by Susan Hayes
“Why are you two here? I told you I could take care of myself, and I can. Not that I’d have to right now. I’m with Cynder, and I’m pretty sure she could take down a Nantari rhino without breaking a sweat, but that’s beside the point. The point is…” She frowned. “The point is, you two need to stop following me.”
“We’re here to talk to Luke and Kit about a few things. We didn’t follow you. We didn’t know you were here until we walked through that door and saw you with your friends.”
“Kit and Luke can vouch for us. Right, guys?” Dash prompted.
“They asked if they could drop by and talk. They’ve been hanging out with us in the back for over an hour.” Kit said.
Lieksa sighed. “Okay. And you’re not going to follow me now, right?”
“Not unless you ask us to, sweetheart.”
“Not going to happen. You can keep your charming charms to yourself, mister spy guy.”
Luke snickered. “Mister spy guy is now your new nickname, Dash. Better get used to it.”
“Not helping, Luke.”
“Just paying back an old debt. Did you think I’d forgotten what happened the day we proposed to Zura?”
“I was hoping you had, yeah.”
Lieksa glowered at Luke and shook a finger in his direction. “You hush.”
Luke wisely kept his mouth closed and moved back the same time Kit did, leaving them alone at the bar.
“You’re sexy as hell when you’re sassy. Especially when you’re not sassing us,” Dash said.
“You’re incredible no matter what you’re doing. Since we’re all here, do you want to talk about things?” Mack asked her and offered her his hand. He wanted to fold her into his arms and hold her until she softened, but he couldn’t risk it. Being overprotective and pushy was what had them in this situation in the first place.
When she took his hand, a warm glow settled into his chest and wrapped around his heart.
“I’m still not ready for that. We said we’d talk tomorrow. Can we still do that?”
He squeezed her fingers gently. “Call us when you’re ready to talk, and we’ll be there.”
“I will.”
She gifted them both with a tiny smile that made him want to slay dragons in her name.
Dash spoke. “Before you go back to your friends, I need to ask you something. When you were talking to Len, he said something and then made a gesture with his fingers, sort of like he was pulling a trigger. Do you remember what he said to you?”
She snatched her hand out of Mack’s grasp and stepped back, glowering at Dash with distrust. “You were spying on me!”
“If I were, I wouldn’t have to ask you what he said, would I? There was something familiar about the gesture, that’s all. I’ve seen it before, but I don’t know where.” Dash raised his hands in a placating gesture.
Lieksa stopped moving away, but her expression was guarded and her tone was wary. “He said something about it being better to be lucky than good. Then, after he was gone, Cynder mentioned he’s obsessed with luck and gambles a lot. Maybe you heard him say it around the squad room?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Something about it seemed important.” Dash shook his head as if the action could somehow dislodge the information he was looking for.
“Remember what the doctor said—the memories are more likely to come if you don’t force it. Whatever it was, I’m sure it’ll come back to you eventually. I’m going now. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
After she was out of earshot, Mack turned on Dash. “What the hell was that about? You nearly screwed us up all over again.”
“I’m not sure. Something about the gesture made me think about the day I got shot. There’s something about it. Something I need to remember.” Dash groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose with fingers. He hated the idea of leaving Lieksa again, but she needed more time, and the Nova Club was the safest place in the galaxy for her right now. If anyone dangerous came near her, Cynder would take them apart, and Zura would stomp on the pieces.
* * * *
Lieksa wasn’t happy she had walked away from Mack and Dash again. There was an ache in her chest no amount of alcohol was going to ease. She wanted to be with them, but if she turned around now, she would end up going home with them. It would be too easy to stop being angry and let it go, but that wouldn’t solve anything, and she loved them too much to take the easy way out.
She nearly tripped over her own feet as that last thought bounced around her brain a few more times. Re’veth. She loved them.
“Then I guess I better figure out a way to make this work,” she muttered to herself as she made her way through the crowd.
As she passed into the VIP section, her comm device started to vibrate and chirp an alert sequence. For a moment she had no idea what it could be about, and she fumbled several times getting the thing out of her pocket. A quick scan of the readout jogged her memory, and she slipped the device back into her pocket. Her little spy-bot was reporting in. It had found something and was headed back to her workshop.
Once back at the table, she gave Alyson a hug from behind. “You remember that favor you asked me for the other day? It looks like I might have found something for you. I need go check it out, though. Right now.”
Alyson put her hand over Lieksa’s forearm and squeezed. “Everything okay with the guys? Do you want me to go with you?”
“The guys are fine. They were here for the same reason I was. Drinks with friends. We’re going to talk tomorrow.”
“That’s good.”
“Dash said he remembered something. It wasn’t much, but he was pushing himself again. Maybe you could check in on him?”
“You’ll be careful, right?” Alyson asked.
“Very. I’ll message you as soon as I know anything.”
“And when you get home, too. “
She rolled her eyes and laughed. “Yes, mom.”
