Avert

  Sky’s urge to avert death brings her prison, isolation and Tavik.

  Sky lived a quiet life on Resku Station until the day her life ended at the hand of an invasion. She is forced into a life as a Nameless time traveller, and her companion guards her every move until Tavik realizes that the Orb of Time has a destiny planned for the Terran and if he wants to take part in it, he had better stay close.

  Knowing that she is the one destined for him, he plans to stay on top of the situation at every opportunity.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Avert

  Copyright © 2012 Viola Grace

  ISBN: 978-1-77111-209-3

  Cover art by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books

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  Avert

  A Terran Times Tale

  By

  Viola Grace

  Chapter One

  Sky Raynard shuddered as her armour took yet another impact. She raised her blaster and held the pressure steady as she fired over and over at the oncoming rush of bodies.

  Her team was down around her, she was the last one standing and she was going to make it count. She struck one after another of her opponents down until there was no one left.

  Standing and looking around at the chaos of the battle, she let out a triumphant whoop. “Station personnel win and the crew of the Exor loses!”

  Sky smiled as her friends and co-workers got to their feet, congratulating each other while the crew of the long-haul ship, Exor, looked around with chagrin.

  “A bet is a bet, Captain. You are buying drinks and dinner for the station staff.”

  The crablike Captain Creeger clicked his mandibles in agreement. “You are correct. The station crew is able to defend itself. I apologize for the comments of my security officer. An evening’s entertainment is on me.”

  The station staff cheered.

  Laughing, Sky removed her helmet only to hear a harsh murmur from the crew of the Exor.

  She frowned, “What? Is there something on my face?”

  Sky knew what the problem was, but she pretended innocence. As the only bi-pedal humanoid on Resku Station, she stood out and some of the incoming crews considered her exotic or a hideous freak. She was good with either one.

  The captain shook his head rapidly and clicked to sweep away his shock. “You are lovely for one of your species, I am sure. It was just such a surprise to be bested by a softie.”

  Sky barked another laugh. “You will be fine, I am sure.”

  She turned to walk to the change room where she was going to resume her normal gear as seamstress for the station.

  When she shucked off the battle armour used in the simulation, she fought the bubbling sense of pride that was welling up in her. As a group, the personnel of Resku Station were a little ungainly, but they fought to the last. She was proud to have been asked to join them when the challenge came down.

  With her armour filed and returned to storage, she left the change room covered in her normal loose trousers and wrap top. The rowdiness of the crew having drinks with the station workers was building to a frenzy and Sky preferred to celebrate alone.

  A nod to the bartender got her a bottle and she tucked it under one arm, returning to her shop.

  Pure mountain spring water was a rarity and the captain was going to wince at the bill, but she had taken on his entire crew when her team was down in the first thirty seconds. She deserved a little gloating and fresh water was the way to do it.

  The Resku Station was silent. All personnel on the small station were enjoying the celebration.

  Inside her silent shop, she pulled a chair up to the counter, fluffed her curls and sipped at the water in the dimness of the dresses and draped manikins that were her sole reason for being on this station in the Nyal Imperium.

  Sky’s only claim to fame was that she literally was not afraid of the unknown, so when she had met her first aliens back on Earth, she had treated them as just another set of strangers. Her lack of fear had captured their attention and she had made it into the final selection of the Volunteers of Terra with little trouble.

  With the shop silent, she caught up on her data processing and filed receipts. Sky was well hydrated and sleepy when she saw the first sign of trouble.

  Oh, crap. Warriors in armour trooped through the station, their weapons held at the ready. This was no security force. Resku Station was being invaded.

  She quickly sounded the alarm and triggered the invasion protocols from her shop. Kneeling behind the counter, she crossed her fingers that their scanners would not pick her up.

  The sudden rush of battle sounds made her wince and she heard voices crying out in pain as the invaders used their weapons with deadly accuracy.

  It was times like now that she wished she had gotten more combat training than the bare minimum offered by the Alliance to someone with her career path.

  She crept along the floor of her shop and reached her worktable, pausing to check again for anyone noticing her before she reached up and gripped the long shears on her table.

  Sky inhaled and exhaled quietly, freezing as she heard a sound within the confines of her shop. As slowly and carefully as she could, she leaned out and peeked around the corner. One of the invaders was sweeping the shop with a scanner.

  “The signal came from in here.”

  The harsh voice sent a shiver through her. She tensed with nerves and prayed that her desk was thick enough to hide her from the scanner.

  To mock her, the beeping of the scanner picked up in pitch and got louder. They had found her and her time was up.

  Sky gripped the scissors in either hand and waited.

