Liberation's Kiss: A Science Fiction Romance (Robotics Faction Book 1)

by Wendy Lynn Clark

He sealed her words with a deep, soul-freeing kiss.

  ~*~*~*~

  Xan kissed down Cressida’s body, following the paths he had learned, devoting himself to the study of her. Every reaction fascinated him. He found the sensitive hollow at her jaw, and she gasped, and as he followed the line down her neck, her moans deepened. Her breasts swelled beneath his hands and her nipples hardened into little beads. When he took her in his hands, she writhed.

  A great wonder filled him.

  His cock pulsed, hard and demanding. Twin desires worked to the surface of his consciousness. He wanted to prolong this hotel stay to the infinite edges of time. Be with Cressida, discovering her with his hands and his mouth, forever. And he wanted to end this immediately and plunge deep into her sweet, hot center. He wanted to fill her with himself and lose all that he was, redefined by their ultimate connection.

  The second desire was terrifying.

  As his mouth closed over her beautiful nipple, her fingers knotted in his hair more desperately. “Xan!”

  He tasted his fill of her creamy skin, and every salty, feminine flavor only increased his desire to taste more, have more, feel more.

  He drew his tongue down the line of her ribcage, down her center, memorizing her noises. Her uncontrolled gasp as he moved her deeper into the desperate, wet stages of ultimate arousal. Her pleased moan as he whipped off his flight suit, descended to her undulating hips, and let his tongue taste the sweet crescent.

  She arched her back. “Xan!”

  His control fragmented.

  He chased her rhythm and found it, driving her wilder and wilder. The precipice loomed. He felt it in her heartbeat, in her scent, in her being. He could lose himself. Because of this woman, he had desires now. He had unique attributes. He had scars.

  But she didn’t trust him.

  He pushed his fingers deep into her feminine core. She knotted her fingers in his hair again, an almost painful pressure of nails against his scalp, arched her back again, and cried out his name as she convulsed. He obeyed her command to stop, resting his cheek against her abdomen, himself encased in a pleasant although somehow distanced sensation of achievement.

  He’d had a chance to become something different. How he knew that, he didn’t know. But he had chosen not to. The need to have her still pulsed hard in his head and in his cock, but the precipice had gone away and he was still himself.

  Anyway, most humans rated sexual release as one of the top pleasures in life. That he could give Cressida one more pleasure she had largely been denied by the Faction—assuming, he was sure, the general hadn’t done a single thing for her—made his obsession ebb slightly and give him peace.

  She stroked his forehead and tugged him up to lie flat on the bed beside her. He rested her head on his shoulder and held her soft body against his. She felt like a cloud, a soft female cloud, and he just wanted to keep her like this forever. He waited for her to fall asleep.

  She hooked her leg across his and brushed his hardness. Surprise colored her voice. “Oh. I guess you aren’t satisfied.”

  “I’m satisfied,” he assured her. “It’s my mental state reaction. My body is saying you’re sexy and beautiful.”

  Her breathing quieted, but her heart kicked in her chest. “Are you sure?”

  Her tone implied a guilt feeling, which was wrong. He shifted, stroking her back to calm her again. “Didn’t I tell you that I only want to do what gives you the greatest pleasure?”

  “You’re still ready to go.” Her voice was small. Her heart kicked up again.

  “Any time. Remember?” In the future, he would have to remember to end his reaction cycle after she climaxed. “It’s not biological.”

  She rolled up on her elbow and smiled down at him. Secretive and beautiful. “I could be ready again.”

  His cock pulsed against her. Biological reaction or not, he would love to grind deep into her wet softness until she dug her nails into his scalp and cried out his name again.

  But that would have consequences.

  Her smile drooped along with her eyes and the squint that suggested a suppressed yawn.

  He pulled her down to his arm again. “Next time.”

  She shifted. “Thank you.”

  He stroked the fuzz on her head that he had forced her to grow at the expense of the beautiful locks she had had before. “For what?”

