“Step foot out of that tube without the doc’s permission, and I’ll bite you on the ass!” Frieka snapped. Despite the blow he’d taken, he was obviously none the worse for wear.
Galar breathed a deep breath in pure, singing relief. And promptly frowned at the intensity of his own reaction. What was with him lately? First the girl had gotten to him, now these two.
True, it was his duty to lead his subordinates safely through their missions. And Riane had real potential as an Enforcer. Galar had been impressed by her willingness to go toe-to-toe with the Xeran, despite his greater size and power. Then there’d been Frieka’s frantic efforts to protect her. The big cyborg beast loved his partner with an intensity that was more paternal than canine.
Anybody would find that touching. It didn’t mean Galar was losing his protective edge.
He stepped closer to Jessica’s regenerator and looked down through the pink healing mist that filled the tube. The girl’s delicate features still looked far too pale. Blood matted her dark hair and covered her slim body, left bare when the doc had stripped off her nightshirt. Galar, no stranger to nudity, didn’t let his gaze linger.
She looked so fragile—but in her case, looks were deceiving.
A smile twitched his lips as he remembered charging into the hall just in time to see her throw the jar of turpentine on the battleborg, then follow it with a lit match. There was obviously more to the little artist than met the eye.
“How’s she doing, Doc?” he asked.
Dr. Sakari Chogan looked up from the regenerator and pushed a long strand of iridescent green hair back from her face. She was a lovely woman, but her air of fragility was belied by a fierce intelligence and sardonic wit. “Our nasty Xeran friend did a lot of damage. His knife left a three-centimeter gash in the large intestine, which bled. A lot. Must have hurt like a son of a bitch.” She turned to eye the blood trail. “But Ms. Kelly apparently isn’t the type to lay down and die.”
“So she will recover?” His computer had predicted as much, but he wanted it confirmed.
“Oh, yeah. I’ve patched you up from worse.” She appraised his face. “Speaking of, you could use a session in the tube yourself. Nice collection of bruises there. Anything more interesting?”
He shrugged. “As you said, it’s just bruises.”
“Schedule a session in the tube anyway.” The voice that issued that order was deep and commanding, rumbling with a natural power that brooked no disobedience. Galar looked around as Chief Enforcer Alerio Dyami strode into the room. The Outpost’s commander had been checking on Riane and supervising the cleanup in the rest of the house.
A Viking Class Warlord, Dyami was even bigger and more powerfully built than Galar. He wore his black hair long in the traditional Warlord style, with glittering combat decorations worked into the single braid that hung beside his face. A tattoo in intricate lines of green and gold ran down the left side of his face—the symbol of House Dyami, which had genetically engineered him.
Unlike Galar, who wore neither tattoos nor beads. He hadn’t even adopted the last name of his House; he’d taken his father’s House name instead. He owed those Kasi bitches nothing after what they’d done to him and his family.
“Well, you called this one right on the money,” Dyami told Galar as he joined the two beside the regenerator. “You said that police report looked like Jumper work, and it was.”
“Yeah, but I thought it was your standard art thief. Which it wasn’t.”
The chief Enforcer’s black eyes narrowed. “But why would a Xeran battleborg try to murder some twenty-first-century artist? He’s certainly no run-of-the mill thief looking to make a fast galactor.”
Galar turned a grim look toward the tube. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
January 3, 1824
New York City
A thunderous crack and a flare of blue light made the carriage horses shy and toss their heads. The hack driver swore and hauled at the reins, bringing them back under control before they could bolt.
A flicker of movement drew his attention, and he glanced around. A woman stepped from the alley between two buildings, breathing hard, her face pale, red hair tangled and wild. For a moment she seemed to be wearing a strange, scandalously short skirt that bared the entire length of her legs from well above the knee. A strange leather bag swung from one arm.
The cabby blinked, shocked. Must be some kind of doxy . . .
She met his gaze, and just like that, she was properly attired in a forest green redingote pelisse in fine velvet, a matching feathered bonnet framing demure red curls. She hurried toward his cab.