  She heard the rush of fabric and a light flared in her eyes as the neural disruptor powered up. Sky lashed out and spiked the scissors into both legs and jerked them free, blood spurting over her as she grabbed his weapon and left him in her shop.

  His screaming brought others to her store and she lifted the disruptor, firing at one after another until the charge was done and she was facing two men with the same weapon.

  She didn’t surrender but dropped her gun and dove for the weapon of one of the dead invaders in her shop’s doorway.

  Sky didn’t make it to the disruptor before she was struck again and again. Her body shorted out, her lungs stopped working, and she heard a series of harsh cries as a bright light took her and carried her away from Resku Station.

  Pain ripped through her as she was subjected to a charge that restarted her system. She gasped and cried out as her body screamed with pain.

  A hand clutched hers and she squeezed it tight.

  “It will be all right, Sky Raynard. You are safe now and your new life begins today.”

  She focussed on the speaker and saw a man with broad shoulders and a smiling curve to his lips. He was wearing a cowl that covered his head and thr
ew his face into shadows. The lips and chin were all that was available to view.

  “Who are you?”

  The smile turned into a grin. “I am Tavik. I had to manipulate the timeline a little to bring you here, but you are safe here.”

  She used his grip on her hand to lever herself upright. “Where is here?”

  He helped her gain her footing and two other figures slipped out of the room.

  A wide balcony was accessible along one wall and he led her out into the peculiar light.

  Looking out over the fantastic view, she blinked rapidly as she tried to absorb the ramifications of the expanse of land that ended suddenly in a swirling star-scape.

  “How are we breathing?”

  “There is a force that provides us with the atmosphere, gravity and lighting that we need to live.”

  “A force?”

  “It will be explained in time. Will you walk with me? Your body is still coming back to itself now and the physician said that the walking would help.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t remember him saying that?”

  “Time moves differently here. What you perceived as a moment was actually close to an hour. Your body did not want to wake. I am wondering if it is a characteristic of your species.”

  She wondered about that but didn’t have a chance to ask him what he was referring to, because he kept his grip on her hand and led her out of the medical centre and onto an arcing walkway that stretched between buildings.

  He didn’t have to hold her hand as they walked. She clung to him for fear of slipping off the edge of the pathway. Shivering, she held on for dear life until they were in a building where a wide spiral staircase ran around the outer edge of the room and huge frames were spaced along the path at regular intervals.

  “Where are we?” The walls absorbed her voice in an eerie way.

  “The library of time. I want to explain to you why you are here, and the best way is to show you where you came from.”

  Realizing that the man she was with had to be totally insane, she let him lead her up the spiralling ramp to stand in front of the third mirror that they passed.

  As she watched the image in the mirror, a sick chill ran through her. There was a warrior standing with a gun at the ready and a heap of fallen at its feet. Sky knew that armour and that pose. She wanted to see what happened next.

  Chapter Two

  Watching yourself through a recorder was always peculiar, but instead of following her back to her shop, the image swung to the hold of the Exor where the army was working its way from the belly of the ship up and into the station.

  “It was their plan all along to take the station, Sky. There was nothing you could have done beyond what you did.”

  Her nails bit into her hands as she watched her friends and companions slaughtered one by one. “Why didn’t you do something?” Her tone was flat. Her soul was numb.

  “I am not allowed to tamper within my timeline and you are part of my timeline. I am sorry, but there was no saving the staff on Resku Station. It was overrun and used as a base for the Raider tribe that inhabited the area.”

  She listened carefully while she watched the horror unfolding in front of her. When it came time for her to watch herself holding the men off at the dress shop, she felt the heavy resolve take hold of her soul. “Why are you talking about it in the past tense?”

  Her companion cleared his throat. “It happened ten years ago. I had to go back in time to catch you before you completely passed on.”

  She swayed and came close to clocking herself on the mirror frame. Her voice was a hoarse croak, “What do you mean?”

  He pulled her away from the screen as the bright flash knocked down the horde of men surrounding her in the image. A figure walked out of the fading brightness and carried her into another glowing ball of brilliance.

  Her companion tugged her away and the image faded behind her.

  “Who are you, why am I here?”

  A feminine voice broke into her whirling thoughts. “Those are the same questions that I asked. Come along, Sky. I will give you the full briefing.”

  The man next to her scowled at the blonde-haired woman walking toward them on the nearest bridge span. “She isn’t your pupil, Aura.”

  “She isn’t yours yet either, Tavik. Let me explain things to her. I am one of her own kind after all.”

  The woman was smiling at her, but Sky was struck by the star-scape whirling in the eyes of the woman facing her. “Who are you? You look familiar.”

  “Come with me. I will have you back to Tavik in no time.”

