Warrior (7 page)

“And yet, they always think it's some kind of goddamned game. I keep telling people, the temporals don't play. And this bunch brought kids. I spent the morning digging an arrow out of a ten-year-old.”

He winced. “Ouch.”

“Yeah. Ouch.” She shook her head with a sigh of pure disgust, then straightened her shoulders. “But you're here about your vic. Given the morning's adventures, I haven't had a chance to put in a request to transfer her to the Rehab Center, but . . .”

“We're not sending her to the Center, Doc. She's got a Xeran military assassin after her. We're keeping her here.”

Chogan froze with her cup half-lifted to her mouth, staring at him over its rim. “I'm not trained to provide temporal rehabilitation to a native, Master Enforcer. Besides, I've got my hands full as it is.”

“Nobody expects you to keep an eye on her.” Galar managed not to snarl. “That's my assignment.”

“Yours?” Dr. Chogan's iridescent green brows flew up as she regarded Galar in surprise. “Do you have any idea how delicate it is to rehab someone who's been temporally displaced? Besides, I've already started the EDI. She'll be unconscious until it's finished.” Almost to herself, Chogan added, “I'd rather keep her out until we transfer her to the Center. She'll find all this traumatic enough as it is.”

“Unfortunately, that's not an option.” Galar ran a thumb along his lower lip in thought. EDIs—educational data implants—were imprinted directly onto a user's memory. Once the brain integrated the EDI's information, it could be used just like knowledge acquired through reading or personal experience. Galar could download and use EDIs instantly through his computer, but with humans like Jessica, nanobots had to do the cerebral imprinting. “What's included in the basic ed program, anyway?”

Chogan shrugged. “Galactic Standard, an elementary knowledge of twenty-third-century technology and science. The same thing any kid knows by the time he's ten.”

“Can you add an unarmed combat routine? And basic weapons use too. I have a feeling she's going to need it.”

Chogan swallowed a mouthful of stimchai and meditated over the taste a moment. “Well, yeah, but she's not going to be able to use it unless somebody works with her to get those skills integrated. She doesn't have a neuronet computer like you Enforcer types to help her absorb what she's downloaded. Somebody's going to have to help her. That's what rehab is for.”

“So I'll help her.”

Chogan looked at him. “Oh, yeah. That'll work.”

He frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

“Empathy and a delicate touch are vital in rehabing a native. Neither are phrases that leap to mind when I hear the word ‘Warlord.' And
you
. . .” She snapped her teeth together with a click. “Never mind.”

Stung, he glowered at her. “Look, I don't like this any better than you do, but the Chief Enforcer gave me a mission, and I'm going to carry it out. Implant that combat data and call me when you wake her up.”

Chogan's eyes narrowed. “I'm not one of your subordinates, Master Enforcer!”

He drew a deep breath and hissed it out between his teeth. “Dr. Chogan,
please
add the combat EDI.” Without waiting to see if she'd agree, Galar swung around and stalked out.

And pretended not to hear Chogan's muttered “Dickhole. ”

Next came images. Strange shapes flashing against the stars, oddly beautiful forms she suddenly realized were ships. People with skin colors she'd never seen before
—
matte black, metallic gold, a shimmering emerald green. Hair like flame, peacock feathers, or filaments of silver tinsel. Too many fingers, too many toes. Tails. Aliens that couldn't possibly be human, and yet were unmistakably intelligent as they stroked
controls with delicate frond fingers, their eyes huge and opalescent.

“Nooo!” Jessica's eyes
flashed wide as she jerked awake.

“It's okay, it's okay.” The voice was deep, soothing. “You were having a nightmare.”

Cautiously, she turned her head and found a big blond man sitting beside the bed. After a moment of disorientation, she recognized him. The cop who'd saved her. Galen? No. Galar.

Her mouth felt like sand. “Water?” she croaked. The word sounded wrong somehow, but she didn't know why.

“Of course.” He stood, and she blinked. She hadn't remembered him being quite so . . . stunning. He had to be a good six inches over six feet, with the leanly powerful build of a professional athlete. The scaled suit he'd worn had been replaced with something in a dark blue fabric, also piped with silver. The stark color called attention to the bright gleam of his blond hair and the translucent gold of his eyes. His face was just as striking, narrow and angular with an aquiline nose and a firm, aggressive chin. His cheekbones were chiseled and elegant, his blond brows thick over intelligent eyes that searched hers intently.

She watched him turn to a console by the bed. He murmured something to it, and a cup appeared through a small doorway in the console. He handed it to her.

Jess took it, staring at the console with a frown. A word teased her tongue, and she spoke it. “Vendser.”

Galar gave her a faint smile. “That's right. It's a food vendser.”

But the words still sounded wrong, composed of strange syllables and odd, lyrical grammar. Jessica froze in the act of lifting the cup to her mouth. “We're not speaking English. ”

“No.” He sat down in the chair again and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees.

A shaft of cold stabbed through her. “But I don't speak anything except English.”

“You do now.”

Words crowded to the tip of her tongue, but they made no sense. She drained the cup in one long, desperate gulp, hoping to clear her befuddled mind. “Galactic Standard.” Both hands curled around the empty cup in her lap. “We're speaking Galactic Standard.” The knowledge was suddenly right there, but she had no idea what it meant. Galactic Standard? It sounded like something from a science fiction novel.

He nodded. “Yes, that's right.”

Fear clicked down Jess's spine on icy claws. Flashes of imagery filled her head, things she could almost understand. Things that made no sense, words she had no frame of reference for.

