by Susan Hayes
“Are you two going to join us anytime soon, or should we go ahead and make plans without you?” Blade’s voice sounded over the ship’s PA system.
“I’m tempted to tell them to go ahead without us,” Lance muttered.
“Me too, but I know what will happen if I do. Blade and Dirk will decide I need to be locked in a bunker somewhere until the danger is passed, and I won’t be there insisting that whatever happens next, I’m going to be part of it.”
“Stubborn woman.”
She stuck out her tongue at him and laughed. “And you love me for it.”
* * * *
Since they had yet to decide on a destination, Dirk opted to stick to the heavily traveled routes leading away from the Drift. Heading deeper into the system meant navigating the massive field of asteroids that were all that was left of what had once been two of the system’s planets, so he pointed the ship toward civilized space. Once they’d decided where they were going, he’d plot a course and activate the FTL drive.
All four of them couldn’t fit into the cockpit of the Sun Sprite, so he and Alyson were in the pilots’ seats while Lance and Blade were crammed into the doorway. At Alyson’s request, he had activated the rear viewscreen. The four of them had spent the last hour sitting in silence, watching as the winking lights of Astek Station and the rest of the Drift were slowly lost to view.
“Do you think he’s coming after us?” Alyson asked, her eyes still on the viewscreen despite the fact there was nothing to see but a near infinite field of black space and cold starlight.
“I think that, until we hear otherwise, we have to assume that the Reaper is still a threat.” Dirk had hoped that they would get news that the Reaper had been caught by now and he could turn the ship around and head back. It wasn’t likely to happen, but that hadn’t stopped him from hoping, anyway.
Alyson sighed and massaged the back of her neck before swinging her chair around to face the others. “So, where do we go? I’d suggest heading to Cassien Alpha, but I’m sure the bastard hunting me knows enough about my family and former friends to find me anywhere I could hide on that planet.”
“It’s the first place he’d look for you,” Blade agreed.
“We’ve got a fully fuelled and stocked ship and a whole galaxy to choose from. The only thing we don’t have is a whole lot of scrip, so we’re not going to any exclusive resort planets,” Lance said.
“Who said we don’t have scrip?” Alyson asked.
She had a gleam in her eye that reminded Dirk of his brothers when they were up to something.
“Is there something you’d like to share with us, Aly?” Dirk prompted.
“You can’t access your regular accounts. There’s every chance the Reaper will be watching them,” Blade reminded her.
“I don’t need to access my regular accounts. Back when I was still roommates with Phaedra, she helped me set up an account with a highly secure, off-world bank. The kind no one can hack. Not even her. She wanted to be sure Bryce couldn’t get his greedy paws on my inheritance. She never trusted him.”
“Inheritance?” Blade leaned into the cockpit and waggled his brows. “Oh, baby. Tell me you’re rich, and I’ll propose right here and now.”
“Maybe you should save the proposals until after we’ve defeated the assassin and disseminated the cure for cyborg infertility.” She blinked and burst out laughing. “Wow. When did my life become the plot of a bad movie?”
“It’s not a bad movie, it’s a blockbuster! Action. Adventure, and not one, not two, but three incredibly sexy leading men,” Blade said. “And you’re changing the subject again. What inheritance?”
She shrugged. “I’m not obscenely wealthy or anything, but when my paternal grandmother died, she left my brother and me sizeable trust funds. If we need scrip, I’ve got access to plenty of it.”
“And that explains how you can afford to run the med-center the way you do.” Lance gave her a knowing look.
She scowled and folded her arms across her chest. “What’s wrong with the way I run my business?”
“For one thing, sunshine, you only charge your patients what they can afford, and some of them can’t afford the cost of a bandage, never mind a full course of healing accelerants.”
“Or surgery,” Blade added.
“And I’ve never seen you turn away anyone. Not once. You’ve got a generous heart, and a kind soul, but as far as business plans go, that’s really no way to make any money.”
“Oh, that. I donate most of my salary back into the medical center to offset those costs.”
All three of them stared at her, dumbstruck.
“What?”
You donate your salary?” Lance asked.
“Not all of it.” She shrugged. “It’s only money. I have more than I need, so I share it with those who don’t have enough. It’s what my grandparents did when they ran their own practice. I wanted to be like them. I even took their last name when I graduated. I’m a Jefferies, like them. The Caldwell way of life didn’t really suit me.”
“One day, I hope we get to meet your grandparents.” Dirk wanted to thank them for encouraging Alyson and helping her become the incredible woman he loved.
“I’d like to meet them, too. I mean, if you think they can deal with the idea of you being with three cyborgs.” Lance said.
Fraxx. With everything that had happened, Dirk hadn’t had time to process who Alyson’s family was, and what that might mean. Out on the Drift, things were different, but it wasn’t uncommon for powerful, influential families like Alyson’s to still have some outdated and unforgiving attitudes when it came to relationships.
