Kicking Ashe

by Pauline Baird Jones

  “Eat.” Bana pointed at the bowl with the knife.

  Unsure if this were a threat or not, Ashe leaned down, needing the shortest distance possible between spoon and mouth. She didn’t want to risk spilling even a drop of the fragrant broth. She didn’t shovel it in, though she wished she had the strength. She paused after the second mouthful to say, “It’s most pleasing. Thank you.”

  Bana’s nod might have been a bit pleased. Hard to know anything through the fog that used to be her brain. In between the sounds of the knife hitting wood, Ashe cleaned her bowl and drank what turned out to be water. Still hungry, but she felt better, felt strength flowing back into her muscles—and a sense of surprise that the food was so excellent. She shook that off—not sure why it should surprise her—and used the last piece of bread to clean out the soup bowl. As if she sensed Ashe could use more, Bana refilled everything.

  Before Ashe could thank her again, she said, “You can’t help me if you can’t stand.”

  The second round went slower into her mouth, her thoughts cleared and the dark edges of oblivion faded as if they’d never been. Lurch stayed furled at her core, probably to make sure she got what she needed first.

  “You are feeling better?” Bana asked as Ashe finished the last of the second round.

  She nodded, felt a need to say, “I have had a difficult—” how long had it been since she left the time base? “—time.”

  “And you are very far from home.”

  Ashe paused, the cup of water just short of her mouth, her brows arching in a question she didn’t know how to frame.

  “Cadir told me you are Garradian.”

  “Yes.” Nice of her not to use the word “claim” or imply it with her tone. Ashe swallowed. “This isn’t Keltinar.” It might have been a bit of question. “So you are not home either.”

  “But I’m not alone.” She paused. “And lost.”

  She didn’t need Lurch to remind her to be careful. Kindness could mask deceit. Ashe knew this. She was vulnerable, dangerously so. This she also knew. Not that Bana felt kind. Curious yes, kind, no.

  Bana tipped her head to one side. “Your color is better.”

  Ashe’s brows arched again, this time in surprise. Her skin color seemed to bother Shan more than a little.

  “It’s not the color,” Bana said, as if Ashe has asked, “it’s the fact that you are an alien that troubles the Commander.”

  “But your people have had contact with aliens before me.”

  “Contact with the Garradians is more legend and myth.” Bana hesitated. “The Grenardians were leaving this galaxy when we had brief contact with them.”

  If this were the old time line, then she was in a time not long after the Dusan-Gadi War. But this wasn’t the old time line, so she was left wondering how much had changed and how much remained the same. The tech seemed too good for what she recalled of the old time line. Did that mean they were ahead of themselves or in the past somewhere?

  “Otherwise contact might not have ended well. Our leaders are xenophobic. Though to be fair, it is a xenophobia that seems to be shared by other species we have met.”

  “So first contact hasn’t gone well.” Ashe was glad she’d eaten before this discussion. It would have killed her appetite.

  “As far as I’m aware, you are the first alien to…” Bana stopped, as if not sure how to phrase it.

  “…be captured alive.” Ashe finished it for her. She’d already guessed this from Shan’s reaction to their discussion on vivisection. “Your Commander has assured me that I am under his protection.”

  Bana’s eyes narrowed. “He has honor.”

  A weird dissonance between the tone and the words. Bana did live in a world where she was only allowed out to play after doing her duty as a baby maker. “I am glad to hear it.”

  “Of course, if you betray him, he will show no mercy.”

  This seemed to please her. Could she be anti-mercy? Or just anti-alien? Ashe arched her brows. “How could anyone betray him with his amazing sniffer?”

  Bana wrinkled her sniffer. “Scent parsing is as much art as skill. Timrick is less skilled at it.”

  The dissonance was back. This time amused mixed into the disdain. What amused? Why the disdain? Not that she minded it. Disdain was something she understood. For her people, for her family, it was the “go to” place whenever they weren’t sure what to feel. “Timrick?” She blinked. Had she heard this name before? Didn’t think so. Soon she’d need a chart to keep track of everyone.

