Kicking Ashe (2 page)

Just take his hand.

Not a punishment to have that big, strong hand close around hers. At least he looked in her in the eyes when he yanked her up—okay, little flicker toward the cleavage. No overt indications of IQ lowering, though a girl could hope. Almost wished his gaze had stayed down instead of boring into hers like he was mining for something. He didn’t release her either, which allowed some weird tingles to trail up her arm and take a pleasant stroll through her middle. Not quite close enough to catch more than a whiff of something male and musky, but too close to escape the slam of power he radiated like a solar event. Caught between wanting to move in and move away, Ashe froze—though cold was not the direction her internal temperature was trending.

Lurch shook his version of his head, sending an odd, counter tremor through her insides.

“You’re Grenardian.” The tone was flat, a bit menacing.

“Is that why you shot me? Because I might be Grenardian?” The top of her head fell far short of his, her eyes level with the chest she’d admired from her prone position. It looked better up close. Her head did a little spin, from the abrupt blood flow change, not the guy. Lurch might have snorted yet again, hard to say when he felt miles distant instead of inside her head. Shan’s grip tightened at her wobble, then fell away when she steadied. Ashe tried not to take it personally, though it felt personal. She may have met a version of him, but he hadn’t met her. The mental reminder didn’t help as much as it should have. Didn’t make sense, but not much had since she left the Time Base and got lost in time. She felt an urge to smile but managed to repress it, helped by the somber menace in his gaze.

Lurch sighed, a cool trickle of sensation along her insides. It helped with the heat, though not enough to stop a bead of sweat from tracking down her chest and into her recently exposed cleavage.

The shooter stammered out something that failed as an answer or an explanation.

“No.” Shan rapped out the single word.

There were, of course, strict protocols in the Service for this situation, none of which helped when her suit tech was blown to hell and back. The urge to look away from his gaze was almost as strong as the urge to keep looking. The expression was hard, but the eyes themselves were intelligent despite that tendency to drill. Instinct lifted her chin in mute challenge, but she couldn’t think of a good reason not to state the obvious, “I do have a little Grenardian in my family line.”

The passing of many seasons had diluted the purple skin tones from her people’s first contact—and an alliance mating with a Grenardian princess—but it had not managed to eliminate it. It wasn’t as if the little band of buccaneers didn’t have a range of skin colors, though none of them were in the cool color range. They trended pale to darker browns. She noted Shan’s attention sharpen. He studied her like she was a newly discovered specimen, which he shouldn’t if he’d had enough contact with the Grenardians to know about their purple skin. Not that she minded the attention—or that he took his time—starting at her toes and working his way up to hair that was mostly brown, but shot through with green, gold and purple—another Grenardian legacy that had dug into the gene pool.

“And the rest of your family line?”

Careful.

The “careful” space ship had crashed when she tried to funnel a time tsunami into an alternate reality with a great, big bomb. Now she wasn’t even in careful’s universe.

“The rest is Garradian.” As much as anyone could be Garradian with all the alliance matings her ancestors had indulged in. She’d been called mongrel more than once, particularly after entering the Time Service where prejudice had been trapped in a bottle and dispensed regularly. She ignored Lurch’s flinch, as Shan’s brows tracked higher, almost vanishing beneath the uneven edge of the dark hair that tumbled across his forehead. Most of the men in her life were crisp and highly pressed, pretty rather than rugged. Their hair didn’t tumble, it lay in neat waves. Not that Shan didn’t have his pretty spots. Those lashes were a lush, comely frame for his eyes, and his mouth, well, it fell deep into the finely sculpted zone, which added up to pretty in her opinion. Still, this Shan lived in rugged, owned it, and worked it with confidence. Not that he’d been smooth the last time they met. He hadn’t been this—her gaze lingered on his unshaven chin—mussed either.

Of course, neither had she.

“There have not been Garradians in this galaxy for a very long time.”

Did that mean they were in his galaxy?

Perhaps.

I know. Never assume.
Shan and his boys gave few clues to where they were—and the boys couldn’t seem to look past her chest long enough to spill any secrets—so Ashe looked past them. She frowned, her gaze traveling up the side of the pit— “An impact crater?” A deep one, too.

