Cyborg Nation

by Kaitlyn O’Connor

  “Why not?”

  “There is no safe place to leave you,” he said tightly.

  “One could stay with me and the other two go on.”

  Gideon expelled an irritated breath. “I do not care how reasonable it may seem to you—or even if it is logical. I will not leave you. You may argue all you please. I will not change my mind.”

  Bronte huffed. “It will take a lot longer to make this trip if one of you has to carry me all the way.”

  He gave her an indecipherable look. “It could take forever, Bronte, and it would not matter. Without you there would be no reason to journey.”

  She ruminated over that for several minutes, trying not to allow herself to take that the way it had sounded. “Oh,” she said finally as it dawned on her that she had misinterpreted the remark, “the mission. I forgot.”

  “You are my woman now. Protecting you is the only ‘mission’ of any importance to me. I will allow no other consideration to take precedence over that.”

  Bronte blinked at him in surprise. A smile curled her lips as it sank in that he really had meant his remarks the way she’d thought. Tightening her arms around his neck, she dropped her head to his shoulder. “That is … so sweet!” she murmured.

  She felt a frisson of surprise ripple through him.

  “Which part?” he asked curiously.

  She nuzzled her face against his neck and then gave him a light peck there. “All of it.”

  His cheek creased in a smile. “Then why were you giving me your stubborn face?”

  “Because I thought you were just being unreasonable.”

  “And now I am not?”

  “No, you still are. I just like why you’re being unreasonable.”

  He chuckled. The sound warmed her as much as his comments had. “I will be certain to make such remarks as often as possible if they please you so much.”

  “Only if you mean them.”

  “I would not say something that was untrue.”

  “I know. That’s one of the things I love about you.”

  He almost missed a step, but recovered quickly. She was a little disappointed that he didn’t ask her to elaborate. A good thirty minutes passed in silence before he broke it.

  “There are other things?”

  Bronte couldn’t prevent a smile, but since she still had her head on his shoulder she knew he couldn’t see it. “What?” she asked, pretending she had no idea what he was asking.

  “You said that it was ‘one’?”

  Resisting the urge to chuckle, she made a point of thinking it over. “Mmm,” she finally responded. “Yes, definitely one of them.”

  “But there are others?” he persisted.

  “Mmmhmm,” she made the sound of agreement, thoroughly enjoying teasing him by that time.

  He was silent for several moments. “What?”

  She was tempted to pretend incomprehension, just to see how long it would take to provoke his temper, but she decided she’d teased him enough. “Pretty much everything.”

  “You can not name anything,” he said, his voice so carefully neutral she realized with dismay that he didn’t believe her and he was disappointed because he didn’t. Oddly enough, though, when she settled to study it over, she realized she couldn’t think of anything specific. It defied a break down into a list. It was just the way he made her feel and that was too nebulous to put into words. Everything he said or did made her feel safe, special, desirable, or beautiful, or all of those things at the same time. The only specifics that came to mind sounded far more like lust than affection, and she didn’t want to give him that impression. It finally occurred to her, though, that it wouldn’t just be easier to give him that kind of list, it would be easier for him to understand.

  “I think you’re handsome,” she offered finally.

  He twisted his head, trying to see her expression and she lifted her head from his shoulder to look at him. Doubt seemed to war with relief in his eyes as his gaze flickered over her face. “You do?”

  She smiled faintly. “Very handsome.”

  He looked pleased.

  She lifted her head until her lips were near his ear. “And you have a beautiful cock.”

  He stumbled again.

  “It feels … wonderful when it’s inside of me.”

  He ground his teeth. “Stop it, Bronte.”

  She chuckled huskily. “Or what?”

  “Or I will throw you down and fuck you senseless.”

  She laughed. “Promises, promises.”

  “It is a promise, woman … When you are better.”

  That couldn’t be soon enough to suit her. She was sick of being an invalid. As much better as she felt, she was still so far from completely recovered it had begun to feel as if she would never feel the same again.

