Stars Across Time (5 page)

Min-ji, as naked as Andie, came over to grasp her hand. Optimus wasn’t paying any attention to them, but unfortunately the men who had shifted to guard the exit were keeping an eye on them.

“I don’t know what happened,” Andie whispered, “but we have to get out of here.” She considered the two men and the weapons they held, wondering if she might surprise them to slip past.

“And go where?” Min-ji asked, her dark brown eyes haunted.

“You didn’t see that man who walked into the cave?” Mace demanded, jerking his chin toward the exit tunnel, his tone raised for the first time. “That was Major Rutting General Duckworth. We were all about to get scragged by the damned army.”

Optimus stared at him as if he was speaking gibberish. As far as Andie was concerned, he was. Nobody had ever accused her of being a genius, but she could usually connect enough dots to track conversations and situations. For the first time that she could remember, she felt utterly lost and helpless.

“What do you mean?” she whispered back to Min-ji. “We’ll go back to the campground and the car and hope those assholes left us enough dregs of gas to get down to Cle Elum.”

Min-ji shook her head slowly, the haunted expression still in her eyes. She looked like someone who had just seen both of her parents killed in front of her. “I don’t think the car is going to be there anymore. I’m... not sure about Cle Elum.”

“What? Talk to me, Min-ji. Help me understand.”

Min-ji’s gaze shifted toward the dark shadows at the back of the cave, to the area where the Girl Scouts had been hunkering when they first came in. Earlier, there hadn’t been anything back there except for tufts of animal fur and mildew. Now, a complicated-looking machine the size of an old phone booth lurked in the shadows, LEDs or something like them blinking in different colors on one metallic side.

“Maybe I’m wrong,” she murmured. “Maybe I’ve read too many science fiction novels. Theoretically, it shouldn’t be possible, not with some machine. With a wormhole maybe.”

“What are you
talking
about?”

“I’ve got a story to tell you, new blood,” Optimus said, stabbing a finger toward Mace. “Duckworth is one of our buyers. He’s gone back in time with us twice now, to select goods to bring back.”

Mace’s mouth descended in open shock. Andie’s mouth was doing something similar, though probably for a different reason.

“Did he say back in
time
?” she whispered, her gaze locking on that machine again. “Min-ji, that’s... not possible, right?”

“It
shouldn’t
be. That would violate the law of causality, at least in this scenario.” She waved at the machine. “Some scientists have speculated about using faster-than-light travel to go backward in time, based on the idea that time slows as you approach light speed and that exceeding that speed might cause time to flow backward. Others have proposed using the time dilation of a black hole to—”

“Min-ji,” Andie hissed, gripping her friend’s arm. “We’re not on the
Enterprise
, and we didn’t go through a black hole.”

“I know. The science may simply be beyond me, but I would very much like to look at that machine. The power requirement for any kind of manipulation of the space-time continuum would be beyond immense.”

“You honestly believe we’re in another
time
now?” Even though Andie trusted Min-ji and knew without a doubt that her friend was smarter than she was, she couldn’t reconcile herself to this crazy new notion. She looked down at her arm, tempted to pinch it, but one never realized one was in a dream when one was in one, right?

“I have no idea as to when,” Min-ji whispered, eyeing the guards. They were smirking back at her, listening in on their conversation. Whatever was happening was no surprise to those two, even if Mace had done something to make the transition earlier and more abrupt than planned. “Not the past, though,” Min-ji said. “I don’t think... no. Not from what they’ve been saying or from their dress and mix of technology. I would guess...” Her expression grew grim. “Are you a fan of dystopian novels, Andie?”

“No, you know I prefer the space stuff.”

“I’m thinking that space stuff never happened, not in this future, anyway. Or this past, as it would be now.”

“You’re making my head hurt,” Andie said.

“You’re telling me that one of the highest ranking officers in the Alliance army is working with you?” Mace asked. He seemed to have recovered some of his equilibrium, but his brow still had a furrow to it beneath his shaggy mop of black hair. His weapons had drooped to his sides. The guard had lowered his rifle too. “Why would he?” Mace sounded puzzled. “He has the power to requisition whatever he wants.”

