Cyborg Merman

by Amanda Milo

  The Cyborg Merman

  By Amanda Milo

  Copyright © 2020 Amanda Milo ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information and retrieval system without express written permission from the Author/Publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Edited by LY Services

  Special Thanks To…

  Lori Morris, for your kind words. And to Beasab, for the same.

  DEDICATION:

  To my better half, who lets me complicate his life and says he’s lucky for it.

  WARNING:

  You might have seen in the words ‘Dub-con’ in the blurb—

  (If you bought this without even reading the blurb GOD LOVE YOU! *Heart Eyes*)

  —Dub-con is short for Dubious Consent, a category of romance books that typically includes a scene or is based on the premise of one party not consenting to sexual activity.

  If this kind of material would trigger you, I UNDERSTAND--and it’s with the kindest suggestion that I tell you to close this book now. Pass on this story. You don’t need that stress. I’ve got some fully, 110% Otterly Safe consenting books coming up soon! <3

  Love,

  Amanda♥

  Special Thanks To…

  DEDICATION:

  WARNING:

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  EPILOGUE

  NOTE FROM AMANDA

  Books & Audiobooks by Amanda…

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  STELLA

  My husband has been dead for a month. On the frontier planet of Traxia, that’s a small lifetime for a woman to be single, and it isn’t unheard of for a widow of one week to remarry. It’s the way of life here: on this planet's surface, we’ve harkened back to something like the days of Earth’s Westward Expansion. In a lot of ways, it’s exactly like those long ago days on that faraway planet.

  Traxia is in the process of being terraformed. Men were dropped here to establish it, to carve out an existence in this harsh new corner of the galaxy. A lot of modern tech doesn’t work here. Communication gets no fancier than paper letters in most areas, although some devices get enough reception in bigger cities.

  We—

  ...I mean, me. Just me now. I’m in a ranching district. Our ranch is this district. The closest civilization is a mining town, and it’s our ranch who puts the meat on the locals’ tables.

  And miners are hungry men. A metal similar in properties to gold was found a year or so back, and it’s been a hive of activity, a modern-day ‘gold’ rush for the area, ever since. Baron and I—

  Just me.

  I raise a hybrid version of cattle, the meat of which is in even higher demand if I can drive our stock up to the markets even further outside of the region.

  The cattle are similar enough in looks to Earthen cattle. The rest is Nfurian, a tough monsterish bovine native to the planet. To survive the constantly harsh climate, the cows are tough and mean, and their bulls are even meaner. Their meat though is sublime. We run eight thousand head and were lucky enough to end up on land with a river and a natural spring with water so pure you can drink it from your cupped hands, no treatment needed. It’s priceless.

  It may be worth killing over.

  I’d be naïve if I didn’t look at Baron’s business partner and wonder if he killed my husband in order to secure the rights to our water. In a region as arid as ours, water is more precious than the metal veins the miners are making fortunes off of. Our water means we’re rich as panners, because sure it’s only a commodity and not a precious metal—but men still get stupid over it.

  Although Kashykc’vest Ithor, or C’vest as my husband referred to his partner since we settled here, is not a stupid man.

  ...If you can call him a man, that is. He’s technically a cyborg.

  He’s a cybernetic system created from an otherworldly-planet creature. An ocean humanoid called a Yonderin—

  Essentially, an alien merman in the flesh.

  —who started life with a tail rather than lower limbs, but now he has two artificial legs called C-legs, a term that is aurally ironic since he’s originally from the sea himself.

  His eyes, ears, and gill slits have had changes wrought upon them too, referred to as ‘upgrades.’ He can see, hear, and breathe on land just like the rest of us. But… a lot of locals are freaked out by what’s essentially a fish-man walking around like a person. Frankly, most humans have an aversion to cyborgs, period.

  Chilly reception aside, I can understand why his people altered their designs to leave the ocean. They’re an incredibly advanced society, but limited in their scope of control. On their planet, the only way to direct what happened on land was to alter their people to survive on surfaces where they could act for the greater interest. Now their cyborgs have spread out, like C’vest. How C’vest ended up on a terraforming planet with a naturally arid climate is a mystery—I mean, why the hell would you stay?

  But I’ve never asked him why. Technically, I’ve said very few words to the man, although Baron has worked closely with him for years. I’ve made breakfast with C’vest in mind, serving the few seaside dishes we can occasionally get ahold of the ingredients to make from time to time. That way, he’d feel a little slice of home as he talked business with my mate at the dining table.

  Now I’m sitting across from him wondering if he murdered my husband.

