Savage Planet Cyborg

by Cheyenne Hart

  "I am ready to serve," it said in that rustic drone, sounding like someone was bellowing through a megaphone on the other side of a wall of rushing water. It most certainly did not seem like it was completely ready to serve, as far as Simone could figure.

  Her head was starting to sting even more, now that the adrenaline from the initial confrontation was wearing off. But without any medical supplies, and in these dirty and unfamiliar conditions, there wasn't much hope in her heart that she could help the handsome alien cyborg who'd just been beaten to within an inch of his life. And even in better conditions, Simone wasn't sure how much use she'd be with a head injury of her own.

  That was something she planned to keep to herself though. If Simone was not going to be able to help keep him alive, she certainly did not want to let this violent and unstable woman know that. Her head was spinning as she was swept away by the vile woman, the knife held close to her the whole time. There was a whirring from the robot, and the thudding footsteps of the giant green man.

  Bree was silent, which was good at least. It wouldn't have been totally unlike her to start mouthing off, even knowing that she might have her neck broken as a consequence.

  They came up to a door. It looked very heavy and made of some kind of sturdy metal, almost like some kind of bunker, or something that the government would have built back on Earth. "What the fuck is this place?" asked the scarred leader. "Cyborg, this better not be a trap. Oh, of course you can't answer me." She chuckled at that, then walked up to the door and inspected it briefly. After thinking for some time, staring at the door like it was her worst enemy, Starota went over and dug in the leather bag that her unconscious enemy had carried with him.

  "I think this might do the trick."

  "What are you doing?" said Simone. Her voice was washed out and it was difficult to form the words. "Don't!" she cried out as she saw the grenade in the scarred woman's hand.

  "Move them all back to the crash lading spot—you go back down the tunnel too, Blood Bucket!" Starota yelled. She didn't wait for long, barely giving everyone enough time to move away, before she dropped the grenade and came running out to meet the others. There was a deafening silence as everyone waited for the thing to explode. No one, except for maybe the now unconscious cyborg, had any idea just how long the fuse in that grenade was, or how big the explosion would be. Assuming that the thing even still worked, of course.

  "I think it must have been a dud, boss," said the masked scent shifter named Drydee. "That thing must have been even older than—"

  There was a large boom from the interior of the tunnel, and a wave of swarming dust and smoke rushed forth, out into the open area where the pod had crashed.

  "Damn that was a hell of a rush!" shouted G'oll in a deep and honestly terrifying voice. He was as excited as a boy who'd just been given a whole bag of candy. "I would love to get some more of those things! Maybe we can steal some of those next, Starota?"

  "Yes, maybe we will look into that. They would be very useful, I can imagine. And if not useful, then plenty of fun! Now then, let's go see if that helped unlock the door."

  It did, and Simone was dragged along with Bree, the badly hurt cyborg man, and the tied up young woman, into some kind of facility. As the door swung open, what looked to be electrical lighting flickered on. A whirring sound also began and a gentle breeze started to blow. It must have been ventilation coming in from somewhere.

  "How can this place have power? This looks like a science research lab," Simone mumbled to herself as she was pushed through the door. It hadn't been destroyed by the blast, and could even still be closed behind the group as they all entered the area.

  It wasn't a huge space, but it did not look like the type of place one would find buried underneath a desert on an alien planet. Not that Simone had ever given any thought to what that might look like. It was shiny and everything seemed to be made of some kind of polished metal, thick glass, or a basically concrete.

  "You think you know something about this type of place?" Starota asked Simone. "And what about your smart ass little friend there?" she added, pointing at Bree who was still being quiet as instructed.

  "I think there might be some supplies here that I could use to keep your cyborg man alive," Simone answered.

  "Good," replied Starota, moving up really close to Simone and putting their faces too close together for comfort. Her breath smelled of death and it was easy to tell that she hadn't bathed in an awfully long time. "And you might want to fix yourself up too before you bleed out and fuck up my escape plan. You look like shit, girl. Why don't you try being more careful next time?" She laughed again, that sinister, twisted sound that was neither jovial nor truly evil. It was oddly detached, like someone with their mind in another place entirely had uttered it.

  They were shoved into a room that contained a bunch of medical supplies. "This must have been a first aid room," said Simone to Bree, who nodded but still didn't speak, even after the masked man and green giant had walked out of the small room and back into the larger facility area. They took the tied up young woman, who was starting to stir, with them.

  Starota stopped in the doorway, with her hand on the latch ready to close them in. "Now, make sure he doesn't die and don't cause me any trouble. I would love to slit your throats, or maybe I'll let Drydee have his way with you. Oh, you don't even want to know the kind of crude shit he'd have you doing. Got it?"

  "Yes, okay. Please, just let me take care of his injuries before it's too late."

  Starota slammed the door shut and the three of them were alone together.

  Bree walked over to the wounded man. "Do you suppose he's really a cyborg like they said? That would be the most incredible thing I've ever found. Even more so than finding these aliens, well, for me at least. But then again, I am an engineer. Oh… sorry, it's really not the time for this, right?"

  "I know you can't help yourself when you're around new technology, Bree. Let's just take a breath and see if we can keep this man—or machine, or both?—alive. What do you say?"

