Unbound

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“Enforcer” is dedicated to my son, Anthony, who proved his courage and determination to achieve good health when he had gastric bypass surgery on November 5, 2012. I want to thank his surgeon, Dr. Paul Ross, and the nurses and medical professionals of Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System’s Surgical Weight Loss Unit. Their kindness, dedication, and professionalism made a procedure that could have been agonizing and dangerous much less painful and far safer. As Anthony’s neurotic mother, I can’t thank them enough.

I would also like to thank Cindy Hwang, my editor, for her understanding and unfailing support. She and my agent, Jessica Faust, have been both helpful and patient as I dealt with a number of health issues while writing this book. (Even when Hurricane Sandy plunged Jessica into darkness and closed the Penguin offices.)

I want to congratulate Leis Pederson, Cindy’s assistant, on her promotion to editor. Leis has held my hand and saved my bacon on many occasions, so I was delighted to learn of her new job. It’s well deserved.

Then there’s my talented team of beta readers, all fabulous authors themselves: Shelby Morgen, Kate Douglas, Diane Whiteside, Camille Anthony, Eileen Gormley, and Marteeka Karland. The only one of the group who isn’t a writer is Virginia Ettel, my dear Bookdragon, who never hesitates to kick my butt when needed. (I’m afraid butt-kicking is often warranted—yet it’s always greatly appreciated.)

Most of all I want to thank my own personal romance hero, my husband of twenty-eight years, Michael Woodcock. It’s a huge comfort to know that a six-foot, three-inch cop always has my back. Alerio has nothin’ on you, babe.

And thanks to you, my reader. I deeply appreciate those who have patiently waited for the climax of the Time Hunters series. If you’re not familiar with my work, I have attempted to write “Enforcer” in such a way that new readers won’t be lost. Either way, thank you for buying Unbound. I hope you enjoy the story of Alerio and Dona as much as I loved writing it.

CHAPTER ONE

The dark, narrow stairway stank of murder. The reek seemed to coat her tongue with rot and terror, turning each breath into a bloody assault. Dona Astryr ignored the nauseating taste. She was too busy listening for the killers who’d butchered everyone in the house.

In the crowded town square beyond the house’s neat white shutters, a crier read the American Declaration of Independence in a rolling baritone. The Philadelphia crowd hooted and stomped for the more inflammatory lines, bellowing support for the Continental Congress. If there were any Tories among them, they had the good sense to keep their snarls to themselves.

A fist-sized evidence bot zipped past Dona, riding the blue glow of an anti-grav cushion as it searched for murder victims. She snatched the bot out of the air in a blur of cyborg speed. If there was a killer on the second floor, she didn’t want the device giving her away. The bot lit up, about to beep a protest, but Dona thumbed a button to mute it. Bot in one hand, shard pistol in the other, she cocked her head and scanned with every sensor implant she had.

Just below the roar of the crowd, a female voice whimpered pitifully in despair and pain.

Somebody’s still alive. Dona thumbed off the shard pistol’s safety. And they’re damned well going to stay that way.

Had to be Lolai Hardin. According to her dossier, the temporal guide owned this house, using it as a hostel for the time-traveling tourists who hired her to show them life at the time the Declaration was signed. The United States was considered the direct ancestor of the Galactic Union, and its historic milestones were major tourist attractions.

Hardin’s latest tour group had gotten a hell of a lot more than they bargained for. A vicious attack by forces unknown had left thirteen people dead or injured. Hardin’s two twenty-third-century employees were among them. Only Lolai herself was unaccounted for—a bit surprising, since she’d been the one to send the courier bot that had alerted the Enforcers that her tour group was under attack. She’d suffered at least one minor wound before she sent the bot; a bloody thumbprint had marred its smooth, white surface. Hardin’s fingerprint.

Damn, I wish we could have gotten here before the bastards attacked. Unfortunately, nobody had ever managed to prevent this kind of massacre—and plenty of people had tried. You just couldn’t change history no matter what you did.

Of course, Lolai could have been working with the attackers. Could have been bought off or intimidated into cooperating. She could have been the killer. But that whimper suggested otherwise.

Maybe Dona could save her. Victim’s condition? Dona started up the stairs in a padding rush, soundless as a ghost.

Extremely serious, replied the computer implanted in her brain. Sensors detect multiple stab wounds and extensive blood loss. She must have medical attention in the next 3.2 minutes, or she will die.

Which wouldn’t necessarily end the poor woman’s life. If Dona could get Lolai into regen at the Outpost infirmary within seven minutes of the time her heart stopped beating, she could be brought back. After that, brain death would be too extensive for regeneration, and she really would be dead.

Victim’s location? Reaching the top step, Dona paused for another scan.

First bedroom on the left.

Any sign of the attackers?

No.

That meant nothing. The killer or killers could be sensor-shielded, invisible to both Dona’s eyes and implants.

The evidence bot jerked in her hand, trying to escape. She stuffed it into one of the pouches on her armored belt and padded silently toward the bedroom door. Damn, I wish I had backup.

Unfortunately, every other Enforcer on the ten-agent team was either busy searching the house’s first floor or dealing with the two critically injured victims.

So I go in hard and pray I won’t find some bastard waiting to play “Let’s Kill the Time Cop.” Dona braced herself a meter from the bedroom’s locked entrance, lifted her shard pistol, and slammed an armored boot against the thick oak door. Propelled by cyborg muscle, the door crashed open and banged against the wall. “Temporal Enforcer!” She shot through the opening, crouched low, weapon ready.

Oh, fuck.

An arc of bright scarlet splatter marked the wall on her right. A small round rug squelched under her boots, bleeding streams of red across the polished wooden floor.

To her left, a naked woman lay spread eagle on a canopied bed, wrists and ankles bound to its tall cherry posts. Dozens of wounds marked her breasts, belly, and thighs, drooling blood like witless red mouths. Her attacker had been particularly vicious with her face, cutting off her nose, slashing her cheeks and lips. It would take a DNA scan to identify her with any certainty, but Dona was willing to bet it was Hardin. Weight and height were right, anyway.

Send a message to Dr. Chogan, Dona told her implant as she padded toward the bed. Her feet left bloody footprints across the polished pine. We’ve got another survivor confirmed, condition critical.

One of Lolai’s eyes opened, rolling with terror until it fixed on Dona. The other appeared glued shut by dried blood. A tear spilled as her crusted lips moved soundlessly.

“I’m Temporal Enforcement agent Dona Astryr,” Dona told her, giving the room another quick, wary scan. Bed, armoire, washstand with china bowl and pitcher wreathed in painted roses. No attacker—or at least none visible. “I’m going to get you into regen.” Bad as her injuries were, a few hours of regeneration would heal everything but Lolai’s memories.

The woman’s lips moved again, but the only sound she made was a low wheeze.

Where the fuck is Dr. Chogan? Dona wondered as her eyes flicked over the room again. Maybe I should just pick her up and Jump back to the Outpost. Comp, would she survive a temporal warp in her current condition?

Negative, the neurocomp replied. Given her wounds, an unprotected Jump would probably cause systemic organ failure and brain death. It would be better to wait for Dr. Chogan to bring a regeneration tube.

Frowning, Dona watched the woman’s bloody lips move. Her single open eye looked desperate. Leaning closer, Dona told her comp to amplify audio. “What did you say?”

The words emerged in a painful, wheezing hiss of superhuman effort. “He’s . . . still . . . here!”

Dona spun, bringing her shard pistol up as a figure in red and black temporal armor melted into view like a ghost. I knew it. Botfucker was hiding behind a sensor shield. She fired before he finished his big reveal.

A spray of needle-sharp tritium shards hissed across the room to hit the killer’s chest. Instead of carving him into hash, the metal fléchettes bounced off the suit’s armored scales in a chorus of musical pings.

She knew that red and black armor. A Xeran. Figures. Jolting aside, Dona barely avoided the spray he fired back at her. The bastards did a major upgrade of their tech a month ago. Their armor’s probably better than ours. Ducking, she listened to another round of fléchettes hiss overhead.

It was a diversion. The Xeran charged in a blur of red and black and muscle. The impact of his powerful body knocked her breathless as they reeled backward, hit the bed, and tumbled across the victim’s bound and helpless body. Lolai wheezed in pain. Crashing to the floor, the two cyborgs rolled, each fighting to aim a shard pistol somewhere vital.

“Bastard!” Dona snarled into the Xeran’s black faceplate as she managed to jam the muzzle of her weapon against the underside of his jaw. The armor’s scales were thinnest there to avoid interfering with turning the head. He grabbed her gun hand and twisted, trying to break her wrist.

Fuckit, I’ll go for a head shot. Ignoring the fragile fingers threatening to snap in his crushing grip, she twisted her wrist until the weapon scraped over his faceplate. Backup! Dona snapped to her neurocomp. Dammit, get me some backup!

Requesting backup . . . Chief Dyami says the agents downstairs are also under attack. He will have to fight his way free before he can assist.

The comp was right. Shard fire hissed and whined downstairs, along with the thump of colliding armored bodies. A familiar Vardonese war cry rang out over the shouts, followed by a deafening crash. The Xerans responded with a chorus of curses. They sounded pained.

Chief Dyami really didn’t like people who murdered unarmed tourists.

That’s why you don’t piss off time cops. Dona peeled her lips off her teeth in something that definitely wasn’t a smile. Especially me. Despite the Xeran’s attempts to force the weapon away, she braced the shard pistol’s muzzle against his visor.

But before she could pull the trigger, her foe’s polarized plastium faceplate went transparent, revealing a twisted smirk she knew all too well. “Hello, baby. Miss me?”

Ivar Terje.

Dona stared at him for one suspended instant of disbelief that promptly dissolved into howling rage. “You bot-buggering traitor!” She slammed her left fist into his throat, aiming for the larynx, meaning to crush it right through his armor. Ivan merely gagged, but she felt his savage grip loosen. Just a fraction, but that was all she needed.

Dona wrenched free to slam the pistol into his faceplate. She wanted to beat his head in, but breaking his visor made a fine intermediate step. “You almost killed me, you son of a bitch. You ruined my life, my reputation, my career. They thought I was a traitor because of you!” Another furious swing sent more cracks radiating across the reinforced plastium, but the visor still protected her hated enemy’s face.

The third blow had every last superhuman erg of Dona’s cyborg strength behind it. Her ex-lover’s faceplate finally shattered into jagged, glittering fragments. “I can’t believe I was ever stupid enough to love you!” She aimed the pistol between his eyes, her finger tightening on the trigger . . .

Ivar slapped the muzzle away from his face. The blow looked casual, but it sent her heavy pistol sailing across the room as her arm went numb from hand to shoulder. Now there was a data point she could have done without. Oh, seven hells, he’s been playing with me. He’s easily three, four times as strong as I am. Maybe more.

That must have been some tech upgrade.

“You’re worse than a traitor. You’re a fucking fool.” Thrusting one booted foot against her belly, Ivar kicked her airborne. She sailed over the bed and crashed down into the midst of the washstand, pottery exploding, wood splintering into tinder from the impact of her armored body. Her helmeted head hit hard enough to dent the wooden floor. She tasted blood.

The battleborg rolled to his feet with a grace that was astonishing in a man so massive. “Every lie I told you, you believed. Love you? Why in all the hells would I love you?” The contemptuous jerk of his head made light flash off something inside the dark confines of his shattered helmet.

She squinted. A pair of objects glinted bright and sharp among the disordered, sweat-darkened tufts of his red hair. Something that looked almost like . . .

. . . A priest’s horns.

Xeran religious orders marked rank by the size, number, and length of their surgical horn implants. He’s a Xeran priest now? They accepted him into their priesthood? A traitor? Dona rose from the wreckage of the washstand, though her back howled in bruised protest. Sinking into a crouch, she drew a knife from her boot. The blade chimed, a pure, high note that somehow sounded menacing. Well, not for long, you treasonous son of a bot.

Temporal Enforcement’s techs had improved the quantum weapons they’d invented six months before. The originals had been battle axes even Dona could barely swing, but the new blades were far lighter. And just as capable of cutting through heavy combat armor.

Another deep male roar sounded downstairs. For a split second, Dona felt comforted. Somewhere the chief’s kicking ass. Just like I’m about to. Tech or no tech.

Her quantum dagger hummed a higher note as she circled Ivar, boots crunching through broken crockery. “You’ve had this coming for a long, long time, you son of a bitch.”

“No, you’re the one who’s about to get a taste of what you’ve had coming.” He bared his teeth. They flashed at her from the darkness of his broken helmet. “So, are you still fucking Dyami?” Misinterpreting her shocked expression for surprise, he curled a lip. “Did you really think I didn’t know you were betraying me with that sanctimonious Warlord prick?”

“I never . . .” she began, before she realized she didn’t owe him explanations anymore.

“Don’t waste the oxygen.” Ivar lunged, crossing the distance between them in a blur of battleborg speed. “I always knew you rutted with him, you little bitch-whore.” His fist flew at her face.

Dona twisted, avoiding the blow by millimeters as she drove the quantum blade at his armored belly. He knocked her wrist away, and she went with it, spinning aside before his backhanded blow could hit her head. “I never betrayed you, Ivar,” she gritted, knowing she was wasting her breath. “You were the one who spat on everything you ever claimed to believe in. Me. Chief Dyami. Your Enforcer’s oath.”

“My oath? Only an idiot would buy that beefershit.” He curled a lip and paced to his right, circling. Looking for an opening. “Unlike you, I’m not that stupid.”

He’s so busy sneering, he forgot to keep his guard up. Dona’s eyes narrowed, focusing on the left hand he’d dropped out of a proper defensive position. The only chance she had was to hit him hard and hit him fast.

Even before the Xerans upgraded his nanotech, Ivar was a combat-class battleborg, easily a foot taller and fifty kilos heavier than Dona, every gram genetically engineered and nanofiber-reinforced.

But she was faster. Dona drove the quantum dagger at her foe’s massive chest in a blur of merciless strength.

He hit her so fast, she didn’t even see the blow coming. The stiletto cartwheeled from her hand as Ivar slammed a punch into the side of her head, knocking her off her feet and sending her skidding into a corner.

If not for her helmet, the blow would have shattered her skull.

The battleborg was on her before she could scramble up and away. Dona threw up a forearm block, but his fist still hit her right in the center of her visor. It cracked as her head bounced against the floor. Flat on her back, she counterpunched anyway, a diversion for the kick she planted right between his legs. He only snarled and started pounding her as she tried to twist aside and rise. Punch after punch thudded into her head and torso, smashing her back against the floor.

Starbursts of pain thundered through Dona’s skull, but she ignored them as she fought to scramble to her feet. She managed it somehow, reeling upright, slamming punches and kicks into Ivar’s big body. He didn’t react to the blows at all. Seven hells, it’s as though he doesn’t even feel them.

And it was possible he didn’t, if his implant had blocked the pain. Yeah, I’m fucked.

A blur of red hit her face so hard, her skull felt like it would detonate. The world seemed to blink.

Lifting her head, she realized she was flat on her back in the middle of the room. And she had no idea how she’d gotten there.

Ivar stepped into view and loomed over her, a savage grin on his face.

Oh, fuck. Frantic, desperate, Dona drove both feet into his gut in an effort to kick him the hell away from her. He didn’t even try to block the double kick. Barely even rocked on his heels.

“You’re dead, bitch.” His eyes glittered with a rage that was not entirely sane.

He’s going to kill me. He’d already made far too much progress toward that goal. The room revolved around her, and her head throbbed with a relentless kettledrum pounding.

Warning! her neurocomp blared. You have sustained a severe concussion. You cannot continue to take blows to the head without suffering traumatic brain injury.

And what the hell do you suggest I do about it? Terror spiced her rage like sawpeppers, tongue-searing and bitter. A punch she never even saw exploded against her faceplate, snapping her head back as the plastium shattered. Shards peppered her face, but she barely felt the sting as she staggered. Even with the helmet’s protection, Ivar was bouncing her brain around inside her skull like a grav-ball.

The comp’s right. He’s beating me to death.

Ivar rammed her into the wall with such force, white flakes rained around her shoulders as the plaster cracked like dried mud. Stunned, disoriented, she hung in his grip as he reached up and did something to the underside of her jaw. Her helmet lost its grip on her skull. He pulled it off her head and tossed it aside to hit the floor in a series of rolling thumps.

Oh, fuck. Blearily, she peered at him, hanging limp in his hold, barely able to focus on his face as the world swung around her.

Grinning like a skyshark, Ivar drew back one huge fist for the blow that would likely shatter her skull.

Red alert! her comp squealed. Take defensive action immediately or . . .

Gods curse him, I am not going to let this bastard butcher me. I will fight him to my last breath.

Drawing on the last dregs of her strength, she swung a clumsy fist toward that hated smirk. He merely swatted the blow aside.

“Is that the best you can do, cunt?” Ivar laughed, eyes glittering hot with knife-edged pleasure. “Then I guess you’ll die.” He cocked his fist back for one final blow . . .

And vanished.

Deprived of his support, Dona fell, tried to catch herself. Hit the ground anyway in a heap of knees and elbows. Dazed, barely conscious, she lifted her aching head.

A couple of meters away, Alerio Dyami hammered punches into Ivar, relentless as a metronome. The traitor reeled as he fought to protect himself, arms jerking in a futile effort to ward off crunching blows. He’d lost his helmet, and his face was almost as bloody and bruised as Dona’s. Each blow tore a grunt of pain from his lips. Battleborg tech notwithstanding, Ivar was no Vardonese Warlord.

Alerio was a Warlord, however, and he was pissed.

Safe, Dona thought in dazed relief. I’m safe. The chief won’t let him kill me.

Darkness rolled over her in a black flood. She didn’t feel her head hit the floor.

Chief Alerio Dyami stalked Ivar Terje around the scene of the fucker’s latest crime, the instinct to murder growling in his heart.

The bastard needed killing. Deserved it. Alerio fully intended to give him those just deserts.

A nude woman lay bound to the bed, blood smearing her body from multiple stab wounds. Alerio’s sensors told him the slick gleam on her spread legs was Ivar’s sperm.

But even as that crime filled him with a cold, righteous fury, what really drove Alerio insane was the sight of Dona Astryr lying in a bloody heap. If he hadn’t been forced to fight his way through all those Xeran priests downstairs, he could have spared her the savage beating Ivar had so obviously dished out.

The minute his neurocomp received Dona’s call for help, Alerio ordered the implant to send him into riaat. The stew of biochemicals the computer pumped into his bloodstream had instantly thrown him into the berserker state that made Warlords so feared.

Ivar certainly should fear him, because riaat increased Alerio’s already considerable strength by a factor of ten, while making him almost impervious to pain. All of which made it easy to beat the blood out of a traitor who richly deserved it.

One of Ivar’s eyes was already swollen shut, but the other glittered feverishly at him. “You’re such a fucking hero, aren’t you?” The battleborg’s bloody lip curled in a sneer. “But you didn’t save the bitch on the bed, did you? Or the ones downstairs. Even the kid. We butchered them all, and there’s not a fucking thing you can do about it. You can’t change history. No matter what you do, no matter when you Jump, they’ll die because we killed them. You failed, Chief.” He laughed. “Big hero. Big, noble Warlord. Utter fucking failure.”

Alerio ground his teeth against the need to kill. Get control, dammit. He wants me blind stupid with rage. He wants me to make mistakes. “You’re right.” He forced himself to retreat one step. Then another. Getting room to fight like the calculating warrior he was instead of a berserk killer. “I didn’t save the fourteen people you raped and murdered.”

But despite his battle for control, his murderous fury must have shown. Ivar’s gaze flickered, and for an instant, Alerio saw fear flash through his enemy’s eyes.

And that was the opening he needed. Oh, botfucker, you’d better be scared. Alerio whipped into a spinning kick.

Ivar ducked, throwing up a forearm in an attempted block. Neither effort kept the chief’s boot from slamming into his jaw. The battleborg bounced off the wall behind him, almost went down. Alerio, still balancing effortlessly on one leg, reversed the kick and snapped the toe of his armored boot into Ivar’s jaw.

The battleborg crashed backward, shattering the wall’s plaster but somehow managing to keep his feet.

Alerio took a gliding step forward and punched him squarely in the face with a left-right combination that rocked Ivar’s head on his shoulders. “You’re finished,” the chief growled. “You’ll spend the rest of your life in a penal colony, thinking of all the women you’ll never fuck.”

Ivar steadied himself, one corner of his bleeding mouth lifting in a smirk. “It’s not going to be that easy, Chief.” A punch blurred out of nowhere, bloodying Alerio’s mouth and making his skull ring.

Huh, Alerio eyed his opponent’s vicious grin. Guess he’s got a little more left than I thought. He’s definitely stronger and faster than he was the last time we fought.

“The Xerans gave me an upgrade,” Ivar told him smugly.

Alerio curled a lip. “It’s not going to save you, asshole.”

“Yeah, well, yours definitely won’t save you, Chief. You, or any of those fucking tourists you’re so determined to protect. We’ve got T-suits, motherfucker.” He grinned, smug confidence in the bloody curve of his split lip. “The whole temporal plane is our little playground. We can screw and kill every tourist who falls into our hands. And we will.” His glinting eyes narrowed and went cool. Almost sane. “Unless you turn yourself in to the Victor’s . . . justice. You. Your little whore Dona. Those abominations, Nick Wyatt, his Warfem bitch Riane. Jessica and Galar Arvid. All of them.” Now those eyes went damned icy. “And most of all, we want the T’Lir. So be a hero, Chief. Or watch me kill everything that moves.” Energy began to swirl around him, preparing to coil into a temporal warp that would shoot him across time and space.

Fuck, he’s getting ready to Jump. Alerio lunged toward his foe. Too late. A deafening sonic boom and a flash of light blinded him as Ivar’s T-suit armor warped space and time, catapulting the traitor far from the Warlord’s reaching hands.

When Alerio could see again, Ivar Terje was gone.

Jumped. Goddess knows where. He glared at the empty space where Ivar had been. Yeah, run now, cocksucker. Sooner or later, I’ll hunt you down.

In the meantime, Alerio had more important things to worry about. Starting with Dona Astryr. One long pace took him to his agent’s sprawled, unconscious body.

But before he could begin a sensor scan to determine the extent of her injuries, a sonic boom thundered from the floor below. Another sounded, then another, and another, until Alerio felt the whole house sway in the grip of temporal forces like a tree in a storm. The priests were following Ivar’s lead and Jumping for home.

And there wasn’t a damn thing Alerio or his agents could do about it.

“Chief,” commed Galar Arvid, his second-in-command, “the Xerans have all Jumped, presumably for Xer. Do you want us to pursue or . . . ?”

“What, chase them all the way back to the Crystal Fortress, where ten thousand just like them wait to kick your ass? Fuck no. Start getting the wounded to the Outpost and the dead into stasis. We’ll figure out what to do about the hornheads later.”

“Understood, Chief.”

Wearily, Alerio sank to his knees by Dona’s side. She looked like he felt. The Enforcer’s pretty face was battered, both eyes blackened, her lips cut and swollen. Bruises distorted the clean lines of her high cheekbones and delicate jaw. He was almost afraid to scan for internal injuries. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to know. He scanned anyway. And swore.

Com Dr. Chogan, Alerio told his neurocomp.

The doctor answered a heartbeat later. Evidently someone had already fetched her from the Outpost. Good. “What is it, Chief? I’ve got my hands full with Riane. She took a gut wound.”

“Astryr got the worst of it in a fight with Terje,” Alerio said shortly. “She has a pretty serious concussion. My sensors say her brain is swelling.”

“Let me get Riane into regen, and I’ll head up there.”

Dona moaned, a breathy sound of pain that made the muscles in Alerio’s chest clench. It was more than the ache he’d normally feel over an injured agent. Her remarkable violet eyes opened to slits in her swollen lids. Registered him. Tried to widen. “Terje,” she gasped, apparently trying to warn him. “The traitor’s . . .”

“Already Jumped for home,” Alerio told her roughly. “Along with the rest of the Victor’s priests.”

“What about . . . woman . . . temporal guide . . . owns . . . house. She’s . . .” Dona lifted a wavering hand, gesturing weakly toward the bed and its bloody occupant. “Alive when I . . . came in. Is she . . . ?”

He frowned at the still form. “That’s Lolai Hardin?” he said, only to ask himself an instant later, Well, who the hell else could it be? According to the Temporal Jump plan Hardin had logged with the Outpost, she was the only one unaccounted for. It had not even occurred to him that the woman on the bed could still be alive, considering the extent of her injuries. Scan her, he told his comp.

No cellular activity, the implant reported. Based on decay, she has been dead too long for successful revival. At least ten minutes.

Alerio cursed himself and Ivar with equal venom. “She’s gone,” he told Dona’s swollen violet eyes.

“Dammit.” A tear slipped down a bruised cheek. “I was hoping I could save her.” Her delicate jaw worked as if she ground her teeth. “Fucking . . . Ivar . . . wouldn’t let me Jump her . . . out.” She stopped to pant. “They all died . . . didn’t they? Ivar and the priests . . . killed everybody.”

He had no idea, so he commed Galar to ask about the two survivors. When the answer came, Alerio ground his teeth. Devils drag Ivar right to the seven hells. “Chogan did her best, but . . . no. Couldn’t even save Hardin’s coachman, much less the boy. Both died in regen.” Which said everything that needed to be said about the savagery of the attack on them, since regen could heal damn near anything.

Alerio leaned over to give her his most determined stare. “The Xerans are going to pay for what they did to these people.” Lifting one delicate, chilly hand, he wrapped his big fingers around it. “We’ll make sure of that.”

“I know. You always get justice for the . . . victims.” Her bruised eyes slipped closed.

“Dona!” Stiffening in alarm, Alerio ordered another scan.

She has a concussion, his neurocomp reported. There is swelling in a bruised area of her cerebral cortex that must be addressed before it becomes serious. Fortunately, her neural computer is compensating, and her other injuries are not life-threatening. She will heal quickly once in regeneration.

Alerio sighed in relief and sat back on his heels, studying Astryr’s battered face. Like most Enforcers—and the Warlord himself—she was a cyborg. A network of biocrystal grew through her brain like a second nervous system, feeding her brain sensor data even as it gave her control of most bodily functions. A lacy sensor network lay beneath her skin, designed to detect everything from the DNA of a murder victim to the temporal warp fields produced by T-suits during a Jump.

The tech didn’t stop there. Nanotech filaments reinforced her bones and strengthened her muscles, making her far stronger than any ordinary human, male or female. Yet even given all that, Dona was no match for a battleborg like Ivar Terje. His implants were even more extensive, and his muscles were reinforced with nanofibers three times as thick as hers, giving him far greater strength. She’d known that, yet she’d still gone after Terje, determined to save a dying woman even if it meant her own life.

“Chogan!” he bellowed.

“Gods, Alerio, I’m here already.” Dr. Sakari Chogan stalked into the room, trailed by a seven-foot regeneration tube that wafted like a leaf on a streaming blue anti-grav field. The doctor looked pale and grim despite her ethereal good looks, and she’d gathered her iridescent green hair into an untidy topknot that looked as if she’d been dragging her hands through it. As usual during temporal missions, she wore a bright red T-suit marked with a prominent white M for “Medical.” To most opposing forces, no matter how brutal, that would have made her a noncombatant.

The Xerans had proven time and again that they didn’t give a damn whether medical personnel were off-limits or not. If they’d gotten their hands on the doctor, they’d have shown her no more mercy than they had Lolai Hardin. Yet that hadn’t stopped Chogan from doing her best to save the injured and obtain justice for the dead.

“How’s Riane?” Alerio rose to help the doctor with the regenerator.

“Better. Going to be in regen awhile, though.”

When they had it positioned to her satisfaction, the doctor flicked her fingers over a series of controls. The device obediently lowered to engulf the injured Enforcer. Seconds later, a pink healing mist flooded the tube, obscuring Dona’s unconscious face.

Chogan leaned over the huge device, her hands sweeping through its control field in graceful arcs that triggered a series of medical scans. Within seconds, the results flashed into view, scrolling over the three-dimensional schematic of Dona’s body. Heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen levels, cerebral activity, others Dyami didn’t recognize. Some readings appeared in shades of healthy green, but others pulsed a warning crimson.

“Looks like the botfucker banged her brain around pretty hard,” Chogan told Alerio, a frown forming between her swooping green brows as she studied the readouts. “I never did like that bastard. There was just something so bloody mean about him. He hurt people and enjoyed it. Including Dona, lover or not.”

“Yeah, he’s a bastard.” Brooding, Alerio gazed through the tube’s transparent lid, studying Dona’s unconscious face. Her battered features were already healing, bruises fading, cuts vanishing under a tide of pink, healthy skin.

Alerio felt knotted muscles begin to relax between his shoulders. “Terje needs a fatal ass-kicking,” he told the doctor absently as he braced his palms on the regenerator’s lid and stared into Dona’s sleeping face. Her closed eyelashes looked incredibly thick and dark as they fanned over her cheeks. “Too bad he got away before I could give it to him.”

Chogan sighed. “At least now we know what lies under that slick smile. That’s preferable to being blindsided.”

None of them had known Terje was a hornhead double agent until the Enforcer had damn near strangled Jessica Kelly to death. The pretty redhead’s only crime had been her choice of roommate, a woman named Charlotte Holt, who turned out to be Xeran herself. Charlotte had managed to piss off the Xerans’ so-called “god,” the Victor, by trying to protect an alien race he wanted dead. The Victor had apparently decided to have her killed, along with anyone she might have talked to. Including Jessica.

So what the hell did Holt know that the Victor wanted squashed?

Then there were Holt’s alien friends, the Sela. Big-eyed, six-legged, cuddly little creatures—with one fuck of a lot of power. The Victor considered them abominations, and he intended to exterminate every damned one of them. Now the Xeran “god” had apparently decided to expand his hit list to include every temporal tourist he could get his hands on, along with Alerio and his Enforcers.

Question is, how the hell do I stop him?

Minutes later, Dr. Chogan, Lolai Hardin’s body tube, and the regenerator containing Dona made the Jump back to the Outpost infirmary in the usual showy explosion of light and sound. With them safely away, Alerio rolled his knotted shoulders and headed back downstairs to check on the rest of his team.

He found the nine of them hard at work bustling around the bloody murder scene. To his relief, no one else had been as badly injured as Riane Wyatt, who was already in the infirmary.

We got lucky.

When he was satisfied they’d gathered all the evidence they’d need if this mess ever went to trial, Alerio gave the order to begin the Jump for home. His eight remaining agents began warping out from the wrecked parlor in teams of two, accompanied by evidence bots and body tubes loaded with the tourists they’d failed to save.

As was his habit, Alerio was the last to leave in order to cover his team’s retreat. Which, as usual, left him half-blind and completely deafened from the flash and boom of temporal warps. Luckily the T-suits’ dampening field kept anyone more than ten meters away from sensing the effects. No Philadelphia natives would wonder why there was a thunderstorm raging inside the house next door.

By the time it was his turn to Jump, the chief’s ears were ringing so loudly, it was all he could hear. Until the androgynous mental voice of his neurocomp began reciting the familiar string of coordinates that was the Outpost’s space-time address. Outpost coordinates confirmed, he told the implant. Engage temporal warp.

Engaging temporal warp in three . . . two . . . one . . .

It felt like being hit by lightning, a teeth-rattling electrical assault that shook his body until his consciousness blinked out . . .

. . . And . . . he was back again.

Temporal warp to the Outpost successful, the neurocomp announced.

Alerio made no answer, blind, deaf, stomach knotting in violent rebellion, muscles jerking from the electrical assault that was a side effect of the Jump. Bracing his knees, he stayed upright by will alone and waited for his implant to compensate. My team?

All members of the investigation team present and accounted for.

The chief breathed a silent prayer of thanks to whatever Vardonese goddess happened to be listening.

He’d lost a Jumper once. Riane Arvid’s sabotaged T-suit had bounced her back and forth across Terran temporal space before finally dumping her in the twentieth century. Her suit was dead as a stone by then, unable to generate even the weakest warp field.

To make a bad situation truly gods-awful, a team of Xeran assassins appeared minutes later. They’d have butchered her with their usual viciousness if not for a timely rescue by Nick Wyatt, half-breed Xeran and superhuman guardian of an alien race called the Sela.

The two had bonded as they struggled to elude the Victor’s assassins. By the time Nick helped Riane return to the Outpost, the couple was desperately in love.

Still, almost losing an Enforcer was an experience Alerio had no desire to repeat. Especially considering Ivar’s threats. We can screw and kill every tourist who falls into our hands. And we will. Unless you turn yourself in to the Victor’s . . . justice.

Like hell, ’botfucker.

Blinking the lingering Jump spots from his eyes, Alerio glanced around the cavernous room called Mission Staging. Heavily shielded to control the raging forces of temporal warp, it was lined floor to ceiling with evidence and equipment lockers, as well as regeneration tubes for the injured. Most temporal missions began and ended here, especially those featuring a large Jump team.

Though the chief longed to head for the infirmary to check on Dona, he controlled the impulse. If his Enforcers managed to bring the Xerans to justice, he was damned if the killers would go free because somebody broke the chain of evidence.

“All right, let’s get the physical evidence stowed,” Alerio said in a command bark that had every Enforcer jumping.

Apparently inured to his growls, Chogan’s medical techs strode out, accompanied by a pitiful parade of body tubes. He ignored them as he rapped out instructions. “The evidence bots are to be logged in and their contents transferred into evi-stasis. And make damned sure they’re all our bots. Last thing we need is to give the Xerans another shot at sabotaging our central computer.”

The last time a spy had attempted such sabotage, the virus he unleashed almost killed every senior agent on the Outpost—including Alerio himself. The horrendous delusions the virus created had almost fragged his consciousness and stopped his heart. Not an experience he wanted to repeat.

Especially with the Xerans playing for keeps.

CHAPTER TWO

One thing Alerio had to say for his Enforcers: they were efficient. Within minutes, the agents were scanning and decanting each bot, then sealing the biological evidence in stasis tubes. That finished, they logged in data on each hair, fiber, and blood cell with the Outpost’s main computer.

Skillful hands slid the tubes into wall slots that fired them into the evidence safe deep in the facility’s core. If the Enforcers—or the Galactic Union’s Temporal Court—decided they needed so much as a single hair, it would be instantly available.

The procedure was one his people had done hundreds of times before. They didn’t need Alerio hovering over them like a Soji Dragon with one egg. Especially since he was only putting off a job even more onerous than the one they were doing.

Alerio folded his arms and rocked back on one heel, frowning. Somehow he was going to have to persuade Colonel Elana Ceres to order a moratorium on temporal tourist visas. At least until Ivar was captured . . . or Alerio twisted the traitor’s head off his shoulders.

That action would not be legal under Galactic Union law, his neurocomp informed him primly.

I do not give a stinking pile of Soji shit. Especially if he even thinks about going after my team.

Particularly Dona, who’d become Alerio’s obsession over the past two years. As Ivar knew all too well. The battleborg had been violently jealous of her even back when he was still pretending to be a loyal Enforcer.

Watching Ivar abuse Dona with those little needling digs of his had driven Alerio into a frigid fury. There’d been times the Warlord had ached to kick his subordinate’s ass from one end of the Outpost to the other.