He must have imagined that outlandish costume.
Automatically, the cabby swung down to open the door for her. So well-dressed and prosperous a lady would obviously have the funds to hire a hack. Though he did wonder what had happened to the ladies’ maid who should be escorting her. . . .
“The Carlisle Arms, please,” she told him in a soft, cultured voice as he handed her inside the cab.
He touched the brim of his hat and nodded. “Yes, miss,” and closed the door with a thump.
Charlotte sat back against the leather squabs with a sigh of weary relief. She thought she’d finally lost Marcin, though it had cost her five Jumps to do it. She was running dangerously low on power, especially now that she had to project an illusion of being a lady of 1824.
Luckily, she’d known she was probably going to have to do some Jumps when she left the house. She had coins and paper money from several time periods tucked in her handbag, along with gemstones she could easily convert to cash.
Now if only Marcin would leave her alone long enough to rest and recharge her waning powers.
Still, she’d do whatever she had to. All that mattered was keeping Marcin from getting his hands on them.
“Tell me it’s not true.”
“It’s not true.” His sensors picked up the spike in brain activity in the clear pattern of a formulating lie. She hadn’t even bothered to try to conceal the reaction.
She smiled at him, catlike and feline, her eyes laughing. Laughing at his gullibility, at the way she’d so thoroughly played him to gain access to his investigation of the Xeran plot. Offering her “help,” working with him for weeks, then seducing him, slowly, carefully, distracting him with her lush body and drugging sexuality. It had never occurred to him that she could be a double agent, that she could have infiltrated Vardonese Military Intelligence with intent to betray and kill.
He’d believed every lie out of her mouth. Especially when she’d told him she loved him.
The rage he felt was almost enough to drown out the pain.
“Do you know what you’ve done?” To Vardon. To the Galactic Union.
To him.
“Oh, yeah.” She went for the tachyon pistol holstered at her hip. He grabbed for his own, but pain made him slow.
Agony exploded in his chest as she seared away his heart with a blast of hot-white energy. The last thing he saw was her taunting smile.
Galar jerked upright with the echo of his own hoarse scream in his ears. Panting, he fell back to his elbows against the mound of pillows.
The dream. He hadn’t had it in two years. He wasn’t really surprised he’d had it tonight.
Restlessly, he rolled from the bed and padded naked to the darkened window that took up most of one wall. Polarization off, he ordered the Outpost computer, and the window went fully transparent.
The light of the rising sun spilled across what would one day be called the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia. Mist cloaked their tree-covered flanks, painted now in the reds and oranges and vivid yellows of autumn. A hawk circled, gliding on rising thermals, great dark wings outspread.
The beauty of the mountains did its customary job. Galar felt the furious rhythm of his heart settle. He braced a bare shoulder against the cool glass and wiped his sweating forehead with the back of a wrist.
Tlain Morey always killed him in the dream.
In reality, he’d been faster, but he’d still spent a month in regeneration, healing the left arm she’d almost seared away.
Jessica Kelly must have gotten to him more than he’d thought, if he was dreaming about Tlain again.
He’d always had a weakness for victims. Their vulnerability and pain never failed to get under his skin, no matter how hard he tried to armor himself against them.
He straightened his shoulders. Well, Kelly wouldn’t be a problem for long. They’d be shipping her off to Temporal Rehab in a day or two. He’d just keep his distance until then.
Morning briefing in sixty-five minutes, his comp whispered in his mind.
Galar sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. He’d only slept a couple of hours, but it would have to do. He moved to make his sprawling bed with the precision drummed into him at the Vardonese Military Academy years before. One of the Outpost’s ’bots could have done the job, but he considered picking up after himself an exercise in personal discipline.
Tlain had taught him that maintaining discipline was the only way to avoid pain.
