Cock Of Ages Ch 16

Tampa, Florida

March 10 , 1963

It was twenty minutes to midnight when Cromwell finally arrived, carrying his suitcase and wearing a decidedly sour expression.

Apparently the cabbie he'd hired had wanted to know too much about why he was being dropped off in the middle of nowhere. Cromwell hates that kind of nosiness.

"You finished?" was all he said when he came in.

"Yeah," I sighed. "She's passed out in the other room." Which she was -- she just wasn't the she that Cromwell thought she was. I had positioned Shelly on the bed, naked, with her hands folded over her breasts in repose, like Sleeping Beauty. Cromwell thought that it was my last mark, but I didn't correct him. He wouldn't have approved of me re-visiting a mark from an earlier mission, and I know for a fact that our boss, Dr. Weems, would have flipped out.

"I brought your crap," he added, dropping a suitcase. "Not the clothes, but all the other shit you bought. What's that?" he asked, nodding towards the cardboard box at my feet.

"Angel wings," I offered. "Worked like a charm."

He snorted. "I really can't believe women are that stupid."

"Not all of them, and not all of the time," I explained. "But you get them fucked up enough and play into their base fantasies, they'll often do things they never would do, otherwise."

"How many does that make this trip?"

"Besides the nine on the mission? At least twenty seven or so freebies, give or take. Might not be a record, but it's still impressive. Help me carry this out to the courtyard. Where's the capsule coming in?"

"North corner," he grunted, grabbing the box and letting me take my suitcase. I glanced at my watch as I did so. Quarter 'till.

We dragged everything out to the center of the courtyard to wait. I lit up a smoke while we waited, the sweet cloying aroma of cigarette tobacco stinging my nostrils. They just didn't make them like this in the future. Not that cancer was a danger, anymore, but the regulations on such things were so bad that no matter which brand you bought they all tasted pretty much the same. Progress. I had tucked a carton of Luckies in the suitcase with my other souvineers, just so I wouldn't have to face two weeks at that cheerless base smoking Waldorfs or Crowns. Crowns really sucked -- Canadian brand.

"Y'know, I'm gonna miss Tampa," I mused, looking up at the night's sky.

"Me, not so much," Cromwell grunted. "It was fun for a few days, and then it's just another goddamn mildewed hotel room with roaches."

"I think Mr. Winslow -- Winthrop, whatever -- I think he cut quite the figure in town, if I do say so myself."

"He's gonna be real sought after in a few months," Cromwell laughed, evilly. "All of those full bellies."

"I'd like to think I had more of an impact on the place by what I did, culturally speaking, than just the kids I leave behind."

"You aren't supposed to have an impact," Cromwell reminded me. "Get in, fuck 'em, knock 'em up, leave quietly."

"I know, I know," I complained. "But there is some art to it. Look, the capsule."

Sure enough, a vague silvery shadow with the whirling spiral in the middle began to form in front of us. It was our standard transposition capsule, about big enough for four people to stand up in. About the size of an elevator, only covered with silver mesh and with two microscopic black holes whirling around each other in its innards. We waited until the red light on the face of the capsule turned greened and the door hissed as pressure regulated.

"After you," I offered, catching something out of the corner of my eye.

Cromwell was faster, and suddenly his .45 was in his fist and he was pointing it towards the roof. "Get down!" he screamed, and I noticed tiny puffs of dust erupting from the patio where bullets were missing my body. No gunshots -- they must be using silencers. That got my attention.

Oh, dear lord. We were under attack.

"Fuck!" I shouted, grabbing my stuff and pulling it over me to shield me from the bullets. I'm a coward, in case I haven't mentioned that.

"Get down! Get to the fucking capsule!" Cromwell bellowed into my ear, while he returned fire noisily -- that .45 was loud! I didn't argue: the capsule door was open. As I tried to jump in, pulling my luggage behind me as a shield, a black-clad figure wearing a mask - kind of like a ski-mask but without eye or mouth holes and with a sheen of metallic running through it that you just don't see in 1963 - was in my face. There was a gun in his hand -- also not a 1963 model -- and for the briefest moment he hesitated.

I didn't. I slammed my suitcase down on the pistol, sending it across the courtyard, pushing my attacker against the side of the capsule with my shoulder. All hesitation was gone now as I fought for my life . . . with a suitcase.

