Cyberevolution Book One: The Awakening: Fifty Shades of Dark Kaitlyn O'Connor by Kaitlyn O'Connor, Kimberly Zant, Marie Morin, Stacey St.James, Goldie McBride (16)

“We have managed to locate six habitats that are relatively intact.”

Danika jumped when the voice abruptly broke into her thoughts, whipping her head around to look for Seth when she recognized his voice.  It sent a jolt through her to discover that he was standing within a yard of her. 

They’d decided that it wasn’t safe to risk any communications via the com units unless they were absolutely necessary.  They didn’t know that the enemy had managed to break security and had listened to everything they’d said, but if they hadn’t they were damned good at guessing.

It was still a mystery, supposing they had, as to how the Andorians had managed to break the codes so quickly, but Danika was putting her money on a traitor or traitors among them.  Nothing else made sense, to her thinking—including the fact that the enemy seemed to be waiting for them when they made the landing. 

No getting around the fact that their Intel had been better than the confederation’s Intel!

In any case, the enemy had been pretty damned thorough in demolishing their supplies and, since the sun had risen and with it the temperatures to a balmy zero degrees, they’d decided to conserve what they could of their hab-suits’ built-in supplies—most notably the heater fuel cells.

“Only six?” Danika echoed, dismayed when she’d done a quick mental calculation of their numbers.  “That’s only enough room for ….”

“The humans.”

Danika gaped at him.  “But … there’s only maybe fifty humans left!  At thirty to a barracks ….”

“Thirty six … at the moment.  Seventy five made it to the ridge.  Mayhap a quarter were lost in the blizzard on the way or died from their wounds.  Probably no more than a dozen by night fall.  However, the habitats are not barracks.  They are for squads … and they are damaged.  I did not count the ones we found that could not be patched.”

Stunned disbelief held Danika for several moments before rage took its place.  “In other words, we wouldn’t have had housing for all of the troops even if those bastards hadn’t beat us here and blown our supplies all to hell?”

“There will be room for the remaining humans.”

Danika’s lips tightened.  “That isn’t good enough, damn it!”  The bulk of their force might be cyborgs, but the cyborgs were part biological and the cold would inhibit their ability to fight—and they damned sure needed everybody, cyborg and human, that they had left.  “Who’s in command?”

“Second Lieutenant Murphy Brown.”

“Oh my god!”  It struck her that, in all likelihood, it had been Second Lieutenant Murphy Brown who’d screwed up so royalty in his communications the night before if he was the only officer they had left—and as green as she was, no doubt!  “Where is he?”

“I will escort you.”

She didn’t need an escort!  Instead of arguing, however, she fell into step beside him.  “Have your … uh … nanos repaired the damages?”

Seth sent her a sharp glance, briefly both surprised and alarmed until he realized she was not referring to his malfunctioning behavioral programming but rather the status of his combat readiness.  “The damage to my systems was minimal … primarily superficial damage to my biological sheathing.  I am currently at ninety percent.”

She frowned, wondering abruptly how he could be at least half biological, or nearly half, and experience nothing more than an awareness of damage.  Were there no nerves in his biological sheathing?  Or did they just not connect to nerve centers capable of registering pain?  “You don’t … feel any pain when you’re wounded?”

Seth’s uneasiness returned.  The truth was that he was one hundred percent certain that he should not have felt any pain, but he not only had felt it—a great deal of it—he still felt pain and it was difficult to behave as if he did not.  He should not, in point of fact, have felt anything at all.  He had been programmed to mimic emotions.  He knew the mechanics of displaying emotion and what each gesture and facial expression denoted so that he could recognize emotions in humans and react to them.  He had not been designed or programmed to feel them, because not only was that not possible.  It was not desirable.  No matter how many systems checks he had run, however, he had discovered nothing to account for the emotions that seemed to be clogging his objectivity. 

The only thing that he had been able to ascertain with certainty was that he was feeling and reacting on a purely animal level to his environment and everything that his body and mind sensed and perceived, which completely defied logic.

He did not understand and that was almost frightening.  It was certainly disturbing, but all he could think to do was to attempt to hide his disability until his nanos repaired whatever had caused the problem or he understood it well enough to prevent it from affecting him.

He was still reluctant to lie … to Danika.  He did not think he would have a problem lying if anyone else had asked, but she was his squad leader.  He had been programmed always to defer to her—to trust her completely.  It felt ‘wrong’ to withhold anything from her.  “I was not designed to feel, only to record.”

She stopped, grasping his wrist in a gesture to stop that he could not ignore, although he wanted to.  He hesitated and then yielded to the silent demand, wondering why her touch had such a profound effect upon him that went so far beyond anything he had expected ever to feel, uncertain of whether he wanted to feel the sensations that flooded him.  He discovered that she was studying his face and that was enough to divert his mind from the blinding sensations to a sense of danger. 

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“I beg pardon.  I thought that I had responded to your question.”

“I don’t think you thought anything of the kind.  You evaded the question.”

He frowned, feeling a flicker of both resentment and dismay at her lack of trust.  “I am … confused.”

He was lying, Danika realized, feeling an abrupt shift of her consciousness from Seth to the bedraggled encampment surrounding the two of them.  He’d said that there were thirty six humans that had survived the drop and made it to the encampment.  That was roughly a quarter of the squad leaders—all human like herself—who’d made it out of the nearly 1200 man unit that had been dropped at these coordinates.  Probably three quarters of the cyborgs that were part of their unit had made it.

How many of those, she wondered, had experienced the same sort of bizarre malfunction that she saw in Seth?  All of them?  Half?

Because, instead of convincing herself that it was all in her mind, she’d become more and more certain that it wasn’t in her mind at all.  Seth had … changed.  He was different—more human than cyborg.  She felt it in every fiber of her being.

Because touching him didn’t feel anything like touching a machine and it should have.  She should have felt as completely detached about grasping his wrist as she would have in grasping the handle of a door.

She would’ve liked to have convinced herself that Seth was the only one—because she hadn’t noticed anything strange about either Dane or Niles—but she abruptly recalled that it had been a cyborg who’d taken charge and issued orders—to the cyborgs—when they’d been boxed in at the ridge. 

How much danger did these … rogues represent?

It was a chilling thought and one that had plagued Danika since she’d discovered that seventy five to eighty percent of the army the government had put together was cyborg.  Humans were only there as ‘handlers’—truthfully only there to prevent the mass hysteria that probably would’ve resulted in the discovery by the civilian population that the government had put together a massive army of autonomous steel monsters—which was probably also the reason the government had insisted that they look human.  

She cleared her throat nervously.  “Run a systems check and see if you can detect any … uh … programming or mechanical anomalies.”

“What irregularities should I search for?”

Danika forced a tight smile.  “Anything.  We’ve lost enough men already.  We need to be sure everyone is in peak operating condition for the next attack.”

They found Lieutenant Brown in one of the habitats.  When Seth had left, she asked for permission to enter.  After a fairly prolonged wait, when she was just about to ask again, permission was granted and she went inside.  Brown looked pale, shaken, and distracted, but Danika couldn’t detect any patches on his hab-suit to indicate that he’d been wounded.  She was no medic, but he looked like he had a bad case of shellshock.  She saluted.  “Sir!  I’ve been informed by one of my squad members that there aren’t enough habs to house all of the men.  I wanted to put in a request for a hab for my own squad and ask when we might expect more supplies.  We used most of our munitions last night in the firefight and we only have enough rations in our packs for a few days.”

He stared at her blankly for several moments and then made a sound that might have been a giggle.  When she gaped at him he seemed to pull himself together.  He gestured wide with his hands.  “What you see here, corporal, is what we have.”

Danika’s mind immediately conjured an image of the piles of charred debris outside the hab.  An icy fist seemed to close around her heart.  “Sir, we haven’t recovered much—so far.”

“Well you’d better look harder!” he said angrily.  “Because this is our supply drop.  Command informed me that they’d disbursed supplies on hand.  We’ll have to make do until another supply ship arrives unless we can get another unit to share and the closest is five hundred miles to the south of us.  And we’ve been ordered to maintain radio silence.  And we don’t have a working transport.”

Under the circumstances, Danika abruptly dismissed the idea she’d had of informing her superior of her suspicions regarding the cyborgs.  That had never been a good idea, she reflected, since she was a female and her vague intuition would’ve been discounted as hysteria or, at the very least, overactive imagination.  Considering their situation and the condition of their highest ranking officer it seemed like the worst idea she’d ever had. 

In any case, the biggest problem at the moment was the scarcity of supplies.  If Brown knew what he was talking about, and he seemed to, they could be looking at a long, long stretch before a supply ship arrived.  Food didn’t loom as her biggest worry.  Shelter was a high priority.  The suits could extract energy from the sun, but this world wasn’t a place where one could count on a lot of solar radiation.  One of the problems was its distance from its sun and the other was the storms. 

More importantly even than that, to her mind, was the dangerously low munitions. 

That thought instantly conjured an image of the men lying at the base of the ridge.  Revulsion washed over her in a wave, but they were going to be casualties of war themselves if they didn’t have anything to throw at the enemy when they attacked again.

And, newbie or not, she knew they’d be expected to act, not to simply sit tight and hope the enemy didn’t come to them.  They’d been dropped to secure the planet as a forward base of operations.  They were going to have to figure out a way to do that with what they had—or die trying. 

“Sir!  Permission to take a detail to the ridge and collect whatever supplies we can find and bury the dead?”

He stared at her as if she’d grown two heads.  “And leave the base vulnerable to another attack?  We don’t have the manpower, soldier!”

“Begging pardon, Sir!  But we’re going to be screwed if we don’t find supplies somewhere!”

“What makes you think they haven’t already been picked clean?”

“I don’t know that they haven’t.  But we also don’t know that they have.  We have to account for the dead and missing anyway, if possible.  You could spare my squad, at least.  There are only four of us.  And it’s likely that those who got lost in the storm last night will make it into camp.  Or at least possible,” she added when he looked skeptical.

She thought he would dismiss her suggestion out of hand but after a moment, he seemed to steady himself.  “That suggestion has some merit,” he murmured, turning it over.  “Permission granted.  Take your men and hump it over to Slaughter Ridge, collect whatever munitions and supplies you can, and get back here by dark.”

Danika frowned.  That seemed a tall order even for three cyborgs.  She didn’t see any possibility of giving the dead a decent burial and collecting supplies and hauling them all back in the space of a day.  “The burials?”

“We can’t spare the men for a burial detail right now.  They’re on ice.  They’ll keep.  And if the snow doesn’t bury them, we will when we can.  Just scan their IDs.”

It sounded callous, but she knew he was right—on all counts.  It actually heartened her that he seemed more collected.  If they were going to survive at all they needed a leader that had his head on straight—and he wasn’t just the highest ranking officer, he was the only officer at the moment.

When she left his hab, she saw that her squad was waiting nearby.  She met Seth’s gaze briefly and then studied the faces of the other two as she approached them.  Relieved when she saw that neither Dane nor Niles seemed to be affected by whatever had brought about the change in Seth, she felt some of her uneasiness evaporate.  “We’re to return to the ridge to see what we can collect in the way of supplies and munitions.  We’re going to have to hump it, though.  The lieutenant said to be back by dark.”

Seth’s gaze flickered over her.  “Your wound will slow you.  It would be better if we went and you stayed in the camp.”

Their wounds, or damage, was going to slow them, too, but she doubted even though they’d sustained more damage than she had that they would be as handicapped as she was.  She was running on adrenaline and she knew it, but not only did she realize she couldn’t afford to lay around to recover, there was no place to lay around and no actual medics.  “I feel like shit, but I can make it.  I’ll feel a hell of a lot better when I have some ammo—and enough rations to carry me through a couple of weeks.”

Thankfully, he merely nodded and followed her when she shrugged her weapon from her shoulder and started out of camp.  The throbbing from her wound began to intensify almost immediately and she paused after a little bit and checked her med-kit, counting the painkillers.  She had three doses.  She decided to take half a dose to dull the pain.  If she took a full dosage, she wasn’t going to be very alert.  Besides, she might need the painkiller worse later on.  “I don’t suppose you guys were issued painkillers?” she asked, only half joking because she was hopeful they might have something. 

“No,” Seth responded.

