Shadow of The Jaguar by Steven Savile

FOUR

     Connor hurled aside the garishly covered book he was reading in disgust, nearly hitting Stephen.

"Sorry," he said sheepishly.

"What's wrong? They kill your favourite character?"

"No. It's this bloody stupid rule that says all superior officers have to be fat, corrupt, and incompetent. Just once I'd like to read a military novel where the arch prelate wasn't a back-stabbing son-of-a-bitch with his own agenda instead of God's, and the Captain of the Guard wasn't some bloated power-hungry moron who'd gut his own mother for a chance to advance."

Connor looked across at the three soldiers spread out in the row behind him. Gesturing, he got their attention.

"Tell me your Commanding Officer is a fat, bloated, slug of a man, and I'll scream," he said, eliciting strange looks from each of the trio.

"It's an occupational hazard." Jack Stark, one of the three men who made up their covert military support, explained, "Bosses get fat and they get stupid, forgetting everything that made them ruthless enough to rise through the ranks in the first place. That's just the way it goes."

Connor shot him a look of disgust. Andy Blaine, the second of the three, grinned at Stark.

"Remind me to let the Sarge know your thoughts on his waistline when we get home," he said. Then he nodded at the discarded novel. "You not reading that then, sunshine?"

"No, not any more."

"Mind if I do?"

"Be my guest."

Connor plugged his headphones in, leaned back, and screwed his eyes closed.

Across the row, Abby turned away from the exchange that had just occurred. She was quietly impressed with the way the soldiers were taking to the mission. It wasn't every day you were told about rifts in time, and learned that prehistoric beasts walked the earth. In many ways, the hardest part had been explaining that the anomalies reached both backward and forward.

Yet they didn't seem phased.

Her attention was drawn back to the window. There was nothing quite like the bird's eye view of flight to make one appreciate the sheer immensity and raw beauty of nature. The difference between London - with its precision geometry of streets and roundabouts that intersected like cogs on some vast clockwork mechanism - and the barrenness of Cuzco, which for as far as the eye could see was nothing more than sand-blasted stone and dehydrated trees, was as extreme as the world had to offer.

Coming out of London City Airport, the view out of the window had quickly degenerated into thick clouds that had thoroughly obscured England's green and quite unpleasant land as far as the coastline, giving way to the deep blue of the ocean.

Then for more than a thousand miles she had been able to see the curves and lines of water trailing in the wake of oil tankers and cruise liners and fishing vessels, the ships themselves skating on the meniscus curve of the Atlantic.

Coming down over the east coast the vista had been replaced by snow-capped mountain peaks, and then bare expanses of farming land with cities dotted in between. The world hadn't truly become green until their flight path took them over the Amazon basin.

Here the heat shimmered on the horizon. It was a peculiar phenomenon, considering the chill of the pressurised cabin's air-conditioner, but it offered a good indication of the weather conditions they were flying into.

Glancing over, she decided that Connor was probably fantasising bout being Flash Gordon, skimming over the surface of Arboria. She chuckled at the thought, though a moment later she realised the implications of it: her lodger's geekdom was rubbing off on her. Six months ago the word 'Arboria' wouldn't have meant anything to her, outside of some vague conjugation of plant life. Shuddering at the thought, she turned her attention again to the window.