He didn't waste any time going looking for the pistol, more's the pity, electing instead to draw a long slim knife from some where. Before he could use it I charged again, grinding my shoulder into his chest and kneeing him in the balls.

Only my shoulder hit a lot more padding than I anticipated, and the groin strike didn't have the effect I'd predicted. Oh, it hurt, no doubt of that, but either the bastard was wearing a cup or . . .

He was a she. I inhaled sharply as I pushed her aside, catching the barest hint of something herbal. And feminine. She could disguise her eyes and her face and her figure, but my nose had been in hundreds of coochies, in thousands of heads of soft, feminine hair. It was a woman or a very convincing tranny. I even kind of recognized the scent, although I didn't place it at the time. I was too busy diving into the capsule, my chest pounding and my lungs heaving with adrenaline.

Cromwell shot twice more before he did a very smooth and professional roll that left him right-side up, inside the capsule. I slammed the button that closed the door and as soon as the green light on the simplified control panel lit up, I hit the other button that started the transposition process, taking us out of phase with temporal reality -- and, hopefully, out of range of their bullets.

"Jesus, who were they?" Cromwell asked, panting. He still had his pistol out, and it was smoking.

"Fuck, I didn't see anyone!" I insisted. "No faces, anyway. I think there were three of them."

"Four," he corrected. "Two snipers on the roof, with small-caliber silenced automatic pistols, and two assassins on the ground. I shot one point blank in the chest. You got the other one, it looks like. From the way the fucker fell, though, I'd swear they were all armored."

"No doubt," I agreed. "Cromwell, where the hell did they come from? Not 1963?"

"Fuck, no," he nodded. "Those were special-ops trained -- although they were a little sloppy. I think they were going for a snatch, not a kill. And that armor won't be around until the late 1980's, at the earliest."

"Those masks -- did you recognize those masks? Completely covered the face -- no eye holes, no mouth holes. Just blank faces, like Kabuki dancers."

"Yeah, some of the black ops guys use something like that. Built in night vision, air filters, armored against penetration. That's some high-tech shit!"

"Damn! We got hit!" I repeated, amazed. I'd been in fights before -- even faced down a gun or two -- but I'd never actually fought for my life. "And we got away," I added, when I realized we were safe. I started shaking. "We got away without a fucking scratch!"

"Uh . . . not quite," Cromwell said, quietly.

"Did you get hit?" I asked, suddenly far more concerned for his welfare than I thought I would be.

"No, I'm fine," he said, carefully. "But unless you were hiding a bottle of ketchup in your jacket . . ."

He pointed to my pants. I looked down -- they were covered with blood. Somewhat dispassionately I looked for the source, and found it -- much to my dismay. There was a four-inch slice into the left side of my abdomen. My attacker's knife had apparently slashed me before I left, and I hadn't noticed. Six inches to the right and I'd be out of business. As it was there was a prodigious amount of blood oozing into a puddle on the capsule floor.

"Oh, dear," I said, in a whisper.

"Just relax and keep calm," Cromwell said, breaking out the capsule's First Aid kit. "It's not bad. Even if it hit something serious, it would take you hours to die."

"Damn, that's cold," I complained, the pain suddenly hitting me like a truck. "Where did you get your bedside manner?"

"Army," he grunted, pulling out a package of morphine patches. "They didn't train me to give out suckers to brave little boys, either, so don't bother asking. Here," he said, slapping the patch on my arm. It stung for just a moment, then a warm rosy glow seemed to seep out from it and into the rest of my body. It took a moment, while he fiddled around for a dressing, but my spine finally relaxed from the pain. By the time he slapped the adhesive dressing, liberally impregnated with antibiotics and coagulants to promote wound closure, I couldn't feel a thing. The next thing I remember was Cromwell tucking the silvery emergency thermal blanket under my chin.

"For shock," he explained. "Got to keep you warm."

"Getting stabbed hurts," I observed, sagely.

"Yeah it does," he agreed, finally settling back into his seat. "Been stabbed four times, shot three times. I'd much rather be shot. Hurts a lot less."

"But . . . why did they do it?"

"Don't fret about that," he insisted. "That's for the Brains to work out. We just need to get you back to base and into the infirmary."

"Yes, mommy," I said, blearily.

"Close your eyes and rest," he ordered. "We still have twenty minutes of transit time. Stay still, or the bandage will come off and you'll piss off the techs that will have to clean up all the blood."

