Kicking Ashe

by Pauline Baird Jones

  Someone somewhere had told her first kisses tended to suck. Someone somewhere had been so wrong. Didn’t seem to matter that neither of them knew quite what to do. It just felt, well, lovely. Right. Beyond that was a sense of relief that it had happened, as if she’d been waiting for it and now it was finally here. That relief softened her lips, causing his to grow more insistent, more firm. It was still only point of contact between them—though it felt as if all of her was welded to all of him. There was music in there, too, a love song that she recognized, but didn’t. She kind of knew that Lurch tried to distance himself from the moment.

  Then it changed. His mouth, her response. Something rippled through them both—Ashe felt it in all the places they weren’t touching and where they were. Knowledge shimmered just out of reach, then it wasn’t out of reach. It was there. It passed through them in a rush, became part of them both. The horizon around his head shimmered, too.

  It didn’t surprise her things between them changed again. He deepened the kiss with a new confidence. Now his hands found her waist, pulled her against his lean, hard length. As his confidence deepened, the horizon steadied, though in a new way, and still a bit out of focus. Something had changed outside them, too. The tent. The tent was gone. Room. Some kind of room. Like a house maybe. Didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but him.

  Her lashes wanted to go down as everything sped up like a time launch. Reminded her of being sucked into the crevasse—the horizon quivered again, shivering through her with the kiss. And for several heady seconds everything around them went sharp and clear. A lamp hung from a ceiling. Pretty, but not suited to a tent. Hard to parse the details. Cause his mouth, his gaze, his hands pulled her into a better, much more interesting place…

  He stiffened and she felt the struggle in him to stay in the kiss, to stay in the fractured moment. His sigh came just ahead of hers. He lifted his head. The horizon lost duality, sharpening to the other, to the room, then it was gone and they were back in the tent with the automaton parts.

  What just happened? Ashe blinked. It did not help.

  I am not sure.

  Could it be my time senses trying to return? Only it hadn’t felt like her time senses. It had felt like, and not at all like, travel through time.

  “What was that?” The question and the look that went with it were wary.

  Ashe was pretty sure he didn’t mean the kiss. But not completely sure. She arched her brows.

  “Where did we go? How did we go? How did we return?”

  He saw it, too. Lurch sounded intrigued.

  “I’m not,” she licked her lips, saw his lashes flicker and felt her heart kick a bit, too, at the taste of him lingering there, “sure.” She couldn’t describe it, but she knew it, though she didn’t know it. The confidence from that place lingered in this one, inside them, and he felt it too, if the way he still held her against his chest was any indication. She felt the change in him, the assurance and the new knowledge of hugging, of kissing, of girl/guy interactions. “Did any of it look familiar to you?” She’d never seen that lamp before—or had she? It was just a lamp…

  He shook his head, but not with a lot of certainty. “It did not.” He sighed, his chest expanding against her in a way that was not unpleasant. “And yet…” His frown made a come back, but not in a bad way.

  “Yeah.”

  His gaze pinged on her. “You feel it, too?”

  Would have been nice to know which “it” he thought they shared. Since she didn’t, she just nodded.

  One hand lifted, a gentle finger pushing back the strands of her hair straying across her forehead, sliding down the side around the jaw, then up across her mouth. The touch was slight, but the impact—not so much. What intrigued her was the difference in that touch. He’d initially approached her like someone who did not know much. Based on what she’d learned about his people, she did not know how he could know much of anything about girls except that they existed, but in that moment of duality, that had changed. His touch had changed. He knew more. His kissing had gone from novice to expert and she’d had no trouble staying with him, though how she’d changed was less than how he’d changed, blurred or confused by that other meeting with the other him, perhaps. That was different from this, as night was different from day. Hard to explain how, except that she felt it to her core. The one thing she knew with certainty: in that place, in that room, they knew each other. She knew his touch, his embrace, the feel of his mouth on hers.

  And he knew her.

  He tried to regain balance, but his gaze flared with the same longing, a longing now boosted by the time shift experience, that eroded his effort. She might have helped tip him toward off balance by parting her lips. The music started up again—Lurch. Though she didn’t mind that much. A great love scene needed the right musical score. His head started to dip again—relief spiking with the desire still swirling inside her—when a small sound outside jerked them both back a few steps. The distance did nothing to dispel the tension filling the air. The flap pulled back and Calendria peered in. Why did Ashe sense this was Bana’s work? When Shan didn’t wave her off, she stepped inside.

  “Well?” she asked, her gaze bouncing off Shan, settling on Ashe. If she sensed what she’d interrupted, it did not show in her face.

  “It’s junk. You should throw it back.” Ashe’s voice came out more husky than usual. She wished she had time to think about what just happened, though mostly she wanted to dwell on her first kiss—even though it had morphed into a not-first kiss—which made the need to dwell more crucial.

  “But—” Calendria stopped. “Eamon says he’s tracking another falling. A bigger one than any so far.”

  “Do they all come in from the same direction?” Ashe asked. Calendria waited for a nod from Shan before nodding, too. “That’s good. Be unsafe for a ship to be in that sector—” Shan’s twitch stopped the words. Disappearances. “You lost a ship to one of these things. That’s why you’re here.”

