Page 32 of Time Traveling Space Bastards
I was a regular at several places. The diner, the bar where we initially went, and Kevin was a dick who thought all his bookstore girls should fetch his morning coffee, so even thoughImade my coffee at home, I was at the coffee shop several times a week getting coffee for my boss.
“Maybe it’s not Valtens? When I ran, I came to the last place I thought my parents would look. This is a very tiny town in Alaska on the other side of the country from my parents. I’ve been here ten years. If his Enix found the same murder investigation file you did and tried to come, but the time machine malfunctioned because he stole early plans, he’s had ten years to find me and kill me. That’s how long I’ve been here.”
“Or not,” Kuka said. “My brother is an idiot, but we were friends once. He used to listen and talk about my time travel theories with me. He had access to the exact same tutors and education I did, and he was the one who chose not to use them. Valtens said a king didn’t need to be educated, he just needed to be powerful.
“He knows I’ll eventually follow because I wanted to find the last text. Valtens might be the one who kills you, but he’ll also know he can’t go home again unless I take him back on Big Daddy. If he changes things too soon, I might not know when to come back and get him.”
I scoffed.
“If you give him a ride home after he murders me, you’ll never be my favorite.”
“We need to think about what we know,” Enix said. “Valtens can pass and can apparently explain away his eyes. He’s fifteen years older than the last time we saw him because he got stuck inthe past. Baxter has seenus,and no one believed her, so it’s safe to say no one has figured out Valtens isn’t human. He’s adapted, or he’s found someone to help him.”
“Well, if he looks and talks like Kuka and he found someone who likes smut, then yeah, he found someone who helped him,” I said.
“No,” Kuka said. “I look like my mother and Valtens looks like my uncle. My uncle is generally not well liked and the people who don’t like Valtens either have spread all these awful rumors about my mom that my uncle raped her and Valtens was the result. But that never happened. My mother is a brilliant scholar, but her bodyguard taught her to fight, too. If my uncle had any untoward intentions towards her, my mother was perfectly capable of killing him before he could.”
“Kuka and Valtens don’t talk alike, either, and it’s not just the intelligence levels. You know how I accessed the wrong data and suggested a man tell you to calm down and you tried to assault me? Valtens is like the data where I found that information. It’s unsettling and if he wasn’t in line for the throne, someone would have killed him by now.”
“Oh, yeah, then he’d be limited on who would help him. I’ve also never met him. I can tell the difference between Kuka and Enix’s eyes over the special effects contacts you can buy. Believe me, I did a double take if I saw someone wearing special contacts, but they were never like your eyes.”
“He’ll be watching you, though. He knows I’m coming, and he needs me to take him home.”
I blew out a sigh.
“Stalkers are so much sexier in smut books, but not a lot of fun in real life.”
“You’re going to have to give me some of the literature on this planet,” Omi said.
“Shit, I wonder if my book subscriptions work across different galaxies.”
“We’ve got all kinds of books on our planet.”
“Excellent. But you have to save my life first and we still don’t know who kills me.”
“Which means after you’ve rested and eaten, we’re going to find Valtens’s machine and confront him,” Torrek said.
“That sounds amazing, but?—”
“I’d go to bed,” Omi said. “He can sense you are tired and hungry and his instincts are kicking in. It’s putting him on edge and you don’t want a Saki on edge.”
That was kind of nice because no one gave a shit before and after I ran, I just didn’t let them.
“Sure, but you have to join me and snuggle with me again.”
Yeah, he liked that. Torrek only made that rumble in his chest when he was happy.
The couch in Baxter’s apartment was terrible. I could have left and slept in my quarters in Big Daddy, but now that I knew my brother was close, I didn’t want to leave her. He wanted to stop the holy texts from ever making it to our planet, but he was a curious kid once.
He would want to know what the last texts said andhowthey ended up on our planet seven thousand years ago, even if he wanted to stop them from coming. I’d already worked it out, even if there was still a lot I hadn’t figured out. Valtens would have to deal with it unless he wanted me to leave him on this planet.
My back was killing me when I woke up. Omi was a better fighter than I was, but she decided to sleep in Big Daddy so he could tell her if there was anyone lurking outside her building who shouldn’t be. I made my time machine sentient, and I didn’t regret it, but he seemed to cooperate better with women than men, so I stayed in the apartment.
Omi and Enix came back really early with their arms laden with food. They really picked a variety. Enix chose things he saw me eating in the palace and Omi picked street food. It was a decent representation of our planet. After the last disaster trying to cook from her kitchen, I didn’t want to risk it again.
Torrek came out before Baxter and was sulking.
“She wanted to bathe and refused to let me wash her.”
