Steel (Dark Monster Fantasy Book 2)

by Cari Silverwood

  Why would the cybermonks fake that?

  Chapter 6

  Hoss ambled to the small vehicle, watched Ember climb into the open tray at the back and sit against the side. She wrapped her hand over the edge. While she did all of this, he most definitely admired the shift of her anatomy. Her scent and roundness had him almost...almost drooling. He swallowed the majority of it.

  She’d not joined Baz in the cabin. This was good.

  Nevertheless, a problem had reared up, and he craved whacking off that problem’s head.

  She wanted to sweep away all they’d done, as if it had never happened.

  He understood. It was bad for her career, for the respect others might give her. Humans with orcs, let alone humans mating with orc half-breeds, was a territory few crossed into. She’d be reviled by her own kind. Strangely, he’d go up a notch. Snaring a human for the nest was rare. Though such unions were infertile, his tribe, if he’d still had one, would pin medals on his chest.

  This wasn’t why he wished to pursue her.

  Neither was his rut.

  Okay, the rut was a part of what hooked him but it was more, simply, her.

  Any orc worth the fire his ancestors were burned in, would not give up because she insisted he should.

  Take was orc motto, not...not crawl away in shame.

  Take!

  He sat beside her in the vehicle’s tray, thinking, bouncing as the wheels found holes in the track, and watching the approach of a small forest. Tree shadows flickered over his knees. Opposite, the forest darkened. They emerged into open fields again as the light from the sun waned. No moons showed yet. The sun set slowly on this planet, as if time had been told to wait.

  The cybermonks had chosen a placid planet. He’d not seen a single predatory bird or beast.

  With his orc eyes the minimal light was enough and the darkness concealed where his attention lay. He could look at her legs and thighs, at her boots where they ended in practical square heels – he loved how practical she was. If a warrior, she’d be sticking heads on spears and blasting aside her enemies without mercy. It made his blood exult.

  He stretched and moved to the opposite side of the tray so he could look up her skirt.

  The lenses of her data spectacles sheened pink. Could she be staring at him?

  He pulled his knees up and wrapped his hands over them. “Those wouldn’t happen to have any night vision capabilities?”

  “They would. Stop looking, Hoss. You must not.”

  No please in those words. He eyed her. Not sullen. Not resentful, just...caught in the middle of his needs.

  Take, remember? Sometimes being a gentle half-breed was a hindrance. He wasn’t keen on taking unless they gave. Maybe it’d grow on him.

  “Nice city.” He jerked his head toward the glow the truck approached.

  Too short to see over the cabin of the truck, Ember leaned back to look past the side of the truck and even that, the stretch of fabric over her breasts, the tautness in her legs as she balanced, it drew him.

  “The city of Verd,” Ember said softly.

  As the truck rumbled into the first street, stone surrounded them. Two or three stories of perfectly squared-away sandstone, decorated with the drape and flourish of greenery. Leaves were crushed under their wheels and the soft moist air of the forest seemed to have followed them in here. The people were few, and at least half were dressed in the blue or gray robes of disciples of the cybermonks.

  They passed a wall that ran barely a meter from his ear, and red writing sprang into being, flowing as he read.

  “To achieve greatness one must do and one must sometimes take.”

  What the... His thought dribbled away into nothing.

  How?

  How had the wall known?

  He twisted and saw the writing fade then vanish.

  Chapter 7

  This was it. The day he delivered a princess to the cybermonks. The day he’d get surgery and a new dick. They’d follow through. They always did. His fear was only natural.

  Not many men got to experience having their dick ripped off, fed to animals, a new cybercock attached, then an even better one stuck on years later.

  It made every sphincter he owned clench. Made him grin too.

  Fuck, this had better be as good as he’d heard or he’d roast the monks over a smelter set on nuclear heat and watch them melt.

