Ranger's Quest- The Beginning Read online

  Archie stood behind his father’s desk. From the images displayed on the desk he could see the Enforcers moving down the hallway toward his father’s office, checking every room. He was certain they were coming for him. He was in trouble, big trouble. His data assistant, or DA, had been chirping in his ear since the accident. Many people were trying to contact him. Then the chirping changed to a distinct buzz -- his father’s buzz. Up to this point, he had ignored the chirps, refusing to answer any calls. But he couldn’t ignore his father. He tapped the DA on his wrist but didn’t say anything.

  “Archie? Archie! Are you there?” There was a pause as Archie didn’t answer. “God dammit! Answer me! What the hell did you do?” Archie tapped the wrist DA and the call was lost. He hung up on his father. He had never done that before.

  He looked for a place to hide, but there were no other doors or secret passages. He was stuck. He thought about committing suicide and saving the company and the Enforcers and his father a lot of trouble. He began searching through his father’s desk and cabinets, looking for a means to end it all, when he noticed a metal box sitting on the top shelf behind his father’s desk. He opened it and removed what appeared to be a belt. It was just a simple black synthetic strap with a number of gold and silver cylinders alternately attached all around the belt. There was a small black plastic plate in front of the belt where the two ends attached. He knew his father was working on a personal travel device and wondered whether this was it.

  Archie was so enthralled with the belt that, for the moment, he forgot that he was a fugitive on the run. He noticed a sensor screen on the black plate and a single toggle switch. He flipped the switch and a small red light began to blink. Nothing else happened. He turned the switch off. Maybe the ends need to be connected, he thought. He strapped the belt around himself and attached the ends to secure it. Then he turned on the switch again and the belt began to hum. He grabbed the plate to see whether the red light was blinking and his finger hit a sensor screen. The belt began to emit a glow around him. Startled, he let go of the plate and the glow disappeared. This was a familiar glow to Archie; it was the same blue-green light that flashed every time a traveler came or went through his port. Was this the secret project his dad was working on?

  The Enforcers pounded on the door. Archie looked at the desktop security screens and saw the group of Enforcers along with some others standing outside his father’s office doors. It would be just a matter of time before his father gave them the access codes. He began to panic.

  The buzz started again in his earpiece. He’d had enough. He removed his DA from his wrist and threw it in the atomic incinerator next to his father’s desk. In a flash, his data assistant was vaporized and the chirping and buzzing from the implants in his ear finally ceased.

  He grabbed the black plastic plate again and this time deliberately put his finger on the sensor screen. The bluish glow slowly crept up and formed a cocoon around him. A virtual display appeared before his eyes. Fascinated, he began to read the data that appeared before him. He failed to notice the counter on the bottom of the screen until it was counting down to three … two … one … and the blinding flash of light was the last thing he saw.

  3

  Blue and Gray

  August 9, 1862

  Archie was startled into consciousness by thunderous explosions that shook the ground. Confusion raced through his mind as he looked around at the unfamiliar surroundings. A mixture of pine and hardwood trees surrounded him and the sun shone brightly overhead. Archie found it difficult to breathe in the hot humid air. He removed his white lab coat and rolled up the sleeves of his pale blue dress shirt. The explosions and other chaotic noises continually sounded a little way off. He tried to get a sense of what had just happened. The last thing he remembered was standing behind his father’s desk watching the surveillance screens of the Enforcers trying to open the doors. Now, he was deep in a forest in the middle of the day.

  He walked toward the noise. The terrain sloped downward so he figured he was on a hill or small mountain. He braced himself against a tree and sat down on a rock for a moment to collect his thoughts. The ground-shaking blasts and uproar were constant. The belt, he thought. The belt must have taken him somewhere. But where? And more importantly, when? He removed the time belt and wrapped it in his lab coat.

  Smoke rose from the direction of the loud explosions and Archie headed toward it. As he drew nearer, the noise became deafening. When he reached the edge of the hill where he could look down at the valley, the shock of what greeted him made him gasp.

