Chara snorted. “I doubt it. People advanced enough to Jump an entire ship three hundred years into the past would have better means of shielding than simple mass. No, I think these readings are an illusion. According to the expeditionary force’s files, the Sela are certainly capable of such.”
He recoiled, his crimson eyes dilating in horror. “They interfere with our minds?”
She made no answer, too busy running her hands over the ridges and swirls of the bulkhead. Just prior to this mission, Chara had downloaded an EDI that contained every bit of data the ill-fated expeditionary force had collected on the Sela before being suborned into heresy.
“I think I recognize this pattern of indentations,” she told the monk as she pressed her fingers into them. Two of the marks, however, remained beyond her reach. She growled in frustration. “Curse it, their anatomy is too different; I can’t trigger them by myself. Ralit, put your fingers there and there.”
Reluctantly, the monk placed thumb and pinkie where she indicated and pressed in at her nod.
The bulkhead slid aside, revealing a vast, echoing space filled with row after row of glowing golden eggs, each bigger than a man. Chara smiled in satisfaction. “The crew.”
For a moment, music seemed to fill the air, heard not so much with the ear as in the heart, in the very pump of the blood. Heaven’s own aria, sweet and slow and soft. She drew in a breath in pure wonder.
Then the music was gone. Or had she imagined it?
Apparently not. Ralit’s hand fell to his shard pistol again, a profound fear in his eyes. “Unnatural!” he hissed.
Chara advanced toward the nearest of the eggs, trailed by her swarm of sensor globes. Through its translucent shell, she could see its occupant, six-legged and richly furred, lying curled and still. She contemplated the data. “They seem to be in some kind of travel sleep.”
“Make one of them tell you where the T’lir is,” the monk growled, following at a cautious distance. “Then we’ll blow this whole cursed vessel and everything in it.”
Chara bit back an instinctive protest at the waste. To Ralit, the Sela were not vastly advanced beings, but a proven danger to the faithful. Hadn’t they seduced an entire expeditionary force into turning their backs on the Victor? If not for the enticing possibilities offered by the T’lir, the Cathedral Fortress would have ordered the Sela’s home world burned to bare rock.
Chara shrugged. Well, waste or not, she had a job to do. The Victor knew this wasn’t the first mission to fill her with distaste.
She contemplated the egg, trying to work out how to open it. After a moment, she found the correct position of fingers in indentations, and the whole thing swung open like a clamshell, sighing softly.
The alien within it stirred and lifted its silken head. Enormous eyes blinked open and met hers.
Chara inhaled sharply. She had never met such a gaze in her life, so wise, so compassionate. There was sadness there, and understanding, and—
Forgiveness?
“Use your probe on it,” Ralit snapped. “The pain will make it spill its secrets quickly enough.”
Chara shot him a revolted glance. He wasn’t even looking at her, his gaze instead focused on the alien, his upper lip drawn up in an expression that was half snarl, half grin. A dark, horrific excitement filled his eyes, almost sexual in its anticipation.
He really did remind her of her father.
What am I doing? The thought stabbed through Chara’s heart like a blade. It had the raw force of a question she’d hidden from herself for years. Decades. Why am I playing any part at all in this perversion?
She looked back at the alien. It lay in its egg, watching her quietly, as if waiting for her decision.
“The probe,” Ralit demanded again, licking his lips. “Use the probe.”
You want it tortured, you torture it. The words hovered on the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t bother to utter them. Ralit would be afraid to touch the alien for fear its heresy would contaminate him.
And because he didn’t trust Chara, weak woman that she was, so lacking in Warrior virtues. What would she do while he was . . . distracted?
“Ah, child,” a voice said in her thoughts. To her astonishment, it sounded female, though power rang in every rolling mental syllable. “What have your people done to you?”
“Torn me asunder.” The thought flashed through her, more a product of the heart than the mind. And all the more true for it.
“Yes,” the voice replied. “I see that.”
