JANE'S WARLORD

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  JANE’S WARLORD

  Angela Knight

  BERKLEY SENSATION, NEW YORK

  They’d told him he wouldn’t feel it when the energy beam ripped him apart. They’d lied. Baran Arvid experienced every burning nanosecond as the hot force blazed from cell to cell, searing him away. For an instant he felt himself falling into a cold, familiar peace. He’d died so often, it no longer came as a surprise.

  Then the temporal beam reassembled him again, tormented muscles jerking, optic nerves overloaded by blinding purple starbursts. The dazzle-induced blindness triggered his every combat instinct into roaring protest, but Baran refused to panic. Instead, he locked his knees and concentrated on remaining on his feet while the afterimages faded from his vision.

  Gritting his teeth, he ignored the spasming muscles, the nervous system reverberating with residual agony, the stomach fighting to turn itself inside out. He had no intention of showing weakness in front of that bastard from Temporal Enforcement.

  “Well, we’re still alive, so we didn’t trigger a paradox,” the bastard said. “Guess you two are supposed to be in the twenty-first century after all.”

  “Kiss my furry black ass, Enforcer,” gasped the timber wolf, gagging violently. Apparently he was as sick as Baran. Freika, however, had the luxury of showing it.

  “And you’re speaking colloquial English already. Nice processing speed. I’m impressed,” the Enforcer said. He’d refused to tell them his name. “How about you, Arvid? You look a little pale around the lips.”

  Baran blinked his tearing eyes until he could see again. Searching his new vocabulary, he found an appropriate phrase. “Fuck you.”

  “Very good. Suitably crude and American.” The Enforcer laughed, his teeth flashing white, eyes metallic gold against the inky black of his skin. His hair fell in a mop of curly fire around an ebony face so stylized and perfect, he didn’t look entirely human. Whoever had tinkered with his DNA had possessed a taste for the dramatic.

  “Glad you approve.” Baran turned to scan their surroundings for possible threats in a search that was so ingrained he was scarcely aware of making it.

  He, the Enforcer, and the timber wolf stood in the shadow of strange Earth trees, a full moon riding bright and cold overhead. The air smelled of vegetation he didn’t recognize, and unidentified life-forms buzzed and sang and scuttled all around them. Baran’s aching muscles coiled even tighter. Being on alien planets always made him twitch. Too many unknown threats, too many ways you could be taken off-guard. And Temporal Enforcement’s habitual mind games weren’t helping at all. “You might have warned me the damn Jump would leave me sick and half-blind.”

  The dark scales of the Enforcer’s temporal suit rippled with an iridescent sheen as he shrugged. “You couldn’t have done anything about it anyway. Everybody gets Jumpsick their first time. Though I suppose it would be even worse without a T-suit.”

  “You might say that.” Baran pulled up his sleeve to display the slabs of muscle still jerking in his forearm. He wore nothing more than the twenty-first century garb they’d given him: shirt, pants, and a long rustling coat in some kind of hide. “I feel like somebody worked me over with the butt of a beamer rifle. Temporal armor would have been appreciated.”

  The Enforcer’s smile was faintly taunting. “But then you’d have been able to Jump to whatever time you wanted. We can’t have you wandering loose around the time plane causing paradoxes.”

  Freika lifted his head with a canine moan. “Like I’d want to go through that again anytime soon. I’ve had more fun being shot.”

  Though Baran could understand him perfectly, the words sounded oddly guttural compared to the wolf’s normal liquid speech. Then again, it always took Baran a few hours to adjust to a new language after the comp had re-programmed his brain to speak it. Even his thoughts felt off-kilter as he automatically used American slang instead of the Galactic Standard he normally spoke. “Your vocalizer working all right?”

  Freika hesitated, pale blue eyes going blank as he listened to the mental voice of his computer implant. Then he shook his furry head. “Everything’s fine. Guess English is supposed to sound like two cats fighting in a very small sack.”

  “You both speak as if you were born here,” the Enforcer told them impatiently. “We don’t give our operatives inferior language files. Or inferior anything else.”

