Girl Gone Nova

by Pauline Baird Jones

  Hel used the male designation deliberately. For himself, as soon as Carig mentioned the scientist, this chameleon, he knew it was Delilah. He’d seen her in action. Now he needed to know how much Carig knew. The man used blunt force for every problem. Hel didn’t want that hammer directed at Delilah. This uncharacteristic urge to protect was easy to explain. She had saved his life. He owed her this. That was all.

  “My contact was quite sure—”

  “Contacts are always sure of the information they pass on until they are no longer sure.” He turned, resuming walking. “Tell me about your contact.”

  “I have promised confidentiality.”

  “Of course you have. I’m not asking for a name. I want to know why you trust someone so willing to betray his own people. What is his motivation? His end objective? One would expect your contact to want his people to succeed. He appears to want them to fail. This does not trouble you?”

  Now it did. He noted that Carig didn’t correct Hel’s assumption that his contact was male. His contact would have been attached to the diplomatic group. Someone would have noticed Carig talking to a member of the security detail or a female.

  “If this chameleon succeeds, we will never be allowed onto the outpost.”

  Hel paused again, this time signaling his entourage close.

  “How interesting that you believe the Earth expedition will never allow us onto the Kikk outpost, Carig.” He paused, to make sure all were within hearing. “You seem to be misinformed.” He didn’t add again. He didn’t need to. “While I was on the Doolittle General Halliwell asked me to assemble a team of scientists to work with his people on the Kikk outpost. I have recalled my flagship for transport. I intend to travel with them and tour the outpost.”

  Carig stared at him, his confusion and anger apparent to all. “Why do you let them allow us to visit when we should control the outpost?”

  Hel leaned in, concealing his distaste at the proximity. “I allow them to think they control the outpost until it suits me to intervene. Surely even you can see the tactical advantage in studying the layout and capabilities of the outpost prior to any military action?”

  “You plan to betray them?” Carig’s voice was thick with disbelief.

  Interesting how people heard what they wanted to hear, not what was said.

  “I plan to do what is best for our people, as always.”

  “Why wasn’t I informed our people had been invited to the outpost?”

  “I informed all Council members. Have you read my briefing for today?” Hel knew he hadn’t. He’d made sure to send it just prior to his transport dirt side, after Carig had already left his quarters.

  “I…no, Leader.” Dull red suffused his face. It was not his color.

  Hel looked at his time piece. “I should hurry, Carig, so you can be prepared for the emergency council meeting. It will have to be short, so we can all be at the death ceremony for our fallen.”

  Naman stepped forward now. “We have a few items to discuss before the meeting, Leader. If Council member Carig is finished?”

  The wording was unfortunate, but to the point, at least for the moment. Without further word, Carig spun on his heels and stalked off.

  “A clumsy man, Naman,” Hel murmured, for his aide’s ears only.

  “Indeed, Leader.”

  “I need to know how he’s getting his information from his contact. Is it through diplomatic contact or by covert means?” If Carig had to wait for diplomatic meetings, his information wouldn’t be current.

  “And if his contact is covert?”

  “Find a way to listen in, Naman.” He paused at the doors to his quarters, as his security team moved in to do a sweep. “This is more than political maneuvering, my friend. The bombing wasn’t planted to get our attention.”

  “No, Leader. I’ll do my best.”

  “I know you will, Naman. You always do.” With a brief, charming smile, Hel swept into his quarters. It was good to be home.

  * * * * *

  General Halliwell was on the flight deck to see her off. Doc wasn’t sure whether to be surprised or touched, since she didn’t “do” either. Not that she’d had a lot of opportunity. Her mum had taken the British stiff upper lip to ridiculous lengths and then there was the Major. The only way he’d see her off was with a boot to the butt and that was during his warm, fuzzy moments.

  They were using a secondary flight deck and they were the only ones there, though she was careful to keep her back to the security cameras. She didn’t need anything pointing a big arrow at her with a possible conspiracy on board. The General was a big arrow, though he didn’t appear to realize it.

  “Be careful out there.” Halliwell had returned to his grim expression. Grim was probably his mother ship.

  Doc considered his request. She was never deliberately careless, though that wasn’t quite the same thing as being careful. She met his gaze and gave him a fighter pilot nod. Something odd happened when her gaze connected with his. He looked the same. So did Briggs, but she felt something unfamiliar seep into her, or possibly out of her? She wasn’t sure. Her brain flipped through the memory files, but she had to go way back to find anything similar. Roots? Surely not? She twitched her toes, wanted to lift her feet from the decking, just to prove her brain wrong. You couldn’t put down roots in a space ship. She couldn’t put down roots anywhere. She hadn’t put down roots on the Nimitz and she’d been aboard it longer than the Doolittle.

  Was she in denial? Her thoughts were pretty defensive. It was possible she might be deluding herself. She relaxed her brain and felt tendrils that might have been roots reaching down through the soles of her feet and going, not just into the ship, but reaching out to these men.

  She didn’t panic. She didn’t do panic, but it was a good thing she was going.