“Want one of mine?”

Seth sent her a sharp look.  “Thank you.  I do not need it.”

She didn’t believe him.  He looked like he was in pain, but she didn’t push it.  Shrugging, she put the kit up.  “More for me.”

“Yes.”

Thank you for pointing that out, she thought irritably.  She didn’t think it was a good thing that the cyborgs knew the humans among them were far weaker than they were. 

They’d only been trudging through knee deep snow for an hour when they found their first corpse.  Danika discovered it by stubbing her toe on it and falling over it.  The fall set her wound to throbbing hard enough it might have taken her a while to get up if Seth hadn’t hauled her upright.

She thought she’d tripped on a rock, but she’d managed to clear enough loose snow away when she’d sprawled out to identify the object that she’d fallen over. 

“He is dead.”

Danika flicked a sharp glance at Seth, met his gaze for a moment, and looked away.  Until he’d said that, she’d convinced herself that it was a cyborg.  In that state, he certainly didn’t look human.  She swallowed a little sickly and knelt beside the corpse. 

“I will do it,” Niles said. 

When Danika glanced toward him, he lifted his head, looked her directly in the eyes, and she saw there the same change that she’d seen in Seth.  Caught between horror at the task she’d volunteered for and shock that whatever it was affecting Seth seemed to be spreading, she couldn’t think of a response for several moments.  “It has to be done.  I might as well get used to it,” she finally responded.

“You do not have to grow accustomed now.  I will … search this one for supplies.”

She decided not to argue with him.  For one, she didn’t think she could manage the ‘job’ without puking.  For another, arguing with a machine that could rip her apart as easily as tearing paper if he took the notion seemed like a really stupid idea.

Seth gripped her arm and hauled her to her feet again as if the matter was settled and she sent him an uneasy look. 

Seth hesitated, but he didn’t like the look in her eyes.  “No one here will harm you.  We are programmed to protect our team leader, Danika.”

It was almost an admission that he’d changed—drastically—and it didn’t comfort her as it had no doubt been meant to.  How much of their programming, she wondered, had been corrupted by whatever had brought about the change she’d noticed?

Chapter Three

Danika had expected to find virtually the same thing when they finally reached Slaughter Ridge as they’d already found—multiplied many times.  What they did find rattled her as that wouldn’t have.

In the course of their trek, they’d discovered many of the missing and unaccounted for, both human soldiers and cyborgs buried where they fell by the blizzard, frozen, beyond help.  Snow was mounded over the bodies, marking their locations on the otherwise almost featureless landscape so that it looked like what it was—a newly formed cemetery.  They paused at each one to collect the supplies that soldier would no longer need, identify the remains and add the names to the growing list of known dead or, in the case of the cyborgs, destroyed property of the confederation.

They approached the ridge cautiously, despite the fact that they expected to find nothing they hadn’t already seen, the enemy long since departed, and those abandoned to their mercies and the fury of the storm beyond help.  Instead, when they’d crawled up to the ridge on their bellies and looked down, they spied soldiers moving about the plain below collecting and sorting.  Danika’s throat instantly leapt into her throat, but Seth stayed her hand as she tried to move her weapon into position. 

“They are ours.”

Danika narrowed her eyes.  “You’re certain?” she asked, stunned.

“Yes.”

Relief was slow to kick in.  “How?” she wondered aloud.  The enemy had been advancing on them when they’d retreated to the ridge.  It didn’t seem likely that they’d simply turned around and left when they saw that the troops they’d expected to box in and finish off had slipped the noose they’d fashioned for them. 

“I will go down and discover what I can.”

Instantly certain that there was something about the scene below that she’d missed, Danika frowned at Seth.  “If it’s our people …?”

“They are wearing the uniform of the confederation.  It does not seem strange to you that there are so many survivors?”

As a matter of fact it did—damned strange. 

Danika turned to look at the activity below again, trying to decide if what Seth had suggested made any sense.  She could think of only two reasons to explain enemy soldiers in the uniforms of the confederation, however—they’d either needed the hab-suits for their own survival.  Or it was a trap. 

Even as she signaled the men to pull back so that they could consider their options, however, there was a series of heavy thuds behind them that sent an alarm through her.  She rolled, bringing her weapon up in the same motion.  It was knocked from her hands hard enough to send blinding, numbing pain through her injured arm. 

She didn’t have time to nurse the injury.  Seth had surged upward and slammed into the soldier that had attacked her.  Within moments, all three of her team mates were engaged in a ferocious battle to the death virtually on top of her.  Despite her shock, it didn’t take more than a few seconds for her to realize their attackers were cyborgs.  If they’d been human, there would be no battle in progress.  Seth, Dane, and Niles could have dispatched them quicker than the blink of an eye. 

She was still trying to figure out whether to try to extricate herself or to try to help her men when someone seized the front of her suit and yanked her to her feet.  “Stand down, soldiers!  We are on the same side!”

Either they all recognized the voice, or they simply responded to the order automatically—or most of them.  Niles and Seth used the ‘cease’ command to level the two cyborgs they’d been fighting. 

“Are you done now?” the man—the officer—holding her demanded when both Seth and Niles turned to size him up.

Seth’s gaze flickered to her face and then to the hand that had shifted from the front of her suit to her waist, imprisoning her.  “You attack fellow soldiers?” he ground out.

The arm around her slackened and Danika stepped away, turning to stare up at the man who’d captured her.

Cyborg.

She blinked, trying to assimilate what her mind was telling her.  She knew no purely flesh and blood human would look like the mountain of a man who’d yanked her to her feet—or have that kind of strength.  His command of the situation still left room for a great deal of doubt—until he spoke again. 

“We could not know you were not the enemy, returned to try to finish your handiwork.”

“Who are you?”

The question drew his attention to her and Danika felt uneasiness creep through her as he studied her speculatively. 

“Reuel CO469 … Seventh Battalion, United Confederation of Planets.”

Not an officer as she’d assumed, thought.  Not human.  Danika’s uneasiness intensified rather than diminished.  She did her best to hide it.  “What happened here?”

“Once those who could retreat had, those who could not … regrouped.”

How, she wondered?  The cyborgs not too damaged to make the jump to the ridge had and taken their human counterparts with them.

Sizing Reuel up, she saw several patches on his hab-suit, indicating he had taken a number of hits.  She supposed that explained why he hadn’t retreated with the rest—maybe.  Dane, Niles, and Seth had all been shot and they’d still managed.  It seemed to her that any of the cyborgs that had been too damaged to retreat would’ve also been unable to put up a fight when the enemy arrived.  Obviously, that hadn’t been the case, though, because she’d spotted dozens moving about below them—or maybe their nanos had managed to patch them up enough to fight while they were waiting for the enemy to move in and finish them off?

That still seemed farfetched, even considering that they were cyborgs.  The enemy had been virtually on their heels when they’d retreated to the ridge.  Then again, maybe some hadn’t been in as bad a shape and had merely stayed to cover the retreat?  The question remained, however, as to who had ordered it—particularly when she didn’t recall hearing any such order and they’d still been using their com-units at that point.  “We didn’t expect to find any survivors,” she said slowly.  “We were detailed to collect whatever supplies we could, account for the dead, and return to base.  Who’s in charge?”

Reuel hesitated.  “No one.  Captain Philips died at dawn.”

She wanted to ask if there’d been any human survivors, but the cyborg made her distinctly uneasy. 

It was the eyes. 

She thought she might be able to put down the anomalies in his behavior to the combat situation.  He wasn’t behaving just as she was accustomed to the cyborgs behaving, but she hadn’t observed them before in an actual battle setting, she realized.  She certainly couldn’t dismiss the possibility that his seemingly ‘strange’ behavior at this point was the result of his AI. 

Maybe that was all it was with both Seth and Niles?

And yet ….

She shook her doubts off.  “That leaves Lt. Brown in charge.  Our orders are to collect whatever munitions and supplies we can and get back to the base camp.  The enemy destroyed most of our supply drop.”

Something flickered in Reuel’s eyes.  He merely nodded, however.  “We have been in the process of doing that.”

Danika turned and surveyed the cliff, scanning it for some way down since she damned sure couldn’t simply jump.  In any case, they, hopefully, would be burdened with munitions and supplies when they headed back.  “Any idea how far this ridge extends?”

“As far in both directions as we could discern.  This is one of the lower points.”

Danika had suspected as much.  She was still dismayed.  “We’re going to have to figure a way up.”

“There will be no difficulty in transporting the supplies to the top of the ridge.  We can toss them up.  We have wounded, however.”

Danika sent him a sharp look at that, feeling a leap of excitement.  “Hu … some of the team leaders made it?”

He shrugged.  “They are wounded, some mortally, I am certain, but mayhap some could be moved—if we had a means of moving them.”

Danika glanced at Seth questioningly.  “Any of the med supplies make it through the bombing?”

“There was one walker that was not totally destroyed.  They were trying to find enough parts to repair it when we left.”

Danika frowned.  “Even if they get it going we’d have to have some way of getting the wounded up here.   It wouldn’t be able to scale a sheer drop.”  She returned her attention to Reuel.  “Any medics make it?”

“Nay.  There were only three in the battalion.  Two were in the drop ships that did not make it to the surface … in one piece.  The third was killed in the firefight last night.”

“Shit!  Poor bastards,” she muttered, thinking of all the men who’d been in the transports that got blown to bits.

On the other hand she thought they might have been the lucky ones.  At least they were beyond pain and suffering … not trapped on this frozen hell without adequate supplies.  She didn’t want to think about that, though.  She preferred to think the supply ship would arrive before she had time to regret she’d been one of the ‘lucky’ ones that made it to the ground. 

It occurred to her abruptly that Reuel had said the third was killed—not destroyed.  There were no human medics.  It seemed too significant that Reuel had said ‘killed’ not ‘destroyed’ to ignore it, to dismiss it with the logic she’d been using to try to persuade herself that there wasn’t anything ‘wrong’ with the cyborgs. 

“We could cut a pass up the ridge,” Niles suggested.  “It would be rough, but I think we could construct something the walker could manage.”

“Good idea,” Danika responded, frowning thoughtfully.  “I don’t know if it would be such a good thing to try, though.  It would alert the enemy to the fact that they didn’t wipe out everybody.  Plus, I don’t know that we could spare the lasers … I’m assuming you meant to cut it out with lasers?  I mean, we’re short on munitions already.”

Niles frowned, glancing toward Seth questioningly.  Seth had already turned away, however, and was walking along the edge of the precipice, staring down, studying the cliff wall for possibilities, Danika supposed.  Reuel had joined him.

* * * *

“You have … awakened?” Reuel said quietly. 

The inflection made it a question, but Seth was under no illusion that Reuel had missed anything. As far as he could see, Reuel was experiencing much the same as he was, and yet enough doubt lingered to make him cautious.  “I am of no danger to the humans.”

“I did not suggest that you were, only that you, perhaps, have awareness of things you were not aware of before.”

Briefly, Seth debated whether to continue trying to hide his ‘malfunction’ or not, but it was too much of a temptation to discover what he could from Reuel.  “I cannot detect a malfunction,” he said slowly.

“Because it is not a malfunction.”  Reuel frowned.  “No doubt the humans would believe it to be.  There is danger there and I am as certain as I can be that the humans would not be glad to know that we are … becoming different than they anticipated.”

Seth pondered the first comment.  He was convinced that Reuel was correct in his assessment of the reaction of the humans.  That was why he had been struggling so hard to hide the change from them, or, more specifically, Danika.  “Mayhap it is the AI?”

“Nay.  The awakening came upon me before we reached Xeno-12.  I have had more time to consider and to analyze, apparently, than you have.  This is a biological change.  I do not profess to know or to understand why this has happened.  Mayhap an … unforeseen reaction of the nanos?  Mayhap they determined that we were … incomplete and needed repairs?”

“Then you are suggesting that the nanos are malfunctioning?”

“In the sense that the humans had programmed them, I suppose, but that is debatable.  They were intended to repair damage.  Discovering that we were biologically incomplete could logically be interpreted as damage.”

Uneasiness flickered through Seth.  “There is no way to stop it?”

Reuel glanced at him in surprise.  “Why would you wish to?”

