor already.

The lift door opened ... they got in.

As the door shut, they both saw a starship uncloaking just outside of the plexi-glass window.

“What the fuck,” Flynn said, pointing.

Then the lift door closed.

Dmitry turned to look in the direction that Flynn was pointing in. It was a starship ... slowly uncloaking. It looked vast ... probably because it was floating no more than thirty feet from his plexi-glass window.

He strode over to the glass; leaning against it. The ship’s forward hatch was peeling open. In the doorway he could see a SEG surrogate robot. It was holding some sort of weapon. That was why some people hired those brutes. They could carry some serious firepower. This one was holding a very big, a very clunky looking weapon of some sort. He didn’t recognise the weapon. It looked like it fired a projectile with some sort of bulbous nose to it.

The robot hoisted the weapon up. It was pointing it directly at him.

Dmitry ran back to the lift. He punched the call button. The lift was still going down with Flynn and Matthews in it. It was on floor 22. It must have picked up somebody else.

And it was still going down.

To the left of the lift was a large metal cupboard. Dmitry wrenched it open. He reached into the cupboard, pulling out his old semi-automatic shotgun. It was a Franchi SPAS-12, with a 5-shell magazine extension tube. That meant five shells in the magazine and one in the breach. The gun was nearly 200 years old, but he could enjoy a thing like that. He’d always liked Italian firearms. They built their weapons with care and with love.

Sort of ironic, he thought.

And luckily he always kept it loaded ... well ... it wasn’t luck at all. He had never seen much point in having a gun and not having the fucker loaded. And this one was loaded with some old Monolit 28s ... big old solid steel slugs, 28 grams each one, courtesy of Latvia’s firearm’s industry.

He stifled a chuckle ... you make a cartridge holding a 28-gram chunk of solid steel. A piece of steel designed to hurtle from a rifle barrel and blast its way through damn-near anything.

And then you forge the chunk of steel into a pleasant hour-glass shape.

Like a good-looking woman.

There’s an irony ... to get killed by something flying through the air with the shape of a good-looking woman.

You could possibly kill an elephant with a gun like this ... or at the very least piss it off.

And maybe two shots would blow a section out of the plexi-glass. You never knew when you might need something like that, and this looked like exactly that time.

He heard a sound ... a sound on the plexi-glass. It was like somebody had thrown something soft and squelchy against the glass.

Something was sticking to the glass. Something with four large rubber suckers.

As he watched, the thing sticking to his window began cutting a perfectly circular hole in the glass. Like a laser torch ... slowly cutting a disc from the incredibly strong, incredibly reinforced plexi-glass sheet.

A disc of glass maybe 6 inches in diameter fell out and down onto the floor of his office.

He jabbed at the lift button again ... it was down to the 3rd floor.

If nobody else got in or out, it would be back at his level in maybe 30 seconds.

He strode back to the window.

The device on his window had begun to push a silver ball through the hole it had cut. Dmitry caught the ball as it dropped. He tried to push the ball back through the hole in the window, but the device had already placed a stopper over it.

The silver ball in his hand made a small clicking noise.

He didn’t think that the ball would be heat-generating. In any case, the office sprinklers would extinguish any flames in an instant. And it didn’t look like it was an explosive ... you don’t need to make an explosive device out of a shiny silver sphere. It was a container. He had seen one before just like it. He was pretty sure he had been to the demonstration.

He placed the ball gently on the floor and walked carefully back over to the lift.

. . . . . . . .

Gabriel pulled the goggles on and eased them until they were comfortable. He had read the instructions. They seemed simple enough.

. . . . . . . .

The lift was on the ground floor. It was about to come back up. He jabbed the button again ... then he turned and raised his shotgun. He pointed it at the silver ball, just as a faint crack appeared on its shiny surface. The ball appeared to be levering itself slowly open. Something with legs was climbing out of the ball.

. . . . . . . .

Gabriel said, “Ok, Ginny, your little toy is active.”

. . . . . . . .

Dmitry recognised it. They were nasty little fuckers. He had used them himself. They were spider-liker ... very fast ... very agile. They usually carried some sort of venom (‘a delivery system with the toxin of your choice’ he remembered the ad said).

