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

by Wendy Lynn Clark

“Go away,” one finally cried out. “Medical override, all right? For the last time.”

  The sentry stomped to Cressida. Her first response was always relief, but the long riot baton at its side reminded her that she could no longer feel that in its familiar presence. She rolled forward, onto her knees—headache—and struggled to her feet.

  The sentry stopped in front of her. “Citizen. Move to a safer distance.”

  Blackness overwhelmed her. She put her palms out to ward off the inevitable violence.

  “Citizen. Do you require assistance?”

  “Yes.” Her hands trembled. Perhaps the identification was on a delay, or something had gone wrong with the network. She grasped its proffered arm. Cold, solid metal. “I’m sorry.”

  “This way, citizen.”

  They passed other sentries at a slow walk, each of whom greeted her with a generic, “Citizen.” One asked if she was cold and put a blanket around her shoulders; another asked if she was thirsty and gave her an electrolyte gel. The sentry deposited her on the front steps with a large group of prone, moaning, or sickly quiet patients. “Please remain here until you are processed for recovery.”

  She sipped her electrolyte packet. Planetshine indicated that it was afternoon. Of the same date? No, she had gone to sleep in the evening. It would be the next day, if not later.

  Normally, she would have an internal sense of knowing, as her chip identified the time of day, but now it was strangely blocked, as if the knock to her head had swelled her brain. Perhaps it had. She was in the hospital for a reason.

  The reason came upon her all at once. This was the hospital Xan had wanted her to go to. He had smuggled her into a phrenologist. Maybe she had even agreed; memory loss was not unusual. The Faction woman had interrupted the surgery, evacuated the hospital so that she would have a clean area in which to kill Cressida, and turned Xan against her. Now he was her enemy.

  Her chest squeezed.

  The electrolyte package slipped through her fingers. She leaned forward to pick it up, but blackness nibbled at her vision, and she leaned back, breathing through her nostrils until it went away. Litter. She, who had never done anything deliberately illegal in her entire life, would litter.

  And she would do more.

  Cressida eased to her feet, cautious, until the wooziness passed and she could walk. If Xan was against her, she couldn’t sit here obediently and wait to be killed. She walked across the fields of injured people to the groups who were crossing the street.

  At the edge of the field, a sentry stopped her. “Citizen, you must wait to be processed.”

  She rested on his outstretched arm. A long black mark scarred her forearm to the elbow and bubbled up in a wicked scab. “I’ll be right back.”

  The sentry paused a moment, attempting to encode her response, and moved aside. “Okay.”

  “Thank you.” She waited at the stop signal for the light to change, and then slowly walked across the street and down six blocks to the next hub. Drones zinged by her, and Transit Authority officers stopped every brunette with blue eyes, but she calmly walked right past into the ticket-feed line.

  Another sentry, recognizing her blanket from the disaster at the hospital, attempted to stop her. She promised she was just trying to get home to rest, and it allowed her onto the rail. Rides out cost credits, but rides home were always free.

  She faced forward as instructed and folded her hands in her lap to make the most room for her fellows, demonstrating excellent citizenship. While her brain was swelled and apparently interfering with the broadcast of her chip, she would take advantage of it, like Xan had, and move through the city like a ghost.

  ~*~*~*~

  Xelia|Brae studied Xan|Arch from the private shuttle provided courtesy of the Transit Authority. He regarded her with a smile, the same smile he showed to everybody, even to the target n81x right before the shot that would have killed her if she hadn’t lurched at the moment he’d fired. Such a miss was forgivable; she had calculated it from her trajectory. What bothered her were his additional shots.

  “You wasted valuable bolts melting the escape chute closed when you should have left it unharmed to chase after the target,” she said.

  He looked up from the cleanly flayed kneecap from which he was detaching the human ligaments to install more permanent pistons and lube. His type had an inadequate supply of joint lubrication, because it was not designed to operate under battle conditions for extended periods of time. He was a negotiator, not a soldier, which made her wonder what plans the Faction had held for him on this moon before his defection.