  She made herself come to attention and saluted again. “Permission to—”

  This was a ship, but an Air Force ship, so what was the correct Air Force term for “can I get the hell out of here?”

  “—kick the tires and light the fires?” Did the slang work when there were no tires?

  Briggs gave a grunt that could have been disgust or approval. He had a one-note grunt and made no apologies for it.

  Halliwell jerked his head toward the craft. Doc took that as permission. Carey walked with her and helped her get settled in the cockpit. He hooked her up to the ship’s communication and oxygen, while she ran her systems check. When everything was a “go” for launch, Carey stepped back and gave her a thumbs-up.

  She echoed the move, then hit the control that lowered the canopy. There were some whirring sounds and a secondary canopy rose and locked in place. It was, she knew, the backup ejection system. If the main canopy was compromised, it protected the pilot in an oxygen nil situation. She’d had a chance to study the parts of the system at Area 51. Their people were working on a version of it for their ships.

  She tapped her radio. “This is Test Flight One ready for launch. Do I have a go launch?”

  Her voice was steady, but her hands gripped the controls. She’d never been at war with herself before. It was uncomfortable. But it would get better when she was gone. Roots might be put down, but they could be ripped up. People did it all the time. If people could do it, then she could, too. She was better than people at most things.

  “Test Flight One, you are go launch.”

  Heading and course appeared on her avionics. Coordinates had already been preprogrammed into the hyperdrive systems. Doc tested the controls, felt them respond, took a deep breath, and eased the ship off the decking. A pause and then she put the figurative pedal to the metal. Her reflection in the canopy was cool and calm as her ship shot down the launch tube and out through the force field, but inside she did an exultant yeehaw. She was in motion. That always pissed them off. Whatever pissed them off was good for her.

  She did a tight turn, a quick couple of loop-the-loops, and then turned on her heading before someone could tell h
er to settle down.

  “Control, Test Flight One preparing to enter hyperspace window in five, four, three, two, one.” Everything outside the ship turned into bright, golden blur and her speed jeans inflated as the g’s hit. A period of adjustment, then bright settled to a muted glow.

  She was alone in space in a galaxy far, far away. That tiny ache around her heart was just from being so alone, so far from the familiar. It was normal to have a period of adjustment, even if she hadn’t needed one before and had never thought she was normal. She should be moving fast enough to stay ahead of her demons, but there was moving and there was moving. Whatever was going on inside her head, she couldn’t sit here and let them get on her case. She needed to focus, to concentrate. She needed to control the chaos starting to stir inside her head.

  She let her fighter pilot shift to the back burner, bringing theoretical physicist to the front. She pulled up what she’d heard or read about the portal and began to sift through the data. There had to be holes in what she thought she knew if Smith had been convinced retrieval was possible. Without access to the original equations, all she could do was theorize. It seemed obvious that the Garradians’ hadn’t planned for one-way trips, so returning was possible. Without a way back, they would never know if the portal operated as expected. The Garradians had locked down the return controls before they left, apparently to keep people from returning to the outpost following the evacuation.

  This tracked with what the Key had told her about the original Garradians’ reasons for leaving. They’d opted to shut the outpost down, rather than destroy it, so that all the scientists working there could evacuate safely. It also indicated trust issues with some of the evacuees, but mulling that was far outside her mission brief.

  There had to be a way to turn it all back on, but Doc suspected that turning the switch wouldn’t be enough. Traversing time and space was more art than science. When Doc first heard about the portal, she’d wondered how the Garradians had managed to overcome the distortion factor of travel through time and space. Even assuming they’d learned how to fold space, there were other variables. Planets rotated and orbited. There were no truly fixed points in space. A wrong calculation could drop a body into an ocean or on a mountain top. Simultaneous arrival would be even more difficult, even if people went through seconds apart.

  What had Dr. Smith discovered that made him believe the group could arrive at the same time and place? And then come back? She hadn’t been able to find his notes in the ship’s computers. Hopefully they’d still be available on the outpost computers. She’d have used communications to hack the computers, but she didn’t want to leave a trail anyone could follow. That was against her religion.

  Two years ago, when the Key was turned and some of the outpost systems came back online, the scientists on-site assumed everything would eventually start to work. It took time to realize that some of the technology had activated, but most hadn’t. There were two camps of opinion on why. One postulated that there was something else the Key needed to do to activate the rest of the outpost. The second theory was the “different scientists, different solutions” hypothesis. This one presumed that each technology needed to be understood before it could be activated or operated.

  Was it this theory that had resulted in her arrival in the galaxy?

  It was possible that someone believed Doc’s multi-tasking brain would be able to find the various threads and pull them all together, i.e., do the impossible. What didn’t seem possible is that the Major would care. She frowned. Unless he’d been promised something for her participation? Would fancy, high-tech weapons tempt him? What Doc knew of him was all about stealth, but she didn’t kid herself she knew the Major well enough to draw a conclusion about that. She’d bet his own mother didn’t know him that well.

