Delta V

by Elsa Jade

  He gazed at her solemnly. “If you say ‘hep and happening’, pretty much you aren’t.”

  Her blue eyes snapped up. Then she laughed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She sauntered toward the kitchen counter, angling one hip against the closest stool where he’d put her hat, not quite settling with her coffee. “I’ll have to get the latest slang from my interns. Except they’ll make it a manifesto on how fifty is the new thirty, and then I’ll have to add another chore to my list: getting out the backhoe to bury their nubile young bodies.”

  “I’d be one of your body chores,” he offered as he cracked eggs into the heating skillet and dropped bread into the toaster. “Midnight to two a.m.: Bang Delta.”

  She laughed again, with that lighthearted note that had captivated him last night. “My days are pretty full, but yeah, at that hour, I don’t have a lot going on.”

  That wasn’t quite a confirmation of their next rendezvous, but at least he hadn’t scared her off.

  Except when he turned toward the counter with two plates, she blanched. “Uh…”

  He looked down at the breakfast. “What?”

  “That’s some…really crispy toast.”

  He’d forgotten to reset the toaster for Lun-mei’s preference. Nanites preferred theirs more carbonized, so he and Mach ate it burnt. “Shit.”

  “It’s not quite that bad,” Lindy started to say, then she peered at the scramble. “Did you…forget to take out the shells?”

  Did Lun-mei take out the shells? He hadn’t noticed, but in retrospect they did seem less crunchy than when Mach had tried making eggs during their cattle-rustling days. “Shit.”

  Lindy chuckled. “Okay, so you’re just a bad cook. I was afraid this was some new hipster breakfast I didn’t know about either.” She gulped her coffee. “I gotta get back anyway. No matter how many times I show them, the cows don’t feed themselves.”

  He grimaced. “Like me cooking breakfast, apparently.” So much for showing her how much he was worth.

  He shoved both plates in front of the dogs; at least they’d think he was great.

  When he straightened, Lindy was right in front of him. She fisted her hands in the front of his t-shirt and pulled him down for a kiss. With her in her heeled boots and him barefoot, it wasn’t quite as much of a stretch as last night. Although it would be easier if they were on his bed again…

  With one arm at the small of her back, he bent her over, his mouth slanting over hers as if all the life-giving energy he needed was in her. The tang of coffee and the warmth of her lips—sweeter than donuts—made his blood swirl faster.

  And powered the swiftly spinning churn of the world because suddenly sunlight was pouring through the window…

  The kitchen door opened, letting in a gust of cold night air. And colder reality. Of course the sun hadn’t come up yet—the glare was just truck headlights.

  Lun-mei blinked at them from the doorway, her dark eyes so wide and flustered she looked like one of the anime characters she’d been introducing to Mach. “Oh. Hey. Good morning.”

  Lindy had already stepped away, one long stride that still couldn’t put any real distance between what Lun-mei was probably thinking (rightly) and a reasonable (if lying) explanation for the neighborly presence of the next-door rancher. “Morning, Doc.”

  “Still kinda night,” Delta said testily. “Wasn’t expecting you back until later today.”

  Lun-mei gave him a look. “Obviously.” She didn’t move aside, but she was small enough that Mach was able to angle through the doorway beside her.

  In an activated CWBOI matrix, the Alpha was one of the biggest and strongest, and got all the best coding. Got the first Earther girl too. But he stopped in his tracks, clearly flummoxed to see their neighbor in his kitchen. “Miz Lindy. Morning.”

  “Welp, seems like we all know each other and the time of day.” Lindy put her empty cup on the counter and plunked her hat on her head. “Speaking of which, gotta get going. Thanks for the coffee, Halley. Hope there’s no trouble with your…herd.” She tipped her hat at Lun-mei and headed up the hallway toward the front door where her truck was parked in the yard.

  She wasn’t quite skedaddling but it wasn’t a saunter either.

  Delta glared at his matrix-brother and pivoted to go after her.

  Mach’s grip on his elbow flung him back around, making his gyros spin. “Not so fast.”

  “She’s going to get away,” Delta hissed.