  The cannon and musket fire barely masked the screams and shouting of the thousands of men who faced each other in the fields below. He placed his hands over his ears to muffle the noise and knelt in the tall grass by a tree to watch. Cannons were being continuously fired from both sides. Some of their shells exploded in the air, sending devastating shrapnel to the ground. Other shells would explode on contact with the ground or an object. Still other solid objects fired from the cannons would crash through wagons, horses, soldiers, and anything that was in their path. It was brutal and barbaric, but he couldn’t turn away. Archie felt himself getting ill from witnessing such devastation.

  Lines of blue uniformed soldiers advanced on other soldiers entrenched at the bottom of the hill. Some of those other soldiers wore gray or oatmeal-colored uniforms, and some had no distinct uniform at all. Volley after volley of musket fire was discharged and men fell dead on both sides. After a number of volleys were fired, the two sides would regroup and the blue soldiers would start their advance all over again. It was sheer madness to Archie.

  The blue army appeared to be gaining the upper hand on the gray army. The gray army had regrouped and fallen back to higher ground twice while Archie watched. He tried to make sense of what he was witnessing.

  Blue and Gray, Blue and Gray, he rolled over in his mind. Then he remembered.

  “My God! It’s the Civil War!” he said out loud. His memory finally recalled learning about this conflict in his classes. His father had an obsessive fascination with this historic event. Archie remembered how, as a child, he would listen to his father tell him very interesting, detailed stories about the War Between the States. This belt must be how his father knew so much. He must have been traveling back in time to study the various battles. But which battle was this, he wondered. Archie thought of the virtual display from the time belt.

  He went back up the hill and strapped on the time belt and turned it on. The display showed the date as August 9th, the same day that he left, but in the year 1862. He noted the longitude and latitude settings and looked up their archive information on the display’s computer. They pointed to an area just outside Culpepper, Virginia. He shut the system down and stashed the belt in his coat. Archie sat down on the rock to digest the facts he had just learned. He tried to convince himself that this was all a dream. He couldn’t really be back in the midst of a Civil War battle. Could he?

  With the noise of the battle raging below, he tried to think of what he should do next. “I gotta get out of here!” He strapped on the time belt and turned it on, then remembered the incident at his transport station that had driven him to this predicament. He suddenly realized he couldn’t go back home, at least not yet. He wondered whether the Enforcers would be able to trace him to another time. Then he shook his head. There’s no way they could possibly know where he was. Unless his father told them.

  Archie’s father, Theodore Campbell, the head of the Eastern Transportation Complexes and a brilliant scientist as well, would know the last settings he used with the time belt and could relay that to the Enforcers. But if he did, he would divulge the existence of the belt, a secret and illegal project. Time travel was forbidden except for licensed time-agents controlled by the governments. Doctor Russell Hicks, the so-called father of teleportation, had made sure that legislation was passed to outlaw time-travel.

  Archie knew his father was important, but he also knew his father w
asn’t a licensed time-agent. Telling the Enforcers that he used an illegal time device to travel back and forth in time would be a dangerous move. It would jeopardize his job and his well-being if he told what he knew.

  Archie was positive his father wouldn’t divulge the existence of the belt. He imagined his father would do all he could to help the Enforcers locate Archie, but would never tell where he was or how he got there. At least he hoped he wouldn’t.

  Archie felt as if he was stuck in a foreign world. He removed the belt. He was frightened. He couldn’t go back home at this time and he knew of no other place to go. He went back to watch the battle and try to sort out what his next course of action should be.

  The heat of the afternoon sun was blistering. Archie found the shade of a tree and sat down on the ground. From his vantage point he could see everything. The battlefield was shrouded in a grayish-white smoke. The humidity held the smoke close to the ground and kept it from dissipating. It was as if a giant fog had settled over the field. A column of men came into view off to his right. They were in the gray uniforms and were marching towards the battlefield. Out of the corner of his eye Archie caught a glimpse of a flash of light. He looked back at the battle but figured he must have imagined it. Maybe it was the sun flashing off some metal piece on the battlefield.