  It was exhausting and uncomfortable to be carried. She shuddered to think what misery she was inflicting on Gideon. His strength and endurance were nothing short of amazing, but as strong as he was, as stoically as he endured, she knew he had to feel the strain and he felt pain just as she did.

  Climbing the cliff was a nightmare. She couldn’t climb it herself and Gideon couldn’t climb carrying her in his arms as he had been. She had to loop her arms around his neck and hang on his back and she didn’t even want to think about how hard that made it for him to climb, quite aside from the fact that his arms and shoulders must feel as if they were going to fall off already from carrying her for hours.

  He didn’t object when she suggested that maybe Jerico or Gabriel could carry her a while, which she couldn’t help but think was significant. They’d been walking the rim of the cliffs for nearly an hour when they heard the sound Bronte thought was going to figure in her nightmares for the rest of her life.

  The screams of challenge were blood curdling.

  Jerico promptly set her on her feet and the three men formed a semi-circle around her as they had before, swords drawn as they waited for the horde that had burst from the edges of the forest with the first cry. Bronte divided her attention between the trogs and the drop at their backs. There was no fortunate circumstance of discovering a nice wide path down. The cliffs were nearly sheer at this point not even offering much in the way of hand or footholds if they had to retreat. The only option they had would be to leap from the top and hope they landed in water deep enough to keep them from dying, and even that was doubtful. She was certain they must be forty or fifty feet from the water’s surface. If she survived such a fall, her healing leg wouldn’t be able to withstand the impact.

  There was no retreat that she could see along the cliffs either. The rocky ledge still stretched out in both directions as far as she could see.

  Coldness gripped her as she realized they were in a fight or die situation. The trogs seemed to have no interest in taking captives and they couldn’t flee even if they wanted to.

  As before, Gideon drew the laser pistol and used it to take out as many as he could. Unlike the first time, however, the pistol ceased to fire before he’d killed more than a half dozen. Tossing the now useless weapon aside, Gideon’s face was grim as he settled into a fighter’s stance and waited for the first to reach them.

  Bronte glanced down the cliff again as cyborg blades of steel rang against the blades of the trogs. She was pretty convinced that she couldn’t have climbed down if her leg hadn’t still been in a splint. With it, she had no chance at all. Jump, she wondered as the battle began to slowly inch toward her?

  She couldn’t bring herself to do it and turned to watch in horror as Gideon, Gabriel, and Jerico swung their blades with fatal, seemingly tireless precision, facing first one opponent and then another, shifting each time one of the trogs tried to dart past them to get to her. Blood flew in every direction, spouting like fountains from the trogs as the cyborgs hacked them to pieces, flying off the blades of their weapons as the swung them over and over until bodies and body parts formed gruesome piles all around them and the trogs were falling over their dead to rea
ch the cyborgs.

  Bronte surveyed the drop again as the circle closed more tightly around her, knowing the moment of choice was nearly upon them.

  “Do not even think about it!” Gideon growled.

  Bronte jerked all over, more unnerved that he’d spared the time to glance at her than she was that he’d correctly interpreted her indecision.

  “Close ranks!” he bellowed directly behind that order.

  Instantly, Jerico and Gabriel stepped closer and Gideon stepped back. “Put your arms around my neck as you did before!” Gideon snapped as he bent down for her to reach around his shoulders. “And hold tightly.”

  She didn’t even think to argue with him although she would almost have preferred to jump without him.

  Actually, not. She didn’t think she could make herself jump. At least if Gideon jumped with her she wouldn’t have to make the choice. Throwing her arms around his neck, she locked them as tightly as she could and prayed she could hold her grip when they impacted with the water.

  To her surprise, he crouched even lower. She bent with him, holding tighter.

  She almost lost her grip when Gideon, instead of whirling and leaping from the cliff, sprang almost straight up. “Behind them!” he bellowed as he launched himself skyward at breath taking speed.