The time wave that carried us here must have made it.

We’re lucky we survived.
One of Shan’s brows shot up and the look in his eyes made her hands settle on her hips. “I did not cause this crater.”

The edge of his stern mouth twitched. “It wasn’t here when we passed this spot earlier.” He paused. “Now it is here.” He paused again. “As are you.”

Might as well have told her that her uniform made her ass look big. She gave a small sniff and studied her crater. Lines cut through it in concentric circles as if it had come in as a vortex. Not a shock, since it had felt like one before she lost consciousness. “A lot of kinetic force and heat.” Which explained her fried gear. “More than I could survive.” She might have been part of the wave that made the crater, but she wasn’t taking the blame for it.

Shan’s other brow rose to join its fellow. “Then how did you get here?”

She should have expected this totally obvious question, been prepared for it. Of course, there had been the tsunami ass kicking to scramble her thinking, but still. She glanced around again, as if looking for her ride. Before she could speak, she heard the crack of an explosion loud enough to get the boys’ attention off her chest. A whistle of something incoming would have dropped her to the ground, but none of them seemed concerned, so she stood her ground. The object penetrated the atmosphere, tracking across the sky, patterning nearly straight contrails in its wake. Its path seemed to be right at them. Low, so low she felt the boosted heat from it as it passed over, splitting into, or perhaps just becoming visible, as three. A pause and then the ground shuddered from multiple impacts.

“Meteorites.” Ashe blinked, then looked at Shan. “Multiple strikes.”

They looked odd, felt off, too.

Not the most scientific analysis from the computer based life form, but it felt weirdly right. Which was so wrong.

Shan half-frowned. “You are not here for the fallings?”

“No.” Throughout the history of many worlds, there had been those who hunted space rocks, so it wasn’t that which puzzled her. It was their…mien. They looked more like, well, buccaneers than rock hunters, even space rock hunters. Since space rocks didn’t usually fight back, she had to wonder what did on this world? Not a good time to be the only one without a weapon.

You don’t need weapons to be dangerous.

You’re just trying to make me feel better.
That it worked was beside the point.

His gaze returned to hers. “You have not answered my question.”

“I didn’t, did I?” She did her casual look around. “Just taking a breather. Needed a rest. A vacation.” Her smile was about as fake as it got and he knew it. “I’ll have to have a talk with my travel agent. I told him I liked rustic, but dang.” She lifted her chin at the open disbelief in his gaze. “Thought the need for accommodations was a no brainer. Sure I mentioned a beach. With cabanas.” Whatever that was.

You should cease while you are behind.

She ceased with another bright, fake smile. Held it through the slamming force of his narrowed gaze, though she sensed a tiny hint of confusion in there. Maybe.

Or you are overly hopeful.

“We’ll split up, collect the fallings and then head back to camp,” Shan directed, his hand movements dividing his crew into three groups, though his hard gaze never left her. “You will come with me.”

Ashe was not unhappy with this, since she didn’t want to be left alone in the center of an impact crater with who knew what lurking outside it. And because she felt like she knew him, even if she actually didn’t know this Shan. Not that she was clingy or anything, just a bit…disconcerted. She nodded and his brows snapped together.
Now what did I do?

He is suspicious of your motives.
Lurch didn’t sigh, but it felt implied.

I could ask him where we are.
She didn’t phrase it as a question, even though it was.

It is better to get information than give it.

I think he got that memo, too.

The hardened concentric circles made steps of a sort, though it was still a steep climb for someone who’d ridden a time event into an impact crater. All the boys watched her with a shy eagerness, so she was surprised when none offered to help her up and out. In that old vid, the dwarfs had been eager to help, even if they weren’t great at it.

On the upside, the view was good. She’d admired Shan’s backside during their previous encounter on the outpost and she saw nothing to lessen that admiration now. Lurch gave an impatient huff that would have involved rolled eyes if he’d had eyes. A pity that admiration, combined with the nasty atmospherics, made the climb a hot one. Her blown suit—with the tech offline—held everything in but her bust. She couldn’t even tug at the neckline. Didn’t want to put the boys’ IQs into the negative digits, not with seven of them already vying for the position of Dopey.

