by Jenna Ives
“Carron’s army will be up to its full complement in two days. I’ll be organizing the transportation details tomorrow. I assume you’re planning to send a military strategist with us?”
Theus nodded. “Yes. Callex Industries will be supplying five-thousand particle disrupter weapons for the soldiers’ use. Marque Callex’s personal assistant, Zan Talesin, has proven himself extremely valuable since Callex was relocated. He will be accompanying you.”
“Then I’ll make arrangements to include Talesin as well as the weapons.”
“Very good.”
“One last thing, sir…”
“Yes?”
“Five-thousand robot soldiers with five-thousand particle disrupters should be a strong deterrent to the aggression demonstrated by regulator Egidia in Terra Radix, but we still haven’t accounted for those two stinger missiles Chavis Smith stole from Callex Industries months ago. If Egidia has those stingers, he could take out a large part of our robot army. Have you considered that?”
A slow smile spread across Theus’ face. “I have. And, frankly, I’m hoping Egidia does possess those missiles and that our army deployment incites him to use them against the soldiers. Robots can easily be replaced, but those stingers cannot. As you know, the Council keeps close track of every weapon on Tau Cetus. Maintaining the balance of power is how we ensure the safety of the planet.”
Wyatt’s eyebrows rose. Theus had obviously considered this scenario months ago, and drawn up a plan accordingly. Always one step ahead of an opponent. The man must be a master chess player. Wyatt’s respect for the premier grew. “So this is a ploy? A feint?”
Theus nodded briefly. “Of sorts. Let’s hope Egidia falls for it. And let’s hope you’re nowhere near the line of fire if or when the explosion occurs.”
#
“What do you mean there’s no tape?”
Anson Carron stared at his programmer Titus Veraine, his anger growing by the minute.
“Didn’t I purposely stay away today because you said it would take the pressure off that asshole Wyatt if I wasn’t here?”
Veraine shifted on his feet. “Yes, sir. I thought agent Wyatt would be more… relaxed… and therefore more susceptible to Ginger if you weren’t around.” He shrugged. “The good news is that they did fuck. The bad news is we didn’t get it on tape. I expect we will tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Carron couldn’t believe his ears. “That’s if we can get him to do it again! Yesterday we basically ambushed him, but that was to show him exactly how talented my Dolls are. Today he was meant to be all hot-and-bothered and eager to get it on with Ginger. Today was meant to seal the deal with a sex tape that would get him fired and off our backs. Do you really think he’ll fall for Ginger a third time?”
“Why not? She’s good.”
“Why not?” Carron could feel a blood vessel pounding along the side of his forehead. “Because he’s not an idiot, that’s why not! Unlike some people who think he might be. He’ll figure out what we’re trying to do.”
Veraine smiled tightly. “I’ve been working to build a certain level of trust with agent Wyatt. I’ve assured him there are no cameras in my lab. And despite the fact he intended to resist Ginger today, he eventually did fuck her. I believe we can get him to do it again tomorrow. We only need to record him on camera once for Theus to have reason to can his ass.”
Carron shook his head in disbelief. “What the hell kind of men do you think the premier of the High Council hires? Men with backbone. Frankly, I think we shot our wad today. We’ve lost our chance. He’ll never fall for it again.”
“And with all due respect, sir, I think we should give it one more day.”
Carron gave Veraine a disgusted look. “It’s a damn good thing you’re a computer programmer, Titus, because you’d make a lousy police agent. They live by a code of conduct.”
Veraine narrowed his eyes at the insult. “I have my own personal code of conduct, Mr. Carron. And you’d do well to remember exactly what a good programmer I am. Without me, your whole operation here would collapse.”
Carron went perfectly still. “Are you threatening me, Titus?”
“Not at all,” Veraine answered tightly. “I’m just reminding you how valuable I am. And how…powerless…you’d be without me.”
Despite the fact his vision clouded with a red rage, Carron kept his mouth shut because he knew Veraine was right. Carron did need him.
But maybe not for long.
Chapter Six
“Wake up, Wyatt. Wake up!”