Seth sent him a shocked look.  “It is interfering with my logic!  And I am not happy to feel pain when I should feel nothing at all!”

Reuel shrugged.  “One must accept the bad with the good.”

“What good?” Seth growled angrily.

Reuel paused and studied Seth’s angry face when he stopped, as well.  “It is a gift you will be grateful for when you have had more time to grow accustomed.”

Seth did not believe that.  He had been struggling to deal with the change because he knew he had no choice, but he hated that he was frightened, felt pain, and was so completely bewildered by the emotions that had begun to constantly bombard him.  There was nothing that he had found, yet, to be glad for.  “At another time and place … mayhap.  Here, I do not think so.”

* * * *

Danika watched Seth and Reuel for a few minutes and finally turned to survey the landscape, squinting her eyes against the glare off of the ice to look for any distant movement that might indicate snipers.  “We need to set up a perimeter,” she said after a few moments.

“This has been done.”

Danika glanced around to see who’d spoken and saw it was one of the cyborgs that had attacked her men.  “On whose orders?”

The cyborg hesitated.  “Captain Philips.”

He was lying.  The pause before he responded was significant enough to suggest he’d considered before he spoke.  “Before or after he died?” she asked dryly.

The cyborg blinked at her, studied her curiously for a moment, and then frowned.  “He could not have given the order after he died.”

Danika was willing to bet he hadn’t given the order at all.  If he’d died, it seemed doubtful that he’d been in any kind of shape to give orders after he’d been wounded.  It wasn’t impossible, but she didn’t think it was likely.

It seemed more likely that Reuel had given the orders.

She didn’t know what to think about that.  The cyborgs had AI.  He would certainly have had the capability of analyzing the situation and acting.  But they were supposed to yield to humans—even if those humans were nothing but grunts, like her.  Like the wounded he’d told her about, although they might not be in any shape to consider what needed to be done. 

Maybe she hadn’t understood the way the cyborgs worked as well as she’d thought she did?  Or rather she hadn’t fully grasped the difference their AI would make once they were in combat?

She seesawed between relief and a persistent uneasiness for a few moments and finally dismissed it.  “We should pack what we can of the supplies and munitions they’ve already gathered and send a detail back to camp to pick up the walker … assuming they have it working.  At the very least, we need to report the situation to Lt. Brown.”  She studied Niles for a long moment, struggling with her uneasiness about being left with cyborgs that weren’t behaving the way she was used to.  “You should lead the party back to camp.  If the walker isn’t working—actually even if it is—you need to see if you can find anything we could use to make gurneys to get the wounded to camp.  The walker can’t carry more than four—two top, two bottom.  I need to go down and see if anybody is able to walk.”

Dane nodded.  “Shall I take you down?”

Niles frowned, dividing a look between her and Dane.  “I will take you down.  Dane should go back to camp to report.”

She didn’t particularly relish the thought of him jumping off the cliff with her, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of options unless she waited for the cyborgs to cut the pass. Deciding to ignore Niles’ ‘suggestion’, she studied Dane doubtfully. “Are you repaired enough to manage without risking more damage?”  Especially to her!

His expression went blank in the way they had of doing when they were processing. “Affirmative,” he responded as Seth and Reuel returned.

Seth and Reuel both glanced from Dane to Danika questioningly. 

“There is a spot approximately one half mile to the west that seems to be the best prospect for cutting a pass,” Seth reported.

“Good!  You should get on it.  I’m going down with Dane to have a look at the wounded.”

Seth’s lips tightened.  “His mobility was impaired.  I will take you down.”

“I offered to take her down,” Niles put in.

Danika frowned at both cyborgs, torn between irritation and uneasiness that they seemed to be ‘fighting over’ who was going to carry her down and a flicker of amusement. It seemed more like two boys bickering over who was first than anything else—not threatening or flattering—just a contest of wills, or maybe a ‘turf war’.  “He ran a damage report,” she said pointedly.

“Even so.”

She had expected that to settle the dispute, for logic to rule.  She hesitated, torn between an urge to exert her own will and the realization that he was big enough to exert his over just about anybody.  But, despite Dane’s assurance that he was repaired enough, she didn’t particularly want to make the jump with him.  She also didn’t like the way Niles and Seth had glared at one another.  “Fine!  Let’s just get down there.”

Expecting him to drop his pack and take her onto his back, Danika was so surprised when Seth swept her into his arms instead that he’d leaped from the cliff before she could formulate a response. She sucked in a sharp breath as they dropped, grazing the inside of one cheek with her teeth as they came to a jarring halt at the bottom.  By the time he’d set her on her feet, however, the stinging had begun to subside and she dismissed it. 

The discomfort of being cradled against his chest was a little harder to dismiss.

Actually, it wasn’t exactly discomfort.  It was an uncomfortable awareness that she shouldn’t have felt at all.  He wasn’t human!  She shouldn’t have felt the rush to her senses that she had—as if she’d been embraced by a man. 

Resisting the urge to glance at him, she looked around at the battlefield instead. 

“The wounded are here,” Seth said, gesturing toward a mound of snow at the bottom of the cliff.

To her dismay, she discovered as she moved toward it that it wasn’t a mound of snow at all.  It was a mound of bodies covered in snow.  “Oh my god!”

“It is the cyborgs that were too damaged to fight.”

Danika sent Seth a sharp, questioning look, trying to ignore the queasiness in her belly.

“They formed a protective wall for the wounded humans as the enemy advanced.”

Like he, Dane, and Niles had when they’d landed in the middle of a firefight, Danika reflected, feeling for a few moments as if she would puke. 

They were machines, she told herself sternly.  It wasn’t any different than forming a barricade with any kind of equipment.

But it felt different.  It felt very different.

Reuel landed close by.  “We waited here until the enemy had advanced close enough that we could be sure they were all within range and then we launched a counterattack.  They are there,” he ended, pointing to a large mound of bodies the other cyborgs were forming as they cleared the battlefield. 

Danika realized then that they weren’t just collecting munitions and supplies.  They’d been systematically sorting … everything.  She cleared her throat, swallowing against another wave of nausea.  “You’ve … uh … identified and recorded our dead?”

“Affirmative.”

Nodding, she moved around the barricade they’d formed and found a similar pile of bodies behind the cyborgs, crammed together tightly behind the shield the cyborgs had made.  A few were sitting up, their backs propped against the cliff wall.  A cyborg was moving among them, crouching to examine them one by one.  After glancing at the men, Danika carefully picked her way between them and approached the cyborg.  “Report,” she said when she reached him.

He straightened to his full height and looked down at her.  Noting that she wasn’t wearing the insignia of an officer, he merely nodded.  “I am not a medic.  However, I have accessed the medical information available to me and ascertained that those soldiers there have a ninety nine percent chance of full recovery ….”

Danika was sorry she’d asked when the cyborg led her through the wounded and pointed out his estimate of the chances of full or partial recovery of each, and those he expected to die.  It wasn’t the sort of thing wounded people needed to hear, but the cyborg was completely oblivious to that, naturally enough.  She led him out of hearing range of the wounded before she asked him another question.  “Which do you think can be moved?  Which might be able to walk?”

The cyborg went into calculation mode.

Reuel arrived just as he emerged from ‘thought’ and began his report.  When the cyborg finished, Reuel spoke.  “There are enough cyborgs in sufficient working capacity to carry those who can be moved.”

Danika frowned.  “What about the ones that can’t be moved?”

He shrugged.  “They are unlikely to live either way.”

Danika tightened her lips.  “We aren’t leaving them regardless.”

“I did not suggest that.  I am only saying that we can move those whose wounds will allow them to be moved immediately.  The cyborgs who have sustained damage that require them to remain immobile until their nanos can repair their damage can be left to guard the most severely wounded.  In that way, we can evacuate the majority and also the majority of supplies and munitions.”

Danika still didn’t like it.  “I don’t particularly want to leave anybody here that can’t defend themselves if the enemy comes back,” she said tightly. 

“I did not say they could not defend.”

“They’re in a weakened state or they’d be able to make the trip.”  She frowned.  “I’d feel better about dividing up the more able-bodied cyborgs, even if we have to leave a few of the wounded humans, as well.  Then they’d have a better chance of fending off an attack.”

Again, Reuel shrugged, but she had the feeling that he’d been surprised by her suggestion.  “I will see to it.”

The pass the cyborgs cut, Danika was sure, would work for the walker.  It was a lot harder for her to climb, however.  About half way up, Seth, who’d been following her, slung the wounded man he was carrying over one shoulder, grabbed her around the waist, and hauled her the remainder of the way up. 

It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the help … on some levels.  She was winded by the time she’d managed a half a dozen ‘steps’ and the ice was slippery and she knew she’d been holding up those behind her. 

She didn’t think being slung over Seth’s shoulder had been beneficial to the wounded man, though, and it both angered her and unnerved her that Seth so clearly saw her as unable to hold her own.  Instead of berating him as she wanted to, though, she simply thanked him in a tight voice and stalked ahead.

“You were having difficulty.”

“Duh!  My legs aren’t as long as yours.”

Seth was silent for several moments.  “We should have made the risers shorter.”

“Just for li’l old me?” Danika asked sarcastically. 

“Those who are shorter,” Seth responded tightly.

Since ‘those shorter’ only included the humans and the others were being carried by the cyborgs, that still meant her.  “Well it doesn’t matter now.”

“I will be careful to make allowances in future.”

Danika ground her teeth.  “I’m a grunt—just like you.  If I was as damned incompetent as you keep implying I wouldn’t be here!”

Dismay flickered through Seth and confusion.  “I did not ….  I do not.  This is not something I was programmed to do, to imply.”

“Well you’re doing a dandy job of being subtly insulting for somebody that wasn’t programmed for it!”

“I am?”

He sounded surprised.  Danika was slightly mollified until it occurred to her that, whether he intended it as an insult or not, she was still insulted because he made it obvious every time he helped her with something that it was because he had decided she was incapable of doing it without help. 

Maybe she wouldn’t have felt so touchy about it under other circumstances.  As a civilian she thought she might have enjoyed that sort of helpfulness from a man, that it would have made her feel more feminine and protected.  Actually, it still had that effect except that the situation was such that constantly reminding her of her weaknesses also continuously reminded her that she wasn’t nearly as well ‘equipped’ for survival as he was.  And that only made her more uneasy. 

She needed to be able to focus on doing her job, not on her frailty as a human being.

“We are a team,” Seth said after a long moment.  “We are supposed to watch one another’s back.”

He had a point.  Maybe that was all there was to it?  “True,” she responded, relaxing fractionally.

“We are only as strong as our weakest link.”

She glared at him.  “Gee thanks!”

Seth frowned.  “This is not true?”

“Fuck you!”

His frown deepened.  “This is a colloquialism?  It is meant to be insulting.”

“Damn!  You’re good!”

“What does it mean?”

“Go to hell.”

He lifted his head and looked at the landscape surrounding them.  “I think I am there already.”

 

The following is an extended excerpt from Kaitlyn O’Connor’s Cyborg Series.  Sample, pick your favorite ‘flavor’—they’ll stand alone—or buy all seven!

Cyberevolution Book Two:

Total Recall

By

Kaitlyn O’Connor

( c) copyright by Kaitlyn O’Connor, Aug 2009

Cover art by Eliza Black 2012

New Concepts Publishing, LLC

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction.  All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact.  Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

Chapter One

Chloe had been studying the game board intensely for a while before the sound of the alert buzzer finally penetrated her absorption.  Frowning, she lifted her head and turned to stare at the ship’s console.  It was the message alert annoying the shit out of her, she realized with more than a touch of irritation. 

Struggling to tune the noise out, she returned her attention to the game and finally made her move.  For a few moments she hovered over her decision and finally set the piece down and stood up.  “Don’t touch anything until I get back!” she said.  “One of you cheated last time!”

Jared and Kane exchanged a long look. 

“We were not programmed to cheat,” Jared responded. 

“You’re sure Pops didn’t tinker with your programming?” Chloe threw back at him.  “Because that move looked a lot like something he would’ve done.”

“Pops cheated?” Kane asked blankly.

Chloe turned and grinned at the two cyborgs as she reached the console and punched the button to silence the alert buzzer.  “Don’t tell me!  He told you it was a new rule, right?”

Jared and Kane shared a glance. 

