Ghost of a Machine

by Cynthia Sax

  “Do you like it?” She smiled. “I found it on one of the multi-level horizontal supports.”

  “No.” He didn’t like it. It concealed her natural scent.

  “Oh.” She blinked. “Do the eyes and the smiling lips on the leaves and flowers bother you?” She looked down at the garment. “I thought they were cute.”

  He gazed closer. There were human-like faces on the images of the vegetation. Why would the manufacturer do that? It served no practical purpose.

  “Smells wrong.” That was his main concern, not her garment’s design.

  He lifted her high against his chest and rubbed her over his bare skin. The enticing aroma of her arousal intensified.

  She hooked her legs around his waist. The action lifted the bottom of the garment, exposing her pussy to him. Ghost grunted with satisfaction. That style of body covering did have its advantages.

  He dropped the pack of weapons, stomped down the ramp, carrying her, his hands cupped under her generous ass, his cock hard.

  They had to leave the chamber soon. He’d spotted a small ship they might be able to steal. It was lightly guarded and could be utilized at any moment.

  That mission held danger, could damage his female. Breeding with her would ensure she repaired as quickly as possible.

  It would also remove the irritating musty scent on the garment she’d donned.

  He propped her against the wall. Her brown eyes had darkened with passion. Her hair was adorably mussed. He wanted her more than he wanted his next breath.

  Ghost positioned himself at her entrance and thrust. She squeaked. A grunt of happiness escaped his lips. She was wet, hot, tight, fitting him like a sheath fit a dagger.

  He reluctantly retreated and then drove into her once more, retreated, drove into her. She gripped his shoulders, holding onto him. He’d never allow her to fall.

  She was his, his sanctuary after a shift of killing, his oasis on a planet ripped apart by war. The musty stench, the smoke, the metallic scent of blood faded and all he smelled was her, her musk clouding his brain, straining his processors.

  She panted, crying out for more, more, more, and he gave that to her, ravishing her savagely, knowing she could handle him, handle his needs. Beads of sweat lifted on her golden skin. Her wetness dripped between his balls.

  “Harder.” She bounced her booted heels against his ass.

  He growled and complied, pounding into her. “Mine.” He’d please her, wouldn’t fail her. Ghost mouthed over her chin, her neck.

  “Yes.” She moaned, the sound tightening his already tormented balls. Her fingernails dug into his skin. Her inner walls closed around his shaft.

  A sense of urgency infected both of them; an awareness that the enemy could advance in a moment, interrupt their breeding. If they waited to come, they might not get that opportunity.

  Ghost rumbled, past words, past thinking, the primitive part of his human half taking over, his machine spinning in the background. His female undulated, the layer of fabric between them warm and damp.

  “Ghost.” Her voice stretched with need.

  “Mine.” He’d give her what she wanted, now, always. Ghost drove deep, smacking her ass against the wall, and he ground against her, rubbing over her clit.

  She opened her mouth to scream. He covered her lips, swallowing the sound, and roared with his own satisfaction. Hard jets of cum pulsed from his body, each spurt bringing a tension-dissolving bliss.

  She writhed and shook, her lips vibrating against his, silent screams heard only by his heart. Her pussy squeezed around him and released, an intimate massage coaxing every drop from his cock, draining him until he had nothing left.

  Sagging, he leaned his forehead against hers, temporarily weakened by his small human. He knew that in a few moments he would be stronger, faster, a better cyborg. Ghost looked into her eyes. She made him better, whole, repairing his damage.

  “Now, do I smell right?” She smiled.

  He grunted an affirmative, his lips curving. The musty scent on her garment had faded. She smelled like she was his.

  “Good.” His female laughed softly.

  Ghost wasn’t given an opportunity to enjoy her mirth. He stiffened, sensing a being nearby.

  Her laughter immediately faded. “What is it?”

  “Female.” He pointed to the ceiling.

  “She can’t be Humanoid Alliance,” his female whispered.

  “Ours.” It was the Deneb female. She’d somehow tracked him back to the chamber. Ghost lowered his female until her boots touched the floor.