The others weren’t eager to let her go, but once she hinted at where she was going, they stopped protesting. A quick round of hugs and a promise to get together again soon and she was on her way. Cynder walked her to a private exit at the back of the club, saving her another trip through the jostling crowd. When Cyn walked outside with her, Lieksa tried to protest, but her argument fell on deaf ears.
“I’m walking with you. If anything happened to you, I’d never forgive myself, and neither would Mack or Dash.”
She made the trip to Astek headquarters with a bounce in her step and a smile. It had been far too long since she had a girls’ night out, no matter what events had made it necessary. It was nice of Cynder to walk with her, even if Lieksa still didn’t really believe it was necessary.
They parted company at the front door. Cynder headed back to her bar, while Lieksa made her way through security and down to her workshop. Once there, she removed the black-market tech from the maintenance bot and sent the robot on its way again, making sure there was nothing in its logs to give away where it had been or what it had been doing. The tech should be undetectable, but why take chances? If anyone noticed the breach, she wasn’t going to make it easy for them to figure out how it had been done, or by whom.
Once the bot was gone, she uploaded the stolen data to her tablet and started scrolling through it, looking for anything that might be helpful.
It didn’t take long for her to find what she was looking for. The files were from a server on the executive floors, protected by firewalls and security systems that should have kept them safe from ever being discovered. Whoever had stored them there had been so certain of their security they hadn’t even bothered to encrypt them.
By the time she was finished scanning it all, Lieksa would never work for any corporation again. How could she? They had made a choice to intentionally inject every cyborg woman with a substance that would render her incapable of having children. There was an antidote, but it had never been manufactured. It only existed as a formula buried in a database. The bastards never had any
intention of reversing what they had done.
There was too much data for her to read in one sitting. It would take hours for her and Alyson to review and make sense of it all. Much of what she saw was couched in medical and technical doublespeak, but she’d read more than her share of those types of reports when she worked for Nobar Tech. She had even written a few.
She saved a copy of the data to her tablet, encrypted it, detached the widget, and slipped it into her pocket. Once she was home, she would make more copies of the files and make sure that enough people had them that there was no chance that the corporations could track them all down. She wouldn’t let this genie get shoved back in its bottle. The people who had done this needed to answer for what they had done.
She typed out a brief message on her comm device and sent it to Alyson, along with an encrypted copy of the file. “Found the book I told you about. I hope you enjoy reading it. Headed home soon.”
After that was done, Lieksa leaned against her workbench and looked around the cluttered room she’d spent most of her waking hours in since coming to Astek Station. It was time to move on. She wouldn’t miss the place, or the work. She would miss Zale, but once he forgave her for quitting on him, she hoped they could still be friends. Despite his tendency to bellow like a wounded bear, he had been a good boss.
To keep up appearances, she would have to come in to work tomorrow and give proper notice, but this was goodbye. She wandered around the cramped space one last time, breathing in the familiar scents of grease and burned-out circuit boards. She was still lost in her moment of farewell when she heard the distinctive sound of a door opening. Fraxx. Who was down here with her? All the warnings Mack and Dash had given her over the last few days had her pulse racing as she looked around for something she could use as a weapon.
“Hello?”
A familiar bellow shook the walls of her workshop. “That better be you in there, Lieksa, or I’m going to have to kick someone’s ass!”
“It’s me, Zale. What are you doing here at this hour?” she asked, relief coursing through her. Of course it was her boss. They were both notorious for working late hours.
Her boss appeared in the doorway, a hand on the firearm at his hip and wearing a smile broad enough to show a flash of his fangs. “I’m here to find out who tripped my security alarm. Care to explain what you’re doing rattling around so late? I thought you went home hours ago. Hot date and all that.”
“Hot date went cold so I came here to do some work, and some thinking. Sorry I made you come down here. I didn’t know you’d upped the security protocols.”
He entered the workshop and joined her at the far end. “With everything going on around the station right now, I thought a little extra security couldn’t hurt. I only left a little while ago, so it was no problem coming back. Do I need to have a word with those men of yours? I’m sure I warned you not to get involved with those two.”
“You can have a word with them after I do. We’re working through a few things. I guess I’m working through a few things, myself.”
“You okay? You look like you’ve got something on your mind. I’m a neutral party, if you feel like talking.”
That made her laugh. Zale wasn’t even close to being neutral. He had her back from the first day she started to work here. Until recently, he was her only friend on the station.
“Remember the day Dash got hurt? You and I had a conversation about secrets and punishing ourselves,” she asked.
He nodded. “I remember. My offer still stands. You tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.”
She blew out a soft breath and decided to trust her instincts. He deserved to know why she was leaving.
“You were right. I was doing penance down here. During the Resource Wars, I worked for Nobar Tech. I was assigned to a hospital ship, and it was my job to repair their cyborgs and send them back into battle. Sometimes I conducted experimental upgrades, too. I thought I was working on machines, but then one day two of my charges refused a direct order. Instead of letting go of me, one of them kissed me. They told me the truth about who, and what they really were. I quit the next day, and I never knew what happened to the men who entrusted me with their secret. Not until you sent me to repair one of them.”
