Girl Gone Nova (38 page)

“As you previously noticed, their shields and weapons are better than yours and ours.”

“But they are not positioned to attack our ships—” He stopped as he realized what he’d seen. “They are after control of the outposts?”

“Or they plan to destroy them. There’s no way to know.”

“They must see my ships approaching this outpost.”

“I know.” Delilah frowned. “Bit unsettling that it doesn’t appear to worry him. That makes me think this is a hit-and-run operation. Up to now, his cloaks have kept him hidden from us.”

It was true he hadn’t seen the ship on Feldstar until it dropped its cloak. “These ships are still cloaked?” A quick nod from Delilah. “How is it possible that you see them?”

“You dumped
three
test tubes of nanites into my system. I’ve acquired several interesting new abilities since you saw me last.”

Hel tensed. “You’ve gained access to the rest of the outpost.”

The General growled again, and Delilah shot him an impatient look.

“Sir?”

He didn’t look happy, but he did nod.

“We haven’t gotten access to the rest of the outpost,” she hesitated, her gaze intent as it met his, “but I did find out how to do it.” Now she looked almost amused.

He didn’t ask the question, because his brain was starting to make some connections that would explain his arrival and the General’s growling, but he wanted her to say it out loud.

“The first tech was unlocked by the Key.”

He knew this.

“It was a
genetic
Key, in something we call DNA. The rest of it also requires a specific DNA string. Another genetic Key.”

No wonder the General looked like a ticking bomb.

“Me.” His smile was slow, but wide.

“You were the closest,” the General snapped.

Why did he suspect he was not the General’s choice?

Delilah stared at the ceiling, trying not to grin.

“The nanites picked you,” the General added, as if to keep Hel from getting ideas about Delilah’s interest.

It was too late for that.

“The nanites remain inside you?” The question gave him breathing room to think about being a
Key
. The irony was delightful and terrifying. For an answer she turned her palm up. Golden beads of light emerged from her skin, then sank out of sight.

The General looked as uncomfortable as Hel felt. “She glowed?” For the first time Hel noticed the weapon lying on the table close to the General’s seat.

“She glowed.”

It did not sound as if the glowing made the General happy, but perhaps nothing could.

He had many questions, but would ask none of them in front of the General. He forced his mind back to the salient point: they needed his help. Was it true there were others out there with the correct DNA string? His power was not absolute, but finding others would take time and time was in short supply. Hel felt this, and he was sure they did, too.

“Currently the outpost has some weapons online and a cloak, but no shield. If you unlock the technology that would bring additional weapons and a shield into play, not just for this outpost, but the others.” She hesitated and her gaze strayed to the General. “It’s not just about our protection. This is your history, your heritage that might be destroyed or taken over.”

“It is true that outsiders to this galaxy have been unwilling to share control,” Hel said, with pointed emphasis.

“You have every reason to be suspicious, Hel,” Delilah said, before the General got his mouth open, “but keep this in mind. We arrived in this galaxy openly. Once we’d sorted out the players, we took sides. We fought
with
you against the Dusan, and we haven’t gone covertly around the galaxy kidnapping young women and forcing them into marriage.”

She gave both men the kind of look only a woman can give a man. Even his mother might have quailed from it.

“And the distrust between our peoples has been
deliberately
fostered and fomented by traitors on both sides. But we’ve moved past that. Haven’t we, sir?”

The General looked like he might choke on the words, but he managed a, “Yes.”

Hel jumped from frustrated to amused in a heartbeat. Halliwell reminded him of Lorin, caught in mischief.

“Of course.” Hel could be gracious. It made him look good to Delilah and annoyed the General at the same time.

“And you don’t need to worry, Hel, because you’ll have joint control of the outpost from now on, won’t he, General Halliwell?”

“Of course.” It came out through gritted teeth, but at least he said it.

Hel could appreciate his problem. He had teased the man at every opportunity.

“I appreciate the effort, General Halliwell.” He said it sincerely and seriously and got his reward—Delilah’s smile of approval.