  He took the wide steps leading up to the audience room three at a time, making his red coat flare open. His boot soles clunked on the stone. His mass was much greater than when he’d been merely an outer human. Born and bred among the stars, his uncle used to say. Well, now he could rip the arms off a robot and say he was made from stars. Some of the metal in his parts would’ve been mined from a white dwarf star.

  Fuck the snobbish CESS girl traipsing after him and her mercenary guard, Hoss. She was pretty, could probably buy the Leaf with her small change, and then there was her...he almost tripped up the stairs...yeah she had a body he was never going to forget.

  Life had been iffy for a while, but he was still here. CESS hadn’t killed him.

  He waited at the top for the doors to slide open, heard Ember and Hoss come up behind him and wait also.

  These doors were wide enough to swallow an oliphant from Gemini two. They rode on bearings smooth as engine oil, silent as a road of corpses...providing the bone birds hadn’t yet arrived. If so, those roads of corpses were full of squawking with giblets being flung about and the very air black with old blood.

  His right fist whined quietly as his fingers curled to their utmost limits.

  Down boy, down. Dial down.

  His vision stained red for a while, simmering, and clearing as the doors shuddered to a stop.

  Ahead, the room was empty save for the cybermonks, lined up at the very end of an aisle of gold-flecked tiles.

  He took in their appearance as he strode closer. Three, same as before, when he’d been broken and bleeding, three years ago. They hadn’t changed externally, though internally they might have upgrades.

  Left to right, standing in their pale blue robes. The metal arrangement of their chrome spindly legs, feet, and arms was similar. It was their heads that differed.

  Stryng Theory, shortened to Stryng. His head wore a cap of knotted white cables that swung like hair to neck level. There were no eyes but squares of inset mesh sat at about the right level for ears.

  Lightnyng File was Lightnyng for short. The top end of him...or her, for the monks seemed sexless, was a wedge-studded shiny sphere and his eyes were a pair of golden balls.

  Erroar Code – or Erroar, was shorter than the other two, and his jigsaw head was fractured pieces of globe, connecting wires, and white triangular teeth. He was the only one with a visible mouth but he lacked eyes and ears.

  “So,” Ember whispered behind him, “You really are cybernetic AIs.”

  “Of course.” Stryng’s head spun and the white cables flared outward. “Hence the cyber.”

  “Bloody obvious,” he said quietly, pleased at her indignant noise. Then he raised his voice. “I’ve brought the princess. Does this girl behind me qualify? I feel she should.”

  “And feelings are so interesting.” Lightnyng bowed a little at the waist, his words sizzling. “We do approve. We will speak to her but you may go, Baz.”

  He hesitated. “Go where?”

  “To surgery. Do you recall the way?”

  Last time he’d been towed in on a stretcher, almost in pieces. Only some extravagant medical care given on the way here had revived him. He remembered, all right.

  Remembered holding up his left hand and grimacing at the lacerations showing beneath the shine of the tissue glue.

  Remembered holding up his right and seeing nothing except for a glimpse of his arm stub lifting as it tried to obey.

  No pain, thank the forgotten gods. Someone had pumped his nerves with anti-pain meds, shorted his sensations to the max.

  He remembered the gore belo
w too.

  “I remember,” he croaked, nodding. “I can find my way.”

  “Good,” one of them said. Erroar probably – from the clack of teeth and whispery whine of the servomotors in his jaw. They liked to take turns speaking.

  “Good luck, man.” Hoss said from above, an avalanche of rumbling words. He inclined his head and held out a hairy hand.

  After a millisecond of hesitation Baz touched it and nodded back.

  “Surgery?” Ember looked concerned and puzzled. Despite the situation he was headed for, the crinkles on her brow and around her eyes were cute.

  “Yes. Tuning up my cyborg bits.”

  “Oh. Good luck from me too.” She shuddered as if imagining some terrible scene.

  If only she knew...

  Left out the doors, down a corridor. He paused once outside, wondering vaguely what they were going to discuss with the girl, Ember. She was a high-level data extractor.

  It dawned on him that he didn’t wish ill for her. Not any more.

