A Time For Truth Read online

  The three men jogged toward the small glen and upon reaching the open spot each gave the surrounding woods a good look. “All clear!” Dawson said.

  Logan nodded and Mikhail moved closer to his companions. The three warriors stood three feet apart from each other. A comfortable distance but not so far as to cause problems when they arrived home in the year 2147.

  They synchronized pushing the time chips embedded in their wrists by nodding three times in unison. They didn’t hear the loud blast or feel the powerful wave of air that emanated in all directions from where they had stood only a second before. They also didn’t see the bright flash of light. The three warriors were gone.

  A Mongol scout sent by Atul to watch three Rus warriors watched in awe as the glen seemed to explode. He dove off his horse and crawled toward a clump of bushes. The event was over in less than three seconds. As he stood up and looked at where the three men had just been standing, he realized they were no longer there.

  The Mongol warrior remounted and trotted over to the center of the glen. There was a dark patch of ground, still smoldering as if a great heat had been applied to only this small area. He rode in a circle looking for tracks leading away but found only the tracks of the three men leading to the middle of the clearing. He scratched his head and decided this wasn’t a story he would repeat. To Atul or anyone. The warrior turned his horse and started off at a gallop. He didn’t want to miss the fun when the great Rus city was sacked.

  The return was always a bit shaky. The process of moving through time had a strange effect on time travelers. They always arrived home shivering and chilled to the bone. At least this time nobody was hurt, Logan thought. It was nice to just be cold and not rushing about trying to get a wounded shield mate to the medical center.

  “Fuck I hate that shit!” Dawson wasn’t fond of the cold, or Romans. Romans, he could do something about. The cold, well, he just had to cope.

  “Must be terrible with all that meat wrapped around your frame and all,” Mikhail responded. “It’s a little bit worse when you’re a whopping one hundred and fifty pounds!”

  Logan took the ladder and stepped onto the main floor of the time chamber. It’d been a good bounce. The slang term used by the time guild warriors to describe the time travel trips. Dawson pushed him to the side. “Outta my way. I’ve been holding it ever since we started running from those damn Mongols!” Dawson moved rapidly to the portal and exited the time chamber.

  “What’s his problem?” Mikhail had been the last one to descend from the platform.

  “If a man’s gotta go…”

  “Ah, speaking of taking a piss.” Mikhail dodged around Logan and followed Dawson out of the room.

  “Are you Logan?” The time technician was an older woman with a kind motherly face.

  “Yes. Do I know you?”

  The woman looked down at her console for a moment. “I have a message for you. The person was quite insistent that you see this as soon as you returned. Here it is!”

  Logan walked over the console and took the slip of paper. “Your handwriting?”

  “Yes. Answered the time technician. It was a communications call. Kinda old fashioned if you ask me.”

  Logan thanked the woman and left the time chamber. The message was simple enough. He was being asked to meet an old acquaintance. The message ended with the words, your favorite bird. The message and the summons it contained was from Osprey. An affectation designed to conceal her real identity. An osprey was a formidable bird of prey somewhere between a large hawk and a small eagle and the leader of the resistance movement embodied the aggressive yet intelligent characteristics of your namesake. Logan crumpled the note in his hand and tossed it to the floor. He had no intention of honoring her request.

  Chapter Two

  Logan boarded his private shuttle and soon became lost in his thoughts as the sleek craft rose up off the pad and turned smoothly toward the north before accelerating and climbing. The great high-rise structures of glass and plastic flashed past his window but Logan ignored the cityscape. He was thankful the trio returned home without serious injuries. Without combat, injuries to cope with the three of them only needed to rest for a day or two and then look to the future. Logan could begin planning their next bounce right away.

  He sat back, sinking into the plush seat, his mind wandering. Osprey. What a pain in the ass the old woman had become. His relationship with the resistance leader was rooted in mutual respect and mutual need. Logan and his guild friends were instrumental in helping her stay alive and keeping the resistance viable through difficult times. Logan was still a little jealous and resentful about how easily her message of freedom and independence had resonated with his handpicked team of warriors. By the time it was all over all but himself, Dawson, and Mikhail had joined the resistance. He missed the old group of warriors and wondered how they were doing.

  Dawson and Mikhail were fans of Osprey too, they just didn’t see the point of becoming an enemy of the state when there was plenty of life still to live. They were young and figured there would be time later in life to participate in politics, that is if they lived that long. Both men shared Logan’s point of view regarding life. They were guild warriors, shield brothers. Their place was on the battlefield facing worthy adversaries and testing their prowess. They didn’t belong in Osprey’s resistance slaughtering the sheep that passed for government security professionals.

  The New Republic’s façade of an egalitarian utopia was crumbling, revealing an ugly reality. The area stretching from Old Massachusetts to Old Richmond had merged with all the cities and communities in between at the end of the great American civil war. The following period of reconstruction was filled with hope and the promise of a different kind of world. A world where the governed were treated no different than those in power. A world where the bounty of the New Republic would be equally distributed and no citizen would go without anything they required. For almost two hundred years things went as promised. That is until Osprey and her movement uncovered the truth. The New Republic wasn’t a utopia.

