Arc Riders (38 page)

The gas shell hit the forehead of the man leaning over Jalouse. The projectile weighed 220 grams and was moving as fast as
the hoof of an angry mule.

The shooter hurtled backward, knocked unconscious by the impact. The contents of the shell sprayed across what should have
been Transfer Control Room Two, volatilizing before the droplets reached the far bulkhead.

Civilians folded up, their muscles unable to obey the commands of fear and hatred that still glared from their eyes. A machine
pistol slipped from nerveless fingers and fired a last shot into the ceiling.

The armored figure who’d followed Jalouse through the airlock slung the gas projector and said in an unfamiliar female voice,
“Hold me! We’re displacing in ten seconds!”

Jalouse thrust his arms out. His right hand wouldn’t close properly, but his left gauntlet twined fingers with hers and they
hugged, chest to chest.

The room’s inner door opened. The hall beyond was filled with figures in displacement suits with an odd shoulder flare. The
leader aimed a plasma weapon as the whole scene faded into the darkness outside of time.

Light. Chest-high grass, clouds too scattered to dim the bright sun, and a warm breeze on Jalouse’s face as he threw his visor
up again.

“What the
hell
happened?” he gasped. The other figure opened her helmet also. He’d never seen her before. “Who
are
you?”

“My name’s Rebecca Carnes,” the woman said. “Can you help me out of this suit? I think we got the legs two different lengths
when we put it together out of the spares in the capsule.”

“But what happened?” Jalouse repeated. He was shaking, but feeling started to return to his right hand as he reached for the
latch of Carnes’ armor. “I’ve never seen you before.”

“Your friends couldn’t go fetch you from…” she nodded, upward, a direction in time. “From there, from that Central. Because
they’d been there when you were caught and couldn’t go back. But I could.”

She stepped out of the suit with Jalouse’s support. She was wearing loose garments of a style he wasn’t familiar with. Her
trousers had been shredded by whatever she’d done before suiting up. What the
hell
had been going on?

“Are they…” Jalouse said. “Is… are they all right?”

“Everybody made it,” Carnes said. “Everybody’s going to go to the real ARC Central together. Including you.”

The air above the sun-drenched prairie trembled, then solidified into an Anti-Revision Command transportation capsule. Jalouse’s
breath caught when he saw the damage to the hull, but Nan Roebeck’s smile from the opening hatch was all the proof he needed
that things really were under control.

D
AVID
D
RAKE
was born in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1945. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Iowa, majoring in history (with honors)
and Latin. He was attending Duke University Law School when he was drafted. He served the next two years in the Army, spending
1970 as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th Armored Cavalry in Viet Nam and Cambodia.

Upon return he completed his law degree at Duke and was for eight years Assistant Town Attorney for Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
He then drove a city bus for a year and, since 1981, has been a full-time freelance writer.

Drake has a wife, a son, and various pets. He lives in a new house on 22 acres in Chatham County, North Carolina, where he
feeds sun-flower seeds to the birds.

J
ANET
M
ORRIS
is Vice President of Morris & Morris, a private consultancy specializing in new defense technology and non-lethal warfare.
She is a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. She has participated in several
unprecedented U.S./Russian technology exchanges. in collaboration with David Drake, she has written
Active Measures
and
Kill Ratio
, among other novels. With her husband, Chris Morris, she has written
The American Warrior
and other titles. She is also the author of the
Tempus
series.

A desperate plot to destroy the United State—a desperate race to save it!

THE 52,000 YEAR WAR

In the twenty-third year of LBJ’s martial rule, the war for Nam has spread to Central China, and rogue generals with nuclear
weapons are poised to blast America into oblivion
.

Reactionary twenty-third century conspirators have changed history…or will, unless the elite Anti-Revision Command, the ARC
Riders, aided by Nam vet Major Rebecca Carnes, can find the terrorists. In a manhunt that ranges from Southeast Asia to Washington,
D.C., from the twenty-sixth century to 50,000
B.C
., the ARC Riders must stop the killing before they lose their one slender chance to untie the fatal knots in Time.

Vietnam veteran D
AVID
D
RAKE
, author of.
Hammer’s Slammers
, and J
ANET
M
ORRIS
, senior fellow of the U.S. Global Strategy Council and author of
The American Warrior
, join their talents for the most exciting time war adventure of the year.

PRAISE FOR DAVID DRAKE AND JANET MORRIS

“A tense, fast-paced thriller…from a writing team that has already demonstrated their individual talents.”

—
Science Fiction Chronicle
, on
Kill Ratio