Kicking Ashe

by Pauline Baird Jones

  Might as well have told her that her uniform made her ass look big. She gave a small sniff and studied her crater. Lines cut through it in concentric circles as if it had come in as a vortex. Not a shock, since it had felt like one before she lost consciousness. “A lot of kinetic force and heat.” Which explained her fried gear. “More than I could survive.” She might have been part of the wave that made the crater, but she wasn’t taking the blame for it.

  Shan’s other brow rose to join its fellow. “Then how did you get here?”

  She should have expected this totally obvious question, been prepared for it. Of course, there had been the tsunami ass kicking to scramble her thinking, but still. She glanced around again, as if looking for her ride. Before she could speak, she heard the crack of an explosion loud enough to get the boys’ attention off her chest. A whistle of something incoming would have dropped her to the ground, but none of them seemed concerned, so she stood her ground. The object penetrated the atmosphere, tracking across the sky, patterning nearly straight contrails in its wake. Its path seemed to be right at them. Low, so low she felt the boosted heat from it as it passed over, splitting into, or perhaps just becoming visible, as three. A pause and then the ground shuddered from multiple impacts.

  “Meteorites.” Ashe blinked, then looked at Shan. “Multiple strikes.”

  They looked odd, felt off, too.

  Not the most scientific analysis from the computer based life form, but it felt weirdly right. Which was so wrong.

  Shan half-frowned. “You are not here for the fallings?”

  “No.” Throughout the history of many worlds, there had been those who hunted space rocks, so it wasn’t that which puzzled her. It was their…mien. They looked more like, well, buccaneers than rock hunters, even space rock hunters. Since space rocks didn’t usually fight back, she had to wonder what did on this world? Not a good time to be the only one without a weapon.

  You don’t need weapons to be dangerous.

  You’re just trying to make me feel better. That it worked was beside the point.

  His gaze returned to hers. “You have not answered my question.”

  “I didn’t, did I?” She did her casual look around. “Just taking a breather. Needed a rest. A vacation.” Her smile was about as fake as it got and he knew it. “I’ll have to have a talk with my travel agent. I told him I liked rustic, but dang.” She lifted her chin at the open disbelief in his gaze. “Thought the need for accommodations was a no brainer. Sure I mentioned a beach. With cabanas.” Whatever that was.

  You should cease while you are behind.

  She ceased with another bright, fake smile. Held it through the slamming force of his narrowed gaze, though she sensed a tiny hint of confusion in there. Maybe.

  Or you are overly hopeful.

  “We’ll split up, collect the fallings and then head back to camp,” Shan directed, his hand movements dividing his crew into three groups, though his hard gaze never left her. “You will come with me.”

  Ashe was not unhappy with this, since she didn’t want to be left alone in the center of an impact crater with who knew what lurking outside it. And because she felt like she knew him, even if she actually didn’t know this Shan. Not that she was clingy or anything, just a bit…disconcerted. She nodded and his brows snapped together. Now what did I do?

  He is suspicious of your motives. Lurch didn’t sigh, but it felt implied.

  I could ask him where we are. She didn’t phrase it as a question, even though it was.

  It is better to get information than give it.

  I think he got that memo, too.

  The hardened concentric circles made steps of a sort, though it was still a steep climb for someone who’d ridden a time event into an impact crater. All the boys watched her with a shy eagerness, so she was surprised when none offered to help her up and out. In that old vid, the dwarfs had been eager to help, even if they weren’t great at it.

  On the upside, the view was good. She’d admired Shan’s backside during their previous encounter on the outpost and she saw nothing to lessen that admiration now. Lurch gave an impatient huff that would have involved rolled eyes if he’d had eyes. A pity that admiration, combined with the nasty atmospherics, made the climb a hot one. Her blown suit—with the tech offline—held everything in but her bust. She couldn’t even tug at the neckline. Didn’t want to put the boys’ IQs into the negative digits, not with seven of them already vying for the position of Dopey.

