Stars Across Time (17 page)

She tried to jerk to the side, but the water made her clumsy. His shot struck her in the shoulder, burning like fire. She sucked in a breath and ducked below the surface of the water, hoping the rain and the waves would hide her. Unfortunately, without her hands, she couldn’t paddle, and her feet broke the surface before she could angle herself downward, into the black depths below.

Another shot fired. This one didn’t hit her, but the agony in her shoulder was tormenting her badly enough. She couldn’t believe they were shooting at her, after all the effort they had gone through to bring her here.

She kicked, trying to stay beneath the surface, and trying to get away from their boat. She could hear the thrumming of the motor, but she couldn’t see anything. With her luck, she would run into a hungry shark.

But it was something with tendrils that she ran into, the slick appendages grasping her face.

Andie shrieked and lost all of her air. Her back broke the surface, and she jerked her head up, afraid something was attacking her—something
else
. Seaweed tangled around her shoulders, but nothing more dangerous. Cursing herself for being silly, she spun around, trying to see the boat while water streamed into her eyes. If a fear of seaweed caused her to be shot again, she would deserve it.

She glimpsed the boat, but it wasn’t coming toward her. She could barely see it anymore. It was arrowing into an alley between two buildings. They were leaving her to drown.

A wave splashed her in the face. She kicked harder, but every movement, even those made with her lower body, caused a wave of pain to stab at her shoulder. A grinding sensation vibrated through her body. The bullet rubbing against her bone? Whatever it was, everything hurt, and keeping her head up became a struggle.

With water—or maybe tears—half-blinding her, Andie rotated in a circle, searching for the military ship, hoping they had seen the fight and that someone was coming to help her. Nothing but the ruins of buildings rose around her. The ship was gone.

T
heron’s hopes rose when he spotted the abandoned truck on the dirt road ahead.

“What a piece of crap,” the corporal in the driver’s seat of their vehicle said, then glanced at Theron and hurried to add, “Sir.”

“I’ll agree with that assessment,” Theron replied, though he kept his focus glued on the truck. Unfortunately, rain spattered off it, and the doors stood open. He had a feeling he was a few hours too late.

He had managed to get the truck in the mountains running again, patching the tires and using some pitch to plug a hole in a hose under the hood. By the time it had reached the border patrol office, they had been driving on the rims and wobbling like a top in an earthquake, but they had still made better time than if he and the women had walked the entire way. He had left them in the care of the lieutenant stationed there and would return to arrange a boat ride to the fort, but a private with a pair of binoculars had reported seeing another truck in the distance earlier in the day, one that had turned off the highway and onto a back road that smugglers were known to use. With a couple hours of daylight left, Theron had gone right back out again to search, in the hope that he might yet catch up with Andie’s group.

“Stop here.” Theron waved behind the truck. He realized he had been holding his knife, flipping it as a nervous habit, and he jammed it into his sheath.

“Yes, sir,” the corporal said without commenting on the knife.

Even though he was worried for Andie and the others, Theron managed a quick smile for the clean-shaven young soldier. It felt good to hear that “sir” again and to have people obey without arguing. Everyone in the border patrol office had been shocked when he rolled up in the battered truck with arrows sticking out of the sides. Thanks to the beard and the grime, the younger men hadn’t even recognized him, but a lieutenant from Fort Kitsap had seen through the dirt. The soldiers’ mouths had tumbled open when Theron had helped the troop of women out of the back of the vehicle. He had been glad to find a female sergeant stationed at the office, so he could hand them off to her for cleanup and medical needs. The women had surely suffered enough indignities at the hands of men.

“Prints look fresh, sir,” the corporal said, a rifle in hand as he climbed out of the office’s all-terrain vehicle.

Theron had felt guilty about requisitioning it, since gasoline was such a scarce commodity, but it was there for emergencies, and this had to count.

“Yes,” he murmured, eyeing footprints in the mud around a log.

