The frown and flicker of confusion was unmistakable, but he proceeded to hide it well beneath his mask of coagulating blood and diced cheekbones.

“Yeah, I’m West.”

Silver eyes swept forth, back under furrowed brows, sculpted with laser precision, fixed on Adam’s again. “Sir?”

“Listen…” The firefight below and above intensified. “I’m not your West. Where are we?”

Realization. “Shit, sorry. Let’s get back to the ship.”

They ran.

That disconcerting joggle in the stomach as inertial dampening systems compensate in an alien atmosphere, butterflies: monarchs? and he felt the suck of the vacuum chair as they rose into a sky shot through with beams of light and plumes of black.

Beside him, Benton wiped beads of nervous sweat from her upper lip. One eye was developing an unpleasant bruise from their rough entry into the wrong When. She caught him looking and smiled quietly, looked toward the front of the cabin where the battle chamber elevator was falling to the floor. The Muj captain got off.

“Okay, let’s figure this out. I just checked with our batteries; nav’s taken us to strato, so we’re out of the battle for the moment.” She palmed the release mechanism on her armor, and silver blades retracted across torso, limbs, settled in seams. “You’re not Commander West.”

He pried himself from his seat, reached to shake her hand. “Not yours. We seem to’ve landed wrong.”

She shook. “It happens. Captain Mindel Frost, Judas Mujahadin Kate, out of Fort John Wayne.”

His eyes lit up. “Mindel Frost? You know Breine Frost?”

“My father.”

“He served with me in the first Jaguar war.”

“I know.” She shrugged. “Same here, too.”

“Is he—”

“Pattern erased two years ago standard.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“So what’s your business in this When?”

“Well…” West looked over at Paul. “It’s complicated.”

Frost turned to the author. “You are..?”