Girl Gone Nova

by Pauline Baird Jones

  His gaze moved to General Halliwell, standing at least a head taller than the group that surrounded him. He’d arrived in the first group from the Doolittle, wearing his reluctance for the meeting like a storm cloud. Hel had hoped that time out in his own galaxy and a promotion would have mellowed him. He’d hoped wrong. The General didn’t like the Gadi, and he really didn’t like their Leader. No surprise he didn’t want to be at the reception—or that he’d come anyway.

  Halliwell was a strategist as well as a warrior.

  The Earth delegation had probably come to the reception in camouflage at the general’s order, in hopes it would annoy Hel into misbehaving.

  It wouldn’t.

  Hel was also sure that the people chosen to attend were here for a purpose. That made the woman even more dangerous—and more interesting.

  After two Earth years butting heads with the various leaders of the Earth delegations, Hel should have had a clearer understanding of them. In many ways, they were simple and straightforward, almost like children, but he’d learned never to assume he was seeing the whole story. No, there was a reason for the woman’s presence, a purpose to be served.

  “Look at that. Morticia has stopped stalking and is talking to someone. Color me shocked,” one of the expedition members said, the voice behind Hel.

  It was easy to conclude the man spoke of the woman. Other than the servers, she was the only one who had been pacing. The words had a malicious edge. Was there dissension in the ranks of the expedition? Why had the General brought her here?

  There was only one way to find out.

  * * * * *

  Doc’s companion turned toward the watcher. She turned with him, even though one part of her overactive brain thought it was a bad idea. Then she saw him and her brain did something it had never, ever done.

  It froze.

  The sudden silence inside her head was as disconcerting as the raw power the Gadi man emitted like a blast wave. He could have powered the Doolittle with a look. Even they paused inside her head.

  She should have been able to calculate his height and center of gravity to within an inch.

  Instead, she couldn’t do basic math.

  She wasn’t sure she knew her own name.

  Her only clear thought: what would it be like to kiss him?

  It should have freaked her out to feel thrust into a romance novel moment. She’d gone through a pile of them trying to find romance in her soul. She’d concluded she had neither romance nor soul.

  Now she wasn’t so sure. She was sure he was beautiful.

  His powerful body was slim and narrow hipped. His shoulders were broad and nicely displayed by his neutral, but well-fitted garments. His slacks were cut to display long, strong legs. His coat reminded her of a Nehru jacket with its standup collar that framed the strong column of his throat and jaw line. It suited a body that moved as gracefully as a jungle cat toward her. His skin was lightly tanned, just enough to deepen the contrast with his blonde hair.

  She couldn’t see a single flaw, not in the way his brows arched over his intensely blue eyes, or in the sweep of his nose, or in the full, sensual curve of his mouth.

  She’d never used the word sensual, never thought it except when reading. Now it whispered through her mind, stroked her insides like a promise.

  He made an elegant motion, like he was sweeping something to the side. She was somewhat aware that Naman bowed and moved away from her. He might have spoken, but Doc didn’t hear it, despite the deep silence inside her head.

  A wave of heat hit her nerve endings at the same time his scent did. It was as mysterious and heady as the man. On some level she knew he couldn’t smell any way but this one.

  There was nothing calculated, no geometry involved in the rising of her chin. No deliberation in the lift of her lashes so that she could meet his gaze. Her world rocked, and when it stopped, it was off its axis. She should have known how far off, but she didn’t. Her brows pulled together as the remaining sliver of sentience in her brain produced a hypothesis based on her body’s reactions.

  Desire.

  So that’s what it felt like.

  * * * * *

  Her eyes were a deep shade of purple, an eye color Hel had never seen before. This should have made her eyes cool, but they weren’t cool. They burned in the pale oval of her face. The frame of black lashes intensified both the color and heat of her eyes, ramped up the impact like a sun going nova. He looked for flaws in how she was made and found none. He homed in on her mouth. It was well formed and pink—the Leader’s personal color.

  If she was Halliwell’s secret weapon, the man was more subtle than Hel had suspected.

  Color stained the sculpted lines of her cheekbones, and the pulse at the base of her throat jumped into hyperdrive, pounding against the pale skin in a way that seemed to say, put your lips here, now, before you die. Hel almost answered that demand, as desire, thick and rich, stirred in his veins. He needed to do something, say something before he gave into temptation.

  “Morticia.” His voice emerged as a husky rasp.

  He’d been sure her eyes could get no wider, no deeper, but they did. Then the thicket of lashes swept down to rest against pale cheeks, there was a forever pause before they lifted again. Purple was gone, though the blue was still intense and unusual. Her mouth curved into a grin that was nothing like the smile she’d directed at Naman. This look was real. He didn’t know how he knew. He just did. He knew her.

  “Morticia?”

  A soft chuckle spilled out of her parted lips. “Right.”

  Her voice had a different inflection than others of her kind, giving an elegance to her brief response. Desire settled now that he had her attention, though it’s current still pulsed between them, like a circuit seeking completion. Her smile also removed that lethal, almost other world quality. She was just a woman, he told himself, a lovely woman, but still just a woman. Even as his brain called him a liar, he wondered if he’d let himself overwork the problem of Halliwell and the threat that this woman had appeared to pose.

