Steamrolled (48 page)

“How do we go about making them uninhabitable for our future bad guy?” Doc asked.

“All laboratories are secured with keys.” The hologram didn’t sniff, but it was implied.

“I am a Key,” Hel pointed out, just a hint of miffed in his tone. Maybe he’d donned his teenager pants today.

“There are many types of keys, my Lord.” The hologram looked and sounded sorry.

“If they are genetic keys—”

“I don’t believe these are genetic,” the hologram broke in, looking pleased. “They appear to be logic locks.”

Doc felt an illogical urge to scream—an urge cut off when an outpost-wide alert sounded.

The peep who would become Lurch said,
Go. We will work on these codes
and find a way to lock down these labs.

Doc felt the total shift of their resources to the problem, though they left enough nanites behind to help her maintain her mental balance. Without waiting for her to do it, Hel initiated emergency transport to the Control Center.

General Halliwell, his burly stance stiff with tension and his face rock-like impassive, wore his command persona like he still ran the show, though primary control had been handed over to the Gadi just after the recent change in Gadi leadership. His issues with Hel ran wide and deep, but he hid them well. His gaze found her, moved to Hel and chilled a bit. Okay, so he hid them pretty well.

“What is our status?” Hel asked the question of the Gadi personnel, who looked at each other instead of him.

“The sensors are—” Halliwell stopped as if he didn’t know what to say either, then gestured toward the screens.

Doc moved closer. He was right. They were…something.

* * * *

Ashe felt the wrongness of the stream, felt rocked by turbulence, as soon as it closed around her. Lurch helped harden her resolve, though she sensed his belief that this might be their last stand. Or maybe she felt it because she believed it. She pushed against the stream’s grain, finding the going as difficult as anything she’d experienced. Not that her experience was deep, but it felt deep after her recent experiences. Even compared to what had gone before, this was bad, very bad. As far as she could see, cracks and fissures spread out, like a parched desert in the dry season, as if time had been sucked somewhere else, a force that tried to suck her in, too. Worse, each fissure seemed to be a deep channel, with a counter force that tried to suck her down inside them as she traversed the parched plain. The beacons that marked the location of the time base in the stream were weak and intermittent, but the apex of the fissures spread out from there, as if a giant fist had planted itself dead center of the island, marking it as a target.

That was where she planned to make her stand.

And does this stand include a plan?

Of course
. She’d been sifting and searching data for what felt like forever, as she clawed her way toward the apex.

Care to share?

Those things Smith used in the stream. They were like bombs.

Time disrupters.

Can this stuff Chameleon gave me work like those?

A sense of Lurch thinking, then,
I think I can alter them sufficiently to create the same effect. I am uncertain whether the blast will be sufficient to stop what appears to be coming.

I’m not going to stop it. I’m going to try to divert it into an alternate time line. If it works like the one we landed in, it will close taking the wave with it.

To quote the Chameleon, it’s ballsy.

She was glad he didn’t protest or act like it couldn’t be done. If Smith had learned all he knew from the nanites, then they could do anything he could.
Do you think it will work?

I believe it is our only option.

Not a ringing endorsement. She reached the apex, though it didn’t ease the counter force trying to take her into some dark, hungry maw. She used strands of the last of her drones to anchor them against the drag. Even anchored, the contrary forces jerked her around, trying to dislodge her anchors. Just when she thought she’d kind of gotten used to the yanking, she sensed the change, felt the sucking ease, then change direction, felt it crackle through the dry-as-dust stream. Didn’t want to look, but had to. Behind her, rising up dark and high, something that looked very like a tsunami rushed over the fractured plain, heading straight at them.

