Girl Gone Nova

by Pauline Baird Jones

  Doc felt around until she found another pebble, about the size of a quarter and continued her low crawl until she spotted another bogey. He looked a bit stressed.

  She liked stressed bogies better than happy ones.

  She sighted the ray gun on the center of his back, using a V in the scrub branches to steady the weapon, so she’d have a hand free. With a flick of the wrist, she sent the pebble sailing into the center of their perimeter. Doc was pretty sure they all fired. She knew she did. None of them appeared to notice her shot, except the guy she hit and he wasn’t talking. She didn’t take time to gloat. Only people who wanted to get caught took time for gloating.

  She almost didn’t see the next guy. He must have moved while they were all shooting at the pebble. He stopped right in front of her, his body alert, his head angled for listening. It was the one called Eamon. He turned, putting her at his back.

  Doc came up out of the scrub without making a sound and tapped him on the shoulder. When he spun around, she applied her knee vigorously to his groin. His eyes crossed. So did his hands—over the affected area. Some blunt force trauma from the butt of the ray gun took him the rest of the way down.

  Doc had moved on before his body hit the ground. She found a big section of scrub and worked her way in to a depression hidden by the low profile branches.

  The eerie silence had returned in spades. She wished she’d dared pause to search the bodies for radios. Whoever had set this up was a decent strategist. These boys had been trained. They just hadn’t expected her to be, well, her. Doc doubted they’d ever met anyone like her. They might have the brute strength, but she’d been trained by the best—and she’d eventually kicked their asses. The Major thought it was because she could think so fast, the whole genius thing. He might be right.

  Now that they were getting a clue, how would they react? And how many of them were left to react? Right now if she were them, she’d be trying to smoke her mark into the open, trying to take back control.

  She saw one of the boys emerge from cover. His back was to her, but there was a self-consciousness to the way he moved that made her roll her eyes. They knew they could mark her position if she fired the ray gun. She hadn’t used lethal force, so whoever was running this op didn’t mind using the kid as bait. The bait didn’t look happy. She’d heard the stun setting hurt like a son of a bitch, so she wasn’t surprised. He had his ray gun out and was making wide sweeps from side to side.

  Doc set down the ray gun and eased out her hand gun.

  Doc did another pebble toss and when he jerked toward it, firing in multiples, she used the confusion to cover her shot. The bullet hit the barrel just above his hand. He jumped like he’d been shot, his ray gun went flying, he said something that sounded like a curse and dived into the scrub. That was four, well, three-and-a-half identified bogeys down. Number four wasn’t unconscious yet.

  She caught a flicker of something sailing through the air in her direction. She pushed her face into the dirt, hands over her ears. She felt the flash, heard and felt the bang. Dang that was close. So the aliens had their version of a flash bang. When the smoke cleared, four bogeys moved into the impact zone, their thrashing loud enough to cover a military band moving through.

  If she’d expected to encounter this type of problem, she’d have been packing flash bangs, too. She didn’t even have a stinking grenade. Too noisy. She low crawled back to one of the unconscious bogey’s and did a quick body search. She didn’t find anything that looked like a radio, but she did find two unfamiliar devices hanging off his belt and took them and his ray gun. She did a quick check of the search effort. Four bogey boys all still bunched together. Bad idea.

  It took her ten seconds to figure out how to activate the alien flash bang. She tossed it into the middle of them. One of them managed to get out half a curse before they all went down. Something sizzled past her position, but other blasts were going off in other directions, so she didn’t think they’d made her. Several blasts hit close, though. The idiots might take her out by accident.

  She felt that odd tingling feeling again. Had they transported out? Or in? Reinforcements or strategic retreat? The rocky bluff might provide some protection from a low orbit scan, but she’d have to expose herself to get there.

