by Cara Bristol
“Hey, Sparky,” she said.
“Woof. Woof.” He gave a quiet, friendly little bark and wagged his tail. Sparky looked at Dante but showed no aggression.
“Hang onto him,” Dante said.
She tightened her grip on the leash.
“Nice doggie.” He reached out and petted Sparky from head to rump. His tail thumped the table.
“I guess he doesn’t perceive you as a threat this time,” Miranda said.
“Not so far.” He continued to pet him while peering at the screen.
A long, pink silicone tongue slurped out to lick Dante’s hand. It was such a contrast to the way the little robot had been functioning. He was acting normal again. “Maybe the problem fixed itself?” she asked hopefully. “Maybe being powered off did something.”
“Often a reboot does fix the problem. But without an idea of what caused the malfunction, we can’t risk him going berserk. SSO15 can do a more comprehensive diagnostic to find the corrupted code—if there is some—but for now you have two options. We can keep him off until you get him looked at—or I can try to remove the override so he’ll respond to your voice command no matter what.”
“Let’s do that. I’d like to be able to keep him activated.” She paused. “Altering the code won’t change his personality, will it?” People said robots didn’t have personalities – or they were programmed to mimic a temperament, but Sparky was different. No matter what science said, he had a personality.
“I’ll back up his programming. If removing the override changes him, I’ll restore the original settings, and you keep him deactivated until an AI coding expert can work on him.”
“All right. Let’s do it.” She missed Sparky tagging along beside her. She peered up at Dante, her heart fluttering. What a different man he’d turned out to be. He hadn’t made a good first impression, but he’d redeemed himself. He didn’t need to do this. It was unheard of for a captain to adopt this much interest in a passenger’s problem. A man in his position had more important duties than reprogramming a canine bot. Gratitude and an even deeper, more personal emotion swelled inside her.
She touched his arm. “Thank you for helping me,” she said huskily. “It means a lot to me.”
He went rigid, and his eyes seemed to smolder. “I’m happy to help,” he said gruffly and then turned toward the lockers. “Switch him off, and I’ll proceed. Let me get the other equipment I need.”
Could it be his helpfulness indicated a deeper personal interest? There had been moments when the chemistry seemed to sizzle between them. Or was she reading too much into his behavior because she was attracted to him and wished for her feelings to be reciprocated?
She knew one thing for certain: to find out how he really felt she was going to have to make the first move. An officer of his standing and character would not make advances to her. If anything was going to grow from this spark of attraction, she would have to take the lead.
Her heart thudded. Then what? Would a shipboard fling be worth the inevitable heartbreak? In another couple of weeks, she would disembark onto the space station. Dante would carry on as captain of the Crimson Hawk. The odds were good they would never see each other again.
But wasn’t it better to have him for a brief time than live with regrets of what could have been? She’d survived a Tyranian attack when most others had died. Only her wits and Sparky had saved her.
She rounded the table. “Dante, wait—”
By the lockers, he turned.
Butterflies tumbled in her stomach. Before she lost her nerve, she rose up on tiptoes and pressed her lips to his. He went rigid—well, more rigid. He was already constructed of hard-packed muscle. His hands closed over her shoulders, and she braced for him to shove her away.
Instead, his arms came around her, and he crushed her against his chest as he plundered her mouth, kissing her with a need seeming to equal her own. The way his heart slammed against his ribs sent hers to pounding. She wrapped her arms around his neck, then felt her feet leave the ground as he lifted her up and continued to kiss her.
When her feet touched the floor again, he leaned his forehead against hers. Their breaths mingled. Then he stepped back. He picked up her wrist, kissed her palm, and sighed.
She recognized regret when she heard it. “Don’t say anything…bad,” she begged.
“What would you consider bad?”
“Like we shouldn’t have done that.” Leave me with an untainted memory of one perfect kiss.
“We shouldn’t have. Kissing you was inappropriate, an abuse of my position.”
She winced. Well, she’d guessed what his reaction might be. “I don’t feel abused, and I kissed you first.”
His gaze darkened with conflict and longing. He seemed to be fighting a battle within himself. Then his mouth twisted. “I should resist you, but I can’t.” He pulled her to him again, and she clutched at his uniform shirt while her head spun with happiness. In his arms, she felt like she’d come home.
From the instant she’d met him, this man had touched her in a deep, lasting way that contradicted his moniker of “Stone Cold.” People believed him to be an emotionless cyborg, but she knew better.
Miranda shivered with pleasure when he nuzzled her ear, her throat, her shoulder. His lips were soft, his jaw slightly raspy, and he ignited tingles with every stroke, every kiss. Her head fell back, and he buried his face against the crook of her neck. His warm breath chased away the cold shadows of her past.
She ran her fingers through his hair, then spread her palms over his muscled chest. Beneath his shirt, his skin burned hot.
He caressed her, touching with a reverent urgency, exploring her shoulders, arms, spine, the curve of her waist, and her derriere. He hesitated before slipping a hand around to her front and covering a breast. She arched into his palm as he thrummed the hardening nipple. She gasped. “I guess you don’t regret it now.”