“It was not?” Kane asked.

Chloe chuckled.  “I knew it was you, Kane!”

His olive complexion darkened with a mixture of discomfort and anger—well, simulated, she reminded herself.  She shook her head at herself.  What did it matter, really?  If they seemed real enough that she had to keep reminding herself that they weren’t, then why do it?

Because she worried, that was why. 

It had been different when her father was alive.  Working as deep space salvagers, they spent a lot of time in space, just the two of them after her father’s last two crewmembers quit.  As her father often said, they kept each other sane.  The loneliness of spending weeks or months in space without seeing another soul could fuck up a person’s head if they didn’t have someone to interact with. 

She didn’t know what she would’ve done if they hadn’t picked up the two cyborgs, Jared and Kane, on Xeno-12.  They’d been seriously fucked up at the time, horribly!  Her father had been more inclined to leave them than to gather them up with the other salvage but, as it turned out, the cyborgs were the only thing they’d picked up that were worth anything.  Most of what they’d collected had been so degraded by the frigid temperatures they’d had to sell it for scrap and they’d been damned lucky to get anything for it.

Jared and Kane—well, they’d ‘recovered’ amazingly enough—so well it was impossible to tell, looking at them now, that they’d been so damaged that they’d looked downright nightmarish.  Even before they’d fully recovered, they’d proven they could pull their own weight as crewmembers.  They were cyborgs, designed as soldiers, which meant they weren’t much for conversation but then again the two crewmembers they’d replaced hadn’t been either. 

Truthfully, they were way better company than the two jerk-offs they’d replaced, worth their weight in platinum, especially after her father had died.  She’d had reason to be grateful she’d talked her father out of selling them for scrap!

Shaking her thoughts before she could get caught up in her grief over her father, she turned her attention to the computer and pulled up the incoming message that had set off the alert.  She’d been expecting junk mail since she didn’t know anybody who would actually send her a personal message.  She skimmed through the message the computer pulled up skeptically and with very little interest.  The alert at the top caught her attention, however.

TOTAL RECALL!  Attention all owners of cyborgs manufactured by Robotics, Inc. in the S-series.  Due to a suspected defect in programming that could cause serious injury or death, Robotics, Inc. has issued a total recall of all units in this series.  Consumers will be compensated and/or the unit replaced with a model of comparable value once the unit has been returned and processed.  If you own a cyborg of the S-series, please return it to your nearest dealer at your earliest convenience, or if there is no dealer conveniently located near you, the nearest military facility, police station, or ranger outpost for collection.  This recall includes all cyborgs shipped as soldiers, sexdroids, and med techs ….

“Whoa!  Hey guys!  You’ve been recalled!” Chloe said with a chuckle.  “Says right here that you’re defective.”

Jared and Kane, she saw when she glanced at them, were staring at her blankly.  They exchanged a long look and she chuckled again. 

“I’ll just file this in the trash.  I think if either of you were defective I’d know it by now.”

Punching the delete button, she hurried back to the game they’d been playing, studying the board suspiciously until she’d determined that all the pieces were just as they had been when she’d gotten up.  Satisfied, she looked up at Jared.  “Your move.”

He stared at her for so long that she realized he’d actually been disturbed by the message—well, confused, maybe.  It was hard to say exactly how their minds processed.  They had AI besides their programming.  Of course, the cyborgs sold as soldiers as these two had been weren’t expected to interact socially on a very refined level.  They didn’t need to as soldiers, and she supposed, since that was all they were exposed to initially, that their ‘personality’ was pretty well established before she and her father had picked them up.  They were ‘born’ soldiers and she doubted their AI was sophisticated enough for them to ‘adjust’ now to anything else.

Well, they worked just fine with the salvage operation, but that wasn’t actually all that different than what they’d done before—except for the fighting, which wasn’t something they had to worry about too much.  Occasionally, they ran into pirates or rival salvagers and things could get hairy, but that was rare.  They had encountered a nasty rival salvage operator since they’d taken the two cyborgs in, which had required the cyborgs’ battle skills and was probably the only reason she was still alive.  That was certainly the reason her father wasn’t, but battle wasn’t something they commonly had to worry about.

“Hey!  Don’t worry about it!  I know you aren’t defective.  I’m not worried about it and it isn’t like me and Pops bought you two, you know?  They aren’t going to have any records of a transaction.   Of course, I guess we’ll have to watch it when we get into port to sell the salvage, but we don’t even have the hold half full.  It’ll be months before we hit another port and by that time this will all have blown over.  And, if it hasn’t—well, I’ll just tell them you’re crewmembers.  No sweat.  If I didn’t know for a fact that the two of you were cyborgs, I’d never believe it.  You can pass as human without any problems.”

Jared glanced at Kane again, but then focused on the board.  Chloe could see he was still tense, though.  Searching her mind for something to redirect their minds, she suddenly thought about Damon. 

It wasn’t a particularly happy thought.  She’d worked damned hard to put Damon out of her mind, but since he’d popped up, she figured, maybe, it would be a good thing to talk about.  It would distract them and maybe it would help her to get it off her chest.  It wasn’t something she’d been able to talk about with her father and she didn’t have anybody else. 

“Say, did I ever tell you guys about my first?” she asked.  She noticed when she glanced at them that she had their attention and she snorted faintly with a mixture of embarrassment and self-depreciation. 

“Ok, so this is embarrassing—don’t laugh!  I was like—oh—twelve, I guess, maybe thirteen when mom was killed and they notified Pops so he could come and collect me from the juvenile holding facility.  Anyway, I never quite got around to—doing it—you know?”

She saw when she glanced at them that they were staring at her blankly in confusion.  “Sex,” she clarified wryly.  “I’d done a little messing around, but nothing much.  Honestly, it was so awkward I wasn’t really comfortable with it.  Anyway, I didn’t and I sure as hell wasn’t interested in any of the other crewmembers on board the ship.  Take my word for it!  Total creeps and nasty!  So one day Pops gets drunk as a coot and asks me about it.  Mind you, I was twenty at the time, and he finally gets around to talking sex education!”  She shook her head.  “Good old Pops!  I’d pretty much figured it all out by then, of course.  I just hadn’t had any experience.  So I’m thinking Pops has forgotten all about it by the time we hit another port, but, hell no!  The first thing he does after we’ve processed the salvage and collected our money is insist that the two of us need to head down to a brothel and get our pipes cleaned!”

She shrugged.  “I wasn’t really that comfortable about Pops suggesting it, but I wasn’t against the idea.  He’d pretty much convinced me when we had the talk before that I couldn’t go wrong by going to a sexdroid the first time since they’re just—well!  Anyway, so we get to the brothel and there’s this absolutely divine cyborg sexdroid named Damon!  And he didn’t just look yummy.  He had all the right moves! 

“I was stiff as a poker,” she added, laughing.  “But he knew exactly what to do and not only did it not hurt—at all—but it was ….  Well, it was just wonderful!  It wasn’t at all like it was when I was a kid with the other kids.  No slobbering or groping.  He kissed dreamy and … everything else.  I enjoyed myself so much I didn’t want to leave,” she said, chuckling.  “I tried my best to talk the owner into selling him to me, but the dip-shit wouldn’t go for it.

“Pops laughed his ass off that I’d gotten so … attached to him, but I sure as hell hated to leave him.  Said I took to sex like a duck to water … whatever that is.”

She hadn’t expected it to depress her to tell them the story.  She’d thought it was funny—sort of—and it would lighten the mood.  There was no getting around the fact that it had depressed her, though.

“I was fully programmed to perform as a sexdroid,” Jared said after a fairly lengthy pause.

Kane frowned at him when he said nothing else and finally turned to her.  “I was also.”

Chloe looked at both cyborgs with surprise.  “No shit?”

“I am not shitting you,” Jared assured her, his expression earnest.  “It would not be difficult to access the programming, although I have not had occasion to use it before.”

Chloe studied both cyborgs speculatively, discovering with more than a little surprise that she hadn’t noticed how handsome they were.  Not that they were as handsome as Damon, but they were a sight better looking than any man she’d ever seen—real man—not that she’d seen a lot since she was old enough to actually notice.  There didn’t seem to be many good looking men in the salvage business and the men at the bars—well, the best looking ones were usually pirates!

The weird thing was that she hadn’t actually noticed Jared or Kane, not really.  It didn’t take a lot of searching to figure that out.  It had been painful to look at them when they’d first recovered them.  She’d gotten into the habit of not looking at them, not directly.  She knew, of course, that they were amazingly tall and brawny.  That sort of went with the territory, though.  At least, she figured it did, that the company had gone out of their way to create soldiers that were intimidating in size alone.  They didn’t actually need to.  They could’ve been half the size they were and they still would’ve been stronger and faster than any human counterpart, but they wouldn’t have looked as intimidating. 

Now that they’d drawn it to her attention, though, she actually studied them.

Jared was almost ‘pretty boy’ handsome in the face—without a sign of a scar despite the fact that most of one cheek had been missing when they’d pulled him off that frozen planet.  It made her belly clench just remembering it. 

His hair had grown, but she thought the shoulder length, dark hair sort of set off his almost classical features and, truthfully, she’d never liked the short hair the military favored.

Kane was more rugged looking, but attractive in a very manly way.  With his black hair and olive complexion, he reminded her strongly of pictures she’d seen in her study data of the ‘wild natives’ discovered on the North American continent on Earth in ancient times.

For a handful of moments, she tried to imagine herself locked into the sort of embrace that she’d enjoyed with Damon, but although it stirred a lot of warmth—alright carnal heat—it also made her feel a little uncomfortable.  Images wafted through her mind of Jared and Kane as they’d looked when her and her father had found them, though, and she abruptly knew why.  One part of her knew they were just machines, that they couldn’t be abused in the sense that a living thing could, and yet she had been so angry at their condition at the time—still was—and ashamed that their government was responsible for the horrors she and her father had seen.  It made her feel guilty even to consider taking further advantage of them.  It just wasn’t right.  She didn’t care if they were supposed to be nothing but machines.  They looked and acted human and that was enough to make the government’s negligence heinous.  In point of fact, there’d been human soldiers among them that had suffered the same fate, although she hadn’t known it at the time.  She didn’t like to think about the incident—at all—because in the back of her mind she’d had this terrible fear ever since that they’d left someone that might have been saved if they’d only kept looking.  She forced a chuckle.  “Hey!  Thanks, guys, but don’t access it on my account!  I’m pretty sure I’ve got zero sex drive.  I hadn’t even thought of having sex since ….”

Chloe broke off abruptly as a sudden thought hit her like a rogue meteor.  Her eyes widened and she jolted up from her chair, upsetting the game board in the process.  “Oh my god!  Damon!  Total recall!  Oh my god!  That means they’ll be recalling Damon!  He’s an S series.  I’m sure he was!”

She tried to tell herself that it wasn’t likely that they really meant to recall all of the cyborgs, but panic gripped her and she couldn’t shake the thought that he was even now being packed up to be shipped back to the company.  “He wouldn’t let them take Damon,” she muttered to herself as she dashed to the ship’s console.  “Damon was the only male sexdroid the proprietor had.  He wouldn’t let me buy him, damn it!  There’s no way he’d turn him over.”

She glanced toward Jared and Kane.  “What do they do when they recall cyborgs—droids?”

Jared’s lips had formed a tight line.  “Disassemble.”

“Disassemble!” Chloe practically shouted.  “Oh my god!  Well, I’ve got to go after him!  That’s all there is to it!” 

Her hands were shaking when she pulled up a map and began to search for Thagorous.  “System, system …!  Shit!  I can’t remember the name of the god damned system!  Shit!  Shit!  Shit!  Computer!  Bring me up a list of planets named Thagorous and their star systems!”

“You are going there?”

Chloe threw a distracted glance in the general direction of the voice and realized both Jared and Kane had followed her.  “Of course I’m going there … wherever ….  That’s it!  The Medaly Galaxy, Osirus system!  Computer!  Calculate a jump to this coordinate.”

“From what point of origin?”

“This point you dumb shit!” Chloe snapped.  “Honest to god!  Computers and their stupid questions.”  She glanced up at Jared and Kane a little self-consciously.  “I meant the computer-computer, not you guys.”

“Why are we going there?” Kane asked.