  “And you’re going to let her.”

  “No.”

  They both froze. Delta tested the word again in his mind, waiting for his subservient programming to kick in as he faced his Alpha. His nanites hung in waiting mode, unperturbed.

  Lun-mei cleared her throat. “Did you leave the shells in the eggs?”

  Mach’s fingers released, and Delta raced after Lindy.

  She’d gotten all the way to her truck—yeah, that had been a skedaddle after all—and had one foot on the running board when he called out, “Lindy, wait.”

  For a second, he thought she was going to jump in and take off. Then he’d have to jump in front of the truck. She’d try to run him over and he’d have to grab the front bumper and stop her. Then she’d know what he was and then…

  And then he wasn’t sure. Deltas weren’t coded with much imagination since mostly they were just meant to withstand blaster fire. But he wanted to think that she’d still come back to his bed sometime.

  Finally she turned to face him, and he realized she was laughing.

  Her eyes glinted, lighter and brighter than the first line of morning blue on the horizon. “Awkward,” she hooted. “That was worse than telling my grandmother I liked girls too and her telling me about dental dams.”

  “When a woman loves a woman very much…” he intoned.

  She took off her hat and slapped it against her thigh, gazing back at the house. “You weren’t supposed to have sleepovers? How old are you again?”

  He scowled. “Not old enough to know better, apparently. But then, neither are you.”

  She grinned up at him. “Yeah.” After a moment, she sobered. “I really do hope everything is okay with your yurk, since the vet is out here.”

  He hesitated, then mentally shrugged. “The doc and Mach are dating.”

  “Oh. That’s good. For the yurk’s sake, I mean. And for your brother too, I guess. I like the doc; she did a real nice job with a feral tom that wandered out to my place and needed neutering.” Lindy laughed again. “Not that your brother should be fixed.”

  Delta snorted. “I’ll warn Mach that she’s good with a knife, but I think that’s part of the appeal.”

  “Always good to find somebody who can meet you where you are.”

  He gazed at her. Could she possibly know how far that was for him?

  She gave her head a little shake, as if she heard his wayward thoughts. “Go put some boots on, cowboy. You won’t get anywhere in this valley with bare feet.”

  He glanced down—at least he’d managed to miss the road apples—and when he looked up again, she’d boosted herself into the cab. He should’ve gone for another kiss… But even without fully activated sensors, he could practically feel Mach and Lun-mei watching from the house. Even Lindy’s simple Earther senses would feel the same.

  He stepped back. “See you around.” The fanciful phrase struck him for the first time. Anywhere around the globe, around the rotation of this world in its orbit around the rising sun. Some unscrupulous being had bought the key to a locked set of illegally engineered cybernetic slaves, but what were the chances in this vast universe that he’d find someone who actually got him?

  As she spun the wheel to take the truck out of the yard, she lifted her first two fingers in a neighborly salute. Missing his hat as well as his boots, half naked and exposed, he wasn’t feeling neighborly at all, but he gave her a wave back, the same two fingers even though his whole body yearned toward her. Every nanite in his system surged to the fore as if they�
�d burst from his skin to go to her, heating his face and heart and perpendicular erection like she was both his magnetic north and the sun around which he found life.

  But as her truck disappeared down the gravel road, leaving only a thin silvery mist behind, he knew his fanciful imagination would get him nowhere. And poetry wouldn’t defend him from Mach’s disapproval.

  With a sigh that made a matching silver plume in the air, he turned back to the house. Maybe he should go hide in the barn with the yurk… No, he might be just a Delta, but he wasn’t a coward.

  Hunching his shoulders, he went back to the kitchen.

  Lun-mei was taking a second crack at breakfast, the dogs watching her as if they’d never eaten before, ever. Delta scowled at them. Traitors. They could give him some credit for holding down the fort.

  Mach was watching her with only slightly less devotion than the dogs. Blackened crumbs of carbonized toast remained on the plate in front of him, so at least Delta knew he wouldn’t be facing a hangry Alpha.

  Yanking on his boots that he’d left next to the counter, he scowled at Mach. “You scared her.”