  “Giving me what I asked. And for rescuing me all of those times, and for caring.”

  He nuzzled her. Her forehead was damp from drying sweat. Sweat that he had caused. He kissed the soft plane between her eyebrows. Inside, this close, he could feel her chip ID radiating against him like an SOS. A radioactive energy signaling her presence to the enemy. A marker of her own death.

  His words, soft and quiet, came unbidden from deep inside him. “Please let me change your chip ID.”

  She stilled. For a few minutes, nothing but their breathing filled the room. Their breathing and the bone-deep insistence of her chip ID against his brain. Finally, she moved again. Shifting closer, her knee on his. “Can you promise that you’ll stay with me no matter what?”

  He couldn’t even promise they’d get out of the room okay; a hundred billion different factors would influence whether they could even enter the phrenologist’s office undetected, to say nothing of getting her off planet. But they were the best odds she had. He had calculated all possible alternates. “I will do my damnedest.”

  She remained silent. Unconvinced.

  Again, the words came from somewhere less conscious. “Can’t you trust me?”

  She was silent for a long time.

  Then, she answered, “Not on this.”

  He accepted her answer, his stroke uninterrupted. If he were human, probably, then it would hurt. Instead, as she drifted to sleep, he felt a dissonant buzz, the one just below his hearing threshold, like a white space in his brain.

  What was it?

  He wanted to shake his head, but he also didn’t want to wake her. He allowed his arm to de-oxygenize while her breathing slowed to sleep patterns. Then, he eased free and popped his own pills. He had enough biological components to make some use of the melanin, and he was curious as to how his irises would change color with the additional refractive properties.

  As the night passed and he gave her the maximum time to sleep, he finished his hair in the shower removed the pizzese from the delivery container, and stuffed it down the recycling chute, along with all of the evidence of their previous inhabitance, including her flight suit.

  She shifted on the bed with the sucking noise of the disposal ventilation.

  Cressida wanted him to promise not to get her off planet unless he was certain he could get off with her. And that was vaguely similar to what the old man had said in his shop. That his don’t-give-a-damn attitude meant the last thing he cared about—himself—would be the only one that survived.

  But, goddamn it, he cared about Cressida too much to make any such promises. If he saw a chance to get her away to safety, he would take it, his own self be damned.

  She still didn’t trust him. He would have to try for her trust harder after she awoke.

  He pulled the last thing out of the bag of cosmetics: a nasal hypo of opi-8. The liquid inside looked clear, which was about all he could guarantee in terms of clarity and cleanliness from the supplier. He stroked Cressida’s cheek. She sighed and curled against him. He tapped the liquid to send the air molecules to the back, uncapped the pen-like instrument, and lodged it up her nose.

  She wrinkled and pushed at his hand as the spray deployed, soaking instantly into her mucus membranes. Her hands lost strength and collapsed, and her forehead cleared. A deep snore filled her—her tongue flopping against her soft palate.

  He rolled her body into the delivery box. As expected, she didn’t fit, which meant that she would pass by any sensors stopping boxes of a correct size for a human body. White buzzing plastered over his brain, softening the loud cracks of her joints dislocating and bone
s breaking as he mashed her body inside, closed the door, and affixed the delivery lock. She had about an hour’s worth of oxygen.

  He headed out.

  The servo he had rented for the morning accepted his coordinates, fixed its magnetic tether to the thick metal delivery box, and levitated Cressida down the stairs.

  At the front of the building, Xan replaced the Valkyrie helmet and headed for the sky bridge. He watched the servo wend through the city, advertising its innocent purpose to all receptors and passersby, all the way to the receiving entrance of the Archimedes Institute. The hour was too early for lunch, but some employees on night shifts might have ordered a late dinner. There, the servo would get her through the automated sensors and to the correct doctor. Meanwhile, Xan would find an alternate entrance and meet her inside.

  He would save Cressida no matter what.

