Winter Harvest

by Dawn Chapman

  Sniper - Rank 16

  Gun Smith - Rank 18

  Nanite Engineer - Rank 17

  Mech pilot - Rank 22

  Human/Machine Interface - Rank 8

  Shadow Awareness - Rank 10

  Negotiator - Rank 5

  Shuttle Operator - Rank 17

  Deception - Rank 5

  Reconstruction expertise - Rank 12

  Sword Play - Rank 18

  Muscle healing - Rank 4

  Animal Handling - Rank 7

  Viral fighting - Rank 6

  Poison resistance - Rank 8

  Spells =

  Locate - Plant or Animals as needed - Rank 4

  Wild Fire - Cast Fire

  Spirit Wolf - Rank 11

  Natural Heals - Rank 32

  I loved the fact he let me see a few of his spells, but not all of them. He loved to make jokes in the shower with the others about a good many things, but the communal showers were a joke in themselves. Now with Tyto and the Elite, we had our own showers, but more often than not, it was easier to get showered off where you were training than to traipse back to our quarters first. We often caught couples fucking. It was interesting and had become a running joke with Dylan. He often looked shy going in, joking that there were a few in there—he could hear them. I took to making him be the first to look. When the coast was clear, we would go in.

  Xe had reported in a few times over the last week. There’d been nothing major that she’d found out about either Saskia or Tyto at first. They seemed to argue just like regular couples. They were also full-on in the bedroom department. I wondered why Saskia had even looked at me when she had someone who obviously satisfied her as much as Tyto. He was a big man, more than well enough experienced in life and with her. She was also seeing a few other men, and she talked. She talked a lot about them and a lot about me too. I wasn’t comfortable with that. I heard her flirting with specifics of our first sexual encounter, seemed she was trying to get the other guys to rise up and see if they could last as long as I had. That day I walked past them with my head high and a growing semi because I wanted to fuck her again.

  Xe came to me after the first couple of days with something that was more than interesting. I’d had to find a quiet place to listen to her report then.

  Saskia is working for another team by the name of the Wreckers.

  I think I’d seen their name floating around. Tyto’s competition here. Second in everything. But how had they gotten to her? She’d been with him for so long. They had to have something on her.

  “The leader offered to get her a Traixic. It was all she ever wanted.”

  That was it, she sold out for a Traixic?

  She wants all power for herself. Not to join any team. But to lead it.

  She knew she’d never get something that powerful from any of them.

  I’d given her what she wanted. Fuck.

  I had to take it back. I had to fix this. I watched Xe’s visual reports then. The things Saskia had done. I cringed and for the first time in my life understood true evil, because Saskia was. Her crimes against others were not only horrendous but gruesome. I hadn’t been convinced she needed to die before now. Now I knew there was no other way.

  My mind had been thinking on the how all week. But nothing was coming up. I had Xe use Saskia to get to all the other team members. She had to infiltrate them all now with my nites. A mission that I thought they’d be great at—Saskia was sleeping with the whole team. I saw her in flashes through Xe’s reports. I shivered. She was a bitch, but she was hotter than sin. I’d fucked her one way, now I was planning to fuck her in others. I pushed those thoughts away and focussed more on my main plan. Hacking and our ship.

  I’d taken a lot of my frustrations out in the yard with others, and then at night in trying my best to get around the system that protected the other ships. I wasn’t getting anywhere, and it was frustrating me every day. I knew the answer was in me somewhere. I just had to keep trying.

  I arrived where I wanted to be outside, going to take a ride back out to our ship. I’d spent many a late night there over the last few weeks, and no one had questioned me at all. I would train as hard as possible through the days, and my nights were in here. I was slowly rebuilding more of the ship than the others knew, starting with her engines. They were old. Beyond old. They would suffice for us, but they needed to be totally reprogrammed from the ground up. Modernising. I was also using it as a ruse to see and try my hand at getting into the other ships.