  Just as he was about to look back to the column of men there came another flash. He caught more than a glimpse of it this time. It seemed to be a very bright bluish-green light.

  “What the hell?”

  Archie turned his full attention to the battlefield. The flash he witnessed was much different from the explosions happening all around. He kept watching to see whether it happened again. He didn’t have to wait long. In the middle of the battlefield there was a bright flash of blue light and a blue uniformed soldier disappeared in the light. Archie was shocked. A minute later, there was another flash and another soldier disappeared. Moments later another flash caused another soldier to vanish. Archie deduced that the Enforcers had figured out the time segment to where he had escaped. But they apparently couldn’t determine one warm body from another. They couldn’t pinpoint Archie. My God, he thought, they’re locking on to any person they could find, thinking it might be me. “Damn my father!” Archie said aloud. That’s the only way they could have found him.

  He stood to get a better look. The battle seemed to stop. Soldiers from both sides were staring at each other. It was apparent that they had seen the flashes too. Another flash and another Union soldier disappeared. The flashes were becoming more frequent. The blue army stopped dead in its advance and was just looking at one another. Some of the soldiers began to move away from the area. More flashes and more disappearances. Now more and more blue uniformed soldiers began running from the battlefield. About that moment, the columns of gray soldiers that had earlier caught Archie’s attention came around the hill and attacked from the side. The entrenched gray army saw their comrades and began to advance on the blue army as well. The flashes continued for a few minutes during the battle and then mercifully stopped. The blue army was retreating, and the gray army was quickly advancing on them.

  As evening approached, the battle had moved off farther north, leaving nothing but devastation and carnage at the bottom of the hill. Hundreds of bodies littered the field below him along with dead animals and destroyed wagons, fences, cannons and other items. Archie began to walk down the hill, moving from the cover of one tree to another. He tried hard not to be seen.

  On the eastern side of the hill, with the sun setting behind him, he was draped in dark shadows. He was about halfway down the hill when he came across the body of a dead soldier in an oatmeal-colored uniform. Archie stood and looked down at the soldier; half of his head had been shot away. The vision of the dead traveler in his travel hub flashed in Archie’s mind.

  Archie fell to his knees next to the dead soldier and began to think a little clearer. He now knew the Enforcers, along with his father, knew where he ended up. He couldn’t go back home, yet. If he wanted to survive, he would have to find a way to blend in with a time period he had little knowledge about. He had to get away from this area. Archie noticed that the uniform and the soldier’s equipment looked brand new. He wondered if this soldier ever fired a shot before he was killed. The soldier was shorter than Archie, but his torso seemed about the same size.

  In the oncoming darkness, Archie removed the soldier’s coat and blouse and put them on. They were a little tight but fit well enough to get by. He removed his belt and hooked the soldier’s suspenders onto his black dress pants.

  Archie searched through the haversack. Most of the items were so foreign to him that he didn’t know what he was looking at. He recognized the tin plate and cup. The meager food supply was some smoked meat, hardtack, and a small sack of coffee beans. There was no identification, no papers of any kind, no money or coins. The soldier did carry a small book of Bible verses. An inscription on the inside front cover indicated it had been a gift from a loved one. It was addressed only to “Dear Sweetheart,” no name.

  Unsure of what he might need, Archie put all the items back in the haversack and strapped it across his back, then strapped the soldier’s pistol belt around his waist. Along with the holster, there were two small leather boxes attached to the belt. One contained several small lead balls, the other some small copper caps. Archie had no idea what either was for. He pulled the pistol from its holster. The gun was heavier than he’d imagined. It was the first time in his life that he ever held a firearm, since in 2275 firearms of any kind were banned from private ownership worldwide and controlled only by the military and the Enforcers. Other than seeing antique data vids of people firing guns, he had no idea how to load, unload or fire such a weapon. He put the revolver back in its holster and buttoned the flap. Archie thought the rifle would be too burdensome for him to carry, so he left it lying next to the soldier’s body.

