“The thruster controls are broken.” Keiko leaned back in her seat, grasped her chin, and scowled at the control panel.
Ah, maybe Cortez had known the shuttle was inoperable and that was why he hadn’t left a guard.
“Any chance you can fix it?”
“Oh, I can fix anything, but…” Keiko looked toward a door and windows leading to a corridor, perhaps the corridor the cyborgs had gone down. “Even if we’re lucky and have all the spare parts we need, it’s an eight-, ten-hour job. Do you think we’ll have that long?” Keiko looked at Skylar, as if she expected her to know the answer.
“I don’t have any clue about what they’re doing, but I’d guess they would want to get in and out quickly.”
“Me too. All right, here are our options.”
Skylar leaned forward, glad to have someone with military experience who could take charge.
“Stay here, start repairing the shuttle, and hope to get lucky,” Keiko said, holding up a finger. “Maybe the cyborgs will get delayed, or maybe they’ll get shot and killed. That would be ideal.”
Skylar hesitated, not sure she agreed that people dying would be ideal. Maybe she should, but it was hard for her to condemn Cortez without knowing more about the situation. Not when she was familiar with his reputation. Shouldn’t a hero get a chance to explain himself?
“Second,” Keiko said, holding up a matching finger, “we leave the shuttle and try to get to C and C. If Big and Beefy hasn’t been up there yet and put his fist through their control panels, we ought to be able to comm out. There’s a relay station at the wormhole, so a message should get back to the fleet quickly.”
“Big and Beefy? Professor Cortez?”
“You’re welcome to give him whatever nickname you want. What’s your opinion on our options?”
“That it would be nice if there were more of them.”
“No kidding.” Keiko raised her eyebrows.
“I think I choose the second one. If we stay here and they come back, they’ll lock us up again, or worse. If we get out of here, even if we don’t make it to Command and Control—is that what C and C stands for?” Skylar waited for Keiko to nod before continuing. “At least we’ll be out in the prison somewhere. We can hide and stay free. Relatively free. I doubt we’re their priority, so if they don’t find us quickly, they may forget about us. And maybe we’ll run into some guards who will help us.”
“Or maybe we’ll run into some inmates who will maul us. Two women roaming around a maximum-security prison sounds idiotic to me.” Despite her grousing, Keiko must have agreed with option two because she rose to her feet. “Let me see if the stunners are still in the little armory back here.”
Skylar would gladly take a stunner, but she headed for the compartment in the back that held the shuttle’s medical kit. She knew her way around drugs far more than she did around weapons. Besides, if they were captured and searched, the cyborgs would find the chunky stunners easily. Perhaps, if she slipped a few packets of pills into her underwear, they would be missed in a pat-down. Presuming the men didn’t decide a strip search would be fun.
The uneasy thought that they might lingered in her mind as she selected items from the kit. It was possible that she and Keiko were the only women out here on this asteroid.
That hadn’t seemed so alarming when she’d believed all was well in the prison and the ten burly guards accompanying the shuttle were there to protect them. Or at least the craft. Now… She had no idea what to expect.
“If you’re hunting for PainAway,” Keiko said, coming up beside her with two stunners in hand, “find some for me too.”
“Did being trapped in a locker for a half hour give you a headache?” Skylar had been hunting for sedatives, not painkillers, but she tossed a couple of foil packets to Keiko.
“No, but I’m anticipating dealing with cyborgs will.”
“What if we don’t deal with them?” Skylar slipped her selected packets into her bra. She eyed a jet injector with ampules of much faster-acting sedatives, but carrying one of those around would be almost as obvious as a stunner. Also, she couldn’t imagine a scenario in which she would get a chance to jab a cyborg with an injector. Even if she surprised one of the men, his reflexes would be far superior to hers.
“What do you mean?” Keiko asked.
“I brought up hiding—isn’t that an option? Until they’ve done what they’ve done and left.”