  “Then she’s not a threat.” His female didn’t share his sense of urgency.

  “Lead others here.” He retrieved the pack, extracted the protective chest covering he’d crafted. His nose wrinkled. It smelled of the other male.

  He swept it over his bare skin. His female should only smell of him.

  “Is this female nice?” She smoothed down her garment.

  He grunted. The other female didn’t concern him…much.

  The female who did concern him ran her fingers through her hair. “Is she pretty?”

  “Not Mine.” He pulled the protective chest covering over her head, guided her arms through the holes. The garment bunched around her breasts. His female was more lushly built than the human male.

  “What is her name?”

  He removed a dagger from the pack and sliced the garment down the center of her chest.

  “Why am I asking you?” His female huffed. “You likely called her Ours.”

  “Not Mine,” he repeated. The Deneb female belonged to one of his brethren.

  The chest covering had sheaths and holsters. He placed two guns in the holsters by her waist, added a dagger to the sheath by her left breast.

  “If you want me to be able to walk, that’s all I can carry.” Her tone was dry.

  “Human.” He was achingly aware of her kind’s frailty.

  “I’m a strong human.” She marched around the chamber, her boot heels clunking against the stone floor. “You should have made one for yourself, cyborg.”

  “Chest too big.” He palmed two guns, slung a long gun over his right shoulder, placed the pack over his left. “Stay with me, Mine.”

  “I’m yours.” She looked at him, her eyes glowing. “Of course, I’ll stay with you.”

  She was his. Ghost’s jaw jutted. He would protect her.

  He wouldn’t fail her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Reluctant to face reality, Lethe trudged up the ramp, following Ghost out of their underground hideaway, a place she’d grown to consider a sanctuary, an oasis for the two of them.

  There was no peacefulness outside the subterranean chamber. The surface was as she remembered it, both from their crash landing and from her nightmares.

  The planet could have been Mercury Minor. It appeared the same. Buildings were toppled. Insects buzzed around bloated bodies. Ash covered everything, turning the landscape gray. The air was filled with a foul smoke, fires burning around them.

  Humanoid Alliance ships bombed buildings in the distance. The ground shook. Gunfire echoed. She drew her guns.

  “Safe,” her cyborg rumbled, walking ahead of her.

  She’d have to trust him about that. Her forward view was of his big body, his broad shoulders, his clenched ass cheeks.

  His height and girth was reassuring. She might be back on a battle-torn planet, stranded, without a means of escape, but she wasn’t alone. She had him.

  The male she loved.

  Something moved to the right of them. Lethe aimed her guns in that direction. A being ducked behind a domicile square.

  “Ghost,” she whispered. They were being watched.

  “Ours.” He didn’t sound happy about that.

  She stopped, lowering her guns. “She’s coming with us.”

  Ghost turned and glowered at her.

  “She is.” Lethe couldn’t leave the unknown female behind, not like she had been left behind by he
r father’s friend, a being she’d considered family. “Getting three beings off the planet isn’t more difficult than getting two beings off.”

  “Protect.” Her cyborg frowned.

  “You can protect both of us.” She gazed up at him, pleading with her eyes. “Please, Ghost. She’s alone, and likely afraid, and she’s ours. You said that. Ours to safeguard.”

  He blew out his breath and grunted his agreement.

  She smiled at him. “Thank you.” She returned her attention to the female behind the domicile square. “You can come out. It’s okay. We won’t hurt you.”

  A female with green hair and green skin straightened. She was as thin as Lethe had been when she had escaped Mercury Minor. She’d likely not eaten in planet rotations.

  The female was also dirty, bruised, covered with scratches and tiny wounds, had a shattered look in her eyes. Lethe had seen that same hopelessness in her own reflection.

  “My name is Lethe.” She kept her voice level, soft, hoping to calm the female. “This is Ghost.”

  Ghost grunted.

  “My name is…” There was a pause as though she couldn’t remember her name. “Zielony.” Her gaze lowered below Lethe’s protective chest covering. She blinked. “My baby sister had a garment using that fabric. She loves the happy faces. Loved. She-she…” Her beautiful face crumpled.