  They topped the ridge and the other two teams split off, following a track laid out by some kind of tracking device and Shan’s terse orders. Thankfully Shan paused to study his device with a frowning intensity that she suspected was more about her than any problem with the readings. It gave her a minute to catch her breath. Might be her imagination, but gravity seemed a bit more insistent on this planet. The hint of meteorite caused sulfur joined the rich scent of earth and pungent green. Heat boosted the scents and humidity thickened them to a hard-to-inhale soup. The undergrowth of the forest was thick in spots, suggesting it followed a water source. Distant mountains had left a trail of boulders sprinkled through the forest clearings.

  Lurch was an amateur geologist, so words like anticline, volcanic, and stratigraphy drifted through her mind without sticking. Since she wasn’t a geologist in any way, he could look but she was not climbing any of those bad boys if she could help it. She didn’t even have the energy to get on her high horse.

  The boy who shot her, a handsome youth—despite his Dopey vibes—gave her a shy, sweet smile. “I am Cadir.”

  “And I am Eamon,” the other one—that she’d assigned to be Happy—hastened to add. He looked enough like Cadir to be an older relative, though they both seemed painfully young.

  They are close to your own age.

  I feel three thousand seasons at least. She opened her mouth to give the standard fake name but it caught in her throat. She coughed once. It stayed stuck.

  “Ashe. I’m Ashe.” Lurch flinched. Her stomach clenched. Been too long since she’d used her real name. If the laws of time worked as their scientists said it did, the sound of her name, in her own voice should be rippling through time and space, setting off alarms somewhere. Might have pissed off Time, too. She’d noticed it had its own way of fixing out of place people and events, though Time seemed to have got it wrong this time. Of course, she might have helped.

  Beyond these concerns and if she were honest—which she could be inside her own head—she’d felt a need to say her name, to declare it not just to these two boys but also to the cosmos. She’d almost died, more than almost died, she’d almost ceased to exist. She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know when she was. But she was. She’d survived. She didn’t know if they’d won the time battle, lost it or fought it to a draw. Not even her time senses—Ashe wobbled and almost fell to her knees. Cadir said something that spun Shan around to grasp her upper arms.

  “Are you ill?” His frown might signal worry. Or not.

  Ashe licked her lips and swallowed before she managed, “I’m fine.” She wasn’t fine. Time blind. I’m time blind, Lurch. She should have noticed that sooner, but she’d had a lot to notice in a very short time.

  Your senses may have been overwhelmed by all that has happened.

  Nice of him not to mention what she had managed to notice since she opened her eyes. Her gaze strayed to the broad shoulders, then jerked back to Shan’s eyes. You can’t heal them?

  They are intuitive. I can’t fix intuitive.

  And yet he had a good handle on sarcastic. For some reason, it took the wobble out of her knees and put the stiffening back in her spine.

  “If you are unable to continue, I can escort you to our base camp.”

  He would escort her? That felt…odd. Didn’t leaders have minions to do that sort of thing? Cause he was totally the leader here. And he had the minions. Tempted by the idea, she nevertheless felt she needed to go with them to the “fallings.” They’d been
trying to break time into two realities with the disrupter, trying to funnel the tsunami into a collapsing reality, thereby saving the real reality and everyone in it. If a time wave brought her here, it was regrettably possible it could have also brought, say, another version of her. Or two. Of course, coming face to face with another Ashe might get them both shot, but… “I’m fine.” For now.

  Eamon removed a container that appeared to be a mixture of metal and fabric, pulled out a stopper. “Perhaps you are thirsty.” He looked at Ashe, but held it out to Shan.

  Before she could react, Shan took the thing, then extended it to her. Another bit of odd, but—she took a long, cool drink—the water was most welcome. She rubbed her mouth with the back of one hand. “Thank you.” She directed the words somewhere in between the two men, since they’d both helped deliver the drink. She handed it back to Shan who handed it to Eamon and found Cadir holding a brown bar in Shan’s direction.