“You’d really want to meet them?” Alyson was smiling, and her expression eased the tightness that had started to grip his heart. “When this is all over, I can arrange a trip home. It’s been too long since I saw them last, and I know they’d like very much to meet the men I’m dating. It won’t bother them at all that you’re cyborgs, or that I’m dating more than one man at a time. If I’m happy, they’ll be happy for me. “
“When this is over, we’ll go to Cassien Alpha and meet them.” Dirk said.
Alyson uttered a wistful sigh. “Home cooking, fresh air, and long walks in the woods. Are you sure we can’t go there right now?”
“Soon.” They all said at once.
The trouble was, they had no idea if it was true or not.
A steady chirping noise started coming from the console in front of him, and Dirk started looking for the source. The console’s layout was newer than anything he’d worked with before, but the basic layout wasn’t all that different from the mining ship where he’d gotten his first hands-on training as a pilot.
There was an incoming vid message, and it was tagged with Mack’s Corp-Sec ID. Anticipation had everyone leaning in to listen as he activated the vid-screen and Mack’s face appeared, his grim expression making it clear that he didn’t have good news to share.
“What happened? Is everyone okay?” Alyson asked.
“Two Corp-Sec officers are in surgery right now, but they’re both expected to make it. The suspect was shielded, which was how he got the drop on them. Everyone else is fine, including Royan. He’s in the med-center, too, but he’s healing so quickly they expect him to be discharged in the morning.”
Alyson exhaled in relief. “I’m glad to hear that. I guess that means the only one still in serious trouble is me, huh?”
“It looks that way. We’ve got teams sweeping the station and computers running facial recognition programs and reviewing every scrap of surveillance footage, but so far we’re coming up empty. If the bastard is still on board the station, we have to assume he won’t be for long.”
Alyson started asking for more information about the medical status of the injured, but before she got her answer, Dirk was distracted by Dash’s voice inside his head.
“While Mack’s performing for whoever might be listening, I’m going to give you a quick rundown on what else is g
oing on.”
“I’m listening.”
“It took Alyson’s friend Phaedra about twenty damned minutes to work some sort of computer wizardry and track down where the Reaper was hiding out. Toro and Jaeger went in with a team, and they found their brother, Victor. He’s in bad shape, but he managed to confirm a few things. He and his clone are both the Reaper. Two men, one face. One kills, one establishes an alibi by being seen far from the crime.”
“What happened to Victor? Will he recover?”
Dash didn’t answer for a second, and when he did, his words were tangled with emotions so strong they traveled across their shared link. “The medics think he’ll recover. At least, his physical wounds should heal. Mental and emotional wounds are another issue. They’ve been reprogrammed, Dirk. The fraxxing corporation who took them reactivated their obedience subroutines and enhanced them for good measure.”
“They were taken? By who? How?” The ramifications of what Dash was saying made it hard for Dirk to focus. Taken. Obedience. Reprogramming. The words bounced around inside his head while his stomach twisted itself into knots. This was the stuff of every cyborg’s nightmares.
“The only one who can tell us that is Victor, and he’s unconscious right now. When we know more, we’ll let you know. This comm link won’t work once you get too far away, but Phaedra is working on setting up some encryption so we can keep in contact. I’ll send the decryption key in a data burst in a minute. There will be some coordinates in the burst, too. They’ll bring you to an automated resupply station Phaedra knows of. She says it’s been abandoned for years. There’s no fuel or supplies there, but it’s still got a breathable atmosphere and an active AI. I don’t want to know how she knows that. She’s broken more privacy and anti-hacking laws in the short time she’s been sitting in our office than I can count.”
“The resupply station sounds like our best chance at finding a defensible position. Thanks.” Dirk paused, then added, “If Toro or Jaeger think of anything that might help us understand the way their brother thinks, we could use the intel. I don’t want to have to kill him…”
“If it comes to a choice between him or Alyson, you do what you have to. Once we have more actionable intel, we’ll share it with Zale’s friend in the IAF. This is too big for us to handle on our own. It’s time for the military to get involved.”
“Agreed.” The IAF had an entire division dedicated to policing the corporations and ensuring they didn’t break planetary or galactic law. If they weren’t aware of what the hell the corporations were doing, it was past time that they found out.
Tell the others good luck from me, and we’ll see you all when this is over,” Dash said.
“Stay safe.”
Mack was saying his goodbyes to the others when Dirk tuned back into the conversation going on around him. He added his farewells to the rest and terminated the call.
“We’ve got a possible destination, and I’ve got news you’re all going to want to hear.”
Alyson spun around in her chair so fast her hair whipped into her face, momentarily blinding her. “What news? What destination? How?”
She swiped at her hair in annoyance, leaned forward, and did a fair impression of his tone when she demanded, “Explain. Now.”
“It’s a little terrifying how well you do that, Doc,” Blade said with a snicker.
“I learned from the best,” she retorted before narrowing her eyes at Dirk. “Who were you talking to while I was chatting with Mack? Because we were clearly having different conversations.”
“Dash.” He tapped his temple. “It was important no one intercepted the message he had for me. Well, for us.”
“What did Dash have to say that was so important?”
He explained about the deactivated resupply station first, and by the time he was done with his explanation, the data burst Dash had promised arrived.
