Drakov opened the case and took out a scoped, stainless steel Colt Python with an eight-inch barrel and black neoprene combat grips. Not as sophisticated as a laser or a plasma gun, but just as effective and, in some ways, more reliable. He kneeled and took a rest position, sighting through the pistol scope. He smiled in anticipation.
Amazing that after everything that happened, it would all come down to just one shot. A mere one hundred and fifty-eight grain, copper-jacketed, hollow-point bullet, no bigger than a dime, would accomplish what even nuclear weapons had failed to do. And he would have his revenge at last
The future would cease to be. Just one shot, its report masked by the gunfire that would shortly erupt in what was no more than an insignificant blood feud, and everything would change. Universes would shift, setting off a timewave that would travel down the timestream, building in intensity. altering events… and in the course of those events that would be altered, Moses Forrester would never be horn. He would never live to meet and fall in love with the Russian gypsy girl named Vanna Drakova. She would be spared the torment she had suffered and he, Nikolai Drakov, would never have lived. Sweet oblivion awaited him.
He wondered what would happen the moment he fired the fatal shot. Would he immediately cease to exist? Would there be pain? Or would he suddenly just be gone… because from the moment of his action, he would never have existed in the first place?
He would be gone but his enemies who survived would suffer the knowledge of their failure. They would return to a future that had changed, a time that was unraveling, to find that their commander. Moses Forrester, had never lived. would they remember? Drakov sincerely hoped so. For if they did, there would be nothing they could do about it. Once the act was done, any attempt on their part to change it would only change the future once again, with consequences that could be even worse in their own time. Further down the timestream, long after they were dead, the cataclysm would occur. They wouldn’t be around to see it, nor would he. But it didn’t really matter. He would have won. He would have destroyed his father, beaten his enemies, wiped out his own tortured existence and brought about an end to all of time with no more than a slight motion of his finger on the trigger. One shot. The ultimate solution.
He felt an almost sexual thrill of anticipation surge through him. He took a deep breath, trying to steady his nerves. His palms were sweating. He wiped them on his trousers. Just one more moment…
Scott came running around the corner of Fourth and Fremont and came to a dead stop. Suddenly, it was daylight. For a moment, he was totally disoriented. And then, just ahead of him, he saw Wyatt Earp, his brothers, Virgil and Morgan. and Doc Holliday walking down the street, heading for the vacant lot between Fly’s Boarding House and Harwood’s place. Just beyond them, he could see Ike Clanton, Billy Clanton, and Tom and Frank McLaury lined up in a row and facing them.
The famous shoot-out.
As if mesmerized, he started to move forward.
He heard Virgil Earp call out, “Boys, throw up your hands! I want your guns!”
The two parties were perhaps six feet apart.
Young Billy Clanton yelled out, “Don’t shoot me! I don’t want to fight!”
Tom McLaury said. “I haven’t got anything, boys. I am disarmed.” He moved his hands up to his coat and started to open it.
Virgil called out sharply, “Hold on! I don’t mean that!”
And as Virgil shouted, Jenny came running around the corner, saw Scott moving toward the men as if hypnotized and..
Lucas and Andre rounded the corner where the Capitol Saloon stood and suddenly everything seemed to shift into slow motion. It felt as if they were moving against some sort of invisible resistance, the current of the timeflow itself pushing against them. They saw Jenny running just ahead of them and it looked as if she were running underwater, bounding in slow motion, her hair gently rising and falling behind her as she ran toward the men ahead of her, Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp, Doc Holliday and Scott, all standing abreast and facing the Clanton and the McLaury brothers. They heard her call out, as if from the bottom of a well, and her words sounded slow and drawn out, like a record being played at the wrong speed as she shouted. “Scoooot… noooooooo!”
With agonizing slowness. Scott and Wyatt both turned around and, at the same time, three shots cracked out, their reports sounding like echoes in a cave. Like feathers floating on the wind, both Wyatt and Scott started to crumple to the ground…
In the next instant, with the suddenness of an earthquake, everything speeded up to normal and Lucas and Andre. straining against the invisible force that seemed to be holding them back, were thrown violently forward, as if shoved hard from behind. They both fell sprawling to the ground, hitting hard, Stunned. Lucas raised his head and saw Jenny running just ahead of them, moving with normal speed, and beyond her, moving toward the Earps and Holliday as if he were spellbound, was Scott. It was almost an exact replay of the scene they had just witnessed a split second earlier. A short distance past the Harwood place. standing in the middle of the street across from the Aztec Rooming House, they saw Finn Delaney. The Earps, Holliday, the Clantons and the McLaurys were already standing in the vacant lot. Scott was a short distance behind them, almost to the corner of Fly’s Boarding House and well out of the center of the street. And there was nothing standing in between Jenny, running toward the combatants, and Finn Delaney, standing in the middle of the street, on the far side of Third. And, as he watched, Lucas suddenly saw Dr. Darkness appear out of nowhere, standing at Finn Delaney’s side.
Andre started to get up. and Lucas saw it all in a flash of realization.
“ No! Stay down!” He threw, himself on top of her.
Delaney watched the men turn into the vacant lot between Fly’s and Harwood’s and then he saw Scott come running around the corner. As he passed the Capitol Saloon, Scott stopped and simply stood there for a moment, looking disoriented, then he started moving with a sort of odd gait, heading off to the side of the street, past Bauer’s Meat Market and the Assay Office, moving toward Fly’s Boarding House…
Delaney caught his breath. “Oh. no…” he said. “No, kid, don’t do it…”
Jenny came running around the corner, as fast as she could, hard on Scott’s heels. Then, just behind her, Lucas and Andre appeared as if out of nowhere, tumbling forward into the street. Christ, this is it, thought Delaney, raising his disruptor. He couldn’t wait for Darkness. He’d have to kill Neilson before he interfered…
“The girl, Delaney!” said Darkness, suddenly materializing at his side. “Shoot the girl!”
Without pausing to think. Finn shifted his aim and fired the disruptor on tight beam. As Jenny opened her mouth to call out, she was suddenly wreathed in the bright blue glow of Cherenkov radiation. An instant later, she was gone, her atoms disintegrated.
And so was Darkness.
Two shots cracked out. And then all hell broke loose.
Simultaneously, Finn Delaney, Lucas Priest, Andre Cross and Scott Neilson all seemed to hear a deafening roaring in their ears, as if an entire ocean were being sucked away, and then there was nothing but the sound of gunfire from the lot, an entire fusillade of shots, one right after the other, and the street became filled with gunsmoke.
Drakov had Finn Delaney square in the crosshairs of his pistol scope. He thumbed back the hammer, put his finger on the trigger and