by Cynthia Sax
“It doesn’t, sir,” she assured him, placing her palms on his armor-covered chest. “It worries me. It’s so close to our chambers and I thought we were safe there.”
“We were and are.” Assured that it wasn’t the blood that bothered Joan, Rage walked along the hallway, carrying her. “When you’re with me, you’re safe.” When she wasn’t with him, he’d ensure she was protected. “The blood didn’t come from a cyborg.” It was Boyd’s. Gap had made a mess when he tortured and killed the guard.
Rage planned to make an even bigger mess when he tortured the Commander. The human arranged the attack on Joan, sought to draw out her suffering. He tightened his grip on her soft form. The Commander would pay for his actions.
Cyborgs were stationed at doors along the hallways, equipped with the severed hands of their former masters. As Rage approached, they sent energy pulses along the flesh, temporarily reanimating them, authorizing the access panels.
Need help with that beautiful cargo, Rage?
You missed most of the fun. Glad you could finally join us.
If you don’t have room on your ship, I’d happily transport your female.
He was surrounded by idiots. Rage ignored their quips.
His female, unaware of the internal conversations, greeted the cyborgs, asking for their names, issuing compliments on some feature of their design. The males stood straighter, their chests puffed out with pride, their expressions verging on besotted.
Rage begrudgingly endured the flirting.
For many males, Joan was the first female they’d seen. She’d already won them over with her attempt to free them, her survival of the attack, and her devotion to him, their number one warrior. Meeting her increased their admiration for her.
And Joan’s words were a coping mechanism, a way of dealing with her lingering fear. Rage smelled the apprehension on her skin every time they approached a male. The scent burned his nostrils and he had to curb the urge to attack, to eliminate the possible threat. But once she talked with the cyborg, her terror eased, allowing him to think clearer. She needed the flirting. He’d tolerate it.
Rage strode toward the Commander’s chambers. Crash and Gap waited by the door, the younger cyborg standing behind his larger, older counterpart.
He frowned. “Why is Gap hiding? Are you planning to shoot me again?”
“Again?” Joan wiggled in his arms. “Your friend shot you, sir?”
“I shot him once.” Crash didn’t meet his gaze. “And the setting was on stun. He was about to get himself and you killed.”
His female looked at him, her eyes wide. “You tried to return to the battle station to rescue me.”
She was too cunning for Rage’s comfort. “I could have succeeded.”
“You wouldn’t have. They would have blown up your ship before you reached the docking bay.” Joan smiled at Crash. “Thank you for stopping him.”
Crash’s lips curled upward.
Rage grunted. She was thanking his friend for shooting him.
“Is there a threat?” He turned toward the younger cyborg. He wouldn’t place his female in danger again. “Why are you standing behind Crash?”
“I’m scaring your female, like I did earlier,” Gap mumbled. “I smell her fear.”
“No, I’m scaring her.” Crash lowered his gaze. “It’s my eyes.” He touched one of his eyebrows. “They frighten humans.”
Joan wiggled. “Your eyes are dark and soulful. When you find the right female, she’ll want to fall into their depths and never find her way out again.”
What kind of nonsense was his female spewing now?
Whatever it was, it was effective. Crash gazed at her with an irritating look of wonder on his more human face.
Rage splayed his fingers over her curves, making his ownership of her clear.
“But, of course I’m frightened of you.” She swallowed hard. “Both of you are fierce warriors, much bigger and stronger than I am. I’d have to be mentally deficient not to fear you. When I first met Rage, I was scared of him also.”
Rage grunted, dipping his head. She had been scared, not that it had stopped her from talking to him, touching him, caring for him. He sniffed the air, smelling no attraction between his female and his friends. She wouldn’t care for them, not the way she cared for him.
“Your fear didn’t stop you from becoming Rage’s female.” Gap peeked around Crash’s shoulder.
“No, it didn’t.” Her smile lit the entire hallway. “And it won’t stop your females from caring for you.”
