by Tamsin Ley
“I have considered those alternatives and find the risks acceptable. Your sister has been without my biometric input for fifty-six days, eleven hours, and thirty-two minutes. My calculations—”
The comm buzzed, and Attie nearly jumped out of her skin. “Shit. Quiet now, Twerp.”
Turning off the water, she tucked the AI into her waistband and stepped out of the bathroom before answering. “Attie Swan here.”
A deep male voice filtered through the speakers, filling her cabin. “Corporal Swan, you are assigned to level three today. New credentials are waiting at the checkpoint.”
“Yes, sir,” Attie said automatically, throat tight. She hadn’t recognized his voice, but the administrative pool still had her on temp duty, filling in wherever she was needed.
The slight static of the open comm cut off, leaving Attie in silence. She remained still for a moment, wondering about her new assignment. Level three was where the ship’s top-secret projects were housed; even when she’d been the admiral’s personal assistant, she hadn’t had access to that area. She put her palm flat against the AI at her waist. It was likely to start talking at exactly the wrong moment if she took it with her. But leaving it hanging around in a desk drawer sounded unwise, as well.
She moved toward her closet to change out of her damp tunic. As she pulled a new uniform over her head, her gaze caught on the recessed light fixture overhead. Marlis used to hide small things inside the light fixture of their room when they were kids. It seemed like the perfect place to stash Twerp until she was more certain about what to do. Prying the fixture loose, she eyed the tiny space behind it. The whole band wouldn’t fit, so she popped the black AI disk free and wedged it inside. “Stay quiet until I get back, Twerp.”
“Please, do not leave—”
“I said hush,” Attie hissed. Marlis had always complained the AI was mouthy, and now Attie understood why. “Don’t say another word until I tell you to.”
Twerp buzzed against her fingers in acknowledgement.
Attie pressed the fixture into the ceiling again and tossed the empty band into her desk drawer. Then she took a deep breath and set off for level three.
The ship's corridors were busy with the shift change as she hurried to the lift. She danced around a maintenance droid and pushed through a group of cadets blocking the hall. It wouldn’t do to be late to a new assignment, especially if it could be a way out of the admin pool and back onto the corporate ladder. An assignment to level three had to be a promotion, right?
She stepped off the lift onto level three and faced an empty corridor. Her skin prickled with goosebumps; she seldom saw a corridor on this ship that was completely empty. It only makes sense, she told herself. Few people have access.
The walls were brushed metal, not painted like those in the rest of the ship, and it somehow felt ominous. Steeling her spine, she moved toward the single, unmarked door at the end of the hall, footsteps echoing against the metal deck. She pressed her palm against a glowing blue biometric security panel next to the door, heart pounding in her ears. For some reason, she half-expected alarms to blare. The door slid aside and she let out a relieved breath.
A man in a solid black security uniform with no visible rank manned a desk just inside. Holo screens cycled through security footage of various rooms, while behind him sat closed doors marked with acronyms she didn’t recognize. He looked up, examining her uniform with an arched eyebrow. “Can I help you?”
She saluted. “Attie Swan, reporting for duty.”
He returned his gaze to the nearest monitor and tapped in her name. His eyebrows shot upward. “New NIU Consort?” He shook his head and opened a drawer to pull out a folded stack of clothing. “You don’t look the type, but whatever.”
Consort? She thought back to the list of positions she’d applied for on the ship, but couldn’t remember that one. Was it a code word for some secret project? She lifted her chin, determined to show she could obey orders and not ask questions. This job—whatever it was—was finally her chance to prove herself. “I’m with the administrative pool.”
“Great.” He thrust the clothing at her. “Put that on.”
Standing, he turned to the wall behind him and popped open what looked like a medical kit.
Attie shook out the thin orange skirt and sleeveless top that looked like it would barely cover her midriff. The letters NIU were imprinted on the back of the shirt in blue and edged the bottom of the skirt. The thing looked more like something a cantina waitress would wear than a uniform. “Is this standard issue?”
