Girl Gone Nova

by Pauline Baird Jones

Halliwell grinned. “Oh yeah.”

  “Do you think whoever took her has figured out how screwed they are yet?”

  * * * * *

  Morning failed to make the encampment look less dreary to Doc’s admittedly jaded gaze, though it had been a relief when she’d learned she was to bunk in Bana’s tent. Doc had refused to share the same bed, even if it meant she slept on the rustic tabletop. Doc didn’t sleep a lot anyway.

  The three barbarians made it clear they considered that a temporary situation and that their lame courting efforts would break down her resistance. Bana was hoping for that, too. Doc was a lousy roommate. She didn’t like spending nights with herself, so why should Bana? Interesting that it was possible to low crawl like a ghost, but a few calisthenics sounded like stampeding dogs. Course, she hadn’t tried that hard to be quiet. She’d offered to go outside several times but had been ignored.

  At one point Bana said, almost impatiently, “You are very headstrong.”

  “You’re not headstrong enough,” Doc shot back. Doc felt and heard her response in the dark of the tent. A sort of tensing and a sharp inhale, as if Doc had shocked her but she needed to hide it. It might be part of her mind games as enabler-in-chief, but Doc still felt uneasy about the innocuous exchange, though she couldn’t explain why.

  Even if Doc was tempted to give in to pressure—which she wasn’t—she couldn’t do this. The only way it could end was badly. Of course, if it was going to go badly anyway, it might be good policy to give bad a nudge in a direction that was bad for them instead of her. But, what was the right nudge in the bad-for-them direction?

  She spent the insomnia portion of the night working out and considering various nudging options, while Bana put a pillow over her head and plotted her death. One idea was to play the three men off each other. Conan was hanging back, but giving off jealous vibes that he thought no one noticed. If she’d stopped to think about this, she’d have been stuck in shock at the idea of three men vying for her attention, so she didn’t.

  The problem with playing the men off each other was her. She’d observed the process, but she had no practical experience. She did know her science. These men weren’t just an unstable element, but an unknown quantity of unstable. There was a less than ten percent chance of a positive outcome and that might be an optimistic projection. Even if she were close in her outcome assessment that left a ninety percent chance someone would get hurt.

  Not that she minded hurting any of them, but it should serve a useful purpose. Doc wasn’t an assassin, nor was she into revenge, well, she tried not to be. She wanted a way off this rock. If she got to kick Conan’s ass in the process, that was a bonus, not the end game.

  There were other ways to stir his pot. Conan looked like he’d hate uncertainty.

  She had a gift for creating it.

  Conan seemed certain he had the upper hand, that he had her boxed in. Changing that perception was as good a place to start as any.

  She paused, not in doubt, but in an honest assessment of the risks. Bana had suggested killing Doc. It was a concern that she might push him too hard and trigger a hard termination, but that wasn’t the worst that could happen to her. If she doubted that, all she had to do was think about her brother.

  Don’t let them get you, Del.

  She added hard termination to the list of escape options. With a little experimentation, she should be able to determine Conan’s breaking point, though she might die doing it. She grinned. Dying doing something was the primary risk of any of her operations. The more her life changed, the more it stayed the same.

  When they went through her stuff they left the stuff that looked harmless to them. A small, but powerful pair of binoculars lurked among the harmless stuff. She’d tucked them and her compass in a pocket of her ABUs before she left the tent.

  The guys sans women were eating more sludge for breakfast, joined by Bana. She ignored them and the bowl waiting her attention. For the moment she was subsisting on her emergency supplies. Instead, she studied the trees surrounding the compound. She needed a big, sturdy one, kind of like the barbarians, only taller.

  She identified a good prospect, then slanted a look Conan’s way through her lowered lashes. As soon as her gaze pinged on him, he pinged back. Interesting that he seemed to be so aware of her. It might prove useful—and annoying. It went against both training and personality to attract attention, though she wasn’t above doing it for operational necessity.

