Rogue.
The woman watched his dawning awareness in her customary friendly silence.
His fingers flexed. “Why did you disconnect me? Are you trying to cause my death?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll be disassembled.”
A smile complemented the lilt of her brow. “Only if they catch you.”
He set that aside and focused on the next most logical reason for her assault. “Stopping me won’t save the target.”
The distant, high-pitched whine of seekers grew stronger, and shadows of drone-controlled bots landed up and down the street. They had deployed in reaction to his disappearance. Backup upon backup was being activated to complete his assignment.
Strangely, although he could no longer “feel” the other robots in the network, he could still sense Cressida’s smart chip, broadcasting her identity.
Why could he still feel Cressida?
The woman in front of him merely shrugged. Everything about her body language and response matched. She didn’t care what he did. Stopping his assignment wasn’t her purpose.
“Then….” He pressed both hands to his temples and squeezed. An irrational response, to physically simulate the constant, unswerving direction to complete his assignment, which was now absent and silent. All choices held identical weight, which was to say, no weight. He floated without purpose between the poles of possible futures, between the very poles of existence. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Enjoy your free will.” Her voice came from farther away than it had moments before. “The choices, Xan|Arch, are up to you.”
He dropped his hands. “How the hell—”
She was gone.
He jerked back, scanning in all directions. She was gone as completely as though she’d been vaporized. Even the scent of her was absent, blown away in the wind of the seeker-drones overhead, crossing his shadow and stirring dust.
Loud clacking on the courtyard walls advertised the clunky bots’ approach. Shit. Normally he would know their position by an internal representation of his world, fed into his brain courtesy of the network, which had now gone completely dark. It was as though all but one eye was poked out and all but two hands were cut off. And the voice, that oh-so-comforting voice that instructed him in every move with divine confidence, had gone silent.
It couldn’t be coincidence that now, blinded from everything else, Xan could still sense Cressida’s presence. Like an anchor to his fragmenting sanity, he fixated on it. Cressida must know something. She just had to.
Drone-controlled sentry bots clopped past him, their thick armor covered in the bloody scent of mud and crushed orchids.
He stopped one. “Wait.”
Its dead visage stared past him as if he didn’t exist.
Did no one see him on the satellites above? Had he somehow slipped off the visible spectrum? How had the mystery woman accomplished that? The Faction, before they disassembled him, would want to know.
He needed answers. Cressida must have them. In moments, he would no longer be able to ask. Sentry bots ascended the stairs, a rising tide of death crashing into her bedroom.
Xan demagnetized his pistol.
CHAPTER TWO
Only a moment after Cressida resumed her cramped position under the bed, a sharp ache in her ear bones sounded like the distant shrieking of a thousand vampire bats. She covered her ears, but the sound intensified. A crash landing—or a deliberate orbital break.
Abruptly, it silenced.
She dropped her hands and held her breath.
Something was happening outside. Please let it be the general. She had done everything he had asked, so surely she would be rescued. That was how it worked. Patience and obedience equaled survival. She squeezed her icy hands together.
Footsteps echoed up the courtyard stairs and thundered down her hall. The regular squeak of machinery. Not one or two, under stealth and silence to smuggle her to safety, but a platoon sent to get her. A firing squad.
“It’s all going to be okay.” She hugged her travel satchel and rocked, mouthing the words silently so that they couldn’t come out a sob. She had done everything she was supposed to. “It’s all going to be fine.”
The clomps stopped right outside her bedroom door. The world settled to silence. Whoever it was, they were just out of her line of sight.
On the street side of her room, a smooth white object nosed through her open terrace. Its small whirring sounded like a flurry of birds. A black light momentarily blinded her with a line of purple.
Oh, no.
Sirens pealed for the rooftops. She clapped her hands over her ears. The sound amplified as two additional drones bumped behind the first, squealing with excruciating volume. They sawed into the room and surrounded the bed.
From the hall, gun barrels swung through the doorway followed by robots. They were the thick sentry models Liberation VI used to guard capitol buildings and safeguard the populace during natural disasters, adept at hefting sandbags and taking down a suspected terrorist. Their rusted-out bodies had always made her feel safe and a little sad. Until now. Decrepit or not, they were deadly armed, pouring through her doorway and clambering over the terrace railing into her bedroom, their ominous shock rifles lowering to center her in their crosshairs.
Her breath stuttered in her throat. Her heart beat frantically against the walls of her chest.
They faced her in a neat line and raised their guns.
White flashed behind them, melting their guns and burning holes. From the hall.
The air tasted like ozone. She opened her mouth, but no sound emerged, not even a scream.
The sentries turned away from her.
Another white light sliced into the line of sentries, holing metal and collapsing joints into smoking piles of debris.
The two drones nosed toward the hall. A second later, they fell silent, crashing to the ground in smoking wreckage. More sentries climbed up through the terrace, but white painted them too, toppling them off the building and burning away the railing. Her ears felt pressed inward by the sudden silence.
A man stepped into the room.
Her rescuer.