  He spun to face her. “Where is it?”

  “I’m not even sure where I am.” It could be anywhere. It could be any when. It could be crushed to pieces like the automatons. At least his presence made more sense now, but he still looked wrong for this place. For this time? The flash of that other time seemed to indicate a hearty yes to that question, but had they seen how it was supposed to be or caught a glimpse into a broken reality that was not meant to be? He’d been so large, so commanding in the other time line with no-so-great grandma. There he’d been a bit player, but he hadn’t seemed to know it, striding around like he was the star and pinging on not-so-great grandma like a heat seeking missile of ancient legend. At the time, she’d thought he was all he could be, but this time, he seemed bigger than that, only still wearing a tight fitting life. One that tried to contain him? Or one that wasn’t his? And the time with the kissing? She’d like to say she noticed how he was in that one, but all she’d noticed was the kissing.

  Which time was right for him? And how could she tell when her heart yearned for that place where he’d known her?

  He does seem an ill fit for this time. Lurch conceded this with extreme reluctance as Shan turned and strode out, pulling Calendria with him.

  Ashe hesitated, but then shrugged and followed. He could stop her if he didn’t want her along. He might have been heading for the tent with the tracking, but before they got there, the incoming arrived, hitting the ground hard enough to almost tumble Calendria to the ground. Ashe rode it pretty easily, but then she’d been schooled by the time tsunami. If it had been a normal meteorite impact, it would have been bad for them. Fry them to the ground, maybe even extinction bad. It was close enough she saw the flash and then a crater appeared just outside the perimeter of the camp. The impact tremors had not all subsided when Shan switched directions, striding out of the shielding. No one stopped her from following him. He halted at the edge, so she did, too. And once again got a jolt.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a pi
ece of a,” Ashe had to swallow and take a run at it before she could get it out, “transmogrification machine.” She eased out a sigh of relief at managing the word. That was one tough word—but only a large piece of the machine itself, almost all of the port side, she estimated, recalling her last sight of it. She had not seen the interior of it then or later, though not-so-great grandma had briefed her about it. She was pretty sure it had looked better all together, though not much could make it look less odd. It appeared to have been twisted before being ripped apart. No heat came from the impact crater, which also showed signs of intense heat, more than her crater had. It didn’t bode well for Shan’s missing ship.

  Lurch felt fascinated. Time waves are carrying the debris here.

  Could we use one of them as a ride out of here?

  Dangerous.

  I ride waves all the time. Or she had.

  These look more like vortexes.

  The edges of the crater did have that vortex type swirl. But we survived.

  Barely. And probably only because of your uniform.

  Which had been fried by the vortex. Had Time hosed her or was it just a happy bi-product? Cause Time was a cranky bitch.

  “What is a—”

  He stopped, probably realizing how hard transmogrification was to say and keep your dignity. That’s why she took it in a rush. Hesitation was fatal, okay not fatal but definitely embarrassing.

  “Something else that shouldn’t be,” Ashe put in to save his dignity and his temper.

  “Should we collect…it?” Calendria asked, her gaze a mix of fascinated and horrified.

  “No.” Shan turned, indicating the camp’s portal with a stern look.

  Ashe passed inside, her thoughts spinning in a bunch of different directions. The big, bad guy had wanted the transmogrification machine, so seeing it in pieces was good, though also unsettling since last time she’d seen it the bad guy’s minion had been following it. Did it mean there might be a minion incoming? If it was part of the plot against Shan, it didn’t appear to have gone well, so the minion might be in for a surprise.

  I am reluctant to make assumptions—

  Ashe didn’t feel much reluctance from him, but didn’t call him on it even though he was the one who always said she should never assume. Sometimes one just had to assume something if one wanted to move forward.

  —but I think this is just time debris and an irrelevant distraction.

  She tended to agree, though that didn’t mean the minion was out of the equation. She thought about the state of the debris. Maybe he’d tried and didn’t make it? Or missed his mark?

  Because it is irrelevant does not mean that someone with ill intent couldn’t use it to forward his agenda. It’s what she’d do, though not with ill intent, of course. There was a family mantra about expecting the unexpected with some corollaries about not letting a crisis go against you and working with what you had. Did other families have tons of mantras? It was easier to wonder this than figure out how this particular unexpected could be twisted for use against Shan or how they neutralized the threat before it could be used against him.

  Let’s focus on what we do know.

  Okay. She thought for a minute, realized why she’d avoided doing this. I got nothing.

  Our bad guy picked on Shan for a reason.

  The bad guy, as near as they could tell, had mined several people from alternate realities and tried to use them to destabilize time. It had taken some huge, brass ones for their bad guy to take on Time, though she was not clear what brass ones were. Just that they had to be huge cause he almost won. Not that they knew for sure he’d lost.

  It is possible this Shan is one of those people.

  The peep into the other reality with Shan did seem to indicate this, though they were seriously winging it into the stratosphere with the hypothesis. And even if Shan had been mined from another reality, they didn’t know how to get him back. Right now she didn’t even know how to get them home.