“Stop it!” Jess didn't know if she was talking to him or to her own suddenly rebellious brain. “I don't know what the hell is going on, but stop it!” She flung the covers aside and rolled out of bed.

Alarm widened Galar's remarkable eyes. He came out of his chair and moved to block her. “Jessica, calm down. It's all right—you're safe.”

“Fuck that!” Jess bared her teeth, breathing hard as she fought to control the panic that threatened to send her into pointless flight. “There are things in my head that don't belong there! Did you do this to me?”

“It's just an educational data implant. There are things you need to know if you're going to . . .”

“Take it out!”
Alien images and strange words flashed through her head, building to a blinding, incomprehensible roar. Panic clawed at her. “Take it out!”

“Jessic—”

She danced forward and slammed a punch right at his chiseled jaw.

Galar blocked the
punch by sheer reflex—not that it would have hurt him if it had landed. He couldn't help but notice she'd executed it perfectly. Apparently she'd integrated the combat EDI—at least if you pissed her off enough to use it.

Lips peeling back from her teeth, she went for his eyes with clawing nails. He grabbed both wrists and forced her back down on the bed, riding her body with his, trying to control her wild, writhing struggles with his greater weight. “Jessica, calm down, dammit! You're all right! It's just an EDI. It's not going to hurt you!”

“I didn't tell you to put that in my head! I don't want it there!” Fear and rage blazed in too-wide blue eyes. “You've got no right to tamper with my brain!”

Running footsteps sounded behind him. “Move, Galar!” Dr. Chogan snapped.

He twisted aside. The doctor snaked a hand past him and clapped it against Jessica's forehead. Galar smelled the sharp, medicinal scent of a capsule breaking, spilling its drug cargo onto the girl's skin. A moment later, her eyes rolled back, and she went limp under him.

He rolled off her to find Chogan staring grimly at the two of them. “I warned you.”

Galar raked a hand through his hair. “Yeah, you did.” Feeling helpless, he stared down at Jessica as she sprawled unconscious on the bed.

She looked delicate in the thin infirmary sleep suit, particularly compared to the lean, muscled strength of the Warfems and female Enforcers he was used to. The memory of her terrified rage made something ache in his chest. He rubbed an absent circle over his heart. “Why did she react like that?”

Chogan sighed. “You and I grew up absorbing implanted knowledge; it's natural to us. But to a temporal native, data implants are an inexplicable mental rape. Some of them even go insane.”

Galar stared at her, sickened. “Why in the hell do we do it, then?”

“Because when you take somebody from the past and stick them in the twenty-third century, surrounded by tech they've never seen and don't understand, they don't do well,” Chogan explained patiently. “A good rehab specialist can trigger the integration gradually enough that they can cope. Which is why we need to send her to the Center.”

“We can't do that, Doctor. The Xeran would kill her, half the staff, and anybody else who happened to get in the way. He's a heavy-combat battleborg. They wouldn't have a prayer.”

She frowned at him. “Why is somebody like that after this poor girl?”

“Believe me, we've all asked that question.” He rocked back on his heels and ran a thumb over his lower lip, his mind racing. “Do we have a rehab specialist EDI?”

“Probably, but it would take me too long to integrate and use it. Unlike some, I don't have a neuronet combat computer. ”

“I do.”

She stared at him, visibly startled. “You're really serious about this, aren't you?”

“When I'm given a mission, I carry it out.”

“Warlords.” Chogan scrubbed both hands over her face. “You're all crazy. All right, I'll call it up for you.”

He watched her move to the main console and bend to murmur instructions to it. A moment later his computer spoke in his mind.
Infirmary computer offers a temporal rehabilitation specialist EDI. No virus detected
.

Download it.
He braced himself.

Information poured into his mind in a torrent of words, images, and concepts. He didn't fight it—just let the flood surge through him like a river of light. The kind he'd experienced so many times before.

What would it be like to endure that surging flood for the first time?

Galar opened his eyes to find Chogan watching him. “On second thought,” she said, “I'm just as glad I don't have a neuronet comp. I thought for a minute there you were having a seizure.”

He rolled his shoulders, trying to banish the knots that had gathered between his shoulder blades during the download. His mouth tasted faintly of copper, and his head ached violently, but he ignored both sensations with the ease of long practice.

As always when Galar absorbed an EDI, everything seemed almost ridiculously clear now. He no longer felt helpless in the face of Jessica's confusion, anger, and pain. Not that helping her integrate her new knowledge would be easy, but at least there were proven techniques he could use, and he understood the psychological processes at work.

There was
nothing
he hated as much as feeling helpless and ignorant.

“It was worth it.” Galar gave the doctor a faint smile. “I know how to help her now.”

Chogan lifted a brow. “Oh?”

“I need to get her the hell out of here for a few hours. Give her a more familiar situation to deal with.”

“Like what?”

“I think the expression was—a date.”

Jessica came awake
to the crackle of a fire and the warmth of a man's arms. She opened drowsy eyes to find the golden glow of a campfire dancing in a circle of stones.

“Feeling better?” The rumble in her ear was deep, calming. The words were English.

She knew that voice. “Galar?” Her tongue felt thick.

“Yeah, it's me.”

She frowned, remembering she'd been really pissed at him. Hadn't she . . . hit him? But why? What had . . . ?

As if that question had broken some mental dam, strange words and concepts began to rush into her mind, a chaotic, terrifying flood of information she had no memory of acquiring. Jess stiffened, sucking in a hard breath like a drowning woman.