  She’d decided to stay put, when another wildly fired shot sizzled down her back. She stowed her hand gun, still reluctant to use lethal force. She gripped both purloined ray guns, counted to three and came up out of scrub, firing from both weapons. She lay down a line of fire, turning in a circle to clear her perimeter, and then took off running toward the rocky bluff. Her legs weren’t as long as Sara’s, but they were long enough. What she couldn’t go through, she went over, training and adrenaline working in perfect synch.

  She saw the bluff, the fall of rocks just ahead and put out an extra burst of speed. It surprised her she still sensed the transport while running full tilt, still felt the change, the tingle of awareness. She almost cannoned into the stolid young man that materialized in her way. He tried to get his arms around her, but she had momentum and training on her side. All he had was his tree-like size. Even as she dealt with him, she knew he was the decoy, a distraction. She twisted, trying to turn to face the real threat.

  She saw the bogey, but the ray’s blast was already tracking toward her. Even she couldn’t move faster than light but that didn’t stop her from trying. The beam caught her full in the chest. Hurt a lot worse than she’d expected. She felt her feet leave the ground, a short flight, and then the jolt as her body hit the ground. That hurt, too. Her body jerked as her overloaded senses began to shut down, the light around her shrinking to a small circle. She fought to stay alert and felt herself losing the battle. She had time to see a face swim into view, had time to learn it before the circle closed with a decisive snap.

  * * * * *

  The General had given Hel much to think about. At some point, he would need to tell Halliwell that Delilah wasn’t the first woman to go missing in the last year, but he needed more data. He sent a request for full details on each woman that was missing and then leaned back in his seat.

  His quarters aboard his flagship were as comfortable as those planet side and felt considerably safer. Security was even now installing transport inhibitors, not to mention organizing repairs to his quarters. He didn’t mind the forced shift in location. It would be a lot harder for his enemies to track him. Oh, they could track his ship, but he had his own ways of dealing with that. In the meantime, he needed to decide what to share with the General and how much.

  The General had been unexpectedly cooperative, though it was still a struggle. He hadn’t wanted to tell Hel that Delilah was missing. And he’d been shaken that Hel knew about Chameleon.

  Early on, one of the diplomats had given Hel a dictionary. Before contacting the General, he’d looked the word up. What had interested him the most about the definition was the lizards “synonymous ability to change color.”

  The first time he’d seen her pacing the perimeter of the room, he’d tagged her as lethal. Then she’d shifted to seductive and then, what? In their brief interaction prior to the explosion, she’d been aroused, then surprised into ordinary when he called her Morticia. For that moment, she hadn’t been anything but herself. And then?

  She’d dealt with the roof collapse and defused a bomb. Two very disparate skills, but they did have one thing in common. She’d solved two problems.

  She had business on the outpost.

  The General was worried about his people, missing through the portals. If Delilah was supposed to solve that problem, then her hasty departure made sense. She’d need to tackle the problem before war broke out. If she was the Chameleon Carig’s contact had spoken of, was it possible her ship had been intercepted by someone from the Earth expedition? They could have hired someone to do the intercept. Except the General had contacted Hel. He was suspicious Hel had been involved. That suggested the General considered her cover secure—at least until He
l had informed him that her cover might not be secure.

  Just because Carig didn’t know the sex or real name of the Chameleon, didn’t mean the contact didn’t know. Hel rubbed his face. The General would have to pursue that angle and he would. He was no fool, even if he was easily riled.

  Hel’s communication system alerted him that his reports had arrived. He opened the reports and read each one. At first glance, the only thing Delilah had in common with the thirteen missing women was that they were all female. All earlier abductees had been well under twenty Earth years in age. Delilah was at least thirty. That was a significant age difference. This seemed to imply she’d been intercepted by someone from the expedition, except for the other connection with some of the intercepts: the energy field.

  Only five of the ships’ captains had reported interference from an outside source, only three had named an energy field. The rest had reported malfunctions with their hyperdrive. The ones who identified an energy source claimed it had interfered with hyperdrive transport. All had reported a period of unconsciousness following the attack. None had managed to send out a request for help until the attack was completed.