* * * *

Faustus felt less pain at being in this place so tied to his memories of Halane, as he exited his time bunker. No one appeared to notice him as he climbed the short distance to the gazebo, where he’d left his other self secured. It was a risk, but a slight one. People rarely traversed the steep climb to the gazebo. And he seemed to be the only one who’d ever wondered about the one hill, the single high point on the entire island. Hidden in plain sight, Faustus was unsurprised by the brilliance of the work hidden in the lab beneath the hill. He’d even considered trying to meet the mind behind the lab. Perhaps he would, once he had control of time. A mind was a terrible thing to waste.

He checked his data pad, looking for the wave that had wiped Halane from existence, and for his counter wave. The rogue wave was there, but no sign of his countering wave yet. Time to secure his front row seat and get the time shields ready.

He’d been here many times, particularly in the beginning when grief had ruled his world, before revenge became his driving force. He’d traveled along the time line in both directions, looking for signs of her, trying to find anything he could use to bring her back. He knew it better than he knew his own time, better than the life he’d had before he traveled to Kikk, before stepping into the space/time portal. Like much of his experience on the outpost, the discovery of the hidden bunker was an accident, though lately he’d begun to wonder if they were accidents or signs of his inevitable rise to power. He still didn’t believe in higher beings, but he could believe he’d been called by higher forces to restore order and keep the time stream from being manipulated by the wrong people. A high calling, he repeated to himself, with a slight smile. He’d use the phrase when the history of his rise to power was penned.

He checked base time once more, just to be sure. None of the time researchers, not even the Garradians, had been able to find a way to pinpoint time travel over great distances, but on the base, shifts through time were possible with the deployment of the proper beacons and a fair amount of practice. Beacons and markers certainly helped narrow time variations, but he believed he could find his way to this place, this time, if he were blind, deaf and dumb. He used a beacon now, but the real beacon was the heart he’d left here.

Already the stream showed signs of distress, though if it were from his assault, launched before leaving the future, or the incoming wave was unclear. He’d learned much about the stream, but it resisted absolute knowing, as if it knew the dangers of too much knowledge. He felt he’d recognize his wave when it arrived, though he wouldn’t need to know which was which. His role was to watch them cancel each other out, grab Halane and get inside the shields. He had time—as always his lips twitched at the word—to set in motion the rest of his plan, set in motion the takedown of the base and the nanites—his last opposition. Soon even Time would serve him. And if all went as planned—and why wouldn’t it—in an orchestrated and ironic twist, at the right time in the future both the base and the nanites would author their own destruction. On his data pad, with as much of a flourish as he could manage, he pressed the buttons that would launch the assault force at the time base.

He did love orchestrated
and
ironic. And when it was over? There were many things to look forward to, but one of the most satisfying would be the long delayed meeting with the Chameleon. He’d look him in the eye while he decided the man’s fate, one of many meetings to anticipate, though the meeting with Halane was, of course, the most desired. But Chameleon was up there in his top ten. A pity Tobias wasn’t here to see the final movement of the symphony. He’d be blamed for it by the opposition—for as long as they managed to exist in the new, universal order. He looked at the recall button and pondered. Maybe Tobias should be here for the finale. He’d always planned to watch him die…

THIRTY-SIX

“We made it…” Em said, “…somewhere.” Her head moved, possibly to assess this somewhere, though it felt like she wriggled closer. “Feeling
deja vu
all over again.”

Her grin told him she knew it was redundant and didn’t care. When she looked at him like that, she could be as redundant as she wanted. Robert did note, without surprise, that she still didn’t stray into question territory. Considering what she’d been through since she met him, it was remarkable. If he weren’t already falling in love, it would have pushed him over the edge. Robert would have liked to count this as progress in expecting the unexpected, but he no longer expected her to act anything but atypical. It wasn’t her best quality, but it was in the top ten. He studied her mouth, which was also in his top ten, possibly number one, and wondered if she could be persuaded into a kissing frame of mind.

Em is always in a kissing frame of mind when she is around you, Robert-oh-my-darling.

Nod?

He felt a wriggle that felt like delight in the center of his chest.

We are connected again!
Blynken wriggled again, as if it couldn’t help itself.
The dampening field is gone!

