Girl Gone Nova (45 page)

“That won’t be necessary,” a cool, calm voice said.

Doc couldn’t tell if they were male or female. Their faces, their clothes, their miens were bland beyond weird. It didn’t take much thought to conclude they were Smith’s prey, but that didn’t make them the good guys.

“Who the foxtrot are you?” She didn’t lower her weapon. Instead, she grabbed one of the future weapons they’d taken off Smith’s buddies. Hel still held the one she’d tossed him.

“We are here to deal with the time violators.”

Doc flicked her safety off. “You’ll notice this is a projectile weapon, so your shields won’t protect you.”

“You do not know this.”

He or she was right. She lifted the future weapon. Only one reason Smith and his boys were packing them. “But this one will.”

They might have paled. Hard to tell when they had skin whiter than hers.

“Who are you?” Pale gazes flicked between Doc and Hel, curiosity lighting their pale gazes with animation.

“The ones with the weapons,” Hel said.

“And the upper hand,” Doc finished. “Who are
you?”

“We are time wardens. We detected an instability and tracked it here.”

“And how do you fix this instability?” Hel asked the question. Doc felt his need to keep their attention away from her.

If this was a Chameleon trap, which of them had set it, Smith or the self-declared time wardens? Doc wasn’t getting heavy truth vibes from them either. How much did they
know?
Her peeps hackles rose with hers.

“We must collect the contagion and reset time.”

“Why should we believe you?” Doc asked, sensing something from them, but not sure what.

“We are not allowed to affect the time stream. We protect it.”

“Then you should already know who we all are, shouldn’t you?” Hel arched his brows, his lips almost twitching at the chagrin that marred the blandness of their expressions.

Good one.

“It is not that simple.”

“Nothing ever is,” Doc agreed. “When I don’t know what to do, I start shooting. It returns things to simple.” She didn’t want any of this bunch at her back when she left. With a flick of her thumb she brought the future weapon online. “Too bad I haven’t had time to figure out the settings.”

Okay, that time they did pale.

The truly weird part for Doc, now that time was frozen, she could feel its fluidity, feel the pressure for it to seek its proper level.

“We are here to remove the interlopers.” Light crept from them to engulf Smith and the bogeys who’d come through the portal. Neither the jarheads nor the geeks were included in the selection. And the light stayed well away from Doc and Hel. The time warden added, a slight tremor in his or her voice, “We have no issue with you or your companions.”

They didn’t know that she and Hel were out of their time.

“You must surrender their weapons.” This came from the other warden.

The gleam in their eyes told Doc all she needed to know. Besides, it was against her religion to surrender a weapon.

“You first,” Hel said, his future weapon pointed at the he or she on the left.

Unlike her and Hel, they had to look at each other to silently communicate. Their pale gazes turned back to them.

“You won’t remember this meeting. Once we leave, this event will cease to exist.”

They were bluffing. Doc felt it to her core.

Doc arched her brows. “Then we have nothing to worry about.” Unlike them, she could make everything she said sound like the truth. “And neither do you. Once time resets, the weapons will cease to exist here.”

They didn’t like that. What was more interesting, they weren’t sure that the weapons would vanish.

“If we use the weapons,” Hel put in, “won’t that create another instability you can track?”

One of them nodded. It seemed unnatural, like they didn’t do it that often. They exchanged looks once more, and then light flared again and when it faded, the two creeps and their time traveling prisoners were gone, leaving the jarheads and the Earth geeks with Doc and Hel. Time unfroze with their departure, the battle once more heading toward its big finish.

How much had changed, or would change when the reset occurred? And when would it happen? What created a trackable instability? Could the wardens track them back through time? She didn’t feel watched, but she felt time building toward something. Doc spun toward the portal, the peeps already entering their coordinates with her mind and preparing to activate the beacons.

Would they be returning to a time different from the one they left? How different might it be? Neither the geeks nor the jarheads would regain consciousness in time to go through the portal before the battle ended and if they did? They’d arrive two years into the future. No one would be traveling to Keltinar. Halliwell would not have spent the last two years worrying about his lost people. Would he have returned on the
Doolittle
or retired? Doc would not have traveled to Keltinar, and she would not have started that war that wasn’t her fault. Conan would have bigger guns, but he had no reason to come to this galaxy.