When she looked up, he stood next to her with a hypodermic injector. “Standard as it gets. Feel free to dress it up if you like.”
Before she could protest, he’d pressed the hypo to her shoulder. The slight pressure of the injection sent a chill over her skin, quickly replaced by heat. A wave of vertigo made the deck feel like it was tilting under her feet. “What was that?”
“Little something to take the edge off.” He leaned close to her face, breath fanning her skin as he looked into her eyes. Apparently satisfied, he stepped back.
“I—I think there's been some mistake,” said Attie, her words feeling thick. Her legs felt weak and her head swam as if she’d been drinking. “You need to check your files. Who issued my transfer?”
“Someone higher up the chain of command than you.” He returned to his desk and tapped a few keys, then waved a hand at something behind her. “Change over there.”
She glanced over her shoulder. A glimmering privacy screen now blocked off the far corner of the room. Feeling like she was moving in slow motion, she returned her attention to the man, then down at the black admin uniform she currently wore.
“I suggest you hurry.” He put a hand on her shoulder and turned her toward the privacy screen, patting her butt to urge her forward. “You’ll pick last if you’re late, and no one wants to be paired with Rust.”
Paired with rust? What does that even mean? Like an automaton, she shuffled behind the screen and shucked out of her tunic. Dropping it onto the chair, she held up the sleeveless orange top. The fabric was a little stretchy and very thin. What kind of uniform is this? She slid her arms into it and pulled it closed over her chest. A single snap held it together in front, dipping low at the neckline and riding high over her midriff.
Hoping the skirt would be more modest, she shimmied it over her uniform slacks. The hem came to just above her knees. She debated leaving her pants on, then pressed her lips together. She hadn’t risen in the Syndicorp ranks by disobeying orders. This could be part of a test. A way to see how well she would behave under pressure. She would do as told for now and talk to her superior later, after she’d proved herself.
She slid out of her pants and folded them neatly along with her tunic, laying them on the chair. Stepping out from behind the screen, she saluted, feeling silly in the skimpy outfit. “Ready for duty.”
The security officer swept his gaze over her and nodded. “Pretty thing like you is going to be popular. This way.”
He opened a door marked NIU, and she followed unsteadily down a hall toward a door flanked by two armed guards in full combat gear. The mirrored face plates of their helmets reflected the harsh overhead lighting, but she could feel their gazes on her as she passed between them. Inside the room, a woman wearing an orange uniform like Attie’s slouched on a plush chair, long bare legs crossed at the ankles. An empty chair waited beside the woman, and gauzy curtains hung from the ceiling, which was lit in decorative scrolling panels of light. The room itself was split into six semi-private alcoves filled with all sizes of cushions in a variety of colors. Another closed door waited on the opposite wall.
What a strange waiting room. Attie turned to ask her escort what happened next and discovered he’d already retreated, the door closing into a flat panel with no obvious way to open it from this side.
Deep in her mind, she knew she should be terrified, but whatever drug she’d been given really did take the edge
off, leaving her surprisingly calm, if a little unsteady on her feet. She wobbled toward the empty chair and sank gratefully onto its soft cushion.
The woman turned her head and gave Attie a once-over. She was around the same age, with liquid brown eyes and short brown hair curling slightly below her ears. The orange shirt strained to remain closed across the woman’s ample breasts, and her perfume smelled like sweet ginger. The woman would’ve been stunning except for an old yellowing bruise on one cheek.
“Oh, thank the stars they finally got another girl in here,” the woman said, her words slightly slurred.
Attie wanted to extend a hand, but it seemed like too much effort, so she just said, “I’m Attie Swan.”
“Claudia Maxwell.” The brunette thrust her chin toward the door she was facing. “They should be here any minute.”
“Who?” Attie glanced at the door. “What are we doing here?”
Claudia frowned. “You don’t know? How much are they paying you?”
“Paying me? I don’t understand.”