Leith Wyatt sat straight up in bed, instantly on alert, arms raised in a defensive position. He scanned his room quickly, searching for the source of the warning, his every muscle tensed and ready for action.
Nothing seemed out of place. He paused to listen for any suspicious noise or movement.
“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”
Wyatt’s head whipped around to track the source of that frantic cry, and then he blew out a relieved breath.
It was the auto-alert. Obviously he’d overslept.
He shoved a hand through his night-disheveled hair, and glanced at the readout on the far bedroom wall. 0930.
The auto-alert was one of the most civilized of alarm clocks. At the designated time, a man or woman’s soft voice (depending on your preference) would coax you awake. It was a moment of calm in a turbulent world, but if the bed sensor didn’t register any movement, the alarm would gradually increase both in volume and in urgency until it received a response.
Hell, he must have been dead to the world for the dulcet tones of the ‘femme fatale’ setting to turn into this ‘screeching banshee’ mode.
Wyatt blew out a breath.
This was all Ginger’s fault.
He hadn’t slept well, taunted by erotic fantasies involving the Beautiful Doll. Having experienced two amazing orgasms in two very different positions, he wondered what else she could do. Hell, he wondered if there was anything she couldn’t do. Interesting sexual variations had kept his brain so busy he hadn’t been able to relax into sleep.
But it wasn’t only thoughts of sex which had kept him awake. It was also the things Ginger had said to him.
For instance, when he’d tried to resist oral sex, her response had been, If you refuse, Titus Veraine will be angry with me.
And in her utility closet yesterday, when she’d told him Veraine had lied about the cameras in his lab, she’d said, Titus and Mr. Carron want to trap you. It’s not…right.
The first statement showed fear. The second, morality. Two qualities definitely not able to be programmed into a robot. Not even a Beautiful Doll.
They were human emotions.
It was an anomaly he intended to pursue.
Dragging himself out of bed, he took a quick shower, shaved, downed his morning nutrition pill, brushed his teeth, and then pulled on his dress uniform. Just the mere act of tugging up the zipper of his trousers made his cock stir.
I’ll be having sex with Ginger today.
But only to get information out of the Beautiful Doll.
Yeah, right, go ahead and believe that if you must…
Hell, what was wrong with acknowledging that he would enjoy it? Even Theus had said the Dolls were irresistible. Who was Wyatt to contradict the premier of the High Council?
He allowed himself a small smile. Which reminded him of Ginger’s smile.
I’m programmed to respond to visual cues, Leith…
Her words. Except that yesterday, he hadn’t been smiling when she’d laid eyes on him. He’d given her no visual cue, and yet she’d given him a wide, warm and very welcoming smile.
Another incongruity he intended to pursue. He took one last look at himself in the mirror, carefully smoothing his tunic over his torso.
Idiot. A sexbot doesn’t care what you look like. She’s a machine. Programmed to please.
Right. So why did he want to look nice for her? With a wry twist to his mouth, he grabbed his keys and headed for
the door.
His ride to the former Beautiful Dolls factory took the usual forty minutes. Bruiser-the-guard let him pass easily enough after Wyatt handed over his weapon, but there was a look of suspicion in the guard’s eyes today. Probably because Titus Veraine must have come searching for Wyatt yesterday afternoon after he’d slipped away from Veraine’s lab.
Sure enough, as soon as he entered the manufacturing facility, Wyatt was met by the foppish Loris Rhean, who gave him the same suspicious look as Bruiser outside, not his usual goofy, gap-toothed grin. Shit. There’d probably be no way he’d shake this wiry-haired escort today.
Wyatt felt a brief flare of annoyance. He was the premier of the High Council’s man, and as Theus’ man, Wyatt technically had free rein to go anywhere he pleased in this factory. Hell, the High Council was Anson Carron’s employer. By rights, Wyatt should be the one giving the orders here.
And yet, Carron was making a subtle point by having Wyatt accompanied at all times while on the premises.
Still, maybe this was not the time or the place for Wyatt to flex his power. There would undoubtedly be other times during this assignment when Wyatt would need to take charge. So in the interest of tactful cooperation, Wyatt nodded at the smarmy Rhean, acknowledging and accepting his presence.