Gap opened his mouth. Rage didn’t have the patience for more chattering. “Is the Commander inside?”
“He’s chained. She’ll be safe.” Crash slapped two severed hands against the access panel and the door opened.
A clear wall two beings high separated them from the rest of the chambers. Cyborgs, different heights, different models, lined the perimeter. Commander Lewis stood naked in the center, facing away from them. One of his legs was chained to the floor. One of his hands was missing.
Joan quivered, her fear aggravating Rage.
“He won’t touch you.” He pressed his lips to her forehead, trying to calm her.
“He’ll talk, sir, tell them what he, what the others did to me.” The pain in her eyes pierced his heart. “Your friends will know and they won’t look at me the same way.”
“Every being here knows what he did to you.” Rage wouldn’t allow her to feel shame for another being’s actions. “They want to watch because he did the same to them.”
She blinked once, twice. “Did he do the same to you, sir?”
“Yes.” He set her down, Gap positioned to her left, Crash to her right. “But I wasn’t able to avoid the prolonger. None of us were.” He summoned a smile he hoped was reassuring. “We’re not as cunning as you are, female.”
The lines etched between her eyebrows flattened. “They don’t think less of me?”
“They don’t.” He held her gaze. “They admire your strength, as I do.”
“I love you, sir.”
Joan’s declaration echoed through the cyborgs’ private transmission lines.
“Kneel.” That position would make her a smaller target. “While I seek justice for you.”
“For every being, sir.”
Rage didn’t care about every being. He walked around the wall, into the middle of the chambers.
Make him pay.
Kill him slowly.
Show him how primitive a cyborg can be.
Rage tuned out the flow of unnecessary advice. “You can have a weapon to defend yourself.” He’d give the Commander that dignity, to die fighting.
“C899321. I should have known they’d send you, our most primitive machine, to kill me.” The Commander turned. Yellow rimmed his eyes. He’d been given a prolonger. “Who’s controlling you? Is it the Mantidae? You’re using their weapons.”
The human still thought them mindless machines. Rage wouldn’t correct that misconception. “Your dagger.” He tossed the weapon to him.
The human caught it with his one remaining hand. “Go back to their nest. When we track you down, we’ll destroy it and you.”
Rage grunted and circled him, daggers in both hands. Where to hurt him first? He recalled Joan’s battered face. The Commander raised his dagger. Rage rushed forward, nicked the delicate skin under the human’s eyes and retreated before his opponent reacted.
The Commander yipped like a new cyborg, swiped his fingers over the blood streaming down his face. “You missed my eyes.”
“I wasn’t aiming for your eyes.”
The other cyborgs yelled suggestions for next nicks through the private lines. Rage had his own agenda, breaking the human’s nose with his dagger handles.
The Commander howled. “You weren’t designed for this. You kill quickly.”
“I torture slowly.” Rage bounced on the balls of his feet. “Humans taught me that.” He sliced the male’s forehead, easily avoiding the clumsy
counterattack.
The Commander struggled to deal with the new wounds. Rage looked over his shoulder. His female nodded at him, a ghost of a smile on her face. He returned his attention to his opponent, not wishing for the male to see Joan, to taunt her, cause her more pain.
Rage took shallow gouges out of the Commander’s cheeks, his neck, shoulders, chest, pausing after each strike, allowing the human’s pain to crest and level.
“Tell the Mantidae we’ll negotiate.” The Commander’s pitch rose. He was breaking, already. Rage’s disgust of him increased. “We’ll concede the planet.”
The humans would concede the planet. They didn’t have cyborgs to defend it.
He decorated the Commander’s protruding belly with nicks and slices, added a few to his back and shoulders, returned to his front, lowering to his hips.
One cut landed close to the male’s cock.
The Commander whimpered. “I’m influential with the Humanoid Alliance. Whatever the Mantidae want, I’ll arrange that they get it. We could clear their migration paths, give them more planets, anything.”
