The Syn-En Solution (7 page)

Burkina resisted the urge to drive the thin book pad through his skull. Instead, she caressed his cheek returning to the bidable lover he’d grown used to. Did he honestly think she’d decommission scores of Syn-En and stick around to see if the tinmen grieved? “We will return to Earth, my love.”

“Then what is all this business about humiliating the Admiral?” The debris field shimmered. Three Civies waded into a clearing to stand behind Tim.

She scanned their faces, memorizing the features. So, they thought they could switch allegiances just because their plan hit a snare? She flexed her cyborg arm, reveling at the strength contained under her armor. They’d learn different on the trip home, or they’d never see Earth again. “He’s a
lieutenant
now. And thanks to Tim’s bad directions, they now know all of your names.”

Tim stabbed the air in front of her chest. “I want to be alive when we return to Earth.”

She grabbed his finger, tugging him closer. Crushing his finger into dust might make her feel better, but she still needed one or two of the Civies to reach home. Until she figured out which, she’d have to play nice. Tim’s rancid breath surged into her nose when she inhaled. She lightly kissed the top of his finger, felt his heart race kick up at the sexual gesture. “Then you should have picked the right cargo bay. The ships are obviously not here, and I needed to buy us time.”

“And how does pissing off the entire Syn-En Fleet accomplish that?” Tim’s nostrils flared as if he’d only just caught the scent of danger. The furrow between his eyebrows deepened.

How like a man to underestimate a woman. Of course, if she hadn’t been so confident of one of her lovers, she’d never have been stripped of her rights in the first place. “I had to improvise. If you hadn’t screwed up, we would have escaped before they discovered us missing. All of us would have been listed as killed in action and freed from service. Humans rights restored.”

Tim’s followers looked from him to each other.

Burkina kept the smile from her face. They were so easy to manipulate. It was why she’d chosen them. Of course, she’d trade the lot of them for one Syn-En, but that was not to be.

Tim braced his thin shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “So how does murder buy us time?”

“While Bei and his mechanical minions are busy rescuing the modified humans, we will escape in the shuttle prototype.” Burkina glanced down at the screen of the pad. A green light flashed on the
Starfarer’s
schematic.

“Now that you killed a bunch of them,” Tim whined, “they’ll probably shoot us out of the sky as soon as we leave the hangar.”

“You forget, I infiltrated the Syn-En, pretended to be one of them while on a top secret mission from the United Earth Council. I still have the codes needed to authenticate rescue orders. They won’t realize we’re heading home until we’re out of weapon’s range.” She set her hands on his shoulders, caressed the large bones as she mentally calculated how much pain crushing them would inflict. “Now where are the shuttles?”

“Burkina.” A man’s voice carried through the darkness. “I think you should see this.”

She sighed. “Is it a way off this death trap?”

“No. It’s the thirteenth civilian.”

“Neutralize him so he can’t tell the others where we went.” Her gaze lasered back to Tim’s. “The shuttles?”

Tim nodded and consulted his pad. “I found them. I’m just waiting for more data to plot a course to reach them.”

“She’s a citizen,” Baldy gushed, his voice thick with lust. “Unmodified.”

A hush filled the expanse. Even the conduits stopped leaking gas.

“Citizen?” Burkina shoved a path through the floating wreckage. There had better not be an unmodified citizen on board, who could claim leadership over the Syn-En, usurping Burkina’s claim. Especially when she was so close to achieving her goal. “Where are you?”

About ten yards away, Baldy’s tan face popped up over a solid lump on the floor. “Over here.”

The sarcophagus shaped box remained fixed to the deck. Glowing symbols decorated the sides, and a slight hum vibrated from it. Burkina stopped next to the find and peered inside. “Well, well, look what we have here.”

A petite woman lay inside, blue eyes wide in her oval face. Her pale skin gleamed in the white light of the wormhole and the azure glowing interior. Long blonde tresses covered her bare breasts but not the naked sex at the juncture of her trim legs.

Burkina’s sensors registered one hundred percent organic. Had the citizens really followed them to colonize Terra Dos, or was this another Syn-En groupie? Either way, the bitch had to go.

