by Naomi Lucas
Kat flexed her fingers and attached her portable to her wrist. It could be hours, even days before she received a response and the time increased every light-year the ship moved further away. She absently rubbed her stomach as she went to the roach room.
The echo of her steps followed her. A shiver shot up her back. She shook it away and walked through the door and stopped, and waited; until the lights shot on before moving further in. It didn’t matter how many weeks she had been taking care of the bugs, and the thought brought on a wave of nausea to her already invisible stab wounds in her belly, she would not take one step further in without the light.
When the roaches scattered behind the glass it meant they were not scattering outside the glass. Kat didn’t look at them as she cleaned the debris and stuck in the plants they feasted on, always leaving the Gliese ones for last. She shredded the stalk and jammed it past the filtration system.
Her breath caught and a gag welled up into her throat, the feeling of unease returned. She hugged her body and left the gross room behind.
She walked headfirst into a familiar chest. Kat jerked back. “Sorry,” she breathed as his hands cupped her shoulders, sending electrical fire straight into her, making her blush.
Dommik didn’t remove his hands. “How are you feeling?” he asked. Kat looked up at him, pushing her crimped hair out of her face and lost it with a sag.
She leaned into his body and burrowed herself in his heat. “Not good.”
His arms fell around her and the metal frame of him softened under her cheek until she felt cocooned, one she decided she never wanted to break out of. The cramps and aches of her body went away with each caress he gave her, over her back and shoulder blades, kneading the knots out of her neck to the base of her skull. She lulled into him and her mind went blank with pleasure.
Kat drifted off to that warm place that only an embrace can give.
“Feeling better?”
“Mmm, yes.”
Is he really comforting me? Her reverie went away as he picked her up and carried her back into the ship.
“Where are we going?” she asked, tangling her fingers in his loose hair.
“Someplace to talk.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead as the elevator closed. Kat couldn’t stop the shock her wide eyes portrayed. Dommik was hard, the kind of hard that it took more than an explosive to break through, and he was quiet, she had seen him as a shadow-dwelling loner.
But now he was holding her, touching her, cradling her in his lap as he brought them to the lounge that overlooked the stars. He didn’t let her go but instead settled in.
Kat stiffened.
“What’s wrong?”
“This is awkward.” She tried to remove herself from his lap and after a short struggle, she settled a short distance away.
“Apparently it’s only going to get more awkward,” he muttered, closing ranks. “How are you feeling? Really?”
Kat curled her legs under her. “I have some aches, nothing major.”
Dommik’s eyebrows furrowing as he stared at her. He’s reading me. “Do you have any cramps?”
“What?”
“Cramping,” he sighed, exasperated. “In your stomach.”
“Yes...there is some cramping.” They watched each other in stony silence which is what every conversation and every interaction between them always came to quiet brooding, racing thoughts, and distrust. At least that’s how it felt for her. “We had sex.”
“I’m glad you remember.”
“It was only sex.” She stated more for herself than for anything else. “I don’t expect anything from you and I know why you did it.”
He sat back. “You expect your job? So, it was only mechanical for us, makes sense.” He canted his head. “We are two adults alone out in space but I think you forget Katalina, I let you back on this ship, and regardless of what happens between us, I’m still your boss and your captain. I know you’re lying and I can live with that. I also know everything that happens on this ship. Everything. To what you eat for each meal, how much you eat, where you spend your time, when you step off my ship without permission, and when you send questions out to the EPED that should be directed to me. If you haven’t noticed, I’m a machine and more so than most other Cyborgs out there. My ship is a machine, a machine, Kat,” his voice rose, “and I’m perfectly integrated with it.” Dommik took a deep breath. “This is not how I planned this conversation to go but I’m curious, why did I have sex with you?”
Kat rubbed her stomach and his eyes drifted over her movements. She knew he knew more than he let on, it was obvious, and she was aware that Bin-Three could likely have a camera on him. But they were practically strangers and when it came to his double set of arms, she probably knew his body better than the man himself.
“You said it yourself, you claimed me, and we’re going into Trentian airspace. They didn’t teach the nuances in school but everyone knows they’re dying out because of us and because of that, will do what they can to obtain un…” she paused and swallowed. “Uninfected women.” Kat looked away and out at the stars. “Which is really funny now that I think about it.” She laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“Nothing. I used you too, though.” She turned back to face him. “You don’t need to threaten me and I didn’t come with you just for the hell of it.” Her thoughts wandered back to the space port’s entry gate. “I had my reasons.” The conversation was taking a turn she didn’t want to go down with him. Sex was one thing but she knew better than to share her soul with someone, and only had several times in her life. She didn’t count the doctor who only knew the pond-scum that coated the top.
Dommik watched her as she rubbed her stomach his eyes boring holes into her flesh and under her skin. Kat couldn’t stop the blush that heated her cheeks.
“I wanted to have sex with you. The Trentians had nothing to do with that.” He reached out his hand, willing her to take it. Kat looked at it and at him, her Cyborg, and went with her heart. She took it.
