Seeking Vector (Cyborg Sizzle Book 10)

by Cynthia Sax

  He could keep her, that malfunctioning inner voice contributed once more. He could petition the council to make an exception for her, to allow her to live.

  Vector pushed those thoughts from his processors. She was the enemy, wasn’t his to keep, to petition for.

  I dream about you during rest cycles.

  Fraggin’ hole. The female knew what he wanted her to say. You dream about my voice?

  Last rest cycle, I dreamed about you like this. She sent a file to him, increasing the encryption around it.

  Vector scanned the file for viruses, found nothing. He shouldn’t open it. She was highly skilled, might have the ability to fool his scanners. But he couldn’t resist. He needed to know what she had uncovered, had to have that information.

  Vector braced himself for a possible cyber-attack and played the footage.

  It was coverage of the last mock battle, the focus on him. He fought Rage, a fellow C Model. Vector’s form was covered with blood, his and his opponent’s. His simulated body armor was tattered. He swung axes in both of his hands, attacking at cyborg speed, a smile curving his lips. Rage was on the defensive. Both of them grunted with effort, sparks flying from their blades.

  Vector had enjoyed that fight. Battle, mock or real, was the only time he indulged his primitive C Model nature.

  Sometimes I dream about you like this.

  The next footage she sent was of him standing in front of his warship, his body straight and stiff, his expression dignified. That was how most beings viewed him. He was the captain.

  The female saw the two sides of him, dreamed about his dual personas.

  That knowledge both pleased and alarmed him. Have you tapped into our recording devices? Vector glanced upward. Did she have access to his ship’s systems?

  I could tap into your recording devices. I have that ability. But that wasn’t necessary. Her mirth bubbled over him. Your brethren recorded the footage and shared it. It is easy to stalk you, Vector.

  It was fraggin’ difficult to stalk her.

  Sometimes I dream about you touching me. She wasn’t finished tormenting him. The weight of your body over mine. Your chest flattening my breasts. Your hips between my thighs. In those dreams, you fuck me like you fight—fast, fierce, nothing held back.

  Vector’s cock pressed against the confines of his body armor. She wasn’t his female. He shouldn’t respond to her, yet he did. She had enthralled him.

  I wake up wet, needy, my fingers in my tight pussy hole. The female was merciless. I stroke myself until I come, biting my lip as I find release, wishing to scream your name, to tell the universe whom I’m fantasizing about.

  Female. Vector growled. There was only so much teasing he could take.

  Are you hard for me, warrior?

  He was hard, painfully so. Unable to lie and unwilling to confess that truth, to acknowledge she had that kind of control over him, Vector abruptly changed the topic. Did you have a reason for communicating with me?

  I turn you on. Smugness lilted her simulated voice.

  What is the purpose of your communication? He flexed to the point of straining, frustrated, wanting her—his enemy.

  I understand, Captain. She blew out her breath. We’ll talk about something else.

  Finally. Vector relaxed.

  What are your council members doing with the information I gave you?

  Nothing. He was truthful with her. She would be monitoring the transmissions to the cyborgs on her battle station, should already be aware of that.

  I didn’t relay that information for fun. Her irritation now matched his. If this invasion happens, humanoids will die. Your brethren will die.

  That is war. He concealed his guilt under a layer of coldness. What do you expect us to do?

  Move your damn plans forward a few planet rotations. She increased the volume, mimicking shouting.

  What plans? His gut said she was referring to a cyborg rebellion, but how could she have knowledge about that before he did?

  Your council knows what plans. I won’t risk them by talking about them, even on this highly secure line. The volume of her voice lowered once more, as though that would stop anyone from listening to them. I’m disappointed, Vector.

  In me? That bothered him for some unknown reason.

  I’m disappointed in your council members. I thought they would be different, that they would be the solution. There was a pause. Don’t worry. I’ll do what I can.

  He hadn’t been worried previously but he was now. What will you do?

