He tapped a command. “Initiate Echo Protocol.”
Elena’s voice crackled in his earpiece. “General, seismic readings suggest they’re opening a deep temporal rift. If they pull something from the Bronze Age Collapse, we’ll have sea peoples on triremes armed with Greek fire. We can’t counter that.”
She looked at Kane, unafraid. “You pulled me from the Library of Alexandria. Year 48 BC. It was burning.” She glanced at the tablet. “I was saving this. The formula for concrete that hardens underwater. Your empire will need it.” Empire Earth II
Across the base, massive cylindrical resonance generators hummed to life. The air shimmered. In a flash of white, a battalion of World War I-era British Mark IV tanks materialized on the parade ground. Behind them, disoriented Tommies in woolen uniforms gaped at the jets overhead.
Kane smiled thinly. “Welcome to the Pacific Theater, Lieutenant. Your mission hasn’t changed: kill the enemy. Only now he’s got diesel engines and flak cannons. Adapt.” He tapped a command
A young lieutenant ran up, saluting sloppily. “Sir! We were just outside Amiens, 1918. Then… then this .”
The temporal displacement wasn’t perfect. It never was. The Echo Corps—soldiers ripped from their native eras—suffered psychological fractures. Some saw ghosts of their original wars. Others simply shut down. But the Grigori had their own chrono-sorcerers: priests who sang hymns over resonance crystals, pulling knights from the Crusades and lining them up beside Panzer IVs. If they pull something from the Bronze Age
Kane shot the Archimandrite in the throat. The man fell, and the rift destabilized. Screams echoed from within—not human sounds. Something had been halfway through.
Behind them, the first genuine temporal alliance began, not with a shot, but with a single, intact clay tablet. In the long war for history itself, that was the first victory.
They breached the walls under cover of a P-40 Warhawk strafing run. Inside, chaos reigned: a Grigori Archimandrite in jeweled robes directed crossbowmen firing magnesium bolts, while technicians in gas masks fed artillery shells into a brass-and-iron breechloader. In the center, a pulsating purple rift hovered above an altar made of melted-down AK-47s.