  The shuttle came to rest, gently touching down on the freshly mown grass lawn of Logan’s estate. He exited the craft and took a deep breath. This estate, one of several Logan owned, was located in what was once West Virginia. The property had originally been a ski lodge with rooms for twenty people and a large working kitchen. It boasted an Olympic sized swimming pool, a large tennis court, and an intimate health spa located fifty yards from the main campus. He took a long look around the grounds and them looked further into the terrain beyond the estate before walking toward the building.

  The lodge was a recent purchase and Logan had already made significant changes and upgrades. For one thing, the vast complex was hard-wired for defense and intrusion alert. His security measures extended to the nearby wood line and were deployed everywhere around and within the estate. He also had seismic sensors planted everywhere. These sensors felt the vibrations of vehicles or people approaching his home.

  Other advanced security technology registered any odd tremor signature picked up by the seismic sensors. The software registered the signatures of all the animals and birds frequenting the environment around his estate when it was set up. Now it was ready to distinguish normal from not so normal seismic movement.

  The second bit of technology he had installed used well-disguised microphones. These microphones listened to the frequencies generated by living things. Every heart, human or otherwise, generated a distinctive frequency. A new frequency detected on the grounds was compared to the database of normal activity and any anomalies to that database generated an alarm.

  Logan allowed the door scanner to complete a full biometric sweep from top to bottom and waited until the process was complete. The door clicked open and a pleasant software generated voice welcomed him.

  “Nice to see you again, Logan”

  Logan was always caught off guard by this electronic greeting, he lived alone and didn’t expect to hear a human voice out here in the wilds. It was pitch perfect and that also creeped him out, it was too human. He checked himself, almost thanking the security system for its kind comment.

  It was a little over a year now since he’d lost the love of his life. Maya was smart, beautiful, and the reason why he could afford all this affluence. Her family was involved in the founding of the New Republic and contrary to the government’s narrative, the original founders had all accumulated great wealth over the years, each family building a lasting dynasty. Maya’s family was no different.

  She’d had discovered Logan laying in an alley, unconscious and near death after trying for several weeks to commit suicide by alcohol. She’d directed her personal bodyguard to take Logan to her upscale apartment near the ocean and proceeded to nurse him back to health. First, there was the detox phase, then physical recovery from the malnutrition. It was intimate and as personal as two humans could get. It wasn’t unexpected that in time they fell in love with each other.

  Logan was stiff and getter worse. While not wounded, the days spent in Ukraine had been characteristically rough. Sleeping outside in the cold of a Ukrainian November, eating meager cold rations, and then there was the continuous labor of traveling by foot, up and down the undulating terrain. Finally, there was the expenditure of energy fighting in combat. The trio saw a lot of combat in a very short period of time. The fighting and the intense need to remain vigilant at all times in the ancient and violent past also drained him mentally. The warm shuttle ride helped initiate the decompression process and by the time Logan reached his bedroom he simply flopped down face first and fell into a deep sleep.

  The piercing alarm steadily increased in volume, rising more and more until Logan came out of his stupor. The room was aware of his pre
sence by tracking his bio-vitals and monitoring them whenever he was on the estate grounds. His sleep cycles were mapped and the system was programmed to allow Logan sufficient sleep to recover but no more. Logan hated the contraption.

  He waved his hand while keeping his eyes closed but that didn’t stop the pealing sound of the alarm bouncing off the walls of his room. The room’s sleep cycle management program system was set up to detect when his full body weight hit the floor, indicating he was up and vertical. Logan began to play a game of endurance, trying to get a few minutes more in bed while ignoring the alarm by wrapping a blanket around his head. He always lost this battle but the warrior in him felt it was worth the fight, at least for a moment or two.

  Finally, in frustration, Logan tossed the covers aside and swung his feet out and over the floor. He pushed off the bed and let his feet hit the floor. The system wasn’t impressed and the alarm continued. He needed to stand up to kill the pain in his ears.

  “Alright, enough!” Logan stood up placing all his weight on the heated floor and the sound abruptly ceased. Responding to verbal commands wasn’t a part of the system’s instructions but yelling at the faceless demon made him feel better. He wasn’t even sure where the program was physically stored.

  Sunlight poured through the many skylights and windows scattered throughout the old clubhouse making the interior of the repurposed facility seem homey, even spiritual. It was an effect Logan retained intentionally. For the next hour, he went through his standard morning routine. Stretching, doing selected yoga moves, flexing through various isometric muscle conditioning sets, and finally he engaged in twenty minutes of meditation. He found the discipline settling and a key to preparing him for what the day had in store for him. When he was done, he suddenly realized he was starving.

  Logan walked through the open concept structure heading straight for the kitchen area. As he passed the sitting room, he noticed the communications station light was flashing on and off. The visual cue alerted him that there was a message waiting for him. Logan didn’t have any friends outside the guild warriors he trusted and he only gave out his personal data and the coordinates of his several homes to a select few. So, this must be someone he knew. He anticipated and was rewarded when he saw the message was from his friend Dawson. The message was short and to the point, meet me at the guild, mid-day today. Logan wasn’t ready to fly back to the city and his first impulse was to ignore the request. His hand hovered over the delete function.

