She tore down the dead-end aisles, reached the window to the back of the mess hall, and backtracked. Where the hell was he? Where—
There he was. Still, on the ground.
Her oculars flipped to highlight the atmosphere. Three flammable tanks of dinozoid tranquilizers hissed next to his body. Dinozoid tranquilizer was heavier than oxygen and the two layers stuck together like oil and water. He was below the water line.
She started for him.
A hand grabbed her helmet.
She spun.
A foreign weight settled onto her back. She kept spinning. Only flashes of color and shadow darted away from the corner of her frantic eyes; oculars picked them out where she would have failed.
An arm reached around her neck and locked her into a choke hold.
Her suit emitted a warning sign. External pressure on the neck plate exceeded critical thresholds. In another few seconds, it would crush her trachea.
There. Her oculars picked out a reflection in the commark screen against the wall. Through her terror, she saw Rezo’s shadow strangling her.
Terror gripped her.
No.
Talia leveled her gun over her shoulder and squeezed the trigger.
The laser cut through her attacker, shooting sparks that winked out just before they touched the flammable gas. The robot thing let go of her neck and swung below the laser. She released the trigger before she cut herself.
The robot grabbed her barrel and bent the metal.
She threw it.
Her strength-assists launched the robot across the mess hall and into a wall of boxes, burying him in debris.
She dropped to Logen.
He’d taken off his glove, and his suit had sucked the gas right in.
First step, drain the tranq. Second step, get his heart restarted. Third step, make him breathe in oxygen.
The boxes toppled. A crazed robot, forehead half-melted and face mangled, crawled out of the wreckage and across the floor at them. Sparks spattered like electric blood, dripping inches from the deadly flammable gas.
Correction.
She grabbed Logen, swung his bulk across the concrete like he weighed nothing, and flung him out the back window.
His body sailed out, heavy armor and all.
She ran after him and leapt.
Something caught her ankle and yanked her back inside.
She went down hard, crashing into the cement and smacking her faceplate. A small chip flew off but the seal remained intact.
Behind her, the robot grabbed onto a metal pylon. It yanked her backward. Her suit scraped along the floor.
She tried to roll to face her attacker.
It held her down.
She gasped, frustration weakening her. How could it be so strong? It wasn’t even a full body.
It dragged her again.
Her metal strength-assists hissed against the concrete, friction rising in the incendiary gas.
The robot grabbed the back of her neck and slammed her face into the ground. Her helmet pinged, protesting around the weakened area. It slammed her again, and a third time. The clear alloy turned white as though it were about to crumble.
Her breath came in short gasps.
She couldn’t win against it. She lost her gun. She had nothing.
Rezo—no, the robot—clamped onto her forearm. His dominant arm wrapped around her neck and squeezed her life out. She arched frantically. Her vision turned black. Her breath left her body. No one would save her. She would finally die.
I think you’re the strong one.
Beneath the blackness was a bright burning ball of fury.
Rezo was dead.
No legless metal asshole was turning her into a corpse. She was a fucking mercenary now.
The robot let go of the pylon to strangle her with both hands.
She jack-knifed and pounded it into the concrete.
It let go.
She jumped up.
It jumped after her.
She turned midair and kicked its sparking face into the wall commark.
The screen fell in a shatter of sparks into the gas.
The explosion blew her backward out the window.
She landed on the hill next to Logen, cushioned by the gravity assists in the suit so she didn’t lose her breath.
Yes.
“I am not dying for you or anyone else today!” she screamed at the exploded robot.
Debris and flaming fireballs spit through the window at them in answer.
She rolled onto her front, flung Logen over her shoulder, and escaped into the dense foliage. Tumbling over vine and shrub, tree root and palm, she dragged him up the back hill, his feet gouging deep tracks in the soft earth.
Behind her, a roar filled her external helmet audios. Flames spread through the whole complex, snaking as though following them.
He was still vulnerable. His lungs were filled with the gas. If a spark got too close...
No, no, no.
She dragged Logen to the limit of where the jungle cut them off against a cliff, and then she turned back to the exploding base. Flames had already cut her off from the tractor. No choice. She crossed through a river of fire.
Flame licked and heated her metal suit.
Inside the mess hall, pressurized pops of equipment exploded. The roof shuddered and fell in.
At the tractor, she fought with the handle. Open, open, open! The handle turned but nothing happened.
From beyond the wall of fire, something skeletal and shiny dragged itself from the mess hall and crossed the burning dirt.
Open!
She jumped up, tapped the pilot’s window five times, and landed heavily with Logen still over her shoulder. She twisted the handle.
The door hissed and swung outward.
She raced up the ramp and into the pressurized vestibule.
The flaming robot followed them. Its face melted off and holes like black pits showed where its eyes had once been. Metal dripped, sizzling, as it crawled up the ramp.
She dumped Logen against the far wall and slammed the controls. Close, close, close!
