Warrior

by Angela Knight

  Hell, no. I am not going to die! Determination rose in her, the same fierce refusal to give up that had driven her to paint when everyone told her a white-trash girl could never be an artist.

  I am not going to die.

  Well, this was a planet-fuck of galactic proportions.

  The supposed art thief Jumper—who should have been easy prey for the three of them—was actually a Xeran heavy-combat cyborg. He was well over two meters tall, with cybernetic implants that gave him strength greater than Galar’s even in riaat.

  Galar ducked a punch that would have taken his head off, and drove one of his own at the ’borg’s belly. The impact jarred his teeth. The bastard’s T-suit was so heavily armored, nothing could get through it, not even projectile weapons like the shard pistols the agents carried. Worse, the metal shards would probably ricochet, posing a risk to Jessica. Their only chance was to hit the ’borg so hard from so many directions that his suit’s protection broke down under the barrage. Then Galar might be able to get a knife blade in and finish him off.

  A kick blurred out of nowhere, catching him across the jaw and spinning him into the wall. Thanks to riaat, he didn’t feel it; the berserker state his computer induced gave him fantastic strength and a near-immunity to pain.

  At least until after the fight.

  Galar whirled back into the battle, hungry to pay the bastard back with a sucker shot of his own.

  Riane had engaged the Xeran, trading flat-footed punches with him despite the fact that he outweighed her by a hundred kilos. Frieka darted around the pair, trying to get his fangs through the ’borg’s T-suit for a good bite. Defeated by the armor, the wolf cursed steadily in frustration.

  Galar stepped in and swung. The blow landed with every erg of his riaat-enhanced strength behind it, sending the battleborg reeling back.

  For an instant, the Xeran crouched against the wall and panted, eyeing them with the crazed glitter of desperation in his eyes. “You don’t know what you’re involved in!” He licked the blood off his lip. “That little primitive is dangerous! ”

  Galar bared his teeth. “Yeah, all sixty kilos of her. Why don’t you surrender and explain it to us?”

  The cyborg made an anatomically impossible suggestion and lunged, swinging his knife in a blurring arc. Galar ducked and drove a punch upward, catching the ’borg’s wrist. The knife went flying.

  Seeing his chance, Galar bulled into him, trying to throw the big Xeran. Riane crashed into the man’s thighs, adding her weight. With a howl of victory, Frieka locked his jaws around one of the battleborg’s ankles.

  The Xeran crashed onto his belly, Galar riding him down. Jerking a pair of force cuffs from his weapons belt, he grabbed for the ’borg’s left arm and started wrestling it back.

  The cyborg kicked out viciously, sending the wolf flying into the wall with a yelp of pain.

  “Frieka!” Riane, straddling the Xeran’s ass now, jerked around to stare after her injured partner.

  Which was when the ’borg twisted and buried a bloody knife in her thigh, slicing right through her T-suit as if it were paper. That shouldn’t even have been possible.

  Riane screamed in pain, grabbing desperately at the hilt.

  Warning! Galar’s comp shrilled. Weapon hit the femoral artery. . . .

  Sweet Goddess, she’ll bleed out in minutes!

  Something slammed into his head, knocking him sideways. The Xeran gave him a kick in the gut for good measure and scrambled away.

  Cursing, dazed, Galar did the only thing he could— grabbed for Riane and jerked the knife from her leg, then clamped a hard grip over the wound. He needed to maintain pressure until her system’s medibots could seal the injury.

  Comp, Riane’s medibots?

  Responding. Three-point-four minutes to wound closure.

  Jessica might not have three minutes. He threw a desperate glance at the limp, furred figure against the wall. Frieka’s status?

  Stunned, his computer replied.

  “Dammit, dog!” Nothing would rouse the wolf faster than the hated insult of being called a dog. “Get your furry ass up! I need you to get to Jessica before that bastard kills her!”

  But Frieka didn’t even twitch.