Unfortunately, being Ivar’s commanding officer made that impulse impossible to carry out. Especially since Dona never reported her lover for his conduct. Alerio wasn’t sure whether she just didn’t notice—which strained belief, Dona being pretty damned observant—or whether she just had a very thick skin.

Even though it looked so incredibly soft . . .

Within the hour, all evidence was logged in and preserved in stasis tubes. The evidence bots were safely slotted into their charging stations, beeping quietly to themselves as they waited for the next round of collections.

Housekeeping chores complete, the Enforcers streamed out of Mission Staging and into the corridor beyond. Alerio knew they’d either head to their quarters on the Residence Deck or make for the Outpost Mess for a meal. Normally the agents joked and laughed after a mission, but tonight’s bloodbath had left them all in a grim, silent mood.

Alerio felt pretty damned grim himself.

He stalked toward his office through the murmuring human stream of agents and administration staff. Normally Enforcers would stop him along the way for greetings or questions. Tonight, though, his expression was apparently so pissed that anyone who started toward him quickly veered away.

The Chief Enforcer’s office was located on the administrative level, sandwiched between the residential deck and the infirmary. As Alerio put the finishing touches on his report, he dropped into the command chair behind his massive black desk. Its gleaming surface instantly lit, scrolling a color-coded list of the tourists, historians, and documentary crews presently passing through the Outpost on their way to various temporal destinations. Like Britain and the ancient world, the Americas were popular with time travelers.

Alerio grimaced, knowing every one of those tourists had just become an unwitting target. They had to be warned, but he knew damned well he’d better get permission first. He was on thin ice as it was, after the disaster with Ivar and Chief Investigator Alex Coridon.

Coridon, though supposedly investigating Ivar’s crimes for TE Headquarters, was actually a spy and saboteur for the Xerans. He was the one who’d infected every computer on the Outpost with a really ugly virus—including the Enforcers’ nuerocomps. And in the process, he’d plunged them all into hell as the virus made them experience their worst nightmares . . .

By the time the chief found the fourth mutilated body, he was running. He didn’t even break step. If there was anyone left alive, it was his job to save whoever it was.

Too late for the rest.

He needed his weapons. His armor, his knives, a shard rifle at the very least.

Had to be Xerans. Had to find the sons of bitches. And kill them. He’d grieve once his enemies had paid for what they’d done.

Alerio charged into the armory, fury, grief, and guilt boiling inside him like a toxic stew.

Just inside the door, he slid to a stop as shock rolled over him like an ice-water bath.

Ivar Terje looked up at him from Dona Astryr’s butchered body. The traitor was covered in blood. “I told you I’d kill her.”

Alerio’s scream of anguish rang in his own ears, tore at his throat . . .

Alerio jerked himself out of the flashback. It didn’t happen. It never happened anywhere but my nightmares. I haven’t lost my people. I haven’t lost Dona. “Courier, prepare for Jump.”

A door in the wall behind his head slid open, and a courier bot floated out with an inquiring beep.

The North American Outpost was actually situated in the sixteenth century, deep inside what would later be known as Georgia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a good site, being situated on a central node in space-time that made it easier to generate temporal warps. As a result, Jumps required less energy, which made temporal warps cheaper to create. That was particularly crucial for large tour groups; a Jump was enormously expensive. First there was the energy cost in generating warps there and back, then the price of buying the group food and clothing appropriate to the period. And finally, you had to hire enough experienced personnel to make sure none of the tourists did anything fatally stupid.

There were a great many ways to get dead in centuries not your own.

If it was hard to finance a trip back in time, living there was a real pain in the ass. Luckily for the Enforcers, all the activity around the Outpost helped convince the area’s native population that the mountains were haunted. They avoided the area, making life much easier for the agents who would otherwise have had to deal with them.

Which meant the Enforcers could do as they damned well pleased.

The one drawback to the location was that any communication with Temporal Enforcement’s twenty-fourth-century headquarters had to be sent by courier bot. Com messages couldn’t travel through temporal warps. Not that it mattered. You couldn’t change history. As much as Alerio would have liked to travel back to the moment the Xerans attacked and stop them, it just wasn’t possible. His team would have ended up dead, or they’d have jumped to the wrong location, or all their suits would have failed at the same time. Something would have stopped them, just as something had stopped all the other teams who’d tried to prevent crimes before they happened.

Every one of those attempts had failed.

Every single time.

Eventually, temporal physicists had finally worked out the equations that explained why history could not be changed. Alerio even understood the math. He didn’t like it, but he understood it.

So when he’d received the bot with Lolai’s hysterical plea for help that morning, he’d summoned his team and Jumped to the moment after the courier had left. Not before. Never before.

“Ready to record,” the bot said in a smooth, androgynous voice.

Jolted back to the moment, Alerio told his neurocomp to send the report to the courier. The implant obediently transmitted both the report and its assorted attachments: trid recordings of the crime scenes, a few gigs’ worth of data on the blood, sperm, and fiber evidence, his comp’s recording of Ivar making his threats.

“Message received and logged,” the bot said. “Recipient?”

“Colonel Elana Ceres.”

The bot acknowledged his command and vanished with a deafening crack and retina-searing flash. Alerio grunted and sat back to await the colonel’s response. It wouldn’t be long. Ceres could take her sweet time considering all the angles and still program the courier to arrive within five minutes of the time it left. Time travel could be either damned convenient or a huge aching pain in the ass.

While Alerio waited, he started wrestling with the problem of how to protect the scheduled temporal tours with the personnel he had available. Ivar is damned well not going to claim any more victims on my watch.

He’d barely settled down for some serious plotting when the courier made its thunderous reappearance. “I have the colonel’s response,” it announced in its prissy Galactic Capital accent.

“Proceed.” Alerio braced one elbow on his desk and waited to see what beefershit his superior would bury him in. He’d commanded the Outpost for five years now under the direction of three different TE colonels. They’d all been career politicians who viewed Alerio and his agents as stepping-stones to some more significant post.

Elana Ceres was the worst of the lot.

What’s more, she’d just decided to run for the Terran Regional Governor’s office. A victory would make her the leader of five planets, fifteen moons, and a couple of asteroid belts, besides giving her a seat on the Galactic Union Council of Governors.

All of which was a long step up from Temporal Enforcement. Luckily for Ceres, she was a member of a politically well-connected family, backed by all the money that came with that kind of power. She was generally considered the odds-on favorite in the governor’s race.

Unfortunately, the mess Alerio had just dumped in her lap could complicate that easy jog to victory. She won’t like that one bit. He braced himself for an icy chewing-out delivered in Ceres’s silken drawl.

The courier beeped, and projected the colonel’s trid just above his desk surface. As always, there was no expression on the woman’s beautiful face, as if she feared creating creases in her flawless skin. Hair the color of champagne tumbled in shimmering curls around the dark blue shoulders of her Temporal Enforcement dress uniform. Huge eyes stared from a screen of thick, dark lashes, their irises a brilliant shimmering green streaked with amber. Every bone of her delicate face looked as if it had been mathematically plotted for perfection.

Alerio had known combat droids with more personality.

Fortunately for Ceres, she could fake character well enough if a trid camera was aimed her way. But today there was no larger audience than Alerio, so she didn’t bother to fake humanity, much less civility. Not for a mere Vardonese Warlord.

“I have discussed your report with my fellow Temporal Enforcement regional commanders,” Ceres announced. “We’re all of the opinion that informing the public of this . . . terrorist’s threats would do more harm than good.”

Alerio snorted. “Especially when it comes to your gubernatorial campaign.” He wasn’t recording a response—she’d be shocked to receive one—so he could say whatever the hell he wanted. Not that he’d ever hesitated to tell Ceres what he thought, though he usually tried to do it with some pretense of diplomacy.

“Making the public aware of Terje’s attempted blackmail could have a negative impact on temporal tourism,” she continued with the cold objectivity of a combat droid. “Considering the licensing fees involved and current Galactic Union budgeting constraints, we simply can’t afford to start a panic. However, if the situation becomes more fluid . . .”

“In other words, if more people end up dead,” he muttered, grinding his teeth so hard they creaked as if on the verge of cracking.

“We will certainly reevaluate our decision. In the meantime, you’re ordered to do everything possible to apprehend these killers while preventing further collateral damage.”

“‘So don’t let anyone else get dead.’” He clenched his jaw again. It was starting to ache from the pressure. “Believe it or not, I didn’t need that last bit spelled out.”

“Please know we take this situation very seriously, Chief Dyami. However, I have faith in your ability to prevent further losses and apprehend those involved.”

Ceres paused. The corners of her lips lifted slightly. By her standards, it was the equivalent of a sadistic grin. “However, you should be aware that a number of my fellow commanders have raised concerns. Some still think you should be reassigned, especially in light of Terje’s treason.”

Yeah, he’d figured the bastards would want to strip him of his command. He supposed he was lucky they hadn’t fired him already. Fortunately—or not, depending on your point of view—he’d make a highly convenient scapegoat if the public should somehow learn of the scandal.

“I, however, argued that given the . . . volatility on the Xeran home world, it was best to leave you in place.”

So you can toss my bleeding corpse to the media wolves and run like hell if anything goes wrong.

Ceres’s lovely eyes narrowed to blazing green slits. “Don’t make me regret that clemency, Chief Dyami.” Her image vanished, revealing the courier floating serenely on a blue cushion of antigrav energy. “Is there a response?”

“Such as, ‘You’re a gutless political hack, and you’re going to find yourself in a media shit-storm if this gets out?’” Alerio rubbed his aching forehead. He knew from past experience that nothing he could say would move Ceres one millimeter once she’d made up her mind. He looked up at the bot. “No, courier, there is no further message. Return to your charging station.”

As the bot disappeared back into the wall, Alerio stared sightlessly at his desktop. Within the desk’s gleaming dark surface, lists of temporal tour groups rolled like the credits of some ancient movie in glowing greens and blues. Men, women, and children, all targets for Ivar and his vicious ilk.

Alerio’s main priority now was the same as it always had been: the safety of those people. Making sure they all made it home.

According to the Outpost’s main comp, there were a dozen tours scheduled for the next week. Each would require the protection of between three to six agents. Which left him with a serious manpower problem.

To make matters worse, a number of his Enforcers were on leave back home in the twenty-fourth century. He could recall them, of course, but some of those agents really needed the break. Temporal Enforcement tended to extract a heavy toll, particularly on good people who cared about solving cases and protecting the public. Because sometimes you found yourself fighting history’s infinite inertia.

Then you were just fucked.

Which brought him right back to the original problem. How was he supposed to protect all those tourists with the agents he had? Hell with it, Alerio finally decided in disgust. I’m heading to the infirmary. It’s time for Dona to get out of regen.

He wanted to see her, whether it was a wise thing to do or not.

The Outpost occupied the core of Spirit Mountain, a huge high-tech cylinder cut into five levels that were in turn divided into offices, science labs, and sleeping quarters. Then there was the Concourse, a sprawling complex dedicated to serving temporal tourists with hotels, restaurants, bars, and stores selling everything from period clothing to kitschy souvenirs.

Chogan’s infirmary took up the Outpost’s fourth level, its circular central ward surrounded by a ring of medical offices and lab facilities. Normally the ward would be crowded with as many as ten hemispherical sterile fields, each of them sheltering a patient’s bed. At the moment the only patients were Dona and Riane Arvid, both of them still occupying regeneration tubes.

Alerio scanned the med-sensor data that floated, glowing, above the massive cylinders. He saw with relief that both agents were recovering nicely, though neither was conscious yet.

Dammit, he wanted to see Dona. Needed to see her. Professionally, Alerio reminded himself. Just professionally. It couldn’t be anything more than that.

“I wondered when you’d be by.” Dr. Sakari Chogan leaned a hip against a counter by the far wall, sipping one of her habitual cups of stimchai. Soft music played in the gently lit ward, though if it was intended to soothe, it wasn’t doing its job.

At least, not on Alerio. Then again, maybe I’m just wound a little too tight. He gave the doctor a tired smile. “How are your patients, Sakari?”

She grimaced. “Better than the fourteen people whose autopsies I’m currently putting off.” She held up a hand as if to deflect criticism—not that he intended to offer any. “I’ll get to ’em. I just . . . need a little break.”

Alerio gave her a sympathetic smile, knowing the doctor’s work ethic would drive her to start work on the first of them by the time she finished her stimchai. “The crime scene was pretty ugly.” One of the worst he’d ever seen in twenty years as a time cop, in fact.

The bastards had tortured a child.

“Yeah, it was definitely ugly.” Her expression brooding, Chogan took another sip. “I’m just glad we didn’t lose any of the Enforcers. We came damned close, what with the bloody great chunk that priest took out of Riane’s intestines. Thank all seven gods for regen.”

“When are you going to spring her from that tube?”

Chogan shrugged and sipped her stimchai. “Hour or so.”

“What about Astryr?” He glanced at Dona’s tube again and frowned at the floating readout. He didn’t like the looks of that cerebral pressure reading.

“Sorry, I don’t dare release her tonight,” Chogan said, confirming his suspicions. “Neural tissue just doesn’t regenerate as fast as the rest of the body. Her brain needs a little more time to heal from the battering Ivar gave her.” Her voice dropped to a mutter. “The botfucker.”

Alerio curled his upper lip in agreement. “There’s one I’d love to put in a tube. And I’m not talking about a regenerator.”

“And I’d love to watch you put him there.” She gave him a dark smile over the rim of her cup. “You’ll get your chance, Chief. I’ve got confidence in you.”

He snorted. “I’m certainly going to give it my best shot.”

Hearing claws click on the infirmary deck, Alerio looked around just as a pony-sized black wolf trotted into the ward. Beside him strode a tall, dark-haired man. Though handsome, the human’s angular, sculpted features were a bit too broad and starkly cut to be the product of genetic engineering.

And they weren’t; Nick Wyatt had been born in 1977.

“How’s Riane, Dr. Chogan?” he asked, green eyes worried as he dropped one hand to the wolf’s head. “Frieka tells me one of the Xerans tried to gut her.”

“Until I ripped out his throat,” the wolf rumbled, the blue lights of his vocalizer flashing among the thick fur around his throat. Frieka’s toothy wolf muzzle wasn’t structured to produce Galactic Standard, though his powerful neurocomp and genetic engineering made him more than intelligent enough to speak. The vocalizer solved that problem by giving voice to his often snarky thoughts.

“When will I be able to speak to her?” Wyatt demanded. As if reacting to his obvious anxiety, the huge green gem inset in his silver armband flashed with a dull glow.

Chogan moved to give the Guardian’s brawny forearm a pat. “Patience, Nick. Give her another hour in regen and I’ll discharge her.”

“Told you Riane’s going to be fine,” the pretty red-haired woman said, strolling into the ward on the arm of a tall, massively built blond man. She was delicately pretty, particularly compared to her companion.

Like Alerio, Galar was a Warlord, though he was a product of House Arvid, the corporation which had gene-gineered and raised him. Unlike Alerio, Galar had refused to wear the traditional facial tattoo of his House. He’d never really explained why, though Alerio suspected his ugly childhood had something to do with it.

But if his childhood had been unhappy, he was making up for it now. He and Jessica had been married for almost seven months, but they were still surrounded by a happy newlywed glow.

The Master Enforcer was also Alerio’s most trusted officer, a skilled and deadly agent he’d trust with his life. There was no chance whatsoever Alerio would keep Galar in the dark about the danger they were in. Or any of his people, for that matter. “I’m afraid I have some news you’re not going to like,” Alerio told them. “At all.”

Nick straightened. Frieka’s ears flattened, and Galar’s hand went to his hip, as if to draw a weapon he wasn’t wearing. His wife glanced up into his hard face, visibly worried.

In short, stark sentences, Alerio recounted Ivar’s ultimatum and Colonel Ceres’s reaction to it. When he finished, an appalled silence fell.

“Well,” Frieka observed, “that sucks.”

Jessica gave the wolf an amused snort. “Fuzzy, has anyone ever told you that you’ve got a talent for understatement?”

“Just a couple thousand times.” The wolf paused, as if recalculating. “Well, more like 3,452. Give or take.”

“Why not just set a trap for Ivar?” Chogan gestured at Nick’s gemstone. “You could bait it with the T’Lir. That is what that god of his wants, right?”

Nick shook his head. “The T’Lir’s still pretty drained from my last fight with the Victor. If something went wrong, it could end up completely dead. Just like all the Sela souls it shelters.”

“Sela souls?” Chogan lifted a skeptical eyebrow. She picked up a carafe and refilled her cup, then held it up in question.

As Jessica moved gratefully to accept a cup, her husband explained, “The T’Lir shelters the spirits of all the dead from one particular Sela colony . . .”

“In this case, the one Nick serves as guardian,” Frieka added.

“Their souls are the source of the gem’s power,” Wyatt continued. “If I drained it, none of those spirits would be reincarnated in the next generation.”

“And since Nick’s mother is one of them, she’d be among the lost,” Frieka put in. “That would suck.”

“Oh. Yeah, I can see why that’s not a good idea.” Chogan drained the cup in one long gulp and tossed it into the recycling unit that popped out to catch it.

Alerio gave her a slight smile. “It’s not a bad plan. It just has some seriously ugly consequences.”

The group discussed several more ideas over the next hour, only to reject them all. Finally Chogan called a halt to the discussion in order to release Riane from her tube.

The moment the cylinder’s lid opened, Nick bent and scooped the pretty young Enforcer into his arms. Riane moaned something that might have been a greeting before pulling his head down for a kiss. The raw passion in that kiss blazed with such intensity, Alerio had to look away. Absently, he rubbed a palm over his aching chest.

“Pheromones!” Frieka gasped, pretending to stagger. “Choking . . . clouds of lust!” Straightening, he gave the couple a stern look. “Go find yourselves a bunk before you reek up the whole Outpost.”

Nick pulled his mouth away from Riane’s long enough to smile down at the big cyborg beast. “You’re just jealous.”

“And you’re still not married,” Frieka retorted. “Get it together, would you? I want another cub to spoil.”

Riane laughed and reached down to ruffle his thick fur. “We’re working on it, Fuzzy.”

“That’s the Goddess’s own sweet truth.” Frieka rolled his vivid blue eyes. “Sharing quarters with you two is like being trapped in a porn trid.”

Jessica held up both hands. “Okay, that’s it. I don’t need to know any more.”

Alerio headed for the infirmary door. “And on that note, I’ll leave you all alone.”

“Oh, gods, please don’t,” Chogan muttered.

The next morning, Dr. Chogan helped Dona climb out of the tube. The help was appreciated, considering her trembling knees. She glanced around the ward, trying to ignore the usual post-regen spins.

The chief wasn’t there.

The disappointment Dona felt was completely irrational. So was the sudden flash of pique. “Any problem with me going to the gym and sparring with a combat bot? I feel the need for some exercise.”

“You mean you feel the need to beat up a dead ringer for a certain traitor.” Chogan handed her a tablet to sign. Paperwork might not be printed on actual paper anymore, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t as obnoxious as ever. “After all that time in regen, you’re as healthy as you were before Ivar bloodied his knuckles on your face.”

“Good. I really need to hit something.

It took Dona the better part of an hour to work out her frustrations on the combot. It put up a lively enough fight that she was nursing bruises by the time she decided she was ready to cool down.

At least I’ll be able to sleep tonight. Without, if the gods are merciful, dreaming about the chief.

She was halfway through a second set of repetitions with a grav-bar when Alerio stalked through the gym’s double doors in a pair of black snugs and a very bad mood. Spotting her, he gave her a wary look.

Despite his dark, lowered brows, Alerio’s half-naked body made Dona’s own body purr in hungry approval. He looked nothing short of massive with all that genetically engineered muscle on display, rippling beneath tanned skin and a dusting of black body hair. His waist appeared even more ridiculously narrow compared to his powerful shoulders, and his abdominals rolled with every step above the waistband of his thin black snugs.

And his ass was a true thing of beauty.

“I see Chogan let you out of regen,” he said, his voice a delicious velvet rumble.

“Yeah, thank the gods. Those things make me claustrophobic.” She tried to concentrate on raising her grav-bar and controlling her breathing. “Too much like a coffin.”

Alerio’s gaze flicked up and down her body. He could see a lot more of it than usual, since she wore only a narrow breast band and snug shorts, both in vivid blue.

Something hungry stirred in his dark eyes, making her acutely aware she was slick with sweat and probably smelling like a goatbuck. She certainly didn’t feel sexy, not with her aching, exhausted body and the bruise forming on one cheek where she’d missed a block.

“You’ve been sparring.” The erotic hunger in his eyes vanished behind a wall of disapproval. “You sure that’s a good idea, considering the concussion Ivar gave you yesterday?”

Dona shrugged. “Chogan said she had no problem with it.”

“Oh.” He looked away. “As long as you got her approval.”

Was it her imagination or did he look embarrassed, as if he’d expressed inappropriate concern? But Alerio was her commander; of course he was entitled to question her about anything affecting her fitness for duty. Unless it was more than that.

Feeling heat flood her cheeks, Dona pretended to adjust the grav-bar while watching him out of the corner of one eye. Alerio had drawn his shoulder-length hair back in a tight, severe club. It only emphasized the masculine elegance of his Warlord’s angular bone structure and square chin. The gym’s stark lighting shadowed the deep hollows beneath his cheekbones and the wolfish line of his nose. The intricate green and gold lines of his facial tattoo only emphasized those stark good looks.

Dona had once researched Vardonese tats, so she knew the chief’s denoted his rank during his service with the Vardonese military, his combat history, and his status as a product of House Dyami.

And I’m staring. He’s going to notice. Trying to distract herself, she looked down at the grav-bar she held braced, half-forgotten, in both hands. The quarterstaff-length rod was equipped with a grav-field unit that amplified its weight according to the settings the user chose. Dona had set the bar at two hundred kilograms, a weight her cyborg muscles could handle with ease.

If I had any brains at all, she thought, ordering her implant to increase the bar’s setting by another fifty kilos, I’d head for the showers and leave the chief to his workout.

Which she fully intended to do—after she’d watched him bloody “Ivar’s” simulated face.

Dona had missed Alerio’s actual fight with the battleborg, since she’d been unconscious at the time. She was going to enjoy watching the traitor get his ass kicked—even if “Ivar” was only a combot in disguise.

As Alerio entered the combat circle, a door opened in the bulkhead. The combot stepped out, its big body as gray and featureless as a kiosk mannequin’s. Obeying some silent command, a wave of color washed over the android’s translucent surface as its trid imagizer projected the face and form of Ivar Terje across its bland surface.

The pseudo-Ivar was dressed in the same crimson Xeran T-suit the real traitor had worn the day before. Only the helmet was missing, leaving the bot’s head bare, red hair bristling in a novice priest’s cut, silver horn implants jutting from his temples. He was blandly handsome in the way of the genetically engineered, with a narrow, ruler-straight nose and a wide mouth that looked far more sensuous than it actually was. All in all, the bot looked exactly like Ivar, which made the sneer he aimed at Alerio all the more chilling.

“Begin hand-to-hand practice match,” the main Outpost comp intoned from its hidden speakers. “Full contact rules.”

Which essentially meant there were no rules. Combots were designed to let Enforcers go full-out, to practice the moves they’d use in the field against opponents intent on killing them.

The chief didn’t say a word. He simply lunged at the combot, exploding into a whirl of punches, blocks, and kicks that forced the big android to retreat across the combat circle. Its big arms blurred as it tried to block Alerio’s attacks.

After that first flurry of blows, the two spun apart to stalk each other.

Dona absently pumped out another set of repetitions with the grav-bar, barely aware of its weight in her preoccupation with Alerio.

He dropped into a combat crouch, knees flexed, his hands raised loose and open. Muscle rippled up and down his powerful torso, biceps, triceps, and deltoids rolling under his smooth, tanned skin. A pattern of black hair formed a cloud across his broad chest, narrowing into a thin trail that dove into the waistband of his snugs.

Dona ached to touch that tempting trail. Burned to follow it, find out where it led . . .

Idiot. He locked you in a cell just a few months ago, remember? He thought you were a traitor. He believed the frame fucking Alex Coridon constructed. Just because you were dumb enough to fall in love with Ivar.

Or at least, she’d thought she was in love with Ivar. In retrospect, Dona realized she’d only used the traitor to distract herself from her inappropriate infatuation with their commander. Which was why the condemnation in the chief’s black eyes had flayed Dona to the very soul.

So why couldn’t she drag her eyes away from him now?

CHAPTER THREE

Dona tried, but she couldn’t seem to stop watching Alerio battle the combot. She’d rarely seen the Warlord go full-out. He fought with a kind of cold, focused concentration, his intent black gaze missing nothing. Weaving to avoid the combot’s deadly fists, he threw brutally powerful punches with the full strength of his Warlord body behind them. Even the combot had a hard time blocking those merciless punches.

The bot re-created Ivar’s fighting style perfectly, in all its ruthless strength and agility. Alerio must have recorded their battles as a template, because the android precisely duplicated Ivar’s speed, strength, and reach. Right down to the way he dropped his left hand, leaving a weakness in his guard. She’d been too busy fighting the thing off to notice that before.

Dona opened her mouth, but before she could point out the weakness, Alerio went on the attack, hammering the bot with blows that rocked its head on its shoulders. The android snarled one of Ivar’s favorite curses and spun into a kick. The Warlord leaped over its scything leg and, still in midair, kicked the bot in the face.

As the combot staggered and nearly fell, Alerio landed, light as a dancer. Any impression of delicacy vanished as he moved in hard, hammering its face and body with punch after punch. The bot roared and hit him hard, actually knocking him flat on his ass.

Where he promptly kicked the bot’s legs out from under it.

The android hit the ground hard as Alerio surged to his feet and pounced. Right into a kick in the gut hard enough to make Dona wince. The Warlord reeled backward, fighting to suck in a breath.

She froze with the grav-bar half-raised, watching, just as breathless as he was. Idiot. Shaking off her hypnotized fascination, Dona belatedly felt the grav-bar’s weight and started pumping out reps again.

Alerio shook off the blow and surged toward his opponent again as the combot leaped to its feet. It closed with the chief yet again, slamming a brutal punch past his guard into his hawkish nose. Blood spurted.

Dona winced. And caught her breath as rage blazed in the chief’s eyes. Uh-oh.

The bot threw another punch, but Alerio ducked and counter-attacked, ramming his bladed hand into the bot’s throat. A blow like that would have laid a human out with a crushed larynx, but it only made the bot cough and shake its Ivar-like head.

The chief didn’t give it any more time to recover. Snapping into a savage spinning kick, he drove his heel into the bot’s ribs. It reeled backward to slam into the rear bulkhead with a crash, barely catching itself before it fell on its face.

One arm curled protectively around its side, it wheezed as if nursing broken ribs. The bot didn’t actually have ribs to break, of course, but it was programmed to react to blows of sufficient force as if it did. It backed away, watching the chief warily.

Sweat streamed down Alerio’s broad back, but his steps didn’t hesitate as he circled his enemy. His hooded eyes glowed with red sparks that suggested he was deep in riaat, the Warlord berserker state. Otherwise his face was as expressionless as an executioner’s.

Despite herself, Dona felt a deep, familiar heat gathering in her belly as she watched sweat trace gleaming trails down the chief’s sculpted chest and long legs.

Lost gods, I want him.

Too bad Dona knew better. She was damned if she’d get caught in that trap again. Not after what happened with the colonel . . .

“Dyami!” Bellowing the war cry of his House loud enough to make her jump, Alerio lunged at the bot yet again. He bulled right past its defective guard to shoot a pair of vicious punches into its “broken ribs.”

Obeying its programming, the combot went down to one knee.

Alerio fell on the bot like a starving wolf on a stag. One hand clamped around the droid’s throat as he cocked a fist.

Coldly, deliberately, Alerio hit “Ivar” once, twice, then a third time, the blows landing with punishing force. Dona would have winced if the android hadn’t been wearing the traitor’s face. Instead she felt only a dark satisfaction as the chief methodically beat the shit out of “Ivar.” Especially when the bot slumped into faux unconsciousness, simulated blood spilling from its nose and mouth.

Alerio’s mouth twitched into a grim smile distorted by bruises as he rose and backed away from his beaten foe.

“Match complete,” the main computer intoned. “Chief Alerio Dyami is the victor.”

The Ivar projection vanished, and the bot rose slowly to its feet. “I am damaged,” it announced in a voice that had developed a definite wheeze. “I will not be available for further sparring until I have been repaired.” With that, it limped back to its charging bay, presumably to undergo servicing for whatever damage it had suffered.

“You broke the combot.” Dona returned the grav-bar back to its rack and walked over to join Alerio.

“Or it broke me.” With a groan, the big Warlord fell back against the bulkhead, breathing in pumping pants.

Which was no surprise. Practice bots were notoriously tough. But then, they had to be. Most Enforcers were combat-rated cyborgs who did not pull their punches even in practice matches. Alerio certainly hadn’t.

“Don’t be too impressed.” Grimacing, he grabbed a towel from a nearby shelf and wiped his sweating face. When he started rubbing slow circles over his broad, slick chest, Dona’s eyes helplessly tracked the towel with more interest than was good for her.

“I doubt I’ll be able to walk tomorrow,” the chief continued, apparently oblivious to her fascination. “That bot can hit almost as hard as Ivar.” With a wince of pain, he dug long fingers into the thick trapezius muscle that bulged between his neck and left shoulder as if trying to massage a knot that had coiled there. “But then, I did recalibrate its strength to match Ivar’s. I think the Xerans upgraded his tech again.”

“I thought so, too.” They’d done so at least once before, at least if you believed Ivar’s boasts. “When we fought six months ago, Ivar was a hell of a lot stronger than he’d ever been before. And he’s even more powerful now.” Frowning, she absently rubbed her face, where Ivar’s big fist had left so many bruises. “He certainly kicked my ass.”

“What do you expect? He’s half a meter taller than you are—and fifty kilos heavier,” Alerio told her bluntly. “Add in the genetically engineered bones and the triple-thick nanofiber reinforced muscles, and you’ve got a battleborg monster. That’s not even counting whatever the hell the Xerans did to upgrade his tech.”

She shuddered. “I noticed.”

“You’d better. Just look at what he did to Lolai Hardin . . .”

“Okay, okay, I get it. He’s a psychopath.” Dona folded her arms and avoided his sharp gaze. “I don’t know whether he’s always been twisted, or if the Xerans did something to him . . .”

“Either way, he’s a vicious son of a whore. You’d do well to keep the hell away from him.” The chief pulled a thick cloth towel from a wall dispenser and scrubbed it over his sweating face and torso before shooting it into a recycler. “Don’t worry—I’ll bring the fucker to justice. He’s going to pay for every last crime he ever committed.” His dark eyes seemed to add, Especially against you. “If you’re ever in the position of having to fight that bastard, run,” he continued. “Consider that a direct order. You can probably outrun him, but you can’t outfight him. Don’t even try.”

Stung out of her hypnotized fascination with his feral masculinity, Dona straightened. “I’m not exactly a wimp, Chief. I’m combat rated. Hell, I went in for a level six upgrade just last year. I could wipe up the floor with ten humans Ivar’s size.”

Alerio shook his head. “Impressive as that is, it doesn’t mean shit when it comes to Ivar.”

She gave him a tight smile. “Never underestimate the power of pissed.”

The chief sighed. “Dona, you’re one of my best agents. You’re smart, strong, and hell on wheels in a fight.” His gaze met hers with rough honesty. “But Ivar is. Not. Human. If he ever manages to get you alone, run like hell. I don’t want you ending up like Lolai Hardin, and you came too damned close.”

“Hardin’s life was at stake.” Dona raised her chin and met his intent stare with her own. “I couldn’t leave her, not as long as she was still alive.”

Alerio folded his massive arms and rocked back on his heels. And loomed. “Which would have done her no good at all if Ivar had killed you.”

Remembering the wounds that spoke of the torture, Dona looked away. “You’re assuming I deserve any better.”

“Oh, for the sweet sake of the Goddess . . . !”

“You can’t deny if I’d been more suspicious of Ivar’s crap, less willing to believe whatever shit he fed me, maybe I would have realized he was a traitor before his fist hit my face. Maybe I could have prevented what happened to Jess, or Corydon’s virus attack, or . . .”

“Stop,” Alerio snapped. “Just cut it out, Dona. I’m tired of watching you torment yourself.” One long pace brought him so close she could feel the heat radiating from his body. He stared down at her with eyes that burned in the shadows of his thick brows. “You are not responsible for Ivar’s crimes.”

All she had to do was reach out and touch that bare, sweating chest. She could feel the heat, the vital male power, radiating across the inches between them. So seductive . . .

“You aren’t the commander of this station, Astryr,” he continued, apparently oblivious to her hungry gaze. “It’s not your job to protect your people from greedy, treasonous assholes. That was my ball to drop.”

“I’m still Temporal Enforcement. And it is my job to know when I’m being lied to.” She curled her hands into fists so tight, her nails dug into her palms hard enough to draw blood. Trying to hold onto some vestige of control. “But when it came to Ivar, I completely missed all the signs.”

“So? All that proves is that you’re human,” he growled roughly.

“And so are you.” Dona gazed up into his roughly handsome, angular face, the genuinely sensual mouth, the deep hollows and fierce eyes that burned even in the well-lit room. A Warlord’s eyes shone red like that in riaat—or moments of passion.

Rage or desire? Dona thought. Which made those black eyes burn?

She opened a stinging hand and reached out, scarcely aware of what she did. The tips of her fingers brushed the hot skin of his chest, still heaving from his fight with the combot.

A bead of sweat rolled slowly down his right pectoral, sliding around the taught, brown peak of one male nipple.

Dona had never felt as starkly aware of a man as a being of raw sex, raw aggression. Raw need. She could feel his heart pounding under her fingers as the crimson sparks brightened, as if the emotion he felt was intensifying. Growing as hot as his eyes.

They stared at one another, unspeaking. Suspended in a moment of mutual awareness. Her lips parted, and her heartbeat began to pound in her ears. Each lush minute crept by on velvet paws, stropping over her skin like a cat.

“Dona,” Alerio said, voice hoarse, eyes hot. “Aren’t you tired of regret?” He lowered his head until his breath puffed warm against her lips. Almost a kiss. Almost. The sensation teased and maddened her. “Don’t you want to feel something more than guilt?”

Hypnotized, she stared into the scarlet sparks deep in those night-dark eyes. “Yes. Gods, yes.”

He groaned. His mouth touched hers. Just a soft brush of lip on lip at first, not demanding. Requesting. “Are you sure?” he breathed.

“Help me feel something else,” she murmured back. “Anything else. I’m so sick of regret. And guilt tastes like coals and ash.”

He made a low, fierce sound, dragging her against his chest with powerful arms and hands that trembled. Parting her lips with a sound as much moan as sigh, Dona let him in. His tongue slipped deep in a slow, erotic stroke. The heat of that delicate probe raced right to the base of her belly.

And set her aflame.

Heat raced through her, a blaze of red need stronger than anything she’d ever felt for any other man. Even—especially—Ivar. So she whispered the stark truth she’d always fought to hide against those velvet lips. “I want you. I shouldn’t. Gods, I know I shouldn’t. It’s not smart.”

“No, it’s not smart at all,” he agreed in a rough whisper. “And I don’t give a pile of Soji shit.”