  Even if he had to kill her to do it.

  ~*~*~*~

  Xelia|Brae stood in the upper window of the director’s office of the Archimedes Institute, watching all traffic below on the wide front steps of the edifice.

  She stared out the window, idly picking out targets with her active mind. This child could be n81x in disguise, or the pregnant woman waddling behind could be, and this was how it would feel to plant a fragmenting shatter-bullet right between their eyes, all of their eyes, a great gruesome stream of death and brain matter cascading down the steps in a river of blood.

  A direct feed of the hospital’s seven intake fans and forty-seven ventilation shafts scrolled through her mind: dust particle of unusual size, dust particle of unusual size, woman Miana EscidVo age twenty-six real age sixty-seven complaint pregnancy—triplets, dust particle of unusual size, Jestin EscidAtal age eleven real age eleven complaint none, dust particle of unusual size.

  Shaft forty-two, situated just above a landscaping debris heap, sucked disturbed earth along with air up into the ventilators. So, they got a lot of dust particles. Which, clean or not, the director assured her was infused with a higher percentage of oxygen than city atmosphere.

  “Representative Brae, I must protest this continued habitation in my private office.” The florid director, a tall woman in her late forties who chose to act from that youthful impetuosity rather than the experience of her real age, smacked her antigrav chair back with irritation. “Even if the criminals are on their way here, do you really think they are going to stroll through the front door?”

  Three males ascended the stairs.

  She turned from the window. “It has the greatest odds, yes.”

  “They won’t be able to approach without compromising their identification chips, and now we are reviewing their physical features too. What do you expect to find by staring out a window that we can’t discover with the height of medical scanning technology?”

  She did not let the director’s overblown accusations of superiority irritate her, even though the oblivious arrogance would surely shock any human in Xelia|Brae’s position. “I’m looking for the one who’s not here.”

  Maximil Ventat age 172 real age 172 complaint dislocated shoulders; Fornin Apelon age thirty-eight real age seventeen complaint sexual dysfunction.

  She glanced out the window. The third male had returned to the sidewalk to dispose of a cigarette sparker.

  “The male criminal has disabled his chip. He will enter the building as closely as possible to another with an active chip. Your sensors are not set up to record entries and exits; they are only set up to record identifications. So I am watching for a person who does not register on any scanner.”

  The director blinked and then cleared her throat pompously. “We have security guards.”

  “Your sentries, remote sensors, and human transit force have thus far allowed the criminals free range of this moon for days.” She turned back to the window.

  While the director sputtered, something new dropped into her feed: a servo leaving with a takeout box. She scrolled through the records of the day from before she had begun her reconnaissance to identify its entrance.

  She turned back to the director. “How often does pizzese ordered for patients go through the staff entrance?”

  The woman reddened. “We don’t allow that slop in our institute.”

  “Staff deliveries only occur on the last days of holiday weeks.” She tapped her fingers on the cool hilt of her shatter-pistol, skimming through the thousands of daily records in the giant hospital database. “You use a local provider, not a restaurant based halfway across the city.”

  “We don’t allow it even for staff,” the director insisted, tugging at her collar and sweating.

  Xelia|Brae clicked the transmitter button for her contacts in the Transit Authority. “Trace this company’s order history and tell me who’s requested delivery in the past hour.”

  “That is a violation of privacy,” the operator started to protest when another voice interrupted. “Understood.”

  She reviewed the video in her head, turning down the audio inputs of the sputtering director. A servo of indeterminate origin wheeled a delivery cart through the staff entrance, interfaced with the intake computer, and buzzed down the correct hall. Staff passing didn’t spare it a second glance, indicating familiarity with the objects. It turned away from the office of interest and headed down a corridor toward a patient hub. Fertility treatments—complications.

  The director had finally stopped arguing and was studying the same video, slightly advanced, on her desktop display. “It is against policy,” she said slowly, “but we will accommodate the cravings of our delicate patients who may desire such inadequate calories—with the inclusion of nutritional supplements, of course.”

