Hellfire (THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY) Read Free Page A

muttered. “Sir.”
    “Dostoyervski won’t work for me, Sergeant,” Ia dismissed. “I’ll need to find someone else.”
    She shrugged and tapped something on her workpad. “Fine. Arstoll it is, then. Sign it with your thumbprint, Captain, and have a nice day.”
    Ia shook her head. “I won’t sign that, Sergeant. I’ve found an anomaly—a huge anomaly—and I have to track down the right way to fix it, first.”
    “
What
anomaly, Captain?”
    The impatient question came from the oldest man in the room, and the only soldier whose rank matched her own. The main differences between them were that he wore brown stripes on his black uniform, and that his brass eagle did not carry the rockets in its claws that hers did, making her a ship’s captain and him a lieutenant colonel. As dark-skinned as the sergeant, but with three times as many wrinkles and none of the hair, Lieutenant Colonel Luu-Smith flicked his hand irritably.
    “You’ve already taken up hours of our time this morning with a task normally left to the experts, Captain Ia. What anomaly could
possibly
throw everything we’ve done out the window at this point in time?” he demanded. “I thought you said you were some sort of massive precog. Shouldn’t you have already foreseen it?”
    “With respect, Colonel,” Ia returned, “I am
not
the only being who can see into the future, and that means I’m not the only one who can act to change the things they foresee.” At his skeptical look, she rolled her eyes. After several years of playing her cards close to her chest, ingrained habit had kept her from revealing what she apparently needed to reveal. “…The
Feyori
are now involved. They cannot see as far as me, but they
can
see, and they will interfere, if they think it will somehow promote their own positions in their gods-be-stupid Game.
    “Unfortunately, some of them are now considering me a threat. It’s incredibly shortsighted of them because I’m not their enemy, but there it is. Now, if you’ll just be a little more patient, please, I was in the middle of tracking down where the anomalies started when I was interrupted.” She glanced briefly at Sergeant Plimstaad. “And I did mean it when I said do not touch me. You do not want to see what is inside my head; I’m dealing with scales that most people aren’t prepared to deal with, at speeds that would give you a raging migraine.
    “I do thank you for your efforts on my behalf,” Ia added. “I’ll try to be quick about this, but there are a lot of lives at stake. More than you know.”
    Closing her eyes, Ia breathed deep and let it out, then did it again, calming and centering her mind. A flip of her thoughtslanded her in the grass next to the waters of her own life. From there, it didn’t take much effort to condense Time back into a thin, interwoven sheet, though she did have to spend a few moments refinding the slub-nodes of Feyori influence in the future. Once she had her mental metaphor adjusted so that her conscious mind could comprehend it, she stained the lead one purple again and followed it up-thread into the past, trying to find the moment where the anonymous Meddler in question had decided to begin interfering.
    The
recent
past, she discovered with an unpleasant jolt.
Ah, slag…The initial slip in the streams took place just thirteen days ago. That was the day I left the Solarican Warstation
Nnying Yanh.
More precisely, this is the Feyori whose presence I uncovered and threw off the Warstation. The same day I was tested and my father’s legacy had to be revealed, explaining the strengths of my psychic powers.
    Which was also the day I stupidly didn’t check to see
what
effects his abrupt exposure would have on the timelines,
she castigated herself, wincing.
    She didn’t have to touch that thread to know the Feyori in question would be upset enough to try to counterfaction her. The energy-based beings converted themselves into matter-based beings so that they could