“Neither do I.” Dona leaned in, letting him gather her in until his big, hard body pressed the length of hers.

He rumbled a purr against her mouth and deepened the kiss even more. She opened recklessly, letting herself float in the pure, creamy pleasure of his warm lips, his exploring tongue. His cock pressed against her stomach, a thick, hot ridge that tempted her to roll her hips against it. A thought flashed through her mind: I won’t have the guts to do this again. I’ve got to make the most of it.

Hooking a long leg over his hip, Dona ground into him with shameless hips. Sliding her hands down his chest, she savored the rolling muscle and smooth, warm skin against her palms. “The door,” Dona murmured, “hadn’t we better do something about the door?”

Alerio drew a bare inch from her mouth and rumbled, “Outpost main computer, Chief Alerio Dyami.”

“Your orders, Chief Dyami?” the computer asked in its androgynous purr.

“Lock door of gymnasium three. Mark as fully occupied.” His mouth covered hers again, then lifted. “And dim the lighting to thirty percent.”

“Yes, Chief Dyami.”

The door chimed a signal as its lock clicked home. Alerio kissed her slowly, hungrily, as the room’s stark illumination dimmed to the creamy gold of candlelight. Finally he drew back, a question in his gaze. One hand slid the length of her torso. She covered it with her own and guided it to the closure of her top. His fingers found the slight indentation that marked the seal and slid along its length. The top’s seal obediently parted, baring the skin from waist to high collar to the pink buds of her nipples. He pulled the top from her shoulders and tossed it aside.

Dona grabbed the waistband of her shorts and dragged them down the length of her legs until she could kick them away. Straightening, she stood shamelessly naked. Her bare breasts gleamed softly in the dim light, the smooth muscle of her torso sweeping down to the triangle of soft hair between her legs. Her nipples puckered into tight points, both from the gym’s cool air and the hot arousal storming through her blood.

Dona’s breath caught as he froze, his eyes locked on those pink tips.

Then he sank to his knees.

Goddess, she’s beautiful, Alerio thought. Her breasts were as perfect as her flawless face, sweet curves that called to his hands. He wanted to feel their smooth skin, their warm round weight.

Alerio drew in a breath as his fingers closed gently over taut, candy-pink peaks. He looked up to find violet eyes watching him, hooded with heat above flushed, parted lips. Stroking her nipples, Alerio watched as those lovely, luminous eyes slowly closed. White teeth sank into her lower lip as he stroked, tugged, and pinched. Dona shivered, her expression dreamy, lost in sensation.

Leaning in, Alerio closed his mouth over a jutting tip. She caught her breath, a sound almost as erotic as the taste of her tight flesh. He increased the pull of his suckling into a hard draw that made her gasp, eyes widening in obvious delight.

She feels so damned good in my arms. Soft here, firm there, as lush with sensation as a rose in bloom.

Sliding a hand down her hip, he discovered the soft hair of her sex. Carefully, he slipped a finger between her lips to find her so incredibly slick, so swollen tight, his cock jerked in lust.

Dona’s arms curved around his head, fingers tunneling through his hair, gently directing his mouth down to her neglected right breast. As he drew on her in deep, hard pulls, she braced her legs apart. Her soft sigh sent a shudder of lust down his spine.

Straight to his cock. The long shaft jerked against the seam of his snugs as if demanding its freedom. With a growl, Alerio began nibbling his way lower, down the smooth, toned length of her torso, pausing to explore the firm muscle of her abdomen before continuing to the sable hair curling over her sex. He paused, studying the delicious sight of her vaginal lips pouting between strong thighs.

And slid his tongue between plump lips, groaning at the taste of slick, tight flesh. She moaned encouragement, the breathless sound of pleasure rushing right to his straining cock.

Alerio reached for it, stroking a hand over the seam of his snugs. Dona’s brilliant violet eyes widened as his shaft tumbled free, its heavy length provoking her into a feline purr of pleasure and anticipation.

Dona stared down at Alerio’s cock, entranced. She’d fantasized about how he’d look naked for two furtive, guilty years. Granted, his T-suit armor hugged every powerful centimeter of that big body, but it also protected—and concealed—his genitals.

Yet now he knelt before her, gorgeously naked and lushly erect.

And so damned beautiful. Sometime during their play, she’d pulled his hair free of its club to tumble in wild strands around his wide shoulders, leading her gaze down his powerful chest and tight abdomen to the beefy length of his cock.

It was delightfully long, flushed dark and rosy with blood until it jutted like a lance above the soft, furred sac of heavy balls.

Dona dropped to her knees and reached for that impossibly tempting cock. Wrapping her fingers around the smooth, thick shaft, she stroked it from balls to tip, entranced by its elegant erotic promise.

Glancing up, she found his eyes now blazed like a pair of torches, not one fleck of black to be seen. Entranced, she stared until one corner of his lip curled up. Catching her shoulders, he turned her, still kneeling, to face a waist-high gravity bench. Knowing what he wanted, she rose to drape herself over it, spreading her legs wide and bracing her feet apart.

Ready for whatever he cared to do.

As Alerio’s fingers parted her vaginal lips, the wall in front of her shimmered, its surface shifting from matte to mirror. Probably at some silent order from Alerio’s neurocomp. Dizzy, her lips dry, Dona stared into her own eyes as lust rolled through her blood in waves hot enough to singe.

Then he licked her.

One long, wet stroke that wiped every thought from her brain. Dona shuddered at the feral delight. In the mirror, her reflection’s eyes widened, as he began to lick her like a melting icecone, slowly, as if savoring the taste.

Gods and goddesses, the pleasure felt thick, creamy, as his hands cupped her ass, his tongue alternating long licks and short, hot flicks. Bent as she was, Dona couldn’t see what he was doing, but she could see her own expression as delight curled her hands into claws on the padded bench. Pleasure jolted her again and again in sizzling electric pulses that soon had the muscles of her thighs twitching.

The orgasm hit her like a wave of heated honey. Her legs lost all strength, and she damn near tumbled right off the bench with a yowl of delight. Shameless as a cat.

When Dona finally opened her eyes again, Alerio had risen to his feet behind her. His burning eyes met hers in the mirror, drinking in the dazed pleasure in her eyes. He stepped against her, his gaze dropping to her ass as he caught his cock in one hand. The smooth mushroom crown brushed her vaginal lips as he leaned in. Dona inhaled sharply. His entry—feeling so thick, so hot, so damned good—made her entire nervous system thrum like a plucked harp string.

Despite the torchlight lust in his eyes, Alerio took it slow. Slow, patient, spacing his thrusts far enough apart to give her heat time to grow. Hotter, higher, until she swore she could feel it leaping in her own eyes.

Alerio drove deep in a long thick thrust that tore a strangled scream from her lips as she shook in the grip of blazing sensation. He watched her reaction with absorbed eyes, his irises solid sheets of flame. His satyr’s lips curled into a smile that was half snarl, and he began to thrust with lazily rolling hips. Deeper, faster, until he lanced that big cock in and out and in and out, circling his hips to screw her in luscious digs.

Dona screamed, helpless and overwhelmed in the grip of an orgasm that flashed through her like a firestorm.

Alerio leaned closer, one hand sliding between their grinding hips until he could strum his thumb over her clit. Gasping, she arched her spine, pushing back onto his probing cock. His free hand glided up her torso, found one breast, and pinched its tight, flushed nipple.

A third orgasm spilled over her. Dona screamed, so lost in delight, she was barely aware of Alerio shoving to the balls, roaring in animal delight as he came, pulsing heat spurting into her depths.

Floating in a kind of sweet, dreamy contentment, Dona savored the sensation of Alerio’s strong arms wrapped around her, his body warm and sweat-damp against her back.

She’d had fantasies like this, secret midnight dreams with one hand busy between her thighs. Yet she’d never thought she’d actually make love to Alerio Dyami, Warlord and Chief Enforcer of the North American Outpost. She’d never expected to feel his hands gripping her ass as he suckled each nipple in turn and his cock drove into her slick core, fucking her with impossibly deep, greedy strokes.

I never thought I’d be this stupid, a mental voice whispered, acrid as bitterfruit. To make such a mistake once, that’s understandable. Twice, even. But three times? After Ivar? Hell, after the colonel?

Shut up. Dammit, not now. She didn’t need that vicious inner voice ruining this moment. All she wanted was to savor this sweet, fragile peace before something snatched it away.

Something always did.

Unfortunately, her inner bitch had no intentions of leaving her in peace. He put you in the brig, Dona. Locked you away. Didn’t even listen when you tried to explain. He believed you were the kind of woman willing to spit on her honor and her friends for tainted Xeran galactors.

Dammit, shut up.

He betrayed you, just like the other two.

He’s not the colonel. And he’s sure as hell not Ivar.

He’s wanted a taste of your hot little ass since you arrived on this station. Now he’s had it. And you know what that means.

He’s a Warlord. They’re not like . . .

He won’t love you. The whisper was damn near a shout now, pounding away at her like Ivar’s fists. Why would he? They never do. Take what you’ve got and get out with what’s left of your pride before it gets sticky.

Shut up.

You’ve got a good thing here. Better than you deserve. Don’t fuck it up the way you did on Arania.

Suddenly Alerio’s weight seemed crushing, as if someone had turned up the Outpost’s gravity. Dona fought the growing claustrophobia, but it grew worse by the second.

“Dona, what’s wrong?” Concern colored Alerio’s voice as his arms suddenly tightened, drawing her tighter—and intensifying the sensation of being slowly smothered.

He’s already feeling sorry for you. He’s going to start noticing the cracks in what passes for your soul. Get the fuck out while you can.

“I can’t breathe,” she wheezed. “Get off. Please, just get off!”

“Yes, of course.” Alerio rolled off her before her voice could quite spiral into a scream. His concerned gaze searched her face as he helped her to her feet. The crimson had vanished from his irises, leaving them a deep, velvety brown verging on black. “Are you all right?”

Means nothing, the voice whispered as she fought the panic attack. Her heartbeat filled her ears, and she gasped helplessly. Yet somehow she could still hear that fucking whisper. Ivar could fake it, too.

“Dona, what’s wrong?” She could almost feel the sweep of his sensors, registering her galloping heartbeat, her labored breathing, the sick nausea churning her stomach.

Don’t let me toss, she ordered her computer.

Anti-nausea procedures activated.

Spotting her top on the floor, she pounced on it and started shrugging it over her head as if it were combot armor and she were under fire. Once she was a little less naked, her panic began to ease.

Before she could start the search for her shorts, Alerio held them out to her. “Look, what’s going on? Did I . . . ?”

“You didn’t do anything.” Yet. “I just need to go.” She considered adding a lie, but knew his Warlord sensors would spot it like a signal flare. “I . . . just don’t feel well.”

His frown deepened. Her sensors detected his worry intensifying as his confusion deepened. With it came anger—and more than a little hurt. Hurt? Why would he feel hurt?

They like to be the one to end it when they want it ended, the frigid whisper reminded her. They don’t like it when you take control.

She started for the door, wanting only to get away from him before she humiliated herself any further.

“Dona, wait . . .” Alerio sealed his own snugs, stepped into one low gymboot, and glanced around for the other. “I think I should walk you back to your quarters.”

“Dammit, stop scanning me!” Dona snapped, the words bursting from her twisted lips like a shard pistol’s fléchettes. “Give me a little fucking privacy, would you?”

He rocked back on his heels, his brows shooting for his hairline. There it was again—hurt flashing across his face.

Ah, seven hells. To make matters worse, she sounded like a bitch. And a crazy bitch at that. Just the impression she wanted to give her CO.

That’s what he is, she reminded herself. My CO. That’s all.

Alerio stiffened. “It’s my job to be concerned for those under my command,” he pointed out in a cool, level voice. Obviously fighting to control his temper. “And that includes you.”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry, I just . . .” Throwing up her hands, Dona spun toward the door, ignoring his growled Vardonese curse. “Look, I’ve got to go . . .” She told her comp to order the door open.

It didn’t budge, sending a quick spurt of panic into her bloodstream.

“Let Enforcer Astryr out,” Alerio growled, and the door slid open with a sigh.

Oh, right, the chief had ordered it locked. Naturally it wouldn’t respond to her counter-command.

Not when you’re nothing more than a mere Enforcer. Unimportant to the Outpost—and to Alerio Dyami.

Dona fled from the gym, driven by the stinging, acid whispers that somehow managed to drown out the delicious memory of Alerio’s passion.

Almost.

Frustrated, confused, Alerio watched her escape through the gym doors as if something with a lot of teeth was chasing her. What the flaming hells? He’d thought he was finally making progress . . .

Hell, he had been making progress. According to his sensors, she’d been enjoying the same post-coital bliss he’d felt. At least, until a wave of self-loathing had triggered some sort of panic attack, though Alerio had no idea what had brought either of them on.

Oh, fuck. Ivar. Of course.

This was probably the first time she’d made love to anyone since the romance with the traitor ended six months ago—when Ivar had beaten her half to death.

Instinct demanded he go after her, somehow pull her out of the emotional death spiral she’d obviously been caught in. And if he’d been nothing more than a Vardonese Warlord, Alerio would have obeyed that impulse.

Unfortunately, he was also her commanding officer.

Temporal Enforcement didn’t forbid sexual liaisons between a superior and a subordinate—as a rule. However, the agency took a very dim view of sexual coercion. The regs were clear: a superior could not pursue a subordinate who had walked away.

Alerio’s own sense of ethics agreed. He didn’t want Dona to feel he was pushing her into a relationship she didn’t want. Especially since he wanted everything she was willing to give him. Her heart. Her soul . . .

He needed to think this through.

Twenty minutes later, Alerio had showered and dressed in his dark blue duty uniform. The heels of his low boots clicked sharply on the deck as he stalked back to his quarters, his mood spectacularly foul.

“Hey, Chief!” A familiar gruff rumble made him break step and look around just as Frieka trotted up. The wolf gapped his jaws in his signature fang-filled grin. “Up for a drink?”

Alerio hesitated a beat before surrendering. “Why not?” Frieka made a good sounding board, wise old beast that he was. And I need all the help with Dona I can get.

CHAPTER FOUR

Knowing his audience, Alerio gave the wolf a grin. “I’ve got one last bottle of Vardonese ale stashed in my quarters.”

Frieka’s blue eyes lit until they damn near glowed. “Gods, I haven’t had Vardonese ale since the last time the kid took leave.”

“Where is Riane, anyway?” Alerio asked as they turned down the corridor and headed for his quarters. “You two are usually attached at the hip.”

The wolf snorted in lupine disgust. “Where she always is every minute we’re not on duty. In our quarters, mating with Wyatt.”

Alerio almost choked on his tongue. “Ah.”

“I can’t sleep for all the yowling,” the cyborg beast continued gloomily. “I need my own place, Chief. They’re driving me buggier than a flea festival.”

Somehow Alerio managed not to laugh. “I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”

The doors to his quarters slid open at their approach, and he paused to let the wolf enter first. “I think there’s a couple of vacant rooms near the main lift. Make a formal request and I’ll sign off on it.”

The wolf sighed in relief as he trotted inside. “You may have just saved my sanity.”

“Such as it is.”

“Ha. Ha.” Frieka watched with obvious impatience—and more than a hint of greed—as Alerio walked over to one of the gleaming black cabinets that lined his quarters. He reached into one and extracted a glass and a shallow bowl, then turned to gesture the wolf toward the leather love seat. Alerio collapsed into the grip of the matching well-upholstered couch. Both faced the room’s single window; Alerio never tired of those glorious Outpost views. Today the Blue Ridge Mountains rolled in mist-shrouded violet waves to a brilliant blue horizon, the sun riding above it in cloudless splendor.

Leaning forward to brace his elbows on his knees, the chief sent a mental order to the long, low cocktail table that sat in front of the couches. A drawer slid open in the smooth, black lacquer surface, revealing a single bottle. As he lifted it out, sunlight danced over the expensive cut glass and shimmered in the golden depths of its contents.

“Ohhhh,” Frieka breathed in admiration, catching sight of the bottle’s label. “You buy the good stuff.”

“No point in settling for less.” As Alerio poured each of them a generous portion of the potent liquor, the wolf jumped up on the love seat. The short couch creaked and writhed as it sought to accommodate his lupine haunches. Finally arriving at a comfortable grip, the seat quieted.

Alerio slid the bowl down the length of the table. Frieka stuck out a paw to catch it, then leaned down to lap noisily.

Smiling at his guest’s enthusiasm, the chief took a warily careful sip from his own glass. Even a Warlord had to treat Vardonese ale with respect.

The liquor tasted sweet and fruity for about a tenth of a second before it detonated like ancient napalm and seared its way down his throat. Tense muscles promptly began to relax in the ale’s heat. Alerio sank into the couch’s grip and sighed in appreciation.

“So.” Frieka glanced up from his bowl. “You and Dona finally mated. Took you long enough.”

Alerio, in the midst of a second sip, damn near spewed ale across the table. “By the Goddess’s sweet tits, Frieka! Did anybody ever teach you tact?”

“They tried.” The wolf flicked a disdainful ear. “Didn’t take.”

“You might have tried.”

“Why? So I could tell pretty lies like you humans? You’d be better off hearing the truth.” Frieka grunted in ripe disgust. “Humans. You’d rather pretend you don’t smell the Soji shit instead of grabbing a shovel and taking care of the problem. Annoys the hell out of me.”

Alerio considered the point before risking another sip. “Okay, you may be right.”

“Of course I’m right.” With a regal sniff, the cyborg returned his attention to his bowl.

“How did you know? About Dona and me.”

Frieka rolled blue eyes up at him. “Same way I know the kid is banging Wyatt like a kettledrum. There’s this smell . . .”

Alerio threw up a warding hand. “Enough. I don’t want to know any more.”

“So don’t ask, Warlord.”

“Oh, I won’t. Ever again. And if I ever forget, I’m sure the psychic scars will remind me.”

Silence fell, broken only by the sound of Frieka’s enthusiastic tongue sucking up ale. Until there was enough of the liquor in Alerio’s bloodstream to let him voice a few uncomfortable truths. “I’ve wanted Dona for the past two years. Damned if I know why. Yeah, she is lovely . . .”

“Genetically engineered,” Frieka pointed out. “Those girls don’t come in ‘ugly.’”

“Well, no.” Alerio swallowed another mouthful of fire and meditated on its potent blaze. “But it’s not her looks. There’s something about Dona that . . . Well, it fits me. And the longer I know her, the more convinced I am that’s true.” Cradling the glass between his palms, he began to roll it back and forth, staring down into the shining amber liquid. “My sensors tell me she feels the same attraction . . .”

The wolf snorted. “No shit. Chief, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s this pheromone fog bank that surrounds you two whenever you’re together.”

Ignoring the wolf’s habitual sarcasm, Alerio continued, “But the thing is, she’s never said anything about how she feels . . .”

“Like, oh, ‘Fuck me hard, big boy’?”

Alerio snorted in lieu of a laugh. “Smart-ass.”

“See, this is exactly what I was talking about.” Frieka tilted his muzzle to the left. “Here we have a big pile of Soji shit.” He turned his head right. “Here we have a shovel. The problem’s so simple, a cat could solve it. First you kick Ivar’s cyborg ass, then you tell the girl how you feel. Voila: your basic happily ever after. All you need now is a fairy godmother and a magic glass dildo.”

Alerio’s swallow of ale slid down his windpipe. Once he stopped coughing, he wheezed, “Glass slipper, not glass dildo.”

“You’ve got your version, I’ve got mine.”

The chief swallowed and blinked the tears out of his eyes. “And I definitely do not want to know your version.”

“Pussy.”

“Seriously, about Dona . . .”

“I thought we were being serious.”

“I’m her superior officer. If I make a move before she does, it’s an abuse of my rank.”

“And she’s your subordinate,” Frieka retorted, the humor disappearing from his eyes. “What, you want her to suggest an affair to somebody who outranks her by as much as you do? What if you said no? Never mind that we both know you wouldn’t—Dona doesn’t know that. But she does know that if your romance goes sideways, she’s just blown her career out the air lock.”

The chief stared down at him, struck by the insight. “You know, you understand the finer points of human relationships a hell of a lot better than you pretend to.”

“I hate to break this to you, but it’s not exactly astronavigation.” Frieka dipped his head for a few more laps, his vocalizer flashing as he drank. “You people like to think you’re soooo complicated, but take away the tech, and you’re just bare-assed apes.”

“It truly pains me to say this, but you’ve got a point.”

“A whole mouthful of them. See?” Frieka raised his muzzle to display the teeth in question. “The difference between us is that I know I’m an animal. Your problem is those opposable thumbs give you delusions of grandeur. Speaking of which, use ’em on that bottle, would you? My bowl is distressingly dry.”

“That’s all I need—a hundred kilos of drunken timber wolf.” But Alerio refilled Frieka’s bowl anyway before topping off his own glass. Settling back into the couch’s heated grip, he took a deep swallow, barely feeling the burn anymore. Which is probably a bad sign. “Then there’s Ivar. Tits of the Goddess, I’d like to take a blade to that bastard. Or my fists. Or hell, my boot.” He gestured with his glass, ignoring the ale that sloshed over the rim. “Right up his ass.”

“Yeah, I’ve been waiting for you to tube that botfucker. Baran would have slit Ivar’s throat years ago for some of the shit he’s pulled on Dona.” Riane’s father, Baran Arvid, had been Frieka’s first partner. The Warlord was something of a legend in Temporal Enforcement; he’d been the first to figure out you couldn’t change history.

Alerio nodded boozily. “I knew there was a reason I liked Baran.”

“Well, he’s a likable guy when he’s not gutting people that piss him off.” The wolf added earnestly, “Mostly just the assholes. It’s a public service, really.”

“I’ve always thought so.” Alerio picked up the ale bottle before reluctantly setting it aside again. “I have wondered if my jealousy made Ivar seem worse than he was.”

“Nope, he was pretty damn fucking bad,” Frieka opined. “And then he got worse. I do not understand why Dona didn’t slam his ’borg ass right through the nearest bulkhead. It was almost as if she believed whatever Ivar told her.”

Alerio nodded, ignoring the way the room spun. “I had the same impression.”

“He’d say the most vicious shit in this really concerned voice, like honey poured over rotten meat.” Frieka growled softly, ears flattening. “I was tempted to bite the fucker, oh, half a dozen times, but Riane said you’d throw me in the brig for attacking another agent.”

“She was probably right. Though I’d have secretly cheered while you chewed.” A new question occurred to him. “Frieka?”

“Yeah?”

“Why would the Xerans allow a human traitor to wear the horns of a priest? Especially considering how seriously they take that lunatic religion of theirs.”

“Do I look like the source of all fuzzy wisdom?”

“I’m serious.”

“And drunk.”

“True, but beside the point. Look, when Terje first defected, I assumed they’d pay him a pittance and send him off into one of their flesh slums to drug himself to death. Instead they’ve got him leading missions. How the hell did that happen?”

“A complete lack of common sense and simple primate decency?”

“We’re talking Xerans, so yeah, that’s a given.” Alerio frowned as his instincts clamored at him through the ale haze. “But something tells me we’d better figure out just what the hell Ivar Terje has on the Victor.”

You idiot bastard, Ivar thought viciously. You and your stupid ideas. “I’m bored—I’ll become a Xeran spy.” And look where I ended up: the puppet of a psychopath with delusions of godhood.

He floated in a mental fog that numbed his every sensation and left him as helpless as an infant. If he concentrated, Ivar could see out of his hijacked eyes, hear what the Victor heard, detect the thoughts running through his own stolen brain.

But he couldn’t do a damn thing about any of it.

The Victor had seized Ivar’s cyborg body in the aftermath of his battle with Nick Wyatt. Six months later, he still showed no sign of releasing control. The fucker was convinced his own priests were plotting against him.

And though the Victor was unquestionably paranoid and borderline batshit, he was also absolutely right. His priests had turned against him. The rebels meant to destroy him and seize control of the Xeran theocracy.

It was all Nick Wyatt’s fault. He was the one who had exposed the Victor’s lethal weakness and blown him into ooze. Though the half-breed hadn’t quite succeeded in finishing the Victor off, Wyatt had destroyed Ivar, who was, for once, nothing more than an innocent bystander.

Bastard, Ivar thought, not even sure if the thought was his own or the Victor’s. I’m going to kill that half-breed abomination if it’s the last thing I do.

Actually, that particular thought sounded more like the Victor’s than his own. It was sometimes hard to tell his mind from that of his hijacker/rapist.

Another thing he could thank Wyatt for.

A memory emerged from the mental fog: Wyatt, half-breed guardian of the alien Sela, his human body wrapped in the glowing energy form of one of their ancient warriors. The creature had looked something like one of the Earth’s extinct tigers—if the tiger in question was the size of a grizzly, with six powerful legs tipped in claws like daggers.

Wyatt had used that deadly Sela construct to rip into the Victor like a grizzly with a honeycomb. Despite the Xeran god’s nine-foot golden body and massive two-handed sword, Wyatt had beaten him right into the ground. Then he’d blasted the Victor into a black, oily rain. Too bad it hadn’t stuck.

Turns out the Victor’s original cyborg body had been dead for more than a century. All that remained were the microscopic nanobots that had once enhanced his strength and intelligence.

His priests had frantically raced around, trying to collect the Victor’s scattered nanobots. Some of the ooze had crept up armored legs, silently pleading for rescue and protection. Gods, the memory of those frantic moments scalded his pride. Wyatt needed to die for that humiliation alone.

Even as they struggled to collect the Victor’s components, his priests had been horrified to realize the truth about their golden god: he was nothing more than a bot colony that hadn’t been human in a century.

True, the nanobots retained the memories of the original cyborg warrior who’d once declared himself the god of the Xer. Yet the colony itself was neither god nor man. In fact, it had no real idea what it was.

By sheer bad luck, a particularly large glob of the nanobot ooze had found Ivar and promptly crawled up his boot, slimy and determined. It was like being attacked by an enormous hunk of sentient snot.

He’d been revolted, of course. After all, Ivar was no priest. Besides, the thing reminded him entirely too much of a nilik.

Back on his home world, that particular predator had the habit of disguising itself as a puddle across some well-trafficked forest path. Whenever an unsuspecting victim fell into the nilik, he’d be horrified to discover the “puddle” was actually five meters deep—and it had started digesting him alive. It usually took the poor fucker an hour to stop screaming. A day later, there’d be nothing left but bones.

Which was exactly what happened to Ivar.

The Victor’s bots had quickly seeped through his skin and into his bloodstream, then climbed his brain stem until they’d found the nanobot filaments which led to his neurocomp. Since the Xerans had already installed a series of nanotech upgrades to his various systems, the comp had no way to keep them out. And once the bots controlled the neurocomp, they controlled Ivar. Within hours, he found himself nothing more than a puppet.

No. A slave.

Wearing Ivar like a cheap suit, the Victor had ordered his priests to surrender whatever bits of ooze they’d collected. He’d then absorbed it all, regaining his power and memories with every drop he reclaimed.

Using Ivar’s body and brain as templates, the colony could rebuild the Victor with greater solidity than he’d had in decades; he’d been growing more and more unstable since the death of his human host.

But just when the Victor thought he had everything under control, a group of renegade priests refused to surrender the nanobots they’d collected. The rebels coolly informed their incredulous leader that they were tired of licking the boots of some bot with delusions of godhood. And who could blame them?

Well, the Victor, for one.

The god had used Ivar’s stolen body to lead his loyal priests in battle against the rebels. The resulting religious war had claimed thousands of lives and left the Xeran home world in blasted ruins, all in the space of six months. Only the Victor’s iron control over the planet’s media had kept the Galactic Union from finding out what was going on.

In the end, the god colony managed to recover the last of its missing nanobots. It then ordered the execution of the captured rebel priests. Once they were all safely dead, the colony warily left the shelter of Ivar’s hijacked body and reformed into the familiar towering persona of the Victor.

Even so, the nanobots refused to release their grip on Ivar, maintaining tight control of their battleborg slave. Just in case.

Though Ivar hated the Victor’s guts with a spitting hysterical fury, he knew he’d have done the same thing. No matter how the surviving priests sought to demonstrate their extravagant submission—wrapping their genitals in spiked silver wire was one popular gesture—the Victor knew the truth.

The seeds of rebellion still lurked in his priests’ traitorous hearts.

He needed to make some really spectacular gesture that would scare the fuck out of everybody. Something even bigger than the bonfire of burning priests he’d lit in the capital square.

Something like, say, executing Nick Wyatt and exterminating every last one of the alien Sela like the abominations they were. Gods, how the little creatures revolted him. There was something intensely disturbing about their huge, glistening eyes, six furry limbs, and pacifistic ways.

Creepy fucks.

Then he’d kill every Temporal Enforcer who’d ever stymied his plans, beginning with Galar Arvid and his Sela-infected abomination of a wife. Next he’d do Riane and her flea-bitten, unnatural wolf. Of course, by then the little bitch would probably find her execution a relief, what with Wyatt so spectacularly dead.

He’d save Alerio Dyami and his whore, Dona, for the bloody climax, when they’d suffer his most viciously inspired butchery. Something medieval perhaps. Like the executions ancient human kings once used to send a message to their rebellious subjects.

Perhaps drawing and quartering. Ivar had seen a human killed like that during a mission once; he’d been fascinated by the shrieking agony of the victim, not to mention the truly impressive blood splatter.

So he’d start by disemboweling Alerio the same way. Slowly, while Dona watched. He’d do it in the Crystal Arena with the capital’s entire population in the stands and Xer’s trid services broadcasting the whole thing to the rest of the planet.

After he’d personally gutted the Warlord, he’d cable Dyami’s arms and legs to a quartet of combat skimmers, which he’d send jetting in four different directions. The chief would be ripped into four bloody chunks while his whore shrieked and the people cheered.

As for Dona, Ivar would order her raped to death by his priests.

He was God, dammit. He’d kill any motherfucker who thought otherwise. He . . .

No, wait. That was the Victor. He was Ivar Terje. Who was . . .

Nobody. Not anymore.

But somehow, some way, I’m going to change that, Ivar thought in the one hidden nook of his brain he could call his own. I’ll get back in the driver’s seat, and everybody who ever fucked with me will pay in blood. Wyatt, Riane, Frieka, Dona, Dyami . . .

And the Victor.

Especially the Victor.

Dona was still cursing herself the next morning when her comp told her Alerio had called an assembly in the Main Briefing Hall.

He’d probably come up with a battle plan for dealing with Ivar and his threats. Knowing Alerio, he’d been up all night working on it, considering all the tactical angles and running computer simulations to check his conclusions. The chief was the most thorough commander she’d ever had, being both a brilliant investigator and a damn fine tactician.

What’s more, he was genuinely concerned for the people under his command. If you had a problem, odds were good Alerio would show up at your quarters with a bottle of Vardonese ale. Before you knew what hit you, you’d be spilling your guts.

In retrospect, it was surprising the chief had kept his nose out of the situation between her and Ivar as long as he had. Gods knew they’d had some pretty spectacular fights, even before Ivar had tried to kill her.

More than once in the aftermath of those brawls, she’d found Alerio watching her, his gaze steady, questioning. Silently telling her he was there if she needed to talk. Or do something really stupid, like file a complaint.

Yeah, that would have gone over well. Kind of like taking a tachyon beamer on a temporal Jump. By the time Ivar got through expressing his opinion, the resulting crater would have been visible from space.

Seven hells, she’d been a fool. But after what happened with Colonel Kavel, Dona had been determined she’d never have an affair with another commanding officer.

Unfortunately, Alerio Dyami was a hell of a lot more tempting than any commander she’d ever had. Including the colonel.

Especially the colonel.

So instead she’d focused her passions on Ivar Terje . . . and what a clusterfuck that had turned out to be. Her taste in men sucked liked an air lock venting into space.

Dona found Main Briefing packed with Enforcers. Every chair in the cavernous room was occupied, wide rows of them sloping down to Alerio’s massive black podium. The elegant obsidian stand stood center stage on a platform that ran the width of the room.

Above that was an enormous trid screen that displayed the blue and silver Temporal Enforcement shield. The ancient scales of Mother Justice hung superimposed over an hourglass that in turn floated above the Galactic Union’s star field.

A sharp bark drew her attention, ringing over the murmur produced by a thousand chatting time cops. Frieka stood on his hind legs in one of the seats, forepaws braced on its back. The chair next to him was empty; he and Riane had held it for her.

Oh, hell, she thought. They’ll want all the details, and I’d rather eat my shard pistol.

Too bad she couldn’t run. Fuckit. Might as well get it over with. With a mental sigh of resignation, Dona strode down the stairs to drop into the seat next to Frieka. It squirmed around her until it cradled her backside comfortably. “Thanks,” Dona told her friends. “I was afraid I’d have to stand all the way through the briefing.”

Riane frowned, assessing her face with that habitual Vardonese attention to detail. Probably analyzing the bags under my eyes and the accompanying ghostly pallor. Dona hadn’t slept worth a damn the night before; she’d been far too busy mentally flogging herself for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty.

“You look like hell,” Riane told her bluntly. “Dammit, when are you going to get it through your thick head—you are not responsible for the actions of your psychotic ex!”

That was the trouble with cyborg friends. Dona was a talented liar, but she’d never been able to fool Riane’s sensors. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?” The redhead glowered. “I swear everybody’s gone nuts! First Frieka staggers in at too-fucking-early after getting plowed with the chief—” She broke off, eyes widening.

Dona silently cursed, watching her too-clever friend put the facts together. The same instincts that made Riane an excellent investigator also made her a real pain in the ass to any friend with a secret. “Oh sweet Goddess!” She turned the heat of her glare on her furry partner, whose ears flattened defensively against his skull. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“Kid, I realize this is hard for you to grasp, but the chief’s love life is not your business.”

“It is when he’s boning my best friend!”

“And if she wanted you to know, she’d tell you.”

Riane switched the glare to Dona, who managed not to cower. She relaxed fractionally when the Warfem’s glare dissolved into a salacious grin. “I’ve got to say, your taste in men has definitely improved. So how was he? I want details!”

“Can we not do this in front of every Enforcer at the Outpost?” Dona hissed, feeling her cheeks blaze.

“What, you think they aren’t going to figure it out on their own? You work with detectives, you twit. Cyborg cops with sensor implants. The half-life of an Outpost secret is about fifteen seconds.” Riane grimaced, obviously thinking the same thing Dona was. “Well, except for Ivar.”

Luckily Dyami picked that moment to stride to the podium.

“There’s the chief. Briefing’s starting,” Dona whispered. Thank the gods.

“Don’t think this means you won’t have to spill,” Riane hissed. “You and I are going to have a long talk. With details. Lots and lots of details. With illustrations. And . . .”

“Hand puppets,” Frieka put in, and snickered.

“Okay, fine,” Dona grumbled. Maybe her friends could help her find a little desperately needed perspective. They always had before, even when Ivar had been doing his best to break her like a Soji egg. Come to think of it, they’d urged her to dump him; both agents had hated his cyborg guts long before he’d been unmasked as a traitor.

And I should have listened to them.

“We,” Alerio announced, jolting her back to the present, “have a problem.”

As Alerio played his neurocomp’s recording of Ivar’s gloating threats, the gathered Enforcers listened in complete silence. Dona could almost taste their collective rage. It seemed to fill the huge room, a fog of raw fury.