  It was more than slow. I had allowed some of my nites into our ship’s system, and they were helping when I wasn’t there, slowly replicating and growing. I had supplied them with the things Xe kept me informed of and as a team we were doing well. But to be anywhere near the numbers that would be seriously worth having on board, they needed a full-on nanite factory. So that was my game plan today. To gather their components I needed to start to manufacture them in sufficient quantity that they’d be able to fix the ship themselves. Just by metabolising its components like they did inside me when I was hurt or needed modifying. That happened more often than I knew. The denti’s structure wasn’t anywhere near as functional as the human body. That was down to it being more metal than flesh.

  I was learning just as much about this new body the more I was digging into the ship, the more I enjoyed myself. She was named Elixir 142 and I kind of liked her. She might have been great in her first years out in space, but now she just needed TLC as much as work.

  I had my head stuck in the desk unit on the bridge when I heard someone come up. There were little pings around the ship to let me know what was going on, but the nites knew before I did that someone was on board. They were infiltrating the ship well enough. I looked up to see Tyto heading my way.

  “Anything I can help with?” he asked, sitting on the chair behind me.

  He looked upset.

  Hiro?

  His vitals are off. Blood pressure and heart rate elevated. Stress?

  Maybe, Xirob said. There’s something amiss, he’s never been here at night before.

  “Sure, I could do with a hand. There’s some programming I can’t see from down here. If you follow my lead, it should speed the job up a bit. Thanks.”

  I talked him through some of the changes I wanted as I fiddled with the wires in the chair’s main control panels. It was basic re-routing of the engines and weapons array. Weapons had been decommissioned from this model some years ago, but I wasn’t happy with that. I was putting them back on, even if they would still look decommissioned to anyone else. I knew they would be back online for good at the touch of a button. My hardest problem was actually getting in the materials now to do what was needed.

  It was quite a while before Tyto spoke to me. His voice was low, painful on my ears. “Saskia’s not coming with us.”

  What? Hiroto and Xirob said.

  I looked out from around the side of the console to peer at him. He was upset because his mission was compromised.

  “I didn’t think that was an option,” I said, doing my best to keep things mutual.

  “She ended our relationship tonight, said she didn’t want to go into space now that she had Ishra.”

  Ishra?

  The Traixic.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to him.

  Giving her the Traixic was my fault, and if I ruined his plans because of that—ouch, that wasn’t my intention at the time.

  “You don’t need to be sorry, but I don’t want you trying to steal one of the other ships anymore. She got wind of that plan. No idea how.

  Spies everywhere.”

  Shit, I thought. If she could find out as discreet as I’d been, chances were the system knew too.

  “As much as I didn’t trust her anyway, I know that’s something she’s already passed onto others…”

  I didn’t know what to say to him. “Honestly she’s not the gal anyone thinks she is.”

  The words came out of my mouth before I knew it.


  His eyes narrowed at me. “Yeah, I think she’s known I’ve been playing her all along and maybe even you too. It makes more sense. Though I don’t know to what end or where she’ll go from here.”

  I swallowed but didn’t allow that little bit of hurt to cross my face.

  Damn, he’s bitter, Hiroto said. Over a relationship ending that he didn’t actually want in the first place? Or did he?

  Because he’s not yet got what he wants to leave Tolsa, Xirob retaliated. He knew Saskia was a bitch, but he needed her to come with us for his mission.

  “No. Not because of that, as fine a piece of ass that she is. She’s been doing double duty and crossing everyone around her for some time.” I’d said it aloud before I realised.

  “How do you know that?” Tyto’s demeanour changed, and he was up, dragging me out from under the chair. “You better tell me right now!”

  Spittle flew in my face, and I wanted to gag but his hands were tight.

  I tried to suck in a breath. Too tight!

  I couldn’t breathe. I tried tapping his arms. He was too strong. What the hell! He shouldn’t have reacted like this—it was silly. We knew what she was like. It was as if he’d been possessed.

