Steamrolled

by Pauline Baird Jones

  And nothing changed the fact that they were stuck somewhere and some when. The peeps could activate a beacon that would yank them through the Kikk portal, but he didn’t want to be yanked until he knew more. And he didn’t want to leave until he could be sure he’d be the first one back to get the machine. Had Smith followed the paper trail or the energy trail? Or both? And if the machine was offline, would there be an energy trail to follow?

  “I wish we knew if the machine was out of power or—” What? Taking a break? The red ball appeared dormant, but the peeps weren’t eager to take a chance it wasn’t and he didn’t blame them.

  Thank you.

  “It does seem to have flat-lined.” Emily’s subdued tone felt wrong.

  As if it didn’t like her assessment, the machine gave a twitch.

  Her chin lifted, her body stiffening. They might have been connected to the same thought as they scrambled for cockpit. The gauges were twitching, too.

  “It’s trying to power up again,” she said, her tone calm, excitement beginning to thread into her voice again.

  A trickle of unease made its way down his spine. There was a pattern to the twitching, but a different pattern than the one that had brought them here. His body shifted into Delilah mode. He liked it. Her mode was way cooler than his mode. Way cooler? Where had that come from?

  “What’s it doing?”

  “Something new.” She met his look of worry with, “If it powers up, maybe we can drive the bug closer to town.”

  He had not thought of that. She was…he didn’t know what she was, but he liked it, though the way she thought reminded him somewhat of his time in crazy. In a good way. He felt the peeps shake their heads, and possibly roll their eyes, even though he knew they didn’t, couldn’t without heads or eyes.

  “Should we lock down the machine?” Robert wanted to slam the hatch. Robert didn’t want to leave Emily alone on the bridge. If something happened, she could be flung against any of a hundred sharp corners. Before she could answer the gauges gave a major twitch. He grabbed her close and braced as a blur of motion left him feeling like he’d left his stomach in another dimension. It stopped and his stomach was still with him, though it wasn’t happy about that. “What just happened?”

  It felt a bit like portal transport, but was too short.

  She peered over his arm at the GPS without breaking his hold. Frowned. “We’re still in New Mexico. So…nothing.”

  “That wasn’t nothing.” He didn’t want to let go of her, but he needed to see. He compromised by taking her hand and towing her after him to the access hatch. The door had banged into place, though it wasn’t locked, since they hadn’t locked it. They were lucky the machine hadn’t gone further—unless the unsealed hatch had limited the range? Olivia had believed the machine wouldn’t do anything with the hatch unsealed. She’d been wrong about that, though it could be a side effect of the malfunction and have nothing to do with the door.

  He pushed it open and found it still night, though one devoid of stars. Fast moving clouds covered the sky as far as he could see. He’d intended to shine some light on where Twitchet’s body had lain, but something else caught his attention. Directly across from him, starting close to the ground, a light arced up, then shot across the sky, passing over his head, before dropping down into the opposite horizon. Robert frowned. Could that be one of the intergalactic squadrons doing maneuvers out of Area 51? That seemed faster than what he’d been told they could do in atmosphere, but looks could be deceiving in the desert at night. Lightning flared against the sky. The patterns were intricate and appeared to cover half the sky for a brief instance. One of the fast moving lights shot out of what appeared to be a smaller lightning strike and moved parallel to their position. It stopped, a glowing disc pausing for what seemed a long time before leaping forward again.

  “That’s so—” Emily broke off as more of the fast moving lights appeared in the sky, mingling in and out of the distant lightning storm.

  There’d been no storm or lights when they’d been out here before the shift. He had to presume they’d shifted through time, if not space. Emily went to move past him. He gripped her hand, holding her back.

  “We need to stay with the device.”

  “Our planes and military craft can’t move that fast.” She gave a half laugh, half gasp. “It’s happening again.”

  “What’s happening again?”

  Her head tilted a few degrees. “The Roswell incursion. Aliens. It has to be aliens. They’re back.”

  She sounded too delighted by an unknown alien incursion. Or perhaps she was happy to have something besides her great uncle’s skeleton to focus on.

  “Did it happen like this before?” Robert knew the Garradians’ had had craft that could do this, or might be able to do this. Could they go that fast? Stop that fast? This could be something other than their aliens. That wasn’t what chilled him to his core, though. If they were shifting through time, this might be the original alien incursion. She’d probably love that, but he didn’t know how to tell her they were traveling through time.

  “Depends on who you ask.” She reached across him and aimed the light he forgot he still had toward where they’d last seen Twitchet. The rib cage was still visible but now the hip bones and part of the legs also stuck out the dirt. Robert wanted to check it out, but if the machine moved again… “You said something about the gauges?”

  It was part distraction, part need to know. She did a quick check.

  “Twitching again. Not as much as the first time, but more than last time.”

  “We should lock down.” If it were getting ready to do something—well, he didn’t know what would happen if they were standing in the doorway, but he didn’t think it could be good for them or the device.

  “We could use the Emergency Absquatulation device to anchor the bug,” Emily suggested, leaning against his back with an easy familiarity as she pushed up on her toes to see the lights making patterns in the sky. “That is so cool. Kind of looks like how they described it before the crashes.”

