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  Her ruminations faded as sensation built. At first, he seemed a bit inexperienced, but then something changed—for the better, not that he’d been bad. Maybe kissing had as much to do with right time, right guy, as experience. Or he was a fast learner. The faster he learned, the fuzzier her thoughts got. If her mouth had been free, she might even have asked a question. Or three. How? Why? When? The questions guys hated girls asking. But her mouth wasn’t free, didn’t look like it would be free for a while—

  The Earth moved. Or maybe it shifted. And tilted. A sizzle like electricity kicked up the hairs on the back of her neck and her arms. He stiffened, his mouth still against hers, but she’d lost him. She felt it before he eased her back.

  “Excuse me.”

  And he was gone. She blinked. She knew he’d leave, just not mid-kiss. The earth moved and he leaves—the earth shifted again. More electricity sizzle. So maybe they hadn’t made the Earth move. If the bug was acting up, there was no sign of it here in the engine room. It still hissed sullenly. Then she heard shots. Gunshots. Couldn’t be from Wyoming and not recognize the sound of a gun going off, but there was another sound she didn’t recognize.

  Emily balanced caution with curiosity for several seconds. It shouldn’t when gunshots were involved, but curiosity won. It usually did. She scrambled up and headed for the parlor.

  TWELVE

  Smith rode the time slip, releasing a disrupter back along his six, so it would go off just before he dropped back into real time. Not that he thought anyone was following him. The Time Service’s resources had been reduced to inexperienced cadets who were even now heading for time snares. But he hadn’t survived by assuming anything, and time was tricky, with the past, present and future bumping against each other. The current was rough, both ahead and behind. Good thing he knew how to avoid the worst of the turbulence. And he had a strong stomach. He didn’t understand, or control, the gear that sent him through time. Didn’t understand time theory and never would, but he’d learned it was easier to track things not human. This particular energy source was one of the easier mineral compounds to key on. It allowed—not pinpoint accuracy—but as close as it got in the time stream. Even here he was at the mercy of someone else. His life would be easier—and less painful—if time travel were simpler. Maybe time could be pinpointed with more accuracy when limited to a single planet. He didn’t know if that were true or not, but he did know when one threw in multiple galaxies and time lines, time was a bitch. It fought interference as if it knew. Sometimes it felt sentient, as if it wanted to make his existence miserable, too.

  He was a soldier, a do-it-yesterday guy. A fixer, not a creator of problems, certainly not meant to be a time traveler. Only the master saw the big picture, knew what all the little moves meant in that picture. He slowed, shuddering as the stream fought that, too. He was weapons ready when he slammed back into real time—

  * * * *

  Robert felt the shift from the inside out. Felt lethal come online, like a panther uncoiling for the hunt as he stalked for the bug’s exit hatch. The feeling was heady and strange, though his libido was whining about the kiss ending.

  “You’re outnumbered. We’re only here for the machine. Surrender and no one will be harmed.”

  Robert frowned. Who was that? And where had he come from?

  “Outnumbered?” Carey’s voice came from behind the open hatch. Robert saw his legs pressed against the side of the bug through the hatch opening. “This is an opportunity to excel, Smith.”

  Smith. Carey meant the name to be a message to his companions. The time traveling professor had arrived sooner than expected. Carey leaned out and fired off a couple of shots toward the rear of the museum.

  Smith’s mercenaries responded with ray gun blasts that made light dance against the walls of the museum. Had he followed the paper trail or the energy trail? If he was tracking the energy output, that could be a problem. Another opportunity to excel. He edged up to the opening, wondering in a distant way why he felt no fear, and took a quick look. He leaned back. I did not see what it looked like I saw. The mercs, who were using Twitchet’s desk and a couple of workbenches for cover, had looked like robots or something. He leaned out again, risking a longer look, pulling back just before he took a ray blast to the side of the head. Yup, looked a lot like robots.