  Cursing, Galar kept his grip on the wound with one hand while he reached for his belt with the other. He found one of the pouches, opened it, and jerked out a fist-sized silver globe. After broadcasting a quick message to it, he opened his fingers. The ball floated up off his palm toward the ceiling. A temporal field built around it with an electric tingle, and the courier flared blue and disappeared, off to get help from the Outpost. Com messages couldn’t be sent through time; you had to send a messenger.

  Blood pouring from the wound under his palm, Galar counted the seconds until he could save the artist himself. “Just stay alive, Jessica. Stay alive a little longer.”

  Cold. Jessica felt so cold. The hall stretched ahead of her, an endless corridor in the dark.

  Sliding into shock.

  She gritted her teeth and kept crawling. Her arms trembled, the muscles in her thighs jumping. Jesus, it was like being stark naked in the snow.

  Forget that. Phone. Get to the damned phone! 911, 911, 911 . . . The desperate mental chant drove her forward.

  In the living room now. Easel off to her left. Something lying in a patch of moonlight on the floor. She blinked at it, forced her blurring eyes to focus. The box of matches Ruby had dropped. Light a match to see the phone. She closed her hand around the box and kept crawling.

  “Do you really think you can escape me?” The ugly words—and an even uglier laugh—made her head jerk up in terror. A sudden wash of adrenaline catapulted her to her feet, and she reeled around.

  Her attacker leaned against the hallway wall, his face twisted in a snarl. As he staggered forward again, blood glinted wetly across his scaled suit. “I will not let your heretic taint spread any further!” He lowered his horned head and charged her like a bull, rage twisting his brutal features.

  Crazy. This guy was batshit crazy.

  Jess jumped back and knocked against the easel. It toppled with a crash. On sheer instinct, she grabbed a jar from her art taboret and hurled it at his head. It shattered on the metal projections protruding from his skull, filling the air with the reek of turpentine.

  “Heretic slut!” He jerked a knife from his belt. Jesus, how many of them did he have?

  And all she had . . .

  ... was the matches.

  Frantically, Jessica fumbled the box open, grabbed one, raked it across the striker. By the grace of God, it burst into flame on the first try. “Stay back!” Surely the dumb bastard would know better than to jump her when he was covered in turpentine. . . .

  He roared a bestial battle cry and dove at her.

  She tossed the match. It hit him and ignited with a hot whoosh. He bellowed in startled pain and batted at the flames.

  Something big and dark charged past her. A man, damn near as tall and muscled as her hulking attacker, snarling in an alien language. Her attacker danced away, narrowly avoiding being tackled as he fumbled for his waist. Searing blue light exploded in Jessica’s vision with a thunderous boom, blinding and deafening her. The smell of ozone flooded the air.

  When Jess blinked away the purple afterimages, her attacker had vanished. “What the hell?” She fell back against the wall behind her and slid down it, staring at the singed spot in the carpet. Her ears rang. “Did he blow himself up? Why are we still alive?”

  “No, he just Jumped.” It was the big man who spoke. He was using English now, not whatever the hell he’d been speaking earlier. He walked over and flipped on the light switch somewhere far over her head.

  Jessica blinked, bracing her back against the wall as she looked up at him in dazed exhaustion. He crouched beside her, a frown of concern on his face. A very handsome face.

  He pulled off his gloves—they were covered in blood— then clamped both hands over her stomach.

  She sucked
in a breath of pain. “What . . . are you doing?”

  “Putting pressure on your wound.” His face was grim as he leaned into her. His grip tore a yelp of agony from her lips. “Sorry, but I’ve got to keep you from bleeding to death. There’s a doctor on the way. Just hold on.”

  “Are you . . . a cop?” Talking hurt. Everything hurt.

  “Something like that.” His hair was short and very blond, shining under the overhead light.

  She stared at it dreamily, concentrating on it through the waves of pain. Shades of sunlight yellow, ocher, gold. I’d like to paint his hair, she thought. Her eyes fluttered, tried to close.

  “Hey!” His voice turned sharp. “Stay with me, Jessica.”

  She licked dry lips. “Tired.”

  “I know, but you need to stay awake. Don’t let go. Help’s almost here.” His eyes were pale amber, reminding her of sun-kissed honey, warm and unusual. And worried.