  “That’s reassuring,” Baran said, pitching his voice to a tone of silken menace. He was sick of the agent’s arrogance. “I’d hate to be ... disappointed.” Artistically, he added his best lethal smile, as though imagining just what he’d do to anybody with that much bad judgment.

  The Enforcer’s gaze flickered. Despite his weapons, despite his training, they all knew he was no match for Baran. He was, after all, only human.

  Baran was a Warlord.

  His genetically engineered body was a good five times stronger than any human’s, and his bones were so dense they were practically unbreakable. As if that weren’t enough, a neuroweb combat computer wove through his brain, giving him access to both a vast data bank and information from the sensor implants scattered throughout his body.

  Thanks to his computer, anything Baran aimed at, he hit. And thanks to his strength, anything he hit went down hard. Add his well-deserved and very ugly reputation, and it wasn’t surprising the TE agent swallowed visibly. “Oh, you’ll be very pleased with our equipment.”

  “I’d better be. I’d hate to have to show you what I can do with mine.”

  The agent stiffened, finally realizing he was being played. “You do menace well, Warlord. I hope you can back it up with action, because the Jumpkiller is somewhere out here. And he definitely lives up to his reputation.”

  “So do we,” Freika growled, sitting back on his haunches and wrapping his tail around his toes. “And we’ve pulled off enough combat missions to prove it.”

  “But we could finish this up faster if you’d tell us exactly what we’re supposed to do.” Baran glanced restlessly past the Enforcer to the primitive two-story wooden residence that stood just beyond the tree line. He knew the woman lived there, but that was about it. He hated going on missions blind, particularly when it was so bluntly obvious his superiors knew more than they were telling. “The more information we have, the better our chances.”

  The Enforcer gave him that dismissive glance again. “You know everything you need to know: your orders. Keep the Jumpkiller from gutting Jane Colby, preferably by killing him first.”

  “Look,” Baran said impatiently, “you obviously have access to historical records from this time, or you wouldn’t have known I needed to be transported here. And that means you have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen over the next few days. I just want to know where, when, and how I’m supposed to kill the son of a bitch.”

  The agent curled a flawless lip. “How do you usually do your killing?”

  “In a wide variety of ways.” Which he was strongly tempted to demonstrate.

  “Fine. Pick one.”

  “I don’t go on missions blind, Enforcer.”

  “You do this time.” Baran opened his mouth to protest, but the agent cut him off. “Warlord or no, Arvid, you’re not Temporal Enforcement. You’re not trained for time travel. The more information you have, the greater your likelihood of causing a paradox. So I’m not telling you a damn thing. Except this: get the Colby woman under control and wait for Druas to show up. When he does, finish it, and I’ll take you home to your war.”

  Suppressing a violent impulse to plant his fist in the Enforcer’s face, Baran folded his arms. “I’d be delighted. But considering he’s got a T-suit and I don’t, it’s not going to be that easy. Even if I manage to corner him, all he’s got to do is Jump somewhere else.”

&nbs
p; “And he will.” Freika flicked an ear lazily. “He’s not going to want to go against Baran if he can avoid it.”

  “We’ve already taken care of that.” The agent bent and fished around in the pack that lay between his booted feet. He straightened, holding something small that he handed over to Baran. “Suit neutralizer,” he explained as the Warlord examined the intricately filigreed ring. It was set with a red gem cut into complex facets that shattered the cold, pale moonlight into sparks. “When you get close enough, press the stone against the Jumpkiller’s suit for several seconds. It’ll short out the T-field generators, and he’ll be trapped. Then you can take your time killing him.”

  Baran looked up. “Several seconds? How do I keep him from Jumping before the stone finishes the process?”

  The Enforcer gave him a malicious smile. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

  Frowning, Baran slipped the ring on. The metal seemed to squirm as it automatically adjusted to the diameter of his finger. “Sounds like I’ll need to stun him somehow. Got any weapons?”

  “Are you insane?” The agent snorted. “Take anything with a tachyon power pack on a Jump, and you’d end up at the bottom of a crater.”