Keiko scowled at her. In disbelief? “For all we know, they’re here to get all the prisoners out and unleash them on the innocent colonies. Or maybe start some army full of super soldiers. Any one of those cyborgs has the ability to assassinate the president, and there are dozens of them locked up in here, dozens that have proven themselves criminals.”
“What do you think we can do against such men?”
“Warn the fleet, that’s what. You can hide if you want to, but I’m getting to C and C. Do you want this or not?” Keiko held up one of the two stunners she’d pulled out.
Skylar accepted the weapon. “I’ll go with you. I was just—” being rational, she thought, “—offering suggestions.”
Keiko jerked her head toward the hatch, strode toward it, and hit the manual controls. It opened, and she crouched with both hands gripping the stunner as she scanned the bay outside.
It was still empty, though they could hear the alarm wailing more loudly now.
Skylar followed Keiko out of the shuttle, hoping they weren’t going to have to pass through corridors filled with dead bodies. Her willingness to sympathize with the cyborgs would end at that point. While she could understand Cortez wanting to rescue his men, she couldn’t understand choosing to kill prison guards to do so.
Skylar looked back as they walked, the view of space and the stars magnificent through the forcefield. It was unlike looking at the night sky back on Earth. There were no clouds, no atmosphere to dull their glows.
As beautiful as those stars were, she couldn’t help but think she might never see the ones back home again, not if she took a wrong step and got in the way of a prison break.
“Do you know which way this C and C is?” Skylar whispered as they crossed the large bay.
“Yeah. I’ve been here a couple times before on cargo runs. We have to go up three levels.”
Keiko halted a few steps from the corridor and whispered, “I hear—”
Two big, armed men jogged through a doorway, their eyes hard and intent as they focused on Skylar and Keiko.
Keiko reacted with the instincts of a trained warrior, jerking her stunner up and firing. But the men anticipated the attack and turned their jogs into dives, somersaulting through the doorway and coming up after the stun beam passed over their heads. They sprang as quickly as panthers, landing in front of Keiko before she could fire again. One knocked the stunner out of her hand, and she gasped, dropping to a knee and curling that hand to her chest.
The second one turned toward Skylar, and she realized she was looking at Professor Cortez, still in his tweed suit. Professor? A wholly inaccurate title for someone who moved like that. Captain. That had been his military rank, she recalled.
Cortez met Skylar’s gaze and held out his hand for the stunner. She hadn’t raised it and didn’t now. With his speed, he would knock it aside as easily as his comrade had.
Comrade, yes, that seemed the right term, even though the other cyborg was shirtless and barefoot, wearing neon orange trousers that could only be part of the prison garb. He stood ready in case Keiko tried another attack, but he also looked over at Skylar, and she felt conspicuous in her white lab coat.
He was handsome—his lack of a shirt revealed a powerful body, as lithe and muscled as she would have expected from a cyborg soldier—but his blue eyes narrowed distrustfully as he took her in, his gaze lingering on that coat. She had the sense that he’d encountered other doctors and hadn’t liked them.
“Huh,” another man said, walking in behind Cortez and his orange-pajamaed friend. “That
’s not where we left those women.”
Skylar recognized one of the guards in black fatigues from the shuttle. Three of them had gathered in the corridor beyond the doorway, along with two more bare-chested men in orange trousers.
She dropped the stunner into Cortez’s patiently waiting hand. Even if she could by some miracle stun one, she could never drop the rest of them before they pinned her.
“It’s so tedious when prisoners escape,” the man in front of Keiko said, his tone dry, but he didn’t seem that amused by his observation. He pointed at Skylar. “I recognize her. She’s the neurologist they sent to replace Branigan, to fuck with our brains and experiment on us like we’re lab rats.”
“Uh, actually, I’m a neuroscientist,” Skylar said.
“Like it matters.”
The man’s lip curled. His pale blue eyes contrasted strikingly with his short black hair, a combination that should have been appealing, but there was something in those eyes that made Skylar uneasy, something that made her think again of the predator she’d likened him to.