  “His younger brother.”

  Ashe felt a quiver of something, instincts or maybe Lurch twitched. Hard to tell with him still in his version of fetal. “You don’t like him.”

  Bana tried to look innocent, though she didn’t try that hard. Or she sucked at it.

  “He is my nephew.” A pause. “Vidor trusts him.”

  That seemed to be all she intended to say on the subject, since she directed all her attention to her cutting table and a pile of vegetable looking stuff. Based on what she’d seen before the time tsunami, Shan might make a habit of trusting the wrong person. Ashe had siblings. Some she trusted, some not so much. Not that she thought any of them would put a metal bug in her head. She considered some more. No, she actually wasn’t that sure they wouldn’t put a metal bug in her head. She didn’t like thinking about the metal bug in the other Shan’s head. Creepy plus. So if Timrick was Bana’s nephew, then Shan must be one, too. Though she wouldn’t assume. This was an alien culture.

  “Why don’t your people touch each other?”

  Bana looked surprised. “The closer you are to someone, the stronger the scent.”

  “So its part courtesy, part privacy.” That kind of made sense except for the death penalty part. Unless… “So if two women accidentally touch…”

  “It is rude.”

  “But not life threatening?”

  She almost smiled. “No. For a male to touch a female not his partner, however…” She didn’t finish. Didn’t need to.

  Again, kind of understood, but not really. Ashe leaned her elbows on the table, wondering how to phrase her next question. “I thought your people protected women? Kept them partitioned.”

  “This is a very safe place.” Bana chopped some stuff before pausing. “And there are…rewards…for—”

  “Playing along with the rules?”

  Bana’s facial muscles tightened. “Doing one’s duty. There are always rewards for doing one’s duty.” She resumed chopping. “And it frees up men for their important work.”

  Ashe listened for irony and didn’t hear any. Guess women couldn’t help drinking the Kil-prin when that’s all they’d been allowed to drink, though millions of women’s movements on millions of planets said some women managed it. It was interesting how much had changed and how much hadn’t in this civilization. It was probably ironic, for the women anyway. It made a change from poaching women from other galaxies, though being so genetically diverse she couldn’t help but worry about their thin gene pool. Certainly explained the boys’ reaction to her and her cleavage. And if this was a “safe” place, why was Shan set to high?

  Okay, the Zelk could be the reason, though if this was a safe place, it should be Zelk-free. Reptilian aliens. A first for her and, even more startling, a first for Lurch who had encountered millions of alien species during his time with his various hosts. Was this a time line change or a sign of wrong time? If she hadn’t lost her time sense, she’d know if this was wrong time, but she should be able to tell. Other time trackers identified wrong time without a time sense, which Lurch claimed was unique to her—at least as far as he knew, and he knew a lot. Of course, they also had the suits and its tech to help them identify wrong time. The presence of the automatons seemed to support Lurch’s thesis that all was not right yet, though they could also be debris from the time wave. Time was not tidy and hadn’t been before it had kicked her trash into the unknown.

  “If you have a way to leave, you should u
se it.”

  The warning wasn’t a shock, the steel in her tone—a little bit of a shock. Not that Ashe hadn’t been getting get-the-hell-out vibes since she arrived, well, except for the boys who appeared focused on her assets. But Shan definitely wanted her gone.

  “It is better for Vidor if you leave before his loyalty to his people, his strata, is compromised.”

  Ashe wasn’t surprised—or hurt—to find out the reason behind Bana’s advice. She was relieved. It was always better to know where one stood. Always. Illusions were for children. “I have been told that if I attempt an unsanctioned exit, I’ll be rendered unconscious.”

  “You arrived without warning. Surely you can leave the same way?”

  Ashe’s chin angled up. Not going to admit to Bana she didn’t know how she got here or how to leave. “It is not my intention to linger in this place longer than I must.”