  Repairs had been authorized, despite his imminent disassembly, so that he would have better bolting abilities during the rest of the mission. Since the target had successfully evaded the two of them even on her own, such a repair was deemed acceptable.

  “You melted the elevator doors.” He excised the slender pink flesh, showing none of the revulsion she felt looking at the human weakness he had willingly installed in himself. “I thought I could hobble her with a rebound.”

  “The escape chutes are coated with antireflective materials.”

  “Sure, I know that now.” He rested his scalpel on the table, yanked up the skin covering his kneecap, and popped off the cap. Beneath, the pistons glinted wetly. His cheeks remained immobile as he began the long process of forcing out the dry-locked pistons and refilling the sacks with lube fluid.

  “Besides, you’re the one who lost her outside the hospital.”

  “That she obeyed sentries and traffic signals when her life was under threat only proves the depths of her mental inadequacy,” Xelia|Brae said.

  “It’s not like we don’t know where she’s going.”

  Xelia|Brae studied him. So arrogantly certain. “I hope you are correct this time.”

  “Oh, come on. You’ve seen the data files.”

  He worked the first pin free. The sour scent of overwrought metal filled the small car. If she had a working stomach, surely it would turn. He looked at the twisted metal, set it aside, and poured the new lube into the hole.

  “She’s obviously run to the safe bosom of her good friend the general.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  General Vardis had a huge residence in the middle of a well-positioned trade plaza, with private sea access, shuttle port, and launch pad for his vast shipping business, although his personal mine entrance was only for show. The rubilum-producing bacteria had been coated with shellac.

  Lucky for Cressida’s sinuses, the maglev transit was easy, and she could take a straight-through to the Central Continent. There, she changed rails for the port quarter, and thanks to the strange sights of the flower memorial piled outside of the men’s decontam, the tall stacks of off-planet coffins painted with funerary black, and the haggard lines of travelers still camping for the grounded Upstairs shuttles, no one gave her bare feet or disaster blanket a second glance. It was very reassuring.

  Because every time she remembered Xan’s grin as he raised the pistol at her head, the trembling began again and the tears started behind her eyes.

  She concentrated on being alert. When her brain swelling went down, she would become vulnerable again, and they would catch her.

  Cressida exited the small transit station and walked the long, empty seaside road to the general’s villa. Furious wind whipped big waves against the force shield. Bird-sized droplets or smaller flew through, spattering her with a mild acidic mist.

  She should have come here immediately after the Central Hub incident, no matter what the station sentry had said. General Vardis would have allowed her entry and gotten her off planet before she spent any vulnerable nights learning to trust and open herself to Xan. Before they shared the physicality that manifested her true feelings for him.

  Because she loved him. Not as she loved her parents or her family, not as she had imagined she’d once loved the general, but truly, passionately, wonderfully, fully, she loved Xan.

  Only that man was dead, and
the creature wearing his face was a machine that wanted to kill her.

  She reached the giant convoy entrance along the cliffside—fewer cameras here, now that Xan had made her paranoid of them drifting endlessly overhead—and hailed the occupants.

  An automated message greeted her. “General Vardis welcomes the Nar administration and voluntarily accepts no visitors during the changeover.”

  Cressida cleared her throat. The wind whipped by her, chilling her through her blanket, and her bare feet were sore and raw from the road. “Please tell him it’s Cressida.”

  “General Vardis welcomes the Nar administration and voluntarily accepts no visitors during the changeover, Cressida.”

  Oh, great. She studied the harsh shoreline, carved from millennia before humans settled. An obedient girl would go home, but hers had been destroyed. This girl, even the general wouldn’t recognize.

  She pressed the hail again. “Please let me in, authorization code rosy-rosy-rosy-lips.”

  A pause.