  Bronte’s stomach didn’t just go weightless. It couldn’t decide which way to pitch. They soared over the stunned, gaping trogs as if Gideon had suddenly sprouted wings. Almost as if time had slowed, she turned her head to rest her cheek against Gideon’s shoulders and saw Gabriel soaring beside them, higher, almost spinning as he slashed at the men now below him as he passed over their heads. Sheer awe flooded her at the sight … and then they landed. Gideon absorbed much of the impact with his legs, allowing them to bend, and the abrupt stop still jarred Bronte loose. She sprawled on the ground at Gideon’s feet.

  Jerico and Gabriel, unencumbered as Gideon had been, landed several yards further away, but they whipped around almost before they had touched down and raced forward as Gideon bounded over her, landing behind her. Bellowing their own war cries, they charged the trogs, who’d just discovered they were now trapped at the edge of the cliff.

  She thought the trogs would have fought even more ferociously if they’d had the time to overcome their shocked surprise. They didn’t. The cyborgs had executed the maneuver so swiftly and charged that the primitives barely had time to turn to meet them, and no time at all to realize how closely they were to the cliff’s edge. Three went over immediately, shoved off by those trying to break their forward race and turn. Another five fell over as the ‘rear guard’ suddenly discovered they were in the forefront of the battle and tried to avoid being impaled on the cyborg swords.

  Within a matter of minutes, Gideon and Gabriel and Jerico had dispatched the rest, some with their swords and others by seizing them and pitching them from the cliff.

  Bronte lay where she’d fallen, watching them with a mixture awe, relief … and pride. As wonderful as she’d thought they were before, watching the absolute beauty of their fluid movements, seeing their skill and agility and strength was like watching the finest of athletes perform seemingly impossible feats.

  And these wonderful, absolutely amazing men thought she was special!

  Luckily for her they weren’t nearly as discriminating as they should have been.

  Her pride and joy dissolved, however, as she descended enough to notice that they hadn’t moved. They were still laboring for breath, standing, but in a way that she finally realized denoted determination to remain on their feet. It was hardly surprising, and yet it made her heart clutch in her chest. She examined them more carefully with her gaze, searching for wounds. She could see nothing, however. They were so spattered with blood there was no way to tell how much was theirs, if any, but she knew they couldn’t have come off from the encounter totally unscathed.

  As remarkable as they were, they’d been injured in the crash just as she had, and then fought a standing battle against the trogs, and now another one. Even if they hadn’t sacrificed some of the nanos that helped them heal so rapidly to save her, the nanos had had far more to deal with in a very short time than she thought would be ‘normal’.

  The thoughts had no sooner formed in her mind that the urge hit her to rush to them and check them to reassure herself that they weren’t badly hurt. She couldn’t ‘rush’ anywhere, though. She couldn’t even get up because she’d had to abandon her crutch to hold on to Gideon. She tried anyway. Seeing her efforts, Gabriel looked around for the crutch and Gideon and Jerico strode toward her and crouched to examine her.

  “You were hurt from the fall?” Gideon asked, looking her over searchingly.

  Bronte’s chin wobbled at his concern for her when he’d nearly gotten killed—they all had. She shook her head. “You’re hurt,” she managed finally.

  He stared at her for a long moment. “It is nothing. I am more tired than hurt.”

  Even admitting that much told her it was worse that she’d thought. “If it’s no more than a scratch it’s too much,” she said, bursting into tears.

  Gideon and Jerico exchanged an uneasy glance. “She is unsettled from the fighting,” Jerico said finally.

  “I am not unsettled by the fight!” Bronte said angrily, mopping at the tears with the back of her hand. “Yes, I am! But I’m upset because you’re hurt! Let me see where you’re hurt,” she demanded.

  Gabriel had arrived by that time. The three men exchanged speaking glances that annoyed the hell out of her.

  “It is nothing more than a nick here and there and you could not see it for all the muck,” Gideon said reasonably.

