“The Robotics Faction wants to kill me?” Talia repeated. “Just me? Why?”
“Something about bad genes.”
So she’d lost the genetic lottery. Somehow.
And robots had ordered Logen to kill her. Through his stents. She didn’t even know it was possible.
Was the penknife trying to kill her?
It sat in her hands like a dumb, ordinary penknife.
Her head hurt. “Why would a military company have something in their soldiers’ brains that could be controlled by someone else?”
“Obviously that was unplanned,” Vi said.
“Take them out!”
“Stents can’t be taken out,” Navina piped up. “Your brain grows up around them, using them to grow in new directions, and you’d end up with severe brain damage.”
“They can only be shut off,” Vi said. “Which is what we’re going to do to Logen’s at the solar station.”
If Logen had been mind-controlled by the Robotics Faction to kill her, then his body had moved on its own.
She had succumbed to a murder she had never seen coming. Which meant if she let down her guard, he could attack her again.
She could never, ever, ever trust him again.
“I’m sorry, Talia.”
“It’s fine.” She was used to trusting no one.
The pity in Vi’s silent gaze weighed down on Talia like heavy gravity. She was not a weak woman. She was not a victim. And if the Robotics Faction wanted her dead, she was going to give them a hell of a fight.
“Whatever he did isn’t his fault,” Vi said. “But it’s better not to let him know that we know. He could still be transmitting back to the Robotics Faction.”
“And the court martial?”
“A lie. It’s what he’d be charged with if his stents actually had failed and he committed the crime.”
So that was the other confusion for her.
“You’re saying that his stents are still working, and have been, the whole time?”
The women nodded. Iren puttered around the room, listening but not participating.
“But I got the sense that he thinks they stopped working.” No, more than that. “I think they stopped working. I do.”
Iren stopped. “Well, then, why did he kill you?”
Everyone looked at her.
“He’s already a criminal,” she said slowly.
“Aw, come on.” Iren tossed his box at the door, rested his hip against her pallet, and threw his beefy arm around her shoulders. “That guy’s only human when you’re in the room. The instant you leave, he’s a hunk of ice.”
“A crime of passion can strike at any time.”
“Passion? That guy?” Iren laughed in her face.
Navina and Vi traded amused smiles.
“It’s possible,” she insisted.
“There’s no arguing with you.” Iren patted her and let go.
“Don’t argue with a spotter,” Navina scolded.
He hefted his box. “Far be it from me to interfere.”
Her head hurt again.
“I need to review the holos,” she said. “And I need to go to Base Two. And if his stents really are still working, the obvious accomplice is anyone else with a stent.”
Iren, Navina, and Vi traded glances.
“So it’s obvious, like I said,” Talia said. “Check everyone’s files for prison time.”
“It’s not so easy,” Vi said. “We don’t have access to the classified files. Sirus had all of those.”
And now he was gone fishing. “Bad Company has a CO.”
“He’s only in charge of us on this assignment, so he didn’t get access to our permanent files before we left. After Logen’s incident, he put in a request for ours weeks ago.”
“And?”
“We got yours and Logen’s so far.”
She rubbed her head. “I know we’re only Hazard Zero, but what the fuck? Is anyone even listening to us at the solar station?”
“Well, that’s the other reason to check on the resupply drone.”
Talia dropped her hand. “Base Two is still an obvious place to investigate.”
“We don’t have the manpower.”
“Just let me and Daz go.”
Navina bit her lip.
Iren shifted.
Vi took a deep breath and held Talia’s gaze.
“What now?” Talia demanded.
“The re-supply drone wasn’t empty.”
“It was chock full of samples,” Talia guessed. “And equipment, since we’re heading out.”
“And your restore point,” Vi said.
No.
But of course it was.
“Those things are impervious to everything.” Her voice trembled. Dammit. “They’re indestructible.”
“Stay in Medical.”
“That’s where they’d—”
“Please remember a mysterious, all-powerful organization of non-human robots is trying to kill you. They’ve already infiltrated the brain of your closest teammate. You don’t know where they’ll turn up next.” She leaned forward, dark eyes glittering with deadly intensity. “They might come here personally to kill you.”
Talia clenched the blanket.
But she couldn’t let Vi see her fears or the smoky second would order something even more draconian. “If they want to waste the fuel coming to the ass-end of space just to cap one unlikeable woman, they’ve got more messed up priorities than the whole mercenary corps.”
“Aw.” Iren hefted his box onto his bulging shoulder. “You’re likeable.”
“Like a hellbender,” Navina agreed. “Or one of those adorable poison-tipped spiky lizards.”
“Thanks,” Talia said dryly. “You guys are the best. Too bad you won’t be around to keep the jokes coming.”
Or to keep an eye on her.
Vi narrowed slightly and leaned back. “Pleasant dreams. In Medical.”
So, Talia laid awake until midnight.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Logen. Beaten, bloodied, tied to a too-small chair.