  Then, “General Vardis welcomes the Nar…” began playing even while the small door slid open, allowing her entry. She closed it behind her, rested in the small gazebo, and made her way through the side garden of his palatial estate.

  Funny that her secret code worked even after all this time, but perhaps only she had thought it special to her. Her lips were not especially rosy unless coated with a thick layer of the whore’s kohl he preferred. Perhaps, like the name she had used to break onto his secret island, rosy-rosy-rosy-lips was simply a shared code given to all his women.

  She passed a tinkling fountain fringed with wide trees, climbed the crystal stairs, and rested three times before she made it all the way to the scenic quadruple doors at the top. She pushed open the smallest door and stepped into the glittering hall.

  The house greeted her. “Hello, citizen.”

  She raised her voice. “Where is General Vardis?”

  Subtle lighting directed her to the general’s evening room, where she often found him at this hour. Taking solace in his unbroken routine when everything else around her was irrevocably broken, she padded across the grand hall, down the triple-steps—pausing again at every landing to rest her shaking legs—and crossed the opulent main floor to the heavy copperwood door of his evening room.

  She paused at the carven doorway—was this really a good idea? What if the gate’s warnings were true and he was furious to see her breaking the Nar pact?—and then she stepped forward, triggering the door to open.

  “Good evening, citizen,” the room greeted her, alerting its occupant to her presence.

  In a sateen-stuffed antigrav lounger, crystal-cut snifter half-drunk beside a ruby-inlaid platter of salted mangoes, loomed the familiar figure of General Vardis. A lampshade jaw framed a ticklish gray mustache, and his strong brows curtained piercing black eyes that focused on her as he paused and set aside his lap-sized screen viewer.

  His gold-encrusted knuckles gripped a stately eaglecrest cane as he rose to his full height on the crystal tile. Ceremonial boots were laced and polished, his crimson uniform of formal military service was crisp, and his Founders’ designation for Liberation VI gleamed with polish. The designation was an honorary title bestowed by the wealth he had brought the moon rather than by heritage.

  His utter familiarity meant more to her than the welcome surprise gentling his features, and she sagged in the doorway. “Forgive me for coming in unannounced. I need your help.”

  “No need for forgiveness.” He crossed the room, hung his cane on his forearm, and gripped her cold hands in his bony knuckles. His smile filled her with a floating sensation of relief, like inflating her bones with helium. “You’ve made it here. You’re safe now.”

  She was safe. Safe. Finally safe.

  The general patted her hands and led her to the guest chair. “Were you followed?”

  “I don’t think so, but surely they’ll figure it out soon.” She fought the tightness in her throat. “One of them knows about you.”

  He glanced at her, pouring carefully from the large imported carafe of maudlin liquor she had seen him offer to her parents on so many occasions. Just the three of them so full of smiles and exotic stories, and he so full of news from the world. “How did you get in?”

  “Rosy-rosy-rosy-lips.” She accepted the snifter, allowing the harsh scent to awaken her and not daring to actually take a sip.

  He grunted, unsurprised.

  This was how it had always been between them, and why it had been so easy to revert to a nonsexual relationship. Returning to such disinterested friendship with Xan, even if he didn’t want to kill her, was unimaginable. “Can we leave right now?”

  He paused in the middle of refilling his snifter and set down the heavy carafe with a pregnant click. “My dear, you do appreciate that the skies are filled with Nar monitoring every inch of airspace? I couldn’t even get an agent undetected to your house, to say nothing of getting you Upstairs. Now?” He shook his head. “A change of pigmentation only goes so far.”

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  He flicked his fingers at the mango slices. “Eat something. You look about to be sick.”

  She focused on the limp pieces of fruit dusted with tiny granules. Like the alcohol, imagining a bite made her nauseous. The longer her head tilted down, the more the pressure built, until she tilted upright again. “Perhaps there’s something we can do? Smuggle me into a cargo container or…” Her voice wobbled. She coughed. “Something?”

