Patchwork

by Elle E. Ire

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1: Vick—Storms Brewing

  Chapter 2: Kelly—Control Factors

  Chapter 3: Vick—Priorities

  Chapter 4: Kelly—Connected

  Chapter 5: Vick—Lock and Load

  Chapter 6: Kelly—Regroup

  Chapter 7: Vick—Death Knell

  Chapter 8: Kelly—Rifts and Fractures

  Chapter 9: Vick—Private Release

  Chapter 10: Kelly—Revelations

  Chapter 11: Vick—A Reason for Everything

  Chapter 12: Kelly—Photographic

  Chapter 13: Vick—Compensate

  Chapter 14: Kelly—Secrets and Admissions

  Chapter 15: Vick—Breakable Bonds?

  Chapter 16: Kelly—Pleasant Distractions

  Chapter 17: Vick—Almost Home

  Chapter 18: Kelly—Aftershocks

  Chapter 19: Vick—Side Effects

  Chapter 20: Kelly—Cold Pursuit

  Chapter 21: Vick—Hard Way

  Chapter 22: Kelly—Wet Welcome

  Chapter 23: Vick—Island Life

  Chapter 24: Kelly—Who Are You?

  Chapter 25: Vick—Bribes and Blackmail

  Chapter 26: Kelly—Beach Party

  Chapter 27: Vick—Buying Power

  Chapter 28: Kelly—Spree

  Chapter 29: Vick—The Hardest and Easiest Choice

  Chapter 30: Kelly—Mood Swings

  Chapter 31: Vick—Work It Out

  Chapter 32: Kelly—The Deep End

  Chapter 33: Vick—What Big Teeth You Have

  Chapter 34: Kelly—Depths of Affection

  Chapter 35: Vick—Truths Left Untold

  Chapter 36: Kelly—Secrets

  Chapter 37: Vick—Friends and Family

  Chapter 38: Kelly—Music by Moonlight

  Chapter 39: Vick—Interruptions

  Chapter 40: Kelly—Last Resort

  Chapter 41: Vick—Departure From Reality

  Chapter 42: Kelly—Fight or Flight

  Chapter 43: Vick—Checkmate

  Chapter 44: Kelly—Hardest Decision

  Chapter 45: Vick—Broken Bonds

  Chapter 46: Kelly—Not Quite Alone

  Chapter 47: Vick—Reborn

  Chapter 48: Kelly—Surprises

  Chapter 49: Vick—Connection

  Chapter 50: Kelly—Nine Lives

  Chapter 51: Vick—Looking Death in the Face

  Epilogue: Rude Awakening

  More from Elle E. Ire

  About the Author

  By Elle E. Ire

  Visit DSP Publications

  Copyright

  Patchwork

  By Elle E. Ire

  Storm Fronts: Book Two

  Empath Kelly LaSalle means everything to cybernetic soldier Vick Corren—and Kelly deserves a partner who can love her in a romantic way.

  For the first time since receiving her robotic enhancements and an AI that makes her faster and stronger than the average merc, Vick thinks she can be that person.

  Vick wants Kelly for life, and she’ll do whatever it takes to be worthy. A holiday on a tropical planet seems the perfect time for Vick to demonstrate her commitment.

  And she has big plans.

  But the best intentions unravel when they’re pursued by a rival mercenary company that wants Vick’s technology—with or without her cooperation. A competitor for Kelly’s affection is determined to tear them apart, and a lover from Vick’s past has depraved plans of her own. Vick might not be able to save their lives without giving herself over to the machine she’s trying so hard to transcend.

  To my spouse: my first, middle, and last reader always. You are my rock and my cushion, my sounding board and my grounding force, my best friend and my forever love.

  Acknowledgments

  PATCHWORK WAS different. Writing the second book in a series, while easier in terms of world-building and character development, is much harder in maintaining the tension, both romantic and otherwise. An author worries about meeting and hopefully surpassing expectations. Will the second book live up to the first? Will readers continue to love the series? And then there is the deadline. When a series is contracted, the first book is usually written prior to signing that contract, over an unlimited amount of time. The second and third books are often not written yet. So the number of people an author can get to critique a book on deadline is sorely limited.

