Authors: Pauline Baird Jones
Halliwell jerked his head toward the craft. Doc took that as permission. Carey walked with her and helped her get settled in the cockpit. He hooked her up to the ship’s communication and oxygen, while she ran her systems check. When everything was a “go” for launch, Carey stepped back and gave her a thumbs-up.
She echoed the move, then hit the control that lowered the canopy. There were some whirring sounds and a secondary canopy rose and locked in place. It was, she knew, the backup ejection system. If the main canopy was compromised, it protected the pilot in an oxygen nil situation. She’d had a chance to study the parts of the system at Area 51. Their people were working on a version of it for their ships.
She tapped her radio. “This is Test Flight One ready for launch. Do I have a go launch?”
Her voice was steady, but her hands gripped the controls. She’d never been at war with herself before. It was uncomfortable. But it would get better when she was gone. Roots might be put down, but they could be ripped up. People did it all the time. If people could do it, then she could, too. She was better than people at most things.
“Test Flight One, you are go launch.”
Heading and course appeared on her avionics. Coordinates had already been preprogrammed into the hyperdrive systems. Doc tested the controls, felt them respond, took a deep breath, and eased the ship off the decking. A pause and then she put the figurative pedal to the metal. Her reflection in the canopy was cool and calm as her ship shot down the launch tube and out through the force field, but inside she did an exultant
yeehaw
. She was in motion. That always pissed
them
off. Whatever pissed
them
off was good for her.
She did a tight turn, a quick couple of loop-the-loops, and then turned on her heading before someone could tell her to settle down.
“Control, Test Flight One preparing to enter hyperspace window in five, four, three, two, one.” Everything outside the ship turned into bright, golden blur and her speed jeans inflated as the
g
’s hit. A period of adjustment, then bright settled to a muted glow.
She was alone in space in a galaxy far, far away. That tiny ache around her heart was just from being so alone, so far from the familiar. It was normal to have a period of adjustment, even if she hadn’t needed one before and had never thought she
was
normal. She should be moving fast enough to stay ahead of her demons, but there was moving and there was
moving
. Whatever was going on inside her head, she couldn’t sit here and let
them
get on her case. She needed to focus, to concentrate. She needed to control the chaos starting to stir inside her head.
She let her fighter pilot shift to the back burner, bringing theoretical physicist to the front. She pulled up what she’d heard or read about the portal and began to sift through the data. There had to be holes in what she thought she knew if Smith had been convinced retrieval was possible. Without access to the original equations, all she could do was theorize. It seemed obvious that the Garradians’ hadn’t planned for one-way trips, so returning
was
possible. Without a way back, they would never know if the portal operated as expected. The Garradians had locked down the return controls before they left, apparently to keep people from returning to the outpost following the evacuation.
This tracked with what the Key had told her about the original Garradians’ reasons for leaving. They’d opted to shut the outpost down, rather than destroy it, so that all the scientists working there could evacuate safely. It also indicated trust issues with some of the evacuees, but mulling that was far outside her mission brief.
There had to be a way to turn it all back on, but Doc suspected that turning the switch wouldn’t be enough. Traversing time
and
space was more art than science. When Doc first heard about the portal, she’d wondered how the Garradians had managed to overcome the distortion factor of travel through time and space. Even assuming they’d learned how to fold space, there were other variables. Planets rotated and orbited. There were no truly fixed points in space. A wrong calculation could drop a body into an ocean or on a mountain top. Simultaneous arrival would be even more difficult, even if people went through seconds apart.
What had Dr. Smith discovered that made him believe the group
could
arrive at the same time and place? And then come back? She hadn’t been able to find his notes in the ship’s computers. Hopefully they’d still be available on the outpost computers. She’d have used communications to hack the computers, but she didn’t want to leave a trail anyone could follow. That was against her religion.