  The man scowled and flipped his cowl back, exposing that he had a similar eye situation to the woman.

  “What is with your eyes?” Sky blurted it out and she bit her lip as the woman burst out laughing.

  “Come with me, Sky. I will tell you a tale of time, death and Terrans.” The woman took her by the arm and walked with her up the bridge, flaring a light around both of them that continued their walk into a building with tantalizing scents coming out of it.

  As Sky sighed and smiled at the familiar smells. “Lead on, stranger.”

  “Aura. My name is Aura of the Nameless, but let’s keep other information aside until we get some food in you. It is a lot to take in and I want you sitting down.”

  Sky walked next to Aura and saw a collection of statues that were life-sized and some of them resembled people eating in the huge refectory under a crystal dome. That was filed as the third question on Sky’s list.

  “Take what interests you and grab a cup of coffee. They have located a decent source as long as you don’t analyze it too much.” Aura wandered off and took a tray, filling it with selections.

  Bemused, Sky did the same, picking things that seemed innocuous and familiar before she followed Aura to the beverage station where Aura filled a tall cup with dark, hot liquid and turned to plunk it on her tray. “Creamers and sugars are to the left. This isn’t Starbucks, but we get by.”

  Sky almost dropped her tray. “You’re a Terran.”

  Aura sipped at her own dark cup. “Yup. Now, come along, so I can explain things to you.”

  With her new friend leading the way, Sky looked out at the smiling faces whose owners waved a hello to her companion.

  Aura slid into a seat at a charmingly located table next to a statue of herself.

  “What is the deal with the statues?” Sky had a thousand questions and no idea who could provide the answers to her.

  “First things first, you eat, I will talk.”

  Aura started nibbling at something on a stick, amusement crinkling her eyes.

  Sky sipped at the coffee and blinked surprised eyes. “This is the closest thing to coffee that I have had in years.”

  Aura chuckled. “It has been thirteen years for me. My second life has been spent running the errands of time.”

  Sky frowned. “There wasn’t an early set of Volunteers. How is it that you have been here thirteen years when I have been away from home for three?”

  “The short answer is that you were pulled forward through time. Out of Tavik’s past and into your own future.”

  “I think I need more of an explanation.”

  Aura nodded and sat back with her mug in one hand. “When the big bang occurred, what happened to the universe that had been here until then?”

  Sky’s eyes widened. “I have no idea.”

  “No one does. It ceased to be. Well, most of it ceased to be. The previous universe did not want to go, so it ripped a chunk of a world, wrapped it in an atmosphere and settled it in the space between universes. The old universe was lonely and it planted the seeds of the capacity to perceive and manipulate it over hundreds of worlds.”

  Aura shifted. “The problem came in getting the people who carried the capacity of manipulating time and space to come to this place, this peculiar Home in the middle of nowhere. The universe created the Orb of Time, the window to its soul and used this to call the first of th
e Nameless to it. To here. To Home.”

  Sky blinked. “What does this have to do with me?”

  “Like many others, you have the potential to do great things and you have the ability to bend time to your will.”

  “I don’t think so. If it was the case, why wasn’t I brought here earlier?” She crossed her arms and scowled.

  “To be frank, you had to die and it had to be on record. To become one of the Nameless, you have to be removed from your timeline. That means you have to die, or be assumed to be dead. Once you are out of your timeline, you can go anywhere, anytime and see any point in history.”

  “I died?”

  “You were mostly dead. Tavik got to you before you were completely dead. There is a difference apparently.” Aura shrugged.

  “Why didn’t any of those abilities show up on the Volunteer scans back on earth?”

  “The gene is hidden. The theory is that at the time of death, your soul sends out a burst of energy that the Orb sees. The Orb, in turn, sends one of us to retrieve those who have just surrendered to time.”

  “What a polite way to phrase it.”

  “Isn’t it? So much better than kicked the bucket.”

  They laughed together and to Sky, it brought back the inhumanity in Aura’s eyes. “What is it with your eyes?”

  “When you look into the Orb of Time, it moves in. It activates the dormant gene and changes your eyes to the swirling patterns of time. Or at least that is what my bondmate calls them. I just call them nifty.”

  A man rose from another table and calmly walked over to join them. He sat in silence and finally Aura sighed.

  “Sky, this is my bondmate, Randr. My transporting us here dragged him along and he was polite enough to let us have a few minutes alone. Mentioning him is like summoning the devil, he will always turn up.”

  “Bondmate? Is that like a husband?”

  “Yes and no. We are bound by the power of the Council of Seven and the energy of the Orb of Time itself. Where I go, he goes and vice versa. It was a punishment for something I did on my first day of being Nameless.”