  Once she was sure she had his attention, she crossed to her designated tree in long swift strides, not wanting to give him time to stop her. Her brain was already calculating the amount of thrust and the best angle to get her body on that lower branch. She hit the sweet spot, bent her knees and then surged forward, leaping at the optimal moment. When her hands hooked around the branch, her body swung up and over. Her legs straddling the branch, she held back a grin at the looks of shock on the various barbarian and girl faces, but it was Conan’s reaction that concerned her. As he approached, she lifted her legs up, then rose to a stand on the branch. Didn’t want him to yank her down until she was ready to come down.

  “What are you doing?” His tone seethed with a frustration out of proportion to her action. He was an uber unstable element.

  “I’m going to climb this tree.” She met his frustration with a cool tone and cooler gaze.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s here.” She could see him consider the activity and conclude it was harmless, though he was still uneasy. She broke eye contact and started up, not stopping until the limbs were too small to hold her weight. She wedged herself in place and looked down. Conan waited at the bottom, staring up at her with what she was coming to think was his only expression—a scowl.

  “Come down.” He’d ramped up again while she climbed, but it eased off when she looked at him.

  That was interesting. Was he calmer because she wasn’t moving or did he like it when she looked at him? She broke eye contact and looked around. It was early, but the heat was already building. The humidity was in play, too. She wondered idly, because it wasn’t an operational necessity, what kind of variations there were in the climate. It had been freaking hot since her arrival. Her ABU jacket upped the heat factor, but she wasn’t comfortable stripping down to a tee shirt in front of three horny guys.

  It wasn’t about her desirability factor, she’d decided sometime in the night. There was some kind of female deficit, either in their expedition or their society—and a huge arrogance surplus. Thinking about what could be happening and why with this bunch sent her mind into a tailspin of theories and spin-off questions.

  Doc’s hands tightened around the branch, the pain a place to use to regain her focus.

  “You are not well?” His voice was sharp and anxious.

  That helped her get her focus back. She needed to learn their pressure points without giving away hers. She relaxed her body, then her hands and looked down.

  “I’m fine.”

  It was her attention that eased him. She could see it happen. She looked away, counted to ten and looked back. Tension eased back again. It was like a yo-yo, though she wasn’t sure who was doing the best job of playing whom since the intensity of his scrutiny made her feel on edge. Normally living on the edge helped her cope with them, but this was different. It had a draining component that was troubling. She felt a need to adjust her internal shield strength and integrity, if that was possible. There was a lot going on inside her head, even for her and not much was that useful.

  Doc put the problem on a back burner, wedged herself to free her hands and pulled out the binoculars. As she studied the terrain, the intensity of his scrutiny faded to the back burner, too. The annoyance factor of her actions wasn’t the only reason to do this. She did need to know about her surroundings.

  She felt his gaze leave her and took a quick look. Now he paced back and forth under the tree. He wore his rock-like expression but his body radiated tension. He tensed, as if he felt her
watching and started to look up. Doc returned her gaze to what she could see through the binoculars.

  They seemed to be deep in a forest. The terrain was diverse. There was a lake a couple of clicks to her right. It was pretty, but she had a bad feeling it doubled as a bathtub, so it was hard to appreciate it properly. Mountains loomed in the distance. No sign of any other human habitation. What she didn’t see was troubling. There was no clearing larger than this one where a ship might be parked.

  It could be parked in a low orbit, if they had a remote transport device similar to the Garradian one. It could even be Garradian. It would also need a cloak if it were in orbit and not just any old cloak. Everyone had assumed the Kikk outpost could “see” cloaked ships, but evidence suggested they couldn’t see this one. A ship hovering over a habitable—but not inhabited—planet would have prompted a visit to check it out.