He stared into her eyes, his breath warming her cheek. “Why would I regret it when you’re all I’ve been thinking about?”
Her breath caught in her throat. He’d thought about her? A surge of joy skipped along nerves.
“I’m older than you,” he said.
“So?”
“I’m a cyborg.”
“So?”
“Some people consider cyborgs more machine than human.”
“I don’t.” She shook her head. How could he think that?
“You make me feel…alive in a way I haven’t felt in a long time,” Dante said, and her heart soared.
A flush darkened his cheekbones, and his eyes blazed. He lowered his head and claimed another plundering kiss that rendered her breathless. Then he planted a quick, hard kiss to her mouth and set her away from him.
The laboratory tilted as if the ship rocked from side to side, but the Crimson Hawk glided through space perfectly level. She was off-kilter.
This man with the brooding eyes and stony features smiled so gently, she about melted into a puddle at his feet. He stroked a finger down her cheek. “You have come to mean a lot to me. Let’s finish up with Sparky, and we’ll go someplace and talk, okay?”
Sparky! She’d forgotten all about him.
“Okay. I’d like that.” Her lips throbbed. She hoped “talk” was a euphemism. While she straightened her clothing, Dante did the same, and with his fingers, combed a semblance of smoothness into his hair.
Then he strode to the lockers and pulled open the nearest one. It made a rude sucking noise as it popped open. “Airtight seal,” he explained with an amused grin, but then frowned. Filled to capacity with equipment and supplies with no apparent organization, it appeared as if someone had crammed as much stuff inside as he or she could.
He rooted around, but did not find what he needed. “This is unacceptable,” he growled at the mess, and she silently agreed, surprised by the disorganization. Military vessels and installations were supposed to be neat and tidy; everything
had a place, and everything was in its place. The second cabinet, equally packed and in disarray, also failed to produce the needed equipment.
Somebody’s going to find himself or herself on KP duty. She covered a grin.
The door of the third stuck—not surprisingly, considering the state of the lockers.
“Something is jammed against the release lever.” Scowling, he gave the handle a hard yank.
The locker sprang open, and a body tumbled out.
Chapter Five
The bloodied, mangled, bloated body of a woman hit the floor, and Miranda screamed. “Oh, my god! Althea! That’s Althea!”
Dante grabbed Miranda against his chest and swung her away to shield her from the gruesomeness of the decomposing corpse. “Don’t look.”
A sickening sweet odor of decay floated off the remains.
She squeezed his waist. “I can handle it. I need to see.” She’d probably witnessed worse on Verde Omega during the invasion, he realized and released her.
“I can’t believe it. How could this have happened?” She covered her nose and mouth with her hand and looked up at Dante.
His mind, assisted by his cyborg circuitry, began processing pertinent data. “The last time you saw her was about four days after you boarded the Crimson Hawk, correct?” he asked, recalling what she’d said when she’d approached him in the observation lounge to report the disappearance.
“Yes—when Sparky scared her.” She glanced at the K9-500. It was sitting on the table, its access panel open, still connected via cable to the code reader. “Could she have been dead that long?”
Judging from the state of decomposition, he’d guess so, but only an autopsy could pinpoint the time and cause of death. Insects did not exist in space, but when a person died, his or her own bacteria and enzymes broke down the body. The big question was, had Althea been alive or dead when the colonists had been counted?
“We’re going to find out,” he told Miranda grimly and tapped his commlink.
“Yes, captain?” the chief medical officer responded.
“We have a ninety-four in the robotics lab.”
“A crewmember is dead?”
“No, a colonist.”
“What was a colonist doing in the robotics lab?”
“That’s one of the questions. First, I need a time and cause of death. We have a homicide on our hands.”
“Homicide! Not an accident?”
“No,” he said grimly. “I want a full postmortem. Get me as much information as you can, as quickly as possible.”
How the hell had this happened on his ship? It seemed unfathomable that a crewmember could have done this—but it was equally unlikely that a colonist could have slipped by security and gotten this far. But hadn’t Miranda insisted all along that colonists had been disappearing? What if she was right? What if there were more? She’d counted nine people as missing.
“I’m on my way,” the medical officer said.
Miranda stood next to Sparky, petting him in a self-soothing way while keeping her face averted from Althea’s body.
“Are you all right?” he asked. He wanted to hold her, comfort her, but he had to deal with this situation. “You can wait outside in the corridor. You don’t need to stay in here.”
“I’m okay. Do what you need to do.”
Next, he notified security, ordered a full investigation, placed the Crimson Hawk on yellow alert, and stationed additional guards in the New Utopian area. Then he contacted Lieutenant Commander Brack. “Get Mr. Ochoa and meet me in my consult room.”
“Is there a problem, captain?”
“A New Utopian has been murdered.”
“That’s horrible!” she gasped. “How? By whom?”
“Those are the questions.”
After disconnecting, he went to Miranda and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m so sorry about your friend.”
She hugged his waist. “Who could have done this?”
