“They’ve shifted into attack position.” But they hadn’t powered up weapons systems. Were they still hoping the Gadi and expedition would go at it first?
“We are too late?” Hel’s voice came from closer than she expected. Warmth bloomed along her back.
“Not yet, but you’ll need to attack soon.”
“Attack?” His hand on her shoulder turned her to face him. “I thought we were to be allies again?”
Doc waited. Her Hel would get it without the long explanation. He had a wonderfully devious mind. What did this man have?
“We are to pretend to attack as a diversion?”
She couldn’t stop the smile any more than she could stop breathing.
“If you start moving your fleet into attack position, that will give us time to deploy small phase cloaked ships, each with a small attack force. We plan to board and neutralize their weapons.” If she and her peeps could figure out how do to that in time. She’d be an attack force of one and would go in ahead of the others. Halliwell had wanted her to target any ship but Conan’s, but Doc didn’t dare. They didn’t know how automated their systems were. It was possible he had override authority. And it was always good strategy to go after the top of the command structure.
“You are going on one of these ships.”
She looked at him. “If we can’t stop Conan, we’ll die anyway.”
“You plan to go alone. I will go with you. I will catch your six.” His smile was wry, a bit crooked for a guy so into perfection.
She’d been hoping he’d say that, though him going with her onto Conan’s ship wasn’t part of her plan. “And who will mind this store while you’re gone?”
“This ship, all our ships have commanders. They will follow my orders, once they learn Glarmere has brought Dusan mercenaries aboard the Gadi flag ship.”
“I don’t have time to wait—” Before she finished, his crew began to flood the room. They checked at the sight of the Dusan, their pretty faces unexpectedly grim. The one in the prettiest uniform and with a decided air of command approached Hel.
“Leader. I am pleased to see you are well.” His gaze flicked toward Doc, but did not stay there. In addition to pretty, the Gadi were polite.
“You will wait while I brief my commanders.” Hel had no problem looking at her, she saw. Just in case she was inclined to protest, he added, “You cannot move freely through this ship without me.”
She could, she already had, but she didn’t tell him that.
Chapter Twenty-two
Hel angled in the co-pilot seat so he could see his ma’rasile. Her skin was smooth and pale, her features flawless. She was younger than he’d first thought and beautiful, despite her military wear. The thick, dark braid hung almost to her hips. When he’d pinned her to his bed, she’d smelled uniquely female, the scent enticing to a man long focused on everything but a woman. Had he thought he would not want her? His temporary detainment must have clouded his judgment. She’d gone quiet since they boarded her ship—he looked around—a Garradian ship that should belong to the Gadi.
“You remember our bonding.”
Her perfect lips tightened into a perfect pout. The look she slanted at him was her only response. He began to object, but saw their course. “We are not returning to the Doolittle?”
“Not enough time for detours.”
He wanted her to look at him. She did not wish to look at him. What did she seek to hide? There were other ways to find out. He watched her closely as he said, “The General wishes me to go with you to the outpost?”
Her lashes flickered. She made some adjustment to ship’s controls.
“He ordered you not to tell me what you know.”
She kicked up the speed of their descent toward Kikk, the edges of her mouth almost curving up until she stopped them.
“He forgot to say something about not showing me the outpost.”
She laughed now, the sound a soft caress across his skin. It had more than humor in it. He felt their connection, something beyond the ma’rasile.
“I have a knack for finding loopholes when it’s an operational necessity,” she admitted.
The ship slowed now, moving into a high orbit above the planet. She adjusted the controls and turned to face him.
“You are not going to land this ship?”
“We’re running out of time.” She hesitated, which was usual for her, he sensed. “I need to—there might not be time later—oh, what the foxtrot.”
She leaned in, putting her mouth against his. Fire surged into his veins at the contact, his memory kicking against the closed door. He knew this. He knew her. She pulled back, breaking the contact. He reached for her.