  I’ll see you soon. She ended the transmission.

  Fraggin’ hole. She was taking action right away. Vector sprang from the sleeping support and rushed out of his chambers. He had to reach her before he lost control of the situation.

  Chapter Two

  Two planet rotations later, Kasia, the female Vector hunted, sat in an air conduit, her handheld in her hands, an earpiece in her right ear.

  She faced a daunting number of challenges.

  Commander Smith, the being in charge of the Humanoid Alliance battle station she was hiding on, would soon figure out she’d been blocking the order to attack Betelgeuse Alpha and the communications from the other commanders. He’d join that fight, putting the cyborgs under her care in danger and increasing the death toll of the peace-loving locals on the planet. Those humanoids hadn’t moved quickly enough on her warnings and were being annihilated.

  Vector, her C Model cyborg, was heading toward her on the ship he commanded. If he caught her, she suspected he’d never let her go. Although that excited her, her need for the male compounding with every passing planet rotation, she wasn’t ready to relinquish her freedom just yet. She had tasks to accomplish, lessons to impart to him.

  But Dissent, the J Model cyborg hurting in the chamber below the air conduit, was her priority. She gazed at the small screen. The image on it was being recorded by the battle station’s internal monitoring systems.

  Commander Smith and his officers circled Dissent, daggers in their hands. The human-appearing cyborg was bent over a horizontal support, his naked body covered with blood, his bare feet braced apart. The males took turns, nicking his skin with the blades, jeering as they tortured him.

  The cyborg didn’t move, his expression blank like the machine they thought he was. To human ears, he endured the torment silently.

  Through the cyborg transmission lines, that communication fed to Kasia’s earpiece, he howled with agony, the depth of his pain turning her stomach. There was little she could do. She’d created distractions three planet rotations in a row. One more distraction might cause suspicion, might put the cyborgs’ larger plans in jeopardy.

  The warrior’s sacrifice for his brethren was the unfortunate reality of the war.

  When Kasia was young, before she’d uncovered the truth, the war had been sanitized by Humanoid Alliance communications and seemed far away. The enemy was evil and wrong. The Humanoid Alliance was good and right. Cyborgs were merely machines, human-looking robots, with no souls, no feelings.

  Then, on a whim, attracted by the challenge, she’d hacked into a Humanoid Alliance database. What she’d seen couldn’t be unseen.

  It had changed her life forever.

  She had to do something. Then. Now. Though what she could do was frustratingly limited.

  You’re a J Model cyborg. You can endure this. Kasia tapped on the handheld, sharing that communication with Dissent. The device converted the text to voice, conveying it through the private transmission line she’d set up with the cyborg.

  She had uncovered the information about the transmission lines while delving into the deepest depths of the Humanoid Alliance databases. Once she had absorbed that knowledge and had tweaked her handhelds to allow those communications, she had deleted the information from the databases.

  Can’t do this. The cyborg, having endured the pain, the humiliation, for solar cycles, now hovered on the point of breaking.

  When Dissent snapped, he would
kill every being in the chamber. The crew of the battle station would eventually capture and restrain him. He’d be decommissioned, taken apart piece by piece.

  Kasia couldn’t allow that to happen, not when he was so close to freedom.

  You CAN do this, warrior. She communicated. Stay still and silent. This is last time you must suffer like this.

  Not last time. Suffering will never end. Dissent had lost all hope.

  She would give him some of hers. This IS the last time. I give you my word.

  There were over a thousand cyborgs on the vessel. Commander Smith and his officers liked to spread out the torture. The cyborg council would issue the orders to rebel before Dissent was targeted again.

  Commander Smith dragged the tip of his dagger along Dissent’s simulated spine. Blood spurted. The cyborg bellowed through the transmission lines.

  Can’t.

  She was losing him. You CAN and you WILL. Kasia barked, forcing herself to be tough with him. You must be strong for your female.