“I don’t know. I’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.” He knew next to nothing about the colonists rescued from Verde Omega. Bio scans had checked for communicable contaminants, but nobody had vetted the survivors’ histories. Why would they? Their goal had been solely to administer humanitarian aid. But, just because the New Utopians followed principles of pacifism didn’t mean their group didn’t harbor a few sociopaths. Maybe some of them had betrayed their fellow settlers and had abetted the Tyranians.
Dante hugged Miranda and then released her to kneel beside the body. Intestines spilled out of the abdominal cavity. He was no doctor, no anatomist, but organs appeared to be missing. Althea had no other marks. No photon blaster burns, no cuts across the throat, no bashing to the skull. He hoped he was wrong, but he suspected the evisceration had been inflicted premortem. Althea had been alive when she’d been disemboweled.
If he hadn’t brought the K9-500 to the rarely used lab, there was no telling when the body would have been discovered. The locker’s airtight seal would have prevented the odor of decomposition from permeating. It was a perfect place to hide a body.
His gaze shifted to the unopened lockers. Hell and damnation. He got to his feet. “You may not want to see this,” he warned.
The handle of the fourth unit turned easily, but as soon as he cracked the door, the decay hit his nose.
“Another body?” Miranda pulled her tunic up to cover her nose and mouth.
“Unfortunately, yes.” He eased open the door and let the gassy corpse slump to the floor. Lockers five and six also yielded bodies, the last one appearing to be a more recent death.
Dante compressed his lips. “You said nine colonists had disappeared?”
“At the time I reported it, yes. I haven’t counted lately.”
He’d brought the New Utopians on board to save their lives, and now it appeared a serial killer had targeted them. The perpetrator was probably one of them, but he’d failed to deliver the safety he’d promised.
He turned to Miranda. He regretted having doubted her. She’d been the only one to notice people were missing. Somehow it had slipped by the civilian liaison and his first officer. “I would like you to be there when I meet with Lieutenant Commander Brack and Mr. Ochoa.”
“Of course.” She moved to the table where the K9-500 sat quietly. She disconnected the cable, closed its access panel, and reached under his collar. “I’ll shut him down.”
“Leave him activated.”
“He might attack—”
“Keep him on a short leash, but take him with you whenever you’re not in your cabin.” He didn’t want to alarm her, but he would feel more comfortable if she had a little extra protection until he knew how and why the victims had been chosen by the killer. Was it random? Or were the individuals themselves targeted?
Miranda set the bot on the floor. Metal nails clicking, the bot padded to Althea’s body, tilted his head back and howled. A chill traveled up Dante’s spine. It was almost as if Sparky knew Althea was dead—and cared. A bot’s programming allowed it to differentiate between organic and AI, between living and dead, but it didn’t develop feelings.
Miranda frowned as she watched the dog.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Sparky always reacted positively to Althea until she returned after being gone, and he tried to attack her. Now, it looks like he likes her again.” She motioned to Sparky. “Come.” The dog trotted to her side and sat. His synthetic tongue lolled out of his mouth.
“Since she’s dead, he probably doesn’t perceive her as dangerous,” he said, but he wasn’t sure he believed it. It was almost as if the dog had feelings.
The medical officer and two security team members entered the lab. Miranda tightened the leash around her hand. Sparky’s eyes flickered and his ears quirked, but he sat there, calm and quiet.
“You said there was only one body!” the medical officer gasped.
“I found three more after I called you
. Unfortunately, there are probably more victims in other parts of the ship. I want a full autopsy. I need to know time of death, how they died, and the weapon used. Don’t wait for a full report to update me. Shoot me the details as you get them.”
He turned to the security chief. “Up the warning status from yellow to orange. Run a ship-wide bio scan. Get an exact headcount—and search for bodies. Check every bay, every cabin, every duct, every conduit, every locker, everything.”
“Aye, captain,” the security chief replied.
“I’ll be in my consult room with Lieutenant Commander Brack and the liaison. You know how to reach me.”
He beckoned to Miranda. He cupped her elbow, and with the K9-500 bot at her heel they left the lab.
Chapter Six
Miranda reeled, stunned and shocked by the senseless murders. This was far worse than what she’d feared. She’d observed there were fewer people in the unit, but she’d never expected this; however, it proved her gut instinct had been correct.
But it still didn’t add up. Literally. The lieutenant commander had counted the colonists, one by one. From the state of decomposition, Althea and the others had been dead at roll call, yet they’d been included in the total. How could that be? Dante would never accept anything less than precision and excellence. If he had considered Brack first officer material, then she was. So how had the lieutenant commander screwed up so bad?
No doubt that would be one of Dante’s first questions. He drummed his fingers impatiently while they waited for Lucille Brack and Warren Ochoa. She’d gotten the impression he had expected them to be waiting in the consult room when they’d arrived a few minutes ago.
Miranda also had a strong feeling the tardiness was due to the commander’s inability to locate Ochoa—because he was dead. He’d been one of the first people to go missing.
The viciousness of the murders would be etched on her brain forever, along with the tortures perpetuated on Verde Omega. She prayed Althea had died quickly—but feared the opposite.