Baldy caressed the woman’s bare thigh but his leer skipped from her breasts to her sex. “I can’t read the writing.”

Others crowded around. The men practically salivated with lust.

Maybe because you’re not looking at the writing on the side of the life pod
. Burkina bit back the comment and groped for a way to turn this to her advantage. Dangling in the space near the bottom of the woman’s sarcophagus, a severed arm caught Burkina’s eye. The Syn-Ens always inspired paranoia. “Of course you can’t. The Syn-Ens developed their secret language to conspire against humans.”

“Is she human?” As if he hadn’t heard, Baldy trailed his fingers over the woman’s stomach. “I’m not registering any implants, and she feels real.”

Two more men edged closer, fondled the organic tissue then retreated before nodding their agreement with Baldy.

Jealousy battered Burkina’s control. Her legs were longer, her breasts perkier, hips leaner, yet her lovers, her chosen followers wanted to lose themselves in unmodified flesh. She would not lose when the prize was so close.

The woman’s blue eyes darted from her to Baldy, who palmed her breast.

“Does this mean the citizens are following us?”

“I said it
looks
human. My implants register a Syn-En identity chip and a neural implant.” Men! Just because the woman was naked, they gawked and thought of little else. Burkina would spin a conspiracy to knot their dicks, then she’d deal with the competition. “This thing is an experiment to fool our sensors into thinking the cyborgs are citizens. I became a Syn-En mole to uncover this conspiracy. Command suspected the Syn-Ens were working on technology to pass as citizens so they could topple our rightful government.”

“But it’s organic tissue.” Baldy smacked his lips.

The woman opened and closed her mouth but no sound came out.

“Cloned skin, no doubt from one of our tissue samples, and layered on their scaley body armor.” Burkina slapped the woman across the face. Red bloomed on the pale skin. “You’re not fooling anyone. Once a Syn-En always a Syn-En.”

“We should take her with us. Turn her over to the UEN Authority.” Baldy hitched the pants of his uniform. The material stretched taunt against his erection. “With her as proof of their treason, the Syn-En will be disbanded, if not permanently deleted.”

Burkina slapped his hand away from the woman’s breast as the air thickened with her followers’ building lust. So they wanted a plaything on the way home, did they? Did they think this blob of flesh could provide something Burkina Faso couldn’t? She’d show them how she climbed her way up from nothing, right before she stuffed them into a vacuum and watched them turn inside out.

“Maybe if the shuttles were in this cargo bay, we could take her. After all, it is my secret mission.” Burkina cupped her hand over the woman’s breasts as she plotted her death. “But with the Syn-En breathing down our neck, we can’t be slowed down by a useless hunk of junk. See what’s taking Tim so long? He should have a way out of here by now.”

Fear flashed in the woman’s eyes.

Burkina drank in the scent.
Yes, you know I’m going to kill you don’t you
?
But do you know how
? She squeezed the tender flesh hard and the woman arched her back in response.

Tim brushed Burkina’s arm. To his credit, he only glanced at the woman once before focusing on Burkina. “Syn-Ens are approaching, but I’ve found a way to the shuttles.”

“Lead the way, Tim. The rest of you fall in behind him. I’ll make sure no cyborg freak follows.” Burkina waited until her followers finished their last ogles before leaning over the sarcophagus. Her whisper stirred the woman’s hair. “I know you’re human but we need a little distraction to make our getaway.”

A low moan echoed in the coffin-like enclosure.

Lifting the nails of her right hand, Burkina watched needles extend from her fingertips. Her little hobby in explosives was about to pay off. The sharp tips of the needles scored the woman’s pale flesh before Burkina injected the peroxide mix into the woman’s soft breasts.

She screamed. The high pitched shriek whipped through the debris field like wind through chimes.

“That’s right. Lure them to you.” Retracting her needles, Burkina kissed the woman’s cheek then stroked the organic flesh before sprinting after her followers. “You should get along with a bang.”

Disease. Drought. War. Famine.

Our world teeters on the brink of destruction.

One person could make the difference. Is it you?