  Maya had been more than a lover. More than a friend. She’s been a part of Logan. They were bound together in so many ways that her loss felt like losing a physical part of his body. Her sinister murder at the hand of a professional assassin, a guild warrior, was partly Logan’s fault. Her probing into guild conspiracies marked her as a risk to those in the guild who were training the resistance movement in combat skills and selectively executing members of society. Maya was just collateral damage to them. That was until Logan, Dawson and his team of guild warriors wiped out those responsible.

  Logan removed his hand. If he started down the path of isolation, he’d slowly go mad. He needed to be engaged with people, people he trusted. People like Dawson. He wolfed down a thick mixture of liquified protein, vegetables, vitamins, and enzymes then got dressed. It was already near mid-day. The shuttle ride would get him to the guild just in time to meet Dawson.

  Dawson kept checking the time. Logan hadn’t responded to his request but he knew his boy. Logan couldn’t sit still, even for one day. Dawson was sore and standing in the guild’s mission planning room was irritating him considerably. He had an idea for their next adventure and wanted to get rolling right away. He, more than anyone else, knew that Logan’s sanity relied on momentum. Dawson was dedicated to making sure Logan didn’t slip into a deep depression, a depression that could result in madness or worse, suicide.

  He checked the time again. Maybe he wasn’t coming after all. Then the portal slid open and Logan strolled into the planning room.

  “This better be good. My ass is dragging.” Logan looked around and plunked down in the nearest chair.

  “You and me, both!” Dawson agreed. After we chat a bit lets hit the spa. A good massage and steam will help.”

  “I have a spa at home.” Logan reminded his friend.

  “Ah, but not a masseuse.” Dawson pointed out. “Just go will the flow my little friend.”

  Logan couldn’t help but smile. When they’d first met as boys Dawson was twice as big and the scariest kid in school. He’d saved Logan from bullies on several occasions, adopting him in a way. Logan didn’t complain. He was a geek growing up. He loved to study, was into art, and didn’t play sports. Dawson, on the other hand, was all muscle, power, and speed.

  The two of them didn’t hang out together back then but they were close in a strange way. Maybe because Dawson didn’t have a sibling. The funny thing now was Logan topped the scales at one hundred and eighty-five pounds of lean muscle and stood just over six foot tall. Dawson was indeed heavier but Logan had gradually gained ground on his friend.

  Logan stopped pushing back. Dawson was no doubt trying to keep him busy. He knew Logan needed to be working on a project or he’d start moping around, or worse. Logan drew in a deep breath and exhaled. It would take a week, maybe two before he could exercise and train at maximum effort. Planning a bounce wasn’t difficult. He suspected Dawson already had a destination in mind.

  “Okay, give me your best pitch!” Logan relaxed and waited.

  Dawson’s face erupted in a big toothy smile. “Alright! So, here’s the idea…”

  Logan listened and tried to pay attention to Dawson as he went over the broad strokes of his idea first and then dove into details, he thought Logan would appreciate. Logan’s mind drifted from time to time to the note he’d thrown away. Why did Osprey want to see him? Was it to warn him? Was one of his former team, now fully embedded in the resistance, in trouble in some way? The move he thought about the possibilities the closer he came to a decision.

  “So, in conclusion, we leave in six weeks. Two weeks to recuperate, and study the historical period and four weeks to train and pass our combat test.” Dawson wasn’t sure Logan had heard a word.

  “Hey!” Dawson barked sharply. “You getting any of this?”

  Logan’s eyes cleared. “Yeah, yeah I get the picture. We have six weeks and then we bounce back to Gaul. Kill some Romans and come home. That about the gist of it?”

  “Well, I guess that all that you need to understand right now.” Dawson was pretty sure Logan had daydreamed through much of his presentation but he wasn’t going to make an issue of it right now. He was just happy Logan had accepted the idea.

  “Are you tired or preoccupied?” Dawson wanted to ensure Logan wasn’t in a funk.

  Logan stretched and stood up. “There was a message from Osprey waited for me when we came home.”

  Dawson put his hands on his hips and unconsciously assumed a wider stance. “What’s that old fart want this time? I thought you’d made it clear to her we were out of politics.

  Logan smiled. Osprey was somewhere around one hundred and twenty years old. He had no doubt Osprey would blow through that statistic.

  “It didn’t say why. It just said to meet with her.”

  “A summons? That seems a bit heavy. You don’t work for her and the last time I looked you were the reason her and her precious movement hadn’t been wiped out by the government.”

  Logan nodded. Dawson was right. In his quest to discover who killed Maya he’d joined forces with Osprey and inadvertently disrupted the government’s plans to destroy the resistance. He knew it was only a respite. The positions he and his team helped empty a year earlier were likely filled with new assholes. Osprey was back in the crosshairs.

  Logan decided he needed to meet with Osprey, if for nothing other than confirming his former teammates were safe. “Summons or not, I need to find out why she feels it necessary to contact me now. It’s been a year, she knows where I stand. If this is some vain attempt to talk me into joining the big game, she’ll be disappointed.”