What she didn’t know, what kept her from diving into the portal was the question of how it would affect her, the peeps and Hel. Would she have come to this galaxy without Smith’s specific shopping list? It seemed unlikely. The Major liked to keep his assets close.

They could stay, even as her mind latched on to the idea, her mind also pointed out the problem: if they stayed, they risked creating a time instability and bringing the wardens back. They had to go through, they had to go back, no matter what the consequences.

At the opening, she looked at Hel. “Things might be weird when we get back.”

His brows arched. She wasn’t sure what he’d do if she told him everything, so she just said, “Just don’t be surprised by what we find on the other side.”

His smile was both wry and tender. “I have been surprised almost every minute since your people arrived in this galaxy, Delilah.”

Doc pulled her sleeve up and looked at the mark of their bonding. “I know you don’t know what it means, but when we say we love someone on my world, it’s big. I want you to know I love you. Whatever is on the other side, that won’t change.” She so hoped that was true. Could she love someone she’d never met?
Time is persistent.
She hoped Smith was right about that.

“We have a different word for it, but it is the same for me.”

Her mind and heart swirling with worry and love, Doc stepped into the portal with Hel.

Doc tried to notice if anything was different from the first time as they went forward in time , but it looked and felt the same. Stomach still lurched and protested. The lights thinned and bent the same. And then it stopped and they were back on Gristal, but
when
were they back?

Doc looked at Hel. He looked at her, his brows arched in a question she didn’t have an answer for. She stepped out, surreptitiously checking for anything that might be missing, such as her
ma’rasile
mark. It glowed on her wrist, a beacon of hope in a life that had been neutral on the subject of hope.

“I still carry my
ma’rasile
mark, as well.”

Doc frowned. “I still remember them. Do you?”

Hel matched her frown and raised it to a scowl. “Yes.”

“Perhaps it takes time to fade. Or maybe they aren’t as powerful as they thought they were.”

Doc liked that option best. She tapped into the outpost. Everything looked the same as when they left, but minus the Conan shooting at them part. Had they arrived before they left? Conan’s ship lurked behind the Kikk moon and his other ships hovered over the outposts, including this one. Were they about to meet themselves coming through the portal? It was almost too weird to deal with. Doc’s gut kicked into high gear. She turned and stared at the portal that would take them back to Kikk. She couldn’t get a sense of
when
it was. She needed contact with the General to get a fix on the date and time. Was this an instability that the time wardens could track?

“I’d sure like to bypass this part of the trip,” she muttered.

“This forgetting could happen at any point,” Hel pointed out. It was very guy of him to take the logical approach, very girl of her to find it annoying. “We must return to Kikk.”

Of course he wanted to get back to Kikk. He’d been trying to get there for most of his life. They could still be in the instability, she supposed. She could wish she’d paid more attention in time travel class, if there’d been one to not pay attention in.

“You are giving me a headache, Delilah.” Hel grabbed her hand and lifted it to his mouth. “Let’s go home.”

Home.
With her free hand, she touched Kikk, bringing it to the front and center, while her mind replayed images of all her time with Hel. So few meetings to feel so safe with him, to feel like she belonged somewhere. To believe they could have a home together. He was right. First things first. She fixed her mind on the things she wanted: a life with her
ma’rasile,
her husband. The power to walk away from the Major and his imperatives, to live her own life. Any life with Hel was a huge unknown, but having
a life
with him was worth holding on to. She anchored her thoughts on these things as they made the leap.

She’d do this last thing and then she’d be free to be who and what she wanted. She owed it to the General. The Major? She’d paid any debt to him a long time ago. She’d do it and somehow, some way, she’d do it without losing what mattered the most. She felt the peeps dig in, too.

“Ready?”

“Weapons out?”

Doc nodded. Kikk should be safe, but she still never assumed.