  “That’s not—”

  The sound of voices rising in jarring conflict ripped across the surface tranquility of the reception. Before his gaze, Morticia shifted into lethal again, like a picture losing its focus and then finding it.

  And he knew he hadn’t imagined anything. She was dangerous, possibly the most dangerous woman he’d ever met.

  The interruption, the altercation, was ill timed. Hel turned toward the sound. A member of the earth delegation appeared to be arguing with one of the servers at the service entrance. Hel frowned, shooting a sharp look of command at his head of security.

  Wilstead started toward the pair, breaking into a trot as the dispute grew louder. The server’s voice rose to a shriek as the Earth man shoved her toward the doorway.

  In the space between two beats of his heart, Hel’s warrior instincts displaced diplomacy. He moved to place himself in front of Morticia, but she was already in motion—heading toward the disputants. Hel shouted a warning that was engulfed in a roar and in the bright, deadly light racing toward him…

  Chapter Two

  Cordite burned into her nose bringing Doc awake and into a low-profile crouch. She eased a weapon free from concealment, ears straining for threats in darkness lit by a half-hearted fire. Nothing immediate presented itself, but her gut refused to stand down and her senses twitched like live wires in water. Something bad had happened. People were down. Stuff was on fire. It took a few seconds to orient her memory, to reconstruct where she was, what had happened and why she was on alert at the cellular level.

  What light there was showed her the remains of the lovely Gadi reception hall. Moans filtered in between the soft crackle of fire somewhere off to her right. Her brain noted aches and pains in a variety of places, and smoke stung her eyes and lungs, but it was a low level concern, all energy channeled to her stretched out senses.

  No one had told her to come to the party armed, but no on
e had told her she couldn’t. Truth was, even if they had, she’d still be armed. It was SOP—standard operating procedure—to expect the unexpected.

  She extracted her infrared monocle. Not everyone could split their vision, but her brain liked it. It pulled more data from the combo of IR and real-time viewing. With the IR in place, she surveyed her surroundings again. Heat signatures popped out of the haze, all of them prone, bodies and rubble tumbled together.

  She would have been one of those bodies, but she’d realized she couldn’t stop the attack and hit the deck before the blast. Still got her bell rung, of course.

  She needed to find the General and not just because of his rank. He’d be one of the few wearing a radio. She wasn’t officially military, so she didn’t have one, though the Doolittle should be monitoring the contingent and seen the explosion on their sensors. There’d been at least one medical officer dirt side, but he’d been the one trying to push the bomber out of the hall. No way had he survived the blast.

  Her brain needed more to do, so she set it to work estimating the general’s current position, calculating trajectories and blast radius. Seemed a good idea to assess for structural integrity concerns, so she threw that into the mental mix, too.

  She had a medical degree in her pocket, but black ops resisted going offline. It was a bit like having multiple personality disorder, but without the forgetting part. No persona ever completely left the building, preferring to jostle for attention inside her head, but if black ops didn’t want to go back in the queue, maybe it shouldn’t. Doc knew to trust her gut.

  According to her calculations, General Halliwell had to be somewhere off to her left. Doc started that direction, pausing when a body in her path stirred and muttered something. She crouched next to him, but before she could do more than check his pulse, a change in the air current proved black ops had been wise to stick around. Her IR-free eye met the wounded man’s gaze, a finger to her lips silenced whatever comment he’d planned to make.

  Her backup weapon slid into her left hand as she went ghost. Both weapons were already silenced. She knew not to attract attention when she shot someone.

  It was easy to locate the source of her unease. They were the only ones upright and moving. The bogeys split into two groups of two, using some kind of hooded light that extinguished any lingering doubt they were a rescue party. The lights passed over each body just long enough for an ID. They were hunting. Didn’t take many of her brain cells to determine two possible targets. Doc decided to go hunting, too. She attached herself to the team heading in the direction that should lead to the general and saw his prone figure when they did.

  “Finish him off and let’s get out of here,” one of them, a male, said, looking back over his shoulder. His eyes widened as his gaze connected with hers, his mouth started to move.

  Doc’s silenced weapon ended that move. The other found a target dead center of bogey number two. She turned before either body hit the ground. Thanks to her IR, she spotted team two. Didn’t look like they’d found what they were looking for yet.

  * * * * *

  Hel woke to a world forever changed. Never had anyone, not even the Dusan at the height of their power, been able to strike at the heart of the Gadi home world, let alone within their seat of government. And only one very dangerous woman had come this close to killing him.

  Rubble covered his legs, and when he tried to move, more debris tumbled down, surrounding him in a choking cloud of dust that set off a round of painful coughing. He could smell blood, felt it making a warm trail down the side of his face. There was pain, but it was manageable. To be without pain was to be dead.

  He needed to free himself. It was not arrogance to think he was the target of this attack. Most plots were aimed at the top. If he were running this operation, he would have backup in place to be sure all targets were eliminated. Bombing was an imprecise assassination tool, but the inevitable chaos could be useful. Mingle assassins with rescuers and no one would know who died when.

