Warrior

by Angela Knight

  Frowning darkly, Dona strode along the Outpost’s broad, ruler-straight corridors, winding her way through crowds of techs, fellow Enforcers, and wandering tourists.

  It was a sprawling facility, one of five located in various continents in various eras. Galactic Union officials had chosen sixteenth-century Spirit Mountain as the site for its North American headquarters. In this time, the surrounding area was sparsely populated by Native Americans, who had witnessed enough strange lights and loud noises to consider the mountain haunted.

  The Outpost itself was located deep within the core of the mountain, where it housed Temporal Enforcement, a well-equipped infirmary, and a sprawling concourse packed with a wide variety of shops.

  Dona headed for the latter. She’d always enjoyed window shopping and people watching in the concourse, where tourists and scholars bought whatever they’d need for their trips through time. Clothing for any era could be synthesized in the stores, along with the appropriate currency and enough supplies for extended temporal excursions.

  There were also banks of Jump tubes that would take time travelers wherever they needed to go with a minimum of discomfort. Unlike Temporal Enforcement agents, tourists, and scholars weren’t permitted T-suits, which would have allowed them to Jump around the time stream at will. The Galactic Union preferred to control where civilians went, and what they did when they got there.

  Dona passed a bearded, long-haired man dressed in filthy buckskins, his face gaunt, his eyes shadowed from weariness and lack of sleep. He was also in desperate need of a bath. She figured he was probably an anthropologist or historian, back from a long trip experiencing life as a seventeenth-century fur trapper.

  Next her attention fell on a man and woman talking earnestly to a patient, cool-eyed tour guide Dona had met before. Beside them, a young boy literally danced with excitement. All five wore late eighteenth-century colonial American dress.

  Dona knew the guide to be a thorough professional who prided herself on bringing her charges home without any serious trauma. Her round face was unmemorable with its button nose and blue eyes, and she wore her graying hair in a tightly braided bun. Relatively short and sturdy of build, she specialized in United States historical tours. Her deliberately nondescript appearance ensured nobody would take a second look at her, regardless of what time she visited.

  “I just don’t think it’s a good idea to take a ten-year-old into a war zone,” the guide said, eyeing the kid critically. “Flintlocks can kill you just as dead as a tachyon beamer.”

  “My son is very mature for his age,” the man told her earnestly. “We’ll keep him out of trouble.”

  Idiots.

  Dona was about to stop and add her authority to the tour guide’s when her gaze fell on a tall, dark-skinned man staggering down the corridor. His brown eyes were blank and stunned, and his rough homespun shirt was bloody, hanging in shreds around his thin waist. Just beyond him, a tourist stared in horror at his back.

  Dona swore and strode toward the man, barely reaching him in time to catch him as he toppled. At her touch, he yelped in agony and fear, one knobby fist glancing off her chin in a wild swing. “It’s all right, you’re safe,” she told him, ducking another awkward punch. “I’m Enforcer Dona Astryr. I’ll get help.”

  With a moan of relief, he went limp in her arms. Lowering him to the floor, Dona used her comp to message the infirmary. “I need a regen tube in Concourse Area 3-12B. Flogging victim.”

  She helped the man roll onto his belly and winced at what she saw. The entire length of his back was covered in blood and finger-width welts, bruises, and gashes, many of which were deep enough to show glints of white bone and torn muscle.

  “She seemed like such a nice woman,” the man said, his voice cracked with pain and tears. “So religious, so soft-spoken and sweet. How could she order sixty lashes . . . ?”

  “Yeah, they always seem like nice people,” Dona told him grimly. “Unfortunately, their version of ‘nice’ doesn’t extend to anybody they consider property.”

  “I’m not going back.” He began to cry in great, wracking sobs. “I can’t. I just can’t. What am I going to do with the rest of my life? My doctoral thesis . . .”

  “Don’t worry about that now.” She turned her attention to a horrified store clerk staring at them from the entry of a nearby shop. “Bring me a blanket, dammit. He’s going into shock.”

  “Oh. Right. Of course.” The woman hurried to her station and began punching buttons. The vendser unit obediently spat out a folded quilt, and she ran back to Dona with it bundled in her arms.

  They got him covered and waited tensely. A few moments later, a medtech raced up, towing a long transparent tube. The tube lowered to the floor, sprang open like a clamshell, and slowly edged beneath the man. He whimpered as it jostled him while scooping him into its confines. The medtech crouched beside it, pushing buttons as it flooded with a pink healing mist.

  “He’ll be all right,” the tech said, shooting Dona an acknowledging nod. “But he wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t gotten to him as quickly you did. Wonder why the hell the Jump tube staff didn’t call the infirmary when he arrived. Morons. I’m putting somebody on report. . . .” Grumbling under his breath, he stood and led the regen tube away.

  In a day or two, the man wouldn’t even have scars to show for his taste of slavery. At least, no physical ones. Dona figured the nightmares would take a lot longer to fade.

  “I can see tourists,” the store clerk told her, looking after the tube with a shaken expression. “I can see assuming the identity of a nobleman or maybe even a servant. But why in the Seven Hells would anybody pose as a slave?”