“What he wants isn’t here in our time,” Optimus said.

“Women? He has a wife and grown children.” Mace looked at Andie and Min-ji for the first time since the flash of light, puzzlement still marking his face.

It was a much different look from the one of sexual interest Andie had caught on his face earlier, followed by the mortified one, his cheeks reddening above that beard. She wasn’t sure what she thought about that earlier look. Oh, she was sure she wanted nothing to do with any of these brutes, but it irritated her that she felt a strange sense of satisfaction over the fact that he had been ogling her when there had been so many other women around to stare at. Younger women. And he was the only one who’d had the decency to appear chagrined when he caught himself staring. Still, he worked with these other animals. She couldn’t forget that. There was no way she could trust him, and no way she wanted anything to do with him.

Optimus snorted. “Fertile women aren’t the only thing history has more of than we do.” He shook his head, throwing an exasperated look around the room, his gaze lingering on the machine in the back. “Bedene, we had the only bracers. I’m going to have to go back to get everyone else. Looks like we got all the older women. Like I was saying, we’ll keep the groups split. You’ll be in charge of taking this group to the market. The smaller group should move more quickly, so you’ll get there first. Sign them up for the auction. I want to make sure we get the best coin possible, so don’t rough them up too much on the march.” Optimus gave a long, cool look to a couple of the other men who had made it to this new time with them, Blackie and one of the others who had been harassing Andie earlier.

“Got it, boss,” the man—Bedene—said. “What about him?” He jerked a thumb toward Mace.

Mace had grown quiet, and at the question, his gaze flicked back and forth between the two men. He shrugged, as if he did not care either way.

“Take him with you,” Optimus said. “Russell said he’s good in a fight, but we don’t want him tempted to put a bullet in one of our best customers. He looks like one of those men with a grudge against the military. Make sure he’s gone when I get back here with Duckworth.”

Bedene spat and glowered at Mace. Andie thought she caught a glint of relief in Mace’s eyes, but it might have been her imagination. His face never changed.

“We’ll take good care of them,” Blackie said, sidling up to Andie and throwing an arm around her waist.

He either hadn’t noticed she wasn’t bound anymore, or he didn’t expect her to react, but Andie’s reflexes were faster than her mind. Had she stopped to think about the wisdom of attacking him when so many other men with guns were around her, she might not have done anything. But before she caught herself, she was jamming an elbow into the soft flesh between his rib cage and hipbone, then following it up with a palm strike to his face.

Blackie staggered back, clutching his nose. He recovered quickly, crouching to spring at Andie, but she had already dropped into a ready stance with her fists up. She had never had to fight naked before, but she would do it to keep that thug from touching her again.

“Stop,” Optimus said. “Tie her up and get on the road. Bedene, watch them.”

“I will, boss,” Bedene said, though he looked like he wanted any other assignment.

Mace remained quiet, his face neutral, but he was watching Blackie, his eyes half-closed. And dangerous. That was the thought that came to Andie’s mind.

“Sal, you tie her,” Bedene said. “And the other one too. Boss, you want us to take any of this stuff to sell?” He waved at the remaining gas containers and the other gear.

“We’ll handle it. We’ll have more people.” Optimus waved him toward the exit and strode to the back of the cave.

Mace watched him, or perhaps the machine—Andie couldn’t bring herself to call it a
time
machine, not without snorting. She wasn’t ready to believe that this wasn’t all some elaborate ruse. To what end, she didn’t know. Perhaps the kidnappers tried to convince their victims that they had been transported to another era and that there was no hope of escape because there was nowhere for them to go. They might spend their whole lives as slaves to some backwoods heathens, never knowing that a highway ran by ten miles away, leading to a town where people might help them.

As one of the men bound her wrists while another pointed a rifle at her, Andie nodded to herself, deciding that her hypothesis made far more sense than any notion of time travel. On this march to wherever they were going, she would look for clues to show Min-ji that they were still in Washington, that nothing crazy had happened—aside from these weirdos showing up.