  He finished the input of data collected from the reports and waited for a map to appear. He leaned back, his elbows on the chair rests, his fingers steepled as he mulled what he knew and what he sensed he knew.

  Halliwell hadn’t wanted to tell him that Delilah was the missing crew—no, the missing pilot. Could it be her skill diversity that gave them hope she could unlock the technology?

  Hel had been sure they would fail to figure out the technologies on the outpost and have to bring the Key back. If they believed Delilah would do the job, why had they waited so long? It could be simple, scientific arrogance. The people who’d been working on the problem might have been convinced they could do it. It took time to get people to admit defeat. It took more time to devise a new plan. Was Delilah the new plan?

  But Delilah couldn’t do it if war broke out. She needed time, she needed access. And the General had arrived at Hel’s door full of helpful information to get her that time. Primed by Delilah? That last part, the so-called teasing, was off script, he was sure of it. If she were pulling the General’s strings, she wouldn’t want Hel to know she was the source of the General’s information. She’d been moving among the Gadi wounded for several days. To his knowledge no one on the expedition knew the Gadi language. It hadn’t been necessary when both sides spoke Standard. But what if she were a linguist, too? And the words she couldn’t figure out? That time with his sons hadn’t all been spent having a party. His mother was still complaining about the words they’d learned during the visit. It would have been an easy matter to “trade” words with two small boys.

  She’d liked him, wanted him, even as she plotted against him. He chuckled. He’d thought he could live without her. Now he was not so sure. He might just have to have her. And the General had almost handed her to him on a platter.

  He just had to find her first.

  * * * * *

  The woman lay on the bed where he’d dropped her. Vidor Shan stared at her pale, mud-smudged face, noting that even unconscious there was a willful curve to her mouth. He wanted to know why she’d done that, smeared mud on her face. How she’d managed to elude them. He wanted to see her eyes again, to see if the intense blue color was real, but her lashes lay stubbornly against her pale cheeks. His body remembered her scent and the silk of her hair brushing against his face as he carried her. She was both smaller and lighter than he’d expected, based on the ferocity and precision of her attack on his men.

  She was, Vidor Shan acknowledged, unlike any of the other women they’d taken. Is that what made her interesting? Both Eamon and Cadir were dumbstruck by her—and a little fearful, though not as much as they should be. Knowing this, why had he brought her into the camp? She dressed like a soldier, and worse, fought like one and they had little time to process her into compliance with their needs.

  “Why doesn’t she wake?” Vidor asked, letting his frustration break free.

  Bana shifted at his side, as if fighting impatience. Vidor scowled at the old, lined face.

  “Each person reacts to the stun in their own way.” Bana’s tone was respectful, but with a hint of irritation. There was a pause. “She is too old and there is no time for one such as this.

  You should have thrown her back.” Another longer pause. “Or killed her.”

  He hadn’t done either and that troubled him. His mission was proving challenging without introducing someone destined to be difficult into their group. The other women had adapted quickly to their new reality, but targets had dried up in the last few months. They’d used care in harvesting women, but word had spread. Convoys had formed or ships had ceased using women or providing transport for them. This was the first ship carrying a female in some weeks.

  That she traveled alone surprised him and made him suspicious. He’d almost let her pass, but time was short, as Bana had pointed out. They’d brought her gear back with them, but it had yielded few clues to her identity. He had not planned to take a woman for himself, but this woman might change his mind.

  His gaze tracked from the top of her head, down to her feet and then back up again until he reached her mouth. It was soft and pink. His hands fisted at his sides. He should eliminate the problem, but he couldn’t do it. Not yet.

  “She interests me,” he said, as if his insides weren’t clenching. Her features were clean and classic, her mouth a frustrating temptation. He tried to imagine what her name might be, but he couldn’t. He wanted to trace the shape of her mouth and then take a long taste. Would she taste as exotic as she looked?