His pure black eyes widened. “No way. That’s why things between the three of you heated up so fast?”
“Yeah. I thought they died in the war. They thought the same about me. You know how it was back then. Hostile takeovers, data being deliberately wiped, servers destroyed. We all moved on, and then the tech who filled their heads with experimental hardware and abandoned them suddenly reappears. It’s been a little intense.”
Low rumbles of laughter filled the workshop. “You always did have a talent for understatement. They were the reason you swore not to work on another living system, huh? You felt guilty about what you’d done to them.”
“I did. Today, Dr. Jefferies offered me a job at her medical center. She wants me to work on the cyborgs with her. She’ll teach me what I need to know to be a medic, and I’ll teach her about cybernetic implants and medi-bots.”
Zale sighed. “I always knew you had too much talent to stay for long. This means I’ll have to break in yet another tech who is going to hate the job and get buried under the workload within a week or two. Fraxx, you have no idea how much I’m going to miss you.”
“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
He shrugged. “I was never good at motivating employees with kindness. Bellowing and intimidation always worked better.”
She reached out to swat his arm playfully. “You’re really not that intimidating.”
He growled and flashed his fangs. “Hey! No reason to be insulting. Especially when you still haven’t told me the real reason why you were down here.”
“I did. I told you, I was thinking.”
“Uh huh. What part of your cognitive process required a cleaner bot arriving outside your workshop door less than twenty minutes before you did?” He made a show of looking around. “I don’t see one around here, anywhere, but my security logged one. Funny thing, it wasn’t programmed to clean this level.”
Fraxx. “You’re better off not knowing,” she said, hoping that he’d leave it alone.
“Probably. That isn’t going to stop me from asking again.”
Zale folded his arms across his massive chest, and she could swear he settled deeper into his stance. He looked determined enough to withstand being rammed by a battle cruiser. Clearly, she wasn’t getting out of here without telling him the truth, or at least part of it.
“I was looking for information on the cyborgs. Something was done to them before they were released, and I was hoping I could find out more about what was done, and how to reverse it.”
“And did you find it? Judging by your solemn expression when I came in, I’m betting you did. You’re right. I’d be better off not knowing any of this. Since it’s too late for that, why don’t you tell me what you found.”
“The corporations made the female cyborgs infertile before releasing them. All of them, Zale. They can’t have children unless they’re given some kind of antidote, and so far, Dr. Jeffries hasn’t been able to pin down exactly what they were given, never mind how to reverse it. Tonight I managed to find the files that show what was done, and how to undo it.”
Instead of looking surprised, Zale nodded. “I told them it was only a matter of time before someone figured it out. They didn’t listen, obviously. They were still thinking about the cyborgs as machines, not human beings, when they made that decision.
“I told you if you shared your secrets, I’d share mine. It’s my turn for confession.” Zale relaxed some, leaning his big bulk up against the worktable, which shifted slightly beneath his weight. “I’ve worked for Astek a long time. More than a decade, now. My specialty was nanotech. I designed the medi-bots that kept their organic elements functional.” He winced. “I hate it when the old terms creep in. Org
anic elements. Like they weren’t living beings at all. Just machines with organic bits tacked on.”
“I know.” She reached out and placed her hand on his arm. It was easy to forget that she wasn’t the only one who felt guilty about what they’d done during the wars. Everyone who was part of the war had to come to terms with the revelation the cyborgs weren’t machines, and some of them had suffered at the hands of people who hadn’t know better.
“You might want to save your sympathy until the end of my story. I’m not sure I deserve it.”
She left her hand on Zale’s arm. “I just confessed to stealing data from our employer. I promise you, I’m in no place to be judging anyone.”
“I know all about what’s in those files. When the war ended, and the victors were finished picking over the carcasses of their enemies, they had to decide what to do with the cyborgs. Their neat, tidy, bloodless war and humane disposal plans all went to hell when the cyborgs made it known they weren’t machines at all. They had to release their creations, but the corporations couldn’t risk letting the medi-bots finding their way into the human population. If any of the women got pregnant, there was a ninety-seven percent chance that their medi-bots would bond with the fetus and become part of them. Meaning any children they had would be born with nanotech we couldn’t remove or deactivate. The men could reproduce without a problem, but the women…” He sighed and shook his head.
“That’s when I got involved. They wanted a way to permanently block fertility, but it had to be something subtle, and it had to be something the medi-bots couldn’t detect, or they’d filter it out. Everyone on the team voiced some level of concern about the plan. It didn’t sit right with us, but orders were orders, and there were some pretty grim alternatives on the table if we didn’t come up with something.”
“You did that to them? Ended any hope of them ever having a family?”
“It was better than sentencing them to death. Believe me, there were some very powerful people who thought that was the way to go. It was the lesser evil. That doesn’t make it any easier for me to sleep at night, but it’s the truth.”
