Out of Time - Jason Ronin (popular romance novels .TXT) 📗

use his mouth to speak verbal, he chose to use his native telepathic ability to impart something of direct importance such as this.

Billy Joe knew such, but still, it took him off guard. He stilled his mind as best he could and focused on the facts at hand. His Quantum Physics were rusty, at best, but he could tell from all the display readouts he was observing that they had uncovered something very particular, if not unusual. “Hmm....” he thought out loud. “Xatacho, I think the boys downstairs need to hear this news of yours.”

Making sure that the zero-time field was firm and holding steady, Billy Joe called down to the Room. “Boss, I’ll be down in a minute. I got some news you need to hear.” He cut the line and made for the access tube. “Come, Xatacho!”

The Cadzinn waddled after him, mumbling to himself and happily chewing on a lint-covered Snicker’s bar he found lying under a chair next to an empty coffee cup.

With the portal open and stabilized, Ben stood in front of it, rubbing his face. The cowboy was long gone, but unfamiliar sounds echoed back through it. The Tesla Coils were back in their raised, but they still crackled with power every now and then. And, although his cloths were singed in spots, Cameron was far enough away from the Tesla Coils that he was unaffected by the activation procedure. Steve Jones was sitting at the workstation collecting his thoughts.

“What do you think it was?” he asked Ben.

“According to the resident chocolate freak,” said Billy Joe, entering the Room, “it’s a time portal!”

Ben turned and looked at Billy as if he had said the vilest kind of expletive.

“I mean, the cowboy points to it. Where else could he have come from but the past.” Billy Joe smiled at his own logic. Xatacho came up from behind him, blinking and nodding his bulbous head.

Shaken from his thoughts, Ben called out, “Steve, didn’t you mention that you spotted some drones down here?”

“Yeah, I think so, Boss.... Yeah! Yeah! I saw them last year ... I think....”

“Good. Go get me one.”

Steve Jones snapped a salute, “Aye, aye, Sir!” and jogged off to parts unknown to find a drone.

Billy Joe joined Ben Sheppard standing in front of the portal. They both looked at the milky, blue-green mist that dancing before them. It swirled in on itself, like a spiral galaxy. And little flashes of lightening blossomed and disappeared here and there, coalescing into proto-stars that were trapped inside of a black hole.

“You know, Billy, we could be standing on the cusp of history here....”

“Or on the edge of hell, Boss....”

The enormity of the implications that the portal represented hit both them. Ben’s legs suddenly felt like Jell-O, and Billy Joe wanted to throw up. They were both aware, acutely aware of what the military could try to do with a discovery like this.

Xatacho broke into their thoughts, projecting, “For now, brothers, we will guard this event like a secret. We have led humanity to this moment. Yet, there is still much to do!”

“What do you mean, Xatacho?” Ben surprised himself, as he rarely used the Cadzinn’s name.

“My people are prohibited by … what you call, the ‘Galactic Federation’ from manipulating the time lines directly.” He finished off the last piece of the lint-laced Snicker’s bar he had before continuing. “Humanity is under no such restrictions, or prohibitions as we Cadzinn are. So we have guided you humans with an influence we knew you could not resist.”

Steve Jones returned just then carrying the drone kit. “Lookie, Boss! It was in the same a storage area i thought it was in, a ways down the hall there. Can you believe it!”

Xatacho decided he had said enough, and, not so graciously, turned away and made haste for the access tube, screaming something about, “More coffee ... and more chocolate bars!”

Billy Joe looked after him and shook his head. So did Ben.

The drone kit that Steve Jones found consisted of a quadricopter with an under slung camera, its control deck, and its monitor. It was originally developed for checking up on hidden troop positions, for police to monitor crowds from a distance, and/or the border patrol staff to chase down illegals with. But now, for the first time, it was going to be used to catch a glimpse of the past. Hopefully....

Steve Jones set down the kit, walked into the next room and drug a table over to the side of the Chair to set up the drone’s control deck and monitor upon. Once done, he placed the drone in the front of the portal, then walked back to the table and sat its control deck.

Billy Joe joined the other two men behind the table to watch the monitor as Steve Jones activated the drone. It arose with an angry, buzzing sound, which none of the men seemed to notice. It hovered in front of the swirling blue-green portal for a moment, turned invisible.

“Its cloaking device works perfect,” observed Ben.

Using the control sticks, Steve Jones maneuvered the drone this way and that, getting a feel for the controls. “Ready, Boss. How do you want to play it?”

Ben felt like he should say something memorable. Although, his only thought was, Come on! What is this, the movies? Ben Sheppard isn’t the kind of guy who shows feeling. That’s what the military likes me.... So he settled on saying, “All right, Captain, send her two-feet past the aperture.”

