Mated with the Cyborg (6 page)

What were the odds that two androids assigned to his daughter would malfunction? “Contact the manufacturer of C684 and R981. Have them transmit the specs for all the bots we ordered from them in the last 90 days.”

“Immediately, General.”

“Oh…notify the Ka-Tȇ there will be a slight delay in the shipment, and then pick two non-producing females as compensation and send them to Katnia.” He leaned back in his chair and waved his hand. “Dismissed.”

“We’re landing on that? There’s nothing there. It’s a large rock.” Mariska gaped at the inhospitable and barren
Deceptio
displayed on the viewer.

He stifled a grin. “Wait.” He opened a secure wireless frequency and hailed the lunar satellite.
Alfa Zulu Papa nine nine. Request permission to dock.

Yankee Zulu four six?
came the request for verification of identity.

India Golf seven one one.

Permission to land granted. Set coordinates to five zero by nine six. Kai, you ugly bastard, I haven’t seen you in a while. I suppose you need a favor.

Big time.
Nah. You’re gonna owe me. I’ve got a gift for you.
Kai tapped in the coordinates.

Why am I doubtful?

Because you’re a dumb fuck.

Laughter.
I must be, if I’m willing to help you out. See you soon.

The shuttle adjusted its trajectory and descended toward the moon’s surface. Deceptio’s atmosphere shimmered like a desert mirage then cleared to reveal a landing strip.

“A runway!” Mariska exclaimed. “It wasn’t there a moment ago.”

“It was there,” he said. “But it was invisible until the control center switched off the cloaking shield.” The computer aligned the craft for touchdown.

The moon’s surface rose to meet them, and then there was a moderate bump as the landing wheels connected with the ground. The computer braked and slowed the velocity, taxied the ship to a rounded area off to the side, and powered down the engine. Dust and sand blew in eddies. Lifeless rocky terrain stretched as far as the eye could see.

“What happens now?” she asked. The pad beneath them gave a jerk and then dropped. She grabbed his arm. We’re sinking!”

Kai chuckled. “We’re on a descender pad being transported to a sublunar hangar.”

Outside the window, harsh, formidable moonscape gave way to a wall of granite as the pad lowered. Within seconds, rock swallowed the craft. Mariska dug her fingernails into his skin. Her nostrils flared, and her chest heaved with her breathing. Perspiration beaded on her forehead.

“Are you all right?” He studied her face.

“Yes. I just…I…closed in…” Her skin had paled.

“Hey, hey.” He pulled her into his arms, pressed her face to his chest, and rocked her. “Shut your eyes. Listen to my voice. It’s going to be okay. We’re taking a little ride, and then there will be plenty of space. I promise.” He stroked her hair and murmured soothing noises.

It would take thirty seconds to complete the kilometer-deep descent.

Mariska clung to his waist and buried her face against his chest. Her breathing slowed. Pressed against him, her breasts and her entire form felt soft and warm. Hair like liquid silk flowed against his hands. His groin tightened.
Not now
. A natural reaction, but not one he could afford when her trust was so fragile, when danger lurked around the corner, when he would leave to face Carter’s wrath as soon as he got her to safety.

“That’s my girl.” He rubbed circles on her back while shifting his hips to avoid contact.

Bright white light flooded the cockpit as they reached the manufacturing plant, but Kai waited until the factory was completely visible and the descender bumped to a stop before rousing her with a little shake. “We’re here.”

She slipped out of his arms and blinked. “What is this place?”

“It’s called Moonbeam Chop Shop. A buddy owns it. We’re stopping here for bit.”

“We’re getting off?”

“Yes.”

“I have to get my veil.” She darted for the passageway.

“What for?”

She brushed a hand over her forehead and temple. “I have to cover up. People prefer not to see me.” Her beautiful face reddened with humiliation.

“You haven’t worn your scarf around me.”

“That’s different.” She averted her gaze. “You’re an andro—a Terran.” She fluttered her hand before dropping it to her side.

Many women would kill to look like her, but the ugliness of her
deformity
had been drilled into her head from birth, and it would take more than a pep talk to counteract the brainwashing. Every minute could mean the difference between life and death. Business had to be conducted at warp speed. Their lives and the lives of all the workers on Deceptio depended on it.