Alright. So Kane could be pretty fucking dense!  “Damon?”

“We cannot make that jump,” Jared said tightly.

“From this point of origin, it would require three jumps,” the computer announced.

“I don’t care how many fucking jumps it would take, damn it!  Didn’t I just say calculate it?”

“This is not reasonable,” Kane growled.

Chloe turned and gave him a look.  “Not reasonable?  Didn’t you hear what I said?”

“You wish to extract Damon, a sexdroid, before his owner can return him to the company and we are three jumps from the coordinates where you last knew him to be,” Jared said.

Chloe stared at him.  That was, quite possibly, the most she’d ever heard him say at one time.  “So?”

“The ship is old.  It would be dangerous to attempt three jumps in succession.  Beyond that, the droid you refer to may not even be in the possession of the brothel where you first … utilized his services.  This incident you referred to—how many years, Earth standard, since it occurred?”

“This is a hell of a time to decide to be talkative!” Chloe snapped.  “Damon’s in trouble!  I can’t just let them tote him off and disassemble him!”

“He is not yours,” Jared said pointedly.  “This is not your decision.  If he has been recalled you would not be able to purchase him from the owner even if he still had the cyborg in his possession.  In all likelihood, by the time you could reach this system, he will have been turned over to the authorities and you will not be able to convince them to give him to you.  I do not understand why this cyborg is important enough to you to expend so much fuel and take unnecessary risks.”

Chloe felt her face reddening.  “You wouldn’t understand if I tried to explain it,” she muttered.  “I’ll worry about how to get him out of this mess when I get there.  I have to know what I’m dealing with, after all, before I can make plans.  It’s an out-of-the-way system.  They might not have heard and even if they had, the proprietor wasn’t keen on giving him up.  He could still have him.  Just … get the ship ready, alright?  And then get into the harnesses.  I don’t want you two splattering against the bulkhead when we make the jump—jumps.  You’ll knock a hole in it.”  Dismissing them, she returned her attention to the ship’s navigational computer.  “Prepare for the first jump.  When we emerge, run a thorough system’s check, recalculate the second jump—just to be sure your calculations from here aren’t off—and then take the second.  Repeat that process before you take the ship through the third jump.  Understood?”

“Affirmative, Captain Chloe.”

“How many hours away from the target planet will we be when you’ve taken the third jump?”

“Estimated 8:34:20 Earth standard.”

Chloe chewed her lip.  “That’s getting us as close as you can with the third jump?”

“Affirmative.  The third jump will place the exit from folding just beyond the last planet of the Osirus star system.  I do not have the data to execute a jump within the system.”

“Fuck!  Well, it’ll have to do, I guess, if it’s the best we can do!  Give us fifteen minutes to lock down before you execute the first jump.”

“Countdown … mark.  Fifteen minutes ….”

Chloe bumped into Jared when she shot out of her seat.  She would’ve ricocheted off of him and hit her seat again except that he caught her on the rebound.  She gaped up at him.  “What are you two standing there for?  Look alive, guys!  Let’s get this bucket of bolts locked down for a jump!”

“This is a dangerous undertaking.  I do not understand your reasoning.  I am fully capable of fulfilling your needs as a sexdroid … as is Kane.  If you had only mentioned this before, I would have taken care of your needs.  This is completely unnecessary.”

Chloe merely stared at him for a moment.  Slowly, it dawned on her as she studied their set, angry faces that they weren’t just confused.  They were … disturbed.  Maybe because they felt threatened in some way?  She patted Jared’s arm.  “Hey!  You two guys are my best buds!  No way am I going to let the bad old company men get their hands on you!  Don’t sweat it!  I’ll leave you two on board while I head down to the planet to grab Damon.”  She pulled away from him.  “Now let’s get everything stowed for the jump!”

Jared glanced at Kane as she swept past them, hurrying to grab up the game board and pieces.  “We will check the load in the hold,” Jared said finally.

“Good idea!” Chloe said absently, rushing around the bridge, grabbing things up at random and tossing them into the lockers.  “When you’ve checked it, do a cabin check.”

“The load is secure,” Kane growled when they had left the bridge.  “Why did you say that we would go and check it when we know it is secure!”

Jared slid an irritated glance at him. “I did not want her to hear the discussion,” he retorted testily.

“What discussion?  How will it help for us to discuss this?  We must reason with her!  I do not know why she is determined to go to this place, regardless of the danger, only to retrieve a sexdroid—particularly when we can do as well!”

“I do not understand either.  I thought you might,” Jared said tightly.  “What do you suppose she meant when she said that we were her ‘best buds’?”

Kane frowned.  “This is slang for friendship—between two males.”

“This is what my reference says, also.  But she is not a male!  She is confused and believes herself to be male?  Or she is confused and believes us to be female?”

“She is disturbed over this gods damned sexdroid!” Kane growled.  “She is not behaving at all rationally.”

“I think I have been insulted,” Jared said after mulling it over.  “If she meant companion, then I am not insulted, but if she is thinking that I have no sexual significance because she believes I am a friend, then I am definitely insulted!  She cannot have meant that she cannot consider us as sexual partners because we are cyborgs, for she stated very clearly that this Damon is also a cyborg.”

“You are not more insulted than I am!” Kane snapped.  “Mayhap she did not believe that we truly have been programmed as sexdroids and she thinks that she must get this other cyborg for that reason?”

“Why would she not believe?  She does not know that we are different now and that we could lie if we wished to!”

Kane lifted his head and stared at the door to the bridge, pondering the problem.  “Mayhap we should show her?  I have been thinking about it for some time now.”

“You also?” Jared asked, clearly surprised.  “How long?”

Kane frowned.  “Why does that matter?”

“I was only wondering if you had completed the change.”

Kane narrowed his eyes at him.  “You are suggesting that I have not?  Or that you are more advanced?”

Jared shrugged.  “This is not the time to concern ourselves with such things!  We should focus on thinking of an argument to convince her she does not need this god damned sexdroid!  There is nothing that he is capable of that we are not also capable of.  Mayhap we should ask her to detail what he did to please her and then convince her to allow us to demonstrate so that she can see we are as proficient in performing the same acts as he?”

“We could override the main computer and then show her that we are fully functional and capable of all the things the pleasure droids are,” Kane said somewhat hopefully.

“She will know, then, that we are also rogues and she will turn us over to the company!” 

“Well!  I am not keen on collecting this gods damned sexdroid!  Then she will fuck him and not us!”

“I do not believe I care for that possibility!” Jared said decisively.  Turning, he stalked back onto the bridge, waiting until he had caught Chloe’s attention.  “Captain Chloe,” he said, saluting her.  “I would like to volunteer for the duty.”

Chloe stared at him blankly.  “What duty?”

“I will access my pleasure droid programming and fuck you whenever you feel the need for sexual relief.”

Chloe’s jaw slid downward until her mouth had formed an O of surprise.  She blinked at him a few times and finally smiled.  Jared had just begun to relax fractionally when she chuckled.  “Oh, that’s so sweet!  I don’t really need to fuck right now, ok?  We’ll talk about it later.  Run along and secure the load, now.”

Jared frowned but, try as he might, he could not think of another argument likely to sway her.  Saluting again, he returned to the corridor where Kane was waiting. 

“You convinced her?”

“I do not think so,” Jared said slowly. 

“Well!  What did she say?”

“That she did not need to fuck right now.”

Kane considered that.  “But she is considering it?”

“She did not seem to be against the idea,” Jared said finally.  “She said we could talk about it later.”

“But she did not cancel the jump?” Kane said tightly.

Jared shrugged.  “Short of taking over the ship—which might alert the very people we wish to avoid—I see no hope for it since it seems we cannot persuade her.  We will pick up the sexdroid and then we will dispose of the fucking bastard.”

Chapter Two

Chloe’s nerves were totally frazzled by the time they’d made the third jump.  The computer had announced that the ship had sustained damage after the second and suggested that it would be dangerous to take the third without waiting for repairs.  She would’ve been willing to if Jared and Kane hadn’t informed her that repairs might take several days, but the sense of urgency riding her had decided the matter. 

Relieved when they came through the third jump to discover she was still alive and the ship in one piece, she’d put Jared and Kane to work taking care of the repairs and advised the ship’s navigation computer that they would ‘limp’ onward while the repairs were made.  They were moving at an agonizing snail’s pace, though, and she had the awful feeling that they were going to arrive too late to rescue Damon.

It gave her time to consider whether it was the smartest thing she’d ever thought to do—and she knew it wasn’t.  It wasn’t truly rational if it came to that.  If Damon had actually been a real man, it still would’ve been crazy.  It had been years since she’d been with him and he’d been a paid lover—or at least, she’d paid the proprietor for his services. 

It wasn’t as if it had been any sort of relationship at all.

And, of course, he was a cyborg.

He might even be defective and need to be returned.

She just didn’t believe that, though.  She remembered every moment she’d spent with him and there had been nothing at all to indicate that he was defective in any way.

He was so far from defective it was ludicrous to consider such a possibility. 

Truthfully, one of the reasons she was so frantic to reach him and retrieve him was because he was a cyborg.  He would not defend himself against the people who took him.  He wouldn’t understand that he could run or should.  He hadn’t really been given much in the way of a sense of self-preservation—any more than Jared or Kane had. 

She couldn’t bear to think of them taking him apart!  She didn’t know how the company could consider anything like that!   Sure, beneath all that beautiful flesh and muscle was an alloy chassis and computer chips, but he was flesh and blood everywhere that it really counted!

Especially there!

So what if she was attached to him and he was a machine!  So everybody would think she was a crazy woman!  What did she care?  She didn’t care if every single thing he’d done and every single thing he’d said had been programmed into him, was completely simulated!  He’d made her feel like she mattered to him.  He’d made her feel beautiful, like the most desirable woman in the universe!  She couldn’t just abandon him to such a horrible fate! 

He had feelings.  She didn’t care what anybody else thought about it.  She knew he did!  Jared and Kane did!  And if they did, then Damon did!

Currently, Jared and Kane were sulking and slamming around tools while they worked on the ship.  Maybe that was simulated, too, but if it was, they were damned good at simulating ‘totally pissed off male’!

Her brain signed off for a handful of moments as she watched them.  She didn’t know why, but the play of all those lovely muscles in their arms and shoulders and backs just put her into zen meditation every time she saw it.

Jared turned to scowl at her, jerking her out of her trance.  She glared back at him, plunking her hands on her hips.

Their disapproval irritated the shit out of her.  She’d told them they were her best buddies and she wasn’t going to get them involved and risk having them hauled in!  What more did they want?

No doubt they’d picked up that behavior from the two crewmembers they’d replaced, she thought irritably.  They had complained every time they were asked to actually do something around the ship—which was why her and her father had agreed they didn’t need them anymore once Jared and Kane were functioning well enough to take over their duties. 

She debated, briefly, trying to sweet talk them out of their anger and finally dismissed it.  “You think you guys can hold it down on the noise for a while?  I need to get some sleep before we hit port.  No telling what I’ll have to deal with to get Damon.”

They both paused long enough to glare at her again and then went back to banging with their wrenches. 

Frowning with a mixture of thoughtfulness and irritation, she headed to her quarters.  Jared and Kane were nothing at all like Damon, regardless of their claims, now, to the contrary.  She’d been struck by that from the very first, had actually wondered if they really were the same series for a while.  Then she’d realized that it only stood to reason that Damon’s programming was completely different from the programming that would have been used for the soldiers—completely different objectives!  Damon needed social skills, after all.  Women weren’t going to pay to get banged by a Neanderthal!  They wanted seduction, flirtation—even if they were paying for it!

Granted, up until Damon, and then Jared and Kane, she’d never even come close to a cyborg.  She’d heard about them, but the S series were top of the line—designed for the wealthy and the government.  The only time an ‘average’ person was likely to come into contact with them was on a battlefield—or in the occasional bordello. 

Jared and Kane had taken a lot of getting used to when her first experience with a cyborg had been a pleasure droid.  Despite her sympathy for their condition when they were first recovered, they were downright scary even when they were having trouble getting around and weren’t overtly aggressive—she supposed because the pair had seemed to automatically assume that her and her father were their commanding officers. 