  She could feel herself drifting away, and shook her head hard, fighting to concentrate. “Talk to me. Keep me awake. What’s your name?”

  “Galar. Galar Arvid.”

  “Galar.” Funny name. She’d never heard anything like it. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “Not really, no.” He wore a dark blue one-piece suit of some kind, made of tiny scales and piped in silver along the arms and across the width of his chest. Splashes of blood marked it, presumably not his own. The suit, whatever it was, appeared hard, dully gleaming, more like armor than fabric. It hugged every powerful inch of him so tightly, she could make out the impressive musculature that lay beneath it, from broad, brawny chest all the way down to powerful thighs and gleaming boots. A weapons belt rode his narrow waist, with a holstered gun, a couple of knives, and an array of pouches of different sizes.

  Okay, so maybe he was some kind of cop.

  The room rotated slowly to the left. “May . . . I paint you, Galar?”

  Golden eyes met hers, urgent, demanding. “I’ll be happy to let you do anything you want. Just stay with me.”

  She fought to concentrate on those remarkable eyes. The pain was intensifying, and with it the cold, radiating from her belly as if she’d been stabbed with a frozen ice pick. She gritted her teeth against the need to scream. “It . . . hurts!”

  “I know, but they’ll be here any minute.” He gave her a smile, but it was a little tight, a little fixed. “You know, it was really clever, the way you got rid of the Xeran. Took guts too.”

  “Xeran?” Her voice sounded slurred. “What the hell is a Xeran?”

  “Long story.” He lifted his head, alert. “Here they come, Jessica. Just a little longer, and it’ll be all right.”

  She smelled ozone, dimly felt every hair stand up on her body, heard a faint crackle.

  A lightning bolt struck right in front of her with a deafening crack and a quivering static shock. She yelped and tried to jerk upright, but Galar held her still as the room filled with people. They just appeared there like something out of a science fiction film. Men, women—all of them in the same dark blue suit he wore, except for two people dressed in cherry red.

  The first, a woman, hurried toward Jessica and Galar, towing a man-sized transparent cylinder. A second red-clad person, a man, veered down the hall leading another cylinder. Both tubes floated three feet off the ground with no visible means of support whatsoever.

  Three impossible feet.

  What the hell?

  The woman crouched before her, exchanged urgent words with the cop in that alien language.

  Alien, Jessica thought, stunned, as the pieces came together with an almost audible click. They’re aliens.

  Darkness flooded in and swept her away.

  Colonel Cyrek Marcin materialized a kilometer away, his nerve endings shrieking in pain. He could smell his skin burning. Even as he fought not to scream, foam sprayed from his suit, coating his face, cool and soothing. Medibots en route to injury, his computer purred in his mind.

  The burns would be a distant memory in minutes. He’d suffered worse, though never from such a humiliating source. Marcin couldn’t believe he’d let a primitive hurt him like this. He ached to go back and kill her for the stain to his honor. Gut her slowly in a fitting sacrifice to the Victor.

  Marcin considered the idea, greatly tempted, then reluctantly decided against it. The primitive was, at best, only a distraction from his real target: the heretic. She was the true menace to the Faith. She had to be stopped.

  She had to die.

  Yes, she’d infected the primitive, which meant Jessica Kelly, too, would have to be eliminated. Unfortunately, Kelly was currently surrounded by Enforcers, which made killing her a high-risk mission. There were others who could do that job—assassins her protectors would never even see coming.

  He had to keep his focus on his own heretic target. The first step was finding out where she’d gone, which meant he’d have to return to the house she’d shared with the girl.

  Carefully, very carefully. Temporal Enforcement would still be there, and he didn’t need to attract their attention.

  Marcin scanned his surroundings, taking stock. His comp had chosen a nearby meadow for the emergency Jump. He raised his camo shield and started back toward the house the two women had shared.

  And what was that all about? Why would the heretic choose to live as an ordinary primitive? According to the warrior priest, she could bounce through time without need of a T-suit. And that was the least of her deadly abilities.

  Yet she’d apparently lived with Kelly for months. Why?