The coldness of his face on those interview holos. The deadness in his expression looked exactly like Rezo the instant he reached for her with punishment in his mind.
They looked the same.
She shuddered.
Why think of this now? She had suppressed all those memories, and now they had started welling up, forcing her to look at them and remember.
She focused on the more important question. Who was Logen working with?
He was deadly. Dangerous, with a gorgeous lethal beauty.
Everyone knew she was confined to Medical. One well-placed missile and the whole wing would disappear into a crater. And her along with it.
Logen told her not to close her eyes...
After the roar of the Upstairs shuttle faded away, she woke Daz out of a dead sleep. “My med line is bothering me.”
He stared at her, bleary in the darkness. “You want a sedative?”
“Turn off my heart monitor so I can unplug it.”
He scratched his head. “Are you getting me in trouble?”
“Vi will never know.”
He shrugged and showed her how to deprogram the all-base alarm. “So if she asks me, I can say honestly that I did not turn it off.”
She followed his directions. The heart monitor turned off.
He tapped something over her head and returned to his bunk.
Her neck started to burn. “What was that?”
He spoke through a yawn in the darkness. “Go to sleep.”
Fucking sedative.
She yanked out the tube, ignoring the stab of pain and the hot warmth of blood, and lay with her legs in the air until the light-headedness passed. Then she realized she was still leaking blood all over the place.
Whatever.
She stuck a piece of pressure tape over the hole to keep from leaking out any more, climbed into her exoskeleton, and floated to the officer’s read
y room.
It was locked.
Since her identifying comm badge was still confiscated, she couldn’t force it open. She was probably unauthorized anyway.
She headed to the mess hall. The reprocessor refused to dispense liquid, and she was too weak to argue with it. She had to wait until an insomniac biologist slammed a palm into it several times, and got it working again, before she floated over and got a coffee.
Alone with her thoughts, she sipped the bitter liquid and studied the shadows.
Maybe they did loom, dark and sinister.
A long, low cackle of a deadly dinozoid seared across the dark night sky.
Don’t close your eyes.
He’d said it many times. Most recently on an archaeological dig, where raiders had tried to take out their clients, and their valuables.
On their last attempt, they lulled everyone into a false sense of security and then attacked while they were unarmed and unprepared, in the mess hall.
Well, except for herself and Logen.
As their acid bomb broke apart and oozed through the hall, sending the others running, he grabbed his backup pistol out of his jacket and started shooting randomly. She stopped running, jammed on her oculars, and leapt from table to table to reach Logen. He covered her to her last leap, when she crashed into him, and then he steadied her on the table with a powerful arm around her waist. She synced to his weapon and lit the targets, and he rotated with her in his arms, like a dance, firing on her marks.
Then, his powerful biceps had flexed to cushion her from the harsh kick of the old weapon. His iron-hard thighs had steadied her, anchoring them to the acid-smoking table. And his cut jaw rested lightly against her forehead, rough and sexy, taut as they moved in tandem.
With two split-second sweeps, the assault failed, stopped by the two of them.
All in a day’s work.
Their employers had looked at him with awe, and at his stents with unconcealed fear, but she had only experienced an onslaught of raw physical desire. Here was a man she could anchor to. Here was a man who, at the height of danger, held her close and shot her targets. Here was a man she could trust.
“How did you know?” their employers had asked him, eyeing the stents. “How’d you know they’d come back one more time?”
But he didn’t know. He was just prepared, and when it was the two of them, she’d complimented him on his preparedness.
His expression had gone blank, which for him, was a relaxation from the perpetual scowl that had been his default emotionless face.
“I’ve got a good Spot,” he said, making the desire pulse hotter. “We’re not out of this yet. Don’t close your eyes.”
Damn him. Damn him, damn him.
Talia rested in the nearly empty mess hall, watching the darkness climb into dawn, and heard the jungle wake up with screams.
The Bad Company CO saw her before the first meal. “What’s this about leaving Medical?”
“I want to visit Base Two.”
He stared at her like she was crazy.
“I want to gather evidence.”
“For what? He acted alone.”
“Vi said—”
“You didn’t get anything out of your Gun. Your restore point’s in question. No way in hell am I letting you off Base One.”
“Then can I review the holos?”
“No.”
“I might see something everyone else missed.”
The CO rested his lantern jaw on his big fist. His hand was healed, the knuckles shiny where new skin had been applied. Even though he had beaten Logen to get answers to protect her, she couldn’t help hating him. At least Vi had stopped the beatings.
“Unlocking the door takes seconds.”
“It’s locked because my team’s sensitive files are in there, and I can’t afford anyone to babysit you.”
“I’m not going to watch anything unrelated.”
“You’re not even a real mercenary yet.”
“What can it hurt?”
“It’s already a pain in my ass.”
“But—”
“Contact me after you pass your physicals. And get back to Medical.” He left.
She tightened all the muscles in her body, red and hot. She was naturally weak and had to put in twice as much effort to get strong.