  Automatons perhaps? The nanites sounded way too happy, too hopeful they were right—not that it surprised him. After centuries stuck in test tubes the nanites were interested in anything and everything, no matter how dangerous. Apparently that now included the steampunk subculture. Could his team hold out against Smith and his automatons?

  Large, metal men could have an advantage in a firefight.

  One more look, this time at Smith and he got his second shock. Smith wore a WWII army uniform. He didn’t know the bug was traveling through time. He thought it was still in 1944. It felt important, though why wasn’t clear. And Robert had other, more urgent concerns.

  Robert’s side had the bug for cover. It was well armored but, as more shots thudded into its sides, Robert felt a change ripple through the metal floor. He dropped down close to the opening, but kept out of sight. Don’t get shot. He felt the memory of pain from one that hadn’t happened to him and realized the desire not to get shot came from more than natural caution. He really needed to have a sit down with his little sister after this got sorted. But that was for later. Right now he had to keep Smith from getting the bug.

  The bug shuddered like it wanted to get away, too, vibrated like it couldn’t—the EAD. It was within arm’s reach on the table where Emily had dropped it, buzzing like a small fly. He grabbed it, found the button, but didn’t depress it, instead, he shoved it in his pocket.

  “We need to close the hatch, Colonel.” Robert pitched his voice to be heard only by Carey, which was not that hard, with all the shots flying back and forth.

  “Of course we do.” Carey sounded resigned. “Chewie! Gonna need some cover fire!”

  Ray gun blasts tunneled down the side from the rear of the bug as Carey shoved the hatch into place. Robert spun the wheel until he saw and felt it seal, then he whirled around, faster than he’d thought possible and headed for the engine room. Met Emily coming out. Her lips parted to possibly ask a real question but there wasn’t time.

  “We need to secure this door.”

  She turned with him, yanking it in place. He locked it down, too.

  “The parlor!” She darted there, using the levers to restore one side of the room to crypt status, pausing only to grab her coat, before cranking the last seat into place. Robert did the other.

  “Bridge,” he ordered tersely.

  “Lots of sharp edges in there,” she protested, so he swept her up and in, dropping them both into the chair at the center of it all, yanking her coat from her grasp and tossing it aside, feeling a distant surprise when it clanked upon landing on the floor. “Straps.”

  The gauges jumped crazily, the bug seemed to be gathering itself in, but the first shift felt more like the earlier one—and came from outside. Electricity sizzled again. Was Smith jumping out? Or bringing more men in? The sensations were somewhat like portal travel, but not precisely. The nanites concurred with his assessment, as they battened down their hatches. That they didn’t have hatches did not appear to matter.

  Robert took a strap edge from Emily and shoved it into the buckle, yanking it tight, wishing he had more time to enjoy the sensation of a woman in his lap. Outside, battle sounds increased. Was that increased energy fire from the rear of the device? Another player? There’d been two…teams giving Delilah fits during her first encounter with Smith. Time is persistent. If events had played out differently, would Delilah have led this team on this op? He had no answer, but the question felt significant, felt like it mattered. The impacts to the bug felt and sounded deliberate.

  “Can that affect the engine?” he asked, even knowing Emily couldn’t know.

  Her head turned against his chest, in
the direction of the gauges.

  “Maybe.” Emily shoved another strap in his hand. He secured it. “It’s old.”

  Was it? Where and when had it come from? How many stops had it made on its way here?

  “And it’s weird.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. With a quick breath, and perhaps a bit of bracing, he extracted the EAD and depressed the button.

  The buzzing stopped.

  Time seemed to still for several seconds, then the gauges synched like a slot machine turning up lemons.

  The lights went out, as if the power had been sucked elsewhere.

  “Brace yourself.”