  Doc was pretty sure this planet was located somewhere along what used to be the Dusan frontier. It could be in Dusan space, but it seemed unlikely. If this were about women, well, there were Dusan women left from the war, but they weren’t good breeding stock. None of the brides showed signs of having been Dusan companions, though Doc would need to chat with them to be sure. She was sure they’d been culled from the non-Dusan side of the galaxy.

  Granted she could only see a small portion of the planet, but it appeared uninhabited and probably was. Conan and his merry band were hiding out and doing a pretty good job of it for Cro-Mag men. Using the frontier between Dusan and Gadi space made a kind of sense in the bride hunt, so lurking close to it made sense, too.

  The planets on the fringe of no man’s land near the Dusan frontier were still pretty sparsely populated and isolated, though the inhabitants all had access to space travel and interplanetary trade resources. They’d be easy targets for someone jumping in from the Dusan frontier, and many of them were still fearful of traveling in Dusan space—with some cause. Pirates had quickly filtered into the void left by the Dusan defeat.

  But a small settlement, protected by a cloaked ship, with inhabitants that were careful not to draw attention to themselves? And if pirates did notice them, their primitive profile would indicate a low profit potential not worth the bother. It was moderately clever, though the underlying premise was seriously flawed. There were better—and faster—ways to get girls.

  She honed in on a rocky bluff, maybe twelve clicks from the encampment. If there were caves there, or even overhanging rock, it might screen her from the ship’s sensors. If their ship was in orbit, they needed a control device. Survey complete, she lowered herself down onto a sturdy branch and stared ahead, letting her mind spin with what she’d learned, looking for patterns and clues she might have missed in her initial assessment.

  Her mind, happy with new input, was less fractious than normal, though that wouldn’t last. This place was too quiet, too bland. Her mind hated a vacuum and upped the input streams—

  “What do you think about?” His voice cut into her thoughts, shattering the forming patterns with his frustrated curiosity. “What do you see?”

  She blinked away bits of equations and data streams as external awareness returned. Her temples ached, which was not a surprise. It was one of the downsides of being her. She looked at Conan, letting placid settle over her like she was a cow chewing a cud.

  “I’m getting a fix on my location.”

  She started down, moving from branch to branch until she reached the last one between her and the ground.

  “It will make it easier for my people to find me if I can tell them where I am.”

  He smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile, but he did have good teeth. It was very anti-barbarian and another clue he wasn’t what he seemed to be.

  “You have no way to contact anyone.”

  She stared at him, so placidly she irritated herself.

  It annoyed him, too. “You have no transmission device.”

  If he believed that, why did he look so worried? Again, she said nothing as the air achieved sluggish movement. She loosened the top two buttons of her ABU jacket, letting that air slide in around her neck and provide minute relief.

  Conan pinged on the small action. He was so anxious to see a little skin she was embarrassed for him. His gaze burned into her, trying to find a way past placid to where her real self lived—a person she wasn’t sure she knew, one she hadn’t known existed until she met Hel. Was it all just sex or was there something else in his scrutiny? Did he see her when he looked or just a woman to fill his bride quota?

  She had learned all she could watching them watch her. Now she needed them to leave, she needed them to go to their ship so she could figure out how to take it from them. He wouldn’t want her to see it, but she planned to do a lot of things he wouldn’t want her to do until she got away or he killed her.

  The two other barbarian boys were watching her now, too. She was pretty sure they just wanted sex. Could she let Conan think she was softening toward him? If the boys thought they weren’t going to get what they wanted from her, would that bring back the bride hunt? Thirteen girls grabbed and it had taken at least nine months, possibly longer. She was gauging results by the two pregnancies, so her data could be flawed. But if she was correct, that was a bit more than a bride a month and she’d been in camp one night—give or take how long she was out and the travel time between where she went down and here. She might not be able to get them to go hunting for some time.

  Though Bana had said something about a lack of time when they’d thought Doc was still out. Was there a ticking clock? If there were, it would help her more than it would them.