After all, Wyatt and Anson Carron’s robot army would be flying to Terra Acer tomorrow. He’d be out of here soon enough. In the meantime, had a lot to accomplish today, and not much time to do it.
“I need to go to Titus Veraine’s lab,” he said to Rhean.
Best to get the confrontation with the programmer over with immediately, so that Wyatt could get to work.
He followed Rhean past the entrance to the factory floor, down a familiar corridor, through the double sets of swinging doors to the programming lab, and to the black door at the back that led directly to Veraine’s personal lab. He found it amusing that Rhean’s feet were firmly anchored to the ground today. No silly spring in his step.
“Thanks,” Wyatt said at the door. “You don’t need to stay. I’ll be here a while.”
“I have my orders, agent Wyatt,” Rhean answered haughtily. “Only Mr. Veraine or Mr. Carron can dismiss me.”
Right. No shaking this idiot today. “Fine.”
Rhean knocked once on Veraine’s lab door, then pushed it open. As expected, Veraine was working on yet another generic robot soldier. He looked up when the two men entered the room.
“Ah, agent Wyatt. Welcome back.”
Veraine waved an obviously impatient hand in Rhean’s direction, and, just like that, the clownish assistant was dismissed. With disbelieving eyes, Rhean looked from Veraine to Wyatt, scowled, and then slunk from the room, pulling the door closed behind him.
Wyatt watched him go gratefully.
Veraine stood to disconnect the cable from the side of the robot soldier’s head. “You’re just in time. This is it. The end of the lot. Number five thousand. I never thought we’d meet the Council’s deadline, but we have.”
Wyatt’s eyebrows rose slightly. So. Not a word from Veraine about Wyatt’s stealthy escape from the lab after yesterday’s sex with Ginger? Or maybe Veraine was just waiting for the right moment to broach the subject.
Then again, Ginger had undoubtedly confirmed she was successful with the amazing congress of a cow…
“Your production is right on schedule,” Wyatt acknowledged, ignoring the sudden twitching in his groin at the memory of yesterday’s sex. “Impressive.”
“You can count on us, agent Wyatt. We’re nothing if not responsible.” Veraine gave Wyatt a small smile, then walked around his computer console to take the silent soldier’s arm. “Come. I need to walk this one back to the storage area. And there’s something I want to show you there.”
“Fine. I need to do a body count anyway.”
The two men led the soldier back along the familiar route to the factory floor, then around the corner to the massive storage area. Once the soldier was in place in the back row beside his fellow robots, Veraine motioned to Wyatt with a subtle finger.
Wyatt followed Veraine deep into the dense rows of identical machines, all with their one-piece camouflage uniforms and their staring, lifeless black eyes. Veraine stopped next to one that looked exactly like all the others.
“This is solder two-thousand-two,” he said quietly, indicating the number on the uniform patch that would ordinarily reflect a soldier’s name. Reaching up to insert a finger into the robot’s mechanical mouth, Veraine pulled down its jaw just far enough to allow him to extract a small felt pouch.
Wyatt knew what he’d see even before Veraine opened the drawstring and tipped the contents into his palm.
Diamonds. Five round, perfectly faceted, brilliant stones.
Veraine hastily shoved them back into the pouch and re-inserted the felt sack into the soldier’s mouth. “Shall I show you numbers one, one-thousand-one, three-thousand-three and four-thousand-four?”
Wyatt’s eyes narrowed. Damn straight. He was going to make Veraine show him each one.
In the early hours of last night, Wyatt had had time to consider what this supposed secret information from Veraine might mean. There were three possibilities. Number one: Veraine was telling the truth and Carron was actually intending to smuggle diamonds inside the robot soldiers to ensure a comfortable retirement for himself. Number two: Veraine was setting up his boss to make it look like Carron was smuggling diamonds, undoubtedly to get the High Council to replace Carron with Veraine. After all, just yesterday Veraine had told Wyatt, I’m an ambitious man. Although, the only problem with this second scenario was how Titus Veraine could get his hands on stones this valuable. There was even a third possibility – that Veraine and Carron, working together, hoped Wyatt would go running back to Theus with this conspiracy tale, only to have it disproved when the machines arrived in Terra Acer, discrediting Wyatt in the Council’s eyes. So whether truth or lie, Wyatt was determined to make Veraine play this out.
