Kicking Ashe (16 page)

They are going to be one, big ass bomb.

I’m almost there.

She grabbed Shan’s arm, yanking his attention her way. “We need to leave.” It was possible he’d had contact with his ship through all the shifts.

He frowned. “My brother—” He looked down at the Zelk. The pulse of the red eyes sped up, which seemed to indicate the approach of detonation. “Not time to get far enough away—”

“Commander!” Cadir took his eyes off the battle, shock in his voice, then in his face as the shot hit caught him dead center, throwing him off the path.

Past his sprawled body, the horizon turned brown, like a dust storm on the desert. It sucked bodies—live and dead—up like a vacuum. The fallen Zelk’s eyes quit blinking.

“We need to leave
now
,” Ashe said, clamping her arm on his.

The tug of transport hurt, like being wrenched from the ground, from the storm and maybe boosted by an explosion. A howl—of protest?—and then the chill of the transport beam encompassed them.

* * * *

Ashe’s back slammed against metal. Her breath whooshed out. Shan slammed on to her. Her eyes crossed. Metal tilted, sending them rolling—a tangle of legs and arms—across the decking and into a wall. She ended up on top, her cheek against Shan’s chest. Stars danced past her eyes—not a happy dance, but maybe a bit relieved. Felt like she’d been squeezed through a straw. Even her veins hurt. If that was typical Keltinarian transport, she’d rather blow up than use it again.

I do not think it was a normal transit. I am, in fact, surprised we made it.

High five on getting us here.
She frowned. High five?
What’s that?
Instead of providing an answer, Lurch began smoothing out the pain spots—yay for a more normal supply of drones.
You missed a spot.

It has an external cause.

She shifted so she could check it out. Found Shan’s weapon stabbing her ribs. Still set to kill. And his finger on the trigger. Lovely. She adjusted its trajectory away from her body. Then adjusted her weapon so it wasn’t pointing at Shan’s head. Was a bit surprised Shan hadn’t complained about that until she saw his ridiculously long lashes laying fanned across pale cheeks. Her heart jerked.
What’s wrong with him?

The rough transit. He will recover.

That sounded a bit—something, but in the end it was good news, so she didn’t call him on it. Truth be told, she didn’t mind a catch-your-breath moment. Then her breath hitched instead of catching at the sight of him. Out-like-a-light softened the sharp angles of his face. The shadow of his beard made a heady frame for a relaxed, fuller curve to his finely sculpted mouth. Ashe wasn’t sure which fascinated more, the beard or the mouth. Men in her time were self-shaving, so she’d never seen one. Of course, already a fan of the mouth.

She licked hers, wondering why he seemed to come into sharper, better focus with each time shift. He looked the same, but it felt like she saw him better. Or knew him better? Could time be bringing them closer to a place where they knew each other? Was she seriously wishful thinking? She felt him stir, as if consciousness was returning. When the lashes lifted, what would she see in his eyes? Would he still look at her as if he knew her, liked her even?

His arms lifted, closed around her. His chest gave a slight rumble, almost a contented murmur in there. That felt nice, made her feel almost safe. Been a while since she felt safe. She took a steadying breath, then reluctantly considered their recent fire fight.

The head-kill-shot thing made her gut twitch a bit. Could they be a future version of an automaton? Seemed a bit of a stretch when they looked like a cross between an ancient T-Rex and a well-armored lizard. Top notch camo, too. Though their battle behavior was odd. Why hadn’t they shot back when she and Shan started shooting them? She would have shot the question to Lurch, but she felt him trying to fix their position yet again. The time shifting was messing with both of them. Might be making her a bit paranoid. Did she really think the evil overlord had created a creepy lizard automaton, but only used it in this time? Would have liked a look inside its noggin before it blew up, though, just to see the power source and erase her slight doubt.