He left Keiko and took a step closer to her. “You going to cut our skulls open, like Branigan did Jackson’s and Magnum’s? See if we’re wired any differently up there now that we’ve had eye and nose and ear implants for a decade or more? Figure out how to make the next generation of super soldiers, ones that can be more easily controlled? That won’t have our problems?” He took another step toward her, lifting a hand.
Skylar shifted back, abruptly wishing she hadn’t given up the stunner.
But Cortez stepped between them, blocking the other man. “Enough, Jerick. It doesn’t matter why she’s here.”
The man—Jerick—turned on the captain. “Doesn’t matter? You haven’t been here. You don’t know what they’ve been doing to us.” Jerick grabbed Cortez’s jacket, fingers tight, and the fabric ripped. “You’ve been in your goddamn office, grading papers and basking in the hero worship from those journalists. You don’t get to tell me what matters.”
He was fierce, and the anger roiling off him made Skylar ease back a few more steps, but Cortez didn’t blink or react to Jerick’s grip.
“And you don’t have the right to lecture me because you made a mistake, Sergeant,” Cortez said, his tone polar opposite to Jerick’s, full of ice instead of fire.
“I didn’t—”
“You killed three civilians. You think I didn’t read the police report?”
“All the information wasn’t in that report,” Jerick said, but some of his anger faded, and he lowered his hand.
He glanced at Skylar, and for a second, she thought she read embarrassment or chagrin—or maybe regret—in those blue eyes. But he threw a mask on, covering up his emotions. He looked back to Keiko—she’d barely been paying attention to the two men and had been peering about, maybe looking for a way to use their distraction to escape. The other cyborgs, however, had watched the blowup blandly, staying alert, their weapons cradled in their arms as they blocked the exit.
“Dr. Russo,” Cortez said, facing Skylar as if nothing had happened, as if one of his lapels wasn’t ripped halfway off. He also nodded to Keiko and added, “Lieutenant Sasaki. I apologize for interfering with your transit here and for forcing you to stay, but you are bargaining chips, and I find myself in need of some. Especially you, Doctor.” He extended his hand toward her.
“Me? I’m not anybody anyone will pay to get back.”
“Pay is not what I seek, though I admit that if my funds were unlimited, perhaps I could have bought what I’m hoping to get. But neither academics nor soldiers have historically been paid from overflowing coffers.”
“Coffers?” Jerick grumbled. “You’re not going to get poetical on them, are you?”
Surprisingly, Cortez smiled at the comment, meeting Jerick’s eyes briefly, and Skylar had the sense that they’d known each other for a long time and that the blowup wouldn’t affect their friendship. Or maybe it was a regular part of it.
“You don’t think a little poetry beforehand will soften the blow when I tell them we have to lock them up again?” Cortez asked.
Keiko scowled. Skylar imagined another dark locker and grimaced.
“I suppose if anyone could charm a woman he was about to stuff in a cell, it would be you,” Jerick said.
“At least a cell sounds larger than a locker,” Skylar said, directing the comment to Keiko.
Keiko growled something that managed to sound insulting even though it was completely inarticulate.
“This way, please.” Cortez pointed toward the corridor. “Sergeant Jerick, take us to one of the best cells.”
“Best cells, sir? Are you joking? This isn’t Cloud Bliss 9. There aren’t jetted tubs and automated massage chairs.”
“Something without network access will do,” Cortez said, not responding to the sarcasm. “I’ll be sending the only communications.”
Jerick shrugged his muscled shoulders. “This way.”
He looked back at Keiko, perhaps to see if she would follow or he would have to pick her up. She did stand obstinately still for a moment, but then she looked at the men, growled more inarticulate words, and followed Jerick as he headed for the exit.
In another situation, Skylar might have laughed at the polite way Cortez gestured her toward the doorway. Even more amusing was him in his tweed suit in contrast with the orange-clad prisoners and the burly guards in black fatigues. Yet nobody questioned that he was in charge.