  Was that a flicker of regret in Bana’s eyes? If it was, it didn’t last. And it probably wasn’t. The woman nodded. “That is wise.” She looked away. “It is better for you this way, too.”

  “I know.” So why did she feel regret? For a second Ashe thought she saw time skew wrong but the feeling was gone too fast for her to be sure it was fact or a wish for her time senses to return. Besides, even if they had work to do here, in the end she had to leave. This was not her time, not her place and Vidor Shan certainly wasn’t her friend or her anything. If she felt—a little—different, then it was only that syndrome that captives suffered from, combined with a reluctance to fully face just how completely hosed she was.

  “Come, I will show you how to prepare these.”

  Ashe joined her at the table, the large knife sliding into her palm. It wasn’t an energy weapon, but it was something. “So, what’s a strata?”

  * * * *

  All of him on high alert, Shan circled the camp, managing not to scowl at everyone he passed. Ashe was the main topic of conversation and the subject of much speculation and many questions, with the missing Zalistria coming in a distant second place. He wanted to be annoyed, but how could he? Many ships had gone missing since their first contact with the Zelk. But few of them had been this close to a young female not their mother. None had been this close to an actual alien, despite their time in space.

  The cast of her skin did not stop his team from appreciating all that was female about her. Their interest did not surprise, would be much worse without the dampening measures. Most of them had already offered to partner claim Ashe. Did they really not understand how dangerous that would be? Did they care? Didn’t they understand that it would do nothing to delay the inevitable if he was foolish enough to allow it—or take her home with them?

  Shan felt the same biological urgency to claim her, though the weight of command and his concern for his brother blunted some of it. It was not supposed to be this way, but the dampening measures had not been field tested quite so severely before now. They didn’t usually have contact with young, comely females in space or anywhere else until the time of choosing. The levels were often increased when they were dirt-side where the scent of females breached the compounds, drifting on the air when the wind kicked up. However, he did not have the power to dial them up or down. Only the Authority had this power.

  Now this did not seem so wise, but he had more important worries to sort through. With some effort he dragged his thoughts back to those things.

  Missing ship. Missing brother. Strange fallings. Ashe—an alien—in his camp. It seemed he could not escape thinking about her, because she was one of his worries. If that weren’t enough to make a man want to scowl at the world, there was more trouble incoming or he wasn’t High Strata. Was it related? The missing ship, the missing brother, Ashe, the strange fallings? None seem to have anything in common but—he stopped. There was one other thing they had in common: the mysterious way the Zalistria disappeared and the mysterious way Ashe and the fallings arrived. Could the same force that took the Zalistria have engineered the arrivals? Why did he feel certain Ashe knew more about this puzzling phenomenon than she’d said?

  He’d avoided looking at the eating-place during his pacing, but now he stopped and looked, looked at it hard. Smoke continued to drift out the stove stack, the sight innocent of the trouble the tent sheltered. She couldn’t lie to him, but she could conceal, dissemble, obscure. Delay? Was that her purpose? Why did it feel as if she could help? That she would? Where did this strange certainty come from?

  He turned, followed that certainty into the eating-place, striding past tables toward the sounds of chopping, the banging of pots—but not the sound of chatting. That was odd. Women chatted. It was what his mother and Bana did, others of the older females when they gathered for events. What did this silence mean? He pulled back the flap and stepped inside.

  Ashe sat at a high table, scowling at a pile of vegetables.

  As far from her as the space allowed, Bana stirred a pot with a slight frown.

  An innocuous scene, yet the tension in the air made it feel like two warriors taking a break before reengaging.

  At his entrance, Bana looked at him. Without being told, his aunt would know the complex threat to family and strata Ashe represented, particularly with Timrick missing. He turned from her to the threat.

  Despite the scowl that seemed to be for the vegetables, Ashe looked better, her color deeper, her back as straight as the blade of the knife she held. Studying at her now, he realized, with an almost chill, how off balance she’d been at their first encounter. And how much he’d underestimated her? At first sight she’d been like shifting light before a storm, afraid and then not. And now? It was as if who she was had coalesced into something more.