"Wouldn't want to do that," I agreed, and fell asleep.

I had a long, tangled nightmare that seemed to go on and on way past the twenty minutes he promised. I was supposed to be fucking my marks, and every time I'd get close they'd have a headache, or penises, or their faces would vanish and they'd stab me. A lot of the women I fucked in Tampa popped into my head, too -- Lori, of course, and Shelly, but also Stephanie, Alice, Candace, Lacy, Cammie, Lisa, Pamela, even Mary popped up, Mary the Betty Crocker housewife I seduced way back in 1951, weeks and weeks ago. And Teresa. For some reason Teresa kept swimming into my drugged mind's eye. The way she looked, her exotic eyes, her beautiful nose, the way her pussy felt around my cock, her laugh, her dark, luxurious hair, her perfume . . .

. . . her perfume, the herbal scent with floral overtones, so subtle yet so feminine . . .

. . . her perfume, which had engulfed me in a warm, glowing cloud of erotic bliss, as I buried my nose in her hair. I hadn't smelled it since . . .

. . . the night we were together? No, it had been on her note . . .

. . . no, it had been . . .

I knew who attacked us.

Teresa. The un-accounted for time traveler. My attacker had worn the same scent. But it was more than that -- two women can wear the same perfume, and their natural chemistry will make it smell differently. No, it wasn't a woman wearing her perfume, it was Teresa. The nose knows. The olfactory sense is the one most closely hooked into our memory, and when I thought about it, there was no doubt in my drug-hazed mind. Communicating it as coherent thought, however, was beyond me.

"Heeeyyy," I said, in slow motion, trying to get Cromwell's attention. He was staring anxiously at some dials on the board. We couldn't use regular electronics here, I remembered, because of the singularities.

"Shush, save your strength," Cromwell cautioned paternalistically. "We're almost there."

"I know . . ." I said, knowing that I knew something I wanted to say, but the rest of the sentence, the ". . . who attacked us and which bitch stabbed me" wouldn't pass my lips. I couldn't keep my brain working like that.

"Shhh! We're slowing down!" he said, holding up his hand.

"I know . . ."

Technically we weren't "slowing down", we were just emerging into reality, a transition that took a couple of minutes. But there was decided wind-down of the gyros, or whatever that sounded like "slowing down". I didn't bother to correct him.

"All right, we're here," he said, exhaling gratefully. "As soon as the field clears and I pop the door, I'll get a medical team in here."

"Riiiigght," I agreed, also grateful that the door was opening. Cromwell pulled my arm over his shoulders and stood, and the moment that the door was all the way up, he dragged me through, shouting for a medic.

There wasn't anybody there.

Usually, there's a technician on duty -- always. And a security guard who usually plays cards with the technician, because there's not much security you need in the middle of the Pacific in the 19th century. But there was no one -- the control board was vacant. Cromwell was immediately alarmed, and after sitting me in the control chair, he drew his gun and ran out of the room. Me? I appreciated all of the pretty lights on the board, and amused myself by counting the capsules. A few were missing, I noted idly.

Cromwell was back in a few moments -- or an hour -- I couldn't tell for sure.

"There's no one here," he said, breathlessly.

"What? Where'd they go?"

"I don't know. I'm guessing there's been some kind of attack. I saw impact marks, some carbon scoring, some shell casings, and three or four bloody spots. But no bodies. Just . . . no one."

"You . . . sure?"

"Yes, I'm . . . no, I'm not," he admitted, wiping his face with the back of his hand. "I need to get up to Security and find out what happened. There should be logs there. Even if they erased them, there's bound to be back-ups."

"Um . . . got a little . . . hole in me," I said, calmly.

"I know, I know, but you're stable," he reasoned. "And it won't do much good to patch one if I make a mistake and let you get punctured again. So I'm going to make a quick run up to the control center, you stay here. Here," he said, pressing the gun into my hand. I smelled the powder and gun oil, and my hand curled around the grip of its own accord. "Try not to shoot me when I get back."

"What about . . . you?" I asked, dully. "I can't take . . . your only gun . . ."

"I'm good," he assured me. "I'll stop by the armory and pick up something on the way. You stay here. Okay?"

"She's safe with me," I agreed, to no one in particular. Then he was gone.