The vestibule airlock slowly slid shut.
The robot reached out.
The door stopped on its hand. Gears made a grinding sound. Its melting fingers closed in the gap.
She stepped forward, screaming, and kicked it. “Leave us the fuck alone you fucking fuck!”
The robot collapsed into molten pieces, its head rolling back and toppling from its spine, and all the pieces sizzling into hardened screws.
The vestibule airlock sealed.
Yes.
She hunched over, getting back her breath while the firefight continued outside. On her monitor, she suddenly became conscious of Logen’s breath and heart rate.
He was alive.
At some point, the gas had drained out of his lungs when he was hung over her shoulder, and his suit’s automatic life support had kicked in.
Time to get the fuck out of there.
She twisted.
Logen was staring at her through his faceplate. He looked alive and not happy about it, but the bleakest proud smile touched his lips. “Remind me not to piss you off.”
She laughed, her breath ragged in her throat. “You don’t need a reminder.”
“Heh.” He sobered. “I told you not to leave the cab.”
She helped him to stand. “I don’t take orders very well.”
He winced and groaned. “Just my luck. The woman I love is hell on the chain of command.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
Then his words penetrated her brain.
She paused in the middle of the hangar and looked up at him.
He swallowed, unnaturally red-faced from toxic gas inhalation, but he didn’t back down and he didn’t ease away.
Rightful tingles raced up to her suddenly pounding heart.
A particularly hard boom rocked the tractor, and he grabbed for a bunk support, looking read
y to throw up.
“I’ll start the engine.”
She left him in the back to throw up while she started the tractor and drove right on out of there.
* * *
Logen joined her in the cab for three rough days across a deadly jungle back to Base One.
He listened as Talia told him all about the state of their teammates and their best hope.
“Bad Company also dropped intel about our attackers,” she told him, as she patted the tractor dash, “and where they’re congregating in the arctic. Vi was right that the androids aren’t at Base One any more. They’ve been picked up.”
Made sense.
He grunted. “Picked up and taken to fight elsewhere in the robot war.”
“So I assume. If we go here,” she pointed to an outcropping near Base One, “we should be able to send a message using the same technology that Sirus used to contact us. Get out a warning to the solar station.”
“If they’re still around.”
“Or the one beyond it. Sending the message will make us a target, but it’s the only warning we can give. Are you in?”
As if she had to ask.
“Great. We’ll get Daz, transmit our message, and go back on the run.”
Her face drained of color and looking as sick from the snakezoid poison as he felt from the toxic gas.
“The Bad Company CO set us up pretty good. This tractor can last forever. We’ll give any robots quite the run. Maybe even strike back.”
Chattering about everything except his confession.
“I forgive the guy for rearranging my face,” Logen said.
She darkened. “I don’t.”
He smiled and tugged the thick felty blanket around his shivering shoulders. Since rescuing him from Base Two, she had seemed to grow stronger and stronger.
Except her refusal to face his confession.
Well, she could avoid his confession all she wanted. He wasn’t taking it back. Not this time. He was going to have one moment of true honesty before he died.
He was going to man the fuck up.
“I’m not avoiding you,” she finally said, on the third and last day before they were scheduled to reach Base One.
He snorted.
“What?”
He indicated their small, bumpy cab. It was his turn to drive. She could go into the back hangar if she wanted and sleep in a bunk. “There are not a whole lot of places left to go.”
“I meant about what you said.” She fanned herself.
He was cherry-red and freezing; she was pale blue and said she felt overheated. His hands shook on the wheel. Neurotoxins. The effects got worse and worse.
“I don’t want you to think I’m saying no,” she said.
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“I probably meant I would think about it.”
“You said there was no way in hell you’d ever think of starting anything with me, even if I were the last man in the universe, not just the last man on this planet.”
“That’s a lot of words for old-me.”
“You used fewer words,” he conceded. “The meaning was there.”
She wrinkled her nose and rubbed her forehead. “I’m sure it’s because there was no point.”
“I’m not the guy for you.”
“Hey! I meant there’s no guarantee we’ll even get to spend much time together. One of us could get reassigned and you’re paying out.”
“That’s why we should bunk together now, while we still have the chance.”
“That’s why we shouldn’t, because it will only hurt more when you get ripped away from me.”
Sure. Right. Fine.
Whatever she said.
She seemed to read his expression. “I told you! I’m sure I still liked you.”
“I’m not that likeable.”
“You say that so matter-of-factly.”
He shrugged. “I don’t blame you. It’s no surprise a woman like you wouldn’t want to stick herself with a guy like me.”
“You were paying out!” She smacked her hand on the console. “How could I hold you back when you were on the threshold of becoming free?”
“That’s not a problem now.”
“Oh sure, we’re on the run in an alien jungle now.” She smacked the console a few more times. “You have to become a free man.”
“The only man I want to become is one that’s worthy of you.”