His gun boomed.

Five left.

He had torn a huge chunk out of his polished wooden floorboards. And the blast had simply hurled the silver ball away across the room. They were seemingly built to withstand some serious fire-power.

And the small spider-like device was scuttling its way sideways.

. . . . . . . .

“That was close,” said Gabriel. “Just as well these little buggers are nimble as anything.”

. . . . . . . .

Dmitry had missed the fucking thing ... now it was making its way behind a leg of his desk. He backed up against the door to the lift. He watched to see where the spider went. A movement caught his eye, and the gun bucked and boomed in his hand.

Four left.

And then he felt a tiny pricking sensation in his right leg. The spider was clamped onto his right ankle. He bent down and grabbed its body, making sure that he didn’t get his fingers underneath it. Its legs were just used for movement, but, once its target was reached, tiny needles would protrude from its underbody, injecting the chosen toxin. The spider struggled in his grasp, and he felt a sting in the palm of his hand.

He dropped the spider on the floor. He trod on it. It didn’t try to avoid him. It shattered under his boot.

He guessed that once its target had been reached, it had no further use.

. . . . . . . .

“Ok, Ginny ... we’ve got him twice ... right ankle and right hand,” Gabriel said.

. . . . . . . .

He reflected that they had obviously upgraded the basic model ... the one that he was familiar with. The spiders now had needles in their upper-body... presumably to get around the evasive action that Dmitry had just tried. Dmitry laughed. “Fucking weapons techs. They build a fancy delivery system, they demo them, but then they can’t just leave well enough alone.”

. . . . . . . .

“Ginny?” Gabriel said.

“Yep ... what?”

“What did you end up choosing?”

“How do you mean?”

“What did the spider have in it?”

“It was called ‘WNF’.”

“What does that stand for?”

“It’s weaponised necrotising fasciitis,” Vicky said.

“Isn’t that that flesh-eating virus thing?” Gabriel said. “Been around for donkey’s years? Dates back to biblical times?”

“Quite possibly,” said Vicky. “It’s an infection of the soft tissue. It starts in the subcutaneous tissue. That’s the tissue just below the skin. It spreads along the flat layers of fibrous tissue that separate the different layers of tissue.”

“Sounds bloody horrible,” Gabriel replied.

“The symptoms normally start as areas of localised redness, with warmth, swelling and pain ... normally a great deal of pain. Then the skin darkens, and blisters and black scabs appear. Although there is normally a great deal of pain during the progress of the disease, interestingly the pain may subsequently diminish ... that is because of the nerve damage caused by the ...”

“For God’s sake,” said Gabriel.

“And there are other symptoms associated with this disease,” said Vicky.

“The fun never stops, does it?” Gabriel said.

“Typically there is nausea, vomiting, weakness, dizziness, and confusion. Then, if left untreated, the infection spreads throughout the whole body... typically leading to sepsis, which spreads the infection to the bloodstream. At that point, death is generally inevitable,” Vicky concluded.

“Sorry ... you are saying that this disgusting disease was ‘weaponised’ by ACME INC?” said Gabriel incredulously.

“ACME provided ... whatever was required by its clients,” Vicky said. “And the requirement was to make the native disease faster-acting. What could otherwise take hours or even days has been re-designed to take a maximum of about fifteen minutes.

“What the fuck would somebody want something like that for?” Gabriel said.

“Ask Ginny,” Vicky said, nervously.

“I don’t know what other people wanted it for,” Ginny said, “but it seemed sort of suitable for my use ... to kill this evil bastard.”

Gabriel looked over to Ginny. She was holding onto the robot for balance. She was watching Dmitry intently. She had been listening to Gabriel’s discussion with Vicky.

She looked very calm.

. . . . . . . .

Within seconds of being injected by the spider, the pain in Dmitry’s right hand and leg were excruciating. Blisters were erupting on the skin, and almost instantly they were cracking open, oozing a thick green fluid. He touched his right hand with his still un-affected left hand. Just that light contact caused pain to sear through the length of his right arm.

So now he knew he wouldn’t be able to use his right arm or hand.

