Gates of Rome

CHAPTER 14

AD 37, 16 miles north-east of Rome

He found himself staring up at a cloudless blue sky. A rich, deep blue like the skies one used to see in old images from the beginning of the twenty-first century. Quite different from the perpetual discoloured cloud cover of 2070: the turbulent, sulphurous acid rain clouds, the ever-present smog above cities and refugee shanty towns.

Quite beautiful.

Rashim could feel the warmth of the sun on his face. Hear the whisper of a fresh, untainted breeze gently stirring the branches and leaves of trees nearby.

Is this Heaven?

He realized that was a pleasing notion. That Project Exodus had gone disastrously wrong, that every translation candidate including himself had died — torn to pieces by extra-dimensional forces — and this… this was the afterlife. His uncle, an imam, had once taken him aside and tried to describe what Allah’s Paradise would be like. It had sounded like this. And he’d scoffed at the man’s faith.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there is a God.

And that pleasant illusion could have lasted a while longer, lying there on his back and enjoying the deep blue above him, if it hadn’t been for the stirring of others all around him. It seemed like they’d managed to do it. They survived the jump.

With a weary sigh, Rashim slowly lifted himself up on to his elbows and looked around.

They were right on the flat ground of the receiver station, a field of swaying, olive-coloured grass. In the distance the glint of a gently meandering river and hills beyond that.

The correct location all right. But he couldn’t see any sign of the four receiver beacons, ten-foot-tall tripods with an equipment platform at the top of each one. Each one marking a corner of ground space the exact same size as the translation grid back in the Cheyenne Mountain facility.

He got to his feet, hooding his eyes from the sun. No sign of them. Rashim cursed.

We’ve overshot the snap range.

‘Where is this? Where are we?’

Rashim turned to his right. The corporal was standing beside him. ‘Where the hell is this?’

‘Where this is, is near Rome. But I’m not sure precisely when it is. The receiver station was deployed ahead of us in AD 54,’ Rashim continued, more thinking aloud than answering the corporal’s question. ‘They should be right here, dammit, but I can’t see any of the beacons.’

‘ AD 54…?’ The man rubbed his temples as if trying to push the idea into his head. ‘You mean like the year 54? Like fifty-four years after Jesus Christ?’

Rashim nodded distractedly. ‘Only this isn’t. I can only guess this is some time before then. We’ve overshot the destination time. This is further back in time.’

Rashim completed his three-sixty survey. The field was peppered with 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 of the 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 gone missing. ‘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.