Warrior (19 page)

Jess jerked awake
staring at the ceiling, her heart pounding in hard, desperate thumps. Shivering in reaction, she rolled out of Galar's wide bunk and staggered through the doorway that led to the bathroom.

As she splashed a handful of water into her face, Galar stepped into the doorway. “You okay?” He leaned a shoulder against the door frame, studying her with concern. “Another nightmare?”

“Yeah.” She straightened and ran her wet hands over her face. “But it didn't seem like a dream. It was more . . . logical. More real. Like a memory. Chara's memory.”

“Chara?”

“Charlotte. Chara va Hol is her Xeran name.” Jess grimaced. “Or at least, it was in my dream.”

“Tell me.”

As they dressed, she did. “Do you think there's any truth to it?” Jess asked, as she pulled on a tunic and leggings, both of which felt silken against her skin. The rich royal blue fabric shimmered like a gemstone as she sat on the bed to tug on the matching boots.

Galar frowned as he sat beside her. “I suppose it's possible. Could be she slipped you a memory bead.”

This, Jess's EDI told her, was a nanobot drug capsule that held a recording of someone else's memories. You smeared it over the skin, much as you did with an EDI.

“I don't remember her touching me like that.” Jess reconsidered, then shrugged. “Though I guess she could have done it when I was asleep.”

“But that still doesn't account for my readings,” Galar pointed out. “Charlotte scanned as completely human. I don't see how she could have faked that.”

“It was probably just a nightmare.”

“Probably.”

She just wished she could believe that.

Galar lay sprawled
on the couch in glorious nudity, posing as Jess put the final touches on the painting of him.

The door opened behind her and a hearty voice called, “Hey, Master Enforcer!”

Jess cursed as her brush slipped, leaving a crimson streak across the canvas. She turned to glare as the big redheaded Enforcer sauntered into the room.

A twenty-first-century male would have scrambled to cover himself. Galar only looked around calmly, completely comfortable in his nudity. “Yes?”

“Dona and I have been working the Marcin case,” Ivar told him as Jess worked to repair the damage to her painting. “We were doing a scan on incident reports when we found an interesting lead. We think we know where to find him.”

Irritably, Jessica wondered why they were poking their collective noses in Galar's case, then remembered he'd said Dyami had assigned the two to find the assassin.

The redhead shot him a grin. “I was wondering if you wanted to be in on the takedown.”

Galar considered the idea, obviously tempted, then shook his head. “I can't leave Jessica unprotected.”

“So get somebody else to guard her for a couple of hours. We could really use you on the team.”

He hesitated a long moment. “I suppose I could ask Wulf. I was thinking about asking him to give her a hand-to-hand combat lesson anyway. He's a good teacher. And he's the only Enforcer I know who could singlehandedly wipe up the floor with a battleborg.” Galar returned his attention to Ivar. “Tell me what you're planning for the Xeran.”

Jessica listened absently as she put the finishing touches on the painting's background. As Ivar spoke, she began to frown. It seemed the Enforcer had found a police report of a bald man with steel horns protruding from his head, running down a residential street. The cop obviously thought the drunk who'd done the reporting wasn't all that reliable a source, but the Enforcers knew differently.

“That does sound like Marcin.” Galar, too, frowned, obviously just as uncomfortable with the scenario as she was. “But why would he run around in public without even using a camo field? He'd have to know he'd stand a good chance of some temporal native spotting him and leaving a report for us to find.”

Jessica looked around the edge of her canvas. “It's a trap.”

“Obviously.” Ivar gave her a feral smile. “So we're going to trap the trappers with the best team we can put together.” He nodded at Galar. “Which is why I was hoping you'd be able to join us. You're damn good in a fight.”

“Thanks.” Galar gave him a dry look, then shook his head. “Still, I'm not sure I like this plan of yours. There are too many unknowns. We could all end up shooting straight into the Seven Hells.”

“I'm well aware of that, and I don't like it either.” The big man spread his ham-sized hands. “Unfortunately, it also may be the best chance we're going to get to take Marcin down.”

“I
would
be a lot happier with that battleborg out of the picture.”

“But even if you do get him, what's to stop them from sending another assassin?” Jess asked.

“Nothing.” Galar shrugged. “But Marcin is one of the most dangerous agents they've got. Odds are, his replacement won't be quite as deadly as he is.”

“That's assuming the Xeran military is involved, which we haven't established,” Ivar pointed out. “He could be doing this on his own for all we know.”

“It's possible, but I tend to doubt it.” He ran a thumb over his lower lip. “Then again, if we capture Marcin, we'll have a better chance of finding out what the hell is going on.” He considered the question for a long moment, then clapped Ivar on the back. “All right, you convinced me. I'm in.”

Jessica frowned at her canvas, wondering why her instincts were clamoring a warning.

Because Galar had
no intention of letting Jess out of his sight, she found herself sitting in on the planning session for the Marcin mission.

Ivar had assembled a team of ten Enforcers around the massive gleaming conference table. Besides himself, Dona Astryr, and Galar, the rest of the team included Riane and Frieka; a married couple, Jiri and Ando Cadell; a brawny, grim-faced black agent named Peter Brannon; and Tonn “Bear” Eso, the biggest human being Jess had ever seen.

Eso was over seven feet tall, a hulking blond who had to duck when he entered the room. He would have looked intimidating if not for the constant grin he wore, as if he were always thinking of his next joke.

They all listened attentively as Ivar explained the basis of his plan, the reported Marcin sighting. No sooner had he finished describing the incident than Frieka's jaws gaped in a lupine grin from his seat next to his human partner. “Okay, people, all together now. One, two, three . . .”

“It's a trap!” the Enforcers chorused, and broke into laughter.