  Somewhere along the line, coming here, he’d lost most of his animosity toward Ember. Just what the fuck did the monks want with a CESS operative?

  He’d walked out after the last surgery, years ago, transformed into what he was now – a cyborg with a heart, but not much else of worth. All because of CESS. That road of corpses had led to this. Next time he’d fly past and forget what he’d seen. Stopping to help had been his downfall.

  Hadn’t been her fault.

  He sucked in a breath through his nose, wiped his eyes with his knuckle. Time to do what must be done and get a new cock.

  Everything here was impersonal, done by programmed bots, but better than human.

  His last words were uttered after he lowered himself to the table in the middle of the cool and pristine surgery room. Above, the cutting and laser-bearing robotic arms unfolded from the ceiling and headed for him...

  Make it big and fancy, he slurred.

  Make it really big.

  Really, reeeeally big.

  Had he said that out loud?

  Then the hiss of anesthesia cut into his mind and sent him lala-ing off to almost-sleep.

  He remained a little aware but everything blurred and sound deadened, as if a mountain of blankets covered him.

  There were no woolly animals leaping hurdles in this sleep, only burning and clinking, and the buzz of tiny engines. He twitched but felt nothing.

  Chapter 8

  Ember ran through the checklist of her recent, significant events.

  Rescued from a war, fucked her first orc, brought here sort of against her will, hyperspace intubation of her intimate places done manually by someone she both admired and disliked, and the latter was amazing considering how short a time she’d known Baz Rutland.

  The things one did when not quite of a sane mind...

  So, here she was face-to-metal with the cybermonks of legend, who may or may not have their digital ones and zeroes in the muddy pies of the galaxy.

  Get it right and she’d leave here knowing who she was and where she’d come from, who had given birth to her. The names of her mother and father.

  Gods...that was going to be wonderful when it happened.

  She sniffed then wrinkled her nose to hold back the oncoming watery eyes.

  They were dead but that didn’t matter. Just knowing who they were had become a need so deep it’d wrapped itself around her soul, crawled into the dark spaces in her head and stayed there waiting, niggling at her.

  Just to know. Not knowing killed her a little every day.

  Get it wrong and she’d leave here still a faceless, ancestorless orphan.

  “Greetings, Miss Ember, princess of CESS industries. We are Lightnyng File, Stryng Theory, and Erroar Code.”

  Curious names. She swept her gaze from left to right. So the one with long, white, and swishy cable hair was Stryng. Wedge-studded dome with the coin-colored eyes was Lightnyng. Erroar was shark teeth. Those teeth had markings like...she peered...like ancient circuit boards. That had to be deliberate?

  These guys looked like the leftovers from a techpunk band.

  Weird but nice.

  Ember nodded.

  “We believe you carry something that interests us. The DSU.”

  The DSU? That was what they wanted? She had something they wanted.

  Ember blinked. She had something they wanted. Excellent.

  Yet...

  “You told Baz this three years ago – to rescue me? How did you know I would have the DSU?”

  “We are good at prediction.”

  “Future events predicted from present data?”

  “Yes. We process a lot of information to gain our understanding of the universe.”

  This was why people worshipped them. It had to be. If they truly were prescient, this was world-tilting in significance. Well, well.

  Her fingers twitched, wanting keys to press, data to mine, and her data knife in her hand. This might be fun. “You and me, we need to chat.”

  “I am Erroar. You will give us the DSU,” shark teeth said, mouth widening.

  “The DSU is mine and I’ve trapped it, virused it. No one can get in without my agreement. Especially you. Unless you want to be so many zeroes and ones on the wind.”

  Okay, maybe she’d gone too far with that threat. She’d been riding high on the possibilities here.

  Nevertheless, she slid the data knife from its waist sheath with her gloved left hand, and switched it on. The knife had a six-inch handle. Granted it was decorated with several stickers of her favorite anime star, but it was top-of-the-range equipment. The blade was powered and a six-inch-long piece of woven laser and ultraviolet light – the ultimate cyber-diving machinery. She could reach into any programmable device with this, even the minds of the cybermonks. It was that good. Her data-fucker, she liked to call it.