Together they backed into the portal. All seemed as it should be until the last moment when a bright golden flash went through her like an electrical charge.

She had time to think,
those freaking foxtrot lying time freaks
before she fell into a deep, dark place.

Doc woke in the
Doolittle’s
infirmary feeling some serious
déjà vu.

She loathed
déjà vu
.

Her brain felt like it had been in a blender, but
they
were quiet. Blender was better than
them.
So why did it make her gut kick in fear? Where was she?
When
was she? Why was she thinking when?

She sat up. No one shot her. That was good. She felt fine, better than fine physically. Mentally was another story. Why was she in the infirmary? Inside her head it felt like a two-year-old was trying to build a space ship with the little bitty Legos. She swung her legs off the side and had no trouble getting upright or staying there. The cubby for her clothes held ABUs. Why did that feel wrong?

“Ma’am?”

Doc turned and found Lieutenant Simmons in the doorway. Her look of patient resignation was familiar but something was different between them. Doc felt it, even as she felt uncertainty about how it should be between them.

“Lieutenant.” Doc never asked questions she could get other people to ask. If someone knew what you didn’t know, they could lie to you. People lied to her a lot.

“You shouldn’t be out of bed, ma’am.” She bustled in and began ripping the bedding off, in direct contrast to her statement. “How do you feel?”

With my hands.
She’d had that thought before. When had she started doing lame stand-up routines, in or out of her head? “I feel fine.”

Almost absently she rubbed her
ma’rasile
spot, drawing Simmons attention to it.

“That’s a cool tat. Didn’t notice it when they brought you in.”

“It reacts to my mood,” Doc improvised. “Only shows when I’m happy.”

She got a skeptical look from Simmons and tried to look happier. Simmons turned back to the bedding.

“I’ll get Captain Evans. He wanted to know when you woke up.”

Doc felt her gut jolt.
Captain Evans?
She’d seen him die when he tried to push the suicide bomber out of the Gadi reception hall, hadn’t she? If that hadn’t happened, what else hadn’t happened? And why did she remember stuff that hadn’t happened? The time freaks said she wouldn’t.

She shouldn’t remember them either.

Through the spinning, shifting blocks in her head, she reached out and found the peeps. They’d had their bells rung, too—if they had bells. They’d protected her from whatever the freaks had tried to do, she realized, kept her in the same time slipstream the freaks used to move through time without affecting it.
They lied.
It was so not a shock. What else had they lied about?

She looked at her
ma’rasile
mark again. And why did it itch like crazy? Why was it still there?
Did you protect him, too? Where is he? Does he remember me?

Answers flowed into her head as her link with the peeps was reestablished. They couldn’t reach Hel, couldn’t connect with him, but he must have moved physically closer. They’d been separated. That’s why she’d been unconscious. The peeps had managed to extend the
ma’rasile
link so they didn’t die, but they hadn’t been able to keep her conscious. Hel had probably lost consciousness, too. Inside her head, she saw the approach, not of nine Gadi ships, but the bulk of their fleet, twenty–five ships, including Hel’s flag ship. Was he in charge or was Glarmere? Was Glarmere a problem in this timeline?

Time is persistent.
That would be comforting if she knew in what direction time wanted to be persistent.

The
Doolittle
was on high alert, though Doc couldn’t tell from the data stream if they expected to be attacked or were just being careful. The kind of data she needed was inside the General’s head, not in the computers or on the HUDs. And she had no idea what her relationship with him was like in this altered timeline.

“Doctor Clementyne?”

Doc switched her view from internal to external. It was Captain Evans, and he was alive and well. Did that mean there’d been no reception on the Gadi home world or just no bomb? Had she changed things or had the time freaks?

“Captain.” Doc stayed in neutral. It was the only place she knew to be. Because the peeps had protected her, she hadn’t lived this Doc’s life for the last two years. She wasn’t complaining at what she hadn’t lost, but it did leave her with a huge information deficit. If the bombing hadn’t happened, then she hadn’t helped out here and didn’t know these people.
She’d never met Hel.
If he didn’t remember her, that could be interesting.