She couldn’t help but cringe when their eyes locked on her during Alerio’s vivid description of Ivar’s attack.

“Fucker,” Frieka growled. The word seemed to hang in the air, silently echoed by every agent in the room.

“Yeah, that’s a pretty damned good description of Ivar Terje,” Alerio agreed dryly. “Obviously, we’re not going to hand anyone over to the Xerans’ dubious concept of justice.” His eyes narrowed, and a muscle flexed in his jaw. “But we’re also not going to allow Terje and his band of psycho priests to murder any more tourists. Even if we have to kill every last one of the hornheaded bastards.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Cold determination filled Alerio’s dark eyes as he scanned Main Briefing and its rows of Enforcers. “As of now, we’re all on bodyguard duty. I have assigned everyone to teams of three at a minimum to ensure you can counter any Xeran terrorist squads.

“If any of you do encounter Xerans, you are to immediately courier the Outpost for backup. Obviously, you should report the number of attackers so we can respond in sufficient numbers to neutralize the threat. A trid of the attacking force would be useful. Are there any questions?”

Wulf put up a meaty paw. Genetically engineered for life on a planet with three times Earth’s gravity, the agent was built like a human tank. Yet, big as he was, Wulf was also a damned good criminal investigator, with an instinct for solving temporal crimes that was almost psychic. “What about our current caseload? I’m still working on that da Vinci theft . . .”

Frowning, Alerio leaned an elbow on the podium. The motion made his biceps bunch. Dona stared in hypnotized longing before jerking her eyes away.

“. . . we’re all going to have to back-burner other investigations until Terje and his priests have been apprehended, along with any assassins the Xerans may hire,” Alerio was saying. “The safety of temporal travelers has to take precedence over solving crimes that have already occurred.”

Wulf sat back in his seat, but the big man did not look happy. From what Dona had heard him say over beers in the Outpost Mess, he was tantalizingly close to apprehending the thief responsible for the disappearance of thirty-eight legendary paintings. Leonardo da Vinci’s Leda was the most priceless of the lot; it had vanished sometime during the eighteenth century under mysterious circumstances. Wulf thought that was the work of a time-jumping thief, and he was probably right.

“You’ll get him anyway, Wulf,” Alerio told him. “Even if it takes a little longer, you’ll track the bastard down.”

Wulf’s cheeks went pink at the chief’s praise. In a man the approximate size of an interstellar frigate, the effect was oddly charming.

“I’ve also managed to arrange the temporary transfer of a few more Enforcers from the European office,” Alerio went on. “These are cyborg agents specializing in historical undercover work. I think they’ll prove effective as we counter whatever nasty little tricks the Xerans try.” The chief bared his teeth in an expression more snarl than smile. “I intend to give Terje a surprise he won’t forget.”

The Enforcers rumbled agreement. There was something so feral in those growling voices, even Dona felt a chill. Seven hells, they’re pissed. But then, so am I.

“I’ve sent your assignments to your respective comps,” the chief continued, “along with details of where you’ll be going and who you’ll be guarding. I’ll expect reports on how you intend to cover your protectees by Gamma shift. Include any logistical problems you anticipate so we can address them before you jump. Any questions?”

He nodded at someone behind Dona.

“What are we telling the tourists about this?” the agent asked.

“Not a damned thing,” Alerio said. “And no, I don’t like it either, but Headquarters is concerned about triggering a media shit storm we don’t need. We’ve been lucky so far. If the journos had gotten wind of the Hardin Tours massacre, we’d be ass-deep in trid bots right about now. That’s a headache we do not need. It’s going to be hard enough keeping all those tourists alive without tripping over journos every time we turn around. Not to mention that Terje would just love to kidnap some well-known head-talker he could torture on vid.”

Dona frowned. She understood the chief’s point—even agreed with it—but this situation felt like a sonic grenade. It could easily explode in all their faces . . . And if it did, it would take their careers along for the nasty ride.

She didn’t want to go through that again. She’d barely survived the last time.

I have received a com from Chief Dyami with your orders, her neurocomp announced.

Yeah, she’d been wondering where that was. Display.

Instead of the usual dossier file, a trid image of Alerio appeared in her mind stage. “Enforcer Astryr, you will be assisting me and a nonstandard agent in guarding Geneva Kamil and her tour guide as they attend a ball in nineteenth-century South Carolina.” Alerio’s tone was matter-of-fact, but there was a note of steel in his voice that suggested dissent would not be welcome. “Both computer simulations and my gut indicate this party is a high probability target.”

Well, yeah. Geneva Kamil was a trid star with both money and influence. Which explains how she’d acquired visas for such a small party; tour groups usually numbered at least ten, all of whom paid handsomely to visit whatever time period they intended to tour.

A quick mental calculation told her Geneva would probably pay half a million galactors for this trip, between visa fees, hiring a tour guide, and the charge for tube travel there and back.

Dona frowned. Guarding the woman was going to be a hazardous pain in the ass. Alerio was right; Ivar would cream his armor at the thought of capturing the actress. Murdering her would make him famous. Or rather, infamous.

So yeah, Dona could understand why Alerio would want to personally provide the star with protection. Callous as it sounded, Geneva would make the perfect bait. Ivar wouldn’t be able to resist.

The only thing Dona didn’t understand was why Alerio wanted her as his partner. The emotional situation between them could easily become an ugly distraction when they could least afford it. “What the hell is he doing?”

Riane blinked in surprise at her growl. “What is who doing?”

“The chief. He wants me to partner with him to protect Geneva Kamil.”

“Geneva?” Frieka’s vivid eyes widened. “I love her. She kicked ass in Time Slip.”

“Oh, come on—that ridiculous piece of crap?” Riane scoffed. “She fought off four Tevan warriors in that trid. Count ’em. Four! There is no way in hell a light battleborg like the character she played could have done that. Hell, one Tevan damned near cleaned my clock, and I’m a Warfem!”

“Yeah, yeah, but it was still a great scene.” Frieka displayed every one of his many teeth in an appreciative canine grin. “Remember when she kicked that Tevan in the ’nads?”

“And you cheered like a fourteen-year-old girl.” Riane rolled her eyes. “Goddess, I was so embarrassed!”

“Oh, like you weren’t rooting for her, too.” The wolf sniffed of disdain. “I heard that sob when she sacrificed herself for the ship.”

“I did not sob,” the Warfem objected. “I don’t cry at trids.”

“Yeah, right.” He turned to Dona. “You should have heard the kid during the climax. She cried so hard she soaked my fur. Damned near caught a cold.”

“Hey,” Riane protested, “the wolf sidekick reminded me of you. Of course I cried.”

Dona grinned, absently enjoying the pair’s bickering. But no matter how welcome the distraction, it still didn’t address her current problem. Her gut insisted partnering with Alerio on this job was a really bad idea. And over the years, Dona had learned her gut was usually dead-on.

The trouble was, Dyami was her commanding officer. He could order her to do any damn thing he thought necessary to accomplish their mission: protecting innocent people from temporal criminals. Which meant she couldn’t refuse the assignment, not if she intended to remain an Enforcer.

And she did, because Dona loved her job. True, she’d become an Enforcer in the first place because she’d had no choice, but she’d soon discovered just how much she loved being a time cop. She loved analyzing temporal crimes, finding patterns even the Outpost computer missed, gathering evidence to prove she was right, and capturing the perpetrators before they could steal another priceless work of art or rape another temporal tourist.

You couldn’t change history, but sometimes, history was a lot less cut-and-dried than it seemed. You could never really be sure which crimes were fated, and which you could solve because you were supposed to solve them. Over the years, she’d learned that uncertainty only added to the spice. Besides, there was nothing quite as sweet as preventing some abusive bastard from preying on innocent civilians.

Solving temporal crime had given Dona a purpose when she’d thought she had no reason to live. That was why she wouldn’t say one damned word to Alerio.

The meeting finally broke up. Enforcers flowed into the aisles, discussing their new assignments as they headed for the room’s four double doors. As more agents filed past, Frieka braced his paws on the arm of Dona’s seat. “Want to head to the Concourse with us? I’ve got a yen for a big plate of chiva.”

Like Frieka, Dona loved the meat strips swimming in tangy chiva sauce. She was opening her mouth to accept the invitation when a familiar voice spoke up from behind her.

“Perhaps later,” Alerio said. “Dona and I need to plan our next mission.”

She turned to meet the Warlord’s calm black gaze, and just resisted the need to snarl. “Aye, sir.” Dona stifled the urge to give him a sarcastic salute. Enforcers didn’t salute; he’d know it was a substitution for a gesture far more vulgar.

With an effort, Dona wiped any trace of anger from her face. Fortunately she’d had plenty of practice. Neither the colonel nor Ivar had appreciated any demonstration of how she felt about the way they treated her.

Why are you so surprised? that nasty reptilian whisper hissed from the darkness in her skull. Did you really expect him to respect what you wanted? You’re his subordinate, idiot. You’re nothing to him. True, Alerio had been an attentive and sensitive lover compared to the others. The most sensitive she’d ever had, in fact. Maybe bedroom performance is a bigger indicator of character than I thought . . .

You truly are a fool, aren’t you?

She blinked, suddenly recognizing that papery whisper. It sounded a lot like the colonel . . .

And Alerio is watching me. His big body stood utterly still, his cool gaze locked on her in a way that sent a chill up her spine. It reminded her far too much of her first commanding officer. The colonel in a frigid rage didn’t even need a shockcane; the man could leave frostbitten welts with every word. She hadn’t thought the chief had that in him. Oh, this isn’t good.

“We need to discuss the case in more detail—in my office,” Alerio told her coolly.

She nodded, this time making sure her expression was utterly empty of anger. “Yes, sir.”

Definitely not good.

Alerio’s office was just down the hall from Main Briefing, occupying a prime position on the Admin Deck. Surprisingly spacious, it was dominated by one of those Outpost windows that ran the entire length of the room. The view it offered was nothing short of breathtaking: mountains kissing the horizon clad in vivid spring splendor. Elms and maples, oaks and cottonwoods, their leaves incandescent with countless shades of green. Above them hung a sky so blue, it made her eyes ache. A pair of black couches stood before the window, angled to make the best of the view.

Alerio’s desk offered a stark contrast to that extravagantly sensual window. A curving shape in reflective black polycarbonate, the desk looked as if it belonged on a warstar’s bridge. Alerio could control every system on the Outpost from that desk. The chair behind it seemed to grow directly from the floor, thickly upholstered in some kind of gleaming black material. A pair of smaller, far less comfortable-looking chairs crouched before the desk as though waiting for any hapless Enforcers who’d earned the chief’s wrath.

Alerio ignored the desk, instead waving her toward the pair of couches. “Unlock that stiff spine and sit down, Enforcer,” he told her in a dry tone, dropping into one of them himself. “Permission to speak freely granted.”

She lifted a brow and sat down cautiously. “I wasn’t aware I asked for it.”

“Oh, you did. Just not out loud.” He raised a black brow. “Go on. Tell me exactly what you think before you explode from the sheer pressure of your disapproval.”

This, perversely, made her determined not to say one word. “It is not my place to tell my commanding officer my opinion of my assignments.” Damn, I sound like I have a stick up my ass.

“No,” he agreed, without cracking a smile. “But tell me anyway.”

There were any number of things she could say—if she were stupid enough. Which she wasn’t. Colonel Kavel had taught her the perils of taking a commander at his word.

Well, you fucked this one up, Dyami, Alerio thought in disgust as he watched Dona’s pointedly expressionless face. Now you’re going to have to fix it.

When she remained stubbornly silent, he sighed. “Fine, then I’ll start. As you’re aware, we are painfully shorthanded when it comes to protecting all the scheduled tour groups in numbers sufficient to fend off a Xeran assassination squad.”

He paused, but she only looked at him with polite interest. Containing his growing impatience, Alerio continued, “I don’t normally participate in fieldwork, of course, but the only way we can cover the schedule is with the addition of a new team. And since you no longer have a partner, this logically leaves the two of us working together. Unless you want me to break up an existing partnership . . .” Some of those Enforcers had been working together for years.

His sensors told him her temper promptly began to cool. That’s right, Dona. I didn’t pair us just to force you into something you don’t want.

“That’s not necessary,” she said.

“I didn’t think it was. But I’m aware you may find the situation uncomfortable, considering what happened the other night.”

Dona sighed. “If we avoid a repetition of that . . . incident, it won’t be a problem.”

“Making love to me was an ‘incident’ to you?” Yeah, that’s helpful, he snarled to himself. You sound like a spurned lover. Which was basically what he was. Wrestling his temper back under control, he made a negating gesture. “Forgive me. That was not appropriate.”

“There’s nothing to forgive. This is a trying situation.” Despite her gracious words, Dona’s frigid expression didn’t warm.

Which was a bit like tossing a flamer into a tank of thruster fuel. It was all Alerio could do to contain his fury as he bit out, “Thank you for your understanding.” Damned if I’ll touch you again. Even if you beg. Warlords do not crawl.

Not even a violet-eyed cop who made him ache to stroke and taste and kiss. A woman whose smile flashed as bright as her intelligence . . .

And whose courage was going to get her killed if he wasn’t damned careful.

“Is it true what I’ve heard about Vardonese Warlords?” Geneva Kamil’s lids dipped over the golden eyes her fans adored. “That you’re all very . . . aggressive lovers?”

Dona’s hands curled into fists in her kidskin gloves, though she kept her face expressionless. The closed carriage they rode in jolted over a bump hard enough to click her back teeth together. She damned near bit her tongue.

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” Alerio told the actress, flashing even white teeth in his best charm-the-asshole smile. “People are prone to exaggeration.”

Dona couldn’t help but notice that was not precisely a denial. She tried not to be intrigued.

“Pity.” Geneva’s gaze ran down his body with unblushing hunger. “I do like an aggressive man. Particularly one so very . . . large.”

To be fair, Dona couldn’t really blame the actress for her carnivorous interest. Alerio in Victorian evening wear was nothing short of mouthwatering. Of course, his facial tattoo would have been a problem, but Chogan had injected his skin with a drug that made the ink temporarily vanish.

He’d also removed the beaded Vardonese combat decorations from his long hair, which he’d then braided and bound flat to his skull. A dark wig in the short style worn by men of the period finished off the disguise.

“I did this all the time when I was a field agent,” he’d told her back at the Outpost, apparently in response to her fascinated gaze. “I could have had my comp project an imagizer disguise, of course, but if some temporal accidently touched my long hair . . .”

“We’d have a problem, because trids don’t fool the sense of touch.”

Which explained why they both wore the clothing of the period; a T-suit did not feel anything like nineteenth-century evening wear. As much as Dona secretly loved how Alerio looked in temporal armor, he made a luscious Victorian. The fit of his tight black trousers drew the eye to his long, impressively muscular legs, and his well-tailored jacket made his shoulders appear impossibly broad while simultaneously emphasizing his narrow waist. Yet he looked as comfortable as if he really were a Victorian aristocrat.

Far more at home than Dona in her gold ball gown, with its hoop skirt and layer upon layer of horsehair-padded petticoats. Adding insult to injury, the dress’s dainty cap sleeves revealed arms far too muscular for a woman of the period; most plantation debutantes never did anything more strenuous than embroidery.

Dona was a bit happier with her hair. She’d gathered it at her nape in an intricate arrangement of braided coils and a few deliberately disheveled curls. Best of all, it was secured by clusters of needle-thin quantum stilettos that would hopefully be mistaken for combs.

Armed or not, she had no idea how to fight in all this fabric. Not to mention the corset beneath the gown, with its tight lacing and the whalebone stays that made mere breathing an effort. She had no idea how the women of this time tolerated such torture devices. Or more to the point, why they tolerated them.

Goddess help me if I have to fight, she thought gloomily. All these skirts would probably wrap around her legs and dump her on her face the first time she attempted a kick. Seven hells, she wasn’t all that sure how to get her hoops through a doorway.

Geneva, by contrast, looked every inch the Victorian debutante as she perched demurely on the carriage’s red velvet squabs, surrounded by a cloud of sapphire blue silk. Her pale skin seemed to glow in the soft light of the oil lantern, while her hair blazed in every shade of red from warm copper to shimmering flame. Once they reached the ball, the imagizer in her pearl necklace would dull the metallic gleam of her irises to a more human amber. Not that the change would blunt her incredible beauty.

Geneva’s tour guide sat beside her, swaying gracefully with the carriage’s bumpy progress. Julia Reginald wore an elaborate smoke-gray evening gown tiered in black lace. Jet earbobs swung at her ears, while a matching jet necklace looped around her neck and draped over her impressive breasts.

Dona wondered how the guide had secured invitations for all of them to the ball Mr. and Mrs. Kevin Northram were hosting at their rice plantation. According to her dossier, Reginald had an impressive network of plantation social connections she could call on whenever she needed to indulge some rich client’s fantasy. In this case, Geneva Kamil wanted to experience the life of a plantation deb, right down to the carriage ride.

“This should be a pretty boring trip,” the guide had told them before the Jump. She seemed a little puzzled at Alerio’s insistence about providing them with an escort. “Especially compared to my usual jobs.”

Well, yeah. According to her dossier, Julia’s main business was conducting tours of Civil War battlefields—during the battles. True, the groups were sheltered by a camo shield that rendered them invisible while they watched what had actually happened, but that didn’t make the tours precisely safe. An invisible tourist was as vulnerable to a rifle bullet as anyone else.

Abruptly the guide stiffened. “Lose them!” Leaning forward, she fisted her hands in her skirts, twisting the fabric in agitation. “Whip the horses up and outrun the bastards!”

Must be using a com unit to talk to the carriage driver, Dona realized.

“You . . . might want to go easy on the whip,” Alerio murmured. “The horses won’t like it.”

Geneva stared at the guide in dawning horror. “Outrun who?” When she got no answer from Julia—whose expression now verged on outright terror—the actress turned to Alerio. “Gods and devils!” she exploded. “Who are we running from?”

“Highwaymen,” Dona told her absently as she scanned their pursuers. To the chief, she added, “I count twenty-four. Twenty with shard pistols, two with tritium rifles, two more with Winchesters. And what’s with the gunpowder tech?”

Alerio shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t have enough guns to go around.” He frowned. “Scans make them as Xerans, none with horn implants.”

“Not priests, then. Monks, maybe. No battleborgs, either, which evens the odds a little.”

The chief snorted. “Considering we’re going up against twenty-four of them, we need every advantage we can get.”

“At least there’s no sign of Ivar either.”

“Actually, I’d feel better if he was here. Instead of say, getting ready to ambush us from behind a camo field.”

Dona grimaced. “Good point.”

Over the rumble of the wooden wheels, a whip snapped once, then again and again as the coachman roared curses at his laboring team. Their pounding hoofbeats drummed faster, as the animals ran with everything they had.

Bracing both hands against the vehicle’s jouncing walls, Dona breathed deep, readying herself for the fight she knew was coming. The carriage rattled over ruts and rocks in the wake of the four-horse team. A particularly hard bounce clicked her back teeth together. She tasted blood and braced her feet, wedging herself deeper into a corner.

A hard jolt flung Geneva across the carriage. She choked off a scream as Alerio caught her with casual Warlord strength and stuffed her back into her seat. Julia absently steadied her wild-eyed client while listening to her coachman, who was evidently giving her a play-by-play.

A blast of fléchettes hissed overhead, punctuated by a male scream. Alerio swore as the carriage rocked wildly and the thunder of hooves began to slow.

“What was that?” Geneva demanded, one hand clamped over Julia’s with a white-knuckled grip.

“Shard pistol,” Dona told her, frowning as she scanned through the carriage’s wooden walls. The tritium shards had sliced into the driver’s torso, leaving him slumped and bleeding in his seat, the reins dropping from his lax hands to flap loose over the team’s sweating backs.

“Jorge?” Julia snapped. “Jorge, dammit, answer! Jorge!” She turned to stare at Alerio. “They shot my coachman. I don’t think he’s conscious.” One hand shot out to grab the chief’s knee, nails digging in painfully. “You’re supposed to protect us, Enforcer!” she spat. “Do something. Jorge’s dying!”

“I will if I can.” Alerio’s eyes flicked back and forth as he swept sensor scans over the carriage’s surroundings. “Unfortunately, I’m about to have my hands full keeping the rest of us from joining him.”

“But he’s been shot! Jorge could be dying while you sit on your . . .”

“Calm down,” Dona snapped coldly, silencing the woman in mid-rant. “Look, once we’re all safe, I can Jump him back to the Outpost. Our doctor can bring him back from the dead if she has to.”

“How?” the guide demanded, her voice spiraling into a wail. “Our return Jump isn’t scheduled until Monday! And if the coach is damaged . . .”

“It’ll be fine, Julia.” Dona flipped up her gold skirts to reveal the gleaming blue scales that covered her thighs to the knee. The abbreviated suit of temporal armor was designed to be worn under civilian clothes; the ball gown’s layers of fabric provided the perfect camouflage. “It doesn’t have sleeves or boots—and wearing it with this corset is a pain in the ass—but it’ll get me and your man to the Outpost. Five minutes later, he’ll be in regen.”

The two women gaped at her T-suited legs. “How did you . . .” Geneva began.

“I suspected we’d run into trouble,” Alerio explained. “We’ve got courier bots, of course, but I like to hedge my bets.” A gesture indicated his trousers. “Unfortunately, this getup is a little too snug for armored underwear.”

The guide laughed, the sound high-pitched with hysteria. “If I lose Jorge . . . I don’t think I could stand it.” A tear rolled down her cheek.

“I’ll get him into regen, Julia. He’ll be okay.” Dona braced herself as the carriage jolted to a stop. Her sensors painted a vivid image of the four horses snorting and stamping, tossing their heads, tack jangling. One bay mare half-bucked, kicking out at the carriage as if panicked by the scent of the coachman’s blood. The big white horse harnessed beside her snaked out his neck and nipped her hard on the shoulder. She squealed and shied away before subsiding, cowed by her teammate’s teeth.

As the team heaved and blew, the highwaymen began to steal closer. One of them flipped down the hinged carriage steps . . .

Dyami surged from his seat, ducking his head to accommodate the carriage’s low roof. One foot slammed into the coach door, kicking it open with a screech of rending wood. It crashed into the highwayman who already had one foot on the carriage steps, sending him tumbling with a startled yelp. As he hit the packed dirt of the road, the shard pistol flew from his hand to disappear into the thick brush.

Alerio leaped from the carriage, producing a derringer-sized shard pistol from his sleeve with a flick of his right hand. A quantum combat knife chimed in his left. In the same blurring, graceful move, he shot the first highwayman, kicked another in the face, and whirled to slit a third’s throat.

As the chief charged his next target, Dona sprang from the coach, skirts wadded in one hand. Jerking one of the quantum stilettos from her coiled braids, she sent the thin knife flying. The weapon thunked into a fourth killer’s barrel chest. Gasping, he clutched at the blade and collapsed. His shard pistol thumped to the dirt beside his dying hand.

A plump, graying man snarled at Dona as he brought his weapon up to aim it between her eyes. She spun aside like a bulldancer, avoiding the pistol’s hissing tritium spray. As she whirled to face the gunman again, her forearm snapped out. A quantum dagger thudded home in the gunman’s left eye. His mouth gaped in a silent scream as he toppled into the roadside weeds.

Dona’s neurocomp filled her brain with a sensor image of a tall whippet of a man drawing a bead on the back of her head. She whirled, jerking her hoopskirt up to her thighs, and kicked upward in a merciless arc. Her heel crunched into the thin bones of his nose, driving the resulting splinters into his brain. Pain lanced up her calf, and she grimaced, silently cursing her too-thin dancing slippers. That move is a hell of a lot easier in armored boots.

Drawing another stiletto from her hair, she scanned the surrounding trees. Her eyes narrowed as her neurocomp pinpointed a man aiming a shard rifle at Alerio. She killed him before his finger could tighten on the trigger.

You may call yourself an Enforcer, but under that pretty armor you’re still Kavel’s Killer. Just another assassin with delusions of morality.

Shut up. She slid another blade from her tightly braided bun. The needle-thin length of tritium felt cool and familiar in her fingers before she sent it on its way with a snap of her wrist.

Out in the ring of trees, someone screamed. The cry drowned in a gurgle, but she was already tracking her next target. Thinking nothing at all, she killed one Xeran after another in a bubble of silence and peace.

Monster.

Shut. Up.

Alerio’s reinforced fist crunched into bone, shattering the would-be kidnapper’s skull. The Warlord had gone to riaat as he’d leaped from the coach, and now his blood burned with cold biochemical fire. As the berserker state amplified his strength by a factor of ten, it numbed his awareness of pain and exhaustion. He could fight until he dropped. His lips stretched in a wild wolf grin. He’d missed the feral pleasure of cutting loose, of giving no quarter and expecting none.

This mob of killers deserved anything he did to them.

Relentless as a machine, he ground through his foes with punches, kicks, and ripping thrusts of his combat knife. He’d lost count of the number he’d killed.

Need to leave one alive. I’ve got a few questions . . .

Dona raced by, and his eyes flicked to follow. Even deep in a berserker haze, he was acutely aware of her. Skirts bunched in one hand, she punched and kicked, flattening every Xeran in her way. Now and then she paused to reclaim one of her knives before plunging it into someone else.

There was no rage on her face, no bloodthirst or desire for revenge. Just calculation, blinding speed, and the flash of steel. He had to suppress the urge to grab her for a kiss whenever she went by.

A pistol roared once, twice, a third time, followed by three booming shots in rapid succession, the gunfire deafening at close quarters. Alerio jerked his head around to see Julia Reginald reloading a revolver, grim concentration on her face. She’d evidently decided to stop panicking and start fighting.

“That’s enough!” an unfamiliar voice shouted.

Eyes narrowing, Alerio turned, his sensors locking on the last remaining Xeran. The one they’d have to leave alive.

“All you fuckers throw down your weapons and get the hell away from my men!” He had a thick Xeran accent, all slurred vowels and harsh glottal stops.

And he had a hostage.

CHAPTER SIX

The Xeran’s fist was wrapped in Geneva’s glorious hair as he jammed a shard pistol against the thin white flesh of her temple. Her golden eyes rolled in animal panic.

Dona and Alerio started easing toward the hostage-taker in tandem. One step. Two. Three. Slow and stealthy as a pair of wolves.

“Stay back!” the Xeran shouted, grinding the gun against her head. She cried out, cowering while simultaneously trying to pull away. He jerked her in close again, glaring at the two Enforcers as he backed toward the carriage. “Stay the fuck back!” His face twisted in the furious terror of a man who’d thought he’d had the situation in hand, only to see it sucked right out the air lock. “We had you outnumbered, damn you!”

“Not on your best day,” Dona muttered.

The highwayman jerked Geneva by her hair past the horses, ignoring her yelps of pain. Tears rolled down her perfect cheeks, and her shoulders began to shake. She was terrified.

“He’s trying to drag her into the carriage,” Dona murmured to Alerio. “Must have spotted the enhancements.”

“Yeah, well, I’m damned if I’ll let him . . .”

Which was, of course, when the Xeran finally got a good look at the chief’s face—and the hot riaat glow of his eyes. His eyes widened in horrified realization.

“Oh, shit.” Dona tensed. “Alerio . . .”

“Fuck me!” the man howled in tones of outraged betrayal. “You’re a goddamn Warlord! The botfucking priests didn’t say nothing about no gods-cursed Warlords!” Jerking his pistol from Geneva’s temple, he aimed at Alerio and started to squeeze the trigger.

The lead carriage horse kicked him right in the ass.

Howling in astonished agony, the Xeran fell on his face, both hands flying back to cradle his abused butt. The forgotten pistol fired as it fell, forcing Dona and Alerio to duck.

With a growl, Alerio pounced on the hapless kidnapper, smashing him into the dirt as he jerked a set of restraints from a pocket of his coat. Ignoring the man’s writhing, he started tying the Xeran’s wrists together with the thin magnetic cable.

Before Dona could join them, Julia shouted at her from the carriage box. “Enforcer, Jorge’s bad! If you don’t get him to the Outpost now . . .”

Dona veered toward the couple and began to run. “Alerio . . .”

“Go!” Alerio snapped.

Reaching the box, she bounded up beside Julia and bent to lift the injured coachman into her arms. He didn’t stir.

“Save him,” the guide begged. “Please.” A tear meandered down her cheek.

“There’s time, Julia. But you have to move back so I can Jump.”

The woman jumped down from the box and backed away, watching them with desperate hope. Dona gave her a tight smile, gathered the injured man closer, and Jumped.

The temporal warp flared as bright as a star as the sonic boom made the carriage rock on its great wheels. The three mares jumped and bucked, whinnying in panic. The white horse that had bit the Xeran barely flicked an ear.

Alerio straightened from the hog-tied kidnapper to give the big animal a nod. “Good work, Enforcer Pendragon.”

The stallion shook his mane in a jangle of harness. “Botbangers fall for that trick every time,” the horse grumbled, his deep voice resonant. He had a distinct cockney accent. “Gods’ truth, the idea of a cyborg horse never even crosses their tiny ape minds. It’s bloody insultin’, it is.”

Alerio watched Geneva Kamil waltz past in the arms of some planter’s son, a beaming smile of pure delight on her inhumanly lovely face.

He’d taken both women back to the Outpost so he could interrogate the captured Xeran; leaving them alone was obviously not an option. Actually, he’d half expected Geneva to abandon her dream of dancing at a Victorian ball, but evidently she was made of sterner stuff. The break had given the actress time to recover her composure, and they’d returned with a backup coachman. This time, though, they’d Jumped in a great deal closer to the Northram rice plantation—as they would have done in the first place if Alerio’d had his way. Unfortunately, at the time, Geneva had refused any change in her half-million-galactor itinerary, and he’d been unable to explain because of Colonel Ceres’s ill-conceived orders.

Unsurprisingly, Geneva had turned out to be the belle of the ball, which had done a lot to return her confidence. The moment she’d walked in her dance card had started filling with the names of visibly stunned bachelors. They’d all insisted she was the most beautiful woman they’d ever seen, which was probably no exaggeration, considering the lack of Victorian genetic engineering. Much bad poetry was composed on the spot in praise of her flawless face. She’d proved her acting chops with pretty blushes.

Alerio scanned the intricate pattern of dancers as they spun beneath the cavernous ballroom’s glittering crystal chandeliers. A four-piece string ensemble strove to be heard over the chattering, laughing crowd. The crowd won.

He blinked, noticing a trio of—to his eyes—underage debutantes staring at him, whispering behind their fans. Wondering what the hell they wanted, he gave them a polite nod. They burst into giggles and fled.

“It seems you have a fan club,” Dona observed over the mission’s com channel, probably just so she wouldn’t have to shout over the crowd. “If you spoke to them, they’d probably faint dead away.”

“Witless little femmes.” They reminded him of the Vardonese aristocrats back home: certain the universe revolved around them, on the grounds it wouldn’t dare do anything else.

And Alerio intended to make sure the universe didn’t prove them wrong. At least not tonight. He did another crowd scan, searching for anyone whose body contained molecular traces alien to nineteenth-century Earth. Like Borka Czigany, highwayman, would-be kidnapper, and hired assassin in the pay of the Crystal Fortress.

It had taken Alerio less than five minutes to crack the Xeran’s cheap neurocomp and use it to give Czigany an irresistible compulsion to confess his crimes. Which would have been a violation of his civil rights, had it not been for the fact that he was an enemy combatant caught trying to kidnap a temporal tourist on nineteenth-century Earth. Galactic Union’s courts took a very dim view of that kind of thing.

Especially since Czigany wasn’t exactly a blushing virgin. The bastard had done everything from stealing priceless temporal artifacts to assassinating the leader of the Xeran political underground. In fact, Alerio gathered that if a hornhead priest told Czigany to commit any crime against anybody, anytime, anywhere, he’d never think twice. Not exactly a man who suffered from an overactive conscience.

Firmly in the grip of the chief’s compulsion, Czigany had cheerfully admitted he and his Jump gang had decided to kidnap Geneva Kamil because they’d wanted to collect the bounty the priests were offering for captured temporal tourists: a quarter of a million galactors. Czigany had figured they could probably get half a million for Geneva, given her fame.

If the hornheads had realized Alerio would assign Enforcer escorts to the tours, they’d neglected to share that information with Czigany.

Half a million galactors, Alerio thought. Oh, sweet Goddess, we’re going to be ass-deep in these idiots.

“I owe you more than I can ever repay,” Julia Reginald told Dona and Alerio as they sipped mildly alcoholic punch from crystal glasses. Geneva and the two Enforcers were posing as Julia’s guests from a fictional Germanic principality; anyone who overheard them would hopefully think they were speaking a foreign language. Though come to think of it, a language didn’t get more foreign to nineteenth-century South Carolina than Galactic Standard. “If not for you, Jorge would have bled to death.”

Dona smiled; it was nice to be appreciated. “I’m just glad we made it to the infirmary in time. Dr. Chogan said if we’d been ninety seconds later, he wouldn’t have made it.”

“So she told me.” Punch in one hand, Julia waved her fan at her glistening face with the other. Too many sweating people dancing around a room without climate control was a lot less romantic than it sounded. “Jorge has worked for me for twenty years, and he’s become quite dear to me. More than I ever realized, in fact.”

“Close calls do have a way of making a lot of things clear,” Alerio observed absently, still eyeing the crowd like a professional bodyguard.

“And they don’t get much closer than the one we had today.” Julia shook her head and sipped her punch. “We’re all fortunate you decided to provide us with an escort, Chief Dyami. Otherwise I’d likely be dead, and Geneva . . . The gods know what they’d have done to her.”

“It’s better not to waste your energy imagining all the things that didn’t happen,” he said. “What matters is that you, Geneva, and Jorge are safe.”

“Very true.” Julia’s hazel eyes sharpened as she studied him. “But I’m curious, Chief Dyami. Why did you decide to escort us on this trip?”

Somehow Dona managed not to freeze. If he can’t divert Julia now, she’ll run to the media the minute she gets back. The cover-up will blow wide open, and we’ll all be fucked.

Alerio didn’t even look away from the crowd. “Geneva’s wealth is well-known, and she mentioned her plans to dance at a nineteenth-century ball on one of the Interstellar Data Hubs. I had a feeling the comment would attract the wrong kind of attention.” He shrugged those broad shoulders. “It seems I was right.”

Julia’s fan froze in mid-wave. “I told the little twit not to brag about this trip!”

Dona sipped her own punch and shrugged. “Yeah, we always give tourists that warning. And there’s always somebody who doesn’t listen.”

“Good thing we avoided such a tragedy today.” Julia studied Alerio over her fan, her gaze still a bit too sharp.

Dammit, Dona thought in disgust. Looks like she still hasn’t bought it.

“While you were questioning our would-be kidnapper, I ran into a friend of mine.” The guide’s fan waved a little faster, reminding Dona of the twitch of a cat’s tail. “Perhaps you know him—Kangse Wei? He’s a documentarian. Quite famous. Kangse told me he was assigned an escort, too. In fact, he said every tour going out this week will have Enforcer bodyguards.”

Alerio lifted a brow. “Do you often listen to rumor?”