She felt Lurch’s tension as the connect time increased, then his relief—boosted by hers—when it happened. Even with the connection, the data flow felt slower than usual. At least Shan’s ship was here for them to connect to. If it had disappeared in the time event, they’d have been trashed—a word she didn’t commonly use but which suited what they’d have been. She also suspected it, and some other unfamiliar phrases, came from Lurch’s time with not-so-great grandma. If they survived, she intended to get really pissy about him contaminating her vocabulary with not-so-great grandma’s favorite sayings. It made her feel—

—sibling rivalry?

She is not my sibling.

She is not your rival.

Didn’t feel like that, but she didn’t press the point.
What’s our sitrep?
I did not just use another of her phrases, Ashe thought, mentally hitting her forehead.

We still hold position relatively close to Designation 023456
,
but we appear to have shifted in time.

Forward?

Both forward and back. I have been able to retask one of his sensor arrays to track time. Now that we are on board, I should be able to maintain the connection.

He made no promises, she noticed, not that she blamed him. Events were literally spinning out of their control. She pushed back the memory of Eamon and Cadir—the time tracking screen provided a welcome distraction—
hello
.
That’s pretty odd.
Which was saying a lot considering all the odd they’d seen together. This screen bore some similarities to the time plain right before time tsunami met big ass bomb, though this was more localized and it appeared there was normal time enclosing the quake zone. Within that zone, fractures fanned out in jagged lines away from a, well, a sort of epicenter.
Kind of looks like a cell.
Or an amoeba. Overlaying the fracture zone, there appeared to be wavy lines, like a terrain map.

They are time boundaries. Time moves differently in each section.

Wow, that’s—
she didn’t know what that was except weird.
What is at the epicenter?

His pause felt overlong.
We were.

Glad to be out of it then. She studied the dot that was Shan’s ship and the mess between it and the epicenter.
Did we cross all that to get aboard ship?
A miracle they made it. Not really a surprise it had knocked Shan out or made her molecules hurt.
Why didn’t it bother me more?

A long pause, then a surge of excitement from the usually blasé nanite.
Your suit is back online.

You fixed it?

No. It is not only undamaged, but fully deployed.

So I’m shiny silver metal girl again?
Okay, a bit shallow, but she hated being shiny, silver metal girl.

I am adjusting the hologram settings so you look like you did on the planet. And you still wear the clothes given you there.

Sweet.
Her heart gave a big kick. Maybe her time senses were—more than her heart slumped figuratively against Shan’s chest when her senses remained firmly offline. The warm chest kind of helped ease the pain. It was a very fine chest.

It might return in another time event. Or time may be too unstable for it to work properly.

She stared at the map and had to agree that could mess up more than time senses. Was Time toying with them or trying to help them? Her current proximity with Shan was more than helpful, though the fact that he was still unconscious ramped up worry—

He stirred again. The chest under her chin rising and falling in a big, wake up sigh. A pause, then his lashes fluttered, lifted. A foggy, green gaze warmed. The lips curved a bit, though he didn’t go overboard. With his free hand he touched her cheek. “You are still here.”

The husky mutter sent warm delight cascading through all of her. She wanted to promise she’d always be here. Wanted to believe Time would let her. Hard to trust Time, when it was wigging out all around them. Despite the pang squeezing her heart, she smiled. How could she not when he looked at her like that? “I am.”

His lashes lifted higher, allowing him to see more. “We are on my ship.”

“Yes.”
And I’m on you
. Good news and more good news.

A crease formed between his brows and her heart clenched.

“My brother. I scented him again, just before—”

Her eyes widened. Pieces fell into place. “He was on the missing ship.” His nod was grim, not easy to accomplish with a mere nod, but he managed it.

Seemed wrong to stay on his chest after that. She disentangled limbs, weapon and body and sat up. Did it seem he almost protested? Or had her critical thinking skills turned wishful? Shouldn’t be wishing anything—

She rubbed a tiny ache in her temple that Lurch couldn’t ease. “Do the Zelk ever take prisoners?”

He sat up, too, his back against the bulkhead and rubbed his face. “Not much is known about the Zelk. Nothing is known about how—”

He stopped, his expression deep in not-happy, though not—it seemed to her—the same as their first contact. More crappy-situation not happy, than Ashe-is-a-pain-in-the-ass unhappy. Ashe let relief trickle down her insides, though she tempered it with caution. What Time gave, it could take back without breaking a sweat. The thought of Time sweating rather made her eye want to twitch. To escape thought and twitch, she said, “I’m sorry.”

