Angela Knight - Unbound

“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.

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.