“Charlotte,” Jess said grimly. “Charlotte did this. Marcin said I smelled of her blood. It must have something to do with that.”
“Charlotte scanned as human.”
“Yeah, well, a few days ago, I scanned as human. Now you’re saying I’m some kind of Xeran spy.” She lifted a bitter brow. “Obviously, you don’t know what the fuck is going on.”
“The primitive’s right,” Dyami said grimly. “We don’t know what’s going on. And that’s just not acceptable.”
“I do know one thing.” Galar scrubbed both hands wearily over his face. “She wasn’t lying.” His sensors had told him she was feeling outrage, hurt, and fear, but there had been none of the telltale signs of deception.
What’s more, his heart insisted she couldn’t be a Xeran spy. Unfortunately, his heart had been wrong before.
“It’s not that hard to fool sensors,” Ivar pointed out.
"Only if you’ve got a computer implant capable of controlling your involuntary nervous system,” Galar replied. “Jess doesn’t.”
Ivar lifted a red brow. “Considering she just blew a combot into its component parts, we have no idea what your little friend can do.”
Dyami turned to Chogan, who sprawled wearily at the opposite end of the table. Between the wounded and the dead, she’d had her hands full. “Did your sensors pick up any unexplained energy spikes during the questioning?” Such a spike might indicate Jess was exerting influence on the Enforcers’ brains.
Chogan shook her head, green hair sliding around her shoulders. “Nothing. Certainly nothing like the kind of spike when she blew up the combot. Which reminds me.” She pivoted her chair toward Dyami. “Chief, I’ve been thinking.”
He tilted his head, the beads in his braid clicking. “Yes?”
“If she could produce a blast like that, why did she wait so long? You saw that trid. She’d stopped struggling. She’d gone limp. I really thought she was dead. Then . . .”
Galar winced, remembering the recording he’d already sat through half a dozen excruciating times.
Jess’s eyes had flashed wide in her darkening face, and her mouth had screamed a word she hadn’t had the breath to produce.
Galar’s name.
Then the Outpost’s sensors had picked up a shock wave that had originated from a point six centimeters from her forehead. The blast had shot through the air in a tightly focused beam that ripped the combot apart like a sonic grenade. No human had ever been recorded doing anything like it.
At first they’d thought the combot had simply been programmed to explode, but if so, the blast should have killed Jess even as it demolished the ’bot. Computer simulations showed the blast had unmistakably come from her.
“You know, you’ve got a point,” Dyami said thoughtfully. “Why wait? Especially considering how desperately she fought that thing.”
Galar shifted in his seat, remembering her frantic kicks and punches, the helpless terror in her eyes, her pleading calls to the Outpost computer he’d sworn would protect her.
He’d never watched anything as painful as Jessica fighting for her life while he was five centuries away, getting his ass handed to him.
“Maybe she was faking it,” Ivar suggested. “If it was part of some kind of elaborate scam to make us think the Xerans are targeting her . . .”
“She wasn’t faking it,” Galar growled. “You saw those life scans. Her heart stopped right before that blast.”
Ivar sat back and spread his big hands as if to ward off Galar’s glare. “Hey, just playing devil’s advocate.”
“Find yourself another devil.” Never mind that he’d wondered the same thing. Had his experience with Tlain made him too paranoid, or was he letting himself get suckered by yet another pretty face?
“I really don’t think she knew she could do it,” Chogan said thoughtfully into the tense silence. “What if it was some sort of desperate, last-ditch reflex?”
“Outpost,” Galar said suddenly, remembering a similar incident. “Replay the possible seismic event I’ve inquired about before.” As Dyami he explained, “This is the incident we discussed last week.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember that. We decided it was some kind of abortive Xeran assault, defeated by the shields.”
A trid image appeared of Galar’s quarters, Jessica curled against him under the coverlet. At his silent command, the comp enhanced her face so that the image appeared to zoom in. She was frowning in her sleep, eyes flicking back and forth behind closed lids. An expression of horror crossed her delicate face.