Rage was taking what he wanted—justice for Joan, for himself, for the cyborgs cheering around him. He slid his daggers up the male’s thighs, danced around him, did the same to his flabby ass.
He was tempted to shove a dagger into the human’s puckered hole. The other cyborgs urged him to do exactly that. But, even surrounded by a haze of heart-pounding violence, he was aware of his female watching him, of his need to protect her. He didn’t want Joan to be reminded of what the fiend did to her.
“I’ll tell them anything they want to know,” that fiend now pleaded. “Make it stop.” He dropped to his knees. “Please.”
It wouldn’t stop, not until the human was dead. Rage stabbed him three times in controlled bursts of violence, avoiding all vital organs and arteries. The Commander wheezed, blood bubbling between his lips.
He wouldn’t last much longer, even with the prolonger. Rage looked at Joan. What did she want to do?
She rose to her booted feet. His crazy female wished to confront her attacker.
Rage eyed the dagger still clenched in the Commander’s fingers. That had to go. He sliced through skin and bone, removing the male’s hand. The weapon clattered against the floor tile.
“Finish me,” the Commander begged. “I can’t take any more.”
“Yet you were willing to subject my cyborg to much more pain than you’re currently experiencing.” Joan stood beside Rage, her shoulders back, her boots braced apart. She looked more adorable than fierce and he wanted to lick her all over, starting with the creases between her dainty eyebrows.
“You.” The male coughed. “Almost…dead.”
“Almost isn’t dead.” She tucked her hand in Rage’s. “You should realize that now.”
Her skin was cold. Rage sheathed one of his daggers and linked their fingers, attempting to transfer some of his heat to her.
The Commander’s gaze dropped to their joined hands. “M-machine.”
“He’s more human than you are.” She lifted her rounded chin. “You and the yes-males you selected to staff the battle station aren’t fit to represent our species. If I had the energy, I’d kill you myself.” She gazed at Rage.
She looked to him to be her hands, to do what she hadn’t the strength to accomplish. Satisfaction filled Rage. “Now?”
“Now, sir.” She looked around the chambers at the other cyborgs. “We’ve wasted enough of our energy on him. We’re free, able to do anything we wish. It’s time to start our new lives.”
The cyborgs cheered.
Rage shook his head. So much for their vows to hate all humans.
A vow he once shared.
“Stand back, female.” He wouldn’t have her polluted by the male’s blood. Joan obeyed him. Rage raised his dagger. “If you hadn’t touched her, you and your kind would have had a quick death.”
The Commander’s eyes widened as he realized his mistake. “M-machine.”
“I’m a cyborg and this is for my female.” Rage slit his foe’s throat. The human fell face first, twitching on the floor.
Joan moved closer to Rage as he sheathed his dagger. “Thank you.” She leaned against him, pressing her curves against his armor. “I needed that closure.”
Was closure another word for killing? Rage didn’t know. “There will be more of that in our future.” He swung his drooping female into his arms. “It’s in my design.”
“So is breeding, sir.” She smiled shyly.
It was. Fraggin’ hole. He was a lucky bag of bolts.
Chapter Fifteen
“I can walk, sir.” Joan patted Rage’s chest.
He grunted, didn’t put her down, striding through the hallways, and she was glad. She hadn’t yet fully recovered from her wounds and felt lightheaded.
Watching her cyborg punish the male responsible for her pain had been a surreal experience, one she hadn’t fully absorbed. She’d been alone since she was eleven solar cycles. Could it be true that she now had a being protecting her, seeking justice on her behalf?
She stroked the scar on his chin, his gray skin not even damp from his exertion. He was a finely honed weapon and he had killed for her this planet rotation. She wiggled in his arms, aroused by that thought.
“Control yourself, female.” His voice deepened. “The explosives have been set and other humans might have been notified. This isn’t the time for breeding.”
They also weren’t alone. Cyborgs watched them as they passed. She distracted herself by studying the warriors. The experts at the Academy led her to believe the beings within the same model run would be identical. That wasn’t true. Every male was different, as unique as humans were.
