Guardian

Dona Astryr lay on the narrow bunk, staring sightlessly at the ceiling of her cell. It was a stark little chamber, so tiny its white walls seeming to crowd in on her. It held nothing more than the bunk, a sanitary unit, and the vendser that would produce food and water on a specific schedule.

There were no apparent bars across the empty doorway, but Dona knew better. An invisible repeller field would blow her across the room with a painful shock if she got too close to the opening.

As if that wasn’t enough, two Enforcers stood guard outside. One might think that was overkill, except somebody had broken Ivar out of the brig two weeks before. Agents had been injured in the raid, and the enemy’s self-destructing combots had blown craters in the floor. The damage had only just been repaired. So she supposed it was understandable that Chief Dyami would take precautions.

At the thought of the Chief, Dona’s chest ached with a deep, relentless throb. The really pitiful thing, she thought, was that the pain was not because she faced the likelihood of a long sentence in a penal colony if she was convicted of treason. It wasn’t even that her friends and coworkers thought she had betrayed them, risked their lives, and stranded her best friend in time.

No, she was hurt because Alerio Dyami thought she was a traitor. Alerio, who had been her obsession for entirely too damn long. She never would have gotten involved with Ivar to begin with if it hadn’t been for her commander.

There was no real question that he was as attracted to her as she was to him. That was just as obvious as his reluctance to get involved.

So in order to avoid yearning for a relationship that was obviously doomed, she’d ended up in one that had turned out to be downright toxic.

The question was, who had framed her? Normally she’d have assumed it was Corydon himself—he was fanatical enough to fake evidence if he couldn’t nail her any other way.

The trouble with that theory was that Alerio was right. Corydon simply didn’t have the ability to construct a frame tight enough to defeat the Chief’s ability to pull it apart.

But how could she prove it? Alerio had ordered her comp to shut itself down when he’d locked her in here. He’d even powered down her nanobot enhancements. She had no doubt the Chief had also pulled her permissions to access the Outpost comp for anything but ordering food from the vendser. Which meant she couldn’t hack her way into the system to discover who had done this to her.

Dona rolled to her feet and began to pace in long, restless strides. Even as she strode back and forth, she kept a careful distance from the cell doorway. She had no desire to get hit by that repeller field.

Well, at least her incarceration had accomplished one thing. It had killed off the last of her inappropriate attraction to Chief Alerio Dyami.

There was no way in the Seven Hells she could love a man who could believe she’d work for the Xerans. Not after everything those monsters had done to her home world.

Nick opened his eyes to find a brilliant violet sky. Disoriented, he squinted up at the red sun riding high overhead.

“Hmm?” She stirred sleepily, then sat up abruptly to stare around them in astonishment. “How the fuck did we get to another planet?” She aimed a sharp look at him. “Did you do this? Where are we?”

He rose on one elbow and scrubbed a hand over his face. “We’re on another planet?”

“Well, this sure as hell ain’t Earth.” She looked down at herself, registering the black leather pants and T-shirt she wore. “Huh. I’m dressed again.” She eyed him. “So are you. When did that happen?”

She was right. He wore the same jeans and T-shirt he’d had on before. “I have no idea.” Nick eyed her. “Does that computer of yours have any clue where we are?”

Riane cocked her head, as if listening to some voice he couldn’t hear. “I’m not detecting any electromagnetic communication. At all.” She frowned deeply, examining the sky. “Violet sky, red sun, no advanced civilization. Could be any number of worlds.” She rolled easily to her feet, then aimed a look at him. “You sense anything?”

He, too, stood, peering around them. Underfoot lay a carpet of thick green growth that reminded him of moss, though it was dotted here and there with colorful feathery structures similar to flowers.

Immense blue . . . things rose all around them, spearing toward the sky. He’d have called them trees, but they had no leaves. Instead, each branch ended in a big cluster of hard, glossy bulbs. Faint clicks and scrabbling noises sounded from the strange vegetation, suggesting some kind of life, though it was impossible to tell whether it was insects, animals, or birds. Or something else altogether.

Nick tried reaching out with his powers, searching for other intelligent minds. Riane was a strong, vivid presence next to him, but that was all. “Not sensing anything. Nothing sentient anyway. Lots of little . . . creatures, though.”

“And some that are not so little.” Riane nodded thoughtfully. “Nothing I recognize.”

She looked around them again, pursing her lips as she fisted her hands on her hips. “That’s a good question. I don’t think we can get home, unless you can figure out a way to Jump us there.”

Riane nodded, her gaze shrewd, decisive. “The first order of business is to figure out how we got here. If you didn’t do it . . .”

“. . . Somebody had to.” Nick straightened his shoulders. “Maybe we should take a walk and see what we can see.”

She shot him a look, lifting a red brow. “What, just wander around and hope we stumble on some form of transportation?”

Frieka trotted back into the suite of rooms he and Riane shared. Despite the clawing urgency he’d felt, he’d forced himself to head to the Outpost mess for food and water. He knew from experience that hacking a system could take hours of careful work. You’d have to be an idiot to attempt it on an empty stomach—or for that matter, without a bathroom break. He’d already taken care of both.

Serious hacking wasn’t the kind of thing you charged into. That was a good way to get yourself killed triggering a Trojan or viral bomb, especially if you were trying to work without backup in a system that had obviously been compromised.

Mother Goddess, he missed Riane. She excelled at this kind of thing. He could do it, of course, but it was hardly one of his specialties.

His stomach coiled into a knot, but Frieka ignored it as he leaped up on the bed and settled down. He closed his eyes and opened a data channel to the Outpost mainframe.

This was going to be delicate work, because he’d just as soon not get caught at it. He knew the Chief and his team had worked to tighten the central computer’s security system to prevent hacking. Obviously, the real traitor had found a way in anyway. Whoever it was had probably planted various defenses to keep someone from following his tracks.

Carefully, Frieka began to search the network, probing for the evidence he was looking for. He started with the surveillance system, since he knew at least one recording had been tampered with. Unfortunately, as he scanned the recording of Dona’s supposed crime yet again, he could find no evidence of direct interference in the image. Since he knew the recording was faulty, that had to mean that interference was deeply buried.

Luckily, he also knew there was a particular style in which each program was written. For a creature who was as much computer as Frieka was, variations in that style were as vivid and distinct as scent.

So Frieka went deeper, scanning through the underlying program script, seeking anomalies. It was a slow, tedious process that could not be done quickly. More than once he thought he’d found something, only to have the trail peter out.

Until, at last, Frieka caught a faint, distinctive pattern he knew from years spent in combat with Vardon’s military space fleet. It was complex and impressive, somehow inhuman in its glittering intricacy.

Carefully, wary of booby traps, the wolf began to probe the alien thread, working his way back along it, seeking to identify the traitor who had planted it.

Something dark and vicious and Xeran came raging through his com channel. An instant later his awareness was jerked out of his link to the mainframe.

Panicked, Frieka fought to suck in oxygen. The muscles of his chest ached savagely with desperate effort, but they didn’t move. He tried to struggle to his feet, only to discover his body was completely paralyzed, his rib cage frozen.