Job done, he gave the room a quick scan. Dark, gleaming shelving ran along the wall opposite the window, a match for the bed’s heavy headboard and the wall panels that concealed his clothes and weapons. The shelves held mementoes from his temporal travels—a few books bound in calfskin, beeswax candles in massive golden candlesticks, a rapier with an intricate basket hilt. Trids of his parents, one of him standing with them at his Vardonese Academy graduation. Baird, his Comanche Class Warlord father, tall and dark and massive, with the red and blue of a House Arvid tattoo spilling down his face. His mother, Alina, blond and lithe, with the build of a Samurai Class Warfem, the colors of Kasi House marking her cheek. They both looked so proud.
He’d damned near destroyed them both. The son of the vice admiral of Vardonese Military Intelligence and one of its most decorated senior officers, played for a fool by a double agent. A scandal like that could have ended his parents’ careers, as well as his own. It was a good thing Galar had managed to turn the situation around before it exploded in their collective faces.
It all began when a communications officer in the Vardonese Interstellar Fleet had attracted the interest of Galar’s superiors in military intelligence. Galar had been assigned to investigate whether the man was indeed selling information on ship movements to the Xerans.
Senior Femmat Agent Tlain Morey promptly volunteered her assistance. Since Galar had known her for years—they worked in the same intelligence division—he’d gratefully accepted. Over the months that followed, he’d become entranced by the Femmat’s sensuality, beauty, and intelligence.
Luckily she wasn’t as smart as either of them thought.
Three months later, Galar had the officer under surveillance when the spy met with Tlain one dark night in a city park. They’d acted so transparently suspicious, Galar had found himself hoping they were having an affair. After all, the Femmat knew Galar was watching the suspected spy in a variety of imagizer disguises. Why would she be so stupid?
He’d later realized Tlain simply enjoyed the risk that he might be watching. Taunting him was all part of the fun.
Driven to discover the truth one way or another, Galar had cracked Tlain’s secret computer unit, kept hidden in a diamond bracelet. He would never forget the cold horror he’d felt as he’d read her matter-of-fact account of her espionage activities. She’d been working for the Xerans for years as a leader of the spy ring, which was even larger than Galar and his superiors had thought.
Sickened, he’d shot the file to headquarters and confronted her with the evidence before killing her in that last explosive confrontation.
Thus, instead of getting cashiered for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty, he’d received a commendation.
Yet Galar had known he could no longer serve in Vardonese Military Intelligence. He couldn’t risk another mistake that might destroy his parents’ careers, so he’d sought a post as an Enforcer in the Galactic Union’s Temporal Enforcement Agency. He’d spent the last decade working his way up the ranks.
Atoning for his gullibility.
As Galar strode along the labyrinth of corridors toward the main briefing hall, he downloaded the Outpost’s DNA results on the Xeran. He’d be expected to present a report on the night’s events, and he needed to pin down a few more details.
A moment later, his heart sank. Seven Hells, it was worse than he’d thought.
He stalked into the main briefing hall with five minutes to spare. After ordering a cup of stimchai from the wall vendser, Galar dropped into one of the seats mounted on curving risers surrounding the central stage. The dark blue cushions shifted around his body, adjusting to his height and weight until the chair cradled him comfortably. He sipped his stimchai and brooded.
Fifty Enforcers of various ranks filled the seats around him. Most were either human or close enough to the root stock to fake it. A few, like Frieka, could pass themselves off as Terran animals. To work undercover as a time traveler on old Earth, you couldn’t appear visibly alien.
“I did it! I finally got the murderous son of a bitch!”
Galar looked up as Enforcer Jiri Cadell half-danced up the aisle and threw herself into the seat next to him, a broad grin on her long, elegant face. Senior Enforcer Ando Cadell, looking tolerant, dropped beside her.
“It took me six hours of interrogation, but Usko Vappu finally admitted he killed all those women. The prick.” An expression of catlike satisfaction lit her tilted green eyes.
“She’s going to be insufferable for at least a month.” Cadell rolled his eyes, but there was love in the smile he sent his wife. He was a big, broad-shouldered cyborg, a patient investigator who was painstaking rather than brilliant. Gray salted his brush-cut cobalt hair, though at seventy he was just barely middle aged.