  Thanks go first to my spouse—the only one who got to see this in manuscript form prior to being sent to my amazing editorial team: Rose, Yv, and Brian. Between the four of them, hopefully all the misplaced commas and hyphens, along with any plot holes were caught. Any that remain are my errors and mine alone.

  Thanks to my writing group: Evergreen, Gary, Ann, and Amy, who did not get to see this but helped keep me sane. Thanks also to the fans who wrote beautiful reviews for the first book, THREADBARE, on Amazon, Goodreads, and elsewhere, or supported me in person with their encouragement and enthusiasm for the series: Bob, Elijah, Arielle, Rob, Jenni, Tim, Lily, the entire Tampa writing community, and if I’m forgetting anyone, please forgive me. Thanks also to my karaoke and teacher friends who cheered me on when I needed it most.

  Thanks to my outstanding cover artist, Nathalie Gray, who once again managed to put on the cover what I see in my head. Vick glows because of you. Thanks to the rest of the art department at Dreamspinner Press. You are all awesome! Also thank you to Naomi Grant, social media guru, for your warmth and friendliness welcoming me to the Dreamspinner family and your patience with my online insecurities.

  Finally, thank you to my amazing agent, Naomi Davis, and all the folks at Dreamspinner Publications who believed in me and the STORM FRONTS series. None of this would exist without you.

  Chapter 1: Vick—Storms Brewing

  I AM pissed off.

  Fuck, that hurts. I jerk my hand out and blow on singed fingers, then plunge it back into the mass of wires and circuitry.

  “This has got to be your worst idea yet.”

  I spare the minutest of glares for my teammate, Alex, before returning my attention to the open control panel in front of me. “Maybe if you weren’t hovering, I’d have this done by now.” In the distance, across Girard Moon Base’s central hub promenade, I detect gunfire, my enhanced hearing differentiating both the legal-to-carry-in-a-controlled-environment adjustable laser kind and the I’m-a-fucking-moron-getting-desperate projectile variety. A sound like hailstones on a tin roof confirms the existence of the latter. Idiots. If the bullets don’t pierce the walls and waste the base’s precious atmosphere, they’re just as likely to ricochet and hit an unintended target.

  “Has it occurred to you that I don’t want you to be done?” His boots shuffle from side to side across the steel-gray tile flooring.

  Yeah, it has crossed my mind.

  The fight broke out—I consult my internal chronometer, bringing up the display behind my real-looking, very-manufactured brown eyes—all of fifteen minutes ago. Feels like an hour.

  I’D HAD a spoonful of Kelly’s delicious vat-grown chicken potpie halfway to my mouth, steam rising off the mixture of crust, sauce, potatoes, and poultry, when the call came in on my embedded comm unit. Merc disturbance. Alpha Dog Pub. Shots fired. Local law otherwise engaged. Team One respond and assist.

  Kelly slammed her spoon onto the table. “You’re leaving,” she said. “Again.”

  I blinked once before remembering that she knows when I “check out” on her. She says my eyes unfocus and I go very still. Like a robot. A machine. My words, not hers. She’d never call me those things, but I can think them, and most of the time she doesn’t pick up on it. Maybe. I never am sure.

&n
bsp; I also remembered this was the third interruption in our dinner in the past two weeks. First a martial arts demonstration for some potential client. Then a “quick briefing” that lasted over an hour. Now this. “Duty calls,” I told her with more than a little hesitation. Anger didn’t come naturally to Kel. When it did, it directed itself at me. But I didn’t deserve this. Something beyond an unfinished meal was upsetting her, and I didn’t have time to find out what. “Stay put. Bar brawl. Shouldn’t take long. New recruits probably need reining in. Keep dinner warm for me?” That earned me a fierce glare that sent me squirming backward in my chair before I buried instinct beneath purposeful action. I broke eye contact and stood from her kitchen table, a plastic and metal affair made homey with a red-and-white checkered tablecloth and real linen napkins. Sterile military base or not, she did her best to make her quarters—our quarters now that we’d moved into a two-bedroom unit—as welcoming as possible.

  Her full red lips parted to argue. Then she clamped them shut, snatched my plate from my usual place, and marched with it across to the disposal unit where she scraped my portion into the hatch.