“I’ve got the coordinates now. Does anyone have another destination for us to consider, or do we trust Phaedra and go to this station?”
“There are only a handful of people I’d trust my life with. Three of them are here with me, and Phaedra’s one of the others. If she thinks that’s the best place for us to make our stand, then I say we go.”
“No bystanders to worry about, no potential allies in place already, and we’ll have the advantage of getting there first,” Lance said.
“If we’re going up against a known killer, we’re going to need every advantage we can get. Especially if this guy turns out to be a cyborg.”
Dirk cleared his throat. “And that brings me to my other news.”
He caught them up on everything Dash had shared, ending with the gut-twisting facts about what had been done to both Victor and Ward. When he was done, the cockpit was silent.
“But we’re protected…” Lance started to say, then trailed off.
Blade slammed his hand into the bulkhead. “We’re supposed to be protected. Free citizens of the galaxy and all that. But we’ve always known the corporations don’t all agree with that assessment. They built us, and they still think of us as their property. We’re commodities, not people.”
“They were taken, and then reprogrammed?” Alyson was pale and visibly shaken by what she’d learned. “And now one of them has been ordered to kill me.”
“That’s not going to happen.” It didn’t matter if there was an army of cyborg assassins coming after Alyson, they’d find a way to keep her safe. She was their light in a dark and unforgiving universe. After years spent drifting, they had finally found their purpose. Her.
“It’s decided then.” Dirk programmed in the coordinates and prepped the FTL engines. Even at faster-than-light speed, it would take more than a week to arrive at their destination, especially since he wasn’t programming it as one long jump, but a series of shorter ones. That should stop the Reaper—Ward—from being able to figure out where they were headed until he tracked them to their final jump point.
There wasn’t any doubt in Dirk’s mind that the assassin would follow them. Ward’s behavioral programming wouldn’t let him do anything else. He had to finish his mission, and they had to stop him.
* * * *
Once they were in transit, Dirk activated the AI’s autopilot, and they went to find something to eat. They talked about what they knew and speculated on what they didn’t as they explored the menu of the ship’s food dispenser. It wasn’t the way any of them had hoped to celebrate Alyson’s accomplishment. Instead of a party with her friends at the Nova, it was the four of them, some mediocre cupcakes from the dispenser, and a keg of Torskian ale Blade found stashed in the galley.
“This stuff isn’t getting any easier to drink.” Alyson set down her mostly empty glass of ale hard enough to make every other glass on the table jump.
“That’s because it’s got more in common with engine degreaser than anything you should be drinking. Is this stuff actually safe for human consumption?” Lance asked.
“It hasn’t killed Royan, yet. So, I’d say so.”
“I’m not convinced Royan’s actually human. I’ve seen him drink enough to put a Torski under the table.” Blade moved the glass out of Alyson’s reach before she could take another drink.
“I do not need you three protecting me from a glass of alien hooch.”
“That’s debatable.” For the second time in a day, Dirk indulged himself by scooping Alyson out of her seat and into his lap.
She settled in with a contented sigh that made his heart turn to taffy.
“This is getting to be a habit.”
Blade chuckled. “Haven’t you noticed? When Dirk’s feeling grumpy, you wind up in his arms or his lap. You’re his living, breathing teddy bear. It’s really adorable.”
“I do not need a teddy bear. I’m not the childish one in this family.” Dirk tucked Alyson’s head under his chin and let the comforting warmth of her body soak into his skin. She wasn’t his teddy bear, she was the center of his universe, and the only woman who had
ever made him feel at peace.
“If I’m your teddy bear, then you’re my squishy,” Alyson declared.
Oh, hell no. Both his brothers burst out laughing, and his doom was sealed.
I’m not your squishy.”
“Are too.”
Lance was laughing so hard he was tearing up, and Blade was about to slide under the table, the traitorous bastards. So be it, if he was going down, they were going down with him. “Not that I’m agreeing to anything, but, if you think I should be your squishy, then what are you going to call those two idiots?”
The laughter stopped almost instantly.
“Pookie and snuggles.” Alyson pointed to Blade, then Lance as she christened them.
Blade groaned in horror. “That’s it. You’re never allowed to drink Torskian ale again. Ever.”
“I’m good with snuggles, actually. Every time you use that nickname, I’m going to take it as an invitation.” Lance crooked his finger at Alyson. “Want to come over here and collect?”
Dirk let her go. She hopped to her feet, swayed, and grabbed at the table. “Woah.”
“I’ve got you.” Dirk had her back in his arms in seconds.
“And I’d say that means it’s time tuck you in, sunshine.” Lance glanced over at Blade. “Where the hell are we sleeping, anyway?”
“Wait until you see the captain’s quarters. Zura must have had it redone when the ship went in for a refit because it will accommodate all of us very nicely.”
Alyson giggled. “She wanted to be sure there was room for her and her husbands to sleep comfortably when they were on board. She had a hell of a time getting the designers to understand the changes until she flat out told them she was married to two big cyborgs who took up a lot of space in bed.”
“Well, they must have listened, because it’s the roomiest crew cabin I’ve ever seen,” Blade said before leading them out of the galley.