  "I will be the perfect assistant, and my hands are as nimble as any surgeon. Just tell me what you need done," said Bree. Her optimistic attitude was still unwavering, at least on the outside.

  That gave Simone a surge of confidence. Before, she'd looked at this man like he was some kind of super hero. Now, he was practically knocking on death's door and waiting for an answer. She had a flash back to her ex husband and how he had seemed to be getting better from his sickness. That was a stern reminder for her to keep this strictly professional, even if the cyborg did seem to recover. Never let yourself get attached again, she thought to herself.

  7

  -Jaxxon-

  "Oh, shit, he's waking up." That voice was angelic, like the gods themselves had come down and left a little piece of themselves in the form of a female.

  Jaxxon's vision was clouded at first as he opened his eyes. He was lying on a bed that reminded him of the one he had his routine examinations on before being sent out on a mission. Only, this one wasn't cold and made of metal. It was cushioned and actually quite comfortable. He had not had a regular bed like that since before his memories stopped, but it was nice. "What's going on?" he asked, knowing that it was a stupid question immediately.

  "Are you saying you have memory loss?" asked the beautiful blonde who stood before him. She smelled good, and Jaxxon wasn't even sure if he was capable of having his natural urges triggered by the scent of a woman. There were a lot of things about his living body that he didn't understand; no one did as far as he knew. The lovely woman brought a damn cloth that smelled of some kind of bitter alcohol up to his face, dabbing at his skin and making his fresh cuts and bruises echo the pain that he'd felt as they were inflicted upon him. Of course, this was just a minuscule stinging sensation, especially when compared to the extreme ass kicking he'd taken.

  "I can't believe he lived through that. I mean, that thing out there, he's ridiculously huge!" said the other woman,
Bree. "Don't you think it's incredible, Simone? He just has to be a cyborg like they said or he'd have been turned into a damn pancake under the force of those giant fists."

  "Simone," Jaxxon found himself whisper without really realizing he'd done so. Her name was exotic to his ears, not the type of thing any person he'd ever met was called. And it sounded so good in his brain, especially while he was looking at her. This was stupid, and he was just suffering from serious injuries or there was no way he would have been so taken with a random woman.

  Simone said turned to her friend and said, "Hey, Bree, can you please pass me that thing that looks like a stethoscope? I have no idea if I'm even looking for what I'd call a normal heart rate. But at least I can make sure it doesn't fluctuate too badly. We're going to need to take your shirt off. It's covered in blood anyway."

  He did take his shirt off, and threw it to the floor. Clothing was easily replaced, so he didn't need to worry about keeping that particular supply.

  "Wow, damn. Look at you! I mean, what if it's meant to fluctuate?" asked the brown haired woman, Bree. Judging from the way she'd asked and the faint hint of a smile on the corner of her lips, as well as the way her cheeks became flushed with warm, Jaxxon guessed that this was meant to be some kind of sarcastic joke.

  "My heart rate feels normal. If there was something major malfunctioning in my internal mechanisms, I would be aware of it. That is, unless my core was completely damaged. At least, that is what I remember being told a long, long time ago." Jaxxon readjusted himself in the bed and felt the soft mattress underneath his head as he pushed down into it. "Thank you for helping me."

  The brown haired one, Bree, started to talk again. "What? How can you understand us? I mean, I know why we can understand you. We have these honestly amazing little devices that we found inside the escape pod that we stole and used to escape from those disgusting—"

  "Bree!" interjected Simone.

  "What?"

  "I don't think this is really the time to be discussing the translators again."

  "Translators?" Jaxxon said. "That's what I have installed somewhere in this half-mechanical brain of mine. I've never come across a language on our planet that it didn't work with. I wouldn't have guessed that it would know yours. Where exactly are you from?"

  "We're from Earth," said Simone. She was standing close to his face, looking into his eyes. But it was strictly business to her, just like it would be for any good doctor. And although she was staring right into his eyes, it felt like she was just looking through him, or at a science experiment. That was how all those other doctors back at Baklofer treated him. Jaxxon's heart began to sink as he figured that this alien didn't want to think of him as a person, but just someone she had to try to fix so she could out of there. "Are you saying that the people who turned you into cyborg, have had contact with our home planet before?"

  He didn't honestly know, so he just shrugged and said, "That seems to be the case. There's no other logical explanation for this. I could ask you just as many questions as you must have." Jaxxon was also puzzled by the two women's back and forth banter. They seemed to be team members, or at least they were amiable coworkers. However, they were talking with the kind of abrupt familiarity that would be expected of family members or close friends. He'd never experienced that kind of relationship with any of the people who he dealt with back in the city. "Are you related, friends?" he asked.

  "No," Simone said. "Why do you ask that? And Bree, will you please pass me that stethoscope? You did offer to help here, right?"

  "Yes, boss," Bree answered with some serious attitude in her voice.

  Jaxxon said, "That's why. The way you two tell each other off—but you must be part of the same crew, of a space ship I assume. I do not remember seeing coworkers act so comfortable with each other. Then again, I guess I am officially considered property of the military, not even an employee or soldier technically…" he trailed off and was saddened at having to explain it that way to these two women who seemed so free of spirit. The way they looked at him with a mixture of confusion and pity only made that feeling worse.