“Not as a rule. But I’ve been a temporal guide for twenty-six years, and I have never known of an Outpost chief playing bodyguard.” She smiled sweetly. “Surely you’re not that shorthanded.”

“Of course not.” Alerio gave her one of those charming smiles he did so well, but Julia’s eyes didn’t even glaze. “I haven’t had field duty in so long, I worried I’d gotten rusty.” He returned his attention to the crowd as if barely interested in the conversation. “As for the other tours this week, I felt your fellow guides could use more experience in working with Enforcers. A little practice now will keep everybody alive in the event of crisis.”

“Yes, that does make sense.” Julia’s waving fan slowed. She’d probably hoped she’d uncovered a scandal she could parlay into free media advertising for her agency. “Actually, I’m surprised no one thought of it before now.”

“Oh, we did.” Alerio shrugged. “We just haven’t had a chance to implement the training before.” As the string quartet swooped into another waltz, he turned to Dona and gave her a credible bow. “May I have this dance?”

Good idea, get us the hell away from her before she thinks of another question. “Of course.”

As Alerio led her out onto the dance floor, Dona told him over the mission com channel, “Actually, the training thing sounds like a good idea.”

“I’ll have to come up with a suitable program.” Taking her into his arms, he spun her out among the swirling crowd of dancers. And damn, it felt entirely too good.

Neither Enforcer had ever waltzed before, though the German aristocrats they were pretending to be would definitely know their way around a dance floor. Which was why the mission’s required Educational Data Implant had included popular dances of the period, along with an English language refresher, Victorian slang, and the finer points of nineteenth-century etiquette in the Deep South. Having absorbed the EDI’s package of skills before the Jump, they could probably dance rings around anyone else in the room.

Gazing up into the chief’s handsome face, she found herself acutely aware of the warmth of his palms even through her evening gloves. His eyes should be glowing now, judging by the arousal her sensors detected. Luckily his comp’s imagizer concealed the effect.

Dona swallowed and licked dry lips as her own need rose. His gaze tracked her tongue tip with heated interest. Yeah, definitely glowing. And if Dona had been a Warfem, her own would be lit with the same red blaze.

Unable to hold his stare, she aimed her gaze over his shoulder.

His sensor implants were probably telling him exactly how she felt. A memory flashed through her mind: the last time they’d made love.

Dyami, black eyes flaming as he drove his cock into her with long, driving thrusts that sent corkscrews of pleasure twisting along her nerves . . .

I could have that again, she thought. Tonight. When we return to the Outpost, we could make love. And then I’ll lie awake cursing my lack of self-control.

She couldn’t afford to keep giving in to her desire for Alerio; that would only make it harder to resist the next time. In the end, it would be like the colonel all over again. Her life would sail out the nearest air lock as she was forced to turn her back on everything. Her home, her career, her rank, the skills she’d spent years developing . . .

Though she’d been able to join Temporal Enforcement after Kavel got through wrecking her existence, that wasn’t the sort of second chance that came around more than once. Which was why she’d been devastated when Ivar had turned out to be a traitor. She’d come so close to being charged as his accomplice, she’d figured she was well and truly screwed. She had been wrong.

Then.

But if she didn’t stay away from Dyami, she might find herself in the same sort of ugly mess. Like Temporal Enforcement, Arania’s military had been small. Rumors could travel through its ranks at light speed. Whispers about her relationship with Kavel had dogged her like ghosts, until she’d had no choice except to leave.

If she was stupid enough to make the same mistake with Alerio, she could expect the same result.

Assuming Alerio treats me the way the colonel did. True, the chief seemed to be a fair man, especially compared to Kavel, who’d thrown her to the wolves the minute he’d needed a scapegoat. Alerio would never do that.

You didn’t think the colonel would prove to be a conscienceless shit, either, but you were wrong then, too.

Then there was Ivar, surely the worst mistake she’d ever made. At least the colonel hadn’t committed treason.

Every man you fall in love with turns on you. Watch your step, or Alerio Dyami will be next in line.

Still a little nauseated from the return Jump to the Outpost, Dona closed her eyes and braced her armored boots apart. She’d changed back into her T-suit the minute they were far enough from the plantation, having grown thoroughly sick of that gown. Especially the corset.

The familiar light blast and thunderous crack announced Julia and Geneva’s return. It’s a good thing Mission Staging has good shielding, or everyone on the Outpost would be permanently blind and stone-deaf.

Opening her eyes again, Dona found the carriage and its horses on the Jump pad. The three mares whinnied and danced. Pendragon just looked bored.

Despite its fragile appearance, the reinforced carriage was equipped with temporal generators powerful enough to drag all four animals along for the ride. Still, Jumping would have been hard on the animals if not for the nanotech harnesses that compensated for often ugly side effects of temporal warps. Not quite as effective as a full T-suit, but you couldn’t dress a horse in armor.

Alerio appeared with the standard thunderclap, as usual Jumping last. He shot Dona a probing look as if to make sure she’d arrived with mind and body intact. That wasn’t always a given; warps could sometimes have unexpectedly ugly effects for no apparent reason.

She nodded at him, silently acknowledging his concern.

Geneva’s voice rang out from inside the carriage, edged with a distinct whine. “Lost gods, that was sickening.”

“The wages of time travel, my dear. One gets used to it.” Despite the offhand words, Julia sounded deeply relieved to be back.

The carriage rocked as the substitute coachman jumped from the driver’s box to the staging pad, then moved to unfold the steps and swing open the carriage door. Still playing his role to the hilt, he offered Geneva a half-bow and a hand down. She accepted it and descended the steps, twitching her skirts into place.

“Why can’t we have T-suits?” the actress demanded when she had both feet safely on the pad. Glancing up, she spotted Alerio and stalked toward him. “Armor would make the whole thing a lot less stressful. Besides, then we’d be able to escape any sodding kidnappers.”

“Except the government couldn’t control where you’d go,” Alerio explained patiently. “We can’t have tourists Jumping wherever the hell they want. We tried that a couple of decades ago, and it was chaos.”

“Besides,” Julia added, “Galactic Union law states no one can legally possess a T-suit except TE agents.”

“Too bad that never actually stops anybody,” Dona said over the com channel. No matter what steps TE took to curb the practice, bootleg suit manufacturers always found ways to sell their wares to temporal criminals.

“Good thing, too,” Alerio replied dryly as he moved to join her. “Otherwise you and I would be out of a job.”

Geneva headed for them, skirt swaying like a great bell with the roll of her hips. She looked as ethereal as a fairy queen as she rested one hand on Alerio’s armored chest and raised her huge, famous eyes to his. “Thank you so much for taking such good care of me.” Dark lashes dipped as she rose on her toes to press a lingering kiss on his tattooed cheek.

Dona managed not to grind her teeth.

Just.

Alerio’s gaze flicked warily in her direction before he gave the actress a coolly professional nod and stepped away. “That’s what you pay us for, Ma’am.”

With a wistful sigh that verged on tragic, Geneva dropped her heels to the deck and offered Dona a limp hand. “Thank you, too. Dona, isn’t it?”

Enforcer Astryr. She managed to bite back the correction and shook the actress’s disinterested hand. Good Enforcers don’t break a tourist’s fingers. Even when she richly deserves it. “We’re delighted to have been of service,” she lied.

Geneva’s smile was strictly perfunctory. “I’m sure.”

“Thank you so much for protecting us, Chief.” Julia glided over, taffeta petticoats rustling. “You too, Enforcer.” True gratitude lit the smile she gave Dona, who smiled back. “You’re welcome to escort my tours anytime.”

“I only wish it hadn’t been necessary,” Alerio said, “but I’m glad we were able to inconvenience your kidnappers.”

“Not as glad as we are.” Geneva slid an arm through Julia’s as she turned the guide toward the door. “Fabulous tour, darling. I can’t wait to do it again—without the highwaymen. That was a bit more entertainment than I had in mind.”

“Truer words, darling.” Julia laughed, a tinkling sound she must have learned from a Victorian debutante. “Would you care for a tour of the Outpost? There’s the most amazing restaurant on the Concourse level, The Dark Nebula. You really must try it. Chef Marie makes a beefer filet over asparagus tips and wild seabloom that’s simply . . .” She kissed her fingers in an extravagant gesture.

“Sounds delightful. But how’s the bar?”

“Fabulous. I recommend the Slingshot Orbit . . .” The pair rustled out.

Glad to be rid of them, Dona turned to find the coachman unhitching his team. Enforcer Pendragon sighed in relief as the human hauled the harness off his sweating back.

“Glad that’s done.” The stallion’s vocalizer flashed blue through the silken strands of his mane. He looked around the cavernous room. “Where’s Frieka? He promised to take me pub-crawling.”

“Hold your horses.” The wolf trotted through Mission Staging’s double doors. “If you’ll pardon the expression.”

“What an amusing little fleabag you are.” Pendragon tossed his head and clipped toward the big wolf, only to break step as if a thought had occurred to him. “I assume you have had all your shots?”

“Kiss my bushy tail, Glue Trap,” Frieka retorted equitably. “Let’s go. Getting you plowed will take all night as it is.” The two wandered out, exchanging good-natured insults as they went.

“Awww . . . Frieka’s found a friend.” Dona grinned up at Alerio as they brought up the rear of the little parade.

“Pendragon would be a good friend to have,” the chief agreed. Ahead of them, the unlikely pair headed for the Concourse level and gods knew what exotic alcohol. “I’d love to have him on staff permanently. We could use him. I’ve put in a transfer request, but since the two previous ones were turned down, I’m not particularly optimistic.”

“Why not? I thought the European Outpost had a whole herd of cyborg horses.”

“They do. Unfortunately, Chief Tadhg hates my guts. I get the distinct impression that he knows exactly how badly I need a horseborg, so he’ll do everything in his power to keep me from getting one. He only agreed to let us borrow Pendragon this time because the situation is so dire.”

“Sounds like a case of Warlord envy.” Some TE commanders actively hated Vardonese officers, viewing them as glory hounds who stole rank and accolades from more deserving agents.

Alerio shrugged his broad shoulders. “I don’t have the evidence to make a bias complaint stick, but Tadhg does make a point of being a prick.”

“Maybe Frieka could convince Pendragon to pressure his chief for a transfer,” Dona suggested. “The fuzzball can be surprisingly persuasive for somebody with four legs and a tail. He’s certainly talked me into all kinds of things.” She grinned wickedly. “Some of which I shouldn’t have done.”

“I don’t want to know.” Alerio grinned back before his eyes narrowed with calculation. “Though you make a good point about Frieka’s powers of persuasion. I’ll com him and suggest it.”

They walked along for a moment as the chief’s expression grew distracted by his silent conversation. “Okay,” he said at last, “Frieka says he’ll work on it.”

“I’m not surprised. Frieka would love nothing better than to get a new sidekick. Especially with Nick and Riane emitting ‘choking clouds of pheromones.’”

As they stepped into a lift for the ride up to the Residence Deck, Alerio leaned his broad back against the compartment’s rear wall. He gave her a crooked smile that sent a pleasant little zing through her heart. “Would you like to have dinner? I thought we could discuss our next mission.”

Dona opened her mouth to say no, only to hesitate. He was right about the mission. “All right. Let me change out of this armor, and you’re on.” I just hope I won’t end up regretting it.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The setting sun backlit the Blue Ridge Mountains in fire. Sitting at the small dining table positioned before the room-length window, Dona listened to the hum and click of the vendser as Alerio programmed their meal. Like her, he’d dressed in duty blues, as though to remind both of them this was a working dinner. Minutes later, he put a pair of steaming, fragrant plates on the linen tablecloth. Rare beefer filets, roasted tul, and a slaw of credwan and pearlies. She smiled across the table at him as he sat. “Looks delicious.”

“With any luck it will be—though you never know with a vendser.” Alerio picked up his knife and fork and started slicing into the thick slab of beefer. “Well, it’s definitely tender. How’s the ale?”

Dona took an unwary sip and gasped at the blazing path the alcohol burned down her throat. “Delicious. It could strip the paint off a warstar,” she wheezed.

The Warlord’s teeth flashed in a white grin against the green and gold of his facial tattoo. “Good. I just got in a case of it.”

“A case?” She took a bite of the pearlies and sighed at the smoky crunch.

“Yeah. Frieka and I killed the last bottle I had.” He grinned at her over a forkful of steak. “That furball can drink. Good thing I’m a cyborg, or I’d still be hung over.”

She laughed. “Sounds like Pendragon’s in for an interesting night.”

“He’s a horse, Dona. I doubt even Frieka could drink him under the table.” He ate the bite of beefer, blinked in approval, and started cutting another.

“Never underestimate the ale-guzzling skills of a cyborg wolf.” Dona paused to enjoy her own mouthful, chewing reverently. Swallowing, she asked, “About this bounty the Xerans are offering. You do realize every asshole with a T-suit is going to be gunning for temporal tourists?”

“Now that you mention it, yeah. And you’re right, it’s going to be a problem. We can cover all the tours for a while, but sooner or later the guides are going to realize something serious is up. Judging by what Julia said, rumors have already started to circulate.” He shook his head as he took a bite, swallowed, and added, “It won’t be long before the lid blows off.”

“Yeah.” Dona stared thoughtfully out over the violet-shaded mountains. For a long moment, they were both content to eat and watch the sun sink behind the rolling horizon. “What if we set a trap?” she asked suddenly.

“For whom? The Xerans have a lot more priests than the Outpost has Enforcers. Now, if all we were talking about was Ivar, that we could do. Unfortunately, our real problem is the Victor. How the hell do you trap a god?”

“Well . . .” Dona considered the problem as she ate. “We know the Victor wants the T’Lir pretty damned bad. And Wyatt almost killed him with it six months ago. What if we got Nick another shot?”

“I don’t think the Victor will be that easy to sucker again.” Alerio frowned thoughtfully. “He’s crazy, not stupid. Besides, what if he got away with the bait? I don’t think I want to risk handing the Victor that kind of power. He’s dangerous enough as is.”

Dona glanced up from her beefer. “That’s the gods’ own truth. First thing he’d do is declare war on the Galactic Union. If he could use the T’Lir to actually win, he’d demand we all worship him—and he doesn’t take ‘no’ well. When the Xerans invaded Arania, they tried to convert every town they took, and killed every colonist who refused.”

“Did the same thing on Vardon.” Swirling the ale in his glass with slow circles of one big hand, Alerio gazed broodingly into its depths. “I was only five when they invaded, but I remember the killing. I was almost one of their victims more than once, even before I became a compcracker.” He threw back a swallow of the ale as if it were water. “They didn’t much like Warkin children. And we didn’t much like them.”

Dona stared at him, feeling a sudden kinship with Alerio she’d never suspected. He stared back until she cleared her throat and looked away. “That kind of thing does tend to stick with you. Especially if you’re a child.”

Alerio picked up the bottle of ale and held it out toward her in offering. When she nodded, he topped off her glass. “So. The Xerans will try to convert the worlds of the Galactic Union if they can. And they’ll get really pissy with anyone who says no.”

“A lot of people will end up dead. There’s way too much riding on this, Chief. We’ve got to stop the bastards, or it’s all going to hell.” She frowned and took a burning sip. “What about the government? They could . . .”

“Yeah, they could. But they won’t. I’ve been exchanging courier bots with Colonel Ceres for months. They seem to think if they ignore the Victor long enough, he’ll go away.”

“Yeah, ‘Gutless’ is basically their mission statement. Meanwhile, Ivar’s running around butchering innocents with psychotic abandon.” Dona plunked her chin on her palm and brooded as the woods went dark beyond the window. “Bastards. Stupid, stupid bastards. Nothing ever changes. Ever.”

Alerio frowned, looking into her eyes.

So I’m drunk, she thought rebelliously. And depressed. I’ve got plenty of reason to be both.

After a moment’s hesitation, he rose from his seat and walked around the table. Extending a hand to her, he said, “Come on, Dona. Join me.”

Somewhat to her own surprise, she put her hand in his and let him pull her to her feet. She followed him to the couch knowing very well she was making a mistake. Probably the ale, she decided, as the floor dipped under her boots. A smart woman would leave. She sat down anyway. What the hell. I’ve never been particularly smart.

Sliding an arm around her shoulders, Alerio drew her against his side. “Fuck Ivar.”

She laughed, and heard more than a little boozy bitterness in the sound. “I did. That’s the problem.”

“Look, Ivar is an arrogant little prick. But he’s also sloppy, and he’s definitely not as smart as he thinks he is. Sooner or later, he’s going to screw up. And I promise you this: before we throw his cyborg ass in the nearest penal colony, I will personally beat the shit out of him. Just on general principles.”

Dona found herself settling into his warm hold. “That works—as long as you let me get a couple of shots in. I owe that bastard for blindsiding me.”

Alerio smiled down at her. “It’s a deal.” His arm felt entirely too strong and warm around her shoulders, his big body hard with tight muscle and redolent with the scent of aroused male. Her head buzzed pleasantly. Gods, how Ivar would rage to see me cuddling with Alerio Dyami.

And who gives a fuck what Ivar would think? He’s history, and you can’t change history. Alerio is now.

Okay, definitely drunk. But fuck it, Dona decided with a sudden euphoric recklessness. I’m tired of tiptoeing around my fears. Alerio is not Kavel, and he’s sure as shit not Ivar. I want him—I’ve always wanted him. If I’d had the guts to go after him to start with, I wouldn’t have gotten screwed by Ivar. In the worst possible sense of the word.

She’d spent two years giving in to her fears, and that wasn’t like her. It’s time I act like a warrior instead of a victim.

Turning to face Alerio, Dona rose to her knees on the couch. He glanced up, surprised, and she took his mouth with greedy heat.

Gods, he’s delicious. Tasting of Vardonese ale and masculine heat, his lips felt incredibly soft as they parted under the pressure of hers. His tongue met hers in a spiraling mutual stroke. One big palm cupped her face, fingers brushing back and forth over her cheek as they kissed. Deep, lazy. She heard herself moan.

Suddenly greedy, Dona flung a leg across his lap and settled astride him. He instantly went hard under her ass, and she purred into his mouth. The hand stroking her face sank into her hair and fisted, drawing her even deeper into the kiss.

By the time they broke apart to breathe, Alerio’s eyes burned in full Warlord blaze. “Sweet Goddess, I want you,” he said in a hoarse rumble. “I’ve wanted you for two empty years. I’d watch you endure that psychotic bastard, watch him treat you like shit, and it drove me insane.”

“I know,” Dona told him, aching for the loneliness she could almost feel in him. A yearning so strong she could see it even through the glow. “I’m sorry.” I should have been braver.

“Why did you put up with Ivar’s crap? You could have filed a complaint. I would have stopped him. I itched to stop him.”

“I was afraid.” Shame heated her cheeks, but she didn’t let her gaze drop. Didn’t let herself take the easy way out. “I didn’t think I deserved any better. And he was so subtle—all those stinging little barbs. I wondered if I was being oversensitive.”

“You weren’t,” Alerio growled. “Ivar was a prick. I’m just glad we finally got the treasonous asshole out of your life.” Stroking her jawline with his thumb, he stared into her face, his expression brooding. “And I’m going to make him pay for everything he’s done. To you. To that poor guide he raped and murdered. To Jessica Arvid.” Galar’s wife had survived Ivar’s murder attempt only by using Sela psychic powers she hadn’t even known she had. The chief’s glowing eyes narrowed as his face hardened. “That bastard is going to wish he’d never drawn breath. On my honor as a Warlord.”

“You don’t have to swear an oath to me. I know you.” Dona sighed. “I just wish things were different. Wish I didn’t have the shitty history I have . . .”

“History’s the one thing you can’t change, Dona. It doesn’t have to keep us apart if you don’t want it to.” Alerio cupped one breast through her uniform top. His thumb flicked back and forth over one nipple. The sensation was so hot, so delicious, she sucked in a breath. “Do you want things to be different? Between you and me, if nothing else.”

“Gods, yes. I want you. That I do know.”

He smiled in one of those heart-stopping grins. “And I want you naked. Now.”

Hot arousal flooded her sex as she grinned back in delight. “All right.”

They undressed each other with impatient hands, stripping off duty pants, shirts, jerking down briefs, and tossing aside socks and boots.

When Alerio settled back on the couch again, he was extravagantly naked, his chest wide and brawny, his legs long, muscle working along them. His cock stood thick and proud above the furry weight of his balls.

Dona was just as bare, laughing as she climbed back into his lap, trapping his shaft beneath her butt. “Gods, your cock feels incredible.” So hard, yet covered in skin like hot velvet. She gasped, and let her eyes close. Enjoying the warmth of his skin against hers, all that hard strength contrasting with soft body hair.

Alerio’s mouth closed over a nipple and sucked in a demanding pull. Her eyes popped open and she exhaled, shuddering as pulses of pleasure stabbed from the rose tip, flashing to her brain and swelling cunt. Caressing the other breast, he tugged its budded nipple, sending waves of keen sensation rolling through her with every hard beat of her heart.

Yet there was something she had to tell him. Now, despite the rising tide of blinding pleasure. Now, before they went any further. She caught his head in her palms and stared down into his eyes. Willing him to listen. “I’m not a victim, Alerio. And you’re not going to treat me like one.”

“I’ve never thought of you as a victim.” His stroking hand stilled as his expression hardened. But when she tensed, his gaze softened. “And I would never hurt you, Dona. Will never. On my honor as a Warlord.”

That was not an oath his people took lightly. If he said he wouldn’t hurt her, he wouldn’t. Period. Which is why it shook her to the core. “I believe you, Alerio.” Deep within her, something scarred and vulnerable began to unwind from its tight, defensive ball.

“How about this one, then?” He caught her around the waist and tumbled her down on the couch. “I’ve never wanted another woman the way I want you.” Stretching out on top of her, he claimed her mouth in fierce demand as he settled over her like a cloak of solid male muscle.

Sighing into his mouth, Dona relaxed into boneless surrender, stroking the powerful tendons and muscles of his body, fingertips savoring their smoothly working contours. Her free hand slid around his thick rib cage to caress his back, drifting down his spine to grip his powerful ass. “Mmmm,” she purred, enjoying the banquet of sensation that was Alerio Dyami. “You feel incredible.”

“Thank you.” Alerio grinned in a white flash of teeth, his glowing eyes watching her nipples dance on the rise of her breasts. “I can definitely return the compliment. Gods, your skin is soft. Like silk and fur and rose petals.” He laughed softly. “Well, I never claimed to be a poet.”

“Hey, I’m not complaining. Though if you’d like to . . .” Before she could finish the sentence he slid down and covered a nipple with his hot, wet mouth. Dona gasped at the darts of heat, squirming as he teased with stunning skill. “Have I mentioned . . . you have a very, very nice mouth. And tongue. And hands . . .”

Alerio looked up to grin. “Why, thank you.” Bending down again, he suckled a nipple back into his mouth. Dona tasted delicious, smelled even better, and felt nothing short of amazing. Gently, carefully, he scraped his teeth over the nubbin and listened to her moan of delight.

“Ohhh, that feels so niiice.”

“Just what I was thinking.” He laved her nipple with a swirling lap of his tongue.

She arched, catlike, sleek and soft and warm. Her legs parted. Alerio caught his breath as she slid a long, lean leg up the length of his to hook a graceful calf over his ass.

His cock twitched, trapped between her belly and his. Soft flesh teased its shaft until it jerked in hungry longing. Dona moaned again, so softly. Like a plea. The sound sent a bolt of erotic hunger through his brain as he inhaled the rich scent of her arousal: rich with such erotic promise that his mouth went dry.

“Goddess Mother, I want you,” Alerio whispered against her breast.

Her fingers curved into claws and dug into his broad back. “Yes. Oh, yes . . .”

Goaded, he released her nipple and began to string a nibbling path down her body. Biting here, licking there, swirling designs with his tongue until she squirmed and sighed. Silken legs stroked up and down his hairy thighs as her nails dug into his back, raking just hard enough to make his blood race hotter.

He started alternating nips and tiny, careful bites as he worked down her torso, stopping to lap her belly button and nibble until she giggled, squirming. Satisfied—well, not yet, but soon—he slid between her long runner’s legs. She spread them eagerly wide and dug her nails in his shoulders. He growled at the tiny, delightful sting and kept sliding.

Until he could see the plump lips of her sex, covered in a neatly trimmed triangle of dark hair that was soft as a kitten’s fur. He could smell her arousal, and his mouth flooded with saliva. Parting her nether lips with his thumbs, he admired the slick red petals shimmering under a coat of erotic cream. He groaned in anticipation and leaned down to taste. Salt and woman, and greedy arousal. Just wait, he told her lower lips. I’m a long way from done with you.

Dona ground her head back into the couch cushions as Alerio lapped in greedy strokes, pausing to probe or swirl or thrust. Fingers, tongue—he had equal skill with both. Pleasure pulsed through her body, making her feel more drunk than the ale had. “Gods, Alerio,” she gasped, writhing. “Your tongue . . .”

He paused halfway through a figure-eight pattern around her clit. “What about it?”

“What about what?” She sounded pleasure-stunned even to herself.

“You were saying something about my tongue.” He gave her another flickering stroke with its tip.

“It’s demonic.” She arched her back, grinding shamelessly against his face. “You’re demonic . . . making me so hot.”

“Should I stop?”

She dug in her nails. “Only if you want me to kill you.”

“We can’t have that.” He went back to teasing her, but now he worked his fingers into her cunt, pressing them deep, parting them in scissoring thrusts. Delicately ruthless and utterly irresistible.

Dona squirmed, hips pumping helplessly. Her panting moans sounded so nakedly erotic, Alerio’s cock bucked. Almost ready. He drew back to slide an index finger into her depths. Tight muscles gripped the digit.

“Goddess, you’re delicious,” Alerio rasped, imagining the sensations awaiting his aching cock. “And incredibly wet.”

“So when are you going to do something about it?” Dona growled, sounding just as impatient as he felt.

“Now.” He pushed up on hands and knees, then crawled up her body to settle into the arms she opened wide for him. “Right. Now.”

Alerio planted one hand on the pallet and used the other to position his cock at the opening of her sex. His first thrust made him freeze, afraid he’d come too early. She was just so incredible, slick, swollen tight as her inner muscles clamped down on his cock. Delight flared across his consciousness in an exquisite starburst.

“Oh gods, Alerio!” Drawing up her knees, she wrapped her legs around his waist, using the leverage to grind up to meet his stroking cock.

He breathed in desperate pants as the pleasure built and built even more. Dona ground up at him in an eloquent demand for more. More heat. More friction. More shimmering pleasure.

He fucked harder, pumping into the cradle of her body, watching her face with absorbed fascination as he gauged her pleasure and fought his own. Waiting for his moment, the moment.

He saw it arrive when her face went slack with what could have been pain or pleasure. Sliding a hand between them, Alerio thumbed the jutting button of her clit, circling it as he rode her with deep thrusts. Fending his own orgasm off with sheer will and concentration.

Dona gasped as inner muscles suddenly clamped tight in the first deep pulses of orgasm. He growled back, teeth grinding as he fought to give her the time to peak. He circled his hips to corkscrew his way deep, rolled his thumb over the tiny erection of her clit.

And watched her fly. She screamed, her body lashing against his, inner muscles tightening and releasing, tightening and releasing. Something about that sound made him buck against her and come, pulses shooting into her depths. Refusing to fight the shaking delight. She screamed, teeth gritted, writhing beneath him as he lost it and roared, shooting up into the blazing heights . . .

The final rolling spasms faded. With a spent groan, Alerio collapsed over her, panting and hot and so incredibly male. Catching her around the waist, he rolled onto his back, pulling her tight against his side.

Dona blew out a shuddering breath, one arm curving across his chest while easing a possessive leg over both of his.

For the first time in far, far too long, she felt at peace.

Pleasantly exhausted, they lay wrapped around each other, heartbeats slowing with their slowing breath, bodies still buzzing in the aftermath of their shared climax. Dona rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, breathing in his musky spice as she savored the taste of him lingering on her tongue. Ale and salt and distilled Alerio. The lighting dimmed, probably responding to a command from his neurocomp. Full darkness settled in around them, warm and comforting after the violence of their pleasure.

“I really should go back to my quarters,” Dona murmured against his shoulder.

“You really shouldn’t,” Alerio corrected, without opening his eyes.

She started to pull away, then groaned and gave up. “I can’t move.”

“Then don’t.” He opened his eyes and gave her a sleepy grin. “Please.”

So she nestled deeper into his arms and relaxed at last. Feeling, despite everything, that they were both precisely where they ought to be. Smiling into his sweat-damp shoulder, Dona drifted off to sleep.

Dona slipped through the darkness like a ghost, her R-34 tachyon rifle slung across her back. She glanced down and discovered she was wearing Aranian combat armor. Its stealth field was activated, projecting a pattern of leaves and dirt that slid across her body until it seemed she wasn’t there at all.

A child whimpered in pain.

Dona froze in mid-stride. Five years of war had hardened her, but a child’s pain always had the power to punch through her protective numbness.

She’d been a child, too, when she went to war. A cyborg child, but a child nonetheless. She, too, had once cried in the dark, knowing no one gave a damn.

I’m coming, Dona thought and strode silently in the direction of the cry with a combat ’borg’s smooth, liquid strength. I’m listening. I heard you, and I’m coming.

Nobody had ever listened to her.

Grunts. A rhythmic slapping that was all too recognizable. The child’s voice grew louder, building toward a scream. It cut off when a hand hit flesh in a brutal slap. A male voice snarled a curse.

Dona’s stride lengthened. Oh, now you’re dead, you son of a bitch.

Sobbing. Pitifully, painfully muffled, as if the child cried into her arm. Silently, Dona began to run.

She found them lying across the trail. A Xeran, judging by the ring of horns glinting on the man’s head. The pants of his armor hung over a nearby bush. He’d pinned the girl beneath him, her dirty shirt hiked up, trousers tossed aside. She whimpered again, the sound soft and hopeless with despair. She looked so tiny, especially compared to his meaty heft.

Gods, Dona thought, for a moment stunned motionless. How old is that child?

And how did she get all the way out here to become this Xeran bastard’s prey?

Based on skeletal maturity, she is approximately twelve, the neurocomp said. As to how he captured her, there is no way to tell. However, there is a village a kilometer farther along the trail. It is the closest habitation, so I calculate there is an eighty-five percent probability it is her home.

Dona could guess what had happened far too easily, though she couldn’t guess the details any more than the comp could.

The so-called priest, lurking just beyond the town’s perimeter, perhaps reconnoitering. Planning an attack. Spotting the girl as she left the village, gods knew why. And the Xeran . . . Sickened, she cut the thought off.

Standing over them, Dona began to tremble as a storm of fury hit her without warning. She started to grab the tachyon rifle slung across her back, bring it around . . .

She stopped. At this range, the blast would go right through him, killing the child Dona wanted so desperately to save.

One hand fell to the combat blade on her belt. She drew it, the oiled steel sliding silently from its sheath. She didn’t intend to use it, but something unforeseen could always happen. Better to be prepared.

Clenching the other hand, Dona silently called up the code knife. Letting her eyes slide out of focus, she searched for the flaw she’d discovered in the Xerans’ firewalls. She’d discovered the tiny flaw in their neurocomps two years before. Every one of the hornheads had it.

The Xeran’s plunging hips stopped. Dona was so focused on cracking his comp, she didn’t react in time when the priest jerked out of the girl, leaped to his feet, and spun toward Dona, face twisted in frustrated rage. “You stupid Aranian whore,” he snarled. “I’m going to take that knife and ram it into your . . .”

She almost heard the mental click as she broke through.

Dona lunged, driving the code blade into the Xeran’s forehead as if it was a physical weapon. The code punched through the priest’s defenses to inject its virus payload into his implant. It froze him as though he’d been cast from plastium, mouth still open to spew more filth.

Dona drove her combat knife into the bastard’s chest all the way to the guard. He reeled back, falling flat on the trail like an axed sapling. His body convulsed beside the cowering child who’d been his victim. Dirt smeared the small, elfin face, eyes swollen almost closed from weeping. Bruises distorted her features, and her nose was broken above bloody lips.

Dona wanted to stab him again. Kill him over and over. Cut him into chunks and scatter them from one end of this jungle for the wild dogs.

But the girl was staring at the knife, her eyes huge, not moving. Barely even breathing. Making Dona feel like a monster. “Look, I . . .”

“Don’t kill me!” The child snapped into a protective ball, one arm wrapped around her bloody, naked torso, the other around the head she’d tucked into her chest, eyes squeezed shut.

Dona knew that pose. She’d once held it herself.

She swallowed. The smell of the Xeran’s blood suddenly made her stomach heave, though she’d long since grown used to that.

Plop. Plop. Plop. A slow, steady patter on the leaves next to her feet. Dona looked down. The combat knife she held was dripping. She opened her fingers and let the knife fall.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said softly, but the shaking child only curled into a tighter ball. “Look, I just want to take you back to your village.”

The kid’s eyes squeezed shut as she wailed, “Don’t hurt me!”

“I won’t. I wouldn’t. Not ever.” Dona’s voice dropped, shaking. “I was a little girl once.”

A long, terrified pause. “He hurt me.”

“I know.”

“Is he dead?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” A sniffle. “I’m glad. I’m glad you killed him.” Another sniffle, this one somehow defiant. “He was evil. He deserved it.”

“Yeah, he was evil. And yeah, he deserved it.” Crouching, Dona picked up the child’s pants and offered them. The girl hesitated a long moment, one swollen eye staring up into Dona’s face. At least she’d stopped crying.

Finally Dona put the pants down and backed away. The girl snatched them up and jerked them on, then dragged her shirt down where it belonged. When she was finally covered again, Dona extended a hand. The child shrank away. “I’m sorry I scared you. Look, let’s just . . . go.”

The doubt in those enormous eyes hurt worse than taking a blade herself. Dona gestured down the path. “Your village is that way. Don’t you want to go home?”

The child snuffled and scrubbed a dirt-smeared hand across her runny nose. “I . . . guess.”

Dona forced a smile. When the kid flinched, she realized her face was probably covered in blood splatter. With a mental sigh, she started up the path toward the village. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

She didn’t turn around, but after a pause, she heard the crunch of small feet walking through the leaves in her wake.

“Caroleen?” A male voice cried in the distance. “Caroleen? Caroleen, where are you?!”

“Papa!” The girl darted past Dona, racing down the trail like a startled thing. Dona followed at a slow jog, wanting to make sure she made it back to her father.

“Caroleen!” The voice came closer. He was running.

“Papa! I’m here, Papa! I’m here!”

Dona stopped to watch her vanish around a cluster of crownferns. “Papa!”

“Caroleen! Oh, gods, what happened?”

Hysterical sobs followed, along with a frantic spill of words. “I went looking for Mr. Whiskers because he was lost, and I couldn’t find him anywhere, and I looked and looked, but . . .”

“Damned cat,” Papa muttered. “Where have you been, girl?”

“A hornhead grabbed me! He hurt me, Papa!”

Her father gasped as if he’d just taken a mortal wound. Dona winced.

Incoherent murmurs, soothing whispers.

The next words sounded quite clear. “But then the ’borg lady came, and she killed him! She killed him dead, Papa!”

Dona turned and walked back into the jungle to look for her knife.

The dream shifted, wrenching into another place, another time.

Dona strode through the Aranian compound, headed for her own tent at last, wanting only to forget the night in sleep.

