Stealing Coal

by Laurann Dohner

  Jill did the math. “What about the missing two percent?”

  Rune stopped next to Jill and the doors slid open. The android gave her a warm smile. “The pod could malfunction and blow up when you jettison away. Death would be instantaneous.”

  “Great.” Jill wished the android hadn’t shared that little possibility with her. “Lead the way please.”

  The droid turned left. “The pods are one level lower. We’ll take the lift down.”

  “Thank you for this.” Jill meant it. She just wanted to get away from her father’s insane, woman-drugging friend.

  “I enjoy being helpful.”

  “You really are.”

  They entered the lift. Rune didn’t touch the buttons but the doors closed. “You can remote link to the computer?”

  “Yes.” Rune smiled. “It saves time while I move around the ship to do my chores.”

  Thoughts of Coal had Jill really edgy to get to the life pod. The things were designed to full blast away from ships in case of pirate takeovers or ship failures. As long as the Jenny hadn’t gotten too far away she should be able to hail them to pick her up before the Cutter would have time to catch her.

  What if Captain Varel comes after me? Her eyes closed with that thought. Her ship wouldn’t be great in a shuttle-to-shuttle battle but then Coal had taken out a huge freighter. Her eyes opened when the lift doors did. She had faith he would think of something to save their asses again if it came down to it.

  They stepped into a cargo hold. Two life pods were secured to the deck near the far bulkhead by the exterior loading doors. Jill jogged forward, intent on releasing one of them from the tethers. All she’d have to do would be to activate the docking doors, seal the pod, and it would get sucked out. She would activate the engines at that point to get her away from the Cutter.

  “What are you doing, Rune?”

  The male voice made Jill spin toward another door she hadn’t seen. Captain Varel stood there glaring at the android. Four of his men were behind him, looking mean, unhappy, and tough.

  “Are you giving our guest a tour?” Sarcasm dripped from Barney Varel’s cold tone.

  “She doesn’t wish to marry you.” Rune shrugged. “She made logical arguments to release her.”

  “You stupid, useless pile of synthetic skin.” The captain jerked his head. “I should have allowed that driver to take you to the incinerator factory instead of trading a barrel of banned booze for you.” His cold stare landed on Jill. “Where do you think you were going?”

  Fear made Jill’s heart race. “You can’t force me to marry you. Coal will come after me.”

  He grinned coldly. “That dumb hulk of silver skin? He believes you met me and fell madly in love.” His boots struck the deck when he approached. “I’m irresistible.”

  Her gaze darted frantically around the cargo hold, looking for an escape, but there wasn’t one. She backed up as he and his men approached. They spread out to corral her into a corner.

  “Why are you doing this? I thought you said you were friends with my father. Big Jim obviously trusted you.”

  The captain paused, holding up a hand to stop his advancing men. “Let me tell you about your daddy, Jillian. We had a twenty-eighty profit split. Want to guess who got the much lower portion?” His face turned red. “Me. He ended up richer than I could ever dream of being while I still have to work just to keep paying for my lifestyle. He promised me he’d leave me something but do you know what he did instead?”

  Jill’s shoulders straightened and some of her fear eased to a cold kind of anger. “Let me guess. He screwed you over somehow. I thought you said you knew him. He had a reputation for being a total bastard. Didn’t that ‘bloody’ part of his nickname tip you off that he wasn’t the nicest guy?”

  “He left me you,” Barney Varel snarled.

  “Then problem solved. I’ll be out of your hair forever. I don’t care if you promised to take care of me. I swear you’ll never see me again if you just let me go.”

  The smile he gave Jill froze her inside. She’d never seen so much animosity directed at her. “You don’t understand. Jim happened to be the most ruthless yet intelligent man I ever met. He wanted to make certain I kept you alive and well after he died. He left you all the money he had.”

  Jill blinked repeatedly, staring at the man blankly. “I don’t have his money. If it were on his ship, it went with him when Viking blew up. The Jenny and the cargo aboard it were all I inherited.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.”