  Could they anchor it? Or would Smith use it to track the device? The multitrack function of his brain allowed him to ponder and play with various theories and outcomes, and the peeps helped his brain not melt down— “Crashes?” No known reason to feel uneasy, except he did. “There was more than one?”

  “According to some accounts.”

  One of the bright discs sped across the horizon parallel to their position. It was almost on top of them, though distances were deceiving over flat terrain, when it flared so bright they both flinched back. It sounded like an explosion, but sometimes thunder sounded explosive. Senses Robert hadn’t had before screamed alerts as the disc hurtled right at them. Robert grabbed the hatch handle and yanked it in into place, spinning the handle with speed enhanced by his upgrade and adrenalin. The whistle of something coming—he spun and grabbed Emily, pushing her down and covering her with his body—

  The impact sent the device sideways. Together they slid down the tilting floor. Robert swung his body around so his feet took the jolt just as the machine shifted. Whatever almost hit them affected the trip. It felt like the device kept rolling, but this time in slow motion. Robert felt the peeps straining against it as the device spun one way and time spun another…

  * * * *

  Ashe swam toward consciousness to the sound of an odd beeping off just off her left ear. It was as persistent as time and as annoying.

  Don’t open your eyes.

  She didn’t, hadn’t planned to without more data, though curiosity could be as insistent as time. Being told not to do it almost popped her lids up, but she managed to fight the impulse by focusing on what she could figure out without sight. It wasn’t a lot. She lay on her back. Soft covering over her, semi-soft something under her. Strong smell, possibly some kind of disinfectant? Her nose twitched. Perfume? Maybe Lurch sensed her growing need to see, because he spiked into the primitive cameras monitoring her. Bed. Hospital?
Could be. Ahead, some kind of clear material separated her from a cluster of people staring at her. People in white and a few military types.

  Okay, that’s creepy. Why are they looking at me like that?

  They believe you are an extraterrestrial.

  Ashe hesitated. I am. Kind of. Some percentage of me anyway.

  It is more serious than that. Your holographic image had to reset.

  Reset? Default was her Roswell clone. Crap. Not so funny at the moment. What’s the date?

  As near as I can ascertain, and based on observed, limited technology, this is Earth around the time of the incident known as Roswell.

  That was actually better than a date, though she’d have recognized it, too. Alien conspiracy theories ran in the Earth side of her genetics, not mitigated at all by intermarrying with actual aliens. She’d toured the museum’s website in the future. The irony did not escape her.

  So, I caused the Roswell crash? She paused, but all she could find to add was, that’s embarrassing.

  You had help.

  The Constilinium?

  His affirmative was more a feeling and his thinking kicked into high. She didn’t know what he thought about it, but she felt it when he kicked on the after burners, like the beginnings of a massive headache that never formed. Nanites hosts didn’t get many ailments, since healing came with the job.

  Any chance you know what we hit or where it came from? He wouldn’t have been unconscious with her, so he could know more than she did. He couldn’t know less.

  Space capable craft. Home planet: Keltinar.

  The multiple trails?

  I would assume so.

  I thought we never assumed? Did he chuckle? He could have. Keltinar. She’d never been there or met anyone from there, though she’d seen holos of the people. Her first look at Keltinarian craft had been in the time tear. Her thoughts drifted back to the Council member who might be from Keltinar. She almost frowned, but caught herself in time. Now that she thought about it, it was a bit odd that she knew so little about Keltinar, considering the level of interaction between Earth, Keltinar and the Garradians and the whole mail-order brides’ deal. Of course, three different galaxies, but it felt odd. Off, like time. So, I guess you have a plan?

  You guess correctly.

  Something in his tone told her she wasn’t going to like it. He did the nanite equivalent of the innocent whistle. She did a mental foot tap. The whistling stopped.

  You will have to die.

  No, didn’t like that plan.

  * * * *

  Emily thought they were going to die and almost asked a question because questions seemed preferable to having her life flash before her eyes in unimpressive detail. Only she couldn’t with her tongue being pulled out of her head, or maybe it was back down her throat. All around her everything pulled and pushed and stretched. It felt like her feet lengthened into an event horizon—like she needed to be taller—then they snapped back like rubber bands. She wanted to look away, but her lids wouldn’t close. Then it stopped. No transition, no easing into stopped. Just stopped. The bug was upright and they were in a tumble of legs and arms and bodies against the door to the loo.

  She expected to feel pain, and maybe that would come when her thoughts and brain reconnected, but for the moment all she felt was surprised to be alive. And tumbled. Not that tumbled didn’t have an upside. She was mashed up against Robert in a way that was a bit on the contortionist side, with elements of not bad, verging into seriously pleasant.

  She’d noticed he was hard and powerful each time he’d clasped her, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t find new aspects of clasped to delight in. His heart beat strongly against her cheek. Her hands gripped his back and her fingers got to feel his muscles ripple and shift. Happy hands and fingers. Her nose got to breathe him in with the knowledge that she could be dead and wasn’t. Just a tiny lift of her chin, that didn’t break contact with his chest and his chin—starting to show a sexy shadow—brought his yummy mouth into view. Her heart picked up the pace. Now would be perfect time for a celebrating-life kiss. They sounded great in the books she’d read.