He moved with the grace of a trained soldier, pistol raised by his face and aim iron-steady, each squared step over the piled bodies smooth and experienced. Relief cascaded through her like a drug. Yes. She was so ready to give herself over to an experienced man.
His eyes flashed over her as he continued his sweep. A zing of awareness centered low in her body. The silver flight uniform outlined his hard body; large, capable hands wielded his pistol. “Cressida?”
A little rough on Liberation VI’s local mining dialect, his voice tickled her ear. She could listen to him say her name all night.
Although, she would have been perfectly able to converse with him in any of the fourteen most common language trees and the eighty-seven galactic “familiar” dialects.
Her voice shook on the single syllable. “Y-yes?”
The wall behind his head exploded in a hot, black mark.
Her heart stopped. She dropped to the floor.
He darted behind a half-melted sentry, rolled across her burned carpet, and sheltered behind a wall. Blasts followed his movement, scorching the serving table and shattering her pitcher, and pounded the outside of the wall he used for cover. The plaster cracked, bulged, and began to buckle. He stepped onto the terrace, shot twice at something across the street, and stepped back again. The wall shuddered.
“You okay?” he asked. Calm. Like he dodged shots every day before breakfast.
She reached for dignity. “I think so.”
He stepped out and shot again, nailing his distant target. The blasts abruptly stopped. He scanned every direction including the sky above and the street below, and stepped back into her bedroom. Slapping his pistol to his muscled thigh, he crossed the destroyed tile in three strides, bent under her grav-bed, and offered his hand to lift her out. “Let’s be sure.”
With the sun behind his head, the light seemed to shine from within like a brilliant halo.
She swung her travel pack over her shoulder and accepted his hand, emerging from the steps like a dark-dwelling miner.
His palm was a little rough, like his voice, and sent shivers down her back. Imagining that roughness on her bare skin sensitized her to everything about him. His powerful masculine form only rippled with harder muscle up close. Tousled brown hair begged her to run her fingers through the soft fibers. A worn smile creased his masculine lips, and she shuddered under his stunning eyes. Gray as an inkstone filled with ash, rimmed in the bright green of unfurling leaves. She imagined his gaze cast lower, caressing her body with strange electricity, and flushed with heat.
“I’m okay,” she said, and abruptly lost her balance and stumbled into him.
He caught her gently. Their bodies pressed together, his iron shoulder against her cheek. His hair tickled hers, and the heat kindled.
His voice lowered. Rumbling in her ear, exactly where she wanted more. “Sure?”
Her knees trembled.
“Yes. No. I’m just—” She squeezed her knees together. Stop. “When you walked through that door, I was so grateful I could have kissed you.”
He stilled.
She didn’t know what she was saying. After a lifetime of controlling every thought and action, words bubbled out, fountaining, and she gripped onto him with the strength of her relief.
“I’ve been waiting for you for days, exactly like I promised the general, even after my parents and everyone of importance left, and the bombing started, and then the bombing stopped, and you finally came just at the right moment and you’ve saved me.”
“You were waiting for me,” he repeated.
“For days.” She clung to his arm. “I am so glad to see you.”
“So glad you wanted to kiss me?”
“Ah….”
Despite his embarrassment, he seemed pleased. His eyes slid lower, grazing her figure, and a lazy smile curled his lips. The image of the lovers flashed in her head again.
“Well.” The heat kindled in her body again. “Um, it’s awkward of me to say. Yes.”
He cupped the back of his neck and grimaced. “Damn. I missed my opportunity.”
“I could still kiss you.” The offer popped out and warmth flushed her body. Why had she said that? Just because a rough, hot, rugged soldier protecting her fulfilled all her deepest fantasies didn’t mean that he felt the same way.
He tugged her roughly into his arms.
Surprise melded into hot desire. Was he really— Right now? Oh, please.
His wide hand slid across the small of her back and pressed her into his hard belly. Her heart began to pound. His thumb tilted up her chin and stroked the angle of her sensitive jaw, sending tingles to her lips. Yes. She parted her lips, melting into him, and her body opened like a flower to his life-sustaining sun.
He tilted his head. “Sorry, Cressida.”
Realization hit her. He wasn’t kissing her. He was inspecting her for injuries. She flushed again and started to struggle. “Oh, it’s fine—”
His mouth descended and covered hers.
Slow, masterful, he kissed through her surprise to find her sweet center. Luscious heat streaked through her willing body. He tasted like safety and shelter and home. He nibbled at her lips, his teeth tugging, teasing. Desire pounded low. She yielded herself to his power. More.
As though he heard her silent plea, his tongue plumbed the depths of her mouth. Branding her to him. Possessing her to her innermost core.
The world fell away. She clung to his strength, whimpers of need in her throat. Begging him for exactly this mind-numbing possession. Needing desperately to lose herself in so much more.
He pulled back, unfocused, and licked his lips. Colors seemed to shift in his eyes, gray to silver to green. His breath heated her cheek, and the salt on his brow matched hers. He blinked rapidly, as though trying to regain his senses. “What are you?”
She wiped the slickness from her mouth. Her body pulsed, even now, reaching out to him with every fiber of her will. “What do you mean?”