  “To find out whether history exaggerates.” Dona got to her feet as a small swarm of cleaning ’bots arrived to absorb the blood that had spilled on the floor. Round, silver, and about the size of an orange, they landed on the edges of the sticky red pool, which quickly vanished. “If anything, it understates. Anyway, time travel is never really safe. Not even for tourists.”

  As she turned away, she spotted the little family and their guide. The boy was staring after the tube, his face sheet-pale under his freckles.

  His father swallowed and looked at their guide. “Maybe you’re right. How much did you say you’d charge for that trip to Disney World?”

  Getting pissed at a temporal native for bigoted viciousness was a waste of energy. As far as the slaveholder was concerned, she’d committed no crime in ordering a man flogged until he was half-dead. The bitch was a product of a centuries-old system run by a wealthy class too cheap to pay for labor, a system that had to terrorize its victims in order to maintain control. A system that died more than four hundred years before Dona was born.

  That was the thing about time travel—the crimes of the past didn’t stay in the past.

  Dona growled under her breath and stalked into the Enforcers’ training gym. She needed to hit something. Hard.

  But even as the doors closed behind her, she almost turned and ran out again.

  The chief was here.

  Chief Enforcer Alerio Dyami stood in a corner of the gym holding a grav bar, pumping out repetitions with a Warlord’s effortless strength. He wore only a pair of black snugs that left most of his big body deliciously bare. His black hair fell in a thick mane to his broad, sweating shoulders, one lock of it braided with a string of gemstones that were actually combat decorations on his home planet. An intricate tattoo in vivid shades of gold and green covered the right side of his face, stretching from above one arching brow halfway down his elegant cheek.

  Each part of the swirling pattern meant something; she’d looked it up once. The gold and green color of the tat represented House Dyami, the company which had genetically engineered him and implanted the neuronet computer in his brain, giving him access to bursts of fantastic strength. The triangular design running down his cheek meant he was a Viking-class Warlord, the most physically powerful subclass of his warrior people.

 
; And the empty circle that lay directly underneath that meant he was unmated. Which intrigued Dona entirely too damned much, considering that male Vardonese Warriors were renowned for their sex drive and erotic skill.

  He’s your commanding officer, you moron, Dona told herself impatiently. Eyes off.

  She jerked her head away and mentally stuffed her fascination for her chief back into its box. She’d been infatuated with Dyami since joining the American Outpost two years ago. Which was why she’d gotten involved with that treasonous asshole Ivar Terje. When the big redhead had been assigned as her partner last year, she’d thought he was the perfect antidote for Dyami. He was even taller and more massively built than the chief, with a handsome angular face, cool green eyes, and a talent for making her feel she was the center of the universe.

  Instead, the bastard turned out to be a spy for the Xeran Empire. And now Dona herself was under suspicion.

  Oh, yeah. She definitely needed to hit something.

  Luckily, she spotted just the distraction she needed to take her mind off the chief, Ivar, Corydon, and that vicious little slaveholding bitch.

  Sweet Mother Goddess, Dona just walked in. With an effort, Alerio managed to keep his eyes from drifting in the cyborg’s direction as she strode across the gym on those long legs of hers.

  It was a time when genetic engineering had made beauty commonplace, yet Dona was lovely even by those standards. Tall and lean, she had the long, strong build of a fighter, and there was more than enough curve to her breasts and ass to draw his hot-blooded attention. She usually wore her long, dark hair in intricate braids that called attention to her striking violet eyes. Her features were precisely sculpted, cheekbones high and rounded, with a firm chin and a soft, sensual mouth.

  That mouth had been the focus of far too many of his most erotic dreams.

  It was an entirely inappropriate attraction, and he knew it. She was his subordinate, dammit. Though it wasn’t against Temporal Enforcement regulations to take a lover from among one’s staff, doing so was a very bad idea. How was he supposed to maintain objectivity about a woman who’d obsessed him for the past two years?

  To make matters worse, Dona returned his interest. She’d never said so directly, of course—she was as aware of the inherent problems of a relationship as he was. But her powerful female response to him was entirely too clear to a man with sensor implants.

  Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one who’d sensed her interest.

  At first, he’d been relieved when Dona had gotten involved with Ivar Terje. Terje, however, had proven to be a jealous son of a bitch who’d made Dona’s life hell even before he’d revealed himself to be a spy. Alerio had itched to call the bastard out for a Warlord-style hand-to-hand duel for the way he’d treated her. As the couple’s commanding officer, however, that hadn’t been possible.

  Now, though, if Alerio ever got his hands on the treasonous bastard, he meant to give Terje the beating he’d been begging for.

  Brooding, he rotated the grav-bar, ignoring the ache of his straining arms. The bar basically functioned the same as an antigrav unit, but in reverse. Its actual weight was only a kilo or so, but he’d adjusted its field generators until its mass was closer to four hundred. Controlling that mass deserved every bit of his attention and strength, but it was all he could do to keep his gaze from drifting to Dona.

  She was talking to Riane Arvid, one of Alerio’s fellow Vardonese Warriors. The young Warfem was currently aiming punches and kicks at a combat practice ’bot. The big, vaguely humanoid machine circled with her, trying to avoid her furious blows while getting in some of its own.