Chara found herself reaching toward the alien’s muzzle, driven to discover if its fur was as soft as it looked.
“No!” Ralit barked. “Do not touch it! It will contaminate thy thoughts with heresy!”
Too late. Her fingers had already met that honey-gold fur, thick and impossibly soft. But there was more in that instant of contact, so much more Chara’s mind vibrated like a silver bell.
There was power.
She caught her breath as the creature’s consciousness flooded hers. Its mind was unimaginably ancient, radiating peace and understanding. There was no judgment in the Sela’s thoughts, no condemnation for Chara’s failures, no sense that her softness made her unworthy of life.
Vanja, Chara thought in wonder. She calls herself Vanja.
And in a moment, Ralit would force Chara to take the probe off her belt and bury it in this exquisitely soft fur. She’d have to watch the Sela writhe and scream as the air filled with the stench of burning flesh. Until Vanja broke under the pain and betrayed her people and herself—and gave the Sela’s greatest secret to the Xeran Empire.
Which would use it to plunge the galaxy into war.
But if Chara did not do these things . . .
“Your people will kill you if you try to save us,” Vanja warned in that soft mental voice.
“I will not tell you again, Chara—draw your probe.” Ralit stepped closer, his eyes cold, demanding, his hand on his holstered shard pistol. “And do your job.”
Fear shot through Chara under his icy stare. Her father had looked at her the same way before every session of “instruction. ” She reached for the probe.
Instead, her hand found the shard pistol next to it. In one smooth motion, she drew the weapon and shot Ralit in the chest. The spray of metal shards took him full on, echoed in reverse by a spray of bright heart’s blood. For one shocked instant as he fell to the deck, Chara was reminded of a crimson flower.
Her sensor globes scattered like frightened birds. Off to report the murder to her superiors, no doubt.
Coolly, Chara pivoted and shot them out of the air. They hit the deck with a chorus of tiny pings. She turned back to the monk.
Looking down into his astonished, blood-flecked face, she realized it had never occurred to him that she’d find the courage to kill him.
“Oh, child,” Vanja said softly. “What have you done?”
“Something that’s needed doing for a very long time.” Weapon drawn, a cold, lethal determination in her heart, Chara went to find the rest of the boarding team.
Her father’s training had made her a very efficient killer.
Jess jerked awake staring at the ceiling, her heart pounding in hard, desperate thumps. Shivering in reaction, she rolled out of Galar’s wide bunk and staggered through the doorway that led to the bathroom.
As she splashed a handful of water into her face, Galar stepped into the doorway. “You okay?” He leaned a shoulder against the door frame, studying her with concern. “Another nightmare?”
“Yeah.” She straightened and ran her wet hands over her face. “But it didn’t seem like a dream. It was more . . . logical. More real. Like a memory. Chara’s memory.”
“Chara?”
“Charlotte. Chara va Hol is her Xeran name.” Jess grimaced. “Or at least, it was in my dream.”
“Tell me.”
As they dressed, she did. “Do you think there’s any truth to it?” Jess asked, as she pulled on a tunic and leggings, bot
h of which felt silken against her skin. The rich royal blue fabric shimmered like a gemstone as she sat on the bed to tug on the matching boots.
Galar frowned as he sat beside her. “I suppose it’s possible. Could be she slipped you a memory bead.”
This, Jess’s EDI told her, was a nanobot drug capsule that held a recording of someone else’s memories. You smeared it over the skin, much as you did with an EDI.
“I don’t remember her touching me like that.” Jess reconsidered, then shrugged. “Though I guess she could have done it when I was asleep.”
“But that still doesn’t account for my readings,” Galar pointed out. “Charlotte scanned as completely human. I don’t see how she could have faked that.”
“It was probably just a nightmare.”
“Probably.”
She just wished she could believe that.
Galar lay sprawled on the couch in glorious nudity, posing as Jess put the final touches on the painting of him.
The door opened behind her and a hearty voice called, “Hey, Master Enforcer!”