  “I know.” Lethe stepped toward the female, seeking to comfort her. “You don’t have to say anything more.”

  Ghost growled, expressing his discontentment, and she stopped moving. Her cyborg was on edge. She didn’t want to trigger a killing spree.

  “She was a baby, a baby.” Zielony covered her face and sobbed, her frail shoulders shaking. “And they-they…”

  “I know.” Lethe watched her, feeling helpless, knowing the depth of the female’s pain, also knowing there wasn’t much she could do to ease it. Zielony had lost everyone and everything. Nothing Lethe said or did could reverse that.

  Ghost shifted his weight from his right foot to his left. “Must move.”

  “Stay with us.” Lethe echoed her cyborg’s earlier words. “You’ll be safe.”

  Ghost moved again, slower. Lethe’s heart warmed. He was compensating for Zielony. The Deneb female didn’t have the energy to walk fast. She could barely lift her oversized-boot-clad feet.

  “Do you require beverage?” Lethe offered. The female must be parched.

  “Your mate left a container of beverage for me.” Zielony’s voice was as soft as hers.

  Her mate was more caring than he’d ever admit. Lethe gazed at his back, savoring how the newly forming muscles rippled under his gray skin.

  “He gave me daggers also.”

  Since he couldn’t protect Zielony, her cyborg had given her weapons to protect herself. Lethe’s love for Ghost grew even more, expanding to fill her chest.

  “Can you shoot a gun?” she asked the female.

  “Not well.”

  Not well was better than not at all. Lethe suspected they were shooting their way off the planet. She passed Zielony one of her guns. “Aim at the target and press the big button on the top.”

  “Mine.” Ghost handed Lethe a replacement gun, brushing his fingers over hers, a gentle caress in the midst of war, a reminder he was with her.

  “Yours,” she murmured.

  They trudged forward. Ghost led them through demolished domiciles, shattered pathways, along what appeared to be a sewage disposal system, the repugnant smell making Lethe’s eyes water.

  The sound of gunfire grew louder. The Humanoid Alliance ships were alarmingly close, casting shadows on the ground.

  Lethe braced more and more, expecting a missile to drop on them at any moment.

  They approached several structures, easily visible because they were some of the few structures still standing in an otherwise flattened settlement.

  Ghost pressed his back against the remains of a wall. She did the same, pushing her shoulder against his arm, needing that connection. Zielony crowded against her other side.

  He set the weapons pack on the ground and pointed at it, signaling that they should stay where they were, guard the weapons.

  Lethe nodded, raising her guns. She wouldn’t let him down.

  He rushed around the wall, her cyborg a blur, moving faster than she could track. Shots fired. She peeked around the corner. Ghost barreled through Humanoid Alliance warriors. Her primitive male ripped off skulls and wielded his long gun like a club, beating the enemy to death.

  A projectile hit him in the shoulder and he grunted.

  Blast it. Someone was shooting at him. Lethe looked for the source.

  Humanoid Alliance warriors crouched behind posts and nourishment carts. They poked their heads out of their hiding places and shot at her male.

  No one shot at her male.

  Lethe stepped away from the wall, fired a couple of rounds at the nearest warriors, returned to the safety of the wall. Projectiles ate away at the edge of that barrier between them, the warriors returning fire.

  Ghost roared. A human male shrieked.

  The gunfire slowed and then stopped. She fired more rounds.

  At nothing.

  Those Humanoid Alliance warriors were all dead, their body parts strewn across the ground, pools of blood darkening the surface. Lethe switched her focus to a new group of warriors, shooting two of them, blasting projectiles into their exposed necks.

  The remaining males turned. She hid behind the wall.

  They shot at her for one, two, three heartbeats. There was a splattering sound, more shrieks.

  And then there was quiet.

  She glanced around the edge of the wall. Ghost stood on top of a torso, wild-eyed, his chest heaving, his hands, arms, shoulders, all of him covered with blood. The long gun clutched in his right hand had a skull-shaped dent in it.