  He returned to the top of the hill and watched the sun as it descended toward the horizon in the west. He stuffed the time belt in the haversack and left his lab coat. Below him on the west side of the hill was a valley of farmland and past that lay another series of hills and forests.

  Archie walked down the hill, across the open farmland and into the woods on the other side of the valley. He continued trudging through the trees until it got too dark to go any further. He spent the night deep in the forest, huddled close to a large tree. A half-moon shone through the tree limbs and cast haunting blue shadows across the trees and bushes around him. He was afraid and exhausted. He couldn’t think straight. He thought that he might escape to another time era where conditions might be a little more comfortable. He would make that decision in the morning. Archie knew he had to get away from the battle, the army and the ever-searching Enforcers. It would be just a matter of time before they sent a time-agent looking for him.

  4

  Revelation

  The sun hadn’t come up yet, but the birds were already sending out their morning greetings. The blackness of the night had ebbed to a shallow gray. The fearsome dark shadows that tormented his imagination through the night began to take the shapes of trees and shrubs. Archie sat leaning against the tree he had held onto through the night. He remembered dozing off for only moments at a time and then waking again at the slightest noise. He was exhausted, sore and hungry. He regretted his escape to another time. Even more, he regretted his predicament. He knew an investigation, imprisonment and possible elimination waited for him if he went back.

  Today he planned to get much farther away from this spot. Archie still could not understand how the Enforcers had located him, and that thought had bothered him most of the night. His father was the only person alive who had any inkling as to his whereabouts, and he would never jeopardize his career for any reason.

  Archie abruptly sat up with a thought: unless he put the entire blame for the time belt on his son! That had to be it! His father must have told the Enforcers that the time belt belonged to Archie. T
hat bastard would sacrifice his only son for his career and reputation. Archie figured his father might get a reprimand for not reporting his son’s illegal activity but would probably get a medal for helping the authorities track him down.

  Anger over this revelation rose within him. Archie decided he would never go back. Even if he were somehow exonerated and allowed to go back, he could never face his father again. At that moment, he decided to make a new life, here. A life that would be his choice and not his father’s. A life where he would be in control and no one else. Right or wrong, he would live by his own decisions. From now on, he and he alone would be in control of his own destiny. He smiled. A calmness came over him.

  The deep gray brightened to a lighter gray with each minute. Still no sunlight. The humidity was stifling, worse than the previous day. The night was no relief from the heat and sticky air. His clothes were damp. He could make out the sky now and noticed the deep dark clouds blocking out the sun. Even though it hadn’t started to rain, he could smell it in the air. He had to find shelter somewhere.

  Archie decided to use the virtual display in the time belt to access archived maps of the area to see whether there were any towns or villages nearby. He pulled the time belt from the haversack along with a chunk of dried meat. The meat tasted salty and a bit gamey, but it took away his hunger pangs, at least for the moment. He stood, strapped on the time belt and turned it on. The now familiar blue-green light flowed from the belt and engulfed him. When the virtual display appeared, he put the time system on stand-by and searched the archives for an 1860’s map of Virginia.

  Archie assumed that he was somewhere in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains around the Shenandoah Ridge. Harrisonburg was the closest big town that he could probably walk to in a day or so. However, walking anywhere in a partial Confederate uniform was a concern. He had to avoid the roads, streams and rails to keep from being seen. Dressed as he was, he was either a deserter in one army or a prisoner in another. Neither was a good option. He decided to jump and avoid walking altogether. He studied the map and found Charleston, another large town in Virginia that was quite a distance farther west; but he didn’t want to jump into the middle of a large city. He picked a small town just outside Charleston called Summersville. He set the longitude and latitude settings, strapped on the haversack and took the system off stand-by. The counter began to step down. This time he closed his eyes, and with a loud electric snap the forest at the base of the Shenandoah Mountains was again silent and empty.