  All I managed was “Why?”

  Without facing me, she responded, “Because it’s never short. Dinner’s always ruined. And tonight….” Her voice cracked. “Tonight I thought we might try again.”

  “Try… oh.” Try. As in sex. As in that thing we both wanted but I couldn’t deliver, because no matter how hard I fought to block it out, whenever she touched me, all I saw was Rodwell groping me, violating me, his cold, callused hands— I shook the image away, swallowing the bile in my mouth and unclenching fists I hadn’t realized I’d made. And to make matters worse, Kelly had begun refusing my attempts to take care of her needs in exclusion to my own. Not fair, she’d said, that I should keep giving what I desired but couldn’t receive.

  It’s been almost a year and that attack is still as fresh as if it happened this morning.

  “You’ll never get through it if we don’t keep trying,” Kelly said.

  “We’re not having this conversation right now.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m a soldier. A leader. I need to be able to function without running to you for help. Eventually I’ll work through it on my own.”

  “But you aren’t…,” she said in a small voice.

  Hence the two-bedroom apartment. Sometimes it’s fine, sharing a bed with her. Other times, not so much. If I’m in the middle of a nightmare about what Rodwell did to me and my body comes into contact with hers, things get dangerous for Kelly. I haven’t hurt her yet, but I can usually recognize when I’m edgy and need to sleep alone. The fact that that’s become more frequent was not something I wanted to be reminded of right then, though.

  I whirled and half walked, half ran from the kitchen, aware she called after me, but I was through the archway, crossing the living room that separated our bedrooms, and out the door before she could make me feel any guiltier than I already did.

  Not my fault. None of it. She knew that. Frustration talking. That’s why we both snapped. Had to be. Her empathic talent meant she felt not just her own needs but mine, too, and I’d been pretty damn needy, and edgy, the past few nights alone in my room. Didn’t make her anger and disappointment easier to take. Not one bit. But I couldn’t stick around and hash things out.

  When the Storm orders, I obey. Always. Whether I want to or not.

  In the corridor leading to the promenade dome, I made two quick comm calls and Alex and Lyle fell into step beside me. They updated me on the way. Not new recruits. Not the average bar brawl, but an out-and-out battle being waged at the Alpha Dog between our people and the Sunfires, our biggest rival mercenary company.

  WHICH BROUGHT me to this moment, peering into an open control panel just off the promenade circle and not thinking about Kelly’s face when she yelled at me. Nope. Not thinking about it.

  “Where the hell are the local cops?” I growl through gritted teeth, hands embedded up to my wrists in older-than-moon-rocks circuitry and frayed and corroded wiring. This place is one glitch away from a fatal environmental shutdown.

  “Landing bay,” Lyle says, coming around to stand in my field of view. He’s got three fingers pressed to his ear, his own comm just inside the ear canal, unlike the one wired into my mostly AI implanted brain. “Sanderson reports an explosion in one of the fuel-storage drums. Very suspicious. Looks like Sunfire work. Says we need to get our own damn people in the pub under control and stop making her officers’ jobs harder.” Lyle pauses, cracking a grin despite the intensity of the situation. “And she promises not to charge us for any damages we incur.” He moves to stand behind me and Alex.

  My lips twitch in a quick grin of my own. Officer Sanderson knows me well. She’s got a soft spot for me and I for her. We’ll never be more than friends, but I’d trust her at my back, which, including my own team, places her among a very small and elite group of people.

  Another cascade of gunfire echoes across the open domed space between us and the pub, followed by a shout of pain. “Hope that’s not one of ours,” Alex mutters.

  “Is it?” I subvocalize so neither of my biological teammates hears me.

  VC1, my AI implant, making up 63 percent of my damaged brain, has a twisted sense of humor—my twisted sense of humor if I’m honest with myself. She can talk to me in words but prefers to amuse herself and make me work for the knowledge she deigns to give me.

  Case in point, some outdated sport’s scoreboard pops up in my internal view, green background, loud, clacking, flipping numbers and all.

  Sunfires: 1

  Storm: 0

  I don’t doubt her accuracy. VC1 has voice imprints on record in her extensive memory storage of any member of the Storm we’ve heard speak. Not thrilled with her flippancy, though.