That allowed me a very, very long time, subjectively speaking, to catch up on my regretting. All the women I'd fucked, throughout the ages. All of the lies I'd told. The pure, shallow, singlemindedness of it all, my sociopathic nature, my dashing good looks. It all swam before me, all of my identities swirling around my head until I couldn't remember what my own real name was.

"Tom!"

Tom, that was it. I was Tom. Tom . . . well, last names didn't matter. Not when I was bleeding. And I could see that I was bleeding now -- the dressing had come loose, and there was a largish pool of blood in my chair. No need for formalities when there was this much blood. Death is a casual affair, after all . . .

"Tom!" Cromwell repeated, slapping my face. My pistol came up of its own accord, but he was prepared for that, taking it gently away from me and laying me out on the floor. "Tom! I got a crash-cart. I'm going to do my best to fix you up on my own," he said. "But you've got to stay with me!"

I opened my eyes and watched him for a moment, wearing a stethoscope around his neck and a submachine gun slung from his shoulder. He was stripping off my jacket and shirt and tearing away the spoiled dressing. He jabbed a needle in me and started giving me fluids. Then I saw the wound and felt woozy again. I closed my eyes.

When I opened them next, I could start feeling the pain creep back in, albeit at a more muted volume. Cromwell was smoothing another, more permanent dressing on me. He had also changed a new bottle of fluids. Which was good, because I was feeling a little thirsty.

"You awake again?" he asked, as my eyelids fluttered. "Good. I was getting tired of talking to myself. Won't last long, though -- gave you some good stuff, painkillers. You'll be in happy-happy land in a little while. And the cut didn't even nick your intestines or your kidneys. You'll be fine."

"What . . . happened?"

"I checked the logs -- they were attacked. From outside. Whoever did this transposed in outside of the building and came in through the emergency exits. Used some sort of stunning weapon. Everyone was captured, apparently. The blood is from their side, I think, our people defending themselves. But it must have happened a few days back, from the logs."

"At last," I said, in a whisper, "we're alone."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he said, frowning. "We're fucking alone. Real alone. 'Cause I got no clue where they hid the main base -- need-to-know, only admins and techs knew the coordinates. And if we've been compromised, then they'd likely just abandon us, let the base blow up on schedule."

"So . . . what about us?"

"I have no fucking clue," he admitted. "I'm just a soldier."

"And I'm just a gigolo," I answered. "Every where I go . . ."

"Got no protocols for this," he said, sullenly.

". . . people know the part . . . I'm playin'," I sang. It seemed appropriate.

"Never figured on some bullshit like this," he continued to himself.

"Paid for ev'ry dance . . . something something romance . . ."

"A goddamn contact number would have been nice!"

"Ev'ry night some heart . . . betrayin' . . ."

"Stuck with a goddman pervert in a shit hole island in the 1800s . . ."

"There . . . come a day . . . youth . . . pass away . . ."

"No fucking clue who did this. They're gonna goddamn PAY for this bullshit . . ."

"Then what will they say . . . about me?" I sang.

"That you're a goddamn pervert genius," he spat back at me. "Great job, genius. We're officially fucked!"

"End comes, I know . . . say, 'just a gigolo' . . ."

"I need to eat," he said, scratching his neck with the barrel of his gun as he slumped next to me. "I haven't had anything since dinner."

"LIFE GOES ON . . . WITHOUT ME!" I finished, the pain just a fleeting afterthought under the onslaught of the drugs.

"What the fuck?" Cromwell said, as a light on the control panel began flashing. "Incoming?"

I thought I could see it, there where an empty space was. A silvery glow, just a bit blurry through my eyelids. Someone was transpositioning in. Cromwell picked up his gun and cocked it, then crouched behind the console, his eyes and the barrel just peeking out over it. He didn't seem all that concerned with me or my welfare. Somehow, that didn't bother me. I watched with great interest as the capsule materialized, and Cromwell tensed.

"I . . . " I said, loudly, as the capsule door started to open. Cromwell prepared to fire. There was someone inside, they had a gun -- I could see that much.

"Quiet, asshole!" Cromwell hissed. The door was fully open. I expected a hail of gunshots, the smell of gunpowder, the clean release from consciousness that didn't seem so bad, all things considered. In fact, I decided to favor the occasion with a song.

"I . . . AIN'T GOT NO-BOOOOOOODY!"

Everything went dark.

End of Book One