—Save Our World Foundation

Recruitment poster, fall 2012 CE

Chapter Four

What by all that’s holy is going on here
? Curled in a fetal position, Nell Stafford considered the last two minutes of her life. One moment, she’d been dreaming of warm ocean breezes, and a blue twilight and the next, she awoke with a man pawing at her and a dark skinned woman with wild eyes shoving needles into her breasts. They left, taking with them that comforting azure light. Then she started floating.

Naked.

At least she didn’t think they’d violated her. Exposed yes, raped, no.

The cold air, reeking of ozone and charred meat, crept into the creases and folds of her exposed body. While a humid breath washed over her chest with each saw of her lungs, strips and wads of twisted metal sliced open her skin. Balls of red blood bubbled out, splattered against her every time she turned. Crimson speckles contrasted sharply against her pale arms and legs in the eerie white light slanting into the warehouse full of slaughtered machines.

She wanted to wake up from this nightmare. She wanted to open her eyes, see her cluttered bedroom and smell the cabbage cooking in the Hoffsteader’s apartment. Nell peeked at her surroundings. The coffin-like bed she’d lain in before the groping goons had found her, melded into the black debris drifting under her. Its comforting blue glow faded into the shifting shadows and left her adrift in the cavernous room.

Exhaling her mounting fear, she tumbled head over ass in the air. Her shoulder slammed into a smooth column, ending her somersaulting but rattling her teeth with the abrupt stop. Which way was up now? Nell shook her head. Her blonde hair drifted in front of her face, waving gently as if she floated in water.

This had to be a dream. If she really drifted on the tide, then how come she heard no crashing surf? She could be underwater. And breathing? Not likely.

Could she be dead?

A wave of burning inflamed Nell’s breasts. Death wouldn’t hurt this bad. Beads of moisture frothed over the raw skin where that woman’s syringes had punctured sensitive tissue.

Why had that psychotic Grace Jones wannabe attacked her?

Nell had signed up to save the world not to be tortured by some nut job in a Ninja uniform. She struggled to think, but her precious thoughts seemed shrouded in cotton batting.

Memories played peek-a-boo. There then gone. Not connected to anything that made sense.

She remembered… The portly rent-a-cop who dismissed her with a glance, the Don Juan who set out to charm her, and the plastic women who lounged by the window in the Save Our World’s branch office. The tinny voice of the computer receptionist had called her in for her second interview and then….

And then…

Her brain slammed against a blank memory.

A shiver traveled through Nell that had nothing to do with the frigid air leaching the heat from her body. What had happened to her? How did she get here?
Where exactly is here
?

Another blast of pain caused her back to arch, but her arms clenched around her folded legs, keeping her locked in a fetal position.
Moving would be bad
. The little voice cresting the wave of breath sounded too much like Nell’s perpetually disapproving mother. Nell only obeyed because her mother was almost always right.

Almost always.

Nell would take the odds. At least the voice was familiar in this alien world. Alien? Her stomach threatened to empty its contents into her mouth. No. Reason wrestled with her mushrooming fear. Alien as in unfamiliar, not ET or Mr. Spock.

Look around
. Her eyes obeyed, but her heart still pulsed in terror’s cadence. Red glowed in the hiss of steam.

Blinking, Nell focused on the letters. E. Could that really be English? Yes! Hope stirred to life. An ‘X’ followed the ‘E.’ She searched her vocabulary for words. Exhaust. Extinct. Exit.

Exit!

She could leave this Godforsaken place. Her body refused to uncurl. What the heck was wrong now? Why wouldn’t her body obey her will?

Stay still. Wait for help
.

Help? The notion stirred in the silence. Miz Jones and her pawing minions weren’t about to help her. Heck they’d probably stuff unpleasant things in places Nell preferred not to think about. Being naked and paralyzed, she doubted even her cutting sarcasm would stop them. At least it held her fear at bay.

Listen
.

Nell gritted her teeth at the mother-knows-best tone of her subconscious. How had that part of her brain taken control of her body?

Survival
.

That sounded more like instinct than conscience. Nell shook her head to clear the confusion. What did it matter if all those Discovery Channel programs merged into one? She needed to find a way out of here, and that required her limbs to obey her conscious thought. From the corner of her eye, Nell detected movement.