  As my life started to ebb, my health bar plummeting with the oxygen in my veins, I did the one thing I hadn’t wanted to yet.

  Xe! I ordered. Take-over, now.

  I didn’t have the energy to block Hiroto or Xirob out from seeing this, this time around, and she passed commands to her team that were now well and truly set up in the bodies of all five other members of Tyto’s team.

  Don’t struggle, Xirob said. I see what you’re doing, but you don’t need it. Relax, give yourself time to do what you’re asking of them, and they’ll get there. You can do this.

  What? What’s he doing? Hiroto asked.

  Shut up. You’re not helping, Xirob said. Kyle, you don’t need to breathe like you think you do. Trust me. We don’t need anywhere near as much oxygen as your body’s used to.

  It was Xirob’s calm words even against the panic from Hiroto that allowed me to stop with the kicking and panic. I let myself go limp, but my eyes stayed focussed on the job. On Tyto.

  They dug in, and my mind was flooded with new information. I stopped everything. I essentially shut him down.

  Tyto looked at me, his face blank, but his fingers let go.

  I pushed him away with the last bit of energy I had, gasping for the oxygen I actually didn’t need. Reflex. I learned more in those moments than I had in a long while.

  Thank you, Xirob. What did you do?

  I did what I had to, to survive, I hoped I didn’t need to.

  I moved in closer to him, allowing myself to hold his anger. “Calm down and I’ll let you go.”

  Tyto seemed to get angrier, though, and I watched the more interesting battle going on inside his mind. It was interesting to me because I could see the physical outside of what was going on and the inside. His internal nites were out in force, trying to figure out what was going on and why he couldn’t do anything. But I already had the locks down. There was no way they knew the intricacies of code. All they wanted to do was kill, and even if they got through and into where my nites were holding out, they couldn’t stop me.

  I relaxed control of him, bit by bit. First allowing his vocal cords some room to move. He didn’t speak, just waited to have back what he wanted. Then when he finally did, when I’d given it to him, he sat back, panting. A shaky hand reached up, ran fingers through his hair.

  “Kyle, I…don’t know what?”

  “Better. Get your act together, you’re more than this!” I’d seen a lot these last few weeks.

  Tyto wasn’t a bad man at all. There was another mastermind behind all of what had been going on here. I wasn’t sure it was all Saskia. She might not have been what she portrayed, but she was ruthless. After what she could get from who she could get it. It didn’t matter who got hurt along the way. Tyto was a pawn. As was I. She was trying to get more from me, possibly hoping that I would take him out for her because she knew I was stronger. She knew I would be more than he was, somehow in the mech that one day she’d seen into me and liked it. I’d not only dodged a bullet in avoiding her, but I’d seen how evil she really was.

  I wasn’t going to let her do what she wanted. I knew Rytin and the others could do without her and her strain on the base.

  “We take the Traixic back, we’ll get off this planet, and we’ll deal with her,” I said to him, that feeling of betrayal coming from him seeping into me.

  “What are you, Kyle?” he asked. “You levelled quicker than anyone here has seen, you not only dominated that Traixic but you gave it away. Why?”

  “I need the people in the base to see me,” I replied. “Your show, to get into your team was in everyone’s mind, and it will be for weeks. They might not have or didn’t think anything about it. But this I do know: I do know no one will ever take advantage of those really on my side.”

  “You hacked me. Not the ships’ systems. I didn’t even know that was possible.” It was the way he looked at me, the fight gone.

  But again, I could see nothing but pain there. Almost feel it. My nites had defeated his they were now under my control. I was inside him now, and he’d never get away from that. A power I wasn’t sure I liked but had been needed.

  “I want her dead.” Tyto said.

  I swallowed. I didn’t know if I could do it, but the consequences of actually leaving her on the planet may be worse. I didn’t know if I could do that either. What if Rytin and the others came up against her while I wasn’t around?