  He sipped his liquor, studying her like a problem to be solved. His answer came slowly. “I honestly think the best course is to wait.”

  She tried to swallow the lump closing her throat. “My parents must be so worried.”

  His lips tightened. “I can tell you that they made it out of the system unmolested. As of two days ago, they were both on a cruise ship to the Randovi Cluster.”

  Her chest rose. Thank goodness. “I hope I can join them soon.”

  “Yes, well.” He swirled his snifter. “Their names and faces, unlike yours, are not desired by the greater nation of our times.”

  Hope gripped her. “Then, perhaps it makes a difference to know that my chip ID has been altered.”

  He stared at her.

  She touched the flat plane between her eyes. “I took two rails here, and nothing stopped me.”

  “Impossible,” he said faintly.

  “And when I came in just now, your house addressed me only as ‘citizen’ rather than as ‘Cressida.’”

  His black eyes darted away, summoning the memory of her entrance. “Your name was your most valuable asset. Your parents would have never allowed this.”

  “They’re not here.” She summoned her strength and rose. Although she didn’t know if her newfound anonymity was momentary swelling or something more permanent, it was all she had to give him. “I hope it will help.”

  “It’s a consideration.” He gripped his cane and stepped forward to guide her to the door. “Why don’t you make yourself comfortable? Have a rest and a shower, and I’ll make the arrangements to get you off planet.”

  She stopped and faced him. The blanket fell from her shoulders and piled onto the ground. “Then you can get me off planet?”

  “A changed chip certainly makes a difference.” He tried to guide her again.

  She pushed his hand away. “May I please stay here with you until the arrangements are complete?”

  His brows rose in surprise. “My dear, it will take hours. You look dead already. I don’t want you collapsing in the hall while I’m conferencing with confidential informants.”

  “Thank you for your concern, but I will remain. I can easily wear a silencing mask to protect your privacy.”

  If the past few days had taught her anything, it was that remaining close to the source of her rescue was the best method for ensuring it. She didn’t want to go upstairs and wait under a bed. She wanted to wait right here, or even better, on the entrance ramp for his privately
outfitted Upstairs shuttle, the illegal one he kept in the case of a quick evacuation, the one her parents had whispered never to speak of, even to him, because sober he would never have let such a thing slip.

  She faced down his concern with determination. “I am eager to rejoin my parents, and I will conduct myself in a manner befitting your generosity, I assure you.”

  His brows drew together in some consternation. “Won’t you reconsider?”

  “I won’t.”

  His smile returned. A little sad. “Your tone like this, your stance, it reminds me of your mother.”

  How unusual of him to compliment her. “Thank you.”

  He nodded, unhooked his cane from his arm, and picked up his snifter. “Your parents, as you know, have done me a great number of favors over the years.”

  He swirled the snifter, took a sip, studied the fine liquid, and toasted her family.

  “Your father is a genial man and quite an interesting talker, but it is your mother to whom I owe the greatest debt. She has placed into my path countless deals. Some with my former enemies, some with my current rivals, and some with those I wouldn’t have considered trading with for obvious reasons, such as the Nar. All profitable.”

  She tried to hide her surprise.

  Cressida knew the Antiata contacts allowed the general to transfer his assets from the failing Rhoads Conglomerate, whose crimson colors he still wore, to the Kirkegaaran conquerors. But that had been long before her birth, and he rarely spoke of his business with her. Usually, he focused only upon his own acumen. If he was crediting her mother now to make her back into an obedient child who would go upstairs whenever he asked, his strategy would end in failure.

  Understandably, a smuggler wouldn’t want a woman so wholly unconnected to his business to be allowed deeply into it, and she was happy to wear a privacy cone or to take whatever other measures he desired. Once he understood, then, like the many times she had witnessed him pressure and back off from her parents over various negotiations, he would bend on this one. He was just surprised now because usually she wasn’t the one who was strong.