“I know the feeling.” Doc knew she sounded like a sulky six year old—an unfamiliar sensation.
No one said anything more until they reached the General’s ready room. Their arrival coincided with Conan’s return to his ship. Doc stared at the tracking screen.
“He thinks we don’t know about the other ships.” There ought to be a way to use that. Her brain and her peeps began sifting through possibilities.
“Doc.” This through gritted teeth.
She looked up. “Sir?”
“What makes you believe it was Smith who contaminated their society? We have evidence it was you.”
“From a guy flying in a ship designed by Smith.”
“You’ve seen his design specs.”
“A cursory look. It would take more than some vague knowledge of his design to make those ships happen.” Given enough time she might be able to come up with an FTL—faster-than-light—drive, but ships were about more than drives and design. There was plumbing and air filtration and weapons and material. There were tons of things she’d never needed to know that she’d need to know to design and manufacture a ship. She could multitask, but build ships and start a war? She dedicated half a thought stream to the idea and had to admit it wasn’t totally outside the realm of her possibility. Enough of a long shot she felt comfortable not admitting it, though.
“You’ve taken more than a cursory look in the last few days. As much as it pains me to say this, you haven’t gone there yet.”
It did look like it hurt him to say that. And what she had to say wasn’t going to help that.
“I’m not the person who contaminated their society.” He opened his mouth, probably to scream, so she rushed into an explanation, though she was pretty sure it wouldn’t explain anything. “If I did go there, I’m a different version of me than the one they met. Or will meet.”
His mouth worked for a few seconds. “And you know this how?”
“Well, for one thing, this version of me met Conan. If he’d met me before, he’d have remembered me, so it was a first for him, too. And if I’m the reason they came here, then meeting me, capturing me, has already resulted in an altered me. Even knowing I went to Keltinar and started a war makes me a different me from that me. If I were to go there now, it would create a reality different from this one. Not that I plan to go. Sir.”
The General stared her for what felt like a long time. “I should have retired, but no, I had to make this trip one last time.”
At least he didn’t shoot her. Of course there was still time for that. Neither Briggs nor Hel dared look amused, though Doc sensed they were. Briggs could afford to be amused. He didn’t have to figure it out. Hel just had a dark sense of humor. It was another reason she liked him.
Halliwell took a breath that might be meant to be calming. “What the hell did you just say?”
“You need to understand, sir, that all I have are theories of how time works, and how it might be changed. No one I know has traveled through time.” She frowned. “Well, except me, but since I haven’t done it yet, technically, I still don’t know anyone who’s done it. And I’m still not sure I did it.” Okay, that didn’t come out quite the way she’d wanted.
Her peeps and her thoughts circled what they knew. It didn’t help that much. There was a chicken or the egg problem with the set up, no question. Though, just because Conan hadn’t mentioned Smith, didn’t mean they hadn’t met at some point. There was no way to know what impact their separate trips through the portal had made on the present reality. It was even possible that they’d both traveled through the portal, but not met. Time could have split into divergent realities. There was no way to know.
She rubbed between her brows as her peeps helped her organize her thoughts. Once again, it sounded better inside her head than out loud.
The General blinked. Maybe that’s all he could manage.
What bothered Doc the most, she realized, was Smith’s notes on who could help solve the problem. That act took on a more sinister cast, with this new twist. Had time split, merged or become…fluid? Could opposing goals make time lose cohesion? She and time did have an uneasy relationship. Was it possible it was a side effect of time becoming unstable as different…forces…sought to fix it?
“I can only theorize, sir, but Conan is here on a ship that Smith designed and he’s looking for me.” His eye twitched. Doc’s did, too. “Maybe we can exist in disparate realities because time is fluxing, and it will remain that way until the disparities are resolved.” Now he looked at her like she was crazy. Also fair. She felt a bit crazy. “Maybe I have to go through the portal and stop him from going through and stop someone from sending me through to make time gel again.”
“If you transport to the outpost, Vidor Shan will attack,” Briggs pointed out. “He has the ability to destroy the outpost before you can go through the portal.”
Hel shifted in his chair, then leaned forward. “What if you don’t go down, don’t go through the portal? Won’t that change the past? Change him and his ships?”
“That changes my part of our time problem, not Smith’s. He still goes through, he arms Conan and sends them here.” It was hard to argue a point that wasn’t scientifically sound. And sounded totally nuts. “I think it’s like a leak. We have to plug it in both places.”
“First time is Jell-O and now it’s a faucet?” Doc might have made a face. The General rubbed his face. “And you think this will work?”
Doc shrugged. “I hope it will work. I refer you to my previous statement about the difficulty inherent in doing the impossible or knowing the unknowable.”
“Didn’t work last time,” Briggs pointed out. “Someone got the drop on you and booted you to another galaxy. How do you know it will be different this time?”
“Because I’m not the same person. That’s the problem with trying to game time, if that’s what someone is trying to do. There are always variations. Like me meeting Conan.”
“But how can you be sure you’re a different you?” the General asked with another eye twitch.