  He’d killed everyone. There was no one left for her to shoot.

  Lethe bumped against Zielony and pointed to the weapons pack. The female dipped her head, silently agreeing to watch it.

  Freed of that duty, Lethe walked toward Ghost. His gaze met hers and she sucked in her breath. His eyes were bright with emotion.

  The rage didn’t shock her. She expected that from him.

  What she didn’t anticipate to see was the absolute terror reflecting in those brilliant blue depths, a fear that chilled her to the bone. Her C Model cyborg was scared stiff.

  She holstered her guns and held her hands out to him. “You’re safe, Ghost,” she whispered.

  He tossed the long gun to the side, surged forward, and swept her into his arms, lifting her off the ground. “Mine.”

  She gasped as her breasts smacked against his chest, the impact pushing the air from her lungs. His grip on her was intense.

  He burrowed his face into her hair, breathing heavily.

  “You’re safe.” She stroked his shoulders, drifting her fingertips back and forth, back and forth over his gray skin, trying to soothe him, to take away his fear.

  He grew more and more tense, his muscles flexing, not relaxing.

  “Cyborg.” Ghost held her in the air, his face dark. “Human.” He shook her, clattering her teeth. “Stay.” He inclined his head toward the wall. “Safe.”

  He worried about her. That terror had been for her lifespan, not his.

  Lethe swallowed the ball of emotion forming in her throat. “They were shooting at you. I had to do something.”

  “Cyborg,” he bellowed, the force of his yell blowing her hair away from her face.

  She smiled gently at him. “Cyborgs can be damaged.”

  “Aargh.” He set her on the ground, walked away from her, raking his hands through his patchy black hair.

  The doors of one of the structures opened. Lethe caught a glimpse of a ship in the darkness. Two males in Humanoid Alliance uniforms exited, chatting animatedly about promotions and how dead female Denebs counted for half credits while dead male Denebs were worth full.

  Ghost backed
up, widening his stance, making himself as large as possible.

  He was shielding her with his big body, Lethe realized. If she hadn’t been there, he would have rushed them, ripped them apart. The males would already be dead.

  She was hampering the mission and she was splitting his attention between protecting himself and protecting her.

  Lethe ducked under one of his arms and pointed her guns at the males.

  They saw Ghost. Their eyes widened. They stopped talking mid-sentence, reached for their weapons.

  Lethe tapped the triggers of her guns. Projectiles punctured the males’ foreheads, blasting their brains out of the back of their skulls. They fell to the ground, their legs kicking.

  Ghost huffed, sounding impressed.

  “I like that you protect me,” she admitted. “It turns me on. But I can protect myself.” She pressed her gun-filled hands against his spine. “There will be more males inside the structure. If you want to kill them, kill them, but if they damage you, I will be very upset.”

  He grunted, running toward the structure.

  Lethe gazed at his back for a moment, tempted to follow him, to protect him. That would slow his progress, distract him, put him in danger. She had to trust him as he trusted her.

  Lethe returned to the wall, where Zielony was hiding. The female looked at her, her eyes wide with fear, her slight body trembling. She had thought, as Lethe often did, that she’d be left alone, forced to survive on her own.

  “Everything is okay.” Lethe smiled to reassure her. “Ghost is completing a sweep of one of the structures.” He was likely killing everyone within range. “We have to move the weapons pack.”

  It took both of them to lift it. They struggled, lugging it slowly toward the first structure. The massive doors were open, the metal around the frame bent.

  Zielony’s breath hitched.

  Blood painted the walls. Body parts were strewn everywhere. Ghost slammed his fists down on what looked like a flattened skull.

  Judging by the vigor of the beating, her cyborg was unharmed. The knot in the pit of Lethe’s stomach unraveled.

  “I believe he’s dead.” Her tone was dry. She set down the pack and gazed at the ship. It was a skimmer, a vessel designed for planet surface use only. “Skimmers aren’t meant for long space travel but this one should get us to the next inhabitable planet.”