  Her attention shifted to the brides. How much force had been applied to achieve their compliance? They might be content with their lot or suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Doc slid deeper into detachment as her thoughts went further along this path. It was reasonable to assume there would be a tipping point where Conan would force the issue. She knew the mechanics, so didn’t dwell on that. Marriage appeared to be the goal. Naming was important, but what would he do if she refused to give her name? Would it matter? She couldn’t get pregnant—at least not for several months, but there were signs they could be patient, when they had to be.

  Of the three men, Conan was the most unpredictable. If she toyed with his libido, she might get more than she could control. His expectations were murky, as well. It was obvious they wanted women, and that sex was part of that want, but their overall purpose was unclear. Why choose this course of action? If one were looking for the biddable and downtrodden, they’d come to the right place. But if downtrodden was the goal, then why did it appear part of Bana’s job was to enlighten the men on how to treat the brides?

  If one of them got impatient or seemed unkind to his bride, she was on him in a flash. And these big, tough men subsided at a word from her, even the nasty Conan backed down after two or three words from her. All of them were careful of the pregnant women. Doc assumed this meant they needed children, as well as women. But again, why choose this way to deal with it?

  Doc sighed silently. The brides were so freaking young. Even a geek didn’t like feeling old and neither did she. What had possessed them to bring her here? Her biological clock wasn’t frantic yet, but it was getting pissy. It hadn’t figured out that she had no intention of having a child.

  Don’t let them get you, Del.

  Her parents had wanted a couple of geniuses and that’s what they’d gotten, but they’d also gotten a freak and whack job. No, she would never have a child.

  She might suspect they’d targeted her because of her association with the Earth expedition, but they didn’t act like they expected her to know anything except her name. They could be trying to lull her into a false sense of security, but they appeared to have a point-shoot-and-take mentality. They thought they were being devious about their ship, but there was a big difference between thinking you were devious and actually being devious.

  She needed more information, but the brides were s
kittish and unhappy despite Bana’s “support.” They had no clue how much power they had over the grooms, because no one had broken down the sexual math for them. A little girl bride rebellion would build the boys’ character faster and better than Bana’s etiquette lessons. Doc smiled to herself. She may not know much about sex, but she was great at math.

  “Why do you smile like that?”

  His fascination with her colored his voice, while his expression retained its rock-like impassivity. She fell forward, doing a complete flip in mid-air and landing on her feet in front of him.

  “If you return me to my people, they might be willing to help you with your problem.”

  His eyes narrowed. “We have no problem.”

  “You have so many problems, it’s embarrassing.”

  His hands fisted at his sides. “You know nothing about us, woman.”

  His gaze bored into her but she gave no ground, waited a ten count, then arched her brows. Fire flamed in his eyes. She’d gone too far. He was going to hit her. She shifted body alignment, prepared to take him on. The moment wasn’t optimal, but she could work with what was. She always did.

  * * * * *

  This was his flagship and everyone on board should be loyal, if not to him, then to the position of Leader. Hel was learning, though, that what should be and what was could be quite different. It would be a relief to disappear for a while. He’d chosen to board his flagship because he was expected to stay out of sight and let the ship’s commander command. He could board his Ojemba ship and, using the phase cloak, leave without being seen. He would remain in constant contact with this ship and his people on the home planet, but it would appear he was secluded in his quarters, as was both proper and expected.

  But first he needed to do something about Carig. He couldn’t be allowed to run around making problems for Hel while Hel cruised the galaxy making problems for the General. One thing he’d perfected during his time leading the Ojemba was how to make people disappear.

  He also had the issue of the two rebellious ships’ commanders to deal with. He wasn’t ready for an open confrontation with them, and he suspected they weren’t ready for that either. He was supposed to contact them and ask why they hadn’t moved. Then they would explain they had information of a threat on the Leader’s life and had stayed to act as escort to the Kikk outpost. It was so predictable, it was boring. While he was glad the Dusan had been defeated, he missed the mental cut and thrust of those times.