  She flooded the lines with images of females, human, humanoid, sending them to every cyborg on board the battle station. The females were in various stages of undress, many of them naked. Some were in the late stages of pregnancy, their stomachs rounded.

  She is out there, waiting for you. Kasia hoped that was true. The possibility of finding their females gave many of the cyborgs the strength to survive. You will NOT disappoint her, warrior. You will NOT get yourself decommissioned and leave her unprotected.

  Protect. His transmission strengthened.

  Yes, you must protect her. Her shoulders lowered. The cyborg would survive this ordeal. When you are freed, you must find her, safeguard her, love her.

  Offspring.

  You’ll produce offspring. Kasia envied him that future. She’d foregone any hope of a family, love, children, after hacking into that first Humanoid Alliance database. They hunted her, would always do so. She couldn’t put any other being at risk. You’ll need names for those beautiful offspring.

  She did her best to distract Dissent as Commander Smith and his gang of monstrous humans carved away pieces of his form. The cyborg would heal. The nanocybotics inside him guaranteed that. But the pain must be excruciating. A human would have lost consciousness after a couple of deep slices.

  In the past, she had wondered if she should be sharing information that proved cyborgs were living, thinking beings with her fellow humans and the rest of the universe.

  But the humans had been slow to react on offenses taken against their own kind. Kasia doubted they would fight for the cyborgs’ rights.

  She had chosen to keep the knowledge to herself.

  Now, she was grateful for that decision. The less the Humanoid Alliance knew about cyborgs, the easier it would be for them to escape.

  She hoped that escape occurred soon, before any other cyborg was tortured.

  “That was enjoyable.” Commander Smith smirked, tugging on his uniform and adjusting his ass coverings. They’d abused Dissent in all ways a being could be abused. “But it is time to return to our duties, officers.”

  “Yes, sir.” The males around him straightened.

  “Leave it here for a shift.” Commander Smith slapped the cyborg’s ass with the flat of his dagger. “We have no immediate use for it.”

  “Yes, sir.” The cybernetic engineer in charge of Dissent saluted the commander.

  The males followed their leader out of the chamber. Dissent remained where he was, unable to move without an order from the humans.

  Cleaning bots rolled out from the wall panels, beeping and whirring. They sucked up the blood from the floor tiles, polishing the flat surface.

  You did it. Kasia told Dissent. Your female would be proud of you.

  The cyborg grunted.

  She waited, chattering to him about females, praising him for his strength, his willpower. The cybernetic engineer didn’t return.

  Kasia tapped on her handheld, accessing the battle station’s monitoring system. It was an easy feat to take the chamber offline, replacing the live feed with a static image. The crew member surveying it would expect no change, wouldn’t suspect anything.

  She clipped her handheld to her flight suit and removed a tool from her pack. Close your eyes.

  She unfastened the covering of the air conduit, slowly slid her slender body through the small opening, silently lowering herself. Her lean biceps strained under her weight but she didn’t make a sound. Half a lifespan of constant movement, of navigating the passages in ships, avoiding detection, had shaped her body, giving her muscles few others had. She dropped to the floor.

  It wasn’t a long distance. She was tall for a human female.

  I hear you. Dissent relayed. I can’t detect you on my lifeform scanner.

  That was simply another system and systems were easy to fool once a being was knowledgeable about them. Kasia extracted the pain inhibitor from her pocket and sprayed the back of Dissent’s head, what she could see of his face.

  His muscles flexed, rippling under his blood-coated skin, and her heart twisted. He thought he was under attack. She couldn’t risk a word or two of reassurance. Someone might hear her.

  She misted his shoulders, back, arms. The pain-numbing liquid beaded on his already healing body. She applied extra pain inhibitors to his ass, hoping it would seep into the crevice between his ass cheeks. The officers had boasted of ripping him apart there.

  She couldn’t touch him. That would leave fingerprints in the blood. She also couldn’t flip him over. The cybernetic engineer would know someone had been there.