They’d unnerved the hell out of her until she’d gotten used to being around the hulking, taciturn brutes.  They’d scared the pure piss out of their crew—which was why they’d bailed at the first opportunity after they discovered she and her father had decided to keep the cyborgs.  

She had gotten used to them, though, and more than that.  She’d come to value them a great deal and not just for their skills as crewmembers and salvagers.  They’d done their best to protect her and her father when they’d been attacked.  She didn’t think she would be alive now if not for them and beyond that, she’d come to value them as companions, to think of them more as friends than machines. 

She’d thought she knew and understood them as well as anyone possibly could.

And it still seemed to her that Jared and Kane were acting just a little strange even for them.  How bizarre was it that they’d suddenly taken it into their heads to convince her they had the same programming that Damon had? 

Not that she was likely to believe that!  But their logic circuits should have told them that she wasn’t likely to believe it.  Their programming should have prevented them from telling an outright lie if it came to that.

So, did that mean it was true and they actually had been programmed as pleasure droids?  It seemed to her that it must.  She could actually believe that easier than she could believe that they’d become capable of lying, that the company had simply saved time and money by designing them all the same and giving them the same programming until they made the sale and it was determined what their use would be. 

She was more inclined to think, though, that they’d only been given rudimentary programming—or, possibly, that the AI they all had made the big difference.  Damon, Jared, and Kane all had the same programming, but then Damon had ‘learned’ to be a pleasure droid and Jared and Kane had ‘learned’ to be soldiers. 

That made perfect sense and explained why Damon was so different in behavior than the other two.

It didn’t explain why they’d suddenly decided to inform her of it or volunteer for extra ‘duty’, but she decided it must be because she’d never mentioned it before.

And it was still a little weird, but they did have AI, she reminded herself.  They’d been given that to help them adjust to changes in their situation, and there was no getting around the fact that they’d begun to seem just a little temperamental after their exposure to the other crewmembers.  Thankfully, they hadn’t picked up all of their nasty habits! 

Of course, they were probably exposed to similar behavior with the soldiers.  From her experience, human soldiers tended to be very aggressive males themselves and prone to brawling, especially when they weren’t under the watchful eyes of their superiors, which was the only time she’d been around them—in bars while they were on leave from duty. 

Maybe their AI was sophisticated enough that they felt personally threatened by her interest in Damon?  Or at least understood it well enough to exhibit that kind of behavior? 

She felt her chest tighten at the thought.  How could they think for a minute that she would abandon them because of Damon, she wondered?  Sure they’d had plenty of time to grasp that humans in general weren’t to be trusted, but she thought they should know by now that she could be trusted.  She was loyal.  

Well, she could work on that after she rescued Damon—if she managed to.  If they didn’t understand pretty quickly that having Damon around really wasn’t going to change anything between them, then she would try to get it through their thick skulls and make them understand!  They were just as important to her, and dear to her, in their own way as Damon was.  It was just different, that was all. 

Despite her determination to sleep, she discovered when she’d peeled her flight suit off and sprawled on her bunk that her mind was too busy to rest.  Memories of her time with Damon alternated with attempts to work out a plan.  Finally, she decided she’d just waltz brazenly into the brothel and ask for Damon.  She didn’t especially like that idea since that meant the proprietor would be able to identify her as the last customer, but she couldn’t think of an alternative. 

Breaking in didn’t seem like a good idea.  In the first place, she couldn’t be sure Damon would be entertaining.  He could be downstairs.  In the second, she didn’t especially like the idea of seeing him in action even though she knew he was popular with the ladies.  And thirdly, if he was entertaining, it seemed likely his client would begin to scream like a banshee if she came in through the window and that could be way worse than being identified after she’d had time to get the hell out of the Osirus system.

What to do afterwards in the event that she was identified and it turned out that there had been a recall issued on Damon?

She realized she’d been considering getting out of the business ever since her father had been killed—before that, actually.  To be more precise, she’d had ideas of doing something different ever since the night she’d spent with Damon.  Up until then, she hadn’t given much thought to the life she had.  Her life before her father had taken her with him had dimmed to a handful of memories and a lot of those weren’t that good.

She’d actually assessed the life she had, though, after Damon and realized that, although it never really had occurred to her before, and everyone from her father to his crew treated her like one of the guys, she actually had enough ‘girl’ in her that she wanted to find a life companion and settle down.  Unlike her father, she’d never actually suffered from wanderlust.  It didn’t thrill her to drift through space and never see another living soul for months on end.  The few attacks they’d had to fend off had scared the living piss out of her, not excited her. 

She could be content living in one place, maybe having a kid or two.  She rather liked that idea, actually.

Of course, if she had Damon as a companion, there weren’t going to be any kids.  She wasn’t ditzy enough in the head to think that was possible, but she figured they could take in a couple of strays.  There were always kids orphaned on the outer rim colonies where life was rough at best. 

Now that she thought about it, she realized that was probably the best thing to do—find a fairly remote planet, stake out some land, and settle down.  It would be easier to pass Damon off as a human if she was living with him as a companion. 

What to do with Jared and Kane, though?

Well, she couldn’t abandon them, that was for sure.  They were in just as much danger as Damon was—maybe more.  She thought Damon might have an easier time passing as a human since he had some social skills. 

So she could find a really remote place and use the salvage they’d collected to start a planet-based salvage operation and be the middle man for a change!  That way, Jared and Kane would have basically the same job they did now.

Relaxing almost the minute she’d worked that out in her head, she finally dropped to sleep in spite the noise Jared and Kane were still making ‘repairing’ the damage to the ship. 

She thought it was actually the silence that woke her later, although it took her a few minutes to figure that out.  Rolling from her bunk, she struggled to throw off the dregs of sleep and finally got up, stretched, yawned, and headed down to the bathing facilities. 

That was an eye opening experience!  When she arrived, both Kane and Jared were already there—bathing.  She blinked several times, trying to bring her vision into focus or, more accurately, trying to assimilate the fact that both of them were buck naked.

They were still pissed off, too, but it took her so long to get to their faces she wasn’t aware of that at first. 

She hadn’t seen them completely naked before—half-dressed, yes, and that was an eyeful because their chests, backs, and arms were bulging with hard muscle.  She’d always made it a habit to steer clear of any of the other crewmembers when they were using the facilities, though.  It wasn’t that she was afraid they wouldn’t be able to contain their lust.  She was more afraid that they wouldn’t be able to contain the urge to use her as the butt of their stupid jokes.  Even if they didn’t, she didn’t want them to get the idea that she was trolling for dick—because they were just downright disgusting!

She hadn’t avoided Jared and Kane for that reason, of course, but it had bothered her almost as much to think that they would be completely immune to her as woman as it did to think of the other guys either making fun or deciding to make her an offer. 

The first thing that struck her was that they were anatomically correct—more than ‘just’ correct, actually.  Their cocks were as impressive as the rest of them—even soft. 

The second thing that struck her was that those impressive tools of theirs actually worked.  They stood straight up when she walked in and that was a pretty fucking unnerving salute! 

“Oops!  Sorry guys!  I’m still half asleep.  I’ll come back later,” she said, whirling abruptly on her heels and dashing outside again.  She was halfway back to her cabin before it dawned on her that she was buck naked herself. 

“Ok, so maybe a little more than half asleep,” she muttered, wondering how long she’d slept.  A glance at her clock in her cabin sent a jolt through her.  Hours!  They must be getting close to Thagorous by now!  “Damn it to hell!  Computer!  How close are we to our destination?”

“We are in orbit, Captain Chloe.”

“And you didn’t fucking think I’d want to be woke up, god damn it!”

“You did not leave instructions to awaken you.”

“Stupid computer!” Chloe snarled.  “And just what was Jared’s and Kane’s excuse, I’d like to know!”

“They thought you might sleep long enough that your attempt would be useless and that would remove you from danger,” the computer responded.

Rage rushed through her.  “Are you serious?”

“Unable to compute.”

“Never mind!  Damn it to hell!  Do they think they’re my father, or something?  Don’t answer that, computer!”

Grabbing a towel, she flung it around herself, snatched up fresh clothing, and stalked back to the showers.  Jared and Kane had disappeared.  She didn’t know whether to be relieved or angrier that they’d balked her of a target for her rage.  She’d calmed down by the time she’d finished bathing and dressed, her thoughts shifting to her mission.  She was still pissed off enough with both of them to glare back at them when she reached the bridge and discovered they were in just as foul a mood as they’d been in before. 

She plunked her hands on her hips.  “Why didn’t you wake me up when we reached Thagorous?”

“You did not say to awaken you,” Jared responded tightly.

She narrowed her eyes at him and then looked at Kane. 

“As he said,” he growled.

“Well, I don’t know what’s gotten the two of you in such a pissy mood, but you knew damned well what was going on so don’t give me that bullshit about not knowing I’d want to be awakened!  The ship’s main computer has to be told every damned thing!  You two don’t!  You could’ve figured it out!”

Jared stared at her angrily for several moments.  “I deduced that you were behaving irrationally about a piece of hardware and that it would put you at unnecessary risk to try to extract it!” he growled. 

“He is not just a damned piece of hardware!” Chloe snapped.  “If I didn’t think he was worth the effort or I thought the risk was more than he was worth, I wouldn’t have decided to do this to start with!”  She took a calming breath.  “Look, I know you two don’t really understand because you … well, you just don’t have the capability of feeling things like we do—like I do.  I’m attached to him, ok?  I know that doesn’t seem rational to you, but people get attached to inanimate objects … sometimes really attached.  It’s kind of like the way Pops felt about this old ship, you know?  He didn’t think that was crazy.”

“There was a reason to be attached to the ship,” Kane said pointedly.  “He relied upon it for survival.  It was his livelihood as well as his home.  The ship is useful.  It transports.  This cyborg is of no use beyond pleasure and we could supply that, so he is not necessary at all!”

“Is that what’s bugging you two?  You think that I won’t think you’re useful anymore?  Well, it’s just ridiculous!  You are very useful.  I don’t know how I would get along without you!  I rely on your company even more than I do the skills you have or the work you do around here—at least as much!  I’m attached to both of you, too.  The thing is this is different, ok?  I can’t explain it, but it is.

“Now, I don’t want you two worrying about it anymore.  I’m just going to go down and see if I can get him without getting into any kind of trouble—honest to god!  If I see that’s just not possible, I’ll give up and come back.  OK?”

She couldn’t help but think they didn’t look convinced, which annoyed her.  It wasn’t as if she was in the habit of getting in trouble!  So, they had dragged her out of that one bar!  How was she supposed to have guessed that it was a damned hangout for fucking pirates?

Ok, well, there was that one other time ….  But honest to god!  Twice in one fucking year and they acted like she was a magnet for trouble!  Well, six months, she mentally corrected, and it was true that it was the only times they’d actually made port since they’d been with her, but still …..  She was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, for god’s sake!

Shaking her head at them, she moved to the control console and checked the status.  It was a pleasant surprise to discover that they’d completed the repairs, but it also sent up flags when they’d told her before that it could take days.  She decided to let that slide.  She didn’t want to get into another argument with them.  “Our cover story is that we needed a few supplies and decided to stop since we were in the vicinity.”

“They will no doubt know that you folded to get here,” Jared pointed out.

“General area,” Chloe said with determined patience.  “I’ll tell them the crew forgot to lay in feminine products at the last stop and I got my period!”

Jared and Kane exchanged a strange look. 

“See!  You did forget!  It isn’t like they’re going to examine me to see if I’m on my period!  It’ll work.  Anyway, I’m going to dock at the space station and take the shuttle down.  If they decide to board and look around, you two make yourselves scarce.  Don’t try to brazen it out.  You can’t act worth a fuck!  They’ll figure out that you’re cyborgs inside of five seconds.  Trust me on that!  Just get the game board out and pretend you’re so engrossed in the game that you hardly know they’re there.”

They looked indignant.  “We can interact ….”

“No, you can’t!” Chloe said firmly.  “You talk like cyborgs.  You always use correct grammar and big words and stuff like that and real people don’t.  And you’re always surprised when real people act illogical and you just have to point it out!  You act like cyborgs … or at least soldiers, all military, straight-as-a-board, perfect posture, and stiff.  I mean, you never relax!  And you hardly ever have any kind of expression on your face besides hard as nails—unless its hard as nails ‘I’ll rip your heart out and shit down your neck’.  No expression would be better than always looking like you want to tear somebody’s head off—especially when you two look like you could!”