  She was starting to move past the basic checking of vitals and patching up his cuts and scrapes. "This is going to need stitches. Is there anything I should know, like medical conditions, allergies?" Simone asked.

  "I don't suppose you come with a user manual, do you?" asked Bree with a cheeky note to her voice. She laughed a bit, but that seemed to just be a mask for her embarrassment after having said something inappropriate yet again. It was likely that she did that kind of thing a lot.

  "Sorry, but I don't know what 'alerjes' you're talking about. And no, I don't come with any instruction books, if that is what you mean. I have to tell you, I'm really old. I mean, I was made so long ago that no one in my city has records about who did the making."

  "What do you mean by 'made'? You're still human, I mean, not human. You're still…"

  "What species are you? That's what she's beating around the bush to find out, I'd say," interrupted Bree again. Her forwardness was actually refreshing when she wasn't using it to be annoying.

  "I'm a Bakloferian. We're cousins to a lot of different ethnic groups around the planet, but not so much different species as just, races. I'm not sure if this translator's picking up the right words. And no, I don't know who build it inside my brain, of course. It was there when I was converted into a cyborg. At least, I think so anyway." This was confusing. "Sorry," he said. "I'm not used to thinking about these types of things too much. I usually just have a job to do, and then I get rewarded for completed it before I go back to sleep."

  Simone had been checking his heart rate this entire time. "Well, you don't seem to be rising or falling in your heart rate, so I'm going to just hope that's a good thing. Now, can you tell me if you have any serious pains? I'll bet you have at least a few broken bones, and there could be some serious internal damage. It's just… you don't seem to be as badly hurt as you were being carried in here."

  "He actually looks better than I feel," said Bree with charm in her voice.

  "I'm fine," said Jaxxon. He went to get up. "I'll be ready to finish this mission as soon as I can figure out how to take these assholes out."

  "What?! You are not fine. I saw what happened to you out there! No one would be okay after that kind of a beating," said Simone. She placed her hand on his bare chest. The feeling of her slender, soft fingers on his hard—steel hard—pectoral muscles was invigorating. It started to make his mind spin, but there was definitely something going awry in his body. That vicious assault had harmed him, but he couldn't let this beautiful doctor know.

  If word were to get back to the General, or anyone else high up in the Bakloferian government, they would no doubt want to put him out of work. He had always been assured that retirement after he broke down would mean living out his days like any other normal, respected human. While Jaxxon didn't fear being shut down permanently—he was convinced that wasn't going to happen to him—he was terrified of not being needed anymore. Once people did not seek his skills to go on these dangerous missions, would they even bother with him?

  The thought of that made him feel cold all over, even more than he usually did. And he was sure that she'd noticed that. "Don't," he said, pushing her hand away.

  "What's wrong? And are you always at a reduced body temperature like that? It's so strange. You're still warm, but it's almost like I can sense something inside you that's keeping you from getting up to a regular human temperature."

  "Yeah, well, I'm not human. I never was, if that's the species of you and your friend here. Look, thanks for the patch up, but I am going to figure out how to trick these criminal scumbags and rescue that innocent girl before they do something horrible that can't be undone."

  "What's your problem? She just saved your life by stopping the bleeding and reviving you!" said Bree. Her swings of mood were seemingly random, but she did have a good point. Jaxxon was being an asshole. He knew it, and it made him f
eel like shit, but there was no way he would let these two get any more insight into how hurt he might be.

  "Just don't touch me, alright? Thank you." He got up and reached for his shirt, but the thing already stank and was covered in crud. He decided to leave it off.

  -Simone-

  It was damn hard trying to focus on being a doctor when such a delicious hunk of man was half naked on a table in front of her. Simone caught herself reflecting about this very fact as she placed her hand on Jaxxon's chest. That was when he suddenly started acting like a different person, as though a switch inside his brain had just flipped itself and gone into asshole mode.

  Jaxxon was now standing there with no shirt on, only making it even harder for Simone to concentrate on a straight train of thoughts. He was a perfect specimen of the male form. There were some differences in how he looked compared to a human man back on Earth. For starters, he seemed to be more muscular, and just all around bigger. He must have been nearly seven feet tall, but he was also in proportion around the rest of his firm body. Just thinking about what he might look like without the pants on as well, it was too much for Simone to deal with in her flustered and weakened state.

  More to that, she was actually convinced that he might really be part machine. Even though the very prospect of it seemed preposterous, there was no other explanation for how he was able to heal so quickly. "Maybe all of your people are like you, super strong, quick like you were out there, and… the rest," Simone said. She was almost going to say something like 'and build like a sex god from outerspace,' but her quick wit and natural professionalism caught the foolish words before they could pass through the filter between her brain and her mouth.

  "You know that evil bitch who's out there right now, probably trying to think of something horrible she can do to her prisoner without reducing her value in trade or ransom by killing her? She's the same race as I am. You might have figured that if you weren't so scared back there. That's understandable, for sure, and it's also hard to tell with all those scars all over her face."