  “I want to look anyway,” Bronte said fiercely.

  Shrugging, Gideon lifted his sword to sheathe it. As he did, Bronte spied three gashes along his side across his ribs, another on his chest and one on his belly. There were more on his arms and hands and even a couple on his thighs. As he’d said, they were ‘nicks’, none of them deep or long but all of them had drawn blood. Gabriel and Jerico looked as bad—like pin cushions and even though none of the cuts looked life threatening, together they’d let a good bit of blood, probably more than they could afford given the fact that they’d barely had time to recover from the last blood letting. No wonder they were so tired. It wasn’t just exertion. It was from blood loss.

  It frustrated her that she couldn’t even get up to attend their wounds, couldn’t at least bathe them off and fuss over them.

  “We should go now,” Gideon said when she’d finished examining Gabriel’s wounds.

  “I think I’ll walk awhile,” she said. “I’m sore from being carried.”

  Gideon stared at her for a long moment and finally nodded, looking down at the blood and even more disgusting flecks of flesh clinging to him. “We will bathe in the sea once we have crossed the rocks.”

  She hated for him to think she didn’t want him to touch her because of the mess, but she was not going to let any of them carry her when she could see they were going to have a hard time carrying themselves. Besides, they would have to move slowly if she walked and that would give them a little rest, not as much as actually sitting down to rest, but at least they wouldn’t be pushing themselves to hurry.

  Without feeling any qualms about it at all, she began to complain about being tired as soon as they’d reached the beach again and asked if they couldn’t rest for a while if Gideon was determined not to make camp yet.

  He didn’t like it. She could tell he didn’t. He kept scanning the cliffs and the edge of the woods while she scanned him to make certain his wounds had closed. Finally, he turned to look at her assessingly.

  She felt his gaze, knew as she saw his expression out of the corner of her eye that it had dawned on him she usually didn’t complain and that he was wondering if she was really too tired to keep going. She ignored the look examining Gabriel and Jerico carefully as they returned from bathing. To her relief, she saw that most of their wounds had closed. G
abriel had a long gash on one thigh that was still bleeding sluggishly. She thought it was the fact that it was an almost horizontal slash that made it gape slightly.

  Tugging him down by pulling on his wrist, she examined it more closely. It wasn’t deep, but the wound needed staples to close it, she thought worriedly. After looking around hopefully for something to use, she finally tore a strip from the front flap of his loincloth, pushed the wound together the best she could with her hands and then tied the strip of fabric around his thigh. She didn’t think it would hold it together well, if at all, but it made her feel better to at least try.

  He glanced at Gideon when she’d finished and when Gideon only nodded, sprawled on his back beside her and closed his eyes. Gideon had said he had the last watch the night before, she remembered. It was no wonder he looked so tired when it had been so long since he’d rested. After studying him a moment, Bronte yielded to the urge to touch him, stroking his face soothingly. He smiled faintly but in a moment his face relaxed and he began to breathe heavily with sleep.

  She looked away from him as Gideon settled on her other side, her gaze going instantly to the cut she’d noticed on him that was still bleeding. The slash across his ribs wasn’t even as deep as Gabriel’s, but because it was almost completely horizontal gravity was working against the industrious little nanos. He caught her face in the crook of his hand, tipping her face up for his inspection. “It will close,” he said finally, lifting a finger and rubbing at the worried line between her brows.

  Releasing her after a moment, he settled on his side on one elbow looking up at her. She gazed back at him questioningly for a moment and finally reached for him, tugging until he finally settled his head in her lap. He released a deep sigh, closing his eyes as she stroked his temple as she had Gabriel’s.

  After a few minutes, Jerico sat down behind her. His back bumped hers and she tipped her head to glance back at him. He nuzzled the side of his face along hers for a moment and then returned his attention to his watch.

  Cramped and uncomfortable as she was, and despite the ordeal they’d just endured, or maybe because of it, Bronte felt a blissful peace settle inside of her.