He sighed. “All right. Get it. Please hurry.”

She was back in a flash, her face and head shrouded. He itched to rip away the offending fabric but, instead, opened the forward door and connected the bridge to the dock.

Dale waited at the end of the gangway.

“Hey, asshole.” Kai greeted him with an insult and a bear hug. Dale had been one of the few who retired from Cyber Operations to lead a normal life—if running a spacecraft chop shop and occasionally aiding and abetting individuals on the wrong side of the law could be considered normal. The remanufacturing plant bustled and clanked with activity as workers and robots disassembled spacecraft, repurposing the parts to build untraceable new ships with more advanced capabilities.

“How the fuck are you doing?” Dale thumped his shoulder with a heartiness only a fellow cyborg could deliver and then shoved him away. “Other than getting uglier, that is.”

Next to him, Mariska jerked. Her eyes flashed. “He’s not ugly! He’s very handsome!”

Dale roared with laughter.

Kai couldn’t remember the last time he’d blushed, but heat flooded his face. Dale guffawed harder and afforded Kai another reason to conduct his business and scram. He’d never live this down. “When you’re done pissing all over yourself, let’s talk.”

Dale wiped his streaming eyes.

“Mariska, this is Dale Homme. Despite his uncouth manner, he’s a friend of mine.” Kai glanced at his buddy. “This is…Mariska.”

Fortunately, Dale had the good sense not to mention the veil. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He flashed one of the megawatt smiles he reserved for seducing the opposite sex. “You have the most beautiful eyes.”

Kai ground his teeth.

The flirtation means nothing. Not that it should bother you if it does.
She wasn’t his woman, but a terrorist’s pawn he’d broken the rules to save. He needed to avoid distractions and focus on his objective: get her to a safe haven and then salvage what remained of his Cy-Ops career.

“If you’re finished ogling Mariska, you might peek behind me.” He jerked his head at the shuttle.

Dale winked at her as if they shared a joke then shifted his gaze over Kai’s shoulder. The smirk fell off his face. “Holy Fuck! Is this what I think it is?” He rounded the vehicle, inspecting it from all angles, his expression covetous.

Gotcha!
Kai hadn’t been too worried about getting Dale to trade, but it was reassuring to have it verified. And to get his attention off Mariska. “It’s a Lamis-Odg military small cargo shuttlecraft. Not a warship, but it does have shields and weapons suitable for limited engagement. And a homing device, which you should extract
stat
.”

If the tracker wasn’t removed, it could lead Lamis-Odg to Deceptio. The terrorists wouldn’t be able to see through the cloaking shield, but they would wonder how the ship could vanish and still transmit a beacon.

Dale signaled two workers. “There’s a tracker. Find it. Don’t destroy it, but seal it off in a lead case.”

The men were shorter than the average human and had webbed fingers and two more sets of eyes. Chattering excitedly, they rushed to the spacecraft.

Kai blinked. “You have Arcanians working for you?” The pickpockets of the galaxy, the creatures were notorious for their thievery.

“They pay great attention to detail,” Dale said and shrugged. “I do regular patdowns to recover items that have disappeared.” He beckoned. “Let’s go to my office.”

He ushered them up a set of stairs to a quieter space overlooking the shop floor. A reinforced glass wall allowed for a bird’s-eye watch on the factory while filtering out the noise. Dale’s desk, a curved ship’s console, all but disappeared under piles of parts and circuit boards. The smell of metal, plastic, composite polymers, and grease permeated the air.

Dale unloaded the debris from a chair and gave it a swipe with his palm. “Sit, please,” he said to Mariska, leaving Kai to clear off a seat for himself. Dale rounded his desk and plopped into a sensa-chair with electronic massaging fingers. “What do you want in exchange for the shuttle?”

“Something fast. With some creature comforts.”

“Done.”

“You’re not going to dicker?” Kai arched his eyebrows. Dale could and did drive a hard bargain, using a client’s desperation to press an advantage. But his buddy had lit up like a supernova once he’d ignored Mariska long enough to get a gander at the shuttle. No one in the entire galaxy had been able to get their hands on a Lamis-Odg spacecraft.

“Is there any point?” Dale asked.

“Not much,” Kai leaned back in his chair. Despite their desperate need, he’d had a hunch he would sit in the pilot’s seat in this negotiation.