He told himself that he recognized the tread of Andie’s shoes because he was observant and had seen them on the trail the day before, not because he was obsessed. Still, he admitted to the hollow feeling in his stomach at the thought of never seeing her again.

He crouched down for a closer look. Here by the log, there was a tangle of prints. She hadn’t walked away from it unless she had jumped into the reeds. No, there must have been a fight, and then she had been carried away.

“Not surprising,” he murmured.

He followed the tracks down a trail to a narrow beach. There wasn’t a dock, but he spotted a couple of old pilings where a boat might have been tied up. The prints ran right to the water’s edge. He sighed. Trucks and boats. The kidnappers had been more organized than he had guessed when he first joined them. He should have assumed they would have more assets than their weapons and boots. They had the time machine, and they had been stealing people and items for months before the reports had filtered back to the fort.

Theron gazed out at the Puget Sea, hoping he might glimpse the boat. Whichever direction it had taken, it was long gone, and with hundreds of docks up and down either side of the waterway, he would never be able to track it. He dropped his chin to his chest.

“Are you all right, sir?” the corporal asked tentatively from the path.

“No.”

• • • • •

Ten more kicks, Andie told herself, closing her eyes against the splash of another wave, against the agony in her shoulder. She had almost reached one of the buildings with a hole in the side and hoped she could find a place to rest inside. Unfortunately, the water level was halfway between one floor and the next, so she wouldn’t be able to simply stand on a floor when she reached the gap. She wasn’t even sure if there
was
a floor. She could see the ceiling of the next level, about five feet above the surface, but who knew what lay beneath?

“It’s a
girl
,” came a surprised voice from behind her.

Fresh fear clutched her heart. She recalled Bedene’s warning, about how this wasn’t a good place to be a castaway. Even if she didn’t find him trustworthy as a rule—especially now that he had shot her—the scavenging vessels she had seen
had
appeared dubious.

She forced her weary legs to kick harder so she could lift her head above the choppy surface and find the source of the speaker. Something between a raft and a pontoon boat floated about fifteen meters away, the hull made from recycled wreckage rather than wood. She spotted four young men in ragged clothing on it, all with long, clumsy-looking oars. If the craft had a motor, they weren’t using it. She would have heard that and could have hidden. Or perhaps not. She barely had the strength to stay afloat.

“Let’s get her,” one man said with the enthusiasm of someone who had found a wallet in a park and intended to keep it for himself.

Andie looked toward the dark recesses of the building, tempted to keep kicking in that direction, but who knew what scavengers might live inside? Would her fate be any better in there?

The questions were moot because the oars worked more efficiently than she would have guessed, and the men drew even with her quickly.

“It
is
a girl.”

Hands caught her beneath the armpits, and she cried out as she was lifted, the fire raging anew in her shoulder.

“What’d you do?”

“No idea. I just lifted her.”

Andie would have told them she was injured, but she was too busy gasping with pain. Damn, she had always thought she was stronger than this. She
wanted
to be stronger. One set her down on the deck of the boat, and she dropped her chin, trying to catch her breath and find the equilibrium to deal with this new situation.

“She’s bleeding. Her shoulder got cut or something.”

“Try shot,” Andie said, but it came out as a raspy whisper, and she didn’t know if they heard her. She had swallowed too much water.

“She’s not wearing any
pants
, man. I mean
any
.”

“Quit looking, you perv.”

“I’m not. But you can see. Look.”

“Think she’ll stay with us?” a new voice asked from the back of the boat.

Andie finally managed the energy to look up at her rescuers—or her new captors. That remained to be determined. As she had noticed before, they were in rags, and the boat looked to have been put together with spit and tape. The faces peering at her were younger than she had realized, teenaged. Two had patchy beards that wouldn’t come in fully for a couple more years, and the other two didn’t appear old enough to need to shave. Maybe she could cow them or mother them, convince them to do the right thing and take her someplace safe. Wherever that might be. The way one of the older ones was ogling her bare legs did not make her feel hopeful. What could she say to win them over? Tell her story? Who would believe it?