  That wasn’t quite right, of course, but now that he’d discovered he could deny his Alpha, he might as well lie too. Mach glowered back at him, his expression almost as black as the toast.

  Lun-mei sat down at the counter with her plate of golden toast and shell-less scrambled eggs and the pickled vegetables that she ate with most meals. “I don’t think much scares Lady Minerva,” she mused. “I saw a video of her years ago at the county fair, stopping a runaway bull with a calf rope and half a churro.”

  Delta turned his unreasonable glare to her. “She’s not old,” he said through gritted teeth.

  May wrinkled her nose at him. “I didn’t say she was. I said she wouldn’t be put off by a couple of silent, secretive males relying on their size, their supposed scars, and their silver stares to scare people away.”

  Sinking down onto one of the stools—without Lindy nearby, his energy didn’t seem as high—Delta stared morosely at Mach’s crumbs. “About those secrets,” he muttered. “I might’ve taken the yurk out for a spin on Friday night—”

  Lun-mei sucked in a breath. “Delta…”

  Her disappointment made him wince. “I couldn’t keep her in the yard, she was so restless.”

  “Her or you?” Mach raked one hand over his dark hair. “She’s too young to fly far. And you’re too—”

  “If you say young, I’ll fight you,” Delta snapped. “I’m a hundred a fifty years old, just like you.”

  “Then act like it!” Mach glared at him, and Delta glared back.

  Their stalemate might’ve gone on for another hundred and fifty years, considering that shrouds never fought each other, but a giggle made them swivel their glares to Lun-mei.

  “Sorry!” She held up one hand as if she could ward them off. “It’s just… ‘Da-aad,’” she whined dramatically. “‘You never let me take the yurk.’” When they both just stared at her, she huffed out a breath. “It’s Earther funny,” she muttered. “Look, if you’re trying to tell us that your neighbor saw the yurk—”

  “She did,” he admitted. “She decided we must be a military contractor working on a top-secret project.”

  “Well, that’s close enough,” Lun-mei said. “And it didn’t freak her out, so that’s a plus.” She glanced at Mach. “You could use more allies.”

  His heavy brow furrowed. “I have you.”

  “I don’t have anyone,” Delta said.

  When they looked at him—Mach with confusion, Lun-mei with dawning understanding—he almost wished he hadn’t spoken.

  “Is that what this is about?” she asked softly.

  “You have us,” Mach said in a much louder voice.

  She bumped the Alpha’s arm. “He needs more. Our little Delta is growing up.”

  Delta torqued his lips to one side. While she seemed on his side—mostly—he wasn’t quite sure he appreciated the amusement. “When the yurk’s stasis field was failing, the pyramid sent out an alarm. It was old, faint, and failing itself, but if any passing ship or off-Earther picked up and relayed that signal, our matrix keyholder, or the keyholder’s beneficiaries, could be coming for me right now. Not us—just me, because I haven’t imprinted and I could still be reclaimed by our owner.”

  That erased all Lun-mei’s amusement and Mach’s frustration. They traded glances, and even though Delta knew they couldn’t communicate sub-aurally or electronically since Lun-mei didn’t have the right implants, he knew they were talking about him.

  “We have to tell him,” Lun-mei said.

  Mach averted his gaze. “But we still can’t be sure—”

  “Tell me what?” When both the dogs abruptly sat, he realized he’d snarled the question. But he didn’t modulate his tone to ask again.

  Mach braced his arms on the counter, staring down at the black crumbs on his plate. “We went to the university in Bozeman to talk to a computer programmer—”

  “Reformed black-hat hacker,” Lun-mei corrected. “She can call herself whatever she wants now, but that’s what she is.”

  No one ever escaped their fate, did they? Delta’s skin prickled. “Why did you go after her?”

  “We want to find a way to block activation, no matter who holds the key,” Mach said.

  Lun-mei scowled. “No one should deprive another living, sentient, intelligent, conscious, competent being of their free will.”

  Delta lifted one eyebrow. “That’s a lot of criteria.”