Abruptly she jerked upright. “Charlotte!”
Every object on Galar’s shelves danced backward, hit the wall behind it, bounced off, and fell to the deck with a fusillade of crashes.
“I thought at first it had to be some kind of earthquake, but the Outpost said whatever it was occurred only in my room,” Galar told the other Enforcers. “But what if Jess did it?”
“Looking at it in light of what happened with the combot, it certainly appears that way.” Dyami ran his knuckles over his jaw. “I’m beginning to think we’ve been criminally stupid about all this.”
“To be fair,” Chogan pointed out, “the human brain is not supposed to be able to produce these kinds of energies. Xerans aren’t even supposed to be able to produce these kinds of energies.” She hesitated, frowning, lost in thought. “You know, I think I want another look at those scans I just did. That foreign DNA may be largely Xeran, but there are traces of completely nonhuman genetic material in it too. What if it’s the alien traces that caused the development of these new abilities?”
“Run some simulations and see what you find out,” Dyami told her. “And keep me posted about your conclusions.”
“Of course.”
“So what are we going to do about Jessica?” Galar asked. “Do we assume she’s a Xeran spy or an innocent victim of some kind of unusually impenetrable Xeran plot?”
The Chief Enforcer sat back in his seat, a dark frown on his handsome face. “Well, she’s been the target of at least two murder attempts that came pretty damned close to succeeding. We have to assume she’ll be a target again.” He hesitated a long moment. “I’m not inclined to believe she’s a spy, but on the other hand, I’m not comfortable completely dismissing the idea either.” He rose from his seat and began, restlessly, to pace. “So we arrest her. It’ll put pressure on her, maybe give us some leverage to get the truth out of her if she’s lying.”
Galar’s stomach knotted. “But what if she’s not?”
Dyami looked at him, his expression steely. “The brig is the safest place on the Outpost. We’ll put her under twenty-four-hour guard to make sure there are no more murder attempts. She is not to be left alone.”
Chogan shook her head. “She’s not going to like that, Chief.”
“No,” Dyami said. “But she’ll be alive.”
Galar rose to his feet. “I’ll do it.”
The chief looked startled. “That’s not necessary. Ivar can—”
“She’s my responsibility,” Galar told him tonelessly, despite the nausea already churning his stomach. “I’ll do it.”
Jess sat in frozen silence, ignoring Wulf, who sat by her bedside like a stone monolith. Weary anger tightened her belly and knotted her neck.
They thought she was a Xeran spy. After everything she’d been through—including almost being murdered not once but twice by those bastards—the Enforcers really thought she was one of them.
Galar thought she was one of them. That’s what hurt. He’d made love to her, touched her more profoundly than any man ever had, and yet he still believed she was working for the Xerans. That, in fact, she’d somehow betrayed them all, in the process getting Ando and Jiri killed and the others badly wounded. Including Galar himself.
Hadn’t he been listening when she warned him he was heading into a chain saw? She’d even seduced him in a futile, instinctive effort to get him to stay home. A real Xeran agent would have been shoving
his ass out the door.
Dammit, she thought, grinding her teeth, I am not going to cry in front of Wulf.
But God, it hurts.
13
Wulf’s head lifted, alerting Jess. She looked around just as Galar strode through the bubble chamber’s wall. He looked big and coldly expressionless. Only his eyes held heat, glowing with some fierce emotion, like a pair of coals. He stopped just inside, his feet wide apart, his expression watchful. “Jessica Kelly, you’re under arrest on charges of espionage. Come with me, please.”
On one level, she’d been expecting this. So why did it feel like a body blow? She managed to draw in a breath against the pain. “Do I get an attorney?”
“Not at the moment.” His handsome face looked as if it had been carved out of a solid block of ice.
What were her legal rights here? She had no idea, but she’d better find out. “I want a lawyer.”
“You’ll get one after you’re transported to the twenty-third century.”
“When will that be?”
“I’m not sure, but you’ll be notified. Come along.”