He bent down and rested the shotgun on the floor. He rotated the stock. The gun had been designed to be fired one-handed. You just rotated the stock so that it would fit under your fore-arm. And because he knew he would not be able to use his right hand to re-load the gun using its manual pump action feature, he felt with his left hand for the firing-mode switch under the fore-grip. He selected gas-activated rather than pump-action.

He stood up, wincing as he put weight onto his right leg. He tucked the stock of the gun under his left fore-arm. He looked out of the window and across to the starship.

The robot in the starship doorway was just standing there. It had lowered its weapon. Beside it stood a boy and a girl. They were both about twenty years old. The boy looked about six feet tall, dark skinned, with tufty hair. She was shorter ... pretty, with long blonde hair.

Dmitry didn’t recognise either of them.

He could barely put pressure on his right leg. He could feel waves of pain spreading through into his chest, into his groin. The boy was looking directly at him. The girl was grinning.

He grunted with the pain ... but then he began to laugh. When he saw (and recognised) the spider, he had expected worse ... much worse. He guessed that he was going to have a great deal of pain ... and then die coughing his lungs up out of his mouth. Those little spider fuckers didn’t deliver you a nice shot of whisky. It would be something unpleasant, you could guarantee that ... but if he had designed this toxin, he would definitely have got the weapons techs to incorporate fire into the equation.

People feared fire. Everybody feared fire. It always got results.

He remembered the time ... the little village in the mountains. He had taken all their young boys and girls. He had loosely bound them in coils of chicken wire.

He laughed again at the memory.

The smell had hung about the village for all that day. Then a gentle breeze from up in the mountains had drifted it to the surrounding villages. He had deliberately waited for that to happen ... even though his men were urging him to move on.

The other villages had put up no resistance.

Who else would want their kids to die in that way?

So, yes, if he was going to design weaponised toxins, he wouldn’t make ones that gave you skin blemishes and blisters ... it just wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t enough to discourage the others.

The pain in both of his legs was intense now. His stomach turned over. He retched a gout of thick green bile, splattering down onto the floor. He automatically wiped his mouth with his right sleeve. He grimaced from the pain of moving his right arm.

He guessed that most other people would be screaming by now, but he had always had a high pain threshold.

Just as well.

The lift was showing that it was on the 4th floor now. It was on its way back up. Maybe the lift would be here in 30 seconds. He knew it didn’t matter now when it got here ... he knew he didn’t have long.

He hoped he didn’t have long.

He lifted the gun with his left arm. It seemed heavier ... almost too heavy to lift. He was feeling dizzy, so he had to focus, to concentrate. He focussed his attention on the plexi-glass ... the section already drilled ... the section that the spider had been pushed through.

His gun boomed and bucked ... a comforting feeling.

Three left.

And in semi-automatic mode, the shell had been automatically pushed out of the ejector port. It clattered to the floor at his feet. He muttered a small prayer of thanks.

He fired again.

Two left.

So that was two shells fired directly into the plexi-glass window.

Into the same area that the hole had been drilled.

And a five-foot by four-foot section of glass fell away.

It plummeted down into the plaza.

The lift was on the 23rd floor now.

He forced his body to take him to the window ... to the shattered section of glass. The boy and the girl were still standing there. They were holding on to the robot for security, their arms locked around its arms as their craft swayed in the turbulence. And it was the boy who had controlled the spider. He was still wearing the control gear and goggles.

The pain in Dmitry’s right hand and arm was intense ... it looked as though his skin was literally falling off in front of his eyes.

He lifted the gun again.

He thought to pull the slide back ... but then he realised that he didn’t need to. The shell was in there already. He could barely keep the gun on target. He wasn’t sure if that was because the starship was moving around, swaying in the tall building’s turbulence, or because he just couldn’t manage to hold the five-kilo gun steady with one arm. He lifted the muzzle ... pointed the gun as best he could at the starship’s open hatchway.

His gun boomed, and the used shell spun out and clattered away.

One left.

He wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to do it again. It seemed to have taken all of his strength just to hold the gun up and level for that last shot. And even then ... he had aimed for the boy... but he had hit the fucking robot. Those robots were stupidly strong and robust. They were built to take anything that an off-world environment could throw at them. But he had just thrown a 28-gram piece of solid steel at it, from a very close range. The slug must have bounced off the robot’s hardened outer shell, but it looked like it must have made some damage. He guessed that plasteel shards must have been sent spinning through the air. Spinning and striking the boy, who was falling forwards, tumbling out of the cockpit door.

Dmitry watched as the robot leaned out. It grabbed the boy’s arm, holding him securely over the immense drop.

The boy had blood dripping from his arm, but he had swung himself ... he had swung and caught hold of the robot with the arm that was dripping blood.

The robot was holding onto one of the boy’s arms. The boy was holding on with the other.

He could see the boy nodding over to the girl ... gesturing that he was ok.

The girl reached back behind her. She pulled a gun from her back-pocket. She still had one arm locked around the robot’s. She was using the robot for stability. She was taking great care. Dmitry watched her. He was transfixed by her. He could see that she was controlling the robot. He knew because she was wearing one of the usual WORM-LYNK headsets used to control those things.

And he could see that she had made a decision.

She needed the robot to be rock-solid. She knew the boy was dangling from the robot’s arm, but she had made a conscious decision to leave him there, dangling. She was going to leave the boy hanging over the void rather than get the robot to turn and pull the boy back onboard.

He watched the pretty girl playing with a toy gun.

Taking very careful aim. Not hiding in case Dmitry shot at them again.

She fired.

Dmitry felt the thud of impact in his right thigh. He grunted, though the pain from the bullet scarcely registered above his other pain.

The girl was taking aim again. She was trying to judge the shot to account for the swaying of the starship.

He wished he had had her working for him ... instead of the fuckwits he had spoken to earlier.

She looked smart. She looked focussed. She looked committed to getting a job of work done. He could admire her; admire her attitude ... admire her professionalism.

She reminded him of someone, someone else.

Someone a long time ago.

He thought he should take another shot. He knew he had one shell left. He thought that his left hand still worked. Maybe he had enough strength to lift the gun again. Just enough, maybe. Just enough would do it. He was still holding the gun. But he didn’t think he would be able to hold the gun steady enough to make it worthwhile.

And besides, he didn’t really want to risk shooting the girl.

He couldn’t think why ... after all ... it wasn’t like he hadn’t shot girls before.

Maybe ...

“Shoot him again ... shoot the bastard, Ginny,” Gabriel said. “The fucker doesn’t look like he’s going to drop ... I can’t imagine what’s holding him up. It looks like his skin is dropping off him.”

Gabriel winced. The robot’s grip on his good arm felt like he was being slowly cut in two. He was grateful that he had managed to get a secondary grip with his injured arm, even though it was hurting like fuck. At least it took a bit of pressure off ...

Ginny locked her arm in and against the robot.

This robot didn’t have a name as such. It had a name plate on its chest, but it just said SURR4-B32.

Not like Bill or Ben.

She had told it where and when to shoot the weapon.

Then she had told it to lower the weapon and stand there ... just stand there in the hatchway.

So, it stood there; stood there in the gently swaying starship.

She had seen Gabriel fall forwards ... she had instantly commanded the robot to catch him.

It had caught him.

But now, as Gabriel hung there, she needed the robot to just stand there, immobile, like it was welded to the deck.

She eased in against the robot’s arm, sighted. She gently squeezed the trigger of the small cream gun.

Dmitry howled.

“You’ve shot him in the balls,” Gabriel said.

“Second time lucky,” Ginny said.

Dmitry rocked forwards.

He instinctively grabbed right-handed at the jagged edge of the plexi-glass screen. It flexed under his grasp. He looked over. He looked directly at Ginny.

He swayed forwards, rolling out and down, tumbling through space.

Ginny looked down. Watching him fall. Fall into the plaza, forty-six storeys below.

A small group of people came to look.

“I think he’s dead now,” she said.

From the heads-up display came the sound of chiming.

“The lift’s here,” Ginny said.

The lift doors opened. After a few seconds they closed again.

“Can you pull me in now, Ginny?” Gabriel said.