The men ushered her and the other women toward the cave exit, apparently not caring that they had removed their clothing and they were still naked. Since they had cut it off instead of being clever and making use of such features as zippers and buttons, there was nothing left to be salvaged. But Andie balked and pointed toward her hiking shoes, which had been dumped by a wall near the hoarded gear.

“I’m not going for a hike without shoes,” she said.

She expected another fight, but Bedene merely waved for the women to get their footwear. Andie caught Blackie staring at her butt when she bent over to tie the laces—an action made awkward with her wrists bound in front of her—and did her best to show that it didn’t bother her. But inside, she worried that he would be trouble on this walk.

Min-ji waited for her, but the other three women in the group headed out ahead of them, guards walking ahead of and behind them to make sure nobody escaped. Andie didn’t know any of their names yet. Most of the captives had been ushered into the virgin group, which hadn’t made it to this cave. Their group consisted of two older Girl Scouts and the blonde woman from the campsite next to Andie and Min-ji’s, the woman who had started the night making love to whoever her tent mate had been. She still appeared shocked as she stumbled along, prodded by their captors, and Andie had a feeling she had seen her lover killed in cold blood. She made a vow to talk to her and to the teenagers too. They were outnumbered—including Mace and Bedene, there were twelve men, all armed—but Andie had a hunch that they would have a better chance to escape if they worked together.

“Get moving, Mace,” Bedene said, clearly intending to take up the rear.

Mace frowned at Optimus, who was fiddling with controls on the machine, playing his part in the ruse well, but he obeyed the order and strode after Andie. Aside from Bedene, they were the last two out of the cave. A flash of light came from behind, and Andie paused, looking back as soon as the brightness dimmed. She had to peer around Mace, since he had broad shoulders that filled much of the tunnel. The machine was still there, its LEDs flickering, but Optimus had disappeared.

• • • • •

Of all things, it was the weather that first made Andie doubt her assumption that the time travel story was nothing more than part of a scheme. As soon as she had stepped out of the cave, she had noticed the heat. Not simply the sunlight slanting through the pine trees and beating against her bare skin, but a dryness to the air that soon had her licking her chapped lips. The eastern side of the mountains was always dryer than the western side, but the air reminded her more of Arizona than Eastern Washington. The terrain seemed similar to that of the area they had left, but the scenery had changed. Andie was no botanist, nor was she all that observant when out in the woods, but the ground cover was sparser and dryer. Some of that might have been attributed to a change in seasons—it felt as if they had left early spring behind and jumped into late summer—but even the pine trees were different. When she had been stationed at Luke Air Force Base, outside of Phoenix, she had taken camping trips up into the mountains of Northern Arizona, and everything from the dry grass to the types of pines now on display reminded her of that area.

She stopped to stare at a tree with hard little berries littering the ground at its feet, scarcely noticing when Min-ji bumped into her.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice full of weariness, though she peered about curiously, so fascinated by the environment that she seemed to forget they were kidnap victims in danger of being raped and sold to the highest bidder.

Andie wished she could summon some of that curiosity, but she had a headache, her body’s way of reminding her that she hadn’t had any coffee in almost twenty-four hours.

“Get moving,” the man behind her growled. “We don’t stop until Bedene says we stop.”

Andie thought about protesting, simply because they had been walking for two hours, and she was experiencing some definite chafing, thanks to the rubbing of bare thighs, but she didn’t want to make trouble until she was ready to have something happen as a result of that trouble. Right now, she felt she needed to gather information, and she still needed to talk to the other women. Most of them had fallen further behind, the men with them prodding and grumbling.

Andie resumed walking but waved for Min-ji to come up beside her. Thus far, their captives had snapped at them whenever they attempted to talk, but now that the line had strung out more, maybe they could get away with it.

“What is it?” Min-ji asked again, her voice a whisper this time.

The trail they were following wasn’t wide enough for anyone to walk side by side, but Min-ji stayed closer to Andie’s shoulder.

“An alligator juniper,” Andie said. “I’m not that good at identifying plants and trees, but those are distinctive. And not native to Washington. Not by a long shot. I don’t think you find them north of Arizona and New Mexico.”