The General might have snorted. It was difficult to hear anything negative while basking in that smile.

“While we’re all enjoying being good friends, the Gadi ships are getting closer, and the clock is ticking with these ships from Keltinar,” the General pointed out, going from grouchy to pragmatic with an abruptness that left Hel feeling a bit impressed.

“Keltinar? You know where they originate?”

“We’re pretty sure we know they’re from Keltinar,” Delilah said. Before Hel could ask the next question, she answered it. “We think that’s where our people went and they’re here because of them, because of us. That might be why they are targeting the outposts.” She frowned as if the words didn’t feel right to her.

Hel blinked, mostly because he didn’t know what to do or say to that.

“The doc said you noticed their ships are similar to ours.”

“Yes. I did wonder—”

“If we lied about the level of our deployment in your galaxy.” This General he hardly recognized added, “I would have thought the same thing. The similarities are disturbing.”

“Dr. Smith, the scientist who traveled through the portal, had a design for a ship that is uncannily similar to the Keltinar ships. And he was involved in the design of ours.” Something still bothered Delilah. It was there in the almost absent way she said this.

“Which would explain the similarities and the differences.” Hel didn’t have access to their design specs, but he had scanned their ships. He frowned. “They have been in the galaxy for some time. They started abducting women several seasons past. Is this deployment a reaction to your escape?”

“I don’t think so. I felt their clock ticking when I was with them. I think they’ve been multi-tasking, learning the players here, getting wives, waiting for a trigger of some kind.”

The frown between her brows made her seemed more human, less remote.

“What concerns you?” Hel asked.

“Well, logically, if they had an issue with us, it should be related to Dr. Smith’s trip through the portal two years ago. So either they-re late and don’t know it or—”

“—the trigger is something else. Someone else,” Hel finished for her. “You fear that we, that what we plan to do, is this trigger?”

“I don’t know what to think.” Her wry gaze slammed into his. “Something I’m not used to.”

“Is this more of that time paradox stuff?” The General was getting frustrated again.

Delilah’s smile was half-hearted, abstracted. “Possibly, sir.”

Hel almost asked her what it was, but he did not wish to distract her, too. He looked at the HUD. Was this Conan character only after the outpost? But he had no way to know Delilah was on this ship. He’d made sure he stayed cloaked both arriving and leaving to protect her.

“At least his arrival is not related to you,” he shot a look at the General, “Delilah.”

They both stilled. There was no other word for it.

“He knows I’m here. He tagged me when I was dirt side with him.” She held out her hands, palms up and random spots on them glowed red. “He can track my movements on this ship. And possibly on the outpost.”

“But surely your nanites can deal with this contamination?” Hel’s gut tightened at the thought of the barbarian tracking Delilah’s movements.

“They can, but if he can’t track me that might be the trigger. Or provoke him to premature action.” She rubbed her head and sighed. “He hasn’t attacked yet. That’s probably a good thing.”

“You need to unlock the outpost before he does, Doc,” the General said, his face unsurprisingly grim. “It’ll be a short battle for all of us if you don’t.”

“We can provide proof you weren’t involved in the plots, if you think your people will believe us,” Doc said, trying not to stare too hard at Hel in ABUs and boots. Men in uniform were hot. And a man in uniform you were hot for? Well, the combination was downright explosive. And it had been her idea. She’d pointed out to the General that they’d attract less attention on the outpost if he were dressed like their people.

He paused to consider her words, but he was as good as she was at hiding his thoughts. She wondered what his IQ was. He’d been quick to grasp the essentials. His mind was agile to the point of frightening. So why wasn’t she afraid of him?

You like him.

It was a rhetorical question.

No it wasn’t.

Okay, fine, but the answer is more complicated than like or dislike. And I don’t have time to sort it out now.