Jess cursed as her brush slipped, leaving a crimson streak across the canvas. She turned to glare as the big redheaded Enforcer sauntered into the room.
A twenty-first-century male would have scrambled to cover himself. Galar only looked around calmly, completely comfortable in his nudity. “Yes?”
“Dona and I have been working the Marcin case,” Ivar told him as Jess worked to repair the damage to her painting. “We were doing a scan on incident reports when we found an interesting lead. We think we know where to find him.”
Irritably, Jessica wondered why they were poking their collective noses in Galar’s case, then remembered he’d said Dyami had assigned the two to find the assassin.
The redhead shot him a grin. “I was wondering if you wanted to be in on the takedown.”
Galar considered the idea, obviously tempted, then shook his head. “I can’t leave Jessica unprotected.”
“So get somebody else to guard her for a couple of hours. We could really use you on the team.”
He hesitated a long moment. “I suppose I could ask Wulf. I was thinking about asking him to give her a hand-to-hand combat lesson anyway. He’s a good teacher. And he’s the only Enforcer I know who could singlehandedly wipe up the floor with a battleborg.” Galar returned his attention to Ivar. “Tell me what you’re planning for the Xeran.”
Jessica listened absently as she put the finishing touches on the painting’s background. As Ivar spoke, she began to frown. It seemed the Enforcer had found a police report of a bald man with steel horns protruding from his head, running down a residential street. The cop obviously thought the drunk who’d done the reporting wasn’t all that reliable a source, but the Enforcers knew differently.
“That does sound like Marcin.” Galar, too, frowned, obviously just as uncomfortable with the scenario as she was. “But why would he run around in public without even using a camo field? He’d have to know he’d stand a good chance of some temporal native spotting him and leaving a report for us to find.”
Jessica looked around the edge of her canvas. “It’s a trap.”
“Obviously.” Ivar gave her a feral smile. “So we’re going to trap the trappers with the best team we can put together.” He nodded at Galar. “Which is why I was hoping you’d be able to join us. You’re damn good in a fight.”
“Thanks.” Galar gave him a dry look, then shook his head. “Still, I’m not sure I like this plan of yours. There are too many unknowns. We could all end up shooting straight into the Seven Hells.”
“I’m well aware of that, and I don’t like it either.” The big man spread his ham-sized hands. “Unfortunately, it also may be the best chance we’re going to get to take Marcin down.”
“I would be a lot happier with that battleborg out of the picture.”
“But even if you do get him, what’s to stop them from sending another assassin?” Jess asked.
“Nothing.” Galar shrugged. “But Marcin is one of the most dangerous agents they’ve got. Odds are, his replacement won’t be quite as deadly as he is.”
“That’s assuming the Xeran military is involved, which we haven’t established,” Ivar pointed out. “He could be doing this on his own for all we know.”
“It’s possible, but I tend to doubt it.” He ran a thumb over his lower lip. “Then again, if we capture Marcin, we’ll have a better chance of finding out what the hell is going on.” He considered the question for a long moment, then clapped Ivar on the back. “All right, you convinced me. I’m in.”
Jessica frowned at her canvas, wondering why her instincts were clamoring a warning.
Because Galar had no intention of letting Jess out of his sight, she found herself sitting in on the planning session for the Marcin mission.
Ivar had assembled a team of ten Enforcers around the massive gleaming conference table. Besides himself, Dona Astryr, and Galar, the rest of the team included Riane and Frieka; a married couple, Jiri and Ando Cadell; a brawny, grim-faced black agent named Peter Brannon; and Tonn “Bear” Eso, the biggest human being Jess had ever seen.
Eso was over seven feet tall, a hulking blond who had to duck when he entered the room. He would have looked intimidating if not for the constant grin he wore, as if he were always thinking of his next joke.
They all listened attentively as Ivar explained the basis of his plan, the reported Marcin sighting. No sooner had he finished describing the incident than Frieka’s jaws gaped in a lupine grin from his seat next to his human partner. “Okay, people, all together now. One, two, three . . .”