  “Believe it or not, I do have a knowledge of basic physics,” Baran growled. “But they’ve been making weapons without Tach Packs for the past million years.”

  “Yes, they have. Which is why I suggest you look for one.” He picked up the bag and handed it over with a grunt of effort. Baran accepted it, barely noticing the weight. “This has everything else you’ll need: twenty-first-century clothing, currency, the usual equipment we “pack for jobs like this. Colby should be leaving in the next few minutes, since the Jumpkiller has already claimed his first victim in this time. Move in, establish your base while she’s gone, and take her into custody when she returns. I’ll see you soon.”

  “How soon?”

  He smiled in a toothy display every bit as feral as Baran’s. “For me, in the next few minutes, since I’m Jumping there right now. For you ... it’ll be a little longer. Good hunting, Warlord.”

  Baran looked at him for a long moment. “Eventually,” he observed in a silken voice, “we won’t be on your turf anymore, Enforcer.”

  The agent’s eyes widened at the implied threat. Then he recovered and snapped, “Step clear.”

  Baran and the wolf retreated a safe distance and turned their heads away. Neither had any desire to get caught in the backwash of a Jump.

  Even through closed lids, Baran could see the white-hot glow of the temporal field blooming from the agent’s T-suit. It intensified, growing brighter and brighter as residual energy danced in stinging waves over his skin. Thunder cracked, and a hot wind blew into his face, smelling of ozone.

  When he opened his eyes, the Enforcer was gone.

  “You know, you could probably have forced that little prick to tell us more,” Freika said as the echo died. “He found you pretty unnerving.” He grinned a canine grin. “But then, so many do.”

  Baran shrugged. “True, but I don’t care to end up before a Temporal Court for assaulting an Enforcer. We’ll just have to—“ He broke off as exterior lights flashed on around the woman’s home.

  They turned warily. A wooden door opened, swinging outward rather than sliding into the wall as it should. Jane Colby walked out, moving in an intriguing, long-legged saunter that made Baran’s eyes narrow with interest. Even across the distance that separated them, he saw her look in their direction and frown. She must have heard the sonic boom of the Enforcer’s Jump. He tensed, wondering if she’d come investigate.

  Then she shook her head and turned to get into a boxy, wheeled vehicle parked beside the house. It produced a startling roar and a cloud of petrochemicals that lingered even after it backed up, turned around, and rolled off on its thick tires.

  “No wonder this planet’s a polluted pit, with millions of those things everywhere,” Freika commented, watching its running lights recede.

  “They’ll invent gravlev eventually,” Baran said, hoisting his new pack. The long hide coat of his twenty-first century garb swung around his calves as he started toward the house. “Come on, let’s get to it.”

  When they reached the front door, he drew a slim metallic needle from the interior pocket of his coat. Crouching, he inserted it into the lock set in the door’s round handle. The forcepick vibrated slightly between his fingers as it sent out a precisely shaped force field that filled the space intended for a key. The field rotated, tripping the primitive tumblers until the lock clicked open.

  Patiently Baran used the same procedure on the second lock, the one the computer called a deadbolt. Once it, too, clicked, he turned the knob and pushed the door open.

  Moving as one, he and the wolf vanished inside.

  Damn, she hated murders.

  Jane Colby got out of her SUV and slammed the door, aiming a brooding stare at the swaying strip of yellow plastic strung across the yard. She sometimes felt she’d spent her entire life staring at crime scene tape, waiting to find out how someone had died.

  Hunching deeper into her windbreaker against the April chill, she walked to the tape and studied the small home that stood some distance beyond it. Strobing blue light from the patrol cars parked along the street rolled across

  the house’s neat brick face, casting unnatural shadows between the azalea bushes. Beyond backlit lace curtains, the silhouettes of sheriff’s deputies milled around like guests at a morbid party.

  In the distance a dog barked in a frenzy at the K-9 team that searched for the killer. Jane could hear the cops’ radio chatter through the portable police scanner in the depths of her purse. Their voices sounded grimly subdued. She listened absently, hoping for that rising note of tension and adrenalin that would mean they’d found something.

