303
You instruct CAIN to turn on the Variac Drive to shift you into null-space and to re-engage the Drive as soon as you have finished inputting the navigational co-ordinates for the Timehole in the time of Alexander the Great. Your scalp tingles slightly as the Time Machine moves out of phase, and everything around you seems grey and insubstantial. You know that should you turn on the outside camera the screen would remain blank, not even blackness exists in null-space. You cast your thoughts into the void and, using your Psychic Awareness, locate the Timehole of Alexander the Great. When you have translated this location into co-ordinates for CAIN, the Variac Drive engages once more. The process of re-emerging in real time is immediate, but seems to take about an hour for you. You may spend this time in the Autodoc, if you wish and gain up to 12 Endurance points.
You rematerialise and the holo-projector makes Falcon's Wing look like a bleak hillock. Your exterior camera shows a small range of desolate hills giving way to a dry plain crossed by a small river. You press hold and the camera stops swivelling as a small city of mud-baked houses surrounded by tall, white stone walls and towers appears. A pall of smoke hangs above it and the gates have been flattened. Before the city is an army, celebrating victory, amidst piles of booty, in their camp. A stricken figure in golden armour is lying on a litter outside a great white tent, tended by doctors in grey robes. Others, soldiers and officers, stand about him, anxiously.
You ask CAIN what happened here, historically. He chimes, This city is the local capital. The people marched out to give battle to Alexander the Great and his army of Macedonians and troops from other conquered lands, but fled when they saw Alexander and his men. Alexander is returning from India to Babylon, the capital of his new empire and decided to take this city. His men did not want to risk their lives again and he led the assault in an attempt to inspire them. Realising that he was risking his life, his men threw themselves onto the siege ladders, but these broke in their eagerness. Two men only were with Alexander when he jumped down into the city and he was severely wounded before the Macedonians broke down the gates and rescued him, massacring the townspeople in their frenzy.'
'Thank you CAIN,' you interrupt. 'What action would change the Timeline here?'
CAIN says: The assassination of Alexander would seem the most likely option, but I cannot compute the effect this would have on the past. Alexander will die in only a few years from now at the age of thirty-three and his empire will be divided up and fought over by his successors.' CAIN programmes the Molecular Converter to create the dress of a phalangite, a Macedonian warrior, and you step from Falcon's Wing wearing sandals, bronze greaves, a long heavy skirt of boiled leather strips, a breastplate, a small round shield strapped to your left forearm and your Psionic Enhancer becomes a crested helmet covering your face with a Y-shaped slit for you to see through. Unable to wield a sixteen-foot-long 'sarissa' you make do with a shortsword. Your blaster and holo-detector are concealed under your red cloak. You search the hills for Lord Speke's machine. Turn to 237.