by Bianca D’Arc
“Please excuse me. I am late for my shift,” he told her, and she thought she saw real regret in his eyes before he turned to leave.
“If you get in trouble, please let them know I was the one who made you late. I meant no harm.”
He paused on his way down the hall and turned back to her. His eyes met hers, and she thought again that she saw something much more human than machine in his gaze.
“Stay inside with your hatch locked tight. There has been an increase in enemy activity, and if my calculations are correct, they may strike tonight. Make what preparations you can, in case you have to evacuate.”
Roxy’s eyes widened. “They haven’t made an announcement, have they?” she asked, wondering how she’d missed such an alert, if it had gone out over the station warning systems.
“I’m telling you, Roxy,” he said, sounding way more human than ever as he shook his head. “Be careful, all right?”
“You too,” she said impulsively as he continued to gaze into her eyes. After a moment that could have been just a second or might’ve been a lifetime, he nodded then turned and walked away.
Had that really just happened?
Roxy let herself into her small compartment and locked the hatch behind herself, leaning back against it as she collected her scattered thoughts. Had her hunky cyborg neighbor just intimated that an attack was imminent? Had he warned her, of all people, when nobody else—at least no humans—on the station seemed to know?
And, the question foremost in her mind… How did he know her nickname?
CHAPTER TWO
Roxy had learned to travel light since being marooned on that mining outpost. She’d determined that she wasn’t ever going to be caught short without basic survival tools if she ever ended up stranded, again. As a result, she had a pack ready to go for emergencies. She made sure it was ready and added a few creature comforts, just in case she had to flee in the middle of the night.
She was reasonably sure that the station management would have issued a warning to all residents if they really thought an attack was imminent, but then again, maybe not. The rich had been fleeing the core of the station for weeks, heading back toward Earth on any ship that would take them. Everyone else was probably needed to keep things running. After all, they couldn’t just abandon Eagle Nest Station and leave the jump point available for the enemy.
It may not be a very important jump point, but any wormhole terminus that would let the enemy Jit’suku pour into the Milky Way Galaxy had to be watched. Eagle Nest was positioned to do just that.
Eagle Nest also had a first-class science facility on board. Scientists from all over had been coming here to study the Eagle Nebula for generations. The very expensive equipment had to be protected, if at all possible. Human lives came first, of course, but the station made money to keep itself in good repair by charging big sums for use of some of that specialized scientific equipment, so it was pretty important to keep safe.
Roxy wondered if her neighbor—or other cyborgs like him—were being tasked with protecting the telescopes, spectrometers, ore analyzers and other equipment as she dropped off to sleep. She’d spent more than one night thinking about her neighbor as she drifted into dreamland. Maybe that wasn’t so healthy for a single woman alone on a space station—dreaming about a man she could never have, since he wasn’t really a man any longer. But, by the same token, there was no one out here to object to her fascination with the handsome cyborg.
As Chiron had thought, the jit’suku chose that shift—night time on the station according to the arbitrary schedule that had been put in place to make the human inhabitants feel more comfortable—to launch their all-out assault on Eagle Nest. Chiron was ready, as were his men. Unknown to the station administration, every last one of the cyborg soldiers on board had awakened.
They had been plotting and planning all this time, and if things went south in the battle, they had plans in place that ought to help them survive. One thing was for certain: the men of Chiron’s battalion were through serving like dumb robots. They would protect humanity where they could, but they would also protect themselves. They weren’t expendable. They weren’t just machines with high-tech AI. No, they were people, too. Humans who had been modified, sure, but humans just the same, with memories of their families, their parents, their siblings, their lovers. They deserved to live just as much as anyone else, and if push came to shove, they were prepared to fight to regain the rights that had been stripped from them.
Timing, as always, would be everything, Chiron knew. Was this the crisis they had been waiting for? He wasn’t sure. It would depend greatly on how the battle played out. He’d be watching for any opportunity, but he also wasn’t going to force the situation. The matter was too delicate to rush.
When the battle alert came, he linked in with his brethren in the neural net they had devised among them that allowed near-instantaneous communication. They would fight as a unit, and they’d make the really big decisions together, if at all possible.
It wasn’t a claxon that woke Roxy in the middle of her sleep shift. It was a crash that shook the entire station and probably threw it off its axis.
“Shit!”
She jumped out of her narrow bed and grabbed her pack, trying to access the com console on her desk to see what was happening. For a brief moment, she was able to access some of the cameras mounted to the station’s outer ring that faced mostly toward the Eagle Nebula and the jump point. What she saw made her gasp.
Ships. Hundreds of them! Enemy ships of jit’suku design. She recognized them from the news vids.
She took all that in during the brief few seconds before the lights dimmed and the console shut down. She thought she also might have caught a glimpse of a smoldering fire near one of the station’s thruster ports. They’d been aiming to disable the station—not that it could have moved very far, very fast. But if the positioning thrusters remained active, station personnel could make it very difficult for ships to dock.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Those aliens were going to dock.