She blinked her stinging eyes hard, savagely determined not to cry. She was damned if she’d give him the satisfaction. “Where?”
“The brig.” He didn’t even flinch.
“Damn you, I’m not a spy!” The words burst from her, futile but uncontrollable. “I haven’t done anything! I’m the victim here! I’m the one Marcin’s trying to kill!”
“Marcin’s dead.” Galar said the words as if he were announcing the weather report. “I killed him with a little help from a Xeran who was trying to stab me in the back.”
A faint relief penetrated her outrage and fear. “Well, that’s something, anyway.” Unfortunately, it didn’t mean the Xerans weren’t still after her. Ignoring the spurt of panic that thought inspired, Jess rose from the bed and braced her shaking knees. Squaring her shoulders, she stalked past him. “Let’s go.”
Jessica walked ahead of Galar like a queen, her delicate back straight, her steps unhesitating even as he directed her into the wing that held the brig.
Every instinct he had howled a protest as they started down the corridor between the cells. She hasn’t done anything to deserve this. She’s not a spy.
But could that gut feeling be trusted? What if he were wrong again? Ando and Jiri had already paid for his mistakes with their lives tonight. He couldn’t afford another fatal error in judgment.
Besides, Dyami was right. Jess would be safe in here, particularly if he was watching her. Between that and Marcin’s death, the Xerans should have a lot more difficulty getting at her. Assuming she really was their target.
His instincts insisted she was in serious danger, and he wasn’t inclined to doubt them. The Xerans’ murder attempts had been a little bit too sincere for window dressing.
Then there was the question of who had hacked both the Outpost computer and the combot. Not Marcin; the Outpost’s cybernetic defenses were too strong to be defeated from a distance. You’d have to be on the Outpost to do it.
Unfortunately, there’d been more than a thousand people on the Outpost when the attack had taken place, any one of whom could have been the hacker. Besides the Enforcers themselves, there was the facility’s technical support staff, not to mention all the tourists and shopkeepers. Though that lot was basically confined to the concourse level, it wasn’t completely impossible for one of them to have been the culprit.
He’d prefer that to the alternative—that one of his fellow Enforcers was a spy. They’d certainly have the technical ability for the job, as well as the inside knowledge of the Outpost’s workings to pull it off.
But if an Enforcer was behind the attack, it meant one of his own people was working for the Xerans. And that, in turn, meant that Jessica was not the only possible target.
They all were.
Ivar walked back to his room, carefully maintaining the same grim expression he’d seen on the faces of Dona Astryr and the rest of his fellow Enforcers. But inside, behind his careful mental shields, he was grinning in triumph.
True, Jessica had survived his murder attempt and destroyed the combot assassin. On the other hand, two Enforcers had died in the battle with the cohort, so it wasn’t a total loss. Most delightful of all, Jess was now under suspicion for the very acts of espionage that Ivar himself had committed. And that smug bastard Galar was walking around as if he had a meter-wide hole in his chest. It had been all Ivar had been able to do not to laugh in his agonized face.
Take that, you fucker. Two dead Enforcers, your girl-friend in the brig, and a spy working under your very nose.
The only thing that would have made it any more delicious was if he’d actually managed to kill the primitive.
No, on second thought, putting her under a cloud of suspicion was sweeter. Though he supposed he could still arrange her death. . . .
No. Too risky. Galar and Dyami weren’t stupid, after all. They had to realize hacking the Outpost comp had been an inside job. If he attempted it again in order to get at the girl and kill her, his chances of getting caught would be unacceptably high.
He’d just have to be content with the knowledge that the girl was in the brig and Galar was eating out his own heart while doubting himself and her equally. God, that was sweet.
Senior Enforcer? the Outpost computer said into his mind. A courier has arrived for you.
Ivar went tense, feeling adrenaline spike through his body in a delicious chemical cocktail of excitement and fear. It was probably his spymaster. He’d taken the chance of sending the man a report when they’d returned from the mission.