Their mechanics would be the same. The engineer in her was giddy with the possibilities. “I have upgrades for all of them. The latest bulletins held some exciting breakthroughs.”
Rage grunted.
She nibbled on her bottom lip. “I guess I won’t be receiving any more of those.”
“I downloaded the information from the databases.” Crash fell into line behind them, a gun in his hands. Gap followed him, gazing over his friend’s shoulder.
“That’ll hold us for a while.” She’d find a way to hack into the systems from wherever her cyborg was taking her. “Did you make the upgrades I suggested to the ship?”
“Yes.” Crash grimaced. “The work is sloppy.”
“That you got any of it done impresses me.” She gave him the flattery he seemed to need. “We can make repairs during the voyage.” She’d help, show Rage how useful she could be. “I have more ideas.”
Her cyborg snorted and stomped up the ramp to the ship. They took their seats. Rage’s chair was well back from the controls. He set her sideways on his lap while Gap and Crash went through the pre-flight routine, closing doors, checking fuel levels, starting the engine.
“You don’t fly the ship, do you?” she whispered.
Rage’s thick eyebrows lowered. “I can fly it.”
“He just can’t land it.” Crash grinned.
Gap laughed. “Or successfully lift off.”
“He’s more of an open space sort of pilot.” The two were like a comedy duo, their chatter, as Rage would call it, filling in the quiet. “He’s really good at blowing things up.”
“Including our own ship.” Gap gazed forward, guiding the ship out of the docking bay. “No one fights like Rage. Females like skilled fighters.”
Not all did but she supposed any female attracted to a cyborg would. “How many females have you met?” Had he been in a breeding program too?
Neither cyborg said anything, their silence suspicious.
“Rage?” She looked to her male for the truth.
“You’re their first.” His expression was smug.
She was the first female they’d ever seen. Joan realized then how imprisoned they’d been, how cut off they’d been from everything other than fighting, subjected to engineers, gua
rds, a Commander who abused them, not knowing tenderness or affection.
“I’m honored.” And terrified. She was representing all of her sex. “Your females will be two lucky beings.”
“You talk like we will have females.” Gap’s tone was glum. “There are many males and not many females.”
“On the battle station.” The ship exited the structure and entered the blackness of space. “I grew up on an agri lot and there were two females for every male there.”
“Two females for every male,” he repeated, awe in his voice.
Joan swallowed her amusement. “One of my friends took a birthing class at the Academy. There were one hundred females and no males.”
“Fraggin’ hole.” Those odds impressed Crash. “Were they all soft like you?”
Soft? She gazed down at her curves, accustomed to being overlooked because of her excess weight. Did the cyborgs value plumpness? “Many were. They care for other beings’ offspring.”
The two cyborgs exchanged a glance. “They’ll need warriors to protect them and might not wish offspring of their own.” Excitement buoyed Gap’s words. “Where do we find these females?”
Joan blinked. Were they planning to hunt the entire birthing class down?
“We lead the others to the Homeland first.” Rage saved her from answering. “Set that as our course.”
The males grumbled yet obeyed. She gazed up at him with admiration. Her cyborg might not fly the ship, but he was in charge, a dominant male amongst dominant males.
“You could have your choice of females, sir.” Was he with her because he cared for her or because she’d been the only female available to him?
“You are my choice.” Rage frowned. “Am I yours? I cannot give you offspring of your own.”
“I knew that when we met, sir.” She touched his chin. “Offspring aren’t necessary.” Though she did adore them. “You are more than enough for any female.”
The lines around his mouth eased. “Sleep. I plan to use you hard once we’re away from danger.”
Her face heated. “The others will hear you, sir.”
“It’s a small ship.” His eyes sparkled. “They’ll soon hear you. You’ll lose yourself in our breeding as you always do, screaming my name again and again, telling the worlds who’s inside you.”