  As he tried to shift debris off his legs, he scanned for attackers in the shifting shadows caused by the fire and debris dust. Did he see movement? Heading toward him? It was possible they were the front guard of the rescue, but if they were here to help, logic dictated that they stop and help. He eased his energy weapon from its place of concealment. This loosed a small avalanche of debris, and the two figures ceased movement. They were vague shapes, but he felt their tension. He shared their tension. They wished to kill him. He planned to stop them.

  Did they know the nature of the man they sought to kill? If so many had not been injured, Hel would have enjoyed this encounter. Though he was, of course, pleased the war was over, he missed the mental stimulation, the plotting and counter-plotting involved in fighting the Dusan war machine. The politics of leadership were not nearly as entertaining. In its own way, however, it was as dangerous or he would not be lying buried in rubble.

  He pressed deeper into the shadows as the light began to move again, still heading his direction.

  “If he’s under that, we’ll never find him.”

  Hel did not recognize the voice. He did recognize what was left of the ceiling reflected in the light that the man held. A portion of it hung crookedly, supported by a pillar—a pillar that looked eager to cease its supportive role. At its base was a large pile of debris.

  “If it goes, they won’t find us either.”

  Blood trickled down into Hel’s eye, blurring his vision. He rubbed at it as he lifted the weapon and centered the sight on one of the shadows. His aim was not as steady as he would like.

  A soft thud, followed by an echo, distracted them. The light turned back along the direction they’d come. Soft moans joined sounds made by debris shifting and the crackle of small fires dotting the area.

  “He’s dead. Let’s get out of here.” The holder of the light sounded jumpy and the way the light swung around increased the impression.

  “We finish it, then we go.”

  Hel shifted his sight line to this voice, the dominant one of the pair. With a soft flick of his thumb, he set the weapon to kill. One did not leave enemies behind, not now, not ever.

  He hesitated. The energy flash would blind him, rendering his second shot uncertain, and it would mark his position if he missed the second assassin. Uncertain was not desirable. Fitful light played against the walls, further impeding aim. This would be a good time for a silenced Earth projectile weapon. Since he did not have one, or his usual two weapons, he would improvise. He marked the position of both men. They were moving again.

  He considered his options, studying the terrain with care. To approach him, they would need to go around a larger pile of rubble. This would force them to be parallel with each other, instead of side by side. He used the debris to support and steady his weapon, adjusting his sight line to that spot as the two men continued toward the intercept point.

  When they moved into his target zone, Hel squeezed the trigger mechanism, not releasing it as was his usual practice. The beam of light shot forward, blinding him, but he could still hear. First came the sound of the beam hitting the first assailant, followed by his stagger back into the second man. Air hissed from the second man’s lungs, caused by that impact. He would instinctively grasp his companion, seek to hold him upright, but death would make the first sag enough for the beam to then strike the second assassin. Hel listened for and heard the small sound of both bodies tumbling to the rubble-strewn floor.

  As his vision cleared again, his senses twitched in the almost silence. Was someone watching him?

  * * * * *

  The light from the energy beam was painful to Doc’s eyes, but the IR eye got the worst of it. She ducked back behind an unstable pillar and yanked it off, cussing in her head. Her timing was good, as transport wash from the Doolittle rescue team added more light to the equation. This time black ops went dormant without a fuss. When she could see again, she moved toward the rescuers. Doc felt the mental and physical shift
in focus; her body realigned by the time the first search light played over her.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?” The voice was brisk and American. “If you are—”

  “I’m a medical doctor. If you’ve got a spare emergency kit, I’m ready to assist.”

  The young solider hesitated. “Captain Evans—”

  “—was at ground zero.” She delivered the information without inflection. She paused a few seconds to let him process this, then continued, “You need to get some engineers dirt side ASAP. The roof is trying to come down over there.” Doc knew how much authority to infuse into her voice and wasn’t surprised when the young man activated his radio.

  She looked back to where she’d dropped the bogeys, curious who’d used the ray gun, but the transport wash made it hard to see into the shadows. She suspected she knew who it was, though. The Gadi Leader didn’t seem like the kind to get blown up or assassinated. Too bad they were unlikely to meet. She didn’t like most people, but she might like him.

  The soldier turned to someone behind him, requesting the med kit.

  “You’ll need transport tags for the wounded Gadi, too.” The Gadi might not like summary transport, but there was no sign of Gadi rescuers yet and it had to be better than dying. Doc didn’t wait to hear him pass this suggestion along, just grabbed her kit and headed for the closest body.

  * * * * *

  The constant transport wash kept the room almost well lit. Hel could have alerted the rescuers to his presence, but there were others with worse injuries. And it didn’t hurt for his enemies to remain ignorant about his survival until he was less vulnerable. No sign yet of his people in the rescue party. It looked like they were transporting all survivors to the Doolittle. Not diplomatic, but Hel felt no desire to protest. His people were getting care. Would he allow himself to be transported? So much depended on where this threat came from. He had many enemies, both in the galaxy and within the council, but not that many had the power and the skill to attack inside their seat of government.