  * * * *

  When the tracker, or maybe it was a warden, flashed in, Smith didn’t have time to be relieved it was just one. The silver uniform reminded him of the one he’d seen in the alternate reality, but it couldn’t be the same tracker. Could be his counterpart in this reality, but he should be caught in a time snare—Smith blinked and the tracker looked like one of the guys shooting at them. Whoever it was, wherever he came from, he was good. Smith dodged a stun charge to the face—at least he hoped it was a stun—and saw the next blast hit an automaton in the head. Not good. If its eyes could cross, they would have.

  Its body jerked, its firing pattern going from precision to dangerously random. He shot it himself, then had to do it to a second automaton when it almost shot the third. It toppled with a crash that took out one of the workbenches. The other swayed for several long seconds, before falling on its back.

  When he’d arrived, he thought it was Twitchet’s warehouse workroom, but it wasn’t big enough and the men shooting at him wore the wrong clothes and carried the wrong weapons. He shouldn’t be facing energy weapons, wouldn’t have brought the ’tons if he’d known he would be. No time to think about what had gone wrong or what it meant. No memory adjusting would be happening and he needed to leave before the last ’ton went down.

  Not good to leave those bad boys behind, but he wasn’t going to get out if they didn’t go now. They could be retrieved some other time. He keyed in the retreat command and started backing toward the only door he had access to. If he made it out of this, he’d bring a different mix to the party, though chances were slim he’d run into the same warden twice in a row.

  He laid down cover fire, tracking it along the side of the transmogrification machine, the hits sure to blind the non-warden shooters. He made them as some alien investigation squad. Based on their non-military appearance and very military weapons—with one exception—he figured he was back on Earth, though when they were wasn’t obvious.

  His remaining automaton made it through the door on his plus size feet, just escaping a blast that slammed into the doorframe instead. When he was clear, Smith dove through the opening, too, while the ’ton covered him.

  Time is persistent and so was his master. Smith didn’t know what he wanted with Twitchet’s machine, but back behind the restraints, Smith knew he shouldn’t get it. He was going to pay a price for failing to secure it yet again, but the part of him that felt his own wasn’t sorry. Was this subliminal resistance causing him to sabotage his missions? Or was the mental restraint, and the fugitive hope, another way his master had found to torment him?

  He felt the pain from his past failure, an old echo meant to give him incentive not to fail. He shook it off. He’d already failed. He’d been outgunned before the tracker arrived, even with three ’tons on his team, and where there was one, more might follow—though he did wonder how this one had managed to arrive on his heels. The master had used beacons to disrupt and trap the trackers, but there wasn’t a beacon deployed here, other than the energy trail. Could he have also followed the energy trail?

  This one might be that good or just lucky. He fired around the doorframe, then took a quick look. The machine he’d watched Twitchet build shouldn’t have been able to traverse time, but it must have since it was not when or close to where he’d expected it to be. The shaking of the machine kicked into high, tumbling boxes from the shelves of the storage room. The time warden advanced, covered by the others. Smith fought the imperative. If he could fight it, maybe one of them would take him out. His hand, as if it had a will of its own, hit the recall device. Flash out came just as the warden breached the door…

  * * * *

  One expected strange encounters traveling through time and space. It was in hope of this type of outcome that Ashe had joined the Time Service. It was one thing, however, to expect strange and another to experience it. And do not tell me to expect the unexpected. I am not in the mood. She’d dropped into the midst of a fubar—odd how that inexplicable word managed to convey the problem so well. She’d been hit with a paradox tremor out of the gate—or so she thought at the time—but now she was not so sure. That machine—and what a machine it was—had been vibrating like nothing she’d ever seen—and then it had flashed out, leaving behind the scent of Constilinium, though off somehow. It left a metallic taste in her mouth. Based on observed data, it shouldn’t be possible, shouldn’t even exist in this time, or any time for that matter. There was no comparison in her experience, nor could Lurch produce one from his vast memory reserves. He’d tapped into available data sources upon arrival, to fix a time and place, so they would search the historical record when they got back to the base. Sometime in the future, if they made it back to the base, they were already studying the data on the machine—Ashe shook off that thought. Didn’t want to go into a time spiral in the middle of a fubar.