“Hazard pay. Sometimes the cyborgs get a bit rough. I don’t think most of them intend to. Except Rust. He can be a bit of a bully, but the others try to keep him in line.”
Stomach churning, Attie now noticed the mottled bruises covering Claudia’s knees. What sort of top-secret project was this?
Before she could ask another question, the door opened and several broad-shouldered men poured through the door. Four were human, but there was also a saluqan with purple veins glowing beneath his skin and a dark-skinned enayshuan with prominent facial ridges. Each of them had at least one visible cybernetic implant; an exposed metal faceplate over one side of a jaw, polymer bones and tendons where an arm should be, a mechanical foot sticking out below the hem of loose-fitting pants.
A red-haired human shot forward and picked Attie up with both hands, his grip like a vise around her biceps. “I’ll go first.” He held her as if she weighed nothing, carrying her to one an alcove. “This one's going to be feisty. I can tell.”
“Put me down.” Attie kicked, only then realizing her feet were no longer on the floor. Her toes met his very hard shins. She flinched—he didn’t.
Over her captor’s shoulder, she saw the enayshuan move toward them. He clamped his hand firmly on top of the redhead’s shoulder. “No, Rust. You’re the reason we were down to a single Consort. I’m trained in the art of pleasure. Let me go first.”
“It’s my turn to be first, Emilryde.” The redhead—Rust—scowled, dropping his gaze to Attie’s breasts. “Last time I didn’t even get a turn before Dollard ended the session.” His grip tightened on her arms, forcing a gasp from Attie’s throat.
A human with dark hair going silver at the temples came to stand beside him. “Put her down, Rust. You go last, and that’s that.”
Rust lowered her feet to the cushions and continued pressing her down until she was forced to her knees. “We can go at the same time. I want her mouth. You two can fight over the other end.”
Attie found herself staring at his bulging crotch. The very obvious length of an erection through his gray pants made her insides quake in terror. No way in hell was she putting her mouth or any other part of her body on that. Screw following orders.
Somewhere outside the alcove she heard Claudia’s throaty laugh and the mumbling of other men’s voices. How could the woman be remotely okay with this? No amount of hazard pay could make Attie want to do this. Twisting, she tried to get away.
The cyborg knotted one hand into her hair, holding her in place.
“Let me go!” Scalp burning, she reached up and clawed at his wrist.
Impervious to her nails, he reached for the drawstring at his waistband with his free hand.
Helpless, Attie screamed. These men—these cyborgs were about to gang rape her.
And there was no way she could stop it.
Chapter 3
Doug sat on the steel exam table with a hardline attached to his cranial port. Syndicorp had assigned a mission, and as usual, the doctor chose Doug for the job. Usually, he didn’t mind, but today Attie would be in the Consort chamber, and his fellow cyborgs had already departed for rec time. His imagination kept thinking of Attie stripped naked and pinned to the floor by the other cyborgs.
He quickly shielded that thought. The dampening fields were down, but the hardline let the doctor see everything Doug was doing; a skilled tech could even extract threads of Doug’s thoughts if he wasn’t careful.
Bypassing a firewall, he tunneled into a posungi Matriarch’s personal feed. Syndicorp wanted to guide the government’s response to an emerging coup on the posungi home planet.
The tech sitting at the monitor next to him raised pale eyebrows. “You’re remarkably fast today.”
Doug continued working without responding, wanting to complete the job so he could leave. Before the hardline had been attached, he’d managed to send a transmission to Benjy, one of the other human test subjects. Protect her. Benjy wasn’t exactly a friend—Doug didn’t have friends—and not knowing if the other cyborg would heed his request was killing him.
Dollard leaned over the tech’s shoulder, black hair gleaming in the lab’s harsh light, and examined the monitor. “What’s that?”
Fuck. The doctor was getting suspicious. He once more shunted thoughts about Attie aside and focused.
“You want me to back it up?” the tech asked.
“No. It looks like he’s into the core processor already.”