“Nah.” Jiri folded her arms behind her head. “I figure this is worth a good two months of insufferability. At least.” She was fifteen years younger than her husband, fit and strongly muscled. There was no gray at all in her own long sable braid.
“All right, folks, quiet down.” Chief Enforcer Dyami stepped up to the massive transparent podium. “I want to get this briefing on the road.” He couldn’t have had much more sleep than Galar, but he looked as fresh and bright-eyed as a recruiting trid.
Dyami ticked through the agenda with his usual efficiency. The Outpost mainframe spent its considerable computing power chewing over reams of data on historical crimes to determine which ones were likely to have been committed by time travelers. Each week it generated a list for Dyami’s consideration. He, in turn, used the daily briefing to assign the most likely of those cases to various Enforcers, who would investigate further to determine whether some morally challenged Jumper had indeed been responsible. If not, it was up to officials of that particular time period to catch the perpetrator.
Next came the reports on confirmed temporal crimes. Jiri stood up to brief the group on her Jumpkiller investigation. Galar couldn’t blame her for the obvious triumph in her voice. She’d worked the case for over a year before finally tracking Vappu down.
The Itaran, who made historical documentaries, had confessed to killing fifty-two women during Jumps spanning four centuries and three continents. Jiri curled a disgusted lip as she recounted the sick bastard’s smug description of his crimes.
“The Galactic Union Temporal Prosecutor tells me Vappu’ll spend the rest of his life on the Gorgon penal colony,” she finished with grim satisfaction. “May he rot there.”
As Jiri seated herself, her husband rose to recount his own progress. Ando was working a string of fires he believed had been set to cover up jewel heists. “I’ve found traces of twenty-third-century accelerants at each scene,” the Senior Enforcer said with a grim smile of satisfaction. “When I finally catch the dickhole, I should have no problem getting a conviction.”
Enforcer Clar Vanda was next, describing the murders of fifteen temporal tou
rists who’d gone to Philadelphia for the signing of the Declaration of Independence. All fifteen had been shot with a shard rifle—not exactly a weapon common in the eighteenth century. Their tour guide had gone on the run after looting their respective financial accounts. Vanda was working with Galactic Union Interstellar Investigations on tracking the woman down.
Finally Dyami gave Galar a faint nod, and he stood to report on his own case. He outlined the events of the night before in terse, pointedly unemotional terms. Even so, an angry mutter rumbled over the Enforcer crowd when he described the Xeran’s knifing Riane.
Regen or no regen, nothing pissed off TE agents like an attack on their own. One rule had remained the same over the centuries: you kept your hands off law enforcement. If you didn’t, they’d hunt you down like soji dragons after a snakebird.
“The Outpost computer has completed its analysis of the subject’s DNA.” A three-dimensional image of the Xeran appeared in the center of the stage, twice life-sized, rotating slowly in the air as Galar spoke. He was a big bastard, of course—that went without saying. He had the aggressively masculine kind of face Xeran genetic engineers favored, all cheekbones and chin, so that his head sat on his thick neck like a stone block. His eyes were a demonic red, with thin slit pupils. Two sets of skull implants jutted from his shaved head, a larger pair curving out like a bull’s horns, two shorter ones protruding from his forehead. Both were heavily engraved with fine, intricate designs in a glittering blood red.
Xerans had a taste for melodrama.
“Colonel Cyrek Marcin is a heavy combat battleborg with Xeran Interstellar Intelligence,” Galar said. “According to our own Galactic Union Interstellar Intelligence, he specializes in the assassination of political and military targets. GUII has been sending agents after him for years, but he keeps killing them.”
Dyami lifted a brow. “Yet our little artist stopped him in his tracks. Smart girl.”
“Lucky girl. Unfortunately, that kind of luck doesn’t last. And I have a feeling he’s not after her because she paints very expensive, very pretty pictures. This isn’t a simple art theft. Something else is going on here.”
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