  With some reluctance, Ashe looked at strange and unexpected part two: the two metal-looking men taken down during the exchange of weapons.

  Automatons. Lurch sounded almost awed.

  It wasn’t easy to awe Lurch, so Ashe felt obliged to echo that awe, despite the introduction of yet another unfamiliar word into her fubar. He wanted to be after the man with the automaton, she could feel his longing for this Smith—he coughed up the name with extreme reluctance—but he was almost as curious as she was about the automatons. Resulting in a long, atypical, moment of indecision.

  Both automatons lay tumbled on the floor, but Ashe estimated that on their big feet they’d top her by half her height. One lay on his face amidst the rubble of what had been some sort of table. The other had fallen backward, his mechanical eyes as blank as his face. Their surface, crafted of some inferior metal—that echoed that on the exterior of the strange machine—had been shaped to resemble men. Arm and leg-like appendages where one might expect them to be. Fingers and toes with joints. They’d have been almost comical if she hadn’t seen their lethal efficiency prior to the application of energy fire to their cranial areas. Energy fire to their chests had been ineffective, which made her conclude their power and operating systems were in their cranial zones. Their “eyes” hadn’t blinked, had glowed red, and had appeared not to move during exchange of fire. They’d appeared to respond to stimuli until takedown.

  She crouched by one and poked it in a manner admittedly tentative. If it rebooted or something, his “hand” looked big enough to crush her head. The metal surface was warm and it emitted a faint hiss from small vents on its neck. If Lurch could frown, he would have. What’s wrong?

  I am picking up faint traces of Constilinium from the steam.

  What about the internals?

  My nanites are unable to penetrate the exterior.

  Unable? Like—

  Yes.

  Which means this event is connected to the time traps? But what was this? What had they been fighting for? The machine?

  It seems unlikely, but we can’t rule it out.

  “Hey!” One of the men who’d been shooting at Smith when she arrived, waved his gun her direction, though it wasn’t pointed in a threatening way, more like a gesture to go with the hey.

  Please tell me I don’t look like a silver metal humanoid.

  No one was supposed to remember a warden or a tracker encounter, so clothing shouldn’t matter because if time were fixed properly then
the encounter never happened.

  Never say never, Lurch pointed out with a hint of wry.

  Not for the first time, she sensed a story and wondered if someday he’d trust her enough to share it. Lurch operated on a need to know basis, though they often disagreed on what she needed to know. It helped that he let her win on occasion—helped even more if she’d been right.

  Usually she made sure she’d deployed a holo-something, but she’d arrived mad to her toenails over that thing that had been lobbed at her and been more focused on shooting than camouflaging.

  I adapted the settings to make you look consistent with the gentlemen already present when we arrived.

  Good save. Would have been even better if she’d been able to pause time and get her bearings, though she suspected no one “paused” this Smith character. The ability to pause time wasn’t given to cadets and if he knew how to defeat the pause, then she’d have lost her backup during the firefight. Even some of the top trackers weren’t cleared for time pausing. If not done properly time couldn’t be un-paused, resulting in all kinds of odd tremors from the un-paused time around it. Was that why Smith hadn’t paused time? Seemed like something a bad guy would do as a matter of course.

  It requires nanite assistance—at least non-sentient—to pause time.

  She wanted to ask Lurch if he knew how, but with three armed men staring at her, it seemed a good time to focus on the moment. Besides, she probably already knew.

  “You don’t fool me. You’re one of those warden things.” The three men appeared uncertain whether she was friend or foe. So far only the big one with a head full of snake braids had his weapon pointed at her. She should fix things before she left, but if she erased Smith’s visit, then the automatons would disappear into changed time. She could try to take one of them with her, but it would slow her down. She could talk to them—as if the warden comment had coalesced into lethal agreement, all three weapons steadied into a trajectory focused on her—or she could leave before someone shot her.