“Good-bye, Hel. And good luck.” She hit something on the panel, and he felt transport grab him.
“No—” The light surrounded him, enclosed him and when it receded, he stood alone in a stone lined room somewhere in the Kikk outpost.
He should have felt triumph. Instead he felt empty. Delilah.
* * * * *
Doc knew when she dropped the cloak to transport Hel, Conan’s systems would see the tagging compound and he’d go for her like a barbarian on a bride hunt. Normally, she’d have done all she could to thwart him. Thwarting was good for his character, but they needed to talk, so thwarting would have to be back-burnered. It was no shock when he took the bait. His transport had more of a physical yank than theirs. She felt stun energy try to pierce her peep shield and fail, before she got dropped onto a transport pad on what she presumed was Conan’s ship.
She was upright before the transport wash faded, fighting the urge to pull something and shoot. She was alone in the room, though that wouldn’t last. He hadn’t yanked her here to ignore her.
The peeps dived into the ship’s guts, their curiosity a match for hers, while she studied the surface. There wasn’t a lot to see. The space was small and sterile. Lots of shiny metal and blinking lights. Not friendly. Not that a warship should be welcoming. The Doolittle could do big and bad when necessary, but it gave off pragmatic vibes, lived solidly in the functional zone. This place had a seriously hostile thing going, like a gangbanger strutting his stuff outside his hood.
She didn’t recognize the writing on the single control station and the data streams flowing across several screens didn’t match anything in the Garradian database that the peeps had downloaded into the unused parts of her brain. As expected, they found it alien and fascinating. They loved a challenge. No timeframe on when they’d crack the computers, but she sensed confidence. Of course, they could have caught it from her. She’d always considered overconfidence a strength, but now she wasn’t so sure.
There was an exit that had refused to open for her when she circled the room, but now it slid back with an angry hiss. It seemed even the doors had attitude. Conan stalked through it, checking at the sight of her upright and conscious. He pulled his weapon with a speed that might have impressed Wyatt Earp. She wasn’t Wyatt Earp.
The weapon was huge like his ship.
Time is persistent.
It seemed size issues were as well.
He’d changed his trader gear for a uniform that tilted toward leather and high-topped boots, but with an official spin. He looked like a cross between a pirate and an early Captain Kirk. He had the “I’m so cool even my poop smells good” walk down pat as he paced toward her, his boots hitting the metal decking in measured beats.
Doc auto-calculated the time to intercept. Helped keep her mind off wanting to kick his ass. He stopped in front of her and smiled. The nurse might have found it charming, sexy even. One of her thought streams started pondering the mysteries of sex and attraction again. On the surface, they had a lot in common. They both liked to shoot people and each other. That was almost two things in common. But not enough to get past the intergalactic differences and the fact she was in love with a guy who couldn’t remember her name.
“Doctor Clementyne.”
He just had to rub it
in, like he sensed it was a sore spot. It brought back wanting to kick his ass. “Captain. Or are you a Commander?”
“There is nothing comparable in Standard for my rank. You will have to call me by my name.”
So he still had name issues. This was the point she should think, interesting, only it wasn’t. His fierce gaze narrowed, the ping tightening like a laser on her face. A slight frown pulled his brows together. His gaze swept up and then down.
“You are a soldier?”
Her answer was half-shrug, half-nod. Hard to deny the obvious.
“But you are a doctor.”
She shrugged again.
“I require you to remove your weapons and leave them on the deck.”
He thought he had the upper hand. Not as cute on him as it had been on Hel. It went against the grain to give them up without a fight, but he wouldn’t answer questions if she took him out and if his automated ship had a dead man’s switch, well, that would be bad, too. Now was not a good time to realize just how much she wanted to shoot him for what he’d done in the other timeline. She forced her thoughts into another track so she wouldn’t give into the impulse.
