TW09 The Lilliput Legion NEW Read Free Page B

the shadowy figure.
"Lucas?"
    It was impossible. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly and then opened them again. There was no one there. The window was bright with the reflected glare from the lights of Pendleton Base. No one was silhouetted against it. And no one could have come in through that window. It was on the forty-seventh floor and sealed so that it couldn't open.
    She exhaled heavily and lowered the gun, being careful to put the safety back on. Sleeping with a plasma weapon under her pillow was hazardous to the point of being suicidal, especially after she'd been drinking. It wouldn't do to incinerate herself in the middle of the night or wake up and start blasting away at hallucinations left over from a nightmare, but she had never learned to be comfortable without having a weapon within easy reach, whether it was a plasma pistol or a broadsword. She was a temporal agent and, as such, she was an expert with a wide variety of weapons. Control was so firmly ingrained that it was a matter of instinct.
    Still, her hand was shaking as she put the pistol down.
    She swallowed hard, took another deep breath and leaned back against the wall.
    "Damn,"
she said to herself. "It's
got
to stop. I'm starting to lose it."
    A soft red light suddenly came on above her comscreen and an electronic buzzer sounded three times in rapid succession, paused, then sounded again. General Forrester's face appeared upon the screen.
    "Lt. Cross?"
    "Here, sir," she said.
    "Come up to my quarters, on the double."
    "Sir!"
    She rolled out of bed and quickly slipped into her black base fatigues. Moses Forrester was not in the habit of calling the people under his command in the middle of the night and summoning them "on the double" unless there was a damned good reason for it. She was dressed in moments and out the door, running down the corridor toward the lift tubes.
    Brigadier General Moses Forrester was an unusual commander. He was entitled to a full complement of personal security and staff at his quarters and offices atop the Headquarters Building of Pendleton Base, but he had only four guards working two shifts, which meant that there were only two guards on duty at any one time, plus an orderly who doubled as a secretary. Rather than wear full dress uniforms or even the less formal duty greens, Forrester insisted that his guards dress in the infinitely less impressive and more comfortable black base fatigues, which he himself preferred. No ribbons, no decorations, no insignia other than division pin and rank.
    This gave him the impression, he said, that he was surrounded by soldiers, rather than hotel doormen.
    Formerly the commander of the elite First Division, the Time Commandos, Forrester had been promoted and was now the director of the Temporal Intelligence Agency, which had absorbed the First Division. Although Forrester was entitled to wear civilian clothing if he chose to, he never did, except for the 19th century, green, brocade smoking jacket he liked wearing during evenings in his quarters, when he was fond of settling down with one of his cherished Dunhill or Upshall pipes and a good book. Forrester had been in the service all his life. He had enlisted straight out of high school and risen through the ranks, taking advantage of military benefits to secure an education for himself along the way.
    He had earned a doctorate in history, one in political science, and one in temporal physics, though he often professed to know less about the intricacies of what was more commonly called "zen physics" than he really did.
    Few people knew his exact age. He never spoke of it and no one ever had the temerity to ask. He looked positively ancient. His face was deeply lined and his hair might have been white if he had any, but Moses Forrester had shaved his head for as long as anyone could remember. However old he looked, and he looked like an old grizzly bear with hemorrhoids, he was in remarkable physical condition. He was well over six feet