  Marcin frowned. Had she intended to infect the artist all along? If so, that implied all this was part of some larger plan.

  Whatever it was, they had to put a stop to it, and quickly.

  He reached for one of the pouches on his knife belt and drew out a fist-sized silver ball. Holding it up in front of his eyes, he composed the message he wanted to send and broadcast it at the ball, then tossed it lightly into the air.

  He watched as the courier-bot soared skyward, then flared blue-white and vanished. It would carry his progress to the Cathedral Fortress.

  Or rather, his lack of progress.

  Marcin winced, imagining Tarik ge Lothar’s reaction. He’d damned better find the heretic in a hurry, if he didn’t want to face his leader’s rage.

  Breaking into a ground-eating lope he could maintain indefinitely, Marcin headed back toward the women’s home, considering hunting strategies as he went. He’d have to avoid the Enforcers if he didn’t want another . . .

  A scent came to him, female and subtly alien. He stopped in his tracks, his heartbeat accelerating with excitement. It was the woman who called herself Charlotte Holt. She’d been here within the past half hour.

  He drew in a deep breath, tasting the air like a wolf even as his comp scanned his surroundings for any trace of the heretic.

  There.

  A faint energy trace.

  He cursed softly, recognizing the pattern of forces. She’d Jumped.

  Marcin’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a feral, snarling grin. If the little bitch thought she could get away from him, she was sadly mistaken.

  He scanned the energy trace and fed the data to his computer. It was possible to take the strength of energy remnants and calculate a Jump’s destination. Unfortunately, that only gave you a range of possibilities, a series of times and places where your target could be. To find out for sure, he’d have to search. And get lucky.

  But considering the stakes, he had to try. Killing the heretic was all that mattered. That, and finding the Abominations before their taint spread.

  3

  Grimly, Galar surveyed the wreckage. A blood trail snaked down the hall and halfway through the living room. Jessica’s easel lay toppled on its side, and a blackened scorch mark on the carpet marked where she’d set the battleborg on fire.

  Sweet Goddess, she had guts. Not just when she’d fought the Xeran, though that had been striking enough. She’d dem
onstrated even greater courage when he’d clamped her wound. His sensors had told him how much it hurt, but she’d scarcely made a sound.

  By the time the medtechs had arrived, Galar was just aching to kick the Xeran’s ass. As soon as Chogan had Jessica safely in a regenerator, he’d gone after the battleborg. Using his sensors to collect data, his computer had determined a series of likely destinations, and he’d started making his Jumps.

  Galar found the first materialization point easily enough, since it was only a short distance from Jessica’s house. The Xeran’s next destination had been a filthy alley in seventeenth-century London, while the third was an isolated mountain valley high in the Canadian Rockies around 1923. He’d just missed the battleborg that time.

  Next Galar had tried a fourteenth-century Chinese village, but there was no sign of the Xeran’s Jump energies there at all. His computer had attempted another calculation, suggesting a little Alabama town in 1953, but the Xeran hadn’t been there either.

  Two more fruitless Jumps convinced Galar he’d lost the trail. He wasn’t really surprised. Tracking someone through time was a crapshoot at best.

  Frustrated, he’d returned to Jessica’s house to help with the mopping up.

  Now Galar watched Dr. Chogan bustle around the regenerator tube that held the artist’s unconscious form. According to his sensors, her wound had closed, and her blood volume was increasing at a rate that would have been impossible without twenty-third-century medicine.

  Just in time too. Much longer and even a regenerator wouldn’t have been able to repair the brain damage caused by blood loss.

  Next to Galar’s booted foot, a collector stopped to graze on a tuft of wolf fur. A dozen of the fist-sized floating ’bots were busily swarming over the house, gathering every scrap of evidence that anyone from the future had ever been here. It wouldn’t do to leave the Claremont County Sheriff’s Department with forensic evidence of genetically engineered time travelers. When the ’bots were done, only the artist’s blood trail would remain.

  “Dammit, let me out of this thing!” Riane growled from the next room. She, too, was in a regenerator, but from the sound of it, her healing was even further along than Jessica’s.