Ivar shot them all a glare. “Funny. Yes, we know it's a trap. But we don't intend to be caught.”

“Well, that's a relief,” Jiri Cadell quipped, rolling her eyes. Her husband elbowed her. She grinned and poked him back.

Peter Brannon scowled fiercely. “How stupid do these Xerans think we are?”

“Stupid enough to send only three or four agents to arrest Marcin, instead of the ten we're actually going to send,” Galar told him.

Jess frowned, voicing the thought that had been bothering her since she'd walked into the room. “Is ten going to be enough?”

“If we try to send more than that, we'd produce a huge temporal energy spike the Xerans would be able to detect all the way to the present,” Galar explained. “But the reverse is also true. Our sensors aren't detecting a spike of Xeran Jump energies at those temporal coordinates either, which suggests they don't have a large party there.”

Jess frowned. “But what if they Jumped several groups of ten in earlier and had them wait to ambush you?”

“We'll pop a courier to the Outpost and give a good hearty yell for help,” Galar told her.

“At which point Dyami, who'll be waiting with a backup team, will Jump in and save our collective asses,” Ivar added.

“What about the local cops?” Jess asked as a new thought occurred to her. “All those people Jumping in will sound like World War Three. You're going to be butt-deep in law enforcement.”

Galar shook his head. “No, because modern T-suits generate a dampening field beyond a certain radius. Nobody can see or hear a Jump beyond twenty meters or so.”

“So why not get rid of the boom and the light altogether?” Jess asked, interested.

“The engineers did try that,” Galar told her. “Unfortunately, there's a lot of energy liberated in a Jump. They discovered that if they tried to eliminate the effects completely, the forces reflect off the suppression field and squash the Jumper like a bug.”

Jess wrinkled her nose. “Ewwww.”

“Speaking of killing people, how are we going to take out Marcin?” Ando Cadell asked.

Galar gestured, calling up a trid image of what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary twenty-first-century neighborhood, lined with narrow brick ranch houses and small two-bedroom wood frame houses. “I used photos from the time in question to create this trid.” A computer-generated image of Marcin appeared, dashing down the street. He looked as real as the photographed houses.

“This is the path we believe the battleborg will follow, based on the incident report,” Galar continued. “We're going to break into five teams of two in order to create a perimeter and take him down. Ando and Jiri, I want you two here.” He waved, and the image switched to an overhead view. A second gesture created a red dot in the location he pointed out.

One by one, he gave the teams their assignments, making sure they were ready for any trap the Xerans tried to spring.

As Jess watched, the Enforcers settled in to plan in earnest. She found herself relaxing. It certainly seemed Galar had things under control.

An hour after
the meeting broke up, Ivar leaned a shoulder against the wall of the gym to watch Wulf spar with the combot. Normally the big man fought in a blur of motion and power, using all the great bull strength of a high-grav native. Today he swung with only a fraction of that power, his movements slow and deliberately clumsy.

“What in the Seven Hells are you doing?” Ivar called, though he knew perfectly well.

Wulf ducked the combot's return swing and shot him a look. “Galar's asked me to give his primitive combat lessons while I play bodyguard. I'm trying to make sure this damned combot won't kill her.”

It was a legitimate concern. The 'bot Wulf had chosen was built along the typical dimensions of a battleborg. Two meters tall, it looked just like a massively muscled human, and it was programmed to respond as one when you hit it.

Ivar had sparred with it a few times himself; it had a punch like the kick of a soji dragon. If it cut loose against the primitive at full strength, it would kill her.

The 'bot took another swing at Wulf, a fraction too hard, a fraction too fast. He ducked. “Cease!”

It froze in mid-move. Wulf straightened and stared at it in silence for a long moment. Probably using his computer to readjust its programming.

“Again,” the big man ordered at last.

The combot swung. He ducked, nodding approval. “Much better.”

Ivar turned, whistling softly, and walked away. It was a good thing Wulf couldn't see his smile.

Since Galar was
the senior officer on the strike team, he spent the next two days working on the plan to capture Marcin. He met repeatedly with the Enforcers as well as with Dyami himself, trying to work out every contingency.

Jess found the process a fascinating experience. Galar was an entirely different man when he was in officer mode, an icy strategist who considered every detail, no matter how small. Whenever he spotted anything he considered a weakness in the plan, he worked on it relentlessly until he found a solution.

But as the planning continued, Jessica's sense of foreboding began to grow again. Something was going to go badly wrong; she could feel it in every cell.

Yet she had no logical reason to believe Galar was headed for trouble. The battle plan he'd put together allowed for every contingency, including fifty Xeran Marines showing up instead of the ten they expected.

Logic didn't seem to matter. The premonition scraped at her consciousness like a sweater made of sandpaper, flaying her nerves until she wanted to scream.

Two hours before he was scheduled to leave on the mission, she snapped.

Jess lay curled
up on the bed as Galar cleaned his armor and weapons in preparation for the mission. He held his helmet on his lap, steadying it with one hand as he used a buffing cloth to clean the faceplate of any hint of oil or dirt. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of snugs that clung to his hips. Every move he made sent muscle rippling in his arms and torso. His expression was intent, his profile sharp as he looked down at the helmet. A lock of blond hair fell over his golden eyes. Her fingers itched to smooth it back.

Jessica watched, fighting to contain her brooding restlessness. She jerked her twitching shoulders like a restive horse. “I don't want you to go.” The words burst out of her without her conscious intent. “Stay home with me.”

Galar looked up from the helmet, quirking a brow. “You know better than that. I organized this mission. I've got to lead it.”

Jess sprang restlessly to her feet, unable to contain the need to move. “Something's going to go wrong. Somebody's going to get hurt. Badly.”