He nodded.
Veraine glanced around, in an obvious move to make sure no one on the manufacturing floor was taking particular notice of them. As if to insure their cover further, Veraine raised his voice to be heard above the whine of the factory machines. “You wish to randomly inspect the soldiers? Certainly, agent Wyatt!”
Veraine moved thicker into the midst of the rows of robots, then stopped. “Three-thousand-three.” He repeated the process with the soldier’s jaw, revealing more diamonds. Four-thousand-four and one-thousand-one were the same. Soldier number one was a bit trickier to examine, since it was in the first row, in full view of the factory floor, but Wyatt stood in front of Veraine to provide cover as the programmer pointed out the felt pouch in this robot’s mouth, too.
So. Veraine was telling the truth. At least to this point.
But Wyatt wouldn’t give Veraine the satisfaction of knowing what he was going to do with the information, if anything at all at this point. “I need to do my head count.”
Veraine’s eyebrows rose in apparent surprise at Wyatt’s lack of response to the diamond cache, but he nodded and stepped aside as Wyatt made sure all five-thousand robot soldiers were accounted for. When he was finished, he turned to Veraine.
“Just out of curiosity, why did you make them all male? Wouldn’t an enemy hesitate to fire on a female soldier, even if it was a robot? That extra moment might be all the advantage we’d need in a battle.”
Veraine’s eyebrows rose higher, as he considered Wyatt’s question.
“That’s a brilliant suggestion, agent Wyatt. I’ll have to bring it up with Mr. Carron. It’s too bad you don’t work for us.”
Wyatt snorted. As if I’d ever throw in my lot with a double-crossing traitor who nearly killed my partner.
He straightened to his full height. “Two military airships should be enough, if these soldiers can be stacked. That is, unless their sophisticated circuitry makes them delicate?”
Veraine scoffed. “If they were delicate, ag
ent Wyatt, they wouldn’t be able to go into battle. Or crush cement blocks with their bare hands.”
“Right. No need to worry about their comfort on the planes, then.”
“Not for anyone except you and me and Mr. Carron.”
“And Callex Industries’ military strategist Zan Talesin. He’s been assigned to us by the High Council.” Wyatt waved a hand toward the silent robot army. “Since they’re ready, I’ll arrange for trucks to start transporting them to the airfield this afternoon. We’ll leave tomorrow morning.”
“As you wish.”
“Good.” Wyatt cleared his throat and purposely put a little hesitancy into his voice. “Now… if it’s all right with you… I’d like to go back to your lab to make the travel arrangements. It’s… quieter there.”
And Ginger is there.
The look exchanged between the two men told Wyatt that Veraine knew exactly what he was hinting at. But now that Wyatt had alerted Theus, he had no fear of falling into any trap that Veraine might set. In fact, he was looking forward to the trap. He needed to speak with Ginger. Sex would just be a perk.
Right. Just a perk.
Veraine gave Wyatt a knowing smile as the two men headed back toward the lab. Veraine obviously thought he had Wyatt in the palm of his hand where Ginger was concerned, but before they reached Veraine’s black door, Veraine unexpectedly steered Wyatt to a small side office. There was nothing in here but an unadorned wooden desk and a matching chair. The room was lit by a harsh overhead bulb.
Wyatt gave Veraine a questioning look.
“It’s both quiet and private in here,” Veraine explained. “I’ll give you an hour to make your preparations, and then I’ll come back to take you to Ginger. I’m sure you’ll want to say your personal…goodbyes…to her, since we’ll be leaving on our assignment tomorrow.”
So. Veraine was attempting to increase Wyatt’s anticipation by delaying his sexual gratification for an hour. It was interesting to get a glimpse into the psychology of this man. The insight might come in handy during the course of this assignment.