  As the two sparred, Riane’s cyborg wolf partner, Frieka, lay watching them with intent blue eyes. The big timber wolf was basically a four-legged library, his considerable intelligence enhanced by a powerful internal computer. His loyalty and love for Riane, however, was bred right into the bone and blood of his canine nature.

  “That bastard Corydon!” Riane spat, sweat-damp red hair straggling around her flushed face as she danced around the combot. “I just found out he’s the same son of a blood demon who tried to kill my mother!”

  “Your mother?” Dona rocked back on her heels. “Why did he do that?”

  Frieka lifted his head from his paws and yawned as if faintly bored. “Jane was a temporal native. Corydon thought that damned Xeran Jump killer was supposed to slice her into bacon. When Riane’s father saved her, Corydon’s first response was to try to kill her himself.”

  Dona blinked. “Again, why?”

  “Because he thought the world would end if he didn’t. That was the theory then—if you did something in the past that wasn’t supposed to happen, the fabric of space time would unravel like a cheap scarf. Boom-yow. Baran, of course, refused to let him kak her, and made him transport all four of us into the future instead. Five, counting Jane’s cat.” The big wolf snorted. “To Corydon’s vast surprise, the universe survived.”

  Oh, yeah, that’s right. After Baran Arvid and Jane Colby’s Jump, physicists had taken a second look at the math and concluded history couldn’t be changed. Anything time travelers did in the past was supposed to happen. Temporal Enforcement had changed its policies to allow temporal tourism and scholarship. Over the twenty-five years that followed, a whole industry had grown up around time travel.

  “But you can just imagine how thrilled Corydon was when he found out I’m Jane and Baran’s daughter,” Riane snarled, hitting the combot so hard, it staggered backward a few paces. “He’s just aching to prove I’m some kind of Xeran spy. Yeah, right. The daughter of the Death Lord, working for the Xerans. Not very damn likely!”

  “Since when did Corydon let a few facts get in the way of blind prejudice?” Frieka drawled. “Want me to bite him for you?”

  “Hell, I want to bite him myself!” Riane slammed a foot into the combot’s knee.

  The machine promptly collapsed in a vaguely humanoid heap. “End combat!” it squawked. “This unit has sustained serious damage. Repairs needed.”

  Dona cocked her head and grinned at the Warfem. “I think you broke it.”

  Riane aimed a sneer at the damaged combot. “Yeah, you’d better stay down, you mechanical wimp.”

  Moving to put his grav bar away, Alerio concealed a smile. No matter how grim a situation was, the comedy team of Riane and Frieka was always good for a grin.

  Com message request received from Senior Investigator Alex Corydon, Alerio’s comp suddenly announced.

  Speak of the devil. Open communications, he told the computer implant. “What can I do for you, Senior Investigator?”

  “My team has a lead on the location of your spy, Chief Enforcer,” Corydon’s voice announced in his mind. “He seems to have taken refuge in twenty-second century New York. Please assemble a take-down team to make the arrest.”

  Alerio’s mouth drew into a savage smile. “Believe me, Senior Investigator, it will be my pleasure.”

  He dumped the grav bar into the rack with its fellows and started toward the door. “Riane, Frieka, grab your t-gear and assemble in the conference hall. We’ve got a lead on Terje’s location. We’re going to take the bastard down.”

  “Yes!” Riane crowed, and trotted for the door, the big wolf at her heels.

  Dona, for her part, stepped into Alerio’s path. “I want to go with you, Chief.” Her clear violet gaze met his, level and demanding. “I want—no, I need—to help take him down.”

  He sighed. “You know better than that, Astryr. You haven’t been cleared in this mess yet. It’s a conflict of interest.”

  Her delicate jaw firmed. “You don’t really think I’m involved in his plot, do you Chief?”

  “No, but Corydon certainly does. It’s his show, Astryr, and he’s not going to want you along for the ride.” Besides, there was another concern. Terje had tried to kill her once before, and Alerio knew damned well he’d try again if given the chance. It would be just like him to cut her throat on his way down. And Aleri
o had no desire to watch Dona Astryr die.

  Violet eyes narrowed. He had the uncomfortable feeling she was reading his thoughts right off his face, and he mentally swore. She’d gotten to know him entirely too well.

  “Let me play bait, Chief.”

  “Forget it.” With an uncompromising slash of his hand, he stepped past her and strode toward the door. She followed him with long, angry strides.

  “Ivar’s obsessed with me, Chief. If he’s focused on me, that’ll give the rest of you a golden opportunity to take him out.”

  “And give him a golden opportunity to kill you. Forget it.” But his steps faltered. She had a point. If she’d been any other Enforcer than the one who haunted his dreams, would he let her take the chance?

  Alerio winced. Yeah, probably. If he kept her off the team, would he be putting the rest of his men in danger to protect her?

  Shit. This was exactly why he had no business getting involved with her.

  “Chief?” she asked at his shoulder.

  “You’re in. If Corydon lets you go.” Without looking back, he strode out the door, silently cursing himself and the woman who had become his obsession.