“Where’d you come from, lady?” the one who had pulled her out asked. He appeared to be the oldest in the group.

“I’m a soldier,” Andie said, not sure if that would impress them or make them want to shoot her, but it was the only thing that came to mind. “I was up in the mountains with my squad, fighting raiders. I got separated from my unit, my commander, then taken prisoner. I escaped, but not without getting shot.” She tilted her chin toward her shoulder, though even that limited movement hurt. She definitely had a bullet in there, grinding against the bone.

“
Raiders
,” one blurted. “Damn, they’re wicked evil.”

“That was my impression of them, yes.” Andie hoped the boys didn’t think to ask how she could have gone from the mountains to the sea, because she had the impression the raiders didn’t come down this far, that even seeing them in the pass had been unusual. She also hoped they didn’t think to ask how she had lost her clothes. “I need to get back to the fort.” Belatedly, she realized she didn’t know the name of Theron’s fort. What if there were ten of them? “Report in to my commander.”

“Uh.”

That wasn’t an inspiring response. And the one ogling her legs hadn’t stopped. He looked like he was a few seconds away from reaching out and touching. She didn’t have the energy left to kick anyone. She wondered if they would take advantage of her if she passed out.

“Who’s your commander?” the older one thought to ask.

“Theron,” she said, then looked up, wondering if they might possibly have heard of him. She couldn’t imagine running into teenagers back home who knew the names of any of the officers at the Bremerton naval base, but it was a smaller world now, so maybe...? “Aloysius Theron,” she said more loudly, wishing she knew his rank.

“
Colonel
Theron?” one of the boys asked. All of their eyebrows flew up.

“Yes.” Maybe?

The boys’ faces grew much more serious.

“Maybe we can catch up with that army ship that was just here,” the older one said. “Drew, stop looking at her legs. If she’s a soldier, she can probably knock your package off. Here, Todd, Sanka, get those oars to work.” He was already digging in himself, standing and pressing the long pole into the water.

Andie doubted she could knock anyone’s package anywhere at the moment, but after the two days she’d had, she sat on the edge of the craft, gripping her shoulder in an attempt to stop the bleeding, and allowed herself to experience a modicum of delight. She hadn’t guessed that Theron’s name would mean anything to some civilians, scruffy and young civilians at that, but she was relieved to finally have something go right.

The boys threw their backs into rowing, taking the pontoon boat out into the water beyond the skyscrapers. As soon as the military ship came into view—it had traveled farther north, heading for the coast of an island that had once been Queen Anne—one of her saviors started jumping up and down, waving his long oar overhead. Seeing the effort put out on her behalf almost made Andie melt into a puddle.

But then a realization struck her, and she stiffened. What would happen if they caught up to the ship and the soldiers took her aboard? They would ask her what unit she was in, and she wouldn’t have a clue. She would be called out as a liar right away. Would they still take her to the fort, to lock her up where Theron might eventually find her? Or would they throw her back overboard?

She had to come up with a new story.

“Yeah, and what would that be?” she whispered to herself, the knot of panic behind her breastbone growing larger when someone on the deck pointed in the raft’s direction.

The boys kept rowing, more earnest than ever with their efforts. Andie hoped that she could figure out a way to get invited on board and that the teenagers would be left on the raft. She would need to try a different story on the soldiers. She rehearsed a few ideas as the little craft drew near. Even if the military ship did not look like what she was used to back home, it was large and intimidating, and she found herself craning her neck to look up at the men on the deck. Several had come to the railing, peering down curiously.

“What is it, boy?” one asked, looking at Andie.

She had no idea what his rank was, but he had short, gray hair beneath his blue cap. Their green uniforms reminded her of the simple ones from the Civil War era, though made from a lighter material than wool. They were clean, pressed, and the men wearing them were tidy. She found herself wanting to salute the officer.

“This woman’s been shot,” the oldest boy called up—the others had turned quiet and less animated under the scrutiny of the soldiers. “She says she’s one of Colonel Theron’s men. Er, women.”