She’d figured out some of what was the same between the two timelines—her wanting to shoot him—now she needed to figure out what was different. A big difference was him here and now. Why would he be here? With her and Smith gone from his past, there was no reason for Conan to come to this galaxy, not even for a girl hunt. As she’d previously noted, there were better galaxies to get girls.
That would be one of the things they needed to talk about. So she shed her visible weapons, taking her time, giving it a strip edge that darkened his gaze and hopefully scrambled his brains a bit. Doc wasn’t worried about winding him up. She was worried she didn’t have it in her to wind him up enough. He’d need to be seriously distracted if he wasn’t going to see through the war games ruse.
She watched him through half-mast lashes. So far, the flow of blood away from his head was within expected parameters. And she hadn’t flashed any skin yet. She ran the numbers. How long would it take before the Gadi would start the war games? She estimated the time it would take the teams to get to the ships and launch and then board the alien ships and take them down. No matter how she figured it, it was too long for her to keep Conan so distracted he didn’t notice it wasn’t a real war.
It left her on the high wire, juggling what she didn’t know—the peeps couldn’t connect to the Doolittle through Conan’s cloak, so she was working blind—while trying to keep him interested enough to spill his guts. She wouldn’t be working from her strengths. A pity she didn’t dare shoot him. She was much better at shooting than vamping.
When the last weapon clanked against his decking, he used his foot to shove them away from her. He urged her to back away from the pile with a wave of his big gun. He crouched and picked up her hand gun, studying it with a guy-like interest. When he looked at her, he might have been impressed. She didn’t know him well enough to be sure.
“Impressive.”
Okay, maybe she did know him well enough. She didn’t respond, not even a shrug. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what to say, it just seemed a waste of time to state the obvious.
He gestured toward the still open doorway with his gun. Looked like he wasn’t going to pat her down in this timeline either. She tried to look cowed. Wasn’t sure she succeeded. It was a tough look for someone who’d never seen a live cow. She proceeded as directed. His silence, as he followed her through echoing, empty corridors, didn’t bother her. Talking was overrated when there was so much to see.
The ship was interesting. She studied all they passed, increasing her data streams to accommodate the input. She felt a kick of memory at the sight of the octagonal hatches, added it to her other observations—no, not her memory, but something from the Garradian outpost’s database. She flipped through the files as she walked where he directed, somewhat aware of his gaze boring into her back every inch of the way.
Everything about this ship shouted, I’m a big, bad, very lethal ship. What it didn’t shout was: I’m a Keltinarian ship.
The Garradians had documented their trips through the portal, had made observations about the people and surroundings they’d observed on those journeys. It had been a long time since any Garradian had studied Conan’s world, but there was always something that a defined civilization clung to, even as they moved forward. Just like the Gadi liked pretty and the Dusan didn’t, the Keltinarians had certain design preferences that peeked out here and there, but on this ship they were overpowered by another influence. Her brain found a match: Saratarius.
The name meant less than nothing to Doc. The star map did. Saratarius was about twice as far away from the Garradian galaxy as Keltinar—in the opposite direction. How had Saratarian technology found its way to Keltinar?
* * * * *
In other circumstances Hel would have lingered on the outpost. He’d waited long enough to get here, but all he could think about was how to get to Delilah. He knew what she’d done. He knew why she’d done it. He did not like it. They were ma’rasile. They worked together now. The time she’d saved was negligible when compared to his ability to assist her. The necessity now was to get to her, to cover her six as she had covered his.
He felt the increase in capabilities as his brain made contact with the nanites, expanding his memory beyond the moment when she’d kissed him. He remembered everything from a past that hadn’t happened. His first sight of her at the party. The explosion, her caring for him, her delight with his sons and that strange game they’d played, the way it had felt to hold her, to kiss her. He rubbed at the ma’rasile mark. I’ll tell you later, she’d said. Now, when it might be too late, he heard the suppressed hurt in her voice. She hid many things, but she’d never been able to hide everything from him. They were meant to be together, belonged together, with or without the ma’rasile. He’d been slow to recognize what his instincts had told him the first time he saw her. The threat she posed had always been to his heart.