  “You are hungry?”

  “Famished, thank you.” She added a smile, a real one, not the fake one. Shan also relayed the bar. Was he protecting his team from possible alien contamination? Surely they knew about airborne contaminants. And they were hunting space rocks. The vacuum of space didn’t decontaminate everything. With no answers—and a hollow stomach desperate to quit gnawing on itself—Ashe unwrapped the bar and studied it. Perhaps it was chocolate—no, not chocolate. She managed to hide her grimace as she chewed with a resolution lacking in an enthusiasm she did not have the energy to summon.

  “It does not taste well, but it will strengthen you,” Cadir said, his grin natural, his gaze both bright and interested—though it still tended to stray south of her face far too often.

  She didn’t remember the dwarfs studying Snow White’s cleavage, but they had been shorter. Ashe managed a half smile. Hard to be perky chewing crap with her wares on display. “Believe it or not, I’ve had worse.” One would think, when one had all of time to improve one’s cooking skills, that the Time Service cooks would be better at it, but no, not better.

  Shan lifted the tracking device again—Ashe felt Lurch’s itch to examine it but couldn’t see how to manage it—and scanned their surroundings, then indicated a course that avoided the thick undergrowth and hopefully would take them around the boulders. Even a small amount of up or through felt beyond her. He gestured for her to move, adjusting his pace so that he flanked her. The two boys fell in on their six.

  Questions bubbled to the surface, lots of them, but questions were a giveaway. A brief hope that the boys would babble out some information died in the face of their continued—but silent—fascination with her chest whenever they drew level. She had a feeling that the rest of the time their gazes were fixed on her silver covered ass. She couldn’t whine or be offended since her gaze kept straying to Shan’s assets each time the opportunity presented itself.

  With her suit systems down, and the planet’s sun showing no sign of relenting, sweat and friction made her wish it had completely retracted. Not that she wanted to scramble through underbrush in her knickers, but dang the thing was clingy.

  You can’t cool me off, maybe raise the neckline a bit? Usually Lurch was a genius with her tech.

  I need drones.

  Ashe felt a chill that didn’t help her overheating problem as much as it should have. But you can produce more.

  At your current level of depletion, it would be unwise.

  She felt the truth of his assertion. Even after the energy bar they were both almost tapped out. She should be depressed, even discouraged, instead she felt oddly cheerful. She didn’t die today, she reminded herself. That’s always a good thing. Shan moved ahead of her, then paused, holding several branches out of her way, his body angled as if inviting her to enjoy the view.

  So your insouciance has nothing to do with the male posterior you are admiring?

  Ashe took her gaze off the backside in question, redirecting it to Shan’s face. I don’t know what you are thinking about. His annoyed harrumph felt a bit like a vomit burp—possibly with intent. She drew level with Shan, noting the gleam of sweat on his skin—the only sign he felt the heat. He sure wasn’t breathing heavy—a pulse in his neck surged as she brushed against him, forced close by foliage and terrain. And maybe a little intent on her part. No harm letting her feminine wiles out for a little stroll, just to see if they worked.

  You are playing with fire.

  Rather play with ice, but nope, none around.

  The air soup was redolent with flora and fauna smells and something she rather thought was Shan. Her last encounter with him had been mega-brief and not close enough to be sure it was him she’d sniffed. This smelled like he looked—musky and male—boosted into the stratosphere by the power he gave off like a sun. Playing with him was more like toying with a conflagration. He wasn’t just a man, but a leader of men. She’d been around enough Leaders of her people to recognize one when she saw one. Was this who he was meant to be? At their last meeting he’d been arrogant as hell, sexy, too, and an intergalactic explorer, but not this—

  Ashe froze in her tracks. We might not be in his galaxy if they are intergalactic.

  The thought had occurred.