He keyed open the door and stepped into the hall, waiting impatiently while the courier verified his identity and spat out the data bead. Escaping to his bed with it, he cracked the bead between his fingers and smeared its nanobot contents over his forehead.
“Fool!” hissed the spymaster in his mind. “The point of this entire trap was to kill the primitive! Failure is not acceptable. Kill her. Kill her now, or the Xerans will be coming after us both next!”
Silently, viciously, Ivar began to curse, knowing the spymaster was right.
Despite the risk, something had to be done about Jessica.
Jess sat on the narrow cot, her chin resting on her knees. Her eyes ached, swollen from the crying jag she’d finally indulged in once they’d given her some degree of privacy.
As cells went, it was a relatively comfortable one, she supposed. There was a vendser set in the wall, though it was programmed to provide food and drink only on a rigid schedule. There were no obvious bars in the doorway. In fact, there didn’t even seem to be a door; the opening framed a sun-dappled forest clearing which she knew to be a trid. In reality, a couple of Enforcers were stationed out in the corridor just beyond the field barrier. A barrier, she’d been warned, that would deliver a painful electric shock if she blundered into it. Being in no mood to get jolted, she’d kept her distance.
At least the guards could see her, even if the trid kept her from seeing them. When the image had blocked her view, she’d gone cautiously to the doorway and called to make sure the Enforcers were still there. She’d been relieved when they’d responded. Never mind the lack of privacy or the fact that they were presumably there to keep her in. She just didn’t want to be alone if another assassin showed up.
Though she had saved herself last time. . . .
Unfortunately, Jess had no real idea how she’d done it. Brooding, she let her head fall back against the wall behind her and stared at the ceiling. What would happen if she blew a hole in it?
The Enforcers would probably be pissed. . . . But she needed to figure out how to use her powers deliberately. Next time she might not have time to get angry enough or desperate enough to produce a blast before some thug snapped her neck.
What had she done the last time? She closed her eyes, trying to call up the memory in sufficient detail so that she could re-create her actions. The Marcin-bot’s st
eely fingers had been clamped around her throat, squeezing with slow, brutal power. Black spots had flooded her vision, dancing and swelling until she could no longer see the android’s emotionless face.
And then she’d had the vision. Galar, covered in blood, an armored Xeran racing toward his back with a strange chiming sword lifted in both hands. . . .
Terror and rage had flooded through her dying brain, a fear not for herself but for Galar. Energy had swelled in her chest in a huge, hot bubble until it had exploded out of her and blown the combot apart.
Now she tried to re-create that feeling, that bubble of blazing force.
Nothing happened.
Jess gritted her teeth and glared hard at the spot over her head, fighting to generate that hot burst. Make a hole, she chanted mentally. Make a hole!
Nothing.
The thing was, she realized, all that desperate energy seemed beyond her now, plunged into darkness as she was. Galar had turned his back on her, had left her locked helplessly in here.
Galar, the man she loved.
She squeezed her eyes shut at the stinging power of the revelation. Yeah, I love him. It wouldn’t hurt so damned bad if I didn’t.
Jess remembered Riane’s warning about Galar’s distrust of women because of Tlain, the Femmat who had betrayed and shot him. He’d killed her, but he’d still spent weeks in regen growing back the arm she’d blown off.
Now he was convinced Jess was a Xeran spy too. And Jess—Jess was trapped in a world she knew nothing about, knowing no one, having lost the only family she had left, facing God knew what charges. If she was convicted of espionage, what would be the penalty? Historically speaking, spies were often executed.
“Jessica?”
Her eyes flashed open with a kind of desperate hope as Galar entered her cell. Had they discovered she was innocent?
Dyami followed him in. Both men were dressed in the dark blue uniforms of Temporal Enforcement. Both looked big, powerful, and almost overwhelmingly male. And both wore identical expressions of cool, distant professionalism.
Jessica’s heart sank. She curled a lip, weary anger surging through her. “I gather you still think I’m the Mata Hari of the Outpost.”
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