Before they’d gone through the portal that last time, she’d said she loved him. Was it possible this was that Standard word for what he felt, what he’d never expected to feel for any woman? He recalled the look in her eyes, eyes that were expressive for him and no one else. She’d come to him and he’d failed her. How could he have forgotten her when he bore the mark of their bonding? As he thought the question, his nanites provided the answer. There had not been enough of them to protect him from the effects of the time reset. They’d condensed to protect his memories of Delilah, recognizing their importance to him even before he’d known this. Delilah’s kiss, combined with unlocking the outpost had boosted the number in his system, had helped him remember everything.
He had to get to her before it was too late. She deserved to know the truth, even if she still wanted this divorce that wasn’t possible. If they were going to fail, if they were going to die, he wanted to be with her. It was strange to feel the nanites approval for his course of action. They felt alive and separate, but also part of him. He requested and received immediate transport back to the ship they’d used to travel from his flag ship. As soon as he came on board, he heard General Halliwell trying to make contact with Delilah.
He did not know Hel was the one who’d sent instructions on how to access the ships in the hidden bays. He did not know Hel had unlocked the outpost, not Delilah. He did not know it was Hel who’d requested the evacuation of the outpost. If they failed the self-destruct would destroy the outpost. He could not, he would not, allow it to fall into the hands of the enemy. It did not seem wise to disabuse the General of his misperception just before a big battle. If he were annoyed, he would be distracted. While the General did his part, Hel would help Delilah do her “impossible.”
The impossible takes a little longer.
He steered the ship onto an intercept course with the alien ship, was unsurprised he could not make contact with her outside the cloak. From
the previous timeline, he recalled using his phase cloak to breach the hull of the alien vessel. This should restore communication between them.
On tracking screens, the newly discovered ships rose like small insects from the planet surface, then fanned out to intercept the other alien ships they were not supposed to know were there. What the General didn’t know, what Hel could not tell him, was that he’d also discovered a cache of medium-sized, but powerful war ships. What they lacked in weapons, they made up for in maneuverability.
From the outpost, he’d contacted his fleet. Even now, small crews were heading to the outpost to pilot these ships. Invisible to Earth and alien ships, they’d also rise from the planet, also on intercept course with the alien vessels. He prayed they would be in time. Even with them, in a head-to-head battle with the alien vessels, the victory outlook was not certain.
An opportunity to excel, according to Delilah, Hel recalled with a slight smile. There had been a time when he’d been considered a draw a win. Not anymore. It seems he’d been infected with her unwillingness to give ground. Somewhere, while living in two different time lines, he’d started to believe the impossible was possible.
* * * * *
They stopped on the bridge. It wouldn’t have been Doc’s choice as a prisoner destination, but Conan seemed unconcerned as he did his usual stalk to a panel and activated a view screen.
“So you can observe the coming battle,” he told her.
It was very Emperor of him, even if he hadn’t seen Return of the Jedi. Was he trying to depress her? He’d tried that on Feldstar without much success, and it hadn’t had plumbing.
“Bet this ship has plumbing.”
“Plumbing?” His habitual frown deepened.
“When you’ve had to do without it, you don’t take it for granted.”
He looked at her, baffled now dominating his expression. He tried—and failed—twice before he managed, “The Gadi ships will soon be in attack position. They will open fire on your ships.”
Doc wanted to say something about his ships in position, but she wasn’t supposed to know about them. She sifted through what she wasn’t supposed to say or know, looking for something she could say to get the conversational ball rolling. She needed to know why he was here. That meant she had to interrogate him. Since he had that big gun, she’d have to use small talk. She was better with bright lights and water boards. Drugs were good, too, but his ship might not react well to her usual stuff.
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