Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(16)
“Damn it, James, hurry up,” Smitt urgently crackled in his head.
James turned from the boy and finished his work. He had just completed storing the last panel when he noticed tongues of flames coming from underneath the door to the adjacent room. He glanced back at the boy still huddled in the far corner and saw the stark terror in his eyes, either from the fire or from James. James gritted his teeth, closed the band on the netherstore, and turned to leave.
“Lord save me,” the boy soldier cried over and over again. “I don’t want to die. I am a good person. I don’t want to die.”
With a kinetic hammer, James punched a hole into the wall.
“Please, help me!” the boy screamed. “You must be sent from God, an angel. I’m a Christian! Save me! Please deliver me!”
James stopped again. The fire was threatening to consume the room at any moment. That boy wasn’t getting out alive unless he did something about it. Well, if that was the case, then that boy was as good as dead. James turned and approached the terrified Nazi. “Your time on this world is over. Make peace with your life. It’ll make your final moments easier.”
The boy, probably not even sixteen, face shiny with tears, reached out and clutched James’s ankles. “Mercy! I follow the Führer. I’m a good person. I’m a good person!”
James stared at the terrified youth and was brought back to his own childhood, when he had lived in constant fear. He shook his head sadly. “You’re not, but I’m sorry anyway.”
As a final mercy, he brought his fist down upon the boy’s skull, crushing it. Then he turned and left the Amber Room as K?nigsberg Castle burned to the ground. A few minutes later, there was a bright yellow flash, and James disappeared from April 10, 1944.
SIX
DREAMS
James pulled his head out of the glass of whiskey and glanced around the Never Late bar at Earth Central. The Never Late was twice as big as the Tilted Orbit but had only a third of the patrons, and every single one of them—all chronmen, for sure—was drinking alone. At least there were more women here. He counted twenty, which made this joint the best odds he’d seen in the past six months.
Another good thing was that the whiskey was cheaper, not that price ever mattered to him. The swill here was just as bad as the swill in space, but really, everything in the present tasted like crap compared to the stuff from the past. James downed his drink and poured himself another from the bottle.
He never thought he’d feel bad for a Nazi, even if it was just a kid. He had a little Jewish blood in him, though that meant a lot less now than it did five hundred years ago. These days, everyone had a little of everyone else’s blood.
Born on Mars colony Brukhim Ha’baim in the Hellas Planitia basin, the old Israel’s only colony in the solar system, he had more Jewish in him than most. Still, that Nazi kid was just that, a dumb kid. James raised his glass in salute and then downed it. At least they didn’t serve drinks in tin cups here.
He thought of his mother and little sister, Sasha. Mother had died during the Mars Plague Bomb of—James pulled up the date—2490. He couldn’t remember when he lost Sasha. They had been in Mnemosyne Station, a refugee camp high up in the orbit of Mars. Barely fifteen at the time, he had kept them both alive for almost a year. James’s eyes moistened and turned the same tint as his red drunken face. He had tried to hold her close every night. He gave her whatever scraps he had, and fought off all the adults who tried to steal their meager belongings or lay a hand on them. Then one day, he woke up and found her missing. He never saw her again. She was nine or ten; he hated himself for not remembering.
When she disappeared, he went crazy, killing two of the men who had constantly harassed them and beating to unconsciousness another who had always leered at her. That got him tossed into the refugee prison, which caught the attention of a ChronoCom recruiter. The man pulled James out of certain labor camp slavery and enrolled him in the Academy. Through her death, he owed Sasha his life.
Smitt joined him at the bar two hours later. By this time, James had lost his usual stoic demeanor and was belligerently yelling at the bartender and everyone else around him. The other patrons ignored him. While that was usually fine by him, this was one of those rare instances where he wanted everyone’s attention. James bellowed and raged at anyone within earshot.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Smitt said, pulling James’s arms down and leading him back to his seat. “You’re yelling at other chronmen here, not rucks. These guys wouldn’t hesitate to throw down with you.”
“Good,” said James, reaching for his glass and nearly tipping it over. “I’m tired of people treating me like a leper.”
“Hardly that.” Smitt signaled to the barkeep for a glass of water. “A dick, maybe. A leper, never.”
James buried his face in his hands and ran his fingers through his hair, anguish twisting his expression. “He was a little fascist, ya know. Little f*cking Nazi, and I smashed his skull in with this.” James held up his right hand and powered on the exo. “Like a sledgehammer on a melon. And that’s being merciful.”
Smitt wasn’t very good at being a comforting ear. “Look, James, kid was a goner anyway. You know that. I’m sure in that moment, you wish you could have done something, but that’s not possible. You’re from their future. You can’t change the past. The time line self-heals.”