  Jill backed up until the bulkhead trapped her with nowhere else to go when he inched closer. Captain Varel glared down at her from his slightly taller height and lifted a hand. His finger pointed directly at her chest, pressing right over her left breast.

  “You’re the key to his money.”

  Jill pushed against his chest with both hands, hard enough to knock him back a few stumbling steps. “He never said a word to me about where his money is. Do you think if I knew where it was that I’d be trading with lowlifes in deep space, risking my neck on every job? I can’t even afford to pay a crew. I work with three androids I salvaged. I love the Jenny but that shuttle has more things broken down on it than what actually works.”

  “Unbelievable. He seriously never told you?” Disbelief widened the guy’s eyes.

  “No.”

  The scowl returned. “Have you ever heard of a three-scan lock bank?”

  “No.”

  “Your father had. There are two of them on Earth. That’s where all his money is stored.”

  Jill was not sure what to say.

  “Damn stupid bitch,” he hissed. “They use scans to access the account information. Instead of numbers or passwords or even identification cards, they use your DNA from a blood sample, a genetic scan of your hair, and a retinal scan of your eye.”

  Confused, Jill just gawked at him.

  “You’re coded into the account.”

  Realization slowly dawned. “You mean―”

  He cut her off. “To access it, you have to be alive. Dead or frozen blood is detected, rejected, and it won’t allow access. The same goes for your hair and retinal scans. It verifies you’re alive every damn time. Your father set up the account with a cap on how much can be withdrawn any given time.” He stepped closer but then halted, his hands gripping his hips so hard that his knuckles turned white. “It’s going to take me at least ten years of keeping you alive to use you to withdraw all of it.”

  Horror gripped Jill. “You can have it all. I don’t want it. I just want you to let me go.”

  “Never,” he ground out harshly. “At least not for the next ten years, sweetheart. After the account is drained I don’t give a damn what happens to you.”

  This can’t be happening.

  “Jim felt certain I’d fall in love and grow to care for you in that time.” The captain snorted. “Not damn likely but I will make a deal with you.”

  Jill met his cold glare, feeling numb inside.

  “I won’t beat the shit out of you every time you pull this kind of stunt if you behave and stop trying to escape. If you’re really good, I may even allow you to walk away from me at the end still breathing.”

  Tears blinded her but she tried to blink them back. “Coal will come for me.” God, I hope so. Please, she silently pleaded.

  “The cyborg?” Captain Varel turned his head, grinned at his men, and darted an amused look at each one of them. The amusement left his expression. “She thinks metal heads are intelligent.” He suddenly lunged, a hand fisting in Jill’s hair.

  She cried out when he jerked her away from the bulkhead, spun her to face away from him, and his other arm wrapped around her waist. He held her in front of him. She didn’t fight. The pain of her hair being pulled by the tight grip he had on her kept her still.

  “Watch how damn smart they are,” he whispered in her ear, his hot breath making her nauseous from the unwanted in
timacy of his body pressed so close to hers.

  His crew chuckled and some outright laughed. Varel took a deep breath before speaking.

  “Rune? Clean the damn deck. It’s dirty.”

  The android smiled. “Of course.” She turned and walked to a cabinet, opened it, and removed foam-cleanser canisters.

  “She refuses to have sex with the men, will fight them off if they try to touch her, but they don’t need to,” he whispered.

  Rune reached for the hem of her short dress, gripped it, and pulled it over her head. She placed her dress on a hook inside the cabinet and then turned, totally naked, to face them. Jill’s gaze traveled down the android’s perfectly formed naked body. Rune started to spray down a section of the deck, grabbed a handful of towels, and then dropped to her hands and knees. She started to scrub the deck.

  “She doesn’t want to get her clothes dirty. See how smart she is? She refuses to be a sex aid to men but she’s too stupid to know we get off on her all the time.” Varel jerked on Jill’s hair, forcing her head to turn. “See how easy it is to fool them? Your metal head believes what he’s told. Right now he thinks you’re happy with the man you were meant to be with. He’s never coming for you.”