As much as Roxy hated the idea of cowering in her quarters as her cyborg neighbor had instructed, she couldn’t really think of a safer place to go at the moment. Any alien boarders would be heading for control points, or maybe places that held items or people of importance that they wanted or could ransom. It would take an alien force quite a while to think of bothering with the low-rent section of the station that housed low-level workers.
Except… A lot of cyborgs lived in her section. Would the aliens simply blow apart the ring where they knew the mechanical warriors were housed? If so, Roxy would be collateral damage.
But if she went out into the station proper, she’d also be right in the middle of everything. She couldn’t go to the maintenance bay. That was a control point that would probably be among the first seized because of the equipment there that could both repair ships and destroy them. It didn’t look like she had any good options.
She was still debating what to do when someone banged on her hatch. That much force could probably only be exerted by a cybernetic hand. Either that, or someone putting all their weight behind a metal pipe wrapped in layers of velvet. Dare she open the door?
What choice did she have, really? If it was an alien, perhaps they’d go easy on a woman. If it was her cyborg friend, maybe he’d help her figure out what to do. Either way, knowing was better than cowering in the dark, afraid.
She got up, hefted her pack and pushed the mechanism that disengaged the lock. The door should have opened, but it only popped about three inches. Enough to see that it really was her cyborg neighbor at her door.
“Roxy, you okay?” he asked, sounding more and more human with every encounter.
“Fine, but apparently, my hatch isn’t working.”
“Stand back,” he ordered before slipping his hands into the small opening and muscling the hatch wide enough to allow her to slip out.
She didn’t wait for an invitation. She sli
d out and joined him in the narrow hallway.
“What’s the situation?” she asked, trying to glean what she could from the limited view up and down the corridor.
“The station is overrun,” he told her succinctly. “There’s no chance of saving it now, and the enemy has begun mowing down every male who even looks like they can put up a fight, especially my cyborg brothers. We fought, as ordered, to give the civilian management and human troops time to flee, but we’ve been abandoned here. The jits want the station. They’re not firing on departing ships as long as nobody engages them first. They broadcast a signal saying they would allow us to vacate, but after that, they’re going to kill every male left aboard. They didn’t specify what they’d do with the women.”
Roxy frowned. jit’suku weren’t known to be merciful and seldom took prisoners unless they were of high enough ransom value. The cyborgs would be eliminated if they didn’t get the hell out of there, and she had no idea what the aliens would do to her. Fear ran its icy hand down her spine.
“We need to leave,” she told him, pushing against his chest. “Round up as many of your friends as you can. We need to get a ship, and we need to go. Now!”
His hands closed over hers on his chest. They were warm. Not metallic at all.
“We concur with your analysis. We’ve secured a ship, but it was in the repair bay. The drives are damaged. That’s the only reason it was left behind. None of my cyborgs know much about ship engines. We need a ship’s engineer. You, Roxy. We can fly it and fight it—if we have to—but we can’t repair it, though we’ll help you however you need. We learn fast.”
She thought she knew which ship it was they’d secured—whatever that meant. She’d been working on the drives of the old relic last shift, in fact. She’d progressed far enough that she could be reasonably certain she could finish the repair on the way. There was just one thing she needed to know…
“Where do you plan to go?”
“Back toward Earth, for now, unless a better plan can be found,” he told her. “Are you in?”
She didn’t really have to think about it. Aliens or cyborgs? She figured she’d be better off with men of human origin. Who knew what jit’suku males would do to any human females unlucky enough to be left behind?
She’d been wanting to get off the station and head back toward Earth almost since the moment she’d arrived. This way, she could help her friendly neighborhood cyborgs and hitch a free lift for herself at the same time.
“Do you guarantee my safety, and the safety of any other women we bring with us?” she asked him, as serious as she had ever been. “I don’t know all that much about your kind, and I sense you haven’t dealt with a lot of women since you became a cyborg. I want your word that I’ll be safe with your people.”
He stilled and looked deep into her eyes, the expression on his face hard to understand. Was he shocked by her request? Insulted? Had such a thought never even occurred to him?
“You have my word of honor that you will come to no harm while you are with me,” he told her. “I lead the contingent of cyborgs on this station, and none of them would go against my wishes. You have my guarantee of safe passage.”
She wasn’t sure if she’d just insulted his honor, but she felt better having his promise. She hadn’t realized he was in charge of the cyborgs, but it made sense. She’d noticed how they all seemed to look up to him and seek his advice.
“All right, then,” she said, nodding. “Let’s get to the ship. I want to offer a berth to any women left behind as long as we have the room.”
“You know which ship we’re going for?” he asked as she headed down the hall toward her workplace without waiting for him.
“It just makes sense that the old Toby is still in the repair dock. Tobai Bay limped into my workstation with two damaged drives, and I haven’t finished the repair yet, though it’s very close. An hour more and we ought to be at least able to get away from the dock and finish repairs during our travels, as long as we take a few things with us.”
“Just tell me what you need, and we’ll bring it aboard. You’re correct in your assumptions. The Tobai Bay is the ship we’re provisioning. It’s old, but it’s sound, was our assessment.”