Robert was somewhat aware that they appeared to be back in her uncle’s warehouse, so this didn’t surprise him either. Not that he’d assume, not without more data. He had learned that lesson.

She twisted in his hold—though not out of it he was thankful to note—bringing her mouth into a better position for kissing. Her arms slid around his neck and tugged him closer. And then she kissed
him
, splattering his thoughts, rather like the anomaly had tried to splatter them, but with a much better outcome. He sank into the kiss, letting gravity and her arms bring him closer to her than he’d ever thought possible. Every inch of her was number one on his top ten, he concluded hazily when the necessity for oxygen concluded the kiss.

Her lips curved into her high beam smile. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” A pause. “For what?”

Her soft laugh shook them both, since he was sprawled on top of her. “For saving my life. For kissing me like it’s your job. For—”

“—loving you? Because I do. I know we just met—”

Her hand covered his mouth. “When a guy tells a girl he loves her, he is required to pause for a follow-up kiss, before adding qualifiers or explanations. It’s like a rule or something.”

“Well, if it’s a rule…” He didn’t think it was possible, but this kiss was better than the last. Her mouth was eager and it felt like coming home after a long, dark journey, which kind of fit, though not completely. Home had never been this wonderful. It was annoying to need to breathe again. He rested his head against her shoulder, taking deep, shuddering breaths, almost afraid to look into her eyes. “There is so much I need to tell you, Em, stuff you need to know about me—”

Her hand found his chin and pushed until he looked at her.

“The other rule is that you let the girl tell you she loves you, too, before you try to talk her out of it.”

His mouth turned up in a match of hers. “It’s crazy. We only just met.” Though he could concede a lack of clarity on how long it had been since that first meeting. Felt like years. And minutes. “And I put you through hell.”

“It’s been amazing,” she said with apparent cheer, “and yes, a bit crazy.”

“Insane even.” He winced. Not his best word choice.

“I’m used to both. They don’t scare me.”

A promising statement. “But bugs do.”

She chuckled. “A totally logical and reasonable fear. Not to mention, the most normal thing about me.” She made a face. “Possibly the only normal thing about me.”

“Normal is over-rated.”

Her smile was reward enough, but that didn’t stop him from starting to go in for another kiss. They were quite addictive. The tremor that shook the warehouse and Em, was followed by the crash of something into wood. Or against it. He wasn’t sure which. He had them both upright so fast, he surprised himself. He wasn’t—wholly—surprised to see Smith in the shattered remains of a crate. He had told him how to escape.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Ashe stared at the dark wave rushing toward them, realized it wasn’t all dark, though that made it more—not less—terrifying. In its midst she saw streaks of light that reminded her of transport trails. She longed to ask Lurch if he was done, ask him what the lights meant, but didn’t dare distract him. He’d tell her when he was done, she told herself, since she couldn’t talk to him. Or think to him. It was getting very close, scary close. It felt as if the counter force of it wanted to suck her off her defense point and into the mass, but it couldn’t, could it? She recalled that tsunami’s pulled the water out prior to arrival, that the top traveled faster than the bottom, but this was time, not water, so it shouldn’t be the same. Rather felt like that though and the wave looked a lot like a picture she’d seen of one, but instead of gathering up water, it gathered up time…and people? Were the lights people? It looked wide and appeared deep, but she had a sense that the heart, like a well-aimed projective, headed straight at them.

We’re going to need a big bang.
No qualms about interrupting. This was need-to-know.

I’m linking all your available armament.
A pause.
I will be ready in time.

How did he know when that was? She tried to study the tsunami in a more detached way, one without the panic. It wasn’t easy. Panic seemed indicated. Logical even.

You are doing fine, little one.

Lurch hadn’t called her that for a long time. For some reason it helped. And scared her some more, as if he also knew their chances of surviving this were slim to none and they needed to end their association well. A memory from an old vid, some words in fubar situations seemed indicated.