  One of the crew opened his pants, revealing that he didn’t wear underwear and that the sight of the anatomically correct android turned him on. His hand squeezed his stiff cock, slowly pumping his fist around it while he watched Rune on her hands and knees, moving back and forth.

  “I’m going to puke,” Jill whispered, squeezing her eyes closed as another man unfastened his pants.

  “Go ahead,” Varel laughed. “Rune will just spend more time wiggling that perfect, upturned ass for the men to jack off to. She does have a habit of spreading her knees to really scrub hard.” He suddenly moved, yanking Jill toward the door. “If you try to escape again, I will beat you. I just have to keep you alive, hair on your head for the scans, and make sure nothing happens to those pretty blue eyes of yours. Scans don’t give a shit if you’re in pain or bruised up.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Coal woke with a vengeance. Rage and the pain from the blow to the back of his head had him snarling. Sky had hit him with something, knocked him out, so the Cutter would have more time to take Jill farther away from him. His muscles strained against the chains holding him to the same cargo table he’d been bound to when he’d first entered the Jenny.

  “You will be fine,” Arm stated.

  Coal’s head twisted to the side, spotting the android near the corner, and tried to push his mind to work through the foggy ache he experienced. “Come here.”

  Arm came forward and stopped at the side of the table. With shrewd eyes, Coal stared up at the damaged face of Jill’s military droid.

  “Do I still have access to you?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Release me now.”

  “I have been ordered not to do that unless there was a medical reason.”

  “My right arm hurts. I need to move it to alleviate the pain. I can’t do that chained down.”

  Arm suddenly reached out, his strong fingers gripping the metal above Coal’s wrist, and snapped the links. Coal wanted to yell out in victory but managed to remain calm. He needed to act quickly before one of his cyborg brothers decided to check on him. Jill had been smarter by ordering the droid not to release him under any circumstance unless she’d given Arm a direct order. Of course, it helped that the defense model had outdated systems. A newer model would have never fallen for that ruse.

  “My other arm and both legs need movement. I have cramps in them that hurt me severely,” he lied.

  Arm freed him quickly. Coal stood and ordered Arm to turn around. The big droid spun to present Coal with its back. In seconds Coal opened his access panel. He disconnected the device that allowed data to be transmitted to the android without a direct connection to a terminal.

  “Why have you shut down my receptors? Were they malfunctioning?”

  “Yes.” Coal blew out a deep breath, relieved he had total control of Arm for the time being. “You were being hacked. Now it isn’t possible for someone to send you orders. You’re to only do what I tell you from now on. Disregard everyone else.”

  “Understood.”

  Coal closed the panel and headed for the weapons locker. “I need your help.”

  “Understood.” Arm followed him. “What are my orders, Sir?”

  “Is there a safeguard in case the shuttle is overtaken to regain control?”

  Arm paused. “No, Sir.”

  Frustration gripped Coal as he strapped on weapons. He needed to regain control of the Jenny. “You’re a defense droid. Are you skilled with nonlethal tactics to take out humans without causing permanent injury?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Coal turned, staring at the droid’s damaged face. “What is the quickest way to do that, causing the least injury?”

  A mechanical whine sounded and part of Arm’s side slid open. “I am equipped with hostage bombs.”

  “What are those?” Coal peered at the round green balls displayed in casing, in a row.

  “Avarios gas, Sir.”

  “I don’t know what that is.” Coal frowned.

  “They explode on impact, the nonlethal gas fills a square radius of fifty feet, and once breathed in by life forms it makes them lose consciousness within seconds, Sir. The effects are harmless with only a ten percent chance of slight to severe injury caused by falls when they collapse from the effects of being subjected to the gas.”

  “Do you carry any masks to prevent me from being affected or know of any onboard?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “How long does it take the gas to dissipate?”