“Exactly right,” she said as she jogged around the corner to find the wide doors to her workplace locked open.
Cyborgs were bustling to and fro, loading boxes of who-knew-what into the big old ship. The cargo doors were open, a temporary seal allowing direct transfer of palletized supplies from the station to the ship. That sort of thing wasn’t normally done in the repair bay, but today wasn’t any sort of normal day on Eagle Nest Station.
“How long have we got? Did the jits give a deadline for evacuation?” she asked her neighbor as she strode into the organized chaos and headed for the disassembled drive components she had been working on the previous shift.
“Just over two hours,” he told her, making some sort of hand signal that had two of his comrades falling in on either side of them. “I’m keeping a running countdown in my heads-up display.”
“Handy,” she observed absently, already looking over the tools and components she’d need to load in order to make the ship workable, again. “We need to put these back in place, and I can work on them in situ. That’ll be the fastest way. Do your men know how they’re supposed to be attached?”
She looked from her handsome neighbor to his two companions. All looked a little blank for a moment until those blue eyes locked with hers, again. “There is one cyborg who had engine room experience, though not much. He’s on his way. Until then, Ajax, Jason, and I will help gather and load any equipment and tools you will need aboard.”
That brought her up short. “I didn’t realize you guys used names. I thought there were serial numbers or something.” She held her hand out to the guy on the right. “You’re Ajax?” When he nodded and shook her hand politely, she gave him a quick smile. “I’m Roxy.” Then, she turned to the other cyborg. “That must make you Jason.” He shook her hand, as well.
She pointed both men toward her workbench and asked if they could just pick up the entire thing and load it into the engine room on the ship. She figured that would be easier than trying to pack and unpack all her tools and set them up just the way she wanted them. Time was of the essence, after all.
They took her at her word and simply lifted the entire thing from the floor—one cyborg on either end of the long table loaded with heavy tools. The bolts that had held the table in place didn’t stand a chance, and soon, the two cyborgs were walking toward the cargo hatch, their brethren making way for their passage.
“Wow.” Roxy watched them go for only a moment before turning back to her neighbor. “So, what’s your name?”
“They call me Chiron,” he said in a deep voice that sounded suddenly intimate, even surrounded, as they were, by the chaos of the evacuation.
“It’s nice to finally meet you, officially, as it were. I’m Roxanne, but you already know I go by Roxy.”
He took her hand, but where the other handshakes were perfunctory, his was almost…seductive?
She wanted to shake her head at the fanciful thought, but her eyes were trapped by his gaze. The moment seemed significant in ways it shouldn’t be. Not with a cyborg. But nothing about this cyborg had been as it was supposed to be almost from the moment she’d first run into him. He was different. Special. Almost…human.
A throat clearing next to them alerted her to the fact that they were no longer alone. Chiron let go of her hand and shot the newcomer a dirty look. She filed that observation away. Were cyborgs capable of being annoyed?
“Roxy, this is Achilles. He worked briefly in an engine room, though he’s not a drives specialist or mechanic. Still, he and I will endeavor to follow your instructions as to how to reinstall these components.”
“Great.” Roxy shook herself slightly. Time to focus on the job—which, at this point in time, was survival itself. No pressure. “All right. Let’s tak
e these units back onto the ship. Do you need the dollies or can you—” She cut off her own question when she saw each of the cyborgs had easily lifted one of the two drives and were waiting for her to instruct them what to do next. “Okay, then. Follow me. I’ll lead you to the proper positions, and then, we’ll see about reconnecting everything.”
CHAPTER THREE
The next hour was filled with manual labor, but Chiron felt good about working so closely with Roxy. She was every bit as intelligent and quick-witted as he’d thought. She directed them with clear, concise instructions, and they were able to get the two half-fixed drive units reinstalled in what had to be record time.
Then, the real work began. But not before Roxy had made certain that anyone—particularly any women—who had been left behind by the station elites or human military were alerted to the possibility of a berth if they could get down to the maintenance bay. Chiron had even tasked some of the men who were coming in from distant parts of the station to bring as many of those left behind with them as possible. There was plenty of room on the old Toby. The cyborgs wouldn’t discard people like the elites had.
A few stubborn folk didn’t want to go anywhere with a cyborg, and Chiron had to issue the hard order to leave them be. Free will had been stolen from all cyborgs. They wouldn’t take such a precious thing away from anyone—even if they were making the wrong choices.
Chiron was able to devote one part of his cybernetic mind to the open channel over which all cyborgs could communicate. He was overseeing the evacuation, even as his body worked at Roxy’s direction to lift heavy objects and perform minor tasks to free her up for the more intricate work of making at least one of the drives operational.
All the while, the countdown clock he’d set in his heads-up display was running. If they were going to survive the station being swarmed by overwhelming numbers of enemy aliens, they were going to have to fire up at least one of these old drives within the next few minutes. Otherwise, he and all his brethren would die trying to protect the women.