“If I had nanites when I went through that portal, I would have won that war and come home.”
Damn straight.
When had her nanites learned to swear? She didn’t ask where. She knew that. When this was over, she needed to find out how sentient they were.
“That would be the war you didn’t start?” Briggs arched a brow again. He was almost as creepy as she was when he wanted to be.
Halliwell rubbed his face again. “This is what you meant, isn’t it? This is a time paradox?” Doc nodded. “No wonder no one likes them.” He rubbed his head again. “So how do we get you to the outpost without starting another war?”
* * * * *
The General had detained Hel to threaten him with dire things if he misbehaved while on the Outpost, taking long enough that Hel was able to watch Delilah unobserved for several moments as she geared up once again. He liked her like this, liked the dangerous aura that she donned with her clothing and weapons. Liked the change in the way she moved. He’d always liked danger and dangerous creatures—which made him wonder why had he gone into politics? The reasons were getting harder and harder to remember.
She wore headphones connected to something call an iPod. Their president had sent him one of these as a gift. Hers seemed to be loaded with more interesting content than his. She swayed, as if to music, as she strapped various-sized holsters to various parts of her body. She picked up two of their pulse weapons, spun them several times, then tucked them into slots high on her waist. Two projectile weapons went into holsters riding low on her hips. A larger, longer weapon got slung across her back. A smaller P-90 got hooked to a clip on her vest. She added magazines for her projectile weapons to pockets. Food and water packets also went into other pockets.
“Can you still move with so much armament?” he asked, half-amused, half-fascinated. She didn’t hear him, so he stepped closer and she spun to face him, yanking the plugs fro
m her ears.
“Sorry. The music pumps me up, gets me locked and loaded.”
“You can move,” he gestured with his hands, not sure how to describe her gear.
Her grin was a bit crooked. “Not much slows me down.” She pulled on a rigid hat, with an odd-shaped projectile coming out of the side and what looked like eye protection that could be lowered. She strapped it under her chin. “I don’t always go in quite this geared up—on the surface.”
Hel recalled the pile of hidden weapons she’d removed on his ship and wondered again how she could take a single step.
“It does not inhibit your flexibility?” The word was unfortunate. It conjured up thoughts of other places where flexibility was useful.
She grinned, as if she sensed his thoughts. “Hopefully, you won’t have to be surprised by what I can do like this and with this.”
His attention sharpened. “You play a mind game, too?”
“I can think of three reasons why Smith didn’t outright ask for me in his memo on how to rescue him. He didn’t want to be that obvious. He didn’t dare ask for Chameleon because he wasn’t supposed to know it, or—”
“He did not know who you are,” Hel provided the second. “Could this be an attempt to expose the Chameleon?”
Doc shrugged. “It could be a lot of things. If someone is trying to get at the Chameleon, this has got to be the most convoluted and clumsy attempt ever. Now if they wanted to mess up Keltinar, it looks like I was a good choice. Though Smith seems to have played a part in that as well. His part could have been an accident. We know what happened to me wasn’t.”
Hel considered her words and came back to, “I still do not understand the gear. Would it not be better to be more covert?”
“I thought about that, but if they do know about Chameleon, they’d expect covert. I figure freaking scary might throw them off their game, confuse the issue a bit. If they did take me out as I came through the portal, all I need is for them to hesitate for a second, and I get them instead.”
He could not help but enjoy the way her mind worked. “You would have been an excellent Ojemba.”
Her brows arched. “A girl in your Ojemba? I’m shocked.” But her grin was pleased.
So he would not grab her and kiss her, he addressed his other concern. “You believe your nanites will be able to fool his scanner into believing you are still aboard this ship?”
“I hope so. But just in case the illusion isn’t perfect, the distraction might help.”
The General had almost had a heart attack when she’d suggested bringing Vidor Shan back aboard to meet some possible wives for his two men. She’d also proposed the General invite the prospective husbands aboard. Her mind was as quick and devious as a Gadi. He liked that about her, too.
“But they aren’t here,” the General had said, when he got his voice back.
“He thinks we don’t know that,” Delilah had pointed out. “It will put him on the defensive. Point out that it isn’t reasonable to expect any women to volunteer for this duty without meeting the men in question. Keep pushing. Keep him off balance. Give us time. If we can unlock the outpost’s shields and defenses, we change the board, the game. He thinks he’s got us boxed in. He needs to realize we’re not that easily boxed.”
“How superior are his weapons?”
Hel was coming to recognize the look on her face when she was communicating with her nanites. She’d frowned.
“Just enough to beat us.”
“Does the locked tech put us ahead?”
She’d shaken her head. “If we bring the ships online, can get them manned, we’ll be evenly matched. Without them, he has the edge in numbers.”
“But he’d have to bring his ships here. It gives you time. Gives us time.”
Her smile had been a bit crooked. “Too much time and too little. Did I mention I hate irony as much as time paradoxes?”
The General had lost his ability to be amused by this. Imminent destruction did that to some people, Hel knew.