  “One minute and nine seconds, Sir.”

  Coal took a deep breath, held it, and walked to the terminal that was located inside the door of the cargo hold that led inside the shuttle. He activated the onboard computer, guessing he didn’t have much time before someone noticed the breach. He read life signs on the shuttle. He turned, pulling air into his starving lungs, and knew how long he could hold his breath.

  “There are two life forms in the mess hall and one in cabin three. Go locate them. When you find them I want you to toss one avarios-gas ball, wait one minute, then toss a second one. Keep them pinned down until they fall over. Are my orders clear?”

  “Yes, Sir.” Arm paused. “There are six life forms aboard, including you, at my last scan. I cannot verify that number now that my receptors have malfunctioned.”

  “Ignore the two sealed in the captain’s quarters. The councilman and the human are highly unlikely to leave that section of the ship, but if they do, gas them as well. Under no circumstances are you to kill anyone. Repeat the order.”

  “Use only nonlethal gas to contain the life form threats.”

  “Go. Return to me when it’s done.”

  “Yes, Sir.” Arm spun around, moving fast for the doors.

  Coal closed his eyes. He had no idea what the consequences of his actions for ordering the droid to attack fellow cyborgs would be, but whatever they were, he’d face it after he had Jill back in his arms. Grim determination stilled his inner turmoil over disobeying orders. He’d die for Jill.

  * * * * *

  Jill kicked out at Barney Varel, her bare foot impacting with his thigh, and pain shot through her toes. Without boots on it hurt when she nailed him. The man grunted but didn’t release her arm.

  “Knock it off, you little hellion. You look like your mother but you act just like your father.”

  “Let me go,” she twisted hard, attempting to free her wrist from the bruising grip he had on her.

  “Put your damn thumb on the scanner.”

  “You already tore a handful of my hair out, you bastard!”

  “It was just a few strands. The bank is waiting for the second verification.” His hold tightened, drawing a cry of pain from her, and forced the electronic pad closer. “Do it or I swear I’ll kn
ock out some of your teeth. I want access to that account.”

  “Fine.” She ceased her struggles, jammed her thumb down on the pad, and winced when the needle pierced her skin to draw blood to take a DNA sample.

  The scanner beeped to verify her identity. The captain released her wrist and lunged for her when she tried to spin away to put distance between them. His fingers dug into her hair at the base of her neck, fisting a handful of it, and shoved the scanner in front of her face. Her back ended up pressed against his torso.

  “Look into the damn thing and don’t you dare blink. I’m really getting pissed off at you.”

  “Screw you.”

  “If you don’t stop fighting me, you will not enjoy the consequences. Remember your dear ex-husband? Your father told me what he did to you. Want a repeat?”

  Jill went utterly still. He didn’t say it but he implied he’d rape her. Her eyes widened and she looked at the center of the pad, not blinking. She didn’t care about her father’s money but she hated Varel enough to try to take a stand against him getting a single credit though it wasn’t worth him hurting her that severely.

  A red light blinded her for an instant and then the pad beeped again. Varel laughed, giving her a vicious push forward. Jill stumbled, nearly collapsed to her knees, but managed to stay on her feet. She walked to the other side of the quarters, as far as she could get from the vile man. Once there she glared at him, put her back to the wall, and tensed to attack him if he came at her.

  Varel’s full attention remained on the electric pad while he punched in commands. He grinned widely and looked super pleased at whatever the device displayed.

  “Sweetheart, you’ve made me a happy man.”

  “You got what you wanted. Please leave.”

  “Don’t you enjoy my company?”

  Jill rubbed her throbbing thumb. “No.”

  “Do you know what I’m going to call you?” He didn’t wait for a response. “My bitchy little banker.”

  Jill held her tongue. The guy had gone from anger to being annoyingly happy now that he’d gotten what he wanted from her. She didn’t want to anger him again. She just wanted him to leave her alone in the room.