They topped the ridge and the other two teams split off, following a track laid out by some kind of tracking device and Shan’s terse orders. Thankfully Shan paused to study his device with a frowning intensity that she suspected was more about her than any problem with the readings. It gave her a minute to catch her breath. Might be her imagination, but gravity seemed a bit more insistent on this planet. The hint of meteorite caused sulfur joined the rich scent of earth and pungent green. Heat boosted the scents and humidity thickened them to a hard-to-inhale soup. The undergrowth of the forest was thick in spots, suggesting it followed a water source. Distant mountains had left a trail of boulders sprinkled through the forest clearings.

Lurch was an amateur geologist, so words like anticline, volcanic, and stratigraphy drifted through her mind without sticking. Since she wasn’t a geologist in any way, he could look but she was not climbing any of those bad boys if she could help it. She didn’t even have the energy to get on her high horse.

The boy who shot her, a handsome youth—despite his Dopey vibes—gave her a shy, sweet smile. “I am Cadir.”

“And I am Eamon,” the other one—that she’d assigned to be Happy—hastened to add. He looked enough like Cadir to be an older relative, though they both seemed painfully young.

They are close to your own age.

I feel three thousand seasons at least.
She opened her mouth to give the standard fake name but it caught in her throat. She coughed once. It stayed stuck.

“Ashe. I’m Ashe.” Lurch flinched. Her stomach clenched. Been too long since she’d used her real name. If the laws of time worked as their scientists said it did, the sound of her name, in her own voice should be rippling through time and space, setting off alarms somewhere. Might have pissed off Time, too. She’d noticed it had its own way of fixing out of place people and events, though Time seemed to have got it wrong this time. Of course, she might have helped.

Beyond these concerns and if she were honest—which she could be inside her own head—she’d felt a need to say her name, to declare it not just to these two boys but also to the cosmos. She’d almost died, more than almost died, she’d almost ceased to exist. She didn’t know
where
she was. She didn’t know
when
she was. But she
was
. She’d survived. She didn’t know if they’d won the time battle, lost it or fought it to a draw. Not even her time senses—Ashe wobbled and almost fell to her knees. Cadir said something that spun Shan around to grasp her upper arms.

“Are you ill?” His frown might signal worry. Or not.

Ashe licked her lips and swallowed before she managed, “I’m fine.” She wasn’t fine.
Time blind. I’m time blind, Lurch.
She should have noticed that sooner, but she’d had a lot to notice in a very short time.

Your senses may have been overwhelmed by all that has happened.

Nice of him not to mention what she
had
managed to notice since she opened her eyes. Her gaze strayed to the broad shoulders, then jerked back to Shan’s eyes.
You can’t heal them?

They are intuitive. I can’t fix intuitive.

And yet he had a good handle on sarcastic. For some reason, it took the wobble out of her knees and put the stiffening back in her spine.

“If you are unable to continue, I can escort you to our base camp.”

He would escort her? That felt…odd. Didn’t leaders have minions to do that sort of thing? Cause he was totally the leader here. And he had the minions. Tempted by the idea, she nevertheless felt she needed to go with them to the “fallings.” They’d been trying to break time into two realities with the disrupter, trying to funnel the tsunami into a collapsing reality, thereby saving the real reality and everyone in it. If a time wave brought her here, it was regrettably possible it could have also brought, say, another version of her. Or two. Of course, coming face to face with another Ashe might get them both shot, but… “I’m fine.” For now.

Eamon removed a container that appeared to be a mixture of metal and fabric, pulled out a stopper. “Perhaps you are thirsty.” He looked at Ashe, but held it out to Shan.

Before she could react, Shan took the thing, then extended it to her. Another bit of odd, but—she took a long, cool drink—the water was most welcome. She rubbed her mouth with the back of one hand. “Thank you.” She directed the words somewhere in between the two men, since they’d both helped deliver the drink. She handed it back to Shan who handed it to Eamon and found Cadir holding a brown bar in Shan’s direction.