  In the time line before the tsunami, first contact with Shan had occurred not long after the defeat of the Dusan in the battle for Kikk. Gravity from the Garradian Galaxy had pulled the Keltinarian cluster closer, deforming its shape and eventually cutting the Grenardian planet off from its sun. It had also lessened the void between the two galaxies. Shan had penetrated to what was then the Kikk Outpost, with the Grenardians following a couple of hundred Earth years later. That Keltinarian push into space had been driven by the need to save their society from extinction with the injection of more females. She had no information on why Keltinar and Grenardias hadn’t come to some agreement on the female issue, though the purple skin might have been the deal killer.

  In the lieu of the time wave, the only clue to what had changed was Shan, but he wasn’t talking. Without more data on what had changed, there was no way to know what factors drove this push into space. All she knew for sure was that he and his people had made contact with the Grenardians. Was her arrival an unfortunate accident or a sign his proper time line hadn’t been restored yet?

  It could mean the bad guy won.

  Trust Lurch to think what she didn’t want to. Do you think the bad guy won?

  There is no clear evidence either direction, but…no, I don’t.

  It helped, though she’d have been hard pressed to explain how.

  “Is something wrong?”

  Was his tone a bit rougher? She realized she’d been staring, so she shook her head, and moved past him onto a slight, clear rise overlooking a small ravine. She needed to get her—

  Mojo.

  Okay. She needed to get her mojo back, sooner rather than later. While it was fun to play the girl, she was a time tracker. Unless the Time Service was gone, in which case she didn’t know what she was. And if it still existed? Would they know she’d maybe saved all time and the whole universe?

  It depends on how deep the time reset went.

  If they didn’t know what had happened, could she go back to being a rookie time tracker despised by one and all? And what if they did know? It’s not like any of them would be thrilled with her no matter what she did. She didn’t have to go back into the Service. What do you do after saving, well, everything?

  Go to Disneyworld?

  She was not familiar with a Disney world. What star system is it in?

  It was a joke.

  Not a good one. Why did it feel as if the unsanctioned contact with his original human host had made him nostalgic? Not that she felt threatened or anything but he had changed since they bumped heads with her not-so-great-but-too-many-to-count-the-greats grandma.

  A rather tortured description.

  He had a point. Fine, not-so-great grandma. How is that?

  Lurch answered with a huge sigh, which brought her back to: he’d
changed.

  Shan passed her, pausing his I-own-the-universe stride to sweep the sensor across the terrain ahead of them. When he kept putting his assets into her sightline, it was hard not to look. Made it difficult to remember that this was not her time or her place, though she was happy that this time he wasn’t pinging on another woman. He glared at the horizon, then at his sensor. Not that being upstaged by a space rock was that much better.

  “There.” Shan pointed toward a small clearing—no, it was another impact crater a few clicks past the ravine, almost hidden by a cluster of trees.

  Ashe followed Shan and the boys down, then up again, feeling equal parts curiosity and trepidation. If it were an actual space rock, it might contain data that could aid them in determining their location. If it were another Ashe, well, she couldn’t think of any way that would end well. Shan reached the edge first. He didn’t look shocked or anything so Ashe stepped next to him, took a deep breath, and looked down.

  It wasn’t another Ashe, but the sight still hit with the force of the time tsunami. Without speaking, without asking, she eased down the side of the crater toward the object, sure that she couldn’t see what her eyes and mind said she saw. She sort of knew that Shan followed her down, that he watched her as she crouched next to it and slowly, very slowly touched the metal surface. It was cool, though this crater showed signs of the same heat hers had. Smelled like sulfur, too. She traced the burn pattern from her energy weapon’s fire, and then moved to trace the series of bullet holes in the headless, legless torso. It was, she thought a bit distantly, possible to be relieved and flummoxed at the same time.

  “What is it?” Shan’s voice was hard, as if he expected her to dissemble.

  She looked at him, felt how wide, how dry her eyes were, not able to enjoy feeling cold as ice, because she also felt hot and bothered and shocked to her toenails. She licked her lips. “It’s an automaton.”

  TWO