  All she could do was liberally cover the skin she could access. She sprayed the back of his thighs, knees, his calves and the heels of his big feet. Every part of him had been ravaged.

  Can’t feel my shoulders. Dissent’s voice was drowsy. Must be pain inhibitors.

  The first time she’d used the spray on a cyborg, the warrior had become alarmed, thinking he was damaged, his systems malfunctioning. Cyborgs were viewed as machines and no one cared about the pain of a machine. The warrior hadn’t known what pain inhibitors were.

  After retreating to the air conduit, Kasia had explained the situation. Cyborgs shared information. That was one of their many strengths. That first warrior had told his brethren about pain inhibitors. Now their alarm was temporary.

  The Humanoid Alliance officers could return, Dissent murmured. You take too many risks for us, female.

  She didn’t take enough risks. Kasia sprayed the warrior until she had no pain inhibitors left. She placed the empty container in her pocket, jumped once, twice, finally gripped the edges of the air conduit and pulled herself up. Her muscles burned from the effort.

  She replaced the covering, resumed the live video feed of the chamber. No one, other than Dissent, would know she’d been there.

  Staying invisible had kept her alive. Kasia grabbed her pack and crawled along the air conduit. The space was insulated, soundproof. She didn’t take any unnecessary risks, moving as quietly as possible.

  It didn’t take long to navigate the maze of passageways and return to the storage chamber she called home. It was huge and seldom used.

  She’d shifted some of the floor-to-ceiling multi-level horizontal supports to block the section of the chamber farthest from the doors, creating a fake wall that she hid behind, her own private sanctuary.

  Every portion of the space was monitored. If a being entered it, she could escape through the air conduits, become mobile.

  Sleeping there was too risky but it gave her a place to stretch her legs, to feel semi-normal.

  Kasia sat on the upturned container she used as a seat and surveyed the viewscreens she’d ‘borrowed’ from the Humanoid Alliance. The small viewscreens, the largest she could carry through the air conduits, were pieced together electronically to create the illusion of larger viewscreens.

  They hadn’t been missed. The battle station was a closed system. Movement on and off it was tightly controlled.
Items were rarely tracked as they were unlikely to leave the vessel.

  Kasia had taken other precautions. She kept her hair short, wore the flight suit of maintenance engineers, plus, she was unusually tall for a female, had few curves.

  The battle station had been her home for eight out of the twelve solar cycles she’d been on the run, and she’d been spotted four times by the crew. Each time, they had assumed she was male, one of them.

  The battle station was large enough to become lost in. No one knew everyone on board.

  It was the ideal hiding place.

  Would she be safe there when Vector arrived? He was coming for her. The Freedom, the ship he communicated from, was nearing her location.

  She wouldn’t appear on his lifeform scans but he was a cyborg, would have a cyborg’s enhanced senses. He could hear her breathe, smell her scent.

  Vector was determined. She’d learned that from their conversations. He’d hunt her down, capture her, place his large gray C Model hands on her skin, his brilliant blue eyes blazing.

  Kasia quivered, stimulated beyond logic by that possibility. She should be afraid, be plotting her escape, not fantasizing about his rough fingertips, his sure grip.

  It had been so long since she’d been touched by another being.

  Vector. Kasia tapped on her handheld, unable to resist communicating with him. She chose a sexy tone this time, hoping he’d respond to it, enjoying the challenge of arousing him.

  It wasn’t an easy feat. He was extremely self-disciplined, her cyborg.

  Female. His low, deep growl tightened her nipples.

  He always had that effect on her. That was why, after overhearing one of his transmissions, she had been compelled to follow all of his communications, stalking him through the lines.

  Fighting her reckless nature, she had merely listened, learning about him, waiting for half a solar cycle before contacting him. She knew him by then, knew he would take action on her transmission, view her as a possible threat, inform the council he fervently served.

  Kasia had accepted that danger merely for the opportunity to speak with him. That was how much she wanted Vector.