  C’vest looks mostly human in his face, although his skin appears to have rougher textures and next to no weathering, no gathering of sun wrinkles. His features are handsome, I suppose, in that way that powerful creatures are. His eyes are usually dark, like shark’s eyes. Occasionally they light up with blue flares. Flares that snake out in circuit-symmetry patterns as he receives biofeedback. As you can imagine, the sight of his dark eyes beginning to glow doesn’t make him look less imposing. Neither does his height, which is enough alone to make him cut a formidable figure. When he walks, his long prosthetic legs eat up the ground, his gait measured. In no way is it a swagger; it’s probably the effect of his biosystem efficiently traversing whatever plane he’s striding across, using all precision. But the effect is a man who has pure confidence. And today, dressed in a collared dress shirt, a red vest, pinstriped pants, and his black-dyed leather duster, he’s intimidating.

  He did take his hat off at the door (along with the duster). But that’s less about making himself look less threatening and more due to decent manners. He has excellent manners.

  We’re sitting in the wingback chairs my husband and I have had since we were gifted them by his parents when we got married. When C’vest entered the room, suspecting what I suspect he’s done, I was prepared to crack a whiskey bottle over his head if he dared to sit in the chair that Baron always claimed.

  He didn’t though. C’vest took the same chair he always has. The one he used when he was here for business or to shoot the breeze with Baron.

  It feels like he’s prepared to speak about business matters now. I uncurl my fingers from my fists
and smooth them down my jean-clad legs. For years, I’ve worn dresses because Baron appreciated the look of me in feminine things. He was a throwback to another time in a very far off place, and it didn’t bother me to indulge him. He made me feel pretty. And in a place this rough, it was a special kind of comfort at the end of the day for Baron to come home to me and envelop himself in my softness.

  I’ve been in jeans since the day he died.

  Chiefly because it isn’t safe for me to look any softer or gentler than I already do, being a woman. A lone woman. Just as if we’ve been transported back in time, it’s old world laws that hold sway around here. Which is frustrating. And for me, dangerous. Because when a man dies, everything goes to his widow. If she remarries, everything gets turned over to her new husband. There’s another twist to that law, but the gist is: it means the sharks are circling.

  I look C’vest right in his weirdly lit blue-circuit eyes.

  They haven’t faded to black once since he’s sat down. It’s unnerving me. “Why are you here, C’vest?”

  His mouth tightens imperceptibly at the corners. “I haven’t heard that name since Baron died. He was the only one to use it. And you.”

  I stare at him.

  He nods once, his hands cupped over his square-shaped knees, mechanics covered by cyberskin draped in cotton fabric. “I’ve come here with your best interests in mind.”

  I keep staring at him.

  His eyes are glowing brighter than ever as he studies me, so uncharacteristically silent. I’ve never had reason to sit down and shoot the breeze with C’vest but I was a good hostess. Pleasant. Warm.

  Now?

  C’vest leans forward, elbows planting on his thighs. The leaned-forward posture lowers his height some, but he’s still taller than me by a head and a half. “We need to get married.”

  My throat seizes. Even though I had a precognitive sense and a wild idea of where this conversation would go, I feel the betrayal like he’s clamped his fist around my throat.

  His eyes fade to Stygian black before flashing to active lines of glowing blue data. “I know that for you, it isn’t ideal—”

  My attempt to swallow just lodges a harder knot in the back of my throat.

  “—however, with the local laws being what they are, you’re in danger. Baron wouldn’t want to see you get hurt.”

  Anger lunges inside me, like a mad dog busting free of its chain. I’m furious that he’s invoking Baron’s name to manipulate me.

  “I don’t want to see you hurt.” His gaze meets mine, so solemn that I can almost believe him.

  “The locals all know that Baron is gone. They’re more than aware that all they need to do is marry you to acquire your water rights, along with every oxyoke of land—”

  An oxyoke is a standard measurement of land here. It’s the area you can plow with a yoke of oxen in one day’s worth of work.

  “—and every head of cattle you now solely own.” His face, in its compelling perfection, is arranged in grave lines. “And so I must ask: Stella, will you marry me?”

  What he’s said is true. I am in danger. I’ve hardly done anything outside of the house for the operation—not fence repairs, not medicating steers, nothing that requires two hands—because I’ve had to keep one hand on the gun strapped to my hip. Baron’s gun. Our ranch hands, a mix of humans and aliens, men who were loyal to my husband before he died, still work the ranch. But if it was dangerous to be alone with any of them before, it would be asinine now.

  Proving he knows exactly what the recent danger has been, C’vest’s already down-turned mouth tightens even more. “As you’re aware, if any of the men here want to gain the holdings that now belong to you, they can circumvent your consent to marriage. I would spare you that,” he says softly. His gaze is steady on mine.

  He means they could rape me.

  Here on Traxia, our laws are real old school. If a woman is raped, the man can be punished with death. But if the man is willing to pay a fine to her family, he can marry her and avoid the death penalty.

  Among women, it’s often referred to as the ‘marry-your-rapist’ law, and although it’s something I only ever heard about on Earth, it’s a rule alive and doing horrifically well here.

  It’s supposed to slow a man down from taking a woman against her will. Make him accountable. Give him consequences he has to think about before he rashly tosses her down and rips her skirt up. Because here, the man also has to lawfully care for said wife for the rest of her days if he takes her as his. Unless she dies, she’s his full responsibility, and here’s the kicker: he only ever gets one.