  Xelia|Brae studied the screen upside down. “Where is Dr. Tiam Neeso?”

  “Doing his work,” the director replied testily. “What are you implying?”

  “Your edifice is full of anonymizers, Director.” She removed her shatter-pistol in one fluid movement, appreciating the respectful drop in shoulders as the human shifted back. “I asked a question.”

  “We value patron privacy.” She choked on her next sentence. “What do you want? I told you, we don’t do anything illegal at this institution. What you call the ‘unusual outlay of exits’ was a holdover from the original design. This continued insinuation is an outrage.”

  “There are eighty-six doctors on Liberation VI with licensing qualifications that would allow unquestioned access to the tools and equipment to perform ID chip alterations.” She stroked the barrel of the pistol. Such a clean line. Such deadly accuracy. “Of those eighty-six, only forty-one are currently employed in a medical environment, and only nineteen have the requisite equipment and facilities to perform the alteration—or successfully hide the evidence.”

  Her fat mouth opened to protest.

  Xelia|Brae touched the screen, altering it to display her evidence. “Of those nineteen, seven received a large influx of funds in the last two days. Four are listed on an outworld directory. Only one is on this continent.”

  The director stared down at the financial transfer to the doctor’s picture.

  “Yes, Tiam did his graduate work on a military installation off world. It paid more than civilian work.” She frowned and tapped the deposit. “But that’s for legitimate surgery. I know his code. The amount is perfectly normal for legal work.”

  Xelia|Brae looked at the woman sadly. “Two days ago, all four doctors received an identical deposit. The same work, from the same bank, to four different doctors.”

  The director’s mouth opened and closed.

  She checked her pistol to ensure that every last piece of cockpit plate had been removed. “Sorry, Director. It is possible to identify illegal activity from off planet. You will need to keep that in mind if you expect to navigate the Nar transition successfully.” She paused at the door, on her way to the Fertility wing. “Even a ghost will leave a trail.”

  ~*~*~*~

  The director watched the slim android depart, her pistol already
out and ready for use. So coldly arrogant. So unreasonably psychopathic.

  She hit the remote lock and sat in her chair, staring out over her office. The office she had so joyously taken from the previous director, after a battle of reputations and connections, beating out all of his competitors, earning this privilege.

  The doctors under her care kept their own kingdoms, fiefs under her ultimate domain, and she allowed them to practice up to and occasionally outside the strict bounds of the law so long as they followed the code of morals handed down from the sacred trust of the original founders. Inscribed upon the tops of all of the doorframe entrances: Life over Profit, Liberation over Life.

  At the base of the structure were their patients. Income generators, of course, but more importantly, they were citizens. They had rights. Rights that could be purchased, independently and privately, at this institution. Rights that she now understood had just, and would in the future, be violated for the expedience of an alien power that had no interest in the consequences of that violation.

  She had assumed the Nar would not care about a place like this. What was one hospital off the main continent? She’d had ambitions, but this had been a home to her, a lair from which to make her bids for the next step. Politics, maybe, would have to go on hold until she felt out the new administrators.

  She had not expected such an incisive cut into her institution, into the ideals of privacy and privilege, mere days after the new administration was announced.

  She had not expected to be threatened with prosecution for a history that had not violated Liberation VI’s morals, careful as they were to only quietly insult the laws.

  The director ordered herself a glass of pom-orange juice and sipped the ruby liquid in its cut-glass tumbler. She would miss this in-desk reprocessor. Lunch yesterday with the Transit Authority vice comptroller had been depressingly predictive, she now saw. Nineteen security officers, an entire well-disciplined unit, wiped out. All of them armed and trained, cut down without a full second’s thought. How would the untrained individual fare against such an enemy? How would any of them, if the comptroller’s ultimate suspicions were true, and the destruction of the diplomatic quarter had been no accident?