Chapter Thirteen
Talia’s pale cheeks flushed and her lips parted.
He wanted to put the tractor in park, sweep her into his arms, and reinforce his message with loving that lifted her to ecstasy and removed all doubt.
But they were less than a day out from Base One, and stopping now could cost more than their lives.
She tore her gaze from his and idly said, “Cliff.”
He spun the controls, easing them away from the drop that would have set them back even longer. “Nice, Spot.”
“Good reflex, Gun.”
Falling back into the familiar patterns as if nothing had changed.
Whatever.
“Besides, you’re the one who doesn’t want it to be official,” she muttered.
Okay, that did it.
He put it in park. The tractor hissed to a stop.
She turned and stared at him with gorgeous, luminous eyes.
“Bunk with me,” he said.
A delicate blush rose up on her cheeks. Shimmering tears glimmered at the corners of her eyes. She turned away and put her hand to her mouth. “You have to pay out.”
“There’s nobody and nothing waiting for me to get out but regrets.”
“And why is that?”
His stomach dropped. She wanted to know the truth. She had to know all of him.
“Logen, why?”
Man the fuck up. Quit hiding behind her ignorance. She loves you or she doesn’t.
“Because I was a despicable ass who was better off enlisted,” he said.
“Nobody’s that bad.”
“Oh yeah,” he disagreed. “Somebody ought to have capped me. Instead, I died of stupidity and ended up here.”
“Bullshit.”
And then, since she wanted to know more, he told her the sordid tale of how he ended up enlisted.
On the streets, after a lifetime of failures, he hurt people, stole their belongings, and generally made life harder for everyone in the five hundred blocks than it had to be.
“I was on some kind of ‘might-makes-right’ tear,” he explained, as she turned white and green, “because I didn’t have anything but might, and I sure as hell never landed on the side of anything right.”
A couple of months before the end, he ran into a well-off guy out on a date with his girlfriend. So Logen beat the shit out of him.
“About halfway through, I recognized him from school. He was always kind of nice to me, back when I used to go.”
“So you stopped?”
He grimaced.
“No?” Her voice squeaked.
He rubbed his face. “Here was a guy who started out not much better than me, and he had a girl and a nice jacket, probably a decent job, and most of all, he had hope. He had happiness. Or at least he did, until he ran into me.”
She swallowed back her obvious nausea.
Fuck. What did he expect?
He let out the past with a sigh. It was over and done and he had to live with who he had been. His victims deserved no less. If they thought of him every day, he would think of them twice as often. Not much else he could do for atonement.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” he said. “Hating someone so hard because you want what they have.”
“No, no.” She waved for him to continue. “I might have been a bitch to the civilian biologists recently. Go on. How did it turn out?”
“I put the guy in the hospital,” he said, blowing it right out there. “I might have done more, but Daz ran into me on his way home from work. He had a real job, that guy
.”
She laughed weakly. “He patch the other guy up?”
“The girlfriend had already called the cops and a medic. Daz hustled me out and patched me up, which was more than I deserved.” He sighed. “And here I am.”
She nodded, then frowned. “Wait. How did you enlist?”
Oh. Yeah.
In comparison to the moment he had realized he was a person who didn’t deserve the life his parents had grudgingly gifted him, his actual death barely mattered. He’d been running on suicide mode for months. By the time he actually died, he’d already long pulled the trigger.
“Some girl convinced me to hit up a crime boss’s shipment of illegal imports.”
“Ah.”
“She convinced me to do it on Daz’s shift because he wouldn’t turn me in.”
“Bitch.”
He shrugged. “She was right. I pulled the job and Daz didn’t turn me in. But of course the loot was tagged, the boss’s heavies caught up to me, everybody died, and Daz followed my body to the enlistment office before he could end up as the final casualty. Lives of two brothers ruined in one,” he snapped his fingers, “stupid moment.”
She listened. Really listened.
It was kind of a relief to get it all out there. He’d never told anyone the details before.
“So, if I ask you to bunk with me, are you going to say yes?” he asked.
“I will bunk with you if you promise to pay out.”
“Deal.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why was that so easy?”
“Because you didn’t say anything about me joining up again.”
She looked surprised.
“I want to be with the woman I love doing the job I’m good at,” he said. “On my terms, fine. I’ll stay in until she can get out.”
She bit her lip.
“Don’t try to chicken-shit out of it.”
She smiled, stood, crossed the cab, and cupped his wan cheek. “I am pretty much out of excuses, aren’t I?”
“You are.”
She rested her forehead against his. “I was just thinking that it’s been a long time since I felt at peace. When you joined, and Sirus was in charge, and we all had our place, the mercenaries were almost an adventure and I wasn’t that sad to be a part of it.”
No fucking way. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of staying in now.”
Her smile curved, teasing. “I’m not allowed?”
Resurrection Heart: Robotics Faction - Cyborg Mercenaries Page 16