Dale activated a commline. “Prep the
Panthera
4 for launch,” he said.

“Panthera?”

“She’s sleek, fast, and purrs like a kitten. She’ll be ready to fly in half an hour. I assume you’re on a tight schedule.” He twisted his mouth mockingly.

“Aren’t all your customers?”

Mariska glanced between him and Dale. “Why do we need a new ship at all? If the tracker is removed, what’s wrong with the shuttle we have?”

“The craft is recognizable as a Lamis-Odg vehicle,” Kai answered, hoping she wouldn’t press the issue. Now wasn’t the time to break the news that due to her people’s terrorist proclivities, they had become
personae non gratae
throughout much of the galaxy.
Any
Lamis-Odg ship would be denied landing privileges on many worlds. And a military craft? Forget it.

“Which brings me to the obvious question…how did you manage to acquire the vehicle?” Dale asked.

“It belongs to her father—General Obido.”

His buddy’s jaw dropped, and his gaze flew to her veil.

Kai could guess what he was thinking: the scarf hid the distinctive facial features. “Mariska is not a threat,” he addressed the unspoken question. “Her father was sending her to Katnia.”

“Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Jesus!” Dale shook his head.

“By the way…if Carter asks, you never saw me.”

“You’re AWOL?” Dale whistled through his teeth. “Carter’s gonna have your ass.”

“He’ll have to find it first. And I want to take the homing device with me when I leave.”

“Hell, no. It came with the ship and belongs to me. I paid for it with the Panthera 4 and my selective memory.”

“The lead case will block
further
transmissions, but the electronic signature can be traced to the last emission coordinates. Obido probably has a fleet searching for us and might pick up the frequency. Do you want to draw them here?”

“I haven’t kicked butt in a while,” Dale’s eyes gleamed. Once a cyborg, always a cyborg. Taking on impossible challenges was what they had trained for. Lived for. Sometimes died for.

“An armada hovering over Deceptio would scare off your regular customers.”

“True.” He sighed. “All right. You can have the device back. But that’s it. We’re square.”

“Won’t it allow my father to follow us?” Mariska asked.

“Not if it’s shielded by lead, and we won’t have it for long. I’ll jettison it somewhere. They’ll follow the decoy, which will lead them away from Deceptio and us.”

“Any idea where you’ll go?” Dale asked.

“Not yet.”

“Not that you’d tell me.”

“The fewer people who know, the better.” For security’s sake, in covert ops, no one individual had all the pieces of the puzzle.

Aboard the Panthera, Kai removed the monitoring device from the lead case and slipped it into the underbelly compartment of a small drone. “Sorry, little buddy.” He patted the robotic decoy. “You’re going to have to take one for the team.”

Mariska frowned. “What do you mean?”

Kai picked up the drone, shoved it into the Panthera’s small craft launch tube, and shot it into space. He pushed a button on the remote to fire it up, and the tiny craft zipped away.

“If your father picks up the tracking signal—and I hope he does—he’ll blow it up. With any luck, that will occur after the drone leads him to a far, far corner of the galaxy. I had Dale program it to orbit a couple of smaller uninhabited planets before landing on DeltaNu9084.”

“There aren’t people on DeltaNu9084, right?”

“Nothing there but trees and acid pools. A missile won’t damage anything the galaxy will miss.”

“What did you have to pay Dale for the drone?”

“Surprisingly, nothing. He threw it in
gratis
.”

“Because he was happy to acquire the shuttle.”

“Because he liked you,” Kai said.

She twisted her hands. Her own people had shunned her. Why would an alien like her? Especially since she’d discovered her people and her planet had earned the contempt of the galaxy. While the Panthera was being prepped by his workers, Dale had given them a factory tour. Her father’s ship had drawn gawkers, and she’d overheard their whispers.

Radicals
.

Extremists
.

Terrorists
.

She’d been taught her people were the noblest of the Great One’s acolytes. Yet no one else recognized their favored status—just the opposite.
The infidels know not of what they speak
, her father would have dismissed the claims.

She could not. Not after everything else she’d learned in the past twenty-four hours.

Despite the ribbing and insults batted back and forth between the two men, she sensed a strong friendship. Kai could say what he wanted, but she’d bet Dale had offered the drone to help him and not her.