Steamrolled by Pauline Baird Jones Page A

active. She couldn’t pick up anything from inside the trap. Is the trap giving off any signals?
    Not on any frequencies we use. It could send out a ping when activated.
    A one-time signal would be safer for whoever set the trap. Wouldn’t want to leave a signal a tracker could follow to the source.
    Lurch was still deep in grim as they backed off the trap. Ashe didn’t grudge him his grim. Someone was targeting trackers, but they were killing nanites. It didn’t matter that Selnick’s had been non-sentient. If the missing trackers had been snagged in these traps, then some sentient nanites were dying, too.
    Past the trap, Ashe didn’t rush the station. It seemed unlikely there would be another trap in such close proximity to the station, but she didn’t assume anything. A less wary tracker might see a team member in trouble and head for the station, falling into a second trap either outside or inside the station. Lurch sent a drone in. It didn’t make it. The barriers were smaller versions of the shields that kept the outpost out of time, and transparent, so it was easy to tell there was no one trapped there. Someone comes and collects them . It was the only conclusion.
    They could wait and see who came—while time disintegrated back along that fracture.
    We can leave observers. A tiny bundle of nanites emerged from her arm, bright for a few seconds before they blended into their surroundings. We can pick them up after.
    If there was an after.

NINE
     
     
    Robert knew how to access the steam/transmogrification machine engine room, where the nanites still scurried through metal, valves and pipe. He—and they—knew the basics of steam generation, had studied its history prior to deployment on this operation. And he was a certified genius, despite his time in crazy. It all should work for him, or at least become clear, but the data coming from the nanites made him wonder if he was back in crazy. None of it made sense, to him or the nanites. And there was so much of it, even with the nanites controlling the data flow. It was another bump into impossible, though this one felt more like a face plant than a bump. He had a feeling his sister would have done better in this situation, but he couldn’t be sorry he was here. He’d never been this close to a woman not his mother or his sister. There was enough guy in him to like it without over thinking why he liked it. And, he had to admit, it was easier to think about Emily than sort strange data.
    That she was a woman well suited to this place, this time, and this machine was a bonus. That she was lovely to look at was the cherry on the whipped cream of that bonus. She smelled better than the engine room, too. He shifted marginally closer, wondering if she’d notice. All her attention appeared to be focused on the machine. She hadn’t moved since they’d stepped over the rise, but her stillness indicated hyper attention, not indifference. That stillness intrigued him almost as much as the curve of her mouth. It was warm this close to the steam engine, but he’d have been warm regardless. He accepted this as the price of discovering his guy zone. Another bonus, the nanites were so distracted by the problems of the machine they hadn’t noticed. He was still connected to them, felt their frustration and curiosity in the stream of data they sent back, but the data stream was one-way. He couldn’t help them any more than they could help themselves.
    Without warning Emily shifted to the right, dropping into a crouch. Robert followed her move, still surprised when his body reflected a physical flexibility not present before the introduction of the nanites. They had done a good job of healing the years of physical inertia. Delilah’s memory transfer also helped his physical response time. His muscles now had memories not their own, could do things he couldn’t even before the break. He could jog the perimeter of the Kikk Outpost without breaking a sweat, which was