Slowly, the drone passed through the threshold of the mystical portal and its angry buzzing came back to the men as an echo; as if the drone was in a room down the hall.

“Can’t you mask that damned buzzing sound,” asked Ben. “It’s rather loud and angry-sounding.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Steve, looking down at the control deck. “That would be the best thing to do. Wouldn’t it?” He toggled a switch and the angry buzzing died away.

“Good,” commented Ben. “Now take her up twenty feet.”

The three men looked from monitor to the portal and back to the monitor. At first, the screen was just a bright blur. But, slowly, the image began to make sense as the drone began to rise. A painted wooden structure streaked by. Steve Jones manipulated the second control stick, and each man held his breath.

Billy Joe whispered, “The first view of the past....”

On the monitor, a live street scene straight out of any American Western film beamed in greeting. It was daytime, possibly high noon, and a wide, dirt street ran from the left to the right. It was bordered by many wooden and clapboard buildings with a few adobe and brick buildings sprinkled throughout. Almost at random, some of the buildings had balconies and walkways abutting their fronts. Drunken revelry was roaring from a few of them. Suddenly, a stagecoach pulled into view at the top left corner of the scene. It stopped in front of a long busy building whose entrance was two small swinging doors. The driver and stagehands jumped down to tend the horses and to open the door for the stagecoach’s occupants. Everywhere, townsfolk were going about their personal business’. Some people walked into the scene, some walked out of it; some entered the busy building, some staggered out of it; others marvelled at those exiting the stagecoach. Each person in turn was dressed in the dust-ridden clothing of the bygone era: women wearing high heeled boots under flowing dresses with their hair done up, more sensibly dressed women were herding children; most men had stylized facial hair and were dressed either like a cowboy or businessman " the former usually wore a two-gallon Stetson hat with a wide brim, a trench coat, and cowboy boots with spurs " all the children wore similar fashions but suited to their size, minus the spurs. The invisible drone captured all this in mere seconds before its camera zoomed in on a sign that was at the corner to its airborne position. It read, Crystal Palace Saloon and Hotel, naming the long busy building.

“Oh my god,” Billy Joe uttered. “It’s Tombstone!”

“Fuck off!” the other two men said simultaneously, and looking dumbfounded at their companion.

“It is,” exclaimed Billy Joe, and the three of them stood silent staring hard at the monitor. The Tesla Coils crackled softly in the background. Billy Joe broke the unnerving silence, saying, “I swear, if I’m right, Boss, the building the drone came out of ... is right behind the Bird Cage!”

“Hummph!” commented Steve Jones, bringing the zoom back. Then he maneuvered the drone around to the front of the building it was hovering over; and there it was, painted across the top of it: Bird Cage Theatre.

“Never doubt a Clanton!” said Billy Joe, feeling uppity, and stabbing a forefinger at the monitor.

“Of all the tart-n-blasted--- I take back what I said about earlier, Billy.” Steve slapped his knee. “Shoot, this Clanton boy does know his roots!”

Ben just stared at the monitor, his jaw no longer attached to his face.

Nobody took notice of when Xatacho returned, nor of his bulbous head peering between their shoulders at the monitor, nor of the Greyling casually wandering into the portal to fulfill his mission.

“Let’s bring the drone back,” Ben said.

Steve manipulated the control stick and the drone returned smoothly to the present day landing with a thunk in front of them.

For several seconds they looked at each other, the crackle of the Tesla coils the only sound.

Billy Joe finally broke the silence with, “So when WE gonna go through.”

“Nobody’s going through, at least not yet” Ben stepped around the drone control and stood in front of the portal.

“Ben’s right, we gotta take this to the Colonel”

Billy Joe threw his hands in the air, a look of distaste on his face.

“That’s right, give it to the military,” he shouted, “We all know what they will do with it, and it will not be from the school of Mother Theresa that’s a fact”

Ben turned from the portal and said, “Steve, go get Xatacho, we need to ask him a few questions”

Steve scurried off to find the alien.

Ben was scared, more scared than at any other time in his life. What they had opened could be the gates of hell and lead to the destruction of the world as we know it, Billy Joe was right the powers that be would use it for their own selfish ends, just as all the experiments carried out at this base. How he had got involved with it all he had no idea and when he realized what was happening he was in too deep. Steve and Ben seemed to be of the same mind as him-self. They had joined the program all gung-ho thinking their work was helping the country, it all changed when they witnessed a 12 year old boy being water boarded as part of the trauma based mind control program. When he tried to complain, they showed him a body with double tap holes in its chest and forehead leaving him with no doubt what would happen to him if he pursued the matter.

His reverie is interrupted with the blustery return of Steve, red faced and panting.

“Xatachos gone” he bent over hands on knees, “I’ve looked everywhere”

“Shit!” Ben looked at the portal, knowing where the grey pain in the butt