  “You don’t want to take her out that coldly. I can see it in you,” he said.

  He was right, but I could see that he did.

  He pushed himself up and stood, offering me a hand. “I will keep Saskia away from you while you finish what you need to here. Concentrate on the ship. I’ll assign you anyone else you need.”

  “Oh, what about funds?”

  “There’s a few things I can pull to get in more. I’ll take the guys out and do a few side jobs for more things you need. How quick can you really get us out of here safely?”

  I looked down to the mass of wires, thinking. “Two more weeks, if you can get me at least one or two more technical minds.”

  “I’ll do my best.” He moved to leave, but then looked at me. “I…”

  “Tyto,” I said. “I don’t want submission or control. You lead the team. The guys trust you, and so does Dylan. I just didn’t want to die. It’s a last resort, always.”

  He straightened himself up. “You can do it to everyone?” I shrugged. I didn’t need to tell them all my secrets.

  “Would be amazing if you could. You could have everyone at your beck and call.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, but that’s not a good thing. You want people to fight with you for the right reasons. That’s why we’re here like this in the first place. All the wrong reasons. That’s why all of us on the inside feel this is wrong, but can’t help but play the game.”

  Tyto nodded. “Yeah, I can see that. I think most of us do.”

  He then left me to the spaghetti junction I’d started on the bridge controls, and I rubbed my face, trying to remember where I had left off. I was soon back into it, though, and in the end when I stopped, yawning and stretching, I felt much better with the task at hand.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Tyto was not happy with the team’s progress on acquiring the parts for us. It wasn’t moving us any closer to getting off Tolsa.

  I stood in his office, taking a beat down. There had been several quests he and the boys had gone on that had gone wrong, lost out, or just hadn’t paid what he hoped. I knew it was the Wreckers getting in first.

  They were getting better and better, and it was all due to Saskia. It wouldn’t be long before she made a play for Tyto’s head. He knew it, and so did I.

  Their relationship in general had taken on a more
outward and public affair. That was not what he needed. His whole outward presence was starting to look thin. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be seen on his team, as it seemed to be falling apart at the seams.

  He pointed to the price tag of the part I needed next.

  “We’re not getting it this side of this year.” He looked at me, his frustration evident. “We’re never getting off this rock!”

  “Who has it?” I asked.

  He looked at me, laughed. “You already know the answer to that, don’t you?”

  I frowned. I didn’t need to know the fact—it was hidden more in his eyes and slouching of his shoulders. “The leader of the Wreckers. I don’t even know his name?”

  “No one really does,” he said. “They operate under two names, but I do know it’s a she that runs it. The guys that have always tried to best me were minions, nothing more.”

  “That makes more sense.” That shocked me and both the guys inside my mind. Saskia’s into women?

  No, she’s into power, that’s all, I told them both. She’d play anyone she could to get that.

  Not one of us knew all the answers…and I wasn’t going to believe that Xe hadn’t been tainted either.

  However, Hiroto’s instant commands filtered through.

  NITE SYSTEM SHUTDOWN INITIATED!

  YOU’RE EITHER BRAVE OR STUPID. WITHOUT THEM, YOU HAVE NO HEALING!

  Hiroto, are you sure? But he’d locked out the nites. I suddenly felt like I was inside a box. You really think that’s necessary?

  You thought you were playing her, but you’ve struggled for a few weeks, not only in getting into the new ship’s systems, but as a team to get what you want. She’s got no intention of letting any of you get off this planet, and the money and things she can do with you would mean much more to her than maybe even Ishra, Xirob said. Hiroto was right to block the nites. They may have been double-crossing you.

  Things she would do with me? Damn, I—

  No, not one of us would think that. But you were poisoned by her in the first place. Maybe it didn’t come from Tyto?

  I watched as my nanite numbers dipped. “For fuck’s sake,” I said aloud. “Tyto, did you order Rytin’s second-in-command to poison me?”