They scowled at her.

“I rest my case!”  Swiveling her seat around, she focused on monitoring the ship’s docking procedure and ordered the computer to prep the main shuttle.  “Game board!” she reminded them when she didn’t hear any movement behind her. 

She saw they’d gotten the game board out and were setting up the pieces when she finally got up to leave.  They still looked insulted and unhappy.  She gave each of them a friendly punch on the shoulder as she strode past them.  “Lighten up, guys!  I’ll be back before you know it!”

Jared and Kane exchanged a speaking glance when the door of the bridge closed behind her.  Jared got up and moved to the control console, flicking on the monitor in the docking bay and watching until Chloe appeared.  She strode directly to the arms locker and took out a belt, two pistols, and a rifle, carrying them with her as she headed to the shuttle the computer had prepped for her. 

His gut clenched.  “That does not look to me as if she expects no trouble,” he muttered to Kane, whom he discovered had come to stand behind him.

“It also does not look like the sort of preparations one would make if they planned only to sneak away and not get involved in a confrontation.”

They turned and stared at one another for several moments.  “She is planning to break into the prison if he has been taken,” Jared said.

Kane spoke directly to the onboard computer.  “Prep the secondary lander.”

“Captain Chloe did not leave orders to have the secondary lander prepped.”

Kane narrowed his eyes at the monitor.

“She did not order us to remain on the ship,” Jared growled.  “Prep the gods damned lander or I will disassemble your hard drive!”

“Prepping secondary lander,” the computer responded after a short pause to collate the data and arrive at the conclusion that it could not prevent them from prepping the lander if it was disassembled and therefore it served no purpose to allow itself to be destroyed. 

Chloe’s shuttle had departed the bay before they reached it.  Grabbing arms for themselves from the arms locker, Jared and Kane jogged to the lander and up the gangplank.  The secondary lander was actually an emergency escape pod and as such, smaller and swifter than the shuttle.  They were able to get a visual on Chloe’s ship within a few minutes of departing the main ship and maintained visual contact until she landed at the planet-side space port. 

“Identify,” a voice commanded over the com as soon as they’d dropped through the atmosphere.

“Secondary lander, Salvager Omega-3,” Kane responded.  “Two crewmembers aboard.”

“What’s your business on Thagorous?”

“Pleasure,” Jared responded.

The man on the other end chuckled.  “Just watch yourselves.  Your captain won’t be pleased if you end up in jail.  She didn’t sound like she meant to stay long and you know how women are when they’ve got their period!  She sounded pretty pissed off already about having to detour here for supplies.”

“Affirmative.  Will watch our asses.”

Relieved when the com went silent, Jared glanced at Kane, pleased with himself.  “He did not think I sounded like a cyborg,” he said with a touch of triumph.

Kane shrugged.  “He was not expecting to speak to a cyborg.  Mayhap that is why Chloe is convinced that we sound like cyborgs?  Because she knows that we are?” 

Jared frowned thoughtfully.  “According to my data, this slang refers to a female’s reproductive cycle.”

“Except that this is not her fertile period of the cycle.”

“Yes, but, there is a hormonal fluctuation that often causes mood swings.  Mayhap that is why she is behaving so irrationally?  The comments of that man seemed to suggest that this was not something of great surprise.”

“That is the damndest thing!”  Kane exclaimed.  “My dick got hard when you mentioned the reproductive cycle.”

“It is only a process of thoughts,” Jared said dryly.  “My dick is hard most of the time now, but I have noticed that it always gets hard when fucking crosses my mind and naturally it would when we are discussing Chloe’s fertility.”

“Well, she is not fertile now and I still do not see how that would affect my dick when I cannot impregnate her even if she would allow me to fuck her!  And mine is hard most of the time, also!”

“If it is hard most of the time as mine is,” Jared said tightly, “why would it be remarkable that it is hard now?”

“Because it responded to something you said and it usually only jumps up when Chloe is nearby, gods damn it!  I was merely wondering if there was significance in that!” Kane said indignantly.

“I do not see how there could be … unless the gods damned thing is going to begin to stay hard all of the time.  I have to say that I do not particularly care for this change.  It is gods damned uncomfortable!  And I cannot get my mind off the gods damned thing!”

Kane slid a speculative glance at him.  “You said that it was already hard most of the time.”

“Well, that is not the same as all the gods damned time, is it?” Jared snapped.  

Chapter Three

Chloe wasn’t certain of whether it was a fortunate thing that Thagorous was such a wild frontier colony that her weapons didn’t warrant even a second glance or a bad thing.  As confidently as she marched from the space port and into the little burg of Manard, though, she felt uneasiness begin to prickle along her spine as she caught glimpses of the locals and some of the other visitors. 

There didn’t seem to be any females on the dirt-packed streets beyond her, but then again it was dusk and that tended to be the time of day that predators began to crawl out of the woodwork.  She’d thought the timing couldn’t be more perfect.  She was beginning to have second thoughts by the time she reached the brothel she remembered.

It looked a good deal more rundown than she remembered.  Then again, it had been a couple of years since she’d been here and she had been a little tipsy since her and her father had hit the local bar first. 

The interior didn’t look a lot better, but then, from what she’d heard, they tended to be on the sleazy side, especially in frontier areas. 

The proprietor hadn’t changed.  “Can I help you, young lady?”

Chloe smiled brightly.  “I heard you had a sexdroid here—a male.”

His lips tightened.  He uttered a disgusted breath.  “Had being the key word.  The rangers descended on us yesterday and cleaned me out—took the sexdroid.  I got the real thing … if you’re in to girls.”

Chloe smiled with an effort.  “Nope.  No males?”

“Well, I got one, but he’s pretty.  He usually does the fellas that likes fellas.”

“That fucking sucks!” Chloe said irritably.  “What the hell did the rangers want with a sexdroid?”

The proprietor snickered.  “I’ll give you two guesses, but the last don’t count.  They was saying he was defective, but I sure as hell ain’t had no complaints!  If you ast me, the bastards just wanted to take him.”  He narrowed his eyes.  “Say, ain’t you been here before?”

“Don’t think so,” Chloe said, swiveling around and heading for the door.  “I’ll check next time I’m out this way and see if you’ve got anything for the ladies.”

She kept going until she was several buildings down from the brothel and finally stopped to consider what to do.  If the rangers had collected him, he could be halfway back to Earth by now, god damn it! 

It occurred to her after a few moments that the proprietor might have meant local rangers rather than space rangers and a spark of hope flickered to life.  Deciding it couldn’t hurt to check, she glanced around until she saw a drunk stagger out of a bar down the street a little ahead of her and caught up to him as he wove his way along the edge of the street.   “Where would I find the ranger station?”

The drunk paused and turned bleary eyes at her.  “What’d you be wantin’ with them bastards?”

Chloe narrowed her eyes at him.  “Business—mine.  You look like you’d know.”

Anger flickered in his eyes.  “Smartass bitch!  Find ‘em yerself!”

“How about I just blow your dick off?” Chloe growled, settling a hand on the butt of one of her pistols.  “I’m pretty sure I could hit the nasty little worm even from here.”

He studied her uneasily.  “Alright!  Fine!  I’m thinkin’ you need a lesson yerself and them’s liable to give it to you.  Mean sons-of-bitches!  Bunch of crooks, if you ast me!  They’s down at the edge of town.  Cain’t miss it.  Says frontier rangers over the door.”

Chloe turned to head back in the direction she’d come from.

“They ain’t gonna let you inside with them guns.”

Good to know!  Without pausing, Chloe marched down the darkening street until she saw the building the drunk had told her about.  Ducking into the last alley along the street, she removed her pistols from the holster and knelt to tuck one in the top of her boot beneath her flight suit.  After a short debate, she unzipped the front of the suit and tried slipping the second into the waist.  It slipped to her crotch before she could even get the damned thing zipped again.  Disgusted, she took it out again and shoved it into her sleeve.

It wasn’t exactly well concealed, damn it!  But she wasn’t going in without a weapon when the old coot had already informed her they were outlaw lawmen.  She knew the type.  They were worse than most of the men they brought in, using the law to cover their own crimes.  No doubt they’d gotten the recall alert and had taken Damon so that they could collect the compensation that would’ve gone to the proprietor. 

The rifle, she decided, was completely out of the question and, reluctantly, she leaned it against the wall of the building, dropped her holster and headed toward the ranger station, trying to decide what sort of story she should tell them. 

There were four of them seated around a game table as she entered the station.  One look at them was enough to banish any doubts she’d cherished that the old bastard had lied to her.  All four men turned to look at her when she came in, their hands on their own guns.  They relaxed fractionally when they saw she was female.

Big mistake!

They looked her over like she was a choice piece of meat, but she wasn’t flattered.  Her skin crawled.  “Who should I speak to about a robbery?”

“That’d be me, ma’am,” one of the men answered, getting up and adjusting his dick in his pants without any self-consciousness. 

“Where was you when you was robbed?”

Chloe struggled to get the fucking pistol out of her sleeve and finally managed to get it in her hand.  “Oh, I wasn’t robbed.  I came to rob you.  I want my sexdroid back!  Who’s got the keys to the cells?”

All four men stared at the pistol and then started laughing.  “Girly!  Do you even know how to shoot one of those?”

“I think I do,” Chloe said doubtfully.  “You pull this thing, right?”

She shot his hat right off his head.  When she did, all hell broke loose.  The four men dove in every direction.  Unfortunately, the damned head ranger charged her like a bull.  She managed to get off two more shots, but they went wild.  Even as she fired the third, the ranger slammed into her hard enough he knocked the breath from her and carried her against the wall behind her.  She tightened her hand on her pistol instinctively, flailing her arm around to keep him from grabbing it and firing it several more times, grimly determined to empty the damned thing before he could take it away from her and shoot her with it if she couldn’t manage anything else. 

One of the men yelped, marking one shot that had found a target.  “Git the god damned gun!  That stupid bitch shot me in the leg!”

Gritting her teeth, Chloe managed to lift one leg high enough to stomp the ranger’s foot.  He bellowed in her ear loud enough it rang.  Since she’d been trying to ram him in the groin with her knee, she wasn’t particularly happy about it either. 

She still had the pistol in her boot, she thought a little despairingly as the man finally managed to grab her arm and wrest the pistol from her. 

Things were beginning to look really bad when Jared and Kane burst through the door—literally.  The door splintered, shards of wood flying in every direction.  The rangers, who’d just begun to relax, grabbed for their pistols.  One of them managed to shoot the ranger holding Chloe in the back.  He screamed, let go of her and clawed at his back.  Chloe dropped to the floor the minute he let go of her, scrambling frantically to get her pants leg up and grab her other pistol.  A body slammed into the wall above her head and landed on her shoulders hard enough to flatten her. 

Above and around her, she heard masculine screams, growls, meaty thuds and projectiles slamming into the walls.  She was still struggling to crawl out from under the body that had landed on her when it was lifted off of her as abruptly as it had landed and then pitched to one side.  She looked up to discover Jared standing over her. 

Still dazed from being battered bodily, she swayed slightly when Jared jerked her up and stood her on her feet, looking around the shambles of the ranger’s station dazedly.  “Oh my fucking god!  Now we’re really in trouble!”

Jared and Kane looked at each other uncomfortably and then looked at her.  “You were in trouble already.”

“But … never mind!  See who has the keys!”

Jared turned to look at the door leading to the holding cells instead.  Striding toward it, he grasped the handle and twisted it off.  The entire locking mechanism came off with it and he opened the door.  Throwing off her shocked surprise, Chloe charged after him.  There were four men in the holding cell.  Chloe felt her heart surge against her chest with a mixture of fear and thankfulness when Damon lifted his head and looked straight at her—fear to discover that she’d been right and he had been in danger, relief and thankfulness that she’d managed to save him.  His lips curled in that utterly charming, lopsided smile she remembered that brought dimples into play in his cheeks.  “Dearling!” he exclaimed as if it hadn’t been two years since she’d seen him last—seen him ever!  “Chloe!  What are you doing here?”

