Free TimeRiders 05 - Gates of Rome by Alex Scarrow Page A

people slowly sitting up and getting to their feet, gathering their wits and looking dumbstruck up at the strangely clear and beautifully blue sky above. Many of them still in a silent state of shock. Across the field he noted one ofthe MCVs – the huge Mobile Command Vehicles – had gone missing.
    One of the platoons of combat units strode purposefully across the field towards him, equipment jangling from its webbing, standard army-issue T1-38 pulse carbine slung from a strap on its shoulder. The combat unit came to a halt in front of him and took off its helmet.
    ‘Dr Yatsushita has assigned you full authority.’ Rashim looked at the unit, unsure whether it was telling him that or asking him. The combat units unnerved him. Unlike the bulky, seven-foot-tall goliaths the military used to develop, these newer models could pass more easily as human. Genetic tweaks had produced combat units every bit as strong as the older variants without requiring the same amount of muscle bulk. They still looked like a bunch of military stiffs, though; two dozen po-faced Combat Carls with identical buzz-cut hair. Hardly going to be the fun crowd at a party.
    The combat unit standing in front of him carried the rank of lieutenant; its name, just like Corporal North, was stitched above the breast pocket of its camouflage tunic. Giving them names felt wrong. They should just have numbers. Mind you … he’d given his lab unit a name, hadn’t he?
    ‘Right, yes … uh …
Lieutenant Stern
, is it?’ Rashim tried a salute. Not sure if it was the right thing to do.
    Stern?
Rashim wondered which moron came up with that cheesy name for this unit. He could only imagine what the rest of the platoon were called: Chuck, Butch, Tex, Travis.
    ‘Sir,’ said Stern, ‘what are your orders?’
    Rashim puffed his lips and laughed a little nervously. ‘What … er, what do you suggest?’
    Stern cast cool grey eyes across the field. There were a lot of empty patches of grass where equipment, even people, had gonemissing. ‘I’d suggest, sir, we’d better take stock of how much got lost during the translation.’
    Rashim nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, yes, quite … exactly the thing I was going to suggest. Very good.’ He frowned, his best attempt at looking officious and entirely in command. ‘Well, off you go then, uh …
Stern
. See to it.’
    The combat unit saluted him crisply. ‘Yes, sir.’
    He watched the unit jog across the arid grass towards the rest of the platoon. The other people who had survived the jump were beginning to gather their wits. He could see Vice-president Stilson had managed to make it through – more’s the pity – and that dictator and two of his wives.
    Rashim wondered how long before one of them decided that they should be leading Project Exodus instead of him.

CHAPTER 15
AD 37, 16 miles north-east of Rome
    ‘We’re in a rural region called Sabines, about sixteen miles to the north-east of Rome.’ Rashim looked at the Exodus group gathered in front of him. Just under a hundred and fifty of them. They’d lost roughly half the people in the jump. The children, the baby, were among those that had failed to emerge from extra-dimensional space.
    God help them.
    ‘This location was picked out by the Exodus survey team. Headed up by, uh … well,
me
actually.’ He shrugged self-consciously. The sun was setting behind a row of cypress trees on the horizon, and long shadows stretched across the gently swaying grass around them. ‘I was in charge of establishing the receiver station.’
    ‘What’s that?’ someone in the gathering dusk asked.
    ‘Four beacons broadcasting tachyon beams. The EDT: the Extra-dimensional Translation array …’
    Keep it simple for the morons out there.
    ‘The time machine –’ he hated that term – ‘was designed to zero in and snap to on these beacons’ beams and use that to guide us in to the correct emergence point. But it, uh … it appears we’ve gone a little further back