He pulled her to his side and held her close, his breath tickled the loose strands of her hair.
“I wanted you too,” she whispered.
“I know. I could smell it.”
“Oh. Gross.”
He squeezed her hand. “A strong sense of smell helps when I hunt.”
Kat sniffed him too discerning nothing, not even the natural smell of a human. Dommik didn’t have a smell and it unnerved her. He really is...something else. She laid her head against his chest. “Can I ask you something?”
“Depends.”
“What happened that made the EPED force you to take on an employee?”
He didn’t respond, not immediately, and she could have sworn she felt the metal frame of him shift under his skin where she touched him. It was almost like he was tensing up, but not quite. Muscles didn’t physically shift to the side. Kat remained still and waited; for him to speak and for his interior shell to move.
“I was sent to a barely habitable planet, far off the main spaceways, it was called Argo.” Dommik paused and that eerie feeling of foreboding came back to her.
“I’ve never heard of a planet called Argo.”
“Argo-566 to be exact. It was a dust ball, another one of the billion lifeless planets on our maps charted out long ago by some of our first navigational and mapping scientists before I was created, and long before the great alien war.”
“Oh.”
“Several years ago reports surfaced and pictures were uploaded by another Cyborg onto the Network of life on that planet, not just microscopic life, but plants and, well, creatures. The EPED got ahold of the images. They became interested and wanted to know more.” He spun one of her curls. “I was sent out there about a year ago to verify, scope out, and prove one way or another that it was habitable and that it could sustain a military base or at best a port. It’s a standard job, not one we receive often, but not unusual.”
“We?”
“
Other Cyborgs that work for the EPED, you met two, Gunner and Netto.”
Kat settled closer into Dommik, getting comfortable despite her aches and watched the universe fly by. “I didn’t realize there were others like you. Do they all have a double set of arms?”
“Some have other…well, let’s call them parts, but we’re all different.” He continued, “It took several weeks before I arrived at the planet, and I found something very unusual. Planetary perimeter blockades, satellites, and relays. Someone was there or at least was watching and guarding the place. I assumed outlaws. Tech isn’t my specialty but I was able to override it and hide my presence. I should’ve known then, that something was off, and I did for the most part but I chose not to regroup and turn back. So I landed, or I tried too.” Dommik stopped.
She draped her leg over his outstretched one and fingered the buckles of his chest piece with her free hand. Kat didn’t know how she knew, but this story was harder for him than she anticipated and tried to comfort him the best way she could. “Why couldn’t you land?”
“Because I couldn’t see it.”
Kat looked up at him. “How is that possible?”
“It was covered in corpses.”
Chapter Thirteen:
---
“What?” Kat lifted away and looked at him with shock.
Dommik could count the number of times he had ever been disturbed, and that count didn’t go past his first hand. But that day did something to him that he couldn’t fully understand, it had changed him, evolved him beyond the physical restraints of his body. There were new parts, software and hardware updates, there was even new technology, like his body-suit, that upgraded him. They didn’t prepare him for Argo. And they didn’t prepare him for Kat.
He didn’t know why he felt compelled to tell her about it.
“There was no ground to be seen because it was covered up. And even within my ship, I could smell the stench, it was everywhere and it clung to everything. I was expecting a desert. Eventually, after several hours of flying over the dead, I gave up and landed amongst the waste. The ship popped the bloated things it landed on and settled in. So, after my vessel scanned the vicinity, it managed to find life amongst the dead, at least what remained and it was deep, and I mean deep underground.
I geared up and went out to investigate. It took some time but I managed to dig my way to the planet’s surface only to discover that the dead things had lived beneath the sands and the creatures on my radar were likely the same as the ones on the surface. I don’t know what happened but it drove the beasts from underground to die planetside.” Dommik reached for Kat again and brought her back against him.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“My job. I found a tunnel and went after the live ones.”
“How does this involve you needing me? You made it back.”
“I did.” Dommik sighed. “But it wasn’t that simple. I went down into the tunnel and the live ones began to move toward the surface. They started to move toward me as well and I was ready for it. I thought it was a lucky break on my part and managed to catch several of the small ones, young I assumed at the time; and as I was retreating back to my ship with the paralyzed beasts dragging behind me, the tunnel collapsed.”
“Oh my god.”
Dommik laughed. “Maybe. Maybe not.” He sobered up. “I was alive, partially crushed, for nearly a week and for a good portion of that time I was unconscious. I’m not sure how much you know about Cyborgs but we heal at an extremely fast rate and we can survive without food and water for months before our nanocells begin to fail. My body was healing itself around crushed metal and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t estimate my time of death, and I so very much wanted to die. On the fifth day, I turned myself off and waited for it to happen.”
“Why did you wait so long?”
“I was hoping one of the beasts would open up a tunnel nearby or through me and the ones I had captured perished long before they woke up.”
“So how did you get out?” He felt her body shiver against him.