Another reason she was so easy to kill.
Logen had said she must have fought. Damn right. She returned to Medical, started the physical therapy holos, and doubled down on her exercises.
Talia also persisted in bothering the Bad Company CO while the base was dismantled, generally increasing his ass-pains. She didn’t have a hell of a lot else to do but jump at every shadow, snarl at the civilian biologists, and hate herself for her weakness.
“My team’s rendezvousing with the damaged resupply drone today,” she said, while demonstrating that she could walk slowly now without the hover disk. “I have to spot for them.”
“Spot what? There’s only audio and it’s delayed by six minutes on the shitty slow-wave comm. Besides, they’re backed up by the main ship.”
“I’ll be one more pair of ears.”
“And, when jack shit happens, you’ll help yourself to those holos again.”
She wrapped her hand around the medical monitor cable tying her heart beat to the base’s alarm system.
“Fine. We’re almost loaded. Watch with my spotter.” He checked his chronometer. “There’s a fog storm coming. I’m sending up the biologists ahead of it, and Chaelee’s going with. You and your medic will come with the remainder of my team on the second trip. We’re getting the hell off this cursed zoo tonight.”
“I’m packed.”
“You’ve got two hours.”
She deactivated the system and tugged the monitor line free. “Thank you, sir.”
He met her eye. “Plenty of time to prove that criminal bastard’s irredeemably guilty.”
Chapter Five
She sat beside Chaelee in the dim officer’s ready room, studying evidence. Weather patterns, animal reports, ship sightings. Astrological signs.
“What’s this ridiculousness about the Robotics Faction?”
“We received a transmission about it the day after you died.” Chaelee played it.
“This is an emergency alert,” one of the mercenary company’s highly positioned generals proclaimed. “On Old Empire Date zero-six-zero-six, the Robotics Faction attacked without provocation the Antiata Hyeon home planet Seven Stars. They killed everyone in possession of a specific gene.”
One that Talia apparently had.
“Any soldier with a cybernetic stent is to be considered a potential hostile and sequestered immediately. The following sectors should avoid contact with all unknown ships.”
It listed their sector.
“And that’s it?”
“It came via an ancient communications technology and took days to arrive,” Chaelee confirmed. “We haven’t heard anything via our regular comms. That’s why there’s been no response to our request to send everyone’s classified files. Nothing from the solar station.”
“Are you sure the problem is with our comms?”
Chaelee laughed at her for even asking. “I think we’d know if the whole Antiata Conglomerate was under attack.”
Shitty Hazard Zero equipment.
“Funny, isn’t it?”
Talia was having trouble laughing. “What is?”
“The Robotics Faction wakes up one day and decides to wipe out everyone with this one mysterious gene. So, they activate Logen to kill you. Why didn’t they flip on the two hundred science androids we have stacked in the back storage building? That’d unleash the robocalypse.”
Fuck. She’d forgotten about those.
The biologists had tried them first, like usual, before being forced to pack them up and contract first Bad Company, and then also the Misfits, from the Antiata Deterrence Corporation.
“What is the Robotics Faction thinking?” Chaelee held
out her palms. “If they killed everyone at once, there would have been no one left around to request your restore point.”
True. “Well, they only care about killing my gene. Not everyone else’s.”
“What’s a little collateral damage? We’re only humans, so far as they’re concerned. They’re robots.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense. Why only you? Why right now? Why this planet?”
All good questions.
“Maybe the robots need everyone alive for some reason.”
“Like what?”
Okay, setting that question aside for the moment. “What if the Robotics Faction is going to use this planet as a base for taking over the solar system?”
Chaelee studied the maps. “They can’t get too near the wildlife unless they want to end up in something’s gullet.”
“But it could be done.”
“It would be easy to drop a couple of ships and hide somewhere. The fog is always dense in the Arctic.” She shook her head. “Why would they want to take over this solar system? There’s nothing here but us, a couple locked-down worlds, and a prison planet.”
“The prison planet would be full of people with stents.”
“But why... Oh.”
They came to the same conclusion at the same time. The Faction could be using this planet as a base to take over the prison planet. They could create an entire mind-controlled human army made up of ruthless convicts, under control of psychotic robot overlords.
Chaelee shivered, then shook her head. “They’d have to get through the Wardens first.”
True.
The only thing more terrifying than a prison planet was the aggressively trained, highly outfitted, entirely lethal cadre of Wardens policing the planet and its near space.
Talia saw nothing. She could see a pattern, but the pattern didn’t make any sense.
“What does everyone else think?” Talia asked. “Your Nav, or your Second, or your CO?”
“They’re all too busy packing up. Our next assignment is on sunny, civilized Vasso.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah, it’s about to get less so. The new mineral rights owners are descending on the current inhabitants. It’s hard to kick people out when the first squatters showed up ten generations ago. But at least it’s no jungle.”
Resurrection Heart: Robotics Faction - Cyborg Mercenaries Page 5