  If he was shifted by the bad guy, Time may be trying to restore him to his proper place.

  It was true that the bad guy had had to do some seriously fancy crap to distract Time and almost wipe it out, so even Time might find it challenging to clean it all up. It still made her head hurt to think about it, hurt in a way Lurch couldn’t fix. The complex mix of time theory, time pins, lynch pins, anti-nanite technology, and alternate realties had resulted in the time tsunami. You know, we might be an accident, too. Irrelevant. She felt Lurch pondering this. And with the bad guy with the brass ones possibly out of the equation, we’re left with what?

  Shan is high strata.

  So, it’s a simple power struggle? That still leaves us surplus to requirements.

  If Time sent us here, it is neither simple nor are we surplus to anything.

  Just because it felt good didn’t make him right.

  We have seen evidence that Shan might have been shifted from his own time.

  In her previous meeting with Shan, there’d been clear signs of time shifting, but without access to the Base archives, they had no way to prove this Shan wasn’t in his right time, which turned the situation into a minefield for them. If they made the wrong move, they might destabilize time again. If they didn’t make the right move, they might destabilize time again. Even right moves could make time unstable.

  It’s already unstable, though it seems to be localized.

  The meteorites and the time shift during the kiss did seem to support his thesis. But she was without time senses and gear to navigate the instability—not to mention she had no clue where they were or when—

  The impossible just takes longer.

  Or the impossible might just be impossible. It was a little used family mantra, added by an ancestor no one liked to talk about because it meant something might actually be impossible.

  Let’s look at how one might use this situation against Shan.

  He didn’t have to feel so happy about it. They were here to help him, not hose him.

  There are many ways to cause Shan problems in this situation, the first being your presence.

  No one could know I was incoming. Though she did know she presented Shan with a huge problem. If he surrendered her to his government, he broke his word to her and his guys. He became the bad guy. If he went the good guy route, he still had lots of explaining to do to his xenophobic superiors. That could mess up more than his career.

  But if one were waiting, watching for the right opportunity…

  Then she’d be it in spades—though she did not know what a shovel had to do with anything. Duty seemed to be the main motivator for them all. From what she’d learned about his people, about the female cages, about their lack of access to women, whoever ran things would need to keep things in very tight control to make that work. Didn’t have to have absolute power to corrupt. Just had to want what wasn’t yours. So a ship goes missing in mysterious circumstances. No way to know how or why Shan was sent to investigate. He’s here and he’s uneasy about it, which means something wasn’t right about it.

  So far I concur with your analysis.

  And there’s lots of potential for stuff to go wrong. This sector was already experiencing problems before the time debris started arriving and the ship disappeared. If she were a nasty ass bad guy wanting what wasn’t hers, she’d try to figure out a way to throw the nasty ass Zelk into the mix, cause bad guys tended to get minions to do their dirty work for them. Made plausible deniability more plausible. No matter what time she’d passed through, plausible deniability was the name of the betray game. Or more simply, the more things changed, the more they didn’t.

  Ashe was a bit on the nasty ass side herself, so she had no trouble believing that someone Shan trusted could be in touch with the Zelk. She frowned. How weird was it to run into the only sentient reptilian species ever? It could be a factor of time righting itself, but wouldn’t Lurch have run into a non-humanoid species somewhere in his many years and travels? Could Time have been wro
ng all of his seasons since sentience or had he just not traveled widely enough? It was something to add to the many things she needed to think about when she had time—and yes, she was aware of the irony of the thought, though glad Lurch seemed to have missed it. Or ignored it.

  Even with the Zelk on board, the betrayer had the problem of how to expose the camp without exposing themselves to retribution. And how would the Zelk find the camp? As far as she could tell, Shan had some truly fine cloaking capabilities. She assumed—even though she shouldn’t ever—that a Keltinarian ship could detect the cloaked camp. Her thoughts stalled a bit. What if the camp hadn’t been cloaked until the ship disappeared? It didn’t seem like tech a paranoid government would give to a civilian research team. Since they wouldn’t park a bunch of civilians in a region they thought the Zelk would attack, they wouldn’t need to give them the good stuff. With this side of the galaxy sort of collapsing, it wasn’t prime real estate. Cloaking was expensive—even in her time. Would that mean the camp’s location on this planet was easily available? Or—

  If the cloak is Garradian based, Lurch joined her thought process, then it cloaks by filtering out the elements it wishes to hide, leaving the elements that are natural to the surroundings visible. It also controls temperature.

  Temperature could be tracked. That would be why Shan kept the camp so close to the ambient temperature. And the filters prevented mysterious holes in the planet surface. That left—

  “I’m sure you added the fallings into your cloak’s filtering equations?”

  Shan halted. His hands curled into fists.

  So that would be a no. The rat in the pile could point the Zelk in the right direction and let them home in on the camp using the automaton parts. She wondered whose idea it had been to bring them all into the camp? “I guess you could filter it all out.” Ashe let the words drift on the heated air like they didn’t matter. Shan stared at her, one brow arching. She pitched her voice too low for anyone but him to hear. “Or not.”