She sighed. How could she expect the peeps to tell which questions needed answers and which didn’t, when she didn’t know? She had a weird, knee-jerk reaction to the word
like
in relation to Hel. It was an anemic word and the emotions he roused in her weren’t anemic, but there was no point dwelling on it. There was no future in it and a lot of risk—the kind of risk she wasn’t used to dealing in. The realm of feelings weren’t in her skill set. On some level she so wanted to deny, she knew that the level of pleasure she’d felt at his sudden appearance could result in an equal or greater level of pain when they both returned to their respective worlds. She’d done pain when Robert lost his battle with
them.
It wasn’t a place she wanted to go again. She did understand that one was not always given a choice, but it didn’t stop her from trying.

Hel shrugged, drawing her out of her thoughts. “There is much that will happen in the next few days. The outcome will determine many things about my future and yours.”

So he didn’t want to think too much either. It was kind of funny, that their level of denial was yet another thing they had in common. The General had finally quit hovering and let her brief him on the basics of the plan to retrieve their missing people and eliminate the alien threat. She’d added her usual qualifier about the law of unintended consequences.

It still bothered her that she didn’t know very much about what had happened two years ago, but at least she’d considered all the possibilities that she reasonably could, and prepared for them as much as one could prepare for the impossible and a possible time paradox—which meant she was much less prepared than she liked to be. And at least she could go knowing she’d done all she could to help the General mind the store while she was gone. Even taking out the distance factor, she wouldn’t be able to return that close to her departure time, but if she was successful, any problems with Conan and his boys should just go away as if they never happened. She might not remember him when she got back.

She tried not to worry about how success might change her current reality, tried not to think about possibly returning to a life without the peeps. No matter the impact on
her
life, she had to go forward. She promised the General she’d try to bring his people home. He’d brought her home. She owed him this. Even the peeps didn’t know what would happen. The Garradians hadn’t used the portal to try to change time. It was, in fact, one of the reasons they’d locked it. She felt no sense of judgment from the peeps for what she was attempting. Maybe they didn’t want to get blown away either.

“Do you fear you are this trigger, Delilah?”

Hel breaking into her thoughts was a relief. She needed to think less, if she could just figure out how to do that.

“No.” She frowned, remembering Conan’s reaction to finding out she was a doctor. She wasn’t the only doctor with the expedition, and she couldn’t think of any reason she’d go through the portal to Keltinar. She’d maxed out her brain trying. On the other hand, there was that law of unintended consequences and the many things she didn’t know. “Though I never say never.”

It was part honest assessment, part superstition.

Hel zipped up his vest and hung the loaded P-90 on the hook off the front. With the cap on, he’d exchanged his leader persona for jarhead. And they called
her
chameleon. The weapons added to the uniform made her skin sizzle. She could almost hear her peeps noting and assessing this phenomenon. It was a good thing she could multi-task.

Her peeps went on the alert. “We got incoming.”

“Gadi?” Hel went from jarhead to something even more lethal with the word. Doc didn’t know you could get more lethal than a jarhead, except maybe her.

“No. It’s Conan. He’s popped out in a smaller ship, a kind of shuttle I’d guess. It’s more benign than a fighter craft.” She tapped into ship’s systems. “He’s asking for medical help.”

“He knows you are a healer.” Hel didn’t sound surprised.

“Why would he want to see me after I shot him? That’s nutty.”

“He hopes,” Hel said, his tone quiet but firm.

Doc’s radio earbud activated. “Doc?”

“I see it, sir.”

“Can you get on a video link with me? He’ll be here before you can get to my ready room.”

Doc looked at the video screen, saw the General already there. “I’m here, sir.”

He frowned. “I can’t see you.”

“Oh, sorry. I took us both off the video screen as a security measure.” Well, the peeps had. Yet another cool thing they could do. She loved them. At the thought it almost felt they wiggled with delight. Was that possible? The General twitched, letting her know they were visible again.

“Is that the man who kidnapped you, Doc?”

The picture taken from his transmission popped into view, but Doc had already seen him during her tap.

“Yes, sir.”

“What does he want?”