A group of soldiers staggered out of the Enlisted Club, half-supporting each other, laughing. Drunk.

“Gods!” one of them said, peering at her. She could almost see the haze of alcohol fumes wreathing the woman’s head. “That girl’s got blood all over her. Is she hurt? Shouldn’t we . . .”

“Naw. That’s Kavel’s Killer, dumbass,” one of the others interrupted. “She always comes back wearing somebody else’s blood.”

“That’s Astryr? Shit! I thought she’d be taller.”

Then the dream jumped again, and she stood in the shadow of a tent, a soothing pool of darkness. She knew the darkness, and it knew her.

A soft, high voice began to whimper to the sound of flesh smacking on flesh . . .

“Bastard!”

The scream of rage jolted Alerio awake to see Dona roll off the couch, bare feet thumping to the floor. He hit the deck an instant after she did, scanning for whatever threatened her. But there was nothing there.

Yet she stared around at his quarters with a snarl twisting her face, her body coiled to fight.

She’s asleep.

Sleepwalking, his neurocomp confirmed. It would be best not to touch her. Doing so would only increase her disorientation.

“It’s all right, Dona,” he murmured soothingly, keeping his distance as his comp ordered the room’s illumination increased to full. “You’re in my quarters. Everything’s all right.”

Dona blinked. Awareness returned to her violet eyes as she stared at him in bewilderment. “Alerio?”

“That’s right. It’s me.” He held out his arms and waited.

She paused, before throwing herself into them. Her arms wrapped around him with desperate strength. “Gods and demons, that was a bitch of a dream.”

“Ivar?” Alerio stroked her back.

She laughed, but it sounded more like a sob. “He’s only my latest boogeyman, Alerio. I’ve got a whole collection to choose from.” Dona pulled free. Despite his inclination to draw her tight again, he let her go. “Most of ’em are Xeran. I killed a lot of Xerans.” Her delicate face hardened. “And every one of them deserved it.”

He paused, remembering her file. “That was when you were with the Aranian military?”

“Yeah.” Dona glanced around, spotted her T-suit top and snatched it up. “I’d better go.”

He already missed her warmth. “I like having you in my arms, Dona. Stay.”

She looked at him in pain and longing before she jerked her uniform top over her head and started searching for her pants. “I need to be alone right now. That dream . . .” She broke off. “It’s better if I go.”

“All right.” Trying to stop her would be a really bad idea, Alerio told himself, though the haunted look on her face made his chest ache.

Dona sat down on the couch to drag on her pants and stomp her feet into her boots. Without another word, she rose and headed for the door.

When Alerio stepped into her path and leaned down for a kiss, she dodged without looking at him. “I’ll com you in the morning.”

His big hands fell to his sides. “All right.” Feeling helpless, Alerio watched her escape from his quarters like a woman fleeing a potentially fatal mistake.

Have I lost her again? Did I ever have her to begin with?

Alerio went back to bed and tried to sleep. After a fruitless half hour staring at the ceiling, he gave up and rolled out of bed. His comp could put him to sleep in seconds, but too many problems nagged him. If he didn’t solve at least one of them, he knew he’d only end up wrestling them all in his dreams.

Naked, he dropped into his chair and palmed the top of his desk. Instantly, a glowing grid sprang into place above its smooth obsidian surface. Alerio reached in and drew out a three-dimensional golden box.

Dona’s dossier.

He leaned back and stared at it. He’d last read the file—or at least most of it—two years ago, when Dona was first assigned to the Outpost. She’d only just graduated from the TE academy, having requested to become an Enforcer after a decade with the Aranian military.

He’d approved the request, of course. She had an impressive list of qualifications, including combat skills and a dazzling collection of military decorations for bravery in some very ugly operations.

She could also hit any target with any weapon, and her hand-to-hand combat skills made even Alerio raise an eyebrow. Arania didn’t have a great reputation when it came to producing combat ’borgs, but Dona had upgraded her tech at her own expense before attending the academy. During her four years there, she’d amassed a respectable file of glowing recommendations.

But there was one section of her dossier he’d never read: the complete psychological report prepared by one of the staff psychiatrists at TE Headquarters.

He’d read Dr. Pjam’s medical conclusion about Dona’s mental health, but the rest of the file was under a privacy block. Her conclusion said Dona was intelligent and mentally stable, with strong interpersonal skills and a keen understanding of the motivations of others. But there was one offhand line that had nagged at Alerio for years.

“Despite whatever challenges Dona Astryr encountered as a child and a teen, I believe she will make a skilled and capable Enforcer.”

“Despite whatever challenges”? Now, what the hell did that mean?

Though his curiosity had been piqued, Alerio had no reason to probe deeper. He could have cracked the privacy block and read the file anyway; he’d spent his boyhood compcracking Xeran cyborgs and dodging homicidal priests. He’d left the rest of the file alone because reading it would be a violation of Dona’s privacy.

Two years later, he still felt that way.

Thing was, Dona’s behavior since then—such as putting up with Ivar’s abuse—suggested that whatever childhood trauma she’d suffered was still a problem now. If he had a better idea of just what had happened to her, maybe he’d be able to help her resolve the issue.

Alerio frowned, eyeing the three-dimensional file box icon as it floated above the desk. Am I rationalizing a lover’s curiosity? It was possible, but his gut insisted there was something in that file he needed to know.

Even if he had to invade Dona’s privacy to do it.

She was going to be seriously pissed off when she found out what he’d done. And she would find out, because he would have to tell her. Otherwise, it really would be a betrayal.

A cold ache in his heart told him what he was considering could destroy any hope of a relationship they had. Yet something had gone badly wrong in Dona’s childhood that was still throwing a shadow over her life today. Unless he found out what it was, they had no chance.

Which may be beefershit, he thought grimly. But one way or another, I’m about to find out.

Taking a deep breath, Alerio went to work cracking the privacy block.

The block shattered in five-point-three minutes. “Must be losing my touch,” Alerio grumbled as he tapped the first image, activating it.

Dr. Javen Pjam had skin the smooth honey brown of caramel. Her coloring made her jade green eyes even more startling. They matched the spun-gold hair that reminded Alerio of a Spanish doubloon he’d once seen. Her medical robes were cut like a kimono, the elegant fabric a rich bronze swirled with green and gold.

She studied a younger Dona across the width of a massive teak desk, her gaze probing. Dona looked oddly informal dressed in a dark brown civilian tunic and trousers. Her hair was cropped to shoulder length. “So your parents were gene-gineers?” Pjam asked.

Dona nodded. If she felt any nervousness at the power the doctor had over her future, it didn’t show. “Yes. They specialized in gene-gineering children for the wealthy. I gather they made a very good living at it.”

The doctor made a note on her desktop with a stylus that matched her eyes. “I’d imagine your sisters’ respective careers helped them attract business.”

Alerio drummed his fingers on his desk as he searched his memory of Dona’s background dossier. One sister had been a six-time gold medal winner in anti-grav gymnastics at the GU Olympics. The middle sister was a trid actress who’d been famous from the age of five.

Dona nodded, expressionless. “My parents were very proud of them.”

The doctor looked up. “They ‘were’? You mean they’re not anymore?”

She shrugged. “I’m sure they still are, but I haven’t spoken to any of them in eighteen years.”

Pjam blinked, visibly startled. “Since you were eight?”

“Right.”

She looked down at her desk. Alerio suspected she was giving herself time to think. “You were six when your zero-grav dance teacher told them that though you were technically proficient, you had no talent for the artistic aspect of dance.”

“I didn’t.” If the judgment stung, it didn’t show.

“And whose fault was that?”

“My parents argued about that. Who was supposed to alter whatever gene it was, and hadn’t. Who was responsible.”

“They didn’t blame you?” The doctor lifted a shining blond brow.

“Why should they? I didn’t gene-gineer myself.”

“Ah. No, I don’t suppose you did.” Pjam scribbled a few more notes. “How did they react to learning about the . . . problem?”

“I was born to be a marketing tool, and I was worthless.” Oddly, she didn’t sound angry. If Alerio hadn’t known better, he’d have thought she was talking about someone else. “Worse than that, really. I was evidence they could fail. Not the kind of kid you wanted hanging around.”

“That must have been painful.”

“It’s been twenty years. All that stuff doesn’t really matter to me anymore.”

The doctor gave her a skeptical stare. Alerio didn’t think he believed her either. He was beginning to understand why Dona tolerated Ivar’s abuse. Apparently, she’d rarely known anything else.

“Why did your parents decide to send you to the Aranian academy?”

“I had the intelligence, the physical strength, the agility, and the discipline. And at the time, the government paid families a quarter of a million galactors to let them implant a child with tech and send him to the ’borg academy.” You had to implant the biocrystal net when kids were young, before their brains matured. Otherwise their bodies would reject it.

“A quarter of a million is a lot of money,” Pjam observed.

“Well, it’s not an easy process, and it wasn’t particularly safe. Especially given the quality of Aranian tech at the time. Kids suffered hallucinations and a host of physical side effects. You had officer candidates dropping from heart attacks and tech rejection strokes at the age of ten.”

Pjam looked appalled. “And your parents let the government do that to you, knowing all that?”

“I have no idea whether they knew it or not, but I’d assume they did. It was common knowledge, which was why the government was so desperate for implant candidates. They had a hard time getting parents to agree.”

“Yours did. How did that make you feel?”

Dona jerked one shoulder in a half-shrug. “We were at war. I was needed. And they had to do something with me.”

“You were eight. Most parents don’t require their children to turn a profit before the age of ten.”

“Most parents aren’t genetic engineers.”

“Actually, I know a great many genetic engineers, none of whom sell their children like poverty-stricken Mithran peasants.” The doctor sighed. “Never mind. What was the academy like?”

Her expression eased slightly. She almost smiled. “I learned a great deal.”

“Yes, I’d imagine becoming a government assassin would require mastery of all kinds of skills.”

Dona gave the doctor a long, cold look that barely missed contemptuous. “We were at war, Doctor. And the Xerans were trying to steal our lisium mines, the only thing Arania had that was of any value.” She curled a lip. “And that wasn’t even their worst habit. Not by a long shot.”

Well, I can definitely agree with that sentiment, Alerio thought, remembering life as a very young Warkin child under the Xeran occupation.

“The Xerans do have an ugly reputation,” the doctor agreed. “Did you hate them?”

“I didn’t feel guilt over killing them, if that’s what you mean.” Dona stared absently out the office window, watching flitter lights swoop over the capital in the dark. “And at least I was somebody.”

“And who was that?”

“Kavel’s Killer.” Something flickered across her face, there and gone so fast, Alerio wasn’t positive what emotion he’d seen.

“What was your relationship with the colonel like?”

There was that emotion again. This time Alerio was fairly sure it was pain, or perhaps anger. Or possibly both. “He gave me things I didn’t even know I needed.”

“So it was a good relationship?”

“I thought so at the time.”

“But not now?”

Dona turned to study the doctor, irritation flashing through her cool violet gaze. “I can’t tell whether you’re asking these questions to see what I’ll say, or whether you genuinely don’t know the answer.”

The woman sat back in her seat in a rustle of bronze silk. “Assume I don’t know the answer. Then you’re safe either way.”

“Fine.” Dona gave her a jerky nod.

When she said nothing more, Pjam raised a blond brow and pushed. “So was it a good relationship?”

“He was my lover.”

The doctor looked down at the desktop, nodding. “When did that start?”

“A couple of weeks after I arrived at the base.”

The doctor frowned. So did Alerio; they were probably doing the same math. “I thought you were fifteen when you were sent to help defend the mines.”

“I was.”

The psychiatrist looked so shocked, Dona evidently decided to elaborate. “The war was going poorly, so headquarters decided to throw all available personnel at the problem. They gave me a few tests and concluded I had the emotional maturity to handle combat at that age.”

“So I understand. I also understand that commanding officer raped you.”

Like Dona, Alerio had assumed Pjam knew far more than her apparent lack of a therapeutic poker face would suggest. But judging from her obvious shock now, he decided she’d really had no clue.

But then, neither had he. He felt sick.

Alerio tapped the desktop, stopping the vid file as he fought to control the white-hot fury steaming through his blood.

Jolting to his feet, he heaved his desk chair up and threw it at the room-length window. The plastium screen bonged like a great bell. It didn’t crack, having been designed to withstand fire from a tachyon cannon battery.

The chair fell on its side, looking a bit warped. Alerio stalked over, pulled it upright, and straightened one badly bent tritrium-cored arm. Carrying the chair back to his desk, he dropped it into place and sat down again. He tapped the file to resume play.

“I was flattered,” Dona said in a low voice. Shame flickered in her eyes, and Alerio ground his teeth. He didn’t get up to throw his chair again, but he came close.

“The colonel gave me the approval I never got from anyone else,” she said softly. “And after the first few times, the sex really wasn’t all that bad.”

Alerio stared at the playback. I never thought I’d say this, but Ivar Terje must have seemed like a fucking improvement.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Did you realize Colonel Kavel was an abuser, Dona?” Dr. Pjam asked.

The cyborg raised her chin, defiant. “I was young, not stupid.”

“I never thought you were.”

“Yes, well, your question implied otherwise.” She rose and strode to the window, staring out at the night beyond. “I told myself he loved me. He certainly said as much often enough.”

Turning away, Dona began to pace. “For the next five years, I was . . . happy. I’d never really been happy before, not even when I lived at my parents’ home. Even then, I’d had expectations to live up to.” She grimaced. “Or to fail to live up to.”

“And Kavel didn’t expect anything from you?” There was a note of contempt in the doctor’s voice. Dona looked up sharply, and Alerio realized she thought Pjam’s anger was aimed at her. Instead of that evil fucker Kavel.

“No.” The cyborg paused, her mouth curling into a smile that was just a little twisted. “Well, yes, come to think of it. He wanted me to stay fifteen forever, but I couldn’t seem to pull it off.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“No. But I gathered as much when a sixteen-year-old was assigned to the base. He made her his personal clerk.” Dona’s smile was cool and bitter. “I’d just turned twenty.”

“I’m sorry.” To do the doctor credit, she seemed to mean it.

A muscle rolled in Dona’s jaw as if she was grinding her teeth. “I didn’t much enjoy being bitterly jealous of a teenage kid who wasn’t even remotely the fighter I was.”

The doctor watched her, sympathy in her rich jade eyes. “Humiliating.”

“Intensely. But for the first time, I began to see I’d been manipulated. It became obvious when I heard him say the same things to the new recruit that he’d once said to me. But even then, I didn’t understand the situation.” Rage flashed through her eyes, burning in the violet like a storm. “Not really.”

“Didn’t you report it?” Pjam’s knuckles had gone white around her stylus.

“Yes, when it finally hit me what he’d really done.” She sat down and crossed her booted feet, studying the toes as if she’d never seen them before. “I was on my way back from a mission when I found a Xeran priest raping a twelve-year-old colonist. I killed him and rescued her.”

“She must have been so grateful.”

Dona shot the doctor a look. “She was fucking terrified of me. I took her back to her father and returned to the base. And found Kaven and the girl . . .”

“Oh.”

“That’s when I knew he was a monster.”

“I’m sorry.” Pjam sounded as if she really meant it. Alerio found himself thinking a little better of her for that.

“I reported him to Aranian central headquarters. He claimed I was a jealous psychotic bitch who had made up vicious lies to smear his reputation out of a craving for revenge.” Again, she sounded so icily controlled, Alerio ached for her.

“Surely they didn’t believe that? But your record . . .”

“. . . Meant nothing. He had plenty of witnesses willing to provide him with an alibi. I’ve got a feeling some of the officers who served with him suspected what he was doing with all those young interns. Nobody did anything because he was a military hero.”

“A hero?” Pjam looked incredulous.

Dona spread her hands. “I don’t know. There was something about rushing into one of the lisium mines to prevent a Xeran saboteur from blowing it up. He saved half a billion galactors’ worth of lisium. The government gave him a medal.”

Which explained a great deal. Lisium was a key component in low-cost tachyon field generators. Without the mineral and the weaponry it made possible, the Galactic Union would be easy prey for the Xerans. Which was why Xer had tried to conquer Arania.

“So nobody believed you?”

“I was Kavel’s Killer, doctor. A sniper and assassin. Not exactly an ideal witness.”

“You were also his victim,” Pjam said hotly. “A victim with a computer implant. All they had to do was check your neurocomp’s account of the incidents, and they’d have known you were telling the truth.”

Dona dropped back into her chair to sprawl with boneless grace. “Except it’s not unknown for ’borgs to use their comps to plant false memories in their own brains.”

“True, but a decent forensic hacker can prove a fake like that without even breaking a sweat.”

“Yeah, assuming the brass brings one in, rather than just assuming the accuser is lying.”

“But . . .”

“Kavel had a lot of friends,” Dona told her, almost gently. “And I didn’t have any at all.”

“So you’re telling me he got away with it,” the doctor snapped hotly. “He’s still out there, abusing other children?”

A faint, cold smile lit Dona’s face. “No. Headquarters didn’t take action against him, but the Xerans did.”

The doctor stared at her, eyes widening. “The . . . Xerans did?”

“It was a war. People get killed in wars.”

“So I’m told.”

“He’d left the base one night, headed to a meeting with the parents of a young girl. I’m told he was planning to make her his intern.”

“Intern.” Now Pjam looked almost as expressionless as Dona.

“Yes. A Xeran patrol ambushed him on the way, and he was killed. From what I gather, it was a very unpleasant death.”

Pjam studied her. “Which you had nothing to do with.”

“No, and I can prove it.” Dona’s smile was faint and cold enough to induce frostbite. “Did prove it, at the inquest one of his five-star buddies called. At the time Kavel died, I was a hundred kilometers away, having dinner with a fellow officer. And she’d have had no reason to lie.” Her lips curled very, very slightly. “After all, she’d been his intern.”

Alerio wondered how she’d done it. He was a little surprised to realize he was glad she’d found a way to kill her abuser.

Dona hated being a victim.

The chief pulled the cork out of the bottle of ale. It was almost four in the morning. He promised his conscience he’d only drink one glass before he’d make another attempt to sleep.

He didn’t expect to have much luck. Not after what he’d learned about Dona.

“Chief? Chief Dyami? My sensors tell me you’re awake in there . . .”

Alerio answered the com. “Frieka? Why aren’t you in your bunk? Still pub-crawling with Pendragon?”

“Unfortunately, none of the pubs have Frieka’s precious Vardonese ale,” the stallion put in. “And I’m dying for a sample. It can’t possibly be as good as the fleabag says.”

Alerio laughed. “Hell, why not? I could use some company right now.”

Pendragon was a little too big for Alerio’s quarters, so the three of them decided to head outside to the chief’s favorite picnic spot. The Warlord spread a blanket on the flank of the moonlit mountain, then poured bowls of ale for his four-legged friends. Toasting each other, they drank.

“This is good stuff,” the horse said, lipping ale with an expression of deep concentration.

“Told you.” Frieka looked at Alerio. “Okay, Chief, what’s up with you? And don’t say nothing, because I know damn well there’s something. Is it Dona?”

Pendragon raised his head. “That’s the female Enforcer with the purple eyes, right?”

“That’s the one.” Frieka settled down on the blanket. “She and the chief have been trying to ignore each other for the last couple of years.”

“Now there’s an utter waste of time.” With a gusting snort, the stallion dropped his head again and drank. “I’ll never understand humans. They have to make everything so damned . . .”

“. . . Complicated!” Frieka finished, shooting Alerio a triumphant look. “Ha! He agrees with me.”

“Now there’s a surprise.”

“So what’s bothering you about Dona?” Frieka asked.

Alerio hesitated. “I can’t really talk about it without violating her privacy more than I have already.”

Frieka gave him an assessing look. “Finally hacked Pjam’s file, did you?”

Alerio stared at him. “Are you saying you already have?”

The wolf flicked an ear in a lupine version of a shrug. “Two or three months ago. I knew there was something ugly in that file, and I was right.”

Alerio opened his mouth to chew out the lupine Enforcer, only to snap his mouth closed in frustration. “There’s not one bloody thing I can say about your violating her trust that isn’t just as true of me.”

“Well, I haven’t violated anybody’s trust, and my curiosity is killing me.” Pendragon pricked his ears. “What happened?”

“Dona had a very complicated and ugly childhood.” Frieka thumped his bushy tail on the blanket. “By the way, if Temporal Enforcement ever offers you the services of a psychiatrist named Javen Pjam, turn them down. She’s an idiot.”

“Know her,” the horse said shortly. “And you’re right, she is an idiot. Apparently nobody ever told her mental health professionals are not supposed to pass judgment on their patients’ lives.”

Alerio blinked, wondering what aspect of Pendragon’s life had drawn the doctor’s commentary.

“So.” Frieka turned to study him again. “Now that you’ve learned all Dona’s ugly secrets, what do you intend to do?”

The horse gazed at Alerio, ears pricked, before lowering his head to his ale. “He’s going to dump her.”

“I’m not going to dump her,” Alerio snapped. “I’m concerned about her, and I don’t want to make things any worse.”

“You’re right, Pen,” Frieka said thoughtfully. “He is going to dump her.”

“Dammit, Frieka, every single relationship that woman has ever been in—including the one with her parents—was pure poison. What if I fuck it up? I’m a Warlord, dammit. We kill people. We don’t nurture them.”

“Best nurturer I ever met was Baran Arvid,” Frieka observed, referring to Riane’s father. “But you’re damned near as good at it. Judging from what I’ve seen, you take good care of your people.”

“That’s different,” Alerio growled. “I’m not sleeping with them.”

“I’d hope not,” Pendragon said. “Frieka’s been trying to get me to ask for a transfer, and I’m not interested in being sexually harassed.”

“You’re not my type.”

“You have no idea how relieved I am to hear it.”

Alerio glowered at him. “Just what we need—another smart-ass talking animal.”

“Which is better than a dumb-ass talking human.”

“Isn’t he quick?” Frieka gave the stallion an admiring look. “I love the way that kind of shit just rolls out of his vocalizer.”

Alerio grunted.

“Seriously, Chief,” Pen said. “Obviously I don’t know exactly what problems your female has, but I don’t see how a breakup with you would make it any better.” He flicked his tail across his haunches. “You strike me as the sort of commander who wants to actively improve the lives of those under his command. Especially an agent you . . . feel something for.”

And that’s putting it mildly, Alerio thought.

The next day, Alerio ordered his implant to compensate for his sleepless night and too many glasses of ale while he prepared his gift for Dona.

Maybe it would make up for his sins.

Surveying the results in the golden light of the morning sun, he decided he’d accomplished his goal. “If I’m really lucky, it will at least put her in a good mood.” He grimaced. “Maybe she’ll even let me live after I tell her I hacked that damned file.”

A mental order activated a camouflage field, hiding his work. It wasn’t really likely that a temporal native would stumble on it, but he didn’t want to take chances. The field was a bit of added insurance.

Fifteen minutes later, he arrived at Mission Staging, where two different tour groups were scheduled for Jumps.

Eleven historians surrounded their temporal guide, Masoud Gertsenzon, arguing about the best way to observe the December 20, 1803, French handover of the city of New Orleans to the United States. At the opposite end of the room, a team of Enforcers inspected their baggage for contraband—items that were illegal to transport into the past for various reasons.

Alerio stopped long enough to introduce himself, shake hands all around, and wish the group luck with their trip.

Striding across the room, he found Kangse Wei fidgeting while his equipment was inspected. The slender young documentarian wore a canvas duster, black pants, boots, and a white shirt with a string tie. According to the trip description he’d filled as part of his visa request, he planned to shoot a trid about the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Which meant Wei would spend most of the next week concealed in an invisibility field so the temporal natives wouldn’t know he was there. Just like the fleet of invisible camera bots he’d use to shoot the scene.

Wei was fidgeting from foot to foot as Alerio walked up, almost dancing as he watched the agents searching his equipment. “Come on, Forcies, get it done. I want to Jump.”

Alerio raised a brow. “What’s your hurry, sir? Wyatt Earp isn’t going anywhere. And you’ve already done everything you’re going to do.”

“Maybe, but it sure doesn’t feel that way. And the gods alone know how many doc-jocks are shooting in Tombstone right now.” The young man glowered as he drummed his fingers on his thigh. “I need to tell my story.”

The inspection team started flipping the cases closed. “Looks like they’re finished,” Alerio told him. “Good luck with your story, Mr. Wei.”

“Thanks. Happy times, Forcie.” With a farewell wave, the documentarian strode toward his waiting pile of gear.

Shaking his head, Alerio started toward the other end of the room, where another group of Enforcers stood talking in low, intense voices.

Wulf, a heavy-world agent who was ten centimeters shorter than Alerio—and thirty kilos heavier—was partnered with Tonn “Bear” Esso, equally massive, though considerably taller. With them was a tall, strongly built female agent named Irihapeti Aotea with elegant dark features and a regal carriage. Her partner, pale, slim Anzu Genji, was far stronger than her delicate build suggested. The two made a quick and deadly team.

Alerio’s fellow Warlord, Galar, had been partnered with Peter Brannon, a deceptively wiry man with a wicked sense of humor.

“Are you agents ready to Jump?” Alerio asked, giving them all a smile.

“We just need to load Wei’s equipment on the coach—which may take a while.” Brannon jerked a thumb at the stagecoach and its four horses. “Then we Jump.”

“While trying to keep the little arteeeest out of trouble,” Galar added dryly.

“He does seem a little high-strung,” Alerio allowed with a crooked grin. More seriously, he asked, “Is there anything you need that you don’t already have?”

Galar shrugged. “No, sir, I think we’ve got it all covered.”

“Good.” He slapped the blond on a broad shoulder. “Have a safe Jump.”

As the agents chorused their thanks, Alerio headed over to the coach.

Pendragon flicked his tail and stamped. “Get any sleep?”

Alerio snorted. “Hardly. You?”

“Hour’s nap. It’ll do. My computer’s compensating.” The stallion lifted his elegant head and pricked his ears. “Hey, isn’t that your . . . ah . . . whoever?”

Alerio turned to watch Dona walk in after Jessica Arvid. “Showtime,” he murmured.

“Wanted to see you off and give you a kiss,” the pretty redhead told her husband. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“When have I ever minded a kiss?” Galar pulled her into his arms for an embrace hot enough to make her cheeks turn red.

Alerio’s gaze slipped past the couple to Dona, who watched him. The erotic intensity of her gaze made him grin.

Then he remembered Pjam’s locked file, and the grin faded. Dona’s also disappeared, evidently in response. Eyes narrowing, she started toward him.

Oh, fuck, he thought. I’m not looking forward to this conversation.

“Something wrong?” Dona murmured when they were close enough to speak privately.

“I need to talk to you.”

“What about?”

He hesitated. “Wait until the teams Jump. Then we’ll go discuss it in private.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re the chief.”

“Yeah.” Whether I like it or not.

Half an hour later, Dona stopped dead on the trail. She’d initially thought he’d invited her to walk outside the Outpost so they could enjoy a little romantic privacy.

But then, I’ve always been an idiot. “Let me get this straight—you cracked my sealed medical file?” She couldn’t believe he’d do something like that. Sounds more like Ivar. Only Ivar never cared enough about me to bother. A fact that only added to her rage.

Alerio glanced away to watch a bald eagle soar over the valley. “I realize it was a violation of your trust, your privacy. But I knew there was something wrong, and I thought if I understood what it was, I could help.”

“How—by waving your magic dick?” Dona glared at his handsome profile. “Oh, that’s right—you already tried that.”

“I don’t blame you for being angry.”

Dona ground her teeth. “Thanks so much for your understanding.”

Alerio gave her a long, steady look that made her feel like a cosmic-class bitch. “I am sorry for what you suffered at the hands of those who should have protected you.” He moved closer. “Your parents. The Aranian military.” His lip curled. “Kavel. Especially Kavel.”

Dona stared up into his black eyes, trying to read the emotion there. Did she repulse him now—Dona Astryr, ex-lover of a sixty-eight-year-old pedophile? Or did he just pity her?

And which would she hate more?

Alerio watched as Dona spun on her heel and stalked away. Her booted feet crunched through the leaves in long, angry strides.

He’d hoped she wouldn’t be as angry as he feared. Instead, she seemed even more furious than he’d anticipated. The betrayal in those lovely violet eyes felt like a blade between the ribs.

Far too many people had betrayed Dona. Alerio hated being one of them. Never mind that he’d only wanted to help, while the rest of the bastards seemed to act from pure selfishness.

For Dona, the end result was the same.

Well, not quite. Cracking her medical file is hardly in the same league as raping her from the age of fifteen. But eyeing those rigid shoulders, Alerio wasn’t sure if she’d agree.

She wheeled toward him with such violence, he almost fell into guard out of sheer warrior reflex. Somehow he managed to suppress his body’s wary jerk.

Dona stalked toward him, eyes narrow with calculation. “Just how sorry are you, Alerio?”

“I deeply regret invading your privacy.” Honesty forced him to add, “But I’d do the same thing again if I thought it was necessary. In this case, it was necessary.”

Temper flashed in her brilliant eyes. “Oh, was it?”

“Yeah, it was.” He considered putting a hand on her shoulder, only to hastily drop the idea. He’d probably draw back a stump. “The thing with Ivar wouldn’t have happened otherwise.”

“So now you think I’m a career victim.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth, Dona.” He reined in his own temper with an effort. “Look, I admire the way you’ve overcome your past. Instead of becoming bitter, you’re a generous, compassionate person.”

“Right.” She snorted in skepticism.

Alerio glowered. “I’m serious. Whenever a case requires empathy, you’re the first agent I think of assigning. Even when you were partnered with that asshole Terje, you always treated victims with delicacy and respect.”

She blinked up at him, and he realized he’d surprised her. “I knew we got a lot of sexual assault cases. I just thought you’d already . . .” She broke off.

He nodded slowly. “You thought I already knew.”

“I had no idea what was—or wasn’t—in that file.”

Puzzled, he studied her. “If you thought I already knew, why were you so pissed when I told you I’d hacked it?”

“Because it’s one thing to get the information because you’re supposed to have it,” Dona said, folding her arms and rocking back on her heels, “and another to hack a file you know is private. A distinction I’m sure you grasp.”

She had him there. “Yeah. That’s why I debated doing it for the past six months.”

Dona’s brows shot skyward. “Six months?”

“What, you thought I hacked your psychiatric file on a whim?” Temper stung him with a quick, hard bite. “You really don’t think much of me.”

“Alerio, if my opinion of you weren’t so high, I wouldn’t have gotten so pissed off.” Her voice dropped. “And hurt.”

“I never wanted to hurt you. That I regret to my soul.” Looking down into the violet depths of her eyes, he thought again how incredibly beautiful she was.

Then he was kissing her before he realized he was going to do it.

Alerio Dyami could pack more passion into a simple kiss than any of Dona’s other lovers put into the entire sex act. His kiss certainly affected her with more power.

As his mouth claimed hers, Dona had to straighten her weak knees, catch his powerful shoulders, and let her body melt into his.

She had no choice.

The Warlord made a rough sound against her mouth—half growl, half grateful purr. Strong arms wrapped around her, plastering her body against his.

Dona was always surprised at how soft his mouth felt, even during a kiss so fierce. Particularly compared to the thick erection mashed against her belly. She moaned as arousal blazed up in her like a campfire doused in booster fuel.

Alerio released her waist and drew back, cupping her face in his palms. His eyes burned Warlord red, and his breath came too fast. “Tell me to stop. I won’t be able to if you don’t.”

Dona gazed into his angular, handsome face with its bright tattoo. “What if I don’t want you to stop?”

His eyes flashed red, then cooled. “Are you sure? Five minutes ago you wanted to kick my ass.”

She laughed. “I can think of a lot of things to do to your ass, Alerio. Kicking it isn’t even on the list.”

And it was true. He had wrestled with whether to hack that file for months, had done so only because he was genuinely worried about her. All of which told her she hadn’t misread his feelings for her. Unlike Kavel’s, Terje’s, even her parents.

Alerio Dyami was a genuinely good man.

Dona’s sudden grin felt so wide, she suspected it looked a little goofy. She didn’t give a damn. Reaching for her uniform’s high collar, she traced a finger along the seal and watched his eyes blaze even brighter as the seam parted. “Make love to me, Alerio.”

“Okay, you talked me into it.” Alerio bent, swept her into his arms, and carried her up the winding path.

Laughing, Dona looped her arms around his strong neck. “Mind telling me where we’re going?”

He smiled down at her, his teeth flashing white against his tattoo. “You’ll see.”

“I love surprises.” Settling into his arms, she let herself enjoy the moment.

The ground leveled, and Alerio veered off the path, headed for a massive cliff that formed a sweeping curve. When he rounded the great stone face, a clearing lay tucked against its granite flanks. Flowers ringed it in brilliant shades of red, yellow, and deep, rich violet, along with leafy green cascades of ferns.

As Dona admired the scene, it seemed to ripple like a mirage seen through hot desert air, revealing a tent. Swags of red silk draped from its supporting poles, casting cool pools of shade. Inside the tent lay a thick pallet of white silk piled with pillows.

She blinked at it from the cradle of Alerio’s arms. “Where did that come from?”

Alerio ducked beneath the tent’s opening and lowered her to her feet. “I put it up early this morning before the teams Jumped. I wanted to make love to you somewhere more romantic than my quarters.” He grimaced. “I also hoped it would put you in a good mood so you’d be less pissed after I told you about the file. Reality had other ideas.”

“Either way, it’s lovely.” She smiled over her shoulder at him and stopped in surprise.

He was stripping off his uniform tunic, revealing the muscled width of his chest. Balancing on one foot, he pulled off his left boot, then his right.

As he opened the seal of his pants, his cock spilled free, thick and flushed dark. Dona stared, her mouth going helplessly dry, as he dragged his trousers down his powerful legs. Stepping free of them, he gave her a grin. “I can’t help but notice you’re a trifle overdressed.”

“Can’t have that.” Dona finished unsealing her tunic with eager fingers, and let it slide from her shoulders.

Alerio dropped down on the pallet and watched with unabashed lust as she kicked her boots off and wiggled free of her pants. He caught his breath as she straightened to her full height, all graceful nudity, her breasts full, tipped with the tight rose peaks of luscious nipples. A triangle of dark hair lay between the long, strong thighs that swept down to slender, muscled calves and slim feet.

The scent of her arousal teased his acute Warlord senses. The head of his erection bucked against his belly as he remembered the taste of her, the snug grip of her rosy folds wrapping around his shaft.

She licked her lips with her pointed pink tongue. The violet brilliance of her eyes darkened, her pupils expanding at the sight of him.

“You’re so beautiful.” Her voice sounded throaty, rasping. “I want to taste you. Everywhere.”

“Ah . . . Feel free.” His balls tightened as his cock lengthened. He wondered if he’d ever been this hard in his life—except for the previous times they’d made love.

She moved toward him in that liquid dancer’s stride, then dropped to her hands and knees on the bed. Breath caught, he watched her crawl up the length of his body.

Until she reached his cock.

Slowly, she lowered herself, bending her elbows until her head was mere centimeters from his cock. As she dipped her head, she kept her eyes locked on his in a hot, wild stare that made the blood thunder in his ears. “Sweet Goddess,” Alerio rasped. “You’re so damned lovely. I’ve never known a woman so utterly sensual.”