Two years ago, when the Key was turned and some of the outpost systems came back online, the scientists on-site assumed everything would eventually start to work. It took time to realize that some of the technology had activated, but most hadn’t. There were two camps of opinion on why. One postulated that there was something else the Key needed to do to activate the rest of the outpost. The second theory was the “different scientists, different solutions” hypothesis. This one presumed that each technology needed to be understood before it could be activated or operated.
Was it this theory that had resulted in her arrival in the galaxy?
It was possible that someone believed Doc’s multi-tasking brain would be able to find the various threads and pull them all together, i.e., do the impossible. What didn’t seem possible is that the Major would care. She frowned. Unless he’d been promised something for her participation? Would fancy, high-tech weapons tempt him? What Doc knew of him was all about stealth, but she didn’t kid herself she
knew
the Major well enough to draw a conclusion about that. She’d bet his own mother didn’t know him that well.
Doc still thought it interesting that none of their people seemed to know that the Key was a person and back on Earth. The General had kept a tighter than tight lid on that information, and he’d been unhappy she knew it. It didn’t surprise her he didn’t wholly trust her, considering she was associated with the Major—who didn’t inspire warm, fuzzy feelings in anyone.
The General had good reasons for protecting the Key’s identity. He knew, none better, that the Key had earned her freedom the hard way. Being a part of the small circle
in the know
affected Doc more now, than it had when she’d heard the story. It was all more real here, where it had played out. Doc felt the weight of that trust and touched that her friend had known what Doc hadn’t realized at the time: that Doc would never, ever give her away.
It would have been nice if General Halliwell had been filled with equal certainty. His distrust stung in a way Doc had never experienced before. She wanted to deliver the desired outcome, even as her gut told her it wasn’t possible and would never happen, despite Dr. Smith’s assertion it could. Doc could ponder and hypothesize until the cows—or the Key—came home, but would be low on answers until she had a chance to study the portal herself and get a look at Smith’s notes.
At the same time she pondered the portal, another channel in her brain mulled the possible consequences of launching people into the unknown. It would be interesting to know who, besides Smith, had gone through the portal. If, as everyone believed, they’d gone into the Earth’s past, the impact of their contamination on civilization should be apparent, particularly if one had insight into their personalities and knowledge bases. They’d been ordered to minimize impact on the time line, but minimize didn’t equal
no
impact. It was possible someone had tampered with the settings before the decision to use the portal had been made. The place had been crawling with geeks and geeks, by nature, loved to touch stuff. Inadvertent touching had been how the portal had been discovered in the first place.
Her brain loved this. With so many unknown factors, it was like giving a dog a rubber bone to chew on. But that didn’t stop it from also bringing Hel to the forefront. Her brain was as much of a bitch as she was.
Was Hel already back on his planet? Had the General told him yet that he was giving them access? What if Hel chose to come with his people to the outpost? How soon could they put a team together? And how had thoughts of him snuck into her head again?
She rubbed a spot on her temple that wanted to ache.
This would be a good time to for a brutal workout.
And that made her think about Briggs. He’d seemed worried about her. And the General, too. Their worry made her feel strange and unsettled.
It made her
feel
.
And that made her head ache more.
* * * * *
Hel was certain that Carig had approached him after transport wearing a listening device, what the Earth people called “wired.” Had the man thought that Helfron Giddioni would beg him to stay silent for any reason? The Earth people had a word that Hel found appropriate to the situation: smackdown.
Carig had received a smackdown. It wouldn’t stop his plotting. Hel had reports from his contacts that he’d sent surrogates to suborn Gadi fleet ship’s commanders. The Gadi had eighteen large cruisers patrolling the galaxy. He’d not approached the eight commanders Hel knew would remain loyal, at least for now. There were two ship’s commanders of the old guard who would be neutral in a dispute until it turned official. Then they’d come in on the side of the Leader, whoever it was at that time. If Carig managed to turn the others, he could use that to apply pressure on the Council. No one wanted a civil war—except Carig.