“He’ll want to see you if he does come back aboard,” Hel pointed out now.
“He won’t be surprised if I refuse to see him before I have to. And not getting what he wants will be good for his character.” She stowed the last magazine and turned.
“How will you know the illusion is successful? That his ship is no longer tracking you?”
“When Conan doesn’t open fire?” She grinned. “My nanites will give me a heads up.”
“Could the nanites disable his ship, if you could get them on board?”
She tipped her head to the side for a long moment. “Not in time. There are technical incompatibilities to work through.”
“Incompatibilities?”
“His technology is from another galaxy. The nanites are programmed to learn, to bridge those types of gaps. One reason they were designed was for first contact situations, for travel through the portal, but it takes time for them to learn to talk to alien tech, and they won’t know how much time until they are onboard.”
She turned toward the door leading out into the hall, but he stopped her with a hand to her shoulder.
“I wish you did not have to go through. It feels…personal.”
“His scientist shopping list was pretty detailed in my direction,” she admitted, “but if someone wanted to take me out, a bullet is a lot quicker and more permanent than messing with the space-time continuum.” Her lips pursed, her brow furrowed. “In a way, someone did kill me. Sending me into the past was a death sentence of sorts. But I wasn’t the only victim. If this were a mystery, we have the means and method, but no clear motive for a move on me, Smith, or Keltinar.”
Did she know she rubbed between her brows when her mulling went deep?
“Their world got pretty messed over with the war and all—which I still don’t think I started. There’s evidence their girl population got dramatically reduced and who knows what else happened because of the intrusion. The butterfly effect.”
Hel frowned. “I do not understand.”
She created a HUD with a small creature with delicately fluttering wings.
“There is one theory that says this insect’s wings fluttering can impact time. If that’s true, dropping a whole human into a world could do a lot of damage.”
Meeting Delilah had changed him, changed his world. There were things he thought would never change, wants he would always have. Now he was not so sure.
“We don’t know that Smith wasn’t a victim, too. We don’t know who tampered with the portal settings yet. It could be someone from the future, which makes my head hurt thinking about that. Regardless, all roads lead to the portal. And that means we need to unlock the outpost and I need to go take a look. Conan’s clock is ticking again. Before it hits zero, we need to be able to protect the outpost. It’s my way home again.”
“I should go with you. You should not go alone. Again.”
“That’s sweet, but not a good idea. I can’t even imagine what would happen if you accidentally got stuck someplace where another you existed.”
She had succeeded in doing something none of her people had done before: she’d made his head ache. “You should not go alone,” he insisted.
“I’m always alone. I’m used to it.”
That made his heart hurt worse than his head. He smiled and nodded, but knew he’d find a way. She was not going through alone. Not this time. Not ever again.
* * * * *
Doc had been worried about transporting among members of the expedition, but her peeps took them to another destination. They ended up in a room no one knew existed. It looked a lot like the other spaces they’d explored on the various outposts, but this one had a circle marked out in the center of the room. All kinds of tech consoles circled it. She couldn’t see a door anywhere, which would explain why their people hadn’t found it. The peeps did their equivalent of a dance of joy at being in this place. The data transfer rate spiked again, but they knew her limits better. No pa
in this time. They also knew her mission brief and could answer questions she hadn’t asked or thought to ask. Some of the concepts still baffled her, but she had a feeling if she could stop and think she’d get there. Stopping wasn’t on her agenda at the moment, though.
If clocks still ticked, then they’d be ticking like crazy right now.
“You need to stand in that circle and be scanned,” she said. Hel looked so good, it made it hard to keep her mind on the problem at hand, well, that part of her mind dealing with her feelings. She could still compartmentalize, but it felt odd, thinking and feeling.
He strode into the circle without hesitation. He had some brass ones, when neither of them knew what would happen next. Without warning, beams of light came down from the ceiling, hitting the edges of the marked out circle. The lights changed color several times and then stopped.
Hel looked a bit bemused.
“Are you all right?”
He patted himself, seemed reassured to find all of him still there. “I seem to be.”
“Are you in?”
“I believe so.” He flexed his fingers and Doc saw his skin flicker with beads of light. Did he know he’d picked up some peeps, too?
Before she could ask, a hologram formed at the edge of the circle.
“Welcome back, My Lord.”
Hel stared at the hologram for several seconds.
“Thank you.” Hel glanced at Doc, drawing the hologram’s attention to her.
“Welcome, Lady, to our city.”
“Thank you.” Doc gave a tentative smile, unsure about hologram protocol. “I’m glad to be here.”
“Your makeup is unfamiliar to us, but you have been integrated. How is this possible?”
Gold light flared on Doc’s skin as her peeps opened a dialogue with the hologram. She felt their questions, many of them the same as hers.
The hologram spoke again, “Only he may operate the systems.”
“I don’t know how to operate them. I wish my lady to do this.”
The hologram was silent, perhaps searching information databases. “You may assign her to control the systems if she becomes your ma’rasile. Is this your wish?”
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