Doug had never let on just how lightning quick he could be, keeping the doctor unaware of his true cyber-sensitive potential. Even the other cyborgs had no idea. Too many times he’d made the mistake of trusting someone only to be betrayed.
“Target located,” Doug said aloud. He planted a code in the Matriarch’s polycom that would lead her to blame a particular faction Syndicorp wanted eradicated. This job was more political than usual, but right now Doug honestly didn’t care whether he was sabotaging a start-up competitor or performing cyber-espionage for a backwater colony. He just needed to be released from the hardline, and soon.
“Record time,” the tech said with an appreciative chuckle.
Dollard pointed at one line on the screen. “Back that up.”
Doug’s heartbeat kicked into overdrive, and he resisted the urge to take a peek at what had caught the doctor’s attention. This was a normal job, he told himself, hoping the thought came through to the monitor.
Straightening, the doctor turned to the biometric scanner tracking Doug’s vitals. “Your respiration is stressed. When was your last medical assessment?”
Thinking quickly, he replied, “The anomaly is due to a new algorithm I employed to improve my access speed.” At least he had an excuse for why he’d been able to complete the task in record time. “I’ll work on improvements.”
“Why didn’t you mention that when we started?” The doctor let out a breath, pursing his pale lips. He scowled toward the technician. “Get the details. I have to check in at the cloning lab.”
With that, Dollard pivoted and marched past the armed guards through the exit, white tails of his lab coat fluttering. The moment the door swished closed, Doug detached the hardline from his head.
“Hold on,” the tech complained, lurching out of his chair.
Doug stood, towering over the smaller man. “I sent the algorithm to your computer. I’m eager to join the others. If you would please, open the door.”
The tech scuttled along behind him as Doug strode past a bank of cryopods toward the Consort Chamber.
“What’s gotten into you?” The tech waved a hand over the door’s security scanner and the door whirred open, revealing a short corridor with a single door at the other end. “You’re not usually one for companionship.”
“The task has tired me,” Doug lied. “I need relaxation.” With that, he strode down the short hallway to the other door, which opened automatically. What he saw on the other side made his blood turn to fire.
A scream tore from Attie’s throat as she clawed at the hand knotted in her hair. Her scalp burned as the cyborg jostled her, his other hand freeing the knot holding his pants up. She struggled to remember her combat training—her sister would’ve handed this guy his ass by now. But Attie had never excelled at the physical aspects of her training. She’d gone into admin for a reason. Go for the balls, Marlis’s voice whispered in her head.
Clenching her hands into fists in front of her, Attie lunged forward, driving her knuckles upward into his crotch.
He grunted and let go of her hair.
She tumbled forward, catching herself on one elbow. Pain lanced up her arm to her shoulder.
“Fucking bitch!”
“Cut it out, Rust!” someone shouted.
She clambered upright to see the dark-haired cyborg deflecting a blow Rust aimed at his face, while the saluqan grappled with Rust’s other arm. The redhead shrugged off the saluqan and pummeled the dark-haired cyborg backward. From the other side of the room, a big blond man clomped over to enter the fray, while Claudia gaped at the commotion from the alcove across from her.
Attie pushed to her feet, heart nearly stopping as Rust turned his attention to her once more. She swore steam poured out of his ears as he took a menacing step toward her.
Then a man she hadn’t noticed before stepped in and clamped a metallic hand around Rust’s throat.
As if a curtain had dropped, the fight stopped cold.
The blonde guy muttered, “What’s he doing here?”
The saluqan’s veins pulsed iridescently beneath his dark purple skin.
“Take it easy, now,” said the older man who’d offered to go first.
The new cyborg wasn’t the tallest of them, but somehow he was the most imposing. One side of his face was a dull gray metal, complete with a glowing green cybernetic eye. Beneath his loose clothing, it seemed that much of his body was formed from hard, angular pieces. Every inch of him exuded strength. As if to prove that fact, he slowly lifted Rust off the floor by his throat.