  These are human lives, I subvocalize. This isn’t a game.

  It is all a game to me, she responds.

  I raise my eyes to the proverbial heavens, knowing she will register the motion since my eyeballs are as mechanical as she is and wired straight into her systems. Let me put it differently. If this player gets permanently removed from the field, you cease to exist.

  A brief pause.

  Not entirely true, but I concede your point.

  Huh. I wonder what the hell she means by that, but my functions are far too occupied to devote attention to existentialism.

  “We’re out of time,” I mutter and force my fingers to move faster, rewiring different systems to minimize outages while seeking to achieve the very specific localized results I’m hoping for. With VC1’s help, I’m a blur of motion among the circuits and wires.

  “What, exactly, is it we’re doing again?” Lyle asks, his baritone a little higher pitched than usual. He’s more muscle than mechanic, but even he knows that messing around in a panel clearly marked as hazardous and high-voltage with bright orange glow paint is a bad idea.

  “You aren’t doing anything except providing backup, if possible. I, on the other hand, am—” I break off as I make the final connection… and the lights in every shop, restaurant, and entertainment venue, along with the overhead illumination panels in the center of the promenade dome leading to them, go out.

  This, of course, is followed by added screams and shouts of confusion from those taking refuge in all the businesses.

  “Vick…,” Alex whispers, leaning in so closely I can feel his breath on my cheek. “You’d better have a plan.”

  Using my first name. I’ve really got Alex spooked. At least he’s not calling me VC1 anymore. That brings a momentary warmth to my insides. They know VC1 as a separate entity even if the rest of the Storm doesn’t. They know I’m my own person.

  Acceptance came hard, but it came.

  While we’ve been communing with the base’s technological infrastructure, Lyle’s been pacing back and forth behind us, acting as lookout for any maintenance workers who might object to my activities. The patterned footfalls cease, and his hand brushes my bicep b
efore fumbling and finding my shoulder, then clamping down hard. “What are you up to?”

  In response I activate the spotlights built into my eyes, illuminating first the open panel before me, then shifting to the floor at Lyle’s feet to avoid blinding him. He jumps anyway, releasing me and backpedaling until he bumps the opposite side of the promenade access corridor. So much for acceptance.

  “Shit, I hate it when you do crap like that.” Lyle places one boot in front of the other until he’s within touching distance. But he doesn’t touch me again.

  I roll my eyes, sending the beams bouncing and reflecting off the metal walls. “You’re with me,” I tell Lyle, though if he’s gonna go all skittery on me, I’m not thrilled about it. I turn to my currently less-freaked-out teammate, the one who held his position on my opposite side. “Alex, monitor the new connections I’ve made. They may not be entirely stable. I’ve shut down lighting and emergency backups in this section of the base only. I didn’t touch air or gravity or any other sections. Doesn’t mean it won’t cascade on us. If it does, stop it.”

  Alex’s mouth sets in a grim line. He might not have that much faith in his tech abilities, but I have faith in him. Before VC1 and I worked out the logistics of our symbiotic relationship, he was our go-to guru. After a moment he nods and steps up to take my place while I grab Lyle’s uniform sleeve and tug him along with me. We’ve gone a handful of paces when a thought occurs and I call back over my shoulder, “If Kelly shows up, stall her here. I don’t need to be worrying about the Sunfires and her too.”

  “Stopping a cascade failure will be easier,” Alex grumbles. He focuses his attention on the panel’s depths and the sparks flickering from within that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Dandy.

  Into the dark we go, me keeping the illumination from my eyes at the minimum requirement to prevent me and Lyle from falling on our faces. In addition to a perimeter promenade with shops along the outer edge, the dome is crisscrossed with wagon-wheel-spoke walkways creating bridges over the decorative hydroponics gardens below and to the sides. We move along one of these paths, railings and transparent waist-high barriers preventing pedestrians from accidentally stepping off into the delicate foliage. In full light, provided by both stars and sun lamps, the flowers, shrubs, and food-bearing plants bring greenery to folks who rarely experience such luxuries. Now they’re seemingly bottomless abysses of murk and shadow to either side.