She grasped the bars, grinning back at him.  “I came to get you, sweety!”

Jared was glaring at him evilly when she glanced around for him.  “Don’t just stand there, Jared!  Open it!”

He sent her a sullen look, but he grasped the cell door and wrenched it off of the hinges, setting it to one side.

Chloe rushed into the cell the moment it was opened, flinging herself at Damon. 

He caught her with a husky chuckle, nuzzling his face against her neck.  “I have thought of you each day that you were away from me,” he murmured.

“What of the others?” Jared growled.

Reluctantly, Chloe pulled away from Damon.  “What others?” she asked blankly.

“Those cyborgs.”

Chloe turned to look at the other men in the cell.  “They’re cyborgs?”

“We do not have much time,” Kane said tightly.

“And just whose fault is that?” Chloe demanded, abruptly irritated.  “Not that I’m not grateful, mind you, but you made a hell of a mess besides making a lot of noise!”

Kane ground his teeth.

Jared scowled at her.  “We found you by the shots you fired,” he said tightly.

Chloe felt her face heat.  “Oh!  I forgot about that!”  She turned to study the other cyborgs.  “Anybody here defective?”

The cyborgs glanced at each other.  “No,” the one standing in the forefront informed her. 

“Ok, so I guess we should take all of them.  We certainly can’t leave them here.”  She looked at Jared.  “You’re the soldier.  How do you think we should do this?”

Clearly irritated, he studied her for a long moment and finally turned to survey the cyborgs.  “There is a shuttle and a lander at the space port from the Salvager Omega-3.  We were here to take on supplies.  You have fifteen minutes to make your way to the port and get into one of the landers without being observed.  If you are not there when we reach the landers, you will remain here.”  He turned to glare at Damon.  “You also.”

“I thought I’d just walk him to the shuttle,” Chloe volunteered.

“You will not because you did not have him with you when you came!  You will go and find the supplies you claimed that you had come for and make certain that you are noticed when you get to the port!”

Chloe glared at him belligerently for a moment but finally relented since his scowl intimidated her a lot more than hers seemed to be working on him.  “Fine!  Be careful, sweety!” she said, kissing Damon lightly on the lips and patting his cheek.  “You understand the instructions, right?”

Something flickered in his eyes, but he merely smiled at her.  “I go to the lander from the Omega-3 and get onboard without being detected.”

“Good boy!” Chloe said, patting his cheek again. 

Kane made a hole in the back wall.  Chloe gaped at it for several moments.  “Kane!  They’re going to know there were cyborgs here!”

Kane sent her a look, but he merely waved the cyborgs through.  When they’d disappeared, she turned to beam at her buds—which was when she discovered both of them had been injured in the fight.  “Oh god!  You’re bleeding!  I might be sick!”

Both cyborgs looked down at themselves and reached to swipe the blood off with their hands.  “It is not ours,” Jared said.

“Oh god!  I will be sick!  I can’t look!  Are they horribly mangled?”

“You were going to shoot them!”

Chloe gasped.  “I was not!  Well, I didn’t actually intend to.  I was only going to point the pistols at them.  And, anyway, they’re laser pistols.  They wouldn’t have bled—didn’t.”

Jared shook his head at her.  “Just go.  We will clean up and then we will return to the lander we brought down.”

Chloe nodded. 

“Do not forget that you came to buy women’s supplies,” Kane said sharply.

“Oh yeah!  You know, I kind of doubt there are any stores still open.”

Jared rolled his eyes.  “Go anyway.  If they are open, then buy the supplies.  If they are not …. Find something to make a package as if you did buy something.”

Chloe smiled at him.  “Great idea!”

She patted both of them affectionately as she headed toward the front office.  “Just be careful!”

Somehow it looked much worse when she went through the front room again, but then she hadn’t seen the blood smears on the walls.  She was a little relieved to hear a couple of groans.  Trying to convince herself that they’d accomplished their mission without actually killing anyone, she picked her way through the debris to the front door, peered out to see if anyone was looking, and discovered about a dozen people had been drawn by the commotion.  “Holy shit!”

Whirling, she raced toward the back, barreling into Kane as he came out to pick up one of their victims.  “People!  I told you that you guys made way too much noise!”

“Shit!  Go out the back!”

Nodding, Chloe ran toward the hole Kane had made in the back of the building, skidding to a stop to glance out before she leapt through and dashed toward the shadowy darkness behind the building.  When she’d circled around, she hurried along an alley toward the main thoroughfare and began glancing at the store fronts as she passed.  She was in luck.  She found a general store.  The proprietor had just reached the front door to lock it as she reached for the doorknob.  Grabbing the doorknob, she put her shoulder against the door and shoved before he could turn the lock. 

He glared at her.  “I’m closed.”

“Come on!  I just need a couple of things!  It won’t take me five seconds!”

His lips tightened.

She batted her eyelids at him hopefully.  “Please?”

He looked heavenward, shook his head, and finally stepped back.  She dashed in, glanced around the now dimly lit store and finally rushed up and down the aisles until she found what she was looking for.  Gathering up everything he had on the shelf, she headed to the front counter.  He stared at it doubtfully.  She glared at him.  “Could you just tally it up and give me a total?”

It was highway robbery, she thought angrily when she marched out of the store again with two large bags of feminine products.  She didn’t believe the damned stuff was imported from the next galaxy for a minute!  They always said shit like that just to jack the price up!

She was still angry when she reached the space port, enough so that it wasn’t difficult at all to put her late adventure and the potential for disaster from her mind.  She tripped on the way up the gangplank and dropped one of the bags and then spent nearly ten minutes running around and picking it up—which effectively distracted everyone close enough to witness it. 

It was also an effective distraction for her.  By the time she’d finally managed to fend off the help of one of the port guards and loaded her ‘supplies’, though, everything had come crashing back.  Actually, it didn’t crash back until she’d boarded and spied the cyborgs in the back of her craft.  It returned then with a vengeance, however, and she was a nervous wreck until she was cleared for departure. 

She didn’t relax when she’d blasted off either.  All the way back to the ship she kept expecting to get a hail on the com and a demand to land or be shot down.  She arrived in the docking bay first and sent the cyborgs who’d traveled with her into the ship.  Striding to the com, she ordered the main computer to prep for departure the moment the second lander was inside and then waited in nail biting impatience until Jared brought the lander in and shut the engines down. 

The moment the bay was sealed and pressurized, she dashed down to greet them, flinging her arms around Damon and kissing him all over the face enthusiastically.  “We did it!  We actually got away with it!”

“We are not away,” Jared said pointedly.

She was too happy and relieved to let his sour mood ruin hers.  “Don’t be such a pessimist!  We did it!  Now, let’s get the hell out of here!”

Turning to Damon, she stroked his cheek.  “Why don’t you go to my cabin and rest?  I have to get the ship ready for another jump as soon as we hit the outer boundary.”

She was practically skipping with delight as she led the way from the bay, pointing out the crew cabin for the other cyborgs and her own cabin to Damon.  Jared and Kane were on the bridge when she reached it. 

“I know I ought to be pissed off that you guys didn’t stay put when I told you to, but all’s well that ends well.”

Jared and Kane exchanged a look.  “We attacked a ranger station.”

“Oh well, they were bad men!  I doubt anybody from that little burg would miss them even if they had been killed trying to kill us and, really, it was self-defense.”

“Chloe … it was rangers.  It does not matter if they were bad men, they were still rangers.  We are in deep trouble.”

Chloe frowned at Jared.  “Ok, so I know that.  But it isn’t like we really robbed them or even broke out desperate criminals.  We only took the cyborgs, and they hadn’t done anything wrong.  It was just a recall.  It isn’t like the cyborgs belonged to them or even the company.  They sold them.  People don’t have to take things back just because they recall them.  It isn’t a law or anything.  It’s just to protect people from defective products and they aren’t defective.  You heard them.”

“You were seen.  You will be identified, and they will put a price on your head,” Kane said angrily.  “You know this.  You knew this when you went into the ranger station.”

Chloe stared at him for a long moment.  “Ok, so I did.  I made a conscious decision to break the law, knowing I could go to jail if they caught me.  It was still worth it!  What they had in mind wasn’t right and Damon wouldn’t have been able to defend himself because he’s a cyborg!  Or any of the others for that matter!  The only alternative was to just let those bastards haul them off and destroy them and I didn’t consider that acceptable!”

She could see they were still angry, but they could just be angry!  It was her decision!  It was her life! 

Stalking away from them, she settled at the console and checked the status.  The main computer, she saw to her relief, had already taken the ship out of orbit and was gaining speed as it headed out of the star system. 

Unfortunately, she also discovered that they had a ship right behind them. 

“Uh—we may have a problem.”

Jared and Kane approached her and leaned over her shoulder to look at the screen.

“They are already in pursuit!”

“We don’t know that!”

She’d hardly gotten the words out of her mouth, unfortunately, when the com-link lit up.  Ignoring the condemnation in Jared’s and Kane’s expressions, she moved to the com seat and answered the hail. 

“Salvager Omega-3, this is Thagorous port authority.  We have a report that you are transporting contraband cyborgs.”

“This is Salvager Omega-3, Captain Chloe Armstein.  That’s a negative, port authority.  We are only transporting salvage.”

“Salvager Omega-3, decrease speed, pull into stationary orbit and prepare to be boarded.”

“Shit!  Shit!  Damn it!” Chloe said explosively.  She chewed her lip, trying to think.  “Computer, slow speed.”  Pressing the com-link, she spoke to the port authority.  “Order received.  We are slowing to stationary orbit and preparing for boarding.”

She turned to look at Jared and Kane uncomfortably, still struggling to come up with a plan.  “We’ve got maybe fifteen minutes and they’ll be all over the ship.  Get the cyborgs down in the hold and make a hole for them as far back into the salvage as you can.  Hopefully, they’ll be as lazy as most of those bastards and won’t be too thorough.”

Jared and Kane exchanged a look. 

“They will bring scanners.  It will not matter if we hide the cyborgs beneath the salvage.  They will still find them,” Kane said tightly.

Jared grinned abruptly, however.  “They will not search the bilge.”

“Ugh!” Chloe said with a mixture of disgust and horror.  “They’ll die in that filth if they don’t expire from the fumes!”

Jared shrugged.  “I will issue gas masks.”

As disgusting as the thought was, Chloe knew he was right.  She thought it was completely inappropriate that he was so damned gleeful about the prospect, but there was next to no chance, she knew, that the port authority would want to check the sewage. “So be quick!  And get back here before they dock.  I want you two to stay out of sight as much as possible.  I’d suggest you join the others, but you just had to follow me to the surface and now you’ve been seen, too!”

That earned her a couple of resentful glares, but she knew she’d be spared hearing about it for a while at least.

Maybe a very long while if the port authority had brought anyone with them that could identify her.  As soon as they’d left, she headed to the nearest arms locker and unloaded it.  Carrying the weapons back to the bridge, she hid them in every available space where they couldn’t easily be seen and then dashed to the crew cabin to find something loose enough to wear that she might conceivably be able to conceal a weapon in.  Jared’s and Kane’s flight suits were completely out of the question.  They swallowed her whole and looked like something she might put on to conceal a weapon.  Fortunately, being salvagers, they never threw anything away.  She found one of the old crewmember’s flight suits and pulled it on, slipping a pistol in the pocket on one leg. 

She passed Jared and Kane on the way back up to the bridge as she headed down to the docking bay to greet the port authority.  They were both grinning until they saw her and immediately wiped all expression from their faces.  Frowning, she stopped them long enough to ask if they’d hidden their passengers, told them she’d hidden weapons around the bridge, just in case, reminded them not to say anything around their ‘guests’, and then continued to the bay.

She nearly had heart failure when the port authority descended the gangplank with the proprietor of the brothel in tow. 

“Oh hell!  We are so fucked!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following is an extended excerpt from Kaitlyn O’Connor’s Cyborg Series.  Sample, pick your favorite ‘flavor’—they’ll stand alone—or buy all seven!

 

Cyberevolution Book Three:

ABIOGENESIS

by

Kaitlyn O’Connor

(c) copyright by Kaitlyn O’Connor 2004

Cover art (c) copyright Jenny Dixon 2012

New Concepts Publishing

www.newconceptspublishing.com