  “We made it,” hoping her tone prompted, if her words didn’t.

  “Where is it?”

  She’d have found the question less than wonderful if he’d followed it up with releasing her, but his grip tightened. He did some shifts, mostly in the leg region, that eased some things that had been less good into better, while increasing the fineness of the good parts of being mashed against him. The hard thing digging into ribs went away, the rolling followed by a clunk sound identifying it as the flashlight. She could be impressed he’d held onto it at another time. Emily lifted her chin a bit more, in case he needed more encouragement to take clasping to the next logical level. His brows pulled together, creating a small, cute wrinkle in between them, his gaze unmistakably in the distant zone.

  His sigh came with hers causing all kinds of tremors and quakes to thread through her. On the upside, it yanked his attention back to her.

  “Are you all right?”

  Emily didn’t have to think for more than a few seconds to conclude what answer would bring the desired response. She edged her lower lip out and fluttered her lashes. “I’m…fine.” It had the benefit of being both the truth and guilt inducing. His arms tightened even more, the frown between the brows getting deeper and cuter. Oh my darling.

  For a second she thought he snickered, but she was in position to both hear and feel any snickering and she hadn’t felt anything, just heard it.

  “Do you hurt anywhere?”

  Emily figured he meant to check her for damage, but the one hand he freed from grabbing duty strayed up to her face, which was probably a good thing. She didn’t want to discourage him, so it was better if his hand didn’t stray anywhere controversial. She might be weird and crazy, but she’d known him for—his finger stroked across her lower lip, messing with her attempted math—not very long. His mouth followed his finger, not slamming this time, but still demonstrating proper enthusiasm.

  Oh my darling.

  For just a second, she thought she heard that snicker again…inside her head this time, but that wasn’t possible and then Robert upped the stakes by deepening the kiss and she forgot about anything that didn’t have to do with being hugged and kissed. She sank into him, into the kiss like she’d been waiting for it her whole life, because maybe she had. This was better than the last one, because she got to hold on to him while she spun into sensation—when they thumped into the other side of the bug, she realized the spinning had been real time, not because of the kiss.

  She blinked at him. He blinked back at her.

  “We shifted again.”

  It was better while kissing, she decided. Seemed kind of right to be shifting inside and out. His gaze settled on her mouth and she felt and saw his longing to get back to kissing.

  “I think you’re right.”

  She hadn’t said that kissing thing out loud, had she?

  “Maybe the EAD can anchor us here. We need to find out—” his pause felt abrupt. “—more about where we are.”

  That’s not what he’d meant to say, but she wanted kisses, not answers. So far, kissing Robert exceeded all previous—and mercifully few—kisses in the past. She was somewhat aware that the bug had settled into a low grumble, perhaps worn out by the double shimmy of the past few minutes. She refused to think about the saucer thing coming at them. And the explosion that seemed to tilt the bug, only in the end it hadn’t. The bug was upright, and they were tilted—she shut it off, but not thinking about it required a low level of focus to keep it at bay. She’d felt the impact, heard the impact, but worse than that were the questions that clustered around in her head like vultures. The imagery was apt. When vultures swooped in, what they did was a lot like what happened with answers. She felt the odd sensation of commiseration, but it faded away faster than her brother when there was something to wash.

  She was not so lost in thought s
he missed noticing that Robert was also pondering something. She would have preferred kissing, but if he had to think, at least she got to watch him do it. She could stare with impunity because it was polite to look at a person while waiting for them to speak, and mandatory when one was wrapped around them. His cuteness in no way diminished the politeness aspect. She felt a kind of giggle and wondered if she was having an out of body experience, but before she could go down that road Robert began the process of disentangling from her.

  She took comfort from his obvious reluctance. At one point, when his hand brushed against her somewhat bare midriff, he froze for ten whole seconds. She let him pull her upright and felt a glow of virtue when she refrained from stumbling against him. Her reward for her restraint came after he’d opened the hatch yet again. He took her hand and led her out of the bug with him. Perhaps he felt her curiosity because he said, “Don’t want to leave without you.”

  First came the boosted glow, then the question, didn’t he mean he didn’t want her—and the bug—to leave without him? His fingers twinned deeper into hers, so she felt comfortable snugging in close. It was dim, but not dark this time. Light made a thin rim on the distant horizon. It was hot, but cooling, which seemed to indicate the sun was leaving, not arriving. Her brain shied from more than that, her body choosing to inch in close to Robert in a fear she couldn’t articulate. They didn’t need the flashlight to avoid cacti, but that didn’t mean there was a lot to see—

  Robert halted, giving her an unplanned reason to bump into him. He didn’t wait for her to not ask. Somehow he’d acquired the flashlight again. He flicked it on now, shining it on the ground.

  “He’s gone.”

  Emily peeked around his solid shape, not sure what he meant—

  The skull was gone, replaced by a small, black box. A black box that was a close match for the Emergency Absquatulation Device.