“Because you make me feel beautiful.” Her cool fingers closed around his hot cock, angled the thick shaft upward. “You make me feel like the most gorgeous woman on the Outpost with those Warlord eyes burning.”

Breath caught, he watched her open her mouth, watched the pointed tip of her tongue flick out to swirl over the flushed cap of his erection. Alerio groaned as pleasure thrummed along his nerves. Her fingers tightened around his cock, exerting the perfect degree of pressure as she stroked him slowly. Up and down. Her tongue licked and swirled, each delicate motion seeming to ignite the blood in his veins.

And the way she looked.

That perfect face, intense with arousal that left only a thin ring of purple around her huge black pupils. She shifted to get a better angle on his cock, opened her mouth wide, and swallowed the length of him right down almost to the balls.

Alerio was not a small man, but she didn’t choke on his size as other women had. Instead she suckled him with wicked skill, one hand stroking his balls, the other drifting up his chest to find his small male nipples.

He gasped at the pleasure. It took real effort to manage speech. “Let me . . . taste you. Let me touch you.”

She looked up at him a moment before she slowly, slowly rose on her knees to give him an evil smile. “Well, if you insist.”

Dona rearranged herself, planting her knees on either side of his head, then stretching the length of his torso. Her lush breasts teased his skin as she moved. He reached a hand down, seeking one of those lovely breasts, finding its peak.

As he started to stroke and tease, he slid the tip of his tongue the length of her lips, up and down, then circling her clit. She purred in sensual approval and engulfed him again in a gorgeous erotic rush.

Shuddering in delight, Alerio concentrated on her wet rose folds, savoring her taste and scent as he toyed and licked. Need stormed through him until he ached with it.

Dona’s eyes shuttered in bliss as she filled her mouth with Alerio’s cock. As she slid the hot, smooth shaft over her tongue, Alerio’s fingers teased one nipple while he slowly lapped her sex. The pleasure she felt was so intense and pure, it was like being immersed in heated honey. Floating weightlessly on a golden bed, buoyed by delight.

The orgasm broke free like a champagne cork propelled by a froth of bubbles. It happened to hit just as she raised her head. “Alerio!” she gasped. “Oh, gods, Alerio!”

Strong hands grabbed her waist, picked her up, and tumbled her down on her back. He reared over her, his eyes a solid sheet of fire. He caught her knees and pulled them up until he could hook her heels over his shoulders. Wrapping his hands around her thighs, he aimed his cock for her slick opening. His first thrust was so hard and hot and delicious, her climax spiked even harder.

Watching her face, he reached one hand around to pluck her right nipple, teasing and flicking as he hunched slowly. His hips ground against her ass, first in long drives, then in grinding circles, then thrusting again, varying the stimulation with perfect skill. Maddened, she threw back her head and screamed her way through the wicked pounding.

His roar rose beneath hers, a raw male bellow of existential pleasure, savage and intense.

CHAPTER NINE

A furious banging jolted Dona awake.

“Chief!” Jessica Arvid shouted from the other side of the corridor door. “Chief, he’s taken Galar! That bastard Terje took my husband!” That last word rang with anguish.

“Jessica?” Alerio surged up beneath Dona, rolled her gently aside, and hit the floor, jerking on a robe before striding toward the door.

Dona sat up, swiping her hair out of her face as she stared around them, disoriented. Belatedly, she remembered she and Alerio had returned to his quarters after their adventures in the woods.

“Alerio!” Jessica screamed, genuine panic in her voice.

“I’m coming!” He threw Dona a look. She grabbed her clothing and dove into the bathroom. As she pulled on her uniform, she listened to their conversation through the closed door as her lover let Jessica in.

“What happened?” he demanded. “Did Galar send a courier bot?”

“No, I don’t think he had time. It was a vision.” Her voice sounded tight with strain, pitched higher than her normal throaty voice. “I was asleep. Next thing I knew, I was watching a gang of Xerans in T-suits attack Galar’s coach. He was driving. They shot three of the horses . . .”

“Pendragon?”

“No, him they missed. The others, the mares. Galar tried to brake, but that thing doesn’t exactly stop on a dime. The coach overturned when it hit the bodies, and he was thrown. I think he sustained a head injury.”

Dressed again, Dona slipped back into the bedroom. “Are you sure it was a vision and not a nightmare?”

“She’s had visions before,” Alerio reminded her. “Remember when she saw the Xerans capture Charlotte and the two Sela females?”

“Yes, but she told me the other day that sometimes she has nightmares and isn’t sure they’re not visions.”

“Not this time,” Jessica told her grimly, whirling to pace. Her velvet robe flapped as she moved, revealing the filmy skirt of her negligee fluttering around slippered feet. “The details were too solid. I could even smell the horses. The blood.” She closed her eyes as if fighting for control. “Galar’s blood. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never smelled anything in a dream.”

Alerio watched her agitated pacing with grim, narrow-eyed attention. “How badly was he hurt?”

“Galar tried to get to his feet, but he could barely stand. Ivar stabbed him in the chest. Right through his T-suit. The blade chimed like one of those quantum swords of theirs, but it looked more like a stiletto.” Wringing her hands, she reached the wall and spun to stride the other way. “He tried to fight even then, but between that and the head injury . . . Ivar cuffed him with restraint cable and Jumped, taking Galar with him.” Jessica looked so pale, Dona feared she was going to faint. “He’s not dead. I won’t believe he’s dead.”

“And he’s not going to die,” Alerio told her, stepping into her path and catching her by the shoulders. “I’m taking a Jump team and we’re going to get him back. Now, tell me exactly what you saw.”

“After you sit down.” Dona slipped an arm around her friend’s shoulders. Alerio stepped back as she guided Jessica to a chair. “Now tell us.”

“Chief Dyami?” Nick called through the corridor door.

“What do you want to bet he had the same vision?” Alerio growled as the door opened at his silent command.

“Sorry, but that’s a bet you’d lose. I didn’t see Galar’s kidnapping.” Nick paused to allow Riane and Frieka to enter first. The bedroom was growing crowded. “What I did see was that Jessica and I have to go with the Jump team, or you’ll fail.” His handsome mouth tightened into a tight line. “And we may anyway. I didn’t see all the details.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Dona muttered. “Because that would make it too easy.”

“Goddess knows we never get easy,” Frieka growled, the lights of his vocalizer flashing from his fur.

Alerio gestured for the three to take a seat on his bed. “So. Tell me what you did see.”

Peter Brannon died defending Kangse Wei, the documentarian the Enforcers had been sent to protect. The two men lay in a bloody ring of five dead Xerans fifty feet from the remains of the coach. As Jessica had told Alerio back at the Outpost, the two had apparently escaped the wreckage and attempted to escape.

“He didn’t sell his life cheaply,” Dona said quietly from just behind Alerio’s shoulder.

“He wouldn’t have.” Alerio studied the arc of spilled blood and disordered sand around the bodies. “He wasn’t as big as Wulf, didn’t have the raw power of Terje, but he was a fighter. Intelligent. Courageous.” He winced, remembering Gailisha Brannon, the apple of Peter’s eye. “And I’m going to have to tell his daughter she’ll have to bury him.”

Once Dr. Chogan reattached his head, anyway. One of the Xerans had decapitated him, probably with a quantum sword.

At least Peter had made good use of his own weapon. His fingers still curled around the big axe’s handle, and blood soaked the sand. He would have swung the weapon in wide arcs, hacking right through the Xerans’ armored T-suits with merciless skill.

But once he fell, there’d been no one to save Wei. The documentarian had been cut nearly in two. “Looks like whoever killed Peter took Wei out with the reverse stroke.” Alerio pointed out the sweeping pattern of blood splatter that connected the two bodies. His voice dropped to a mutter. “Poor bastard didn’t get to tell his story.”

Dona studied the dead men with brooding pity, wiping the sweat from her eyes. The Arizona sun beat down like assaulting fists as flies buzzed around the bodies. “At least it was quick.”

“But completely unnecessary.” A muscle jerked in the Warlord’s jaw. “If Colonel Ceres had let me pull those temporal visas the way I’d wanted, these people wouldn’t be dead, and Galar wouldn’t have been kidnapped by the fucking Xerans. I should have . . .”

“Disobeyed orders? Committed career suicide?”

He glared at her. “Better that than bury innocent civilians and good agents.”

“And the end result would have been more dead, innocent and otherwise.” Nick moved to join them. His green eyes appeared out of focus, as if he was looking at something other than the scene around him. A chill brushed Dona’s spine as she realized he was having a vision. “The Victor would have declared war on Terran time travel. The deaths . . .”

Riane moved up behind him and touched his shoulder. He broke off so abruptly, his teeth snapped together.

“What do you see?” Dona studied his pale, set face and the green glow of his eyes.

“The dying.” He turned away. “Far too many dying innocents.”

“Chief!” Chogan called from beyond the wrecked coach. “I’ve got Pendragon stabilized. I believe he’ll be able to talk to you if you get over here before I Jump him back to the Outpost. He needs regen for this wound.”

Alerio headed toward them, his boots sinking into the sand. He was conscious of Dona at his heels, her face grim.

The coach lay on its side, surrounded by broken wood that had exploded from it when it hit the horses. Wei’s equipment lay among the wreckage, camerabots spilled from broken cases. The chief noticed the vehicle fell on the side with the door. Peter had kicked a hole in the topmost side so the two men could escape.

He hadn’t been the only one determined to survive. Pendragon had likewise torn free of his harness and leaped free, avoiding injury when the coach slammed into the rest of the team. The Xerans had managed to wound the great beast anyway. Blood flecked his white coat, much of it from a gash that ran the length of his heaving ribs. Still, judging by his bloody front hooves, he’d gotten in some shots of his own. Apparently he’d tried to stomp a hole in the Xeran who lay on his back nearby, being treated by one of the medtechs.

Frieka sat by the stallion’s head, licking the horse’s long, elegant muzzle. That bit of uncharacteristically canine behavior told Alerio just how upset the wolf was.

Pendragon raised his head at their approach. His eyes were glazed with pain. “They killed the mares. Why the hell did the bastards kill the mares? They weren’t cyborgs. They were just horses.” The grief in his voice made Alerio’s chest ache.

“They didn’t care, Pen,” Frieka told him gruffly. “But I’m going to pay the fuckers back for you. They will regret this.” His lips rippled, pulling off sharp white fangs. “I’m going to make them bleed.”

“And he will, too.” Alerio sank to one knee. “What can you tell me, Pendragon? What happened?”

“They were heavily shielded when they hit us. Hell, I was scanning for them, and I didn’t have a fucking clue we’d been surrounded. There wasn’t even a sensor trace.” He dropped his head back to the sand and stared toward the bloody bodies of his team. “Until they shot the mares. Me, they missed. When the girls went down, my neurocomp projected the coach would hit us, and I tore out of my harness.” He subsided, his massive barrel rising and falling. “The coach overturned. Galar was in the driver’s box—he was thrown. Probably only survived because he was wearing his armor under his civilian clothes. Sensors said he had a severe concussion.”

“How many Xerans were there?” Alerio asked.

“Two cohorts of warrior priests, judging by the number and length of the horns. Twenty more monks, varying ranks.”

A cohort was made up of five of the most elite, most senior members of the caste. Thirty Xerans against three Enforcers, one of whom didn’t even have hands. Alerio dropped his head and cursed.

“How did they bring in that many Jumpers without us knowing it?” Dona sounded appalled. “Thirty Jumpers should have created a temporal warp detectable all the way to the Outpost.”

“Probably Jumped them in a few at a time,” he explained absently. “Dammit, I thought they’d go after the historians, since there were a lot more of them. That’s why I assigned Wulf and his three as escorts. Toughest team we have.”

“Maybe they wanted to make sure they took one of the Enforcers alive.” Dona looked up at him, having dropped to her knees to stroke Pendragon’s neck. “They sent an overwhelming force to make sure somebody would survive.”

“And that means they won’t let him die, Jess,” Riane told the human as the pair moved to join them. “They’ll make sure he gets any treatment he needs.”

“And if he can survive, I can fix anything they do to him.” Chogan looked up from her patient to give Jessica a reassuring smile. “He’ll be fine.”

“I know.” Jess forced a smile, but the effort it cost her was obvious. “You’ve never let us down, Sakari. I know Galar . . .”

“Hey, Chief!” one of the medtechs interrupted. “I’ve got the captive conscious.”

Alerio flashed Pendragon a smile he suspected was savage. “Thanks for leaving me one to question.”

“Wasn’t my idea. I just couldn’t pound through his fucking armor with my hooves.”

The survivor was a low-level monk; he had only two horns.

“Well,” Alerio purred, looking down at the captive with a stare so predatory, even Dona felt a chill. “I wonder what we can get out of you?”

The Xeran stared up at him in wide-eyed fear. “Don’t . . .”

“Let me deal with him, Chief.” Dona gave the monk a deliberately menacing smile. “I can get him to talk.”

The man shrank against the sand as if he wished it would open up and swallow him. “That’s . . . that’s not necessary. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

Dona curled her lip. “You mean you’ll lie and hope we’re gullible enough to swallow your shit.”

To her surprise, the monk’s gaze hardened. “I’ll not stoop to lying for that bastard. Believe me or don’t.”

“What bastard?” Alerio asked, as if not particularly interested. “Ivar?”

“That puppet?” The monk snorted. “Hardly. The Victor.”

Dona glared at him in offended outrage. “What kind of fools do you think we are? I fought you fuckers at Arania. I know you.”

The captive sneered. “You don’t know us now. Not since the rebellion.”

“What rebellion?” Alerio demanded.

“The one that abomination caused.” He jerked his chin at Nick. The big, dark-haired Guardian had moved silently to join them, standing with powerful arms folded. The T’Lir on his arm glinted dully in the desert sun. “After that one broke the Victor, fifty cohorts rebelled, taking half the monks on Xer with them.”

“Fifty cohorts?” Dona snorted. “Beefershit. Those bastards are the most fanatical members of the priesthood. Hells, fanaticism is why the Victor picks them to be the elite.”

“Not after the Victor used Ivar as his refuge following his fight with the abomination. Especially not when the last two cohorts refused to surrender what they held of him.” The monk sneered, his expression bitter. “We all knew that ’borg would pollute the Most High, and that’s exactly what he did.”

“He’s babbling.” Frieka flicked a dismissive ear. “This is a waste of time, Chief. Crack his comp and make him tell the truth.”

Alerio gave the priest a cold glare. “Well? Do I crack you, or do you start talking on your own?”

“I am telling the truth, you stupid ’borg bastard. The cohorts held part of the god, and they refused to give him up,” the monk spat. “Ivar led the loyalists against them—I was stupid enough to follow him—and we killed them all. He took the pieces back, but when the Victor reformed from the ’borg’s body, he was mad.” His gaze shifted away, staring into the distance as if at some horrifying vision. “Mad and corrupted. He ordered the captive priests burned in Ponichi Capital Square, babbling about medieval Earth kings. So no, I don’t care to become a martyr for the Victor.”

Alerio was still trying to get more useful intelligence out of their captive when a voice spoke over the mission com channel. One Dona knew far too well.

“Missing your boy Galar, Dyami?” Ivar asked in a laughing purr that sent a chill down her spine. Everyone in the party simultaneously stiffened. “Want him back?”

She exchanged a look with Alerio. “What do you want, Ivar?” the chief demanded coldly.

“You know what I want. Otherwise you wouldn’t have brought Wyatt. Get the T’Lir and bring it to me. Alone. No Nick. No Jessica. No Dona. No fucking backup whatsoever. Or Jessica gets to bury her Warlord.”

Alerio’s handsome face looked as if it had been cast in plastium. “Where am I supposed to take it?”

Ivar rattled off a string of coordinates. “That’s your first stop. There’ll be others. I’ll give you the next one when you get there. On foot. If I get so much as a whiff of anybody other than you, I’ll send Jess poor Galar’s head in a box. We don’t want that, do we?”

“No.”

“Of course not. Not with you being such a ‘hero’ and all. You have fifteen minutes. Just possible if you haul ass. Otherwise . . .”

“I’ll be there.”

“Of course you will.” Ivar’s tone lost its edge of mocking humor. “And don’t think you can fool me with a fake. I’ll know, and Galar will get a whole lot shorter. By a head. Maybe part of his neck, too, but definitely by a head.”

Com link broken, Dona’s neurocomp told her.

She swallowed, fighting a cold wave of panic that filled her throat with greasy nausea.

Alerio turned to Nick. “I need the T’Lir.”

The Sela Guardian looked at him for a long, silent moment.

“Nick . . .” Jessica stared at him, desperation putting a tremor in her voice. “He’s not bluffing. We both know that.”

“No, he’s not bluffing.” Nick pulled the silver band off his biceps and handed it to Alerio.

Accepting it, the chief met his gaze. “Whatever Terje’s got in mind, I’m not going to let him get away with it.”

“If you can stop him.”

“I’ll stop him.”

“Alerio . . .” Dona had to stop and lick lips gone painfully dry. Her heart pounded so hard, she could barely hear herself speak. “You can’t do this. Ivar hates you. He’s going to kill you.”

“He’s going to try.” Alerio turned away. “But he will definitely kill Galar if I don’t. And I’ve lost all the agents I mean to lose today.”

Ivar watched the black speck that was Alerio Dyami run toward the fortress the Victor had created in the heart of the Arizona desert. It wasn’t a very big fortress, true. It didn’t need to be, with only twenty-four priests alive to man it. But it still resembled a medieval castle, complete with towering stone walls and battlements.

The Victor is insane. Obsessed with medieval kings and crazy as a Soji Dragon in season. The thought zipped through his mind before he had time to suppress it.

Pain! Agony raced across his skin as though he’d been sprayed with acid. His knees buckled, and he cried out before he could clamp his lips together.

I am not mad, the Victor growled from Ivar’s feet.

For once, he hadn’t assumed his towering golden form. Instead, he wore what Ivar now knew to be his true appearance: that of a roiling black amoeba, glistening in the throbbing sunlight and heavily shielded from the Warlord’s sensors.

I. Am. Not. Mad. Say it!

“Of course you’re not mad,” Ivar wheezed. It took everything he had to remain on his feet, but he didn’t dare fall in front of the Victor. He had an ugly feeling the thing would eat him. “I meant no offense!”

See that you remember it. I still know your every thought.

“Yes, I know!” Gods help me.

I am your only god now, cyborg. With one last flaming wave of pain, the Victor ceased the torture. Ivar sagged against the battlements, acutely aware of the two warrior priests watching him with stony contempt. The bastards hated his guts.

Almost as much as I hate Dyami.

Glancing over the battlements, the battleborg blinked in surprise. The Warlord was damned fast; Dyami had almost reached the castle in the short time Ivar had been . . . preoccupied. Though he’d been going full-out in the blistering heat for over an hour, he still ran with the smooth, relentless power of a combot.

Those Vardonese bastards knew their nanotech and genetic engineering. Ivar wasn’t sure even he would have been able to survive a trek like that without collapsing from heatstroke. Any ordinary human would have dropped dead almost an hour ago. Which of course was the whole point: to run Dyami so hard, the Enforcers didn’t have a chance to follow.

Too, all that exercise should have eaten into even the Warlord’s impressive physical reserves. He would still put up a fight—he wasn’t even in riaat yet—but he wouldn’t be able to resist long before his body finally gave out.

The fucking idiot. The chief must know he was a dead man. Must realize the Xerans had no intention of surrendering Galar and every intention of killing Dyami himself once he turned over the T’Lir.

Ivar shot a sullen look over one shoulder. The blond Warlord lay on his back, spread-eagled in anti-grav fetters that held him immobile. The knife wound he’d suffered had finally stopped bleeding, thanks more to his neurocomp than any treatment the Xerans had given him. Even so, Galar was only half-conscious. The concussion he’d suffered during the coach crash had taken a heavy toll.

He was lucky to be breathing at all. He’d be dead by now if Ivar’d had his way. Arvid had always been almost as big a pain in Ivar’s ass as Dyami himself.

Another vicious blast of pain. I told you, I will bend the Warlord to my will. Dyami, and that one down there.

They’re Warlords. The thought flashed through Ivar’s mind before he could stop it. They don’t bend, and they’ll gut you if you try . . . A blast of pain brought tears to his eyes. Frantically, he toed the line. “But it will do them no good, Great One,” he wheezed. “You’ll blow out their minds like a match.” Like hell.

This time the thought zipped past too quickly for the Victor to catch it. Mollified, the oily bastard stopped inflicting that crippling pain. Too bad I can’t do that all the time. Luckily the Victor didn’t catch that either.

“All right, Ivar, I’m here!” Alerio bellowed from the base of the wall. “Now I want to see Galar. Alive.” He held up the T’Lir, fingers closed around the green gem. “Or I’ll shatter this, and your god gets nothing.”

“He lives.” Ivar gestured dramatically and stepped aside. The anti-grav fetters dragged the blond upright and up into the air. The blond Warlord groaned in pain, head lolling forward on his shoulders.

“Barely,” Dyami snarled. His fingers tightened on the gem. “Put him in regen, dammit, or . . .”

“Put him there yourself!” Ivar spat back, in no mood for Dyami’s alpha male bullshit. “After you hand over the T’Lir.”

“Bring him down and get it!” The Warlord’s eyes flared so brightly red, they were visible even at this distance in full desert sunlight.

Ivar hesitated. Damned if he wanted to get in range of those fists with the chief’s eyes that color. True, the Victor had upgraded Ivar’s own tech yet again—the process had been just as agonizing as it had been the first few times the “god” had worked on him—but even that was no guarantee against Dyami in a mood. The Warlord could do more damage through sheer strategy and a suicidal refusal to surrender as anyone else could with raw power.

This is a trap, Ivar thought. Got to be. Dyami isn’t this damned stupid.

He did another sensor sweep, but once again, he could detect no sign of the shielded Enforcers he’d expected to arrive in Alerio’s wake. Though Ivar wouldn’t have been able to punch through their sensor shields, he should have been able to detect the energy trace of the fields themselves. Yet there was absolutely nothing there.

Because he didn’t bring them, the Victor told him, roiling impatiently around Ivar’s feet. I told you the weak fool wouldn’t risk his underling’s life. I would sense the Enforcers’ minds if he had, and there is nothing there. A dark anticipation surged through the link. Now I will take what is mine. At last!

A massive spike of power buckled Ivar’s knees as the Victor sent his energies swirling over the ramparts downward toward the Warlord waiting below.

Alerio was still staring up at the battlements when the three-meter-tall golden giant appeared, almost in his face. He threw up an arm block in sheer spinal reflex. It did him no good as a fist the size of his head slammed into his skull.

The next thing he knew, he was staring up at a painfully cloudless blue sky through a field of dancing sparks. His head was full of his neurocomp’s shrieking alarm Klaxons, but he had no idea where he was or what had just happened.

The Victor hit you, the comp told him. GET UP!

Years of experience had taught Alerio never to ignore that tone in his comp’s voice, no matter how bad he felt. He reeled to his feet, but the world swung around him so violently, he almost fell again. He looked down and felt a chill.

His hands were empty.

The bait. Where the fuck is the bait?

He took it, the neurocomp said. He’s stopped to drain it, just as you expected.

The world stopped spinning as the implant compensated. Glancing around wildly, Alerio spotted the Victor kneeling at the base of the fortress wall a good ten meters away. Last he remembered, he’d been standing beside the wall.

Wait. He knocked me ten meters with one punch?

Yes. He’s incredibly powerful.

Let’s just pray he’s not all that bright.

The giant held the T’Lir in both hands as he studied it in obvious fascination. Alerio licked lips left painfully dry by his enforced desert run. If he spots the trap, we’re fucked.

So far Nick had done a good job creating the dummy T’Lir. The counterfeit looked exactly the same as the silver armband with its embedded green gem, but the real thing was still locked around the Guardian’s arm. Apparently the Victor didn’t know the T’Lir couldn’t be removed until Nick died—and then it would immediately disappear off to whomever the sentient gem had selected to be the new Sela Guardian. Damn sure wouldn’t be the Victor.

The trick had been faking the aura of power that clung to the T’Lir even in its half-drained state. The Victor had seen the gem during the battle with Nick six months back, and they’d known he’d spot a substitute.

Nick had proposed the solution back at the Outpost, since it was obvious what the Victor would demand as Galar’s ransom. It seemed the spirit of Nick’s dead mother had volunteered to inhabit the phony gem and serve as the conduit for the catlike guardian spirit that inhabited Nick. But the cat had warned Nick it didn’t have the power to fool the Victor for long enough.

So Jessica and Riane had linked with Nick, adding the psychic abilities the Sela had given both women months before. Nick suspected the Sela had somehow known this day was coming, which was why they’d empowered Jess and Riane to begin with.

The next step was to fool the Xerans at the coach, which they’d managed to do. The only thing they hadn’t anticipated was that Ivar would demand Alerio bring the T’Lir; they’d expected the Victor to require them to turn over Nick instead. Still, the psychic attack they’d planned should work, assuming the Victor took the bait.

Alerio frowned. What was that ancient military saying they taught at the Vardonese academy?

“No plan ever survives first contact with the enemy.”

From the cool confines of the grav-sled, Dona watched the Victor examine the counterfeit T’Lir. Her guts laced themselves into intricate knots of nausea.

“He’ll be fine,” Frieka told her, sitting strapped in the seat at her side. With Pendragon back at the Outpost in the equine-sized regenerator the European Outpost had sent along with him, the wolf had decided to accompany the rescue party. “Dyami can plot rings around those bastards.”

“He’d better.” Dona frowned, shooting a concerned look at Jessica, who sat in the back of the sled with Nick and Riane. The human’s eyes were glassy, and sweat streamed down her face as she sat with her hands gripping the couple’s. Without the grav-sled, Jess never would have survived the trek across the desert.

The sleds were illegal for use on Jumps, of course. If a temporal native happened to spot one during an invisibility shield failure—unlikely, but theoretically possible—the teardrop-shaped vehicles would be too obviously alien. They were only supposed to be used to transport supplies and equipment on the Outpost, but Alerio had ordered the three units along on the Jump anyway.

“Let the bastards court-martial me,” he’d growled. “I don’t give a shit as long as this works.”

The sleds were crucial to the plan; their sensor shields made them completely undetectable. Unlike those created by T-suits, sled shields produced no ghosting, thanks to their more powerful onboard generators.

Better yet, Ivar would never expect Alerio to violate regs by bringing one along on a Jump.

The problem was they couldn’t be sure what the Victor could sense. Alerio had decided to take the chance anyway.

The other issue was that the three sleds couldn’t detect each other. The only way they’d been able to avoid colliding as they followed Alerio was by triangulating on the Warlord and flying in rigid formation.

“Get us closer,” Nick said to the sled pilot.

Enforcer Carrie Jones gave him a short nod as her hands glided over the controls, bringing the craft to within meters of the Victor. They watched the tridscreen as the “god’s” golden lips peeled back, exposing his white teeth in a grin.

Nick’s broad shoulders tensed under the dove-gray scales of his civilian T-suit. Beside him, Riane tightened her grip on his hand. “Now!” he snapped to his companions. The sled flooded with blinding green light as he, Riane, and Jess began to glow, pumping their collective energies into the stone. The Victor stared down at the faux T’Lir in fascination.

Dona reached across to Frieka, her fingers sliding into the wolf’s thick black fur and curling into a fist.

Alerio looked up, silently praying to every goddess he could think of. Right on cue, two grav-sleds popped into view, swooping downward at the battlements to begin Galar’s rescue.

He whirled and glanced around, searching for Dona’s sled, which should be waiting nearby behind its own camo field. Exactly as planned, the big dark blue sled popped into view as its shield dropped. Its silver-trimmed door slipped open silently, and he raced toward it to fling himself aboard. “Get us up there!”

Carrie Jones sent the craft shooting skyward on pulsing blue anti-grav fields before swooping in to land on the fortress’s flat stone roof. Alerio popped open the weapons locker, revealing the shields and quantum axes inside. Without a word, he took one weapon and tossed another to Dona as she and the wolf moved to join him. Jones would remain with the sled, guarding their rear.

Jess, Nick, and Riane didn’t move; they were busy channeling power to the spirit of Charlotte Holt. The pilot gave Alerio a sharp nod. It was her job to protect the three while they did theirs.

The Enforcers leaped out onto the ramparts as the sled’s door snapped shut and locked behind them.

CHAPTER TEN

Images flooded the Victor’s mind, visions so hypnotically real, he could only watch in fascination. All of them featured six-legged creatures that looked vaguely familiar. It took him a moment to remember where he’d seen one before.

Ah. There’d been an old Earth animal called a tiger: huge, brawny, and striped. These creatures had six limbs, though. The first pair looked like thin, disproportionately long human arms with agile fingers like those of primates, but the other four were nothing short of massive, with claws as long as human fingers. Their feline heads had outsized pointed ears, short muzzles, and huge, intelligent eyes.

Despite their animalistic appearance, they were star travelers. Aggressive, too, conquering every race they encountered, then stealing their technology. The cats killed any individuals stupid enough to resist and enslaved the rest. The Victor could only admire their bloodthirsty efficiency.

It crossed his mind to wonder if these were some version of the Sela, who were also six-legged and catlike. But the Abominations were dainty pacifists, nothing like these brawling brutes who killed and died with equal abandon.

They also sang alien songs the Victor found he could somehow understand, though he’d never heard their language before. Songs that gloried in bloodshed and conquest as proof of their worthiness to rule.

He watched entranced as one of the aliens’ huge ships approached a green and blue gem of a world. It disgorged a smaller craft that landed in a clearing near a crowd of creatures that looked like wheel-shaped crabs, except with fur and a greater number of legs. They call themselves the Di’jiri, said a soft, androgynous mental voice.

What the hells? the Victor wondered, but then the doors opened on the felinoids’ lander. One of the big cats leaped out, followed by fifty or so armored feline soldiers. The lead cat demanded the Di’jiri surrender in a tone the Victor interpreted as acute boredom. He didn’t seem to care whether they understood his threat to kill them all if they didn’t immediately surrender.

Victor suspected they didn’t, since the Di’jiri only blinked their faceted eyes and trilled in polite interest.

The felinoid leader reared on his back legs and lunged, striking out with both powerful mid-legs. His claws ripped through the nearest Di’jiri, which died in an explosion of orange life fluids.

Roaring in joy, his team fell on the survivors and killed them all. The Di’jiri made no attempt to flee or resist as they fell beneath the warriors’ claws.

The Victor frowned in restless disappointment. Where was the glory in killing creatures so utterly lacking in fighting spirit?

“That,” something growled in the felinoids’ tongue, “is quite enough of that.”

A creature five times the size of the others melted into view as if it had dropped a camo shield. The mother of the Di’jiri, the psychic voice told the Victor. And she is most wroth.

The felinoid captain and his warriors froze as though suddenly unable to move, though rage flashed in their enormous eyes. The Di’jiri Mother has done something to them, the Victor realized, outraged.

She circled the team, scuttling on her ring of jointed legs, trilling and clicking her claws as if talking to herself. Finally she switched to the felinoid tongue. “My children did nothing to you. Nothing! And yet you murdered them!”

“Not murder,” the Victor corrected under his breath. “Conquest. The strong have a right to rule the weak.”

“It’s time you share the suffering of your victims, monstrous ones.” The Mother’s ring of eyes began to glow a bright, all-too-familiar green. The same glow he’d seen in the depths of the T’Lir.

The felinoids began to scream in terrified anguish; the pain the Mother felt at her daughters’ deaths and the grief of her surviving children. The psychic suffering of thousands of Di’jiri crushed down on them like the gravity of a black hole.

And the Victor shared that pain.

Though no stranger to the thoughts of others, he’d never experienced the agony of his victims. Now he discovered exactly what it was like as visions flooded his skull: disorienting images of the Sela captain and his soldiers fleeing back to their mothership at maximum speed.

And yes, they were Sela. Apparently the events he was seeing had happened centuries before.

Every captain and his men infected every Sela they encountered with the same psychic abilities the Di’jiri Mother had forced on them. It was like some horrific mental plague.

In the weeks that followed, the contagion flashed from one end of the Sela empire to the other, carried by the mothership Conquest Song. The psychic plague drove warriors mad as they shared their victims’ horrific deaths, tasted the grief of sundered families, felt the helpless fury of being forced to serve sadistic conquerors.

Eventually the Sela could take no more. They began to slay themselves in an effort to escape their guilt. Their vast empire collapsed within months.

Those who survived retreated into hiding as they struggled to learn how to control their psychic abilities. Eventually they decided they had to atone for their actions, but they also knew their lives wouldn’t be long enough to make amends for so many crimes.

They created the first T’Lirs as a repository for their souls and power. They would be reborn in each Sela generation that followed. Though their new bodies did not consciously remember their past lives, they still felt the compulsion to devote themselves to peace.

And the Victor didn’t give a shit. He only wanted the pain to stop.

Roaring in agony, the Xeran god colony sent his life force streaming upward, toward the enemies he sensed battling his soldiers on the ramparts of his fortress.

They did this to me! And they’re going to pay . . .

An axe in one hand, a shield in the other, Alerio battled the hulking cohort leader who’d attacked him when he’d stepped from the sled. The big priest carried a two-handed quantum sword that chimed like an ancient church bell. The weapon was fully as long as the Xeran was tall, but the bastard knew how to use the awkward blade. The hornhead whirled the enormous sword in blurring figure eights, blocking Alerio’s axe swings between attempts to decapitate him. Alerio leaped back, blocking the hornhead’s latest swing with a thrust of his shield. He felt the impact in his back teeth; if the shield hadn’t been made of the same quantum steel as the blades, it would have been hacked in two. “Arrrrgh!” the Victor howled, the rooftop shaking under his big gold feet as he fell out of the sky. Alerio instinctively jumped back just as the giant hit his own priest in the side of the head. The man’s skull exploded like a melon blasted with a shard pistol. As the Xeran fell, the Victor leaped over his corpse, huge hands reaching for Alerio, eyes bulging, black as deep space and flecked with stars. His mouth gaped in a silent shriek of madness.

Oh, fuck, the chief thought. That doesn’t look good at all . . .

Something naked and golden hurtled through Dona’s peripheral vision, but she didn’t dare take her attention off the monk she fought. The wiry bastard had a cat’s speed and a sword longer than she was tall.

Thank the gods for sensors; she could ask her neurocomp. What the seven hells was that?

The Victor just killed a priest. He’s attacking Chief Dyami.

A hideous male scream rang out, sounding as if someone were being gutted. Before Dona could whirl to defend Alerio, the monk she was fighting shouted, “No, Most Glorious! He’s one of us!”

Instantly Dona swung her axe, severing her distracted foe’s head. It spun away, spraying blood across her helmet visor as his body crumpled. His quantum sword struck the rooftop with a high, pealing note. She glanced around to check for nearby attackers. Her immediate surroundings were clear, so she slid her axe into the armored sheath designed to hold it across her back.

She bent and snatched up the monk’s enormous sword. If she intended to help Alerio fight the Victor, she’d need the longest weapon she could get her hands on. The giant had too much reach otherwise.

Leaping into a run, she headed for the Victor, now stalking Alerio. The giant swung his own quantum sword in figure-eight swings that flashed in the harsh sunlight.