He would never secure the Leader position through an open election. There was deep-seated prejudice among the Gadi towards Carig’s family in general and his mental acuity in particular. His appearance didn’t help. The Earth expedition would consider it shallow, Hel supposed, if they knew how much appearance played a role in picking a Leader, but appearances mattered in the galaxy. The Leader represented the Gadi. He wielded great power. He attracted alliance matings. It was necessary he look the part. Being the part had never been enough.
Hel could play the part required. He needed to play many roles to survive and thrive in a world where war was a way of life. Safety at home had been elusive, too. He shifted easily among whichever persona he needed at a given moment, but the meeting with Delilah had been different. He felt jerked all the way to his center, as if she’d honed in on his core—a place he had not visited in many years. He kept that man buried very deep, and she’d unearthed him with a sweep of her lashes. She’d tapped into the passion he used to drive him through the rocks and pits of Gadi politics, the passion he’d used in his fight with the Dusan.
He’d felt passion for his mate, but this was different, though he had not yet discovered why. A man’s passion for a woman was expected, but he’d needed to use care with women, no matter what role he played. Everyone and everything in his life could be used against him. He walked a path that required him to appear just competent enough to do the job, so that his enemies would underestimate him. Two years since the end of the war and most of who he was, was still hidden in the shadows.
Delilah lived there, too. Was this how she’d found him? How he’d found her? And why did this bother him, when he was unlikely to see her again?
He had to force himself to concentrate on the council meeting. Despite his inattention, it was not going as Carig planned and the funeral ceremony would not help Carig’s position as much as he’d hoped. It was true the bombing had been a severe blow to the people’s confidence in the leadership. But because Hel had been injured, the people had chosen to blame the Council, rather than their Leader. Hel may have helped nudge that perception along. His political instincts had not let him down yet. Because of the Dusan defeat, the Council had been preparing to lift the War Powers Act, which had been in place since shortly after war began. The measure would have hampered Hel’s ability to monitor Carig’s communications and meetings—not to mention diminished the power of the Leader overall. Carig should have waited until after that meeting to make his move, but he’d always been clumsy.
Carig wasn’t Hel’s only problem. If Halliwell wasn’t getting critical information, then it was equally true that information getting to Hel would have had to have been filtered or altered as well. The false feeding had gone both ways; otherwise Hel would have bypassed the process much sooner.
His enemies had timed it well. In other circumstances, he’d have picked up on the problem before now, but he’d been distracted by the chaos that had ensued after the fall of the Dusan. This level of tampering was beyond Carig’s reach and abilities. It was possible that someone on the Council was using Carig to do their dirty work. He could think of several members devious enough, including his cousin, Glarmere. The man took after his mother’s side of the family. Their father had been dangerous and devious, which is why Hel’s grandfather had arranged the mating between the two families. His motto was, keep your friends close and mate with your enemies’ daughters. His mother had never forgiven her father or her mate, though Hel’s father had redeemed himself somewhat by dying. If Glarmere was working with Carig, had he been party to the bombing? The blood tie was supposed to be sacrosanct—otherwise marriage was useless—though Glarmere wouldn’t cry at Hel’s funeral. The attempt to discredit him had Glarmere’s fingerprints all over it, and Hel suspected the bombing would, too.
Hel looked at his time piece. It was time to end the meeting, if they were going to make it to the death ceremony in time.
“If there is no further business,” he raised the meeting stone, but Glarmere rose in his seat.
“There is one more item, Leader.”
Glarmere had inherited the family stone face, but Hel could tell he was pleased. He’d lived with his mother long enough to excel in reading stone.
“Are you sure this can’t wait until the next session? We have the death ceremony.”
“I will be brief, Leader.”
Hel’s eyes narrowed. “Proceed—with brevity.”
“Since the Earth expedition is unwilling to proceed with a mating contract, I would like to propose a mating with the Carnarions.”