  She had the grace to look apologetic. “It’s a big universe, and I don’t know all the intersectionality.”

  “The hacker was contracted to the Intergalactic Dating Agency,” Mach said. “She was at the Big Sky outpost before they had their scandal with alien mail order bride thieving. She’d never heard of CWBOIs, but she’s willing to take a look at our code.”

  Delta stiffened. “Yours is already biometrically locked to Lun-mei.”

  She huffed out a breath. “I’m not a mama duck. No one should imprint on me. You should be free to make your own choices.”

  Mach crowded up behind her, wrapping his arms around her from behind, like he was an oversized exosuit of killer alien around a petite Earther female. “I chose you. I choose you.”

  Delta glanced away from their intimate moment. Would Lindy give him a chance, if she knew what he was?

  What would he be if he couldn’t offer her even the minimal value of his code-enforced shroud allegiance?

  “If you think you can disarm a shroud, you better figure that out quick,” he said. Might as well hit them with all the bad news while they were feeling cozy. “Cosmo is back.”

  At his words, Mach pulled Lun-mei even closer, as if he could yank her right inside his reinforced skin. “When? Where?”

  Delta shrugged. “Not sure. Saw some things out of place, and now I got a feeling.”

  “A feeling,” Mach growled. “Since when do we do feelings?”

  “You have feelings. They were just switched off until now.” Lun-mei squirmed against him to get him to loosen his hold. “What is Cosmo?”

  “Our matrix-brother.” Delta looked pointedly at Mach. “So you didn’t tell her all our ugly secrets?”

  “Cosmo is—was—our Omega,” Mach told Lun-mei through gritted teeth. “I explained that he won’t stay around the house, at least not consistently.”

  She nodded, tsking. “I didn’t realize he had a name. He’s the only one of you three who took a name outside your shroud designation.”

  “The translation of his designation into the local language was problematic from the start,” Mach said. “Even in the Old West, calling oneself ‘Omega’ was asking for trouble.”

  “As if he wasn’t trouble without asking,” Delta muttered.

  Mach ran his hand over Lun-mei’s sleek hair, black as purest carbon, as if he were soothing her, but Delta could tell his Alpha was calming himself as well. “Cosmo has a sequence only he
knows, but he swings by the house often enough that we don’t need to think there’s a new problem with him. If the hacker can find a fix for our imprinting, this will be a new chance—like when we crashed here.”

  Lun-mei reached up to touch his jaw, just a fleeting caress before she rested her palm on his shoulder. “Except instead of being stuck, you’ll finally be free.”

  At his smile—incandescent as the air around their dying ship had been—Delta had to look away again. Through the kitchen window, the yard was a mix of shadow and rising sun.

  He wondered which way he’d be going.

  Chapter 5

  When her ranch hands rolled in by early evening, Lindy had the chores done and was sitting on the porch, wrapped in a heavy wool blanket—not gray; hers had lots of color—with a pint of hard cider on the rail beside her. The barn cats, who had joined her quiet vigil, took one look at the truck disgorging three college girls and four ranch dogs and spontaneously evaporated.

  For a moment, Lindy wanted to follow them. She’d hoped to make sense of the last couple of nights. Instead, as the first stars had appeared in the darkening sky, she felt more confused and restless.

  And alone. That was it, she realized. She wanted to retrace her path to the Fallen A.

  Her interns were smart, determined, curious women. They were also college students. They’d pulled out more chairs, blankets, the rest of her growler of cider, and a leftover pizza from the truck almost before she finished saying hello. Well, she hadn’t wanted to be alone…

  They told her about their hiking, a new idea for incentivizing small-scale ag, a great new pub they’d tried on the way “home” where they’d scored the pizza, and a spooky hitchhiker they’d passed right before the turnoff to the ranch.

  “Roxi wanted to stop and offer him a ride.” Sasha shook her head. “I was actually glad to have my chair in the only open seat.” She rubbed one hand over the studded tire of her all-terrain wheelchair.

  Taylor wrinkled her nose, the diamond stud in the crease winking. “The dogs knew he was no good.”