Alerio retreated, blocking his enemy’s pounding blows with his shield and a speed born of riaat. Despite his three-meter height, the Victor was unbelievably fast. He must have been equally strong, because every blow of his sword drove the Warlord back.

Dona broke step, studying the pair. For all his terrifying power, there was no control, no strategy to the Victor’s attacks. His swings left him wide open, but Alerio couldn’t take advantage of his wild assault because the giant’s reach was so damned long. The Warlord simply couldn’t get close enough to hit him.

She swallowed as fear clamped needle claws into her stomach. Though riaat multiplied Alerio’s strength, she knew the effect was only temporary. A Warlord could maintain the berserker state no longer than a half hour before he collapsed from a lethal combination of overheating and exhaustion.

How long has Alerio been in riaat? Dona demanded.

Eight-point-three minutes, the neurocomp replied. But the run through the desert drained his reserves. I estimate he has no more than six-point-four minutes before he suffers system collapse as his body overheats. There is a ninety-six percent chance the Victor will kill him the moment he goes down.

Screw that, Dona thought. That golden son of a bitch is not killing Alerio Dyami. I’ll gut him first.

There is only a fifteen percent chance you will succeed.

Shut the fuck up. Eyes narrow, teeth clenched, Dona focused on the two fighters and waited for her chance.

Maybe she didn’t have the chief’s berserker strength. Maybe she lacked his height and muscle. She was going to find a way to save him anyway . . . assuming he didn’t find a way to save himself.

Either way, the man she loved wasn’t going to die today.

If I don’t wrap this up in six minutes, I’m completely screwed, Alerio thought grimly.

Normally, six minutes was an eternity in a fight like this. Even gene-gineered warriors could burn through their reserves with deadly speed in all-out battle. The priests and Enforcers around him had visibly slowed from the speed of minutes before.

All but the Victor. That fucker seemed just as deadly as he’d been to begin with.

Alerio ducked a swing of the giant’s sword and threw himself into a rolling dive. Slamming to a halt, he leaped up and swung his axe in a vicious diagonal arc. His blade hit the Victor’s naked golden flank . . .

And bounced off in a shower of sparks.

Fuck, Alerio thought, flinging himself clear. He felt the wind of the Victor’s sword as the Xeran giant tried to cut him in two.

Hitting the ground, he rolled neatly to his feet—just in time to see the Victor turn on Dona and swing. Alerio’s heart stopped in his chest, but Dona moved to parry with the instantaneous skill of a trained duelist, swinging her own enormously long weapon into position. He instantly realized what was about to happen.

“No!” Alerio shouted, leaping toward her, trying to get between her and the Victor. “He’s too damned strong!”

As he’d feared, the Victor’s sword met hers, the blades chiming as the giant angled his weapon and sliced across Dona’s slim back. She made no sound, but Alerio sensed the spill of blood down her back. The Victor had sliced right through her T-suit.

With a roar, Alerio rammed the toes of his right boot against the Victor’s knee, forcing the giant to stumble into a monk trying to off Frieka. Snarling, the Victor whirled and cut the Xeran in two.

Someone roared a Xeran protest, but the Victor was already charging Dona again.

“Stay out of this, dammit!” Alerio snapped at her as he threw himself into the giant’s path. “And that’s an order!” Shouldering her backward, he rammed his shield into the Victor’s swinging sword, deflecting it.

The giant was out of reach for an axe-swing—curse those endless arms—so Alerio ran at him, shield held high to protect his head. The Victor bellowed.

Enforcer Astryr is circling, seeking an avenue of attack, Alerio’s comp observed.

Of course she is. Just because I gave her a fucking order, that doesn’t mean she’ll obey it. “I told you to get back, Astryr!” he shouted, blocking the relentless blows. “Unless you want to spend the next month mucking out the Outpost stables!”

“A little horseshit never hurt any—” Dona broke off with a startled cry.

Thrusting his shield to meet the Victor’s weapon yet again, Alerio dared a quick glance back at her.

Ivar had Dona pinned flat on her back while trying to shatter her helmet faceplate with repeated blows of his fist. She bucked and cursed as he hammered the plastium visor.

Alerio whirled, but before he could intervene, the Victor’s fist slammed into the side of his head. The impact batted him through the air like a spiked grav-ball. He tumbled across the roof and hit the parapet wall so hard he saw stars.

The Victor snatched him up by one ankle and slung him right over the parapet. Something snapped, and he cried out in agony as he fell.

Six stories straight down.

The Victor just threw Chief Dyami off the roof, Dona’s neurocomp said. The chief’s leg is broken.

Dona couldn’t even spare the breath to curse as she threw up block after block, trying to keep Ivar from beating her head in. Any other injuries?

His comp says he’s badly concussed, but his T-suit absorbed the impact of his fall. But the Victor just leaped after him . . .

And that’s not going to end well. Dona missed a block, and Ivar’s fist rammed her faceplate, shattering the plastium. Unable to see past the broken visor, Dona punched Ivar with all her strength, making him stagger. Using her sensors as a guide, she pivoted and kicked one foot out from under him. Dona flipped to her feet as Ivar almost tumbled over the parapet after Alerio. He grabbed the edge and caught himself as Dona snatched off her ruined helmet.

And sensed a monk swinging his sword at her from behind. Dona spun, slicing her great sword across the bastard’s gut. The man screamed in agony, then screamed again when she kicked him ruthlessly off her blade. “That’s what you get for jumping me from behind, botfucker,” she muttered.

Damn, she ached to go after Alerio, but she had to take care of Ivar first. Terje was wearing his best crazed psychopath’s expression, complete with bulging eyes and a fixed rictus grin.

She knew that look. He often wore it whenever he was trying to unnerve gullible . . .

Oh, fuck. She stared at him, feeling a chill rolling through her blood. There was something in those eyes, something icy and insane. That’s no act.

Alerio blinked. He was on his feet and circling the Victor, his feet scuffing smoothly through coarse sand. Somehow they’d moved to the base of the fortress, but he had no idea how they’d gotten there.

You have a concussion, his implant told him. The Victor punched you in the head and threw you over the parapet. The fall broke your leg. I used my emergency control of your body to get you back on your feet.

Wait, my leg’s broken? Alerio thought, confused. But I’m walking, and I’m not in any . . . Realization hit. Oh. Pain block.

I also ordered your T-suit to go rigid over the injured tibia. It’s taking the majority of your weight, so you should not make the injury worse. I have accelerated your body’s healing, but the break will require regeneration.

If I live that long. Alerio had to keep fighting until he brought the Victor down.

However the hell he was supposed to accomplish that neat little trick.

He was calculating his next attack on the Victor when his neurocomp spoke. Message from Riane Arvid.

Alerio frowned. Riane was supposed to be on one of the sleds with the team attacking the Victor. Which obviously hasn’t gone so well, or the bastard wouldn’t be trying to pound my head in now. Never mind, put her through.

“Chief, we need your help.” Her mental voice rang with urgent tension.

“You’ve got it, though last time I checked, I’m not exactly psychic.”

“No, but you are the best compcracker I’ve ever known.”

Alerio ducked with all the speed of riaat—just barely avoiding the Victor’s vicious sword swing. “I’m also a bit busy. But your efforts to drive him insane . . .”

“Backfired. Badly.”

“Well, he has killed several of his own people.” Spotting an opening, Alerio charged in, swinging his axe at the giant’s knee. Laughing like a Savannah Hopper, the Victor leaped straight up. The axe missed as he swung his sword.

Alerio threw up his shield and blocked it, then threw himself backward, landing on the shield’s inner curve as he kicked upward with both feet. His armored heels caught the giant in the balls. The Victor howled in pained outrage.

“Good shot, sir!” Riane enthused.

“Yeah, if the fight judge doesn’t deduct points for poor sportsmanship. So what can I do to help take this bastard out?”

“The Victor’s basically one big computer. No organics at all anymore. Nick, Jess, and I have created a . . . well, you could call it a spell. We think it’ll kill him . . .”

“You think?”

“It should work. We already got the first half of it loaded, but his firewall is blocking it. I’ve been battering at his defenses, but I can’t seem to get through. We thought if you could hack his firewall, you could load the other half . . .”

“If he doesn’t kill me while I’m distracted.”

Alerio’s neurocomp spoke up. I can direct your body while you attempt hacking the Victor.

He hesitated. Comps weren’t particularly creative fighters, lacking the instincts humans used in combat—or in penetrating antiviral defenses. On the other hand, an implant’s reaction time was faster. Considering the Victor was basically a computer, that advantage might allow the comp to succeed where Alerio had so far failed.

Fine. Just don’t get me killed.

Alerio let his comp take full control over his body. It instantly sent him soaring upward, somersaulting over the Victor’s sword stroke.

Reassured, Alerio relaxed and sent his mind into virtual space. It was a very old mental skill, one he’d been practicing since he was a boy infiltrating the hated invaders’ computers.

Alerio released his hold on his body until his mind seemed to float skyward like a grav-sled. For an instant, he watched himself dodge and leap, somehow avoiding the Victor. Viewed in virtual space, the giant was surrounded by a glowing mesh that looked impossibly intricate: the antivirus shield designed to keep out hackers. He frowned. The mesh appeared even more complex than the firewalls he’d cracked as an adult Temporal Enforcer.

But complex or not, he had to find a way past the Victor’s defenses. Reaching out, he sent a delicate sensor probe sweeping over the Victor’s virtual shield.

The giant’s head snapped back, the star-flecked eyes finding his virtual body as if he were visible. The Victor’s eyes narrowed.

Oh, shit, Alerio thought.

“Your lover thinks he can crack the Victor like some cheap colony comp.” Ivar barked out a laugh, his voice spiraling into a shrill register that didn’t sound quite sane. “The master’s going to burn out his brain and leave him with the mental power of a hand-calc.”

“The ‘master’?” Dona smirked, though the side of her face was so swollen from his punches, her muscles could barely form a smile. “The Ivar Terje I know wouldn’t call anybody ‘master.’”

That wiped away the grin. His fist blurred at her head.

She tried to block, but her aching arm didn’t respond in time. His knuckles rammed her nose. Blood flew. Dona stumbled back, almost tripping over her own feet. Somehow she regained her balance, shaking off the impact.

Ivar laughed in her bleeding face. “You’re fucked, cow. If you give up now, maybe I’ll feel merciful enough to spare your life.”

She spat blood on the rooftop. “Yeah, right.”

“Why not? You always were good with that hot little mouth. Guess Kavel managed to teach you something.”

Dona felt her face wipe clean of expression.

“Did you really think I didn’t know?” There was that crazy laugh again. “Baby, I cracked your psych file a year ago. Poor little Dona. A dirty pedi’s sex slave. No wonder you fell for me. You were all but programmed to be somebody’s victim.”

The icy shock shattered like a scum of ice over a puddle. Dona snarled in rage.

She’d always wondered if Ivar knew her secret, but she’d never been sure.

“Kept you guessing, didn’t I?” Ivar taunted. “Even when I all but told you I knew everything, I’d toss in some little comment to make you wonder. I could see you struggling to puzzle it out. Stupid little . . .”

In her fury, Dona automatically let her eyes slide out of focus, just as she’d once probed the computer defenses of the Xeran priests Kavel sent her to kill.

Once Ivar’s comp had been typical Galactic Union tech, but all those Xeran upgrades he’d boasted about had changed that. Now his neurocomp was more Xeran than not—and so was its software.

As she studied the glowing mesh of his firewall, Dona’s heart sank. It’s so much more complicated than their old tech. So complex, in fact, it took her a moment to spot a familiar weakness she’d used against the priests all those years ago. Still there, Dona thought in amazement. The lazy bastards just built the new software over the old code.

She’d never realized it before because she no longer needed to use her old code knife. Her tech had been upgraded with Enforcer systems that were a match for the priests’.

And that meant . . .

It had been years since she’d generated a code knife, but some skills you never forgot. She curled her fist around the imaginary blade.

“Last chance, slut,” Ivar sneered, drawing back his quantum blade. “Are you going to beg for mercy, or are you going to die?”

Hiding her delight, Dona snarled, “Fuck. Off.”

He shrugged. “Too bad. I was looking forward to fucking you up the . . .”

Dona stabbed the code knife right into his forehead, where the firewall mesh originated. The firewall shattered. His eyes went wide just as the priests’ had every time she’d used that trick on them. He froze, just as unable to move.

Grinning in triumph, Dona slid into his neurocomp. This would be a great opportunity to raid his comp for useable information . . .

Then she spotted what appeared to be a twisted cable of code leading off through virtual space. She stared at it, puzzled. The cable burned far brighter than the rest of Ivar’s software. In fact, it was brighter than any priest’s she’d ever seen, though it also looked kinked, as if something had twisted it. She followed it . . .

Right to the Victor.

Wait. What had Ivar said? Your lover’s trying to crack the Victor . . . Alerio must be trying to help Nick and his team infect the giant; nobody was better at compcracking than Dyami . . .

Except Dyami didn’t know about Dona’s code blade. It had never occurred to her to tell him, since she’d never suspected the flaw would be usable. Five years, after all, was plenty of time for the Xerans to discover and repair it.

Yet they hadn’t. And that meant Dona could use it like a back door, not only to Ivar’s mind, but to the Victor’s. I can destroy the Xerans’ god.

Do you really think it’ll be that easy, bitch? Ivar commed, guessing her intentions. He’ll destroy you. He’ll make you his puppet, just like he did me. There wasn’t a shred of doubt in the traitor’s mental voice.

He was probably right, much as it galled her to admit it.

It didn’t matter. She couldn’t let the Victor kill Dyami, even if it meant making herself vulnerable to cyber attack.

Ignoring her shrieking instincts, Dona threw open every com frequency she had. “Alerio!”

Alerio circled the Victor through virtual space, trying to find a way through the giant’s firewall. His own Warlord body had begun to overheat, despite his comp’s protective systems. He watched his body stagger, then regain its balance with a jerk. If he didn’t find a way past the Victor’s firewall in the next . . .

“Alerio!” Dona’s desperate scream cut through his preoccupation. “Here! Come this way!” He felt her drop her own firewall.

Ivar, Alerio realized, absorbing the blast of information she sent him. Ivar is the Victor’s weakness.

Alerio shot through the gate Dona held open for him, slicing through her mind and into Ivar’s. The traitor howled and tried to launch his own cyber attack, but Dona blocked it. Ignoring him, Alerio headed for the tangled connections Dona pointed out between Ivar and the Victor. Connections that seemed to be breaking one by one. The Victor must have detected their invasion of his puppet’s mind. Unfortunately for the Victor, he was having trouble breaking all the links.

When Alerio reached the thick glowing cable, only one strand remained intact—but one was all he needed.

Sinking virtual fingers into that last strand, he fired Nick’s virus into it. The strand turned bright green as it carried its payload into the Victor. . . .

The knee of Alerio’s broken leg hit the sand, triggering a blinding flash of pain . . . Wait, I’m back in my body? But that means . . .

Terror spiked through him.

He jerked his head up. Face contorted in madness and rage, the Victor towered over him, one huge fist drawn back for a blow that would doubtless shatter his skull.

Then the giant just . . . froze. Utterly immobilized.

As Alerio watched, a wave of black rolled outward from the giant’s star-flecked eyes. Faster and faster, the rot surged over the golden skin, until it reached the feet planted wide on the sand.

Is he about to turn into that oil he became when he fought Nick?

But no. Looking closer, he realized the substance shone in the light of the setting sun with a dull crystalline gleam, something like quartz.

No, his neurocomp whispered, it’s much more fragile than quartz.

He froze, scarcely daring to hope. Biocrystal became fragile when it died. He’d just never seen it outside a cyborg’s body afterward . . .

A nerve-wracking hesitation, as if his comp was running a series of scans. Yes, it’s dead.

Maybe. Or maybe not.

It took Alerio three tries to struggle to his feet. His riaat-fueled strength was almost gone. Ignoring the pain of his broken ankle, Alerio braced himself and slammed his fist into one of the giant’s black crystal thighs.

It shattered, exploding into massive chunks that pelted down around him, bouncing off his shoulders, hitting the sand around his armored boots. Deprived of the leg’s support, the giant toppled and hit the ground. Its own weight shattered it, the dead crystal breaking into chunks.

But that wasn’t good enough.

Grimly determined, Alerio started stomping the chunks, breaking them into rocks, then pebbles, walking back and forth as he relentlessly crushed every piece of biocrystal into sand, despite the pain of his broken leg.

As he worked, the wind swept up the fine black particles and spun them into obsidian dust devils, then carried them away.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dona watched Ivar’s eyes roll back in his head. He crumpled like a marionette from a Punch and Judy show she’d once seen.

All around them, the rest of the priests were doing the same. Keeling over, one by one.

Dead, Dona’s implant told her. They’re all dead.

The virus must have spread from the Victor to his priests, she realized. Which meant . . . that would only have worked if he’d been linked to all of them, but he was just paranoid enough to do it. Alerio!

Heart shoving its way into her throat, she ran to the parapet and looked over it.

Six stories below, the Warlord lay sprawled on his back in the midst of a circle of blowing black sand. What’s wrong with him?

He’s unconscious, her implant told her. His body overheated from a combination of the heat and riaat, and he lost consciousness.

“Dona!”

Riane and Nick and their pilot hurried down the grav-sled’s ramp. She ran toward them—and kept going right on by. “Come on! We’ve got to get Alerio on that sled so we can Jump him back to the infirmary before he dies from heatstroke!”

Aboard the sled, Jessica hovered anxiously beside a regeneration tube.

“Galar?” Dona demanded, dropping into the sled’s pilot seat.

“Badly hurt, but he’ll survive,” Riane said.

Jessica managed a tremulous smile. “Once we get him back to Dr. Chogan.”

“So let’s get the chief and Jump,” Frieka growled, entering behind Nick, Riane, and the sled pilot. “I want to check on Pendragon.”

Riane grinned at Dona and Nick. “True love is a wonderful thing.”

Frieka glared at his partner. “Oh, you’re as bad as your mother, implying some disgusting relationship between me and that cat of hers.”

Two more Enforcers boarded just before Dona got the sled in the air.

Five minutes later, they Jumped for the Outpost, Alerio safely inside a second regen tube.

Alerio woke when Chogan popped the tube lid. She gave him a smile as he levered himself out. “Good to have you back, Chief.”

“And it’s even better to be back.” Studying her, Alerio frowned in concern. The doctor was visibly exhausted, which didn’t bode well. “Did we get everyone else back?”

“Yeah.” She put a hand between her shoulder blades and stretched wearily. “Some with nasty sword wounds. Jonelle Cartye died, but I was able to resuscitate her. She’ll be in regen at least two more days, healing all the damage.” The doctor grimaced. “Then I’ll have twenty-six autopsies to do.”

Correctly interpreting his widening eyes, she added hastily, “All Xerans. Plus Ivar, of course. Evidently the virus you planted spread to everyone the Victor was linked to. Which was all of them. According to my preliminary med-scans, everyone you hadn’t already killed died within seconds from biocrystal-death-induced aneurisms.”

“Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bunch of assholes. What about the Victor?”

She gave him a tired smile. “Several evidence bots managed to vacuum up what was left of his dead crystal.”

“But he is dead?” Alerio thought he remembered as much, but things were a bit fuzzy. And what he did remember . . .

“Very dead. There’s no way even the Xerans will be able to bring him back.”

He searched her face. “But are you certain?”

Chogan shrugged. “I scanned what was left of the biocrystal . . . sand. There were just enough fragments of petrified memory to prove it was him, but that’s about it. There definitely isn’t enough to re-create him, even if such a thing were possible. He’s dead and gone.”

Alerio closed his eyes in relief. That was why he’d been so determined to crush every last biocrystal chunk into powder, even when it became evident the wind was carrying the dust away.

“Of course,” the doctor said, giving him a significant look, “you’d have had no way of knowing the wind would carry off the dust, you being unconscious by then.”

He opened his mouth, about to correct her assumption.

“And even if you hadn’t been unconscious,” she continued firmly, “nobody would consider you responsible for deliberately losing all that crystal in nineteenth-century Arizona, since you were half-dead from riaat-induced heatstroke.” Her narrow glare warned him not to disagree. “As my medical report concludes beyond any doubt whatsoever.”

In other words, Chogan covered my ass. Otherwise Headquarters would have all the excuse they need to court-martial me.

Actually, she has a point, his implant said. You did have heatstroke. Even Colonel Ceres could hardly call your thought processes optimal.

Oh. He blinked.

“It’s a good thing Dona got you into regeneration so fast, or you might not have made it home,” Chogan continued. “There are limits to what even regen can do, once brain damage gets severe enough.”

Muscles relaxed that he hadn’t been conscious of tensing. “So Dona’s okay?”

“Just fine.” The doctor’s tired eyes crinkled in a smile. “Oh, she had a few cuts and a whole lot of bruises, what with one thing and another. But I took care of most of that, and her comp healed the rest. In fact, she should be walking through the infirmary doors right about . . .”

“Alerio!” Dona’s voice rang with delight.

He turned to watch her hurry in, her eyes bright with joy. “Goddess, I’m glad to see you. Are you all right?”

“Better than all right.” She gave him a sunny grin. “Ivar’s dead, and so are his priests. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about the Xerans kidnapping any more tourists.”

Turning away, the doctor strolled toward the ward exit. “If you two will excuse me, I’ve got work to do . . . somewhere else.”

They barely noticed, too busy staring at one another hungrily. The moment the corridor door closed behind Chogan, they were in each other’s arms, mouths meeting in a ravenous kiss.

Alerio’s mouth tasted like distilled sex. Hot, thick with some exotic Vardonese spice. Gods knew where it had come from; the man had just gotten out of regen. Yet there it was, that blend of sweetness and sharp bite she’d always associated with him. He drank from her mouth just as thirstily, his tongue stroking and swirling around hers, his teeth catching her lower lip in a slow, seductive tug.

All the while, he held her plastered against the length of his body as if trying to absorb her through the skin. He felt so damned big—so tall and broad and hard. The rolling contours of his muscularity shifted under those gleaming navy scales, unbearably tempting.

And too damned far away.

She hooked an arm around his neck and lifted herself until she could wrap both legs around his waist.

That’s better.

The core of her sex ground against the rigid length of his delicious erection—through two layers of armor scales, gods curse it. She growled in frustration against his mouth.

Still too far.

Alerio laughed, puffing warm breath and spice into her mouth. “Dry humping in combat armor is an exercise in frustration, love.”

She drew back just far enough to speak. “So let’s take it off. I’ll bet we could figure out how to put up a privacy bubble around one of these ward beds . . .”

“You know, I’m almost desperate enough to do it.”

Dona grimaced, picking up on that “almost.” “But not quite.”

“Almost, though.”

With a moan, she rolled her hips against that unbearably distant erection. “I’m not sure I can make it back to either of our quarters.”

“Neither am I.” He flashed a wicked smile. “But I do have an idea . . .”

The room was one of the biggest on the Outpost, so much so that it took up most of one entire level of the Enforcement wing. Poles of varying heights jutted from its soaring dome, each supporting a hoop ranging in size from teacup to several you could fit a regen tube through.

Just beyond the dome, rows of seats rose in concentric rings. Dona gave Alerio a smirk. “Why, Chief Dyami, I had no idea you were so kinky.”

He gave her a hungry stare. “I could say the same, Enforcer.” Both wore nothing but grav-generation belts. “Though this isn’t really kinky.”

Dona lifted a brow. “No?”

“Kinky would be inviting spectators.”

She laughed. “And selling tickets.” Her eyes dropped to his cock, which promptly hardened even more. “Come to think of it, that would be really easy to do.”

Alerio gave her a heated stare. “I’m afraid I’m far too possessive for that. I don’t share.” The arena’s dome darkened, turning black as it polarized on command.

“Think of the possibilities.” Dona gave him a teasing look. “Nude grav-ball could really take off.”

“Only assuming all-female teams. There isn’t a man alive who’d let anyone swing a grav-stick around his pride.”

Dona pretended to cower, crossing her arms over her bare breasts. “Hey, I have no desire to take a stick across my delicate bits either.”

Alerio gave the anatomy in question a long, admiring look. “I don’t think the word ‘bits’ does them justice.” A slow, wicked smile spread across his face. “But I can think of something that would.” He reached for her.

A silent command activated Dona’s grav-belt, while reversing its axis of attraction. She fell upward. Grinning downward at him, she called, “Only if you can catch me first!”

“Oh,” he growled, “I can catch you.”

Alerio launched after her like a spear. Damn, I think I’m in trouble. Her lips pulled into a grin of pure anticipation. Good.

A small hoop jutted off to her left. She shot out an arm and grabbed it. Her momentum whipped her around, and gravity shifted as she flipped the belt’s axis so that its field sent her shooting the opposite way just before Alerio gabbed for her. He growled, his eyes flashing red with lust and temper, caught the nearest hoop, and flung himself after her.

Dona sailed across the chamber, her body held as straight as a blade. Alerio admired the luscious view: the sight of her delicious ass muscles working, her thighs together, toes pointed. Her perfect breasts drew upward in the direction of “gravity,” their nipples like furled roses.

Lust prowled through him, hot, primitive, fierce with the animal need to have her. The same feral instincts that made him a Warlord put a burning edge on his hunger. He knew his eyes glowed.

Which gave him a wicked idea. Lips pulling into a fierce grin, he shot a command to the Outpost main comp.

The arena went completely dark as a sensor-blocking field descended over the entire dome.

“Hey!” Dona yelped from somewhere ahead of him. He heard a vibrating thumb as she caught one of the hoops and halted her flight. “No fair!”

“Since when do Enforcers care about ‘fair?’” He grinned in the dark. He’d never have pulled this stunt on a human, of course. Anyone but a ’borg would have ended up hurt by running into one of the jutting hoops.

Fortunately, he and Dona knew the location of every goal in the arena. Thanks to their neurocomps, they could maneuver in the dark by memory and computer calculation alone.

As he flew through the darkness, his comp revealed the location of an approaching ring. Around it hung a forest of additional circles, all of different sizes: the goals. He caught the hoop, dragging himself to a halt. It was one of the bigger ones; he swung around and crouched inside it, gripping its rim with fingers and toes. Nostrils flared, he drew in air, tasting the scent of her.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

He cocked his head, listening to the soft rasp of breathing as Dona leaped from hoop to hoop, the vibrating hum of the plastium as she hit each one in turn. His neurocomp displayed another hoop, superimposing a glowing red box on the darkness.

Dona.

He gathered himself, flicked his belt’s gravity on just behind her, and leaped to sail through the darkness. The belt’s field wasn’t true gravity, so it affected only the one who wore it. Otherwise the game would have never have been possible.

Dona sensed him coming, and bounced from her perch with a yelp of alarm. The target followed her.

Sweet Mother Goddess, I can’t wait to get my hands on her.

He wanted to feel Dona’s firm muscled legs and kitten-soft breasts, ached to taste her mouth and her sex. The cream and salt, just slightly astringent . . .

He loved the taste of her, adored the distilled eroticism, the slick texture of soft female folds just begging for his cock. The hot grip around his shaft, clinging with every hard thrust . . .

His mouth flooded with saliva and the head of his cock stretched upward until it brushed his belly. His hands felt hot with the need to touch. He licked dry lips, focused on the red target.

Dona watched the hot glow of Alerio’s eyes as he soared toward her. Her nipples ached, and she savored the rush of wet heat in her sex. For a moment, she was tempted to wait for him and let him claim her here now.

No, she decided, I’m going to make him work for it.

Dona sprang, heading for a tight cluster of hoops, her speed increasing as she pinpointed the belt’s gravity field just behind them. Catching a hoop, she let her momentum swing her around . . .

Fuck! He’s right on me! She leaped, flinging herself toward another perch, trying to keep the game going as her body thrummed with eager anticipation. When he catches me, I want him hot.

Alerio hit the hoop she’d just left with a vibrating thump, before flinging himself at her. She leaped for another hoop, gripped it, and powered herself toward a fourth, kicked a foot into that one, and kicked off into the dark.

She felt the heat of Alerio’s body the moment before his arms snapped around her waist like the jaws of a trap. Instinctively, Dona twisted, fighting his grip, shooting punches into any part of him she could reach—if carefully, to make sure she didn’t actually hurt him.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Alerio purred in her ear as he contained her struggles despite her cyborg strength.

Gods, he’s strong. Even stronger than she usually realized. Growling and bucking, Dona got exactly nothing for her effort but his low, triumphant laugh.

“You might as well give up.” He bit the lobe of her ear in a tender nip that sent a shiver up her spine. “You’re not getting away from me.”

Wrapping both strong thighs around her waist, he pulled one of her arms back and wrapped her wrist in a length of restraint cable. Spitting a curse despite the arousal jolting through her, she shot an elbow into his ribs. He ignored the blow and captured that hand, too, looping it in more of the cable.

Dona gasped. Her nipples ached, and she felt her cunt go hot.

“Ahhhhh,” Alerio rumbled. “I thought you’d like that.” He relaxed the clamp of his thighs just enough that he could turn her to face him, her wrists gathered tight against her spine. His eyes blazed in the darkness. “You like being tied. And you’ll like this even more.”

His mouth closed over her left nipple in a startling erotic assault that tore a gasp from her mouth. Alerio rumbled in satisfaction and suckled her lazily, simultaneously scraping his teeth across the furled bud. Sparks blazed up her spine in pulses with each teasing bite.

By the time he lifted his head again, she was squirming helplessly in her bonds. “You taste delicious.” He transferred his mouth to the other breast as he cupped and squeezed the first, rolling the nipple with lazy fingers. “How do you like that, hmmm?”

“You know exactly how much I like it . . .” Dona had to stop to pant.

He laughed. “Well, yes, actually I do.” She couldn’t see a damned thing when he lowered his head again, though she caught one last triumphant flash of red.

Then he closed his eyes and seemed to vanish.

Darkness surrounded her, thick as tar and smelling of aroused male. Dona wanted to run her fingers through the rough silk of his hair, but her cabled hands refused to obey. The sense of helplessness heated her simmering arousal until it seemed to smoke through her like hot oil.

Desperate to touch him, she lowered her head until her lips found the thick cords of his neck. She feasted there, running her tongue over his skin, gorging her senses on the taste of him, drinking in his Vardonese musk. Masculinity and raw sex made her head spin. She buried her nose in the thick fall of his hair and closed her eyes. His mouth did wicked, delicious things to her breasts, pointed tongue flicking her erect nipples, each pass making her body ring in sweet reverberations. Ping ping ping. Crystalline shivers of delight.

He began to bite her, careful teeth pressing delicate skin, sending erotic shivers rolling over Dona in sweet waves. She found his ear and bit him back.

To her satisfaction, he growled, so she caught his lobe and bit him again—slowly raking her teeth across that soft bit of flesh, then flicking her tongue into the sensitive channel of his ear.

“Pushing it,” he rumbled.

“I like pushing it,” she breathed.

“I noticed.” He wrapped one powerful arm around her and flipped them both, grabbing the hoop with his free hand to stop their rotation.

Silk lashing her thighs as he caught her knees, spread them wide, and nudged his face between them. Red eyes flashed at her up the length of her body. She felt his fingers part her wet, soft lips.

Sensation stormed her, so fierce she shivered. His tongue traced a burning path from her clit to her hot cream core. His stiffened tongue stabbed into her depths, then softened to explore and lick. Pleasure flared through her body, jolting, electric shocks of delight. His fingers teased her sex, strumming her clit, thrusting deep into her core.

Orgasm flashed through her like lightning in dark clouds, blazing across her senses. The hot power of the climax was so intense, she didn’t even feel him let her go, leaving her floating helpless and stunned. She only became aware again when he drew her close, one hand catching her ass, his narrow hips settling between her legs.

Aiming his cock for her opening, he thrust deep, all the power of his brawn behind it.

Dona threw her head back, moaning at the stark erotic power of the pleasure.

The lights came back on, obeying some soundless order of Alerio’s. She stiffened, blinded by the blaze of light beyond his broad shoulders. She clenched her eyes shut as her comp implant worked to compensate. By the time she opened her eyes again, she could see Alerio’s fiery eyes gazing down into hers from the elegant planes of his face.

I forgot how damned handsome he is.

“Goddess,” he murmured as if somehow reading her mind. “You’re so beautiful.” He sounded almost . . . awed.

She found herself believing him. “Gods, Alerio,” she burst out, “so are you!”

Laughing in genuine amusement, Alerio began to thrust, slowly, carefully, without his usual hammering power. His glowing gaze never wavered from hers. She wrapped her legs around his waist, pressing up to meet his thrusts.

Making love in zero gravity meant they couldn’t use body weight to pump to climax. They had to rely on muscle power.

Dona tightened the grip of her thighs as he cupped her butt and shoulders, pumping lazily at first, gaining speed gradually as the pleasure overcame his control. She watched his face in absorbed fascination as he threw his head back, clenching his teeth, fighting not to come. Fighting to wait for her.

Meanwhile she could feel the strong throbbing pleasure building in her sex, gripping and releasing over and over . . .

“Come,” he growled at last, as if unable to wait anymore. “Come for me now!”

That feral growl triggered the storm that had been building in her. Her climax seemed to detonate, a ferocious explosion, fierce and hot.

Dona convulsed in Alerio’s arms, her back arching hard as she shouted in triumph and delight. Alerio echoed her with a primal male roar.

They floated, wrapped in each other, basking in the lazy aftermath. Alerio reached beneath her and freed her wrists. She gave him an approving purr and curled her arms around his neck, snuggling closer against him.

He felt delightful wrapped around her, hard muscle gleaming with sweat, his hair floating to tangle with her own. Dark chest hair teased her nipples. She sighed into his shoulder, on the verge of drifting to sleep.

“I love you.” He said the words the way he’d comment on the strength of gravity, as if the astonishing comment was nothing more than simple fact. Undeniable.

Dona froze, her eyes flaring wide, her breath catching.

His eyes searched hers, irises still blazing with the strength of his emotion. “Marry me.”

She swallowed, a lump of raw emotion choking her. Astonishment? Pain? She didn’t even know herself. “But I’ve got psychological scars that go all the way to the bone.”

“And it’s time you healed them.” He stroked one hand up and down her back. “I can help you with that.” He began to float downward as he gradually cut power to his belt. Automatically, she followed suit, frantically trying to think.

“But . . .” She was having so much trouble processing the idea of Alerio loving her, she couldn’t put together a coherent argument. “You . . .”

“Not that you need much help,” he told her calmly. “You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever known.”

“You . . . want me?” There was more wonder in the question than she knew there should be. It made her feel naked—more than she had when they’d made love—so she made it a sentence, trying to sound certain. “You want me.”

He smiled down on her. Somehow those flaming eyes of his looked kind, warm as a campfire on a cold night. “I don’t just want you, Dona Astryr. I love you. And that will never change.”

There was such certainty in that last sentence, she found herself grinning back at him. “I love you.” God, it felt good to finally say it. To finally admit it, both to him and to herself. “I love you!” She threw her arms around him, a bubble of laughter spilling from her. “I love you, love you, love you!”

He laughed. Her back touched the floor as full gravity kicked in. Alerio’s big body came to rest on hers. “So you’ll marry me?” he asked, his gaze searching hers with a trace of worry.

“What a question.” Dona grinned, happy tears stinging her eyes. “How could I do anything else?”