  The attire Calendria had given her clung uneasily to her frame, doing nothing to dampen the aura of competent menace so at odds with what he knew of females. To date, the danger of a woman was to a man’s senses, to the tenor of his life, not to life itself. Ashe threatened all of these and more. So why was he afraid she’d vanish as abruptly as she appeared when he should be afraid of what she could do to his life?

  She tensed, then spun on the stool, her grip on the knife turning from slicing to throwing, then back to slicing so fast he almost missed it, for a few seconds thought he’d imagined it until he met her gaze and knew he hadn’t. If he imagined anything, it was that this dangerous woman was anything like the lost little girl she’d sometimes seemed to be during their hike through the forest.

  I’m no threat to you. She’d said the words with truth in her scent. If this woman had said those words, he wouldn’t have believed his own senses. What had made her like this? Why the sudden longing to see this place? He arched his brows. “You expect trouble here, inside the camp?”

  The sides of her mouth edged up, though not in a smile. “Don’t you?”

  His brows snapped down, though he stopped them short of the scowl that would reveal she was right. Her mouth curved into something more like a smile, though it fell short of friendly. Gazes clashed like crossed knives.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  This time he didn’t hold back a scowl. He did not like the implication she could read him.

  “Did you come to glare and stare at your Lady, Vidor?” Bana broke the impasse. “Or did you have some other reason for interrupting our preparations?”

  Bana sounded more hopeful than condemning. Perhaps a bit amused. She’d always had an odd sense of humor, one that walked the line of disrespect. He’d liked that about her. Until now.

  Provocation filtered into Ashe’s smile. “I fear I am not good at slicing or dicing…food.” The knife seemed to dance across her fingers, then she laid it down on the wooden surface with deceptive meekness.

  Weary still pulled at the edges of her eyes and mouth, but her recovery—the contrast with how she’d been—was remarkable and enlightening. If awakening lost and alone on an alien planet, captured and facing an unknown future hadn’t disconcerted her, then what would? What did this female fear? His
gaze traced her form from bottom to top, a not unpleasant exercise. “You’re much recovered.”

  “I owe it all to Bana’s amazing soup.” A pause then, “A good night’s sleep should complete the cure.”

  And would they survive her cure? He should be worried, that he wasn’t—did he believe she was no threat to them as she asserted? His gut did. His mind felt it should not be convinced, but somehow was. “Do you feel well enough to examine the fallings?”

  She looked to Bana, a wry grin edging her mouth at Bana’s eager assent. “Of course.”

  No way to parse her scent in a space redolent with the smell of food. No sign of reluctance as she dropped off the stool as lightly, as at ready as any warrior he’d seen or fought. He shouldn’t have brought her into camp, but instead of the tug of warning from his gut he felt at ease—the first feeling of right since he’d left orbit to find his brother. His brain still wanted to dispute his instincts—she paced toward him, her expression closed—stalling all thought. Paused just long enough for her gaze to clash with his. In her eyes he saw both a question and a challenge, then she moved on, leaving a trail of scent filled with much he recognized—and much he didn’t. His mouth twisted into a half smile. She might hide her thoughts better, but her scent gave her away, revealed the stirring of desire. She fought it, but she felt it, too. He allowed a measure of relief to filter through his frustration.

  He turned and followed her out, paused when she did, noting that while her stance was easy, her eyes were alert, constantly scanning for threats.

  “You are safe inside our perimeter.”

  “Are we?” The question was serious, in look and tone.

  “Of course.” He said the words, but felt doubt strike at certainty. Doubt that she wanted him to feel? It should annoy. “You are trouble.” His almost teasing tone surprised him and widened her eyes.

  A half smile creased the neutrality of her face, softening it. “I don’t seek it, but it does seem to find me.” Her gaze assessed him. “Don’t think I corner the trouble market, though.”