  The hum and shiver of the blade under her fingers and the iridescence shimmering off the twisting purple blade, drew their attention.

  Though she didn’t look down, she knew it would be fogging the adjacent air with frost.

  “I’ll show you my DSU and you show me your database...all of it.”

  “All of it? Never!” The dismay and anger erupting from their voices had her smiling.

  Rescue a princess? They’d caught themselves someone better than that. She was a queen of cyberspace. Then the knife shuddered under her hand and the glow of the blade sputtered some more, faded, and zipped out.

  Dead.

  Which left her with only a handle. She couldn’t scare a hamsterpoodle with that

  She really should’ve recharged it.

  Asking for a wall outlet to plug it into might be a little presumptuous.

  “Damn,” she said under her breath.

  The silence was off-putting. She pretended all was fine and let her arm dangle at her side, casual-like, then slid the now bladeless data knife into the sheath.

  Finally Erroar answered, teeth stretching into a crescent moon shape. “We will need time to consider your proposal. A room will be shown to you. Please feel free to relax. This may take a few days.”

  She was sure teeth should not stretch.

  Days? “What if Baz Rutland wishes to leave before then?”

  “There will be other ships. Unless you are in a hurry?”

  The vacant buzz of their voices blended until she wasn’t sure who spoke unless Erroar opened his toothy mouth.

  Ember cleared her throat. “I’d wait a century if it meant gaining access to your database.”

  “We see that.”

  She’d revealed a weakness there, showed them how important it was, made no move to beg to be returned to CESS, like a dutiful employee should. Of course, she was on their planet, in their city. If they wished to, they could probably use unsavory methods to gain access to the DSU from her. Both she and they knew this. It was a basic fact.

  But they hadn’t, yet. This was good.

  “I’ll...find this room you speak of.”<
br />
  All three of the cybermonks nodded and she backed away a few steps before turning.

  “Your guard may stay a little longer. We need to speak to Hoss.”

  Her glance took in Hoss and them, then Hoss again. He shrugged.

  “I will talk to them.”

  “Sure.” She walked out feeling strangely unsettled.

  What was wrong with Hoss staying behind? Nothing she could put a finger on. If anyone would lay down his life for her, it was Hoss.

  The doors closed behind her. An ankle-high, roach-bot skittered up on metal legs and gestured for her to follow. Ember squeaked and flinched. Not squishing it with her boot was difficult to do.

  Roaches were a galaxy-wide pest critter.

  “Who makes their welcome bots in the shape of a roach?”

  And brown too. A shiny gold-brown. Where was the spray for this thing?

  As long as it didn’t nibble on her food. Ember followed it down the corridor to the right, with her boots making a nice assertive sound on the floor. So far things were going as well as she could hope for, though she wondered exactly what Baz was having done to him.

  Grumpy and rude he might be, but he had rescued her from an ugly death. She could never spit in the face of someone who did that. Well, maybe she could. He’d have to be a helluva lot ruder though.

  The roach led her down sandstone corridors then into a garden open to the sky. Soft lights that dangled from poles came on as she approached them. Night had fallen. Though the walls of the corridor continued, they’d been strategically dismantled, partway to ground level, so they barely indicated where to walk. To either side past the sandstone blocks were ponds studded with stalks topped with huge yellow blossoms.

  Bright-plumaged little birds zipped past, their tails fluttering feathered streams half as long as their bodies. The songbirds were blue mostly. Some were orange. They left trails of color and melodious notes and she closed her eyes just to listen.

  So pretty.

  She realized she hadn’t smiled like this for a long, long time.

  The roach-bot had disappeared.

  Ahead the path ran through a gap in another stone wall, though this one was partly hidden by a morass of vines. She ambled through, her shoulders brushed by tendrils of the low-hanging vine, and found soft green grass underfoot and the path deteriorating into the occasional square flagstone.