  “You’re thinking with the wrong body part, Vidor, though it gives me hope that you can.” Bana sounded more amused than annoyed now. “Come, leave her to wake when she’s ready. If you are to change our history, you must learn how to wait.”

  Not for the first time, he wondered why he’d been cursed to live now, why it had become his burden to change not just the course of his life, but that of his people. His gaze traced the length of the woman one last time. There was strength in her body, in the line of her jaw, but was strength enough? Could her will be turned for their purpose in time? He needed to know quickly.

  * * * * *

  There was pain, but not a kind she recognized. It hurt to breathe in. It hurt to breathe out. Doc tried to slide back into the dark, pain-free void, but it faded like mist in the sun, leaving her aware and hurting in places she didn’t know it was possible to hurt.

  She’d heard them talking, speaking what they called “standard” in the galaxy, realized she was the topic and translated it into playing possum, even when she wanted to moan. It was a relief when she’d heard them move away, but hearing hurt, too. How could hearing hurt? It was an odd kind of pain. It didn’t throb or pulse. It was more like an electric charge brushing across her nerve endings, a muted thrum, except when she moved. Then it wasn’t muted.

  You should have thrown her back or killed her. The phrasing was interesting. Wasn’t “thrown back” a fishing term? And if it was, what had they been fishing for? And what about her that “interested” him?

  She lifted her lids. That hurt. So did blinking—looking not so much. She considered what she could see, which wasn’t a lot. She appeared to be in a tent, lying on a bed. She wasn’t a fan of tents, even ones with beds. The blanket against her cheek was coarse. Not a fan of that either.

  Not Kansas or Oz. Hell was on the short list of possibilities.

  She studied the bedposts. They looked rustic. It wasn’t fun, but she managed to sit up and dangle her legs off the edge of the bed. Her vest and her pack were on the table across from her, a table that was more rustic than the bed. Someone had rummaged through the contents. If the painkillers were gone, someone was going to die.

  She looked down. The floor was dirt.

  Doc was not a fan of that either. She could accept it had its place in the cycle of natur
e, but not as flooring.

  Hell was fast moving up the list of possible locations.

  She stood and her legs held. That was encouraging. She headed for her pack, a bit of a totter to her gait. That wasn’t so encouraging. If she couldn’t walk, how was she going to kick ass? Her ribs hurt, too, recalling the moment when she’d slammed against the ship’s harness.

  Pain meds first. She found a packet of water and the tablets she needed. She also snagged a power bar from the mess. It eased the gnawing in her stomach and helped clear her head.

  She did a weapons check. They’d taken her sidearm and spare magazines, but missed the stuff strapped to her body. Interesting they hadn’t searched her. She didn’t remember them looking sensitive, so that left clueless. She liked clueless opponents.

  There was a way out of the tent, but she wasn’t sure who to be out there. It was no longer a secret that she could kick ass, so that took being underestimated off the table. She didn’t mind that much. She didn’t like pretending to be scared, not when fear was as close as them all the time.

  She heard the softer tones of women, the deeper tones of the men. She padded to the flap and eased it back, trying not to wince as her careful footsteps set little shockwaves across her nerve endings. It was like pain sparklers going off inside her. Through the small gap she could see more tents and a few people, but not much else. She took a shallow breath and stepped out into light that was either fading or building. Not enough data to know which. It took a moment for anyone to notice her. Doc used that moment to expand her SA—her situational awareness.

  It was an encampment, with too much emphasis on camp. The series of tents were arranged in a rough semicircle in a forest-like clearing. Doc wouldn’t have called them a loud bunch of people, even before silence spread through the group. She waited a half beat, angled her chin and stalked into the center of the encampment. She felt them study her, but Doc ignored them. Her gaze swept the surrounding flora and fauna. It was green, brown and rocky with bug sounds just like where she crashed. She looked up. It had sky, but this sky had three moons, none of them purple. Three blue moons. Didn’t seem like a good omen and didn’t take much to conclude this wasn’t where she’d crashed, even if their ship was playing least in sight. So why the primitive pretense?