  The hissing rumble of an approaching car drew her around. Stepping back out of the roadway, Jane threw up a hand to shield her eyes against the blaze of its oncoming headlights.

  God, she hoped it wasn’t family. She’d lost count of the times she’d watched people race ‘toward a scene, eyes wild and tears streaming as police ran to stop them before they saw something they shouldn’t. Jane never failed to feel a twist of pity as she listened to the desperate, heartbreaking argument she’d heard over and over, “But it’s my...” Wife, husband, father, mother, brother, sister, daughter, son. The relationship changed, but the horror and suffering was always the same, whether it was a car accident, a fire, a fatal fall. Or a murder.

  But murders were the worst.

  Jane pitied the victims for the terror and agony of their last moments, but she also knew their suffering was over. It was the survivors who really bothered her, because their pain was only beginning. She’d interviewed enough of them to know it never really ended, even years afterward.

  But when the primer-flecked Trans Am simply slowed to a stop, she relaxed. Family always slammed, on the brakes and jumped out running. The blond driver leaned across to roll down her passenger window and eye the patrol cars lining the street. “What’s going on?”

  Jane shrugged. “Evidently somebody’s been killed.”

  The woman’s interest took on an avid edge. “Yeah? What happened?”

  “They haven’t told me yet.”

  “You family?”

  “No, I’m a reporter for the Trib.”

  The blonde’s expression chilled, and Jane saw the silent judgment in her eyes. Vulture. “Guess I’ll read about it in the paper, then.”

  “Guess you will.”

  The Trans Am pulled off in a gust of exhaust, its tail-lights receding into the darkness.

  At least it hadn’t been family. Jane knew she’d have to talk to them eventually, but she liked to give survivors at least a few hours to adjust to the shock. Back in Atlanta she’d often been forced to interview them before the bodies had even cooled. Sometimes you got more that way because their defenses were down, but she’d always felt it was dirty journalism. P
eople deserved a chance to process the massive shock of a murder without someone working them over for a quote.

  She’d even considered stopping the survivor interviews altogether now that she’d become the publisher of The Tayanita Tribune in the wake of her father’s fatal stroke. The Trib only came out three times a week, so any big crime was often old news by the time it made the paper anyway.

  The trouble was, without the emotional content from survivors, people read crime stories as a kind of horrific entertainment. Interviews gave families a chance to describe the person they’d loved, to transform him from another faceless victim to a person in the public mind. For Jane, that meant an opportunity to bring the tragedy of murder home to readers who had become numb to it.

  Which was why she was standing alone on a country road at midnight when she didn’t go to press for two more days.

  As for the nagging awareness that a killer might be somewhere out here, too ...

  She wasn’t going to think about that.

  Baran and Preika searched Jane’s house with speed, silence, and a ruthless efficiency that left nothing untouched—or visibly disturbed. Unfortunately, there was nothing to find. There was no trace of the Jumpkiller’s presence, not even his scent. Kalig Druas had not been here. Yet.

  The search did, however, tell Baran it wouldn’t be easy keeping him out once he did make his appearance. Every room had fragile glass windows that would take very little effort to break, assuming that the Xeran didn’t simply Jump inside. If they left Jane alone fo/even a moment, Druas could easily slaughter her before they even knew he was there. Which meant Baran and Freika would have to stay with her at all times, whether she bleed it or not. And she wouldn’t.

  Unfortunately, she had no more choice than they did. Baran himself had another monster to kill back in his own time, but Temporal Enforcement had made it clear this one had priority. Never mind that General Jutka’s death would leave the Xeran forces in disarray and save the lives of thousands of Vardonese soldiers. TE wanted its mission taken care of first.

  He’d argued he could make the Jump after he’d assassinated Jutka, but the Enforcer hadn’t bought it. Once he saved Jane, the agent told him, TE would return Baran to the very moment he’d left his own time so he could kill whomever he chose. Since nobody ever argued successfully with Temporal Enforcement, that plan had trumped his.