The Division: Part One

The Division

By Ronald T. Jones



Baseline History refers to past events as presented in historical texts. For example, it is common knowledge that the Normans won the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The proof of a Norman victory is validated by those who witnessed the event and those who recorded such recollections for posterity, hence the Bayeux Tapestry…


Kameron Childers crouched behind his obscurement field at a far enough distance to avoid danger, but close enough to get a fairly good view of the battlefield. Armored Normans on horseback struggled to cut their way through stubborn knots of longhaired, ax wielding Saxon foot soldiers. The Housecarls, King Harold Godwinson’s elite troops, swung their long heavy axes with a savage ease that lethally advertised individual strength and expertise. An ax sank into a horse’s gut. The mortally wounded animal reared up in a mournful cry, spilling its rider. The weight of the Norman’s heavy armor accelerated his fall, adding extra pounds to what was certainly a crunching impact with the ground. The hapless Norman’s headfirst descent probably knocked him out cold, perhaps even killed him. Either fate would have been a small mercy. It would have spared him the terror and the agony of being hacked to pieces in a shredder of Saxon axes.

Kameron accessed his enhanced optic. The implant just behind his right eye shimmied to life. He zoomed in on the seething bloodbath, ignoring the melee between horsemen and foot soldiers to get a close up of a single individual.
There he was. The powerful king of the Saxons, on horseback, surrounded by his bodyguards, in the thick of the fight. King Harold’s arm worked like a piston, each sword stroke a death blow as he continuously cut through Norman defenses to find vulnerable points in their armor.
Kameron allowed himself a hair breadth strand of admiration for the king’s tireless efforts. The Saxon king had just defeated the Vikings in one part of the isle and force-marched his army to another part to deal with yet another incursion.
Baseline History states that Harold died on this day.
But someone was not adhering to the parameters laid out by Baseline History. Someone wanted King Harold to win this battle. Someone wanted King Harold to share the stage of legend with the likes of Alexander, Caesar and Genghis. Two victories against two enemy armies would have achieved just that.
In fact King Harold did achieve that feat. Temporal Renegades had struck again, tampered with the Event Time Line and effected an outcome where the Norman Duke William was killed and his army routed instead of the other way around.
Baseline History had been violated. That was why Kameron Childers, Field Operative, Division of Temporal Preservation and Integrity, was here. Kameron snuffed out his admiration for Harold, replacing it with a cool objectivity drilled into him by training.
He picked up the bow lying next to his foot, pulled an arrow out of a pouch tied to his thigh and notched it. The weapon was a product of Kameron’s time, 42nd second century technology. But it was finely crafted to resemble an 11th century Norman bow and arrow. The difference was the bow was made of a flexible alloy 700 times denser than any metal in this era. There was nothing unusual about the arrow’s construction in the material context of this time frame. Except for the miniature single-stage booster unit attached to the arrow’s shaft, designed to facilitate an extended flight.
Kameron rose from behind his obscurement field so that the top half of his body was visible. The field operative was almost black skinned, with pronounced African features. He wore a mottled black and brown jumpsuit with black calf high all-terrain boots, gray light flak vest and ultra thin utility gloves. The way he looked and the cut of his garb were not common characteristics in 11th century Britain. But Kameron had not been sent to this time frame to blend in. He was sent here for his exceptional skill as a shooter. Whatever the projectile weapon, Kameron was very good at hitting his mark.
Kameron pulled back the taut string of the bow, leveled it, and locked on his target. In his mind it was a slow, methodical action. In real time, less than three seconds passed between notching and aiming. At the third second, Kameron released. The arrow zipped away, whistling over a thousand yards. A gleaming pulse of propulsion shooting from the booster unit, kept the projectile aloft for an additional 500 yards. The arrow sliced through gaps in the slaughter to find its mark in King Harold’s eye.
The Saxon king’s head snapped back as the force of the arrow’s flight drove the razor sharp head deep into the socket, lodging in the skull. Just like in the history books. Life departed Harold in an instant. His body slid limply off his mount. The king’s horse, oblivious to its human master’s demise, stamped frantically without direction through a bloody slush.
Kameron ducked behind his field. He knew his aim was true. He didn’t bother to stick around to see the reaction of both sides to King Harold’s death. Kameron’s mission was a success. Baseline History had been restored. He pulled an extractor from his pocket, tapped out a coordinate on the round palm size device’s touch screen and waited. A warble of time displacement fell over Kameron. The operative vanished.

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