  If he kills her, he doesn’t get the approval to remarry. And if he rapes another woman, he hangs for it.

  In this case, where there’s much to gain, the threat of the noose if the court denies the guy would be worth risking to some men. A man might think the odds of him being granted access to land with water, a fortune of cattle, and a woman to warm his bed and wet his cock for the rest of his life is a pretty sweet deal. A deal so sweet, they’d hurt me for it, no hesitation.

  I’ve already unholstered the gun twice when I’ve been amongst the ranch hands. It was enough to make them rethink edging any closer, but I’m afraid it won’t last. I know I can’t go on like this forever. For the most part, I’ve kept myself locked inside the house, and I never go out after dark anymore. Not for anything. Since the day Baron died, I’ve been living in heartsick sadness and pit-black fear.

  Legally, I can live my life a successful cattle baroness and never remarry.

  Practically, I won’t last a year before some man with hunger for money, land, and power takes everything from me. And he’ll humble me to do it.

  That’s how it’s referred to when people are trying to be polite. ‘He ‘humbled’ her.’

  What bullshit. Faced with the unholy greed and the cruelty slithering across men’s faces—men who shook my husband’s hand, who were loyal to him, who always tipped their hats to me, the bossman’s wife—I can’t help but think that humble is a word too far removed to convey the degradation, the suffering that’s coming.

  They were good men once. Probably still have lots of good left in them. But with a million credits’ worth of land and two million in cattle on the table… It’s enough to darken even decent hearts.

  “I vow to you that I wouldn’t be here now to ask this.” When my gaze narrows, those blue chasing lines in C’vest’s eyes brighten, his circuitry reading me, his eyes, which were designed to scope the ocean deep, now enhanced enough to scrutinize my every microexpression. “I wouldn’t be here so soon,” he amends. “I hoped to give you more time, but…” His chin drops, his jaw working, then jutting out as he takes in a deep breath. “But I overheard men in town talking. Alvert Galensten plans to have your agreement, and I quote, ‘one way or another.’”

  I can’t stop the shudder that travels up my spine.

  “Exactly,” C’vest says, not missing my reaction. “I wouldn’t leave him alone with my horse, let alone you. Add to that, he hated Baron, and he hates me just as much. Probably more. I don’t think he cares for Yonderin or approves of cyborgs. I wouldn’t leave you to him if I could help it, and even if I thought he’d be good to you, I can kiss any hope of a future partnership goodbye if it’s the likes of him taking the reins of your operation.”

  Numbness creeps over me. It’s a familiar blanket lately. At first, I cried. I cried so much I thought the old saying about dying of a broken heart might be true. Might be possible. But a merciful death didn’t happen for me. And I can’t process the world I have to live in. I can’t handle that these are my options. Be raped and get married, or get married and probably be raped. Wholly belong to some man. To a man who isn’t Baron.

  Ten years was all we got, Baron. How? We were good together. We were so happy. We should have shared a lifetime.

  “Stella? Will you agree to marry me?”

  C’vest has posed it so politely as a yes or no question. Instead of tho
se two options, what escapes my mouth instead is a choked whisper. “Did you kill him?”

  My focus returns sharply, honing in on C’vest’s face for any flicker as I wait for him to answer.

  His brows pinch briefly. That’s it. That’s his only reaction, save for his chin firming just slightly. “No, Stella. I didn’t. Baron was my friend.”

  I’m not sure what I was hoping for. I guess I wanted his reaction to be overwhelmingly believable. Preferably in the negative, I wish I could say, but I think what I really wanted was for him to admit fault so that I had someone to attack. Someone to blame. Someone to hurt like I’m hurting. It was labeled a heart attack, and it could have been. But it isn’t only me who wonders if it was no accident. Baron was a powerful man. A very rich man. There are few who stood to gain as much as C’vest did with his death.

  From the business side of things, everything that can be rolled to C’vest already has been. Everything he was owed from their joint partnership has been squared.

  Now it’s a matter of the rest of it. Like crows circling a dead body, they will caw and pick away until the carcass is clean.

  “Stella?” C’vest’s hand lightly covers mine on my thighs and I jerk away like he’s burned me. “Your hands are like ice,” he declares, his voice rising slightly, almost sounding concerned. “Stella,” he says, his tone becoming imploring when I don’t respond. “Listen to me. This is the most logical option.”

  Logical. I want to snarl at him, but C’vest has always been this way. Either it’s his cyborg side or it's the alienness of him, but Baron has always said C’vest approaches the whole world differently. He’s analytical to the point of seeming cold sometimes.

  Calmly, unaware of the depth of my turmoil, he continues, “If I could afford to buy you out, I would. But my money is tied up in my own ventures.”

  “I could sell to someone else,” I offer faintly. Because I know it’s unlikely. Not many around here have the kind of capital to buy me out. And if they do, why would they? Why pay me when they could take me and then get everything for free?