“Remember those satellites and perimeter blockades I mentioned? Well, my override didn’t work and alerted the owner. It was the Cyborg who first uploaded the images of life out there to the network. He had come to dispose of me, of my ship, but ended up saving me instead. He tracked my signal down and we connected wirelessly. It took him two days to get me out. In exchange for letting me live and healing me, I had to keep the EPED from getting involved. I docked my ship to his and we left Argo together.”
Kat moved onto his lap and started kissing his jaw, light touches, just the barest hint of her lips that were dry but still soft and velvet. The parts inside him that wanted to shift into his other form became harder for him to keep under control. Dommik settled with letting her do what she wanted.
He continued, “I was out of commission for months and had my humanity off even longer. We stayed out in the fringes during that time so my ship couldn’t be tracked. I was off the grid, completely, for an entire season. And when my reports were filed through, they had already assumed my death.”
She stopped kissing and looked at him. “Why would they assume that? Did they even send someone out there to find you?”
“They didn’t, couldn’t, each mission costs them a significant amount of money and is queued far in advance. Even if they jumped my rescue to the top of the list it would have taken them months to get there, at best. I have the best track record of any hunter in keeping communication with the EPED, so when I vanished they assumed the worst. Gunner of all Cyborgs was the only one who fought to go look for me. Keep kissing me,” he demanded, harsher than he intended.
She looked away from him, “Okay,” and leaned in, her mouth as light and airy as a butterfly. He flexed and grabbed her legs, pulling her firmly into his lap to straddle and sit on his hard-on.
“I know you want me.”
“Well, Cyborg, I know you want me too. Finish the story, what happened when you returned?”
“Shock, confusion for the most part and quite a bit of anger. I told them the planet was dead and couldn’t sustain life, that I had taken an injury and had recovered, and I would not tell them more. In return, they withheld payment for the mission and business went on as usual. They didn’t believe me, of course, but they couldn’t afford to lose me either. In retaliation, they have kept me on the easiest jobs since and close to Earth. And here you are, and here we are on my first mission since Argo, heading to a place they are probably hoping will get rid of you so they can put one of their own on this ship.”
Kat shook her head and stopped feathering kisses on him again. “I don’t understand,” she leaned back to find his eyes. “Why did you have to keep Argo a secret? Why does a dead planet matter so much? Did he...did the other Cyborg kill it?”
“He told me there was a disease there, something he came into contact with and he took it upon himself to keep it contained.”
“And you believed him?”
“Yes and even if I didn’t. I owed him a life debt. I owe him a lot more. He fixed me, metal frame and all. I can’t even begin to tell you how much money that would have cost him. All he asked for was silence and so I paid up.”
She looked at him, head canted and questioning with messy hair framing her heart-shaped face and lips pressed firm into a straight line. Dommik lost control when she parted her lips to speak. “No more questions,” he mumbled and kissed her. She swallowed her words with a moan and kissed him back.
He took her lips with a desperation he didn’t know was inside him, a need for her exotic, unknowable taste in his mouth, simmering and wild. She parted her velvet soft mouth under his and gave him access to take her as, burning, chaotic desire lit up between them. A wildfire, explosive and uncontrollable. Dommik needed her like this, always like this, and only ever for him.
Kat’s hands gripped his shirt and tore it as she dragged her hands down his chest, his abs, over his pelvis and found the cock she was curre
ntly sitting on. He didn’t stop her when she began to dance on him, rubbing him through his body-suit, with her fingers and her pussy.
Dommik grabbed her ass and thrust her against it. She gasped as he leveraged her above him and pulled down her pants, only letting her stand to rip them off all while she tore at his buckles, freeing him.
His dick sprang up, hard and thick, lusting to be sheathed by her, his little dripping-wet spitfire. With the light of the stars at her back, he could see her drenched panties and the sparkle of her essence at the crux of her thighs.
“I want to see you,” he groaned, trying to control the uncontrollable.
Dommik kept his hands on her skin, caressing her legs as she stood up and shimmied out of her underwear. He kicked them up with his boot and pocketed them. Her knees came down to straddle him again.
And with her pussy just above him, in line to be impaled by him, his little fairy opened herself before his gaze and up on display. One hand on his shoulder for support, the other spreading her folds as she leaned slightly back. “Do you like it?”
He had been with several women in his life, all bought under mutual agreement, all when he was first created and he couldn’t say anything about them, only faceless transactions, shadows in the dark and a minor reprieve to all the bloodshed and death. But Kat was different, alive, and blooming with supple curves, piercing eyes, and hair that was the embodiment of feral. Something that he didn’t know that he so desperately needed.
He was going to keep her. Dommik knew from the moment she walked onto his ship and amongst his cages, he was going to keep her.
“You’re beautiful.” His fingers replaced hers. “I’m going to play with you. You might want to hold on.”
She reached down and grabbed his cock, making him shudder. “I’m going to play with you too, then.” She began to massage his long length.
Dommik tensed, his legs strained as delicate, exploratory hands coaxed him from his thick mushroom tip to his base and lower to explore his balls. Beads of his precum sprouted from him to trail down his girth and catch over her delicate fingers.