  Doc still thought it interesting that none of their people seemed to know that the Key was a person and back on Earth. The General had kept a tighter than tight lid on that information, and he’d been unhappy she knew it. It didn’t surprise her he didn’t wholly trust her, considering she was associated with the Major—who didn’t inspire warm, fuzzy feelings in anyone.

  The General had good reasons for protecting the Key’s identity. He knew, none better, that the Key had earned her freedom the hard way. Being a part of the small circle in the know affected Doc more now, than it had when she’d heard the story. It was all more real here, where it had played out. Doc felt the weight of that trust and touched that her friend had known what Doc hadn’t realized at the time: that Doc would never, ever give her away.

  It would have been nice if General Halliwell had been filled with equal certainty. His distrust stung in a way Doc had never experienced before. She wanted to deliver the desired outcome, even as her gut told her it wasn’t possible and would never happen, despite Dr. Smith’s assertion it could. Doc could ponder and hypothesize until the cows—or the Key—came home, but would be low on answers until she had a chance to study the portal herself and get a look at Smith’s notes.

  At the same time she pondered the portal, another channel in her brain mulled the possible consequences of launching people into the unknown. It would be interesting to know who, besides Smith, had gone through the portal. If, as everyone believed, they’d gone into the Earth’s past, the impact of their contamination on civilization should be apparent, particularly if one had insight into their personalities and knowledge bases. They’d been ordered to minimize impact on the time line, but minimize didn’t equal no impact. It was possible someone had tampered with the settings before the decision to use the portal had been made. The place had been crawling with geeks and geeks, by nature, loved to touch stuff. Inadvertent touching had been how the portal had been discovered in the first place.

  Her brain loved this. With so many unknown factors, it was like giving a dog a rubber bone to chew on. But that didn’t stop it from also bringing Hel to the forefront. Her brain was as much of a bitch as she was.

  Was Hel already back on his planet? Had the General told him yet that he was giving them access? What if Hel chose to come with his people to the outpost? How soon could they put a team together? And how had thoughts of him snuck into her head again?

  She rubbed a spot on her temple that wanted to ache.

  This would be a good time to for a brutal workout.

  And that made her think about Briggs. He’d seemed worried about her. And the General, too. Their worry made her feel strange and unsettled.

  It made her feel.

  And that made her head ache more.

  * * * * *

  Hel was certain that Carig had approached him after transport wearing a listening device, what the Earth people called “wired.” Had the man thought that Helfron Giddioni would beg him to stay silent for any reason? The Earth people had a word that Hel found appropriate to the situation: smackdown.

  Carig had received a smackdown. It wouldn’t stop his plotting. Hel had reports from his contacts that he’d sent surrogates to suborn Gadi fleet ship’s commanders. The Gadi had eighteen large cruisers patrolling the galaxy. He’d not approached the eight commanders Hel knew would remain loyal, at least for now. There were two ship’s commanders of the old guard who would be neutral in a dispute until it turned official. Then they’d come in on the side of the Leader, whoever it was at that time. If Carig managed to turn the others, he could use that to apply pressure on the Council. No one wanted a civil war—except Carig.

  He would never secure the Leader position through an open election. There was deep-seated prejudice among the Gadi towards Carig’s family in general and his mental acuity in particular. His appearance didn’t help. The Earth expedition would consider it shallow, Hel supposed, if they knew how much appearance played a role in picking a Leader, but appearances mattered in the galaxy. The Leader represented the Gadi. He wielded great power. He attracted alliance matings. It was necessary he look the part. Being the part had never been enough.

  Hel could play the part re
quired. He needed to play many roles to survive and thrive in a world where war was a way of life. Safety at home had been elusive, too. He shifted easily among whichever persona he needed at a given moment, but the meeting with Delilah had been different. He felt jerked all the way to his center, as if she’d honed in on his core—a place he had not visited in many years. He kept that man buried very deep, and she’d unearthed him with a sweep of her lashes. She’d tapped into the passion he used to drive him through the rocks and pits of Gadi politics, the passion he’d used in his fight with the Dusan.

  He’d felt passion for his mate, but this was different, though he had not yet discovered why. A man’s passion for a woman was expected, but he’d needed to use care with women, no matter what role he played. Everyone and everything in his life could be used against him. He walked a path that required him to appear just competent enough to do the job, so that his enemies would underestimate him. Two years since the end of the war and most of who he was, was still hidden in the shadows.

  Delilah lived there, too. Was this how she’d found him? How he’d found her? And why did this bother him, when he was unlikely to see her again?

  He had to force himself to concentrate on the council meeting. Despite his inattention, it was not going as Carig planned and the funeral ceremony would not help Carig’s position as much as he’d hoped. It was true the bombing had been a severe blow to the people’s confidence in the leadership. But because Hel had been injured, the people had chosen to blame the Council, rather than their Leader. Hel may have helped nudge that perception along. His political instincts had not let him down yet. Because of the Dusan defeat, the Council had been preparing to lift the War Powers Act, which had been in place since shortly after war began. The measure would have hampered Hel’s ability to monitor Carig’s communications and meetings—not to mention diminished the power of the Leader overall. Carig should have waited until after that meeting to make his move, but he’d always been clumsy.