“It’s a trap!” the Enforcers chorused, and broke into laughter.
Ivar shot them all a glare. “Funny. Yes, we know it’s a trap. But we don’t intend to be caught.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Jiri Cadell quipped, rolling her eyes. Her husband elbowed her. She grinned and poked him back.
Peter Brannon scowled fiercely. “How stupid do these Xerans think we are?”
“Stupid enough to send only three or four agents to arrest Marcin, instead of the ten we’re actually going to send,” Galar told him.
Jess frowned, voicing the thought that had been bothering her since she’d walked into the room. “Is ten going to be enough?”
“If we try to send more than that, we’d produce a huge temporal energy spike the Xerans would be able to detect all the way to the present,” Galar explained. “But the reverse is also true. Our sensors aren’t detecting a spike of Xeran Jump energies at those temporal coordinates either, which suggests they don’t have a large party there.”
Jess frowned. “But what if they Jumped several groups of ten in earlier and had them wait to ambush you?”
“We’ll pop a courier to the Outpost and give a good hearty yell for help,” Galar told her.
“At which point Dyami, who’ll be waiting with a backup team, will Jump in and save our collective asses,” Ivar added.
“What about the local cops?” Jess asked as a new thought occurred to her. “All those people Jumping in will sound like World War Three. You’re going to be butt-deep in law enforcement.”
Galar shook his head. “No, because modern T-suits generate a dampening field beyond a certain radius. Nobody can see or hear a Jump beyond twenty meters or so.”
“So why not get rid of the boom and the light altogether?” Jess asked, interested.
“The engineers did try that,” Galar told her. “Unfortunately, there’s a lot of energy liberated in a Jump. They discovered that if they tried to eliminate the effects completely, the forces reflect off the suppression field and squash the Jumper like a bug.”
Jess wrinkled her nose. “Ewwww.”
“Speaking of killing people, how are we going to take out Marcin?” Ando Cadell asked.
Galar gestured, calling up a trid image of what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary twenty-first-century neighborhood, lined with narrow brick ranch houses and small two
-bedroom wood frame houses. “I used photos from the time in question to create this trid.” A computer-generated image of Marcin appeared, dashing down the street. He looked as real as the photographed houses.
“This is the path we believe the battleborg will follow, based on the incident report,” Galar continued. “We’re going to break into five teams of two in order to create a perimeter and take him down. Ando and Jiri, I want you two here.” He waved, and the image switched to an overhead view. A second gesture created a red dot in the location he pointed out.
One by one, he gave the teams their assignments, making sure they were ready for any trap the Xerans tried to spring.
As Jess watched, the Enforcers settled in to plan in earnest. She found herself relaxing. It certainly seemed Galar had things under control.
An hour after the meeting broke up, Ivar leaned a shoulder against the wall of the gym to watch Wulf spar with the combot. Normally the big man fought in a blur of motion and power, using all the great bull strength of a high-grav native. Today he swung with only a fraction of that power, his movements slow and deliberately clumsy.
“What in the Seven Hells are you doing?” Ivar called, though he knew perfectly well.
Wulf ducked the combot’s return swing and shot him a look. “Galar’s asked me to give his primitive combat lessons while I play bodyguard. I’m trying to make sure this damned combot won’t kill her.”
It was a legitimate concern. The ’bot Wulf had chosen was built along the typical dimensions of a battleborg. Two meters tall, it looked just like a massively muscled human, and it was programmed to respond as one when you hit it.
Ivar had sparred with it a few times himself; it had a punch like the kick of a soji dragon. If it cut loose against the primitive at full strength, it would kill her.
The ’bot took another swing at Wulf, a fraction too hard, a fraction too fast. He ducked. “Cease!”
It froze in mid-move. Wulf straightened and stared at it in silence for a long moment. Probably using his computer to readjust its programming.
“Again,” the big man ordered at last.
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