Do you think we could figure out which time stream his brother is in and go get him?

My time databases have not updated.

Not so much as a negative as an ignore of the question, though now that she thought about it, her suit’s beacon sniffer wasn’t picking up anything from the Time Base. Not a good sign. Still it could be the shifting time blocking both sniffer and Lurch’s access. Or it could be gone.
Could we be in a broken reality?
She’d landed in one once. It had been pretty unstable. Hadn’t been there long enough to know if it was unstable like this was unstable.

Shan looked around, rubbed his face with a kind of manly wince. If he hurt half as much as she had—

“I don’t remember activating transport.”

“We had to get gone and this was the only place to go.” She lifted her knees, wrapped her arms around them, her weapon held loosely and pointed down. Rather expected him to demand it back. He didn’t. Holstered his and made no comment when she stowed hers. He did rise and hold out his hand to help her up. Good manners and sweet when he held on after she made it upright. Now if he’d just offer a little tour of his utilitarian bridge and maybe his ship—

“You brought us here?” So no tour. She nodded. “How?” Before she could answer, he huffed out something that was part sigh, part snort, all of it troubled. “I have many questions.”

What he didn’t have was the attitude. “I’m sure you do.” And she had theories and conjectures instead of answers.

He looked past her with a frown. “What is that?”

Ashe turned. Her gaze pinging on the command sling—and only seat on his bridge. It looked comfortable enough, and apparently gave Shan access to all his data, tripling what was available to him during a battle, if what Lurch had learned was true. Consoles, panels, instrument panels, screens—some lit, some not—walked tidily around the perimeter. Shan took the direct path the tracking screen Lurch had tweaked.

“It looks like a terrain map, but it is not, is it?” Shook his shoulders restlessly. He traced one of the lines with a finger. “It does not follow the topography that we experienced dirt side.”

“Time has a different terrain than, well, terrain.” Well, that sounded bright.

“Time…terrain?” He looked at her, a brow arched in skepticism that was not apparent in his eyes.

“It’s a time tracking display.”

He stared at her for several seconds. “Would not a clock suffice?”

Ashe managed a small chuckle. “According to this, we’re in some kind of fractured time.” She marked the ship’s position near the edge of the amoeba. “We need to be able to track it to navigate our way out.” If that was possible. “I wish we had a picture of what it was like during the skirmish dirt side.”

Why?

“I don’t understand why the Zelk didn’t react when we started shooting them.” Ashe answered Lurch’s question, though Shan didn’t seem to notice. Could they have been in a different flow of time than the Zelk? That didn’t explain why they were able to see and shoot them, though.

Shan shoulder’s shifted, as if the question made him uncomfortable. “This is only my second, dirt side encounter.”

“It was a well laid ambush. Decent strategy.”

“Their tactics were similar to my last encounter.”

“What happened?” Seemed less weird to ask it that way, than to ask how he survived.

“The wind shifted.”

They had been upwind from the Keltinarian patrol, she recalled. “So they know you scent parse, but don’t seem to deal with the unexpected very well.”

Shan’s nod was slow. “It is the same when we encounter them in space. Though they learn quickly. I have to keep changing tactics. What worked once, does not work more than twice, though it will work within a single battle.”

That seemed important, though was not yet clear why. She filed it away, right under the headshots. Not because she saw a connection.

But you feel one.

Yeah. Or I’m crazy.

Shan stepped closer to her time tracking chart, angled his head one way, then the other. “Fractured.” He shook his head. “How then did we move through it?”

“We’re creating theories on the fly here—”

“We?”

Oops.
She licked her lips. “I am in consultation with an expert on time theory.”

His gaze swept her covered parts again. “Despite your malfunction.”

“My malfunction seems to be less…mal. And more…function again.”

His gaze tracked between her and the time data display. “When we moved through time?”