“Something is different.” He carefully straightened, steadying her on her feet. Somehow during their kiss, he had almost bent her over backwards, as though driven to be closer. “You did something to me.”
She stroked his broad shoulders. Her hands were steady, no longer shaking with fear from her near-death experience. “I feel the same way.”
He focused those gorgeous ash-and-leaf eyes on her. Taking her in as though really looking at her for the first time. His mouth opened to ask a question, but then he paused and looked over his shoulder. “Stick close to me, Cressida.”
A very important fact suddenly occurred to her. She touched her hair, smoothed the spikes undoubtedly flying around her ears. “I’m sorry, what was your name?”
A boyish smile curved his lips. “Xan.”
She started to smile back.
He shoved her to the side and wheeled to face a drone that nosed through the open terrace door. Purple light scanned the fallen sentries.
“Xan!” she shrieked.
Xan’s thighs bunched. “I’m going to get you out of here, all right? Trust me?”
Piercing squealing covered over her answer. She clapped her hands over her ears.
He leapt on top of the drone. It rose to the roof, him riding its curved metal back. Both disappeared.
A far explosion rocked the street. Her building trembled. Carvings fell from the wall and shattered. The grav-bed groaned.
She stood slowly. Danger, pushed aside during their kiss, returned with numbing swiftness. Somehow she had survived the first attack. Stick close to me, Cressida. She wanted to so much it hurt.
The world dropped silent as though coated in molten glass. Her hands trembled again. She had to go, now, while it was still quiet. Before more sentries came and found her. Before the first ones came back.
Out in the hallway, destroyed sentries toppled out windows and littered the hall all the way down the sweeping courtyard stairs. She picked her way between their bodies. Whoever Xan was, he had destroyed half an army without even breathing hard.
A boom filled the courtyard. The street wall bulged inward and fell. Stone slammed into walkways, shattered the fountain, and billowed dust. Construction walkers clambered over the rubble, their giant pistons towering over the residence. Implacable feet crushed the cobblestone amidst a new wave of sentries swarming underneath. The walkers hammered at the colonnade supports and the east stairs collapsed in a dusty boom. The entire house creaked.
Xan dropped through the colonnade window beside her, rapidly firing. White spots glowed on the walkers’ columnar legs, but cooled ineffectively to dull gray.
He examined his pistol and slapped it against his thigh. “Damn. Out of charges.”
“Charges?” she repeated stupidly.
“Come on.” He grabbed her wrist and raced for the west stairway. “Run!”
She stumbled to reach his speed. The whole colonnade trembled under the walkers’ steady assault, and the whine of drones overhead reached teeth-grinding levels. The west steps fell away beneath her feet. Xan swore and yanked her back from the precipice. He tugged her down the hall, glancing in all the open rooms, moving steadily, muttering. Back in her room, her grav-bed had finally lost its grip on the failing structure, peeled back half a layer of plaster, and lay sideways on the tile. He dropped her arm and strode to it, set his feet, and gripped the frame. His back rippled and quadriceps bulged.
“What—” she started to ask.
He ripped it from the wall.
Security wires gaped from the ragged plaster. He kicked them free, jacked open the grav-bed’s access panel, and crossed two wires. A flare arced from the unit with a sudden pop, and the bed rose up to her eye level.
“We’re out of time.” He boosted her effortlessly into the bed. “Brace yourself.”
She
gripped the bed railing.
He pushed her out the front balcony. Drones wheeled overhead. Ceiling tiles cascaded off the destroyed residence and shattered in the street. “We’re going to outrun it.”
The street tilted two stories below her. No. She gasped. “Outrun what?”
“Space lasers.” He shoved the bed over the terrace.
It flew out into open air and dropped to the wrecked street below. Her heart flew to her dry throat. There was no time to scream. Xan flew behind the bed. His legs dangled parallel in the fall.
Behind him, the sky turned a paler shade of white.
The bed hit proximity-to-surface-level hard, and its antigrav mechanism churned to compress the air, its frame trembling. Xan slammed into the footrail, bending the metal. His head cracked the bar. His legs swung forward and bashed the cobblestone. The whole bed shot forward as though it were a bar of soap kicked across an oil slick. The sky over her former house turned painful white, then excruciating, even through closed eyes.
Xan popped up, silver jammed against his temple. “Get under the blanket!”
She burrowed beneath the layers until her face mushed against the crystal. She covered her eyes with both hands. Black finger-bones glowed in red skin like a reverse x-ray against her lids. A rumble, loud and deep, ripped open its throat and poured gravel directly into her eardrums, rolling over and over like a cement truck turning sentry parts. Her finger-bones disappeared, and the rumble receded as though a thousand storms had simultaneously passed over.
She became conscious of her own breathing, ragged and loud, in her chest. And that of another person, ragged but regular, and the slap of shoes running behind her.
Sensations returned slowly.
She tentatively removed her hands. The world retained its normal color. She pushed free of the gauze.
The bed was still moving. Xan’s steady breathing and footfalls sounded over the distant wails of emergency warnings.
Liberation's Kiss: A Science Fiction Romance (Robotics Faction Book 1) Page 2