Skylar walked at his side, thinking of the sedatives in her bra. But they were in pill form. She would have to break open the capsules and mix the contents with food or drink for them to work. It wasn’t as if she could hand Cortez a pill and politely suggest he would enjoy swallowing it. Now, she regretted not grabbing the jet injector.
Jerick led the group out of the bay, and the two other prisoners in orange waited for Skylar and Cortez to pass. One looked Skylar up and down with eyes hungry and tinged with lust. It was hard to imagine her form-hiding lab coat inspiring such emotions, but these men had likely been here a long time without any interaction with women.
Cortez shifted closer to her as they walked past the men, lifting a hand to the small of her back as he turned his cool gaze on the inmates. It was a protective gesture but also a possessive one. She had the sense of him claiming her as his own.
A ludicrous thought since he’d certainly not given her any lust-filled stares at any point. Not that she was hoping for them. Back in the shuttle, when the universe had still made sense, she would have entertained an offer of drinks if he’d given her one, but now, she was his prisoner. A hostage for him to barter with. She would not be drinking or doing anything else with him, not voluntarily.
Jerick looked back before turning a corner, and his eyes narrowed when he saw how close Cortez was walking to her. Was he still irritated that Cortez had stopped him from… whatever he’d been thinking of doing to her when he’d lost his temper?
Cortez met his eyes, his own narrowing slightly. Jerick faced forward again, but his back had a rigidness to it that hadn’t been there before. That back was marked with old scars and a tattoo of a dragon over one shoulder blade. The muscles were as pronounced and detailed as in an anatomy drawing, and Skylar caught herself wondering what it would be like to slide her hand over them.
As soon as the thought came, she quashed it. How ridiculous to be contemplating her captors—including hardened murderers with prison sentences—as anything other than enemies.
As soon as possible, she would figure out how to escape whatever cell they put her in and get a communication out to the fleet. The sedatives she had along weren’t likely to be effective in this situation, but after she found C&C, maybe she could locate the medical facilities. From there, she could put together all manner of drugs, some that could perhaps be dispersed aerially through the vent system, to take down all the cyborgs.
4
“We’re searching them before we put them in a cell, right?” Jerick asked a
s the lift came to a stop.
Searching? Skylar exchanged a worried look with Keiko. That sounded ominous.
Jerick led them into an entry room that branched off into three corridors lined with cells. Skylar found it disheartening that the alarm had been silenced and that the cyborgs were strolling around the facility without apparent concern. Had they already subdued everyone?
As she and Keiko had been escorted through the prison, they hadn’t passed any bodies in the corridors. Skylar didn’t know if she should feel hopeful about that. The cyborgs might have stunned and captured the staff without killing them, or they could have killed everyone and moved the bodies. Out an airlock, perhaps.
“We’ve already taken their weapons,” Cortez said, then turned to one of his men and withdrew a miniature tablet. “Pip, here’s a list of prisoners to get out. Find their cells and make it happen.”
“A list?” Jerick glanced at the two orange-clad men that had been trailing their group. “Aren’t we just getting all of the cyborgs?”
“About half of them,” Cortez said.
Jerick frowned at him. “You’d leave people here in this hell?”
“I’ve researched the cases. Some of them…” Cortez spread a hand.
“What? Deserve to be here?”
“Some of them chose to use their enhancements for their own gain. A few had set themselves up as murdering crime lords when they were arrested.”
“They’d still follow you, sir,” Jerick said. “Just because they didn’t know what to do with themselves once the war was over doesn’t mean we couldn’t use them for…” Jerick groped in the air with one hand. “Whatever it is you have planned. You haven’t told me yet.”
“I will. But right now, especially, we need men out that we can rely on. Pip, see to it.”
“Yes, sir.” The man responding to that name was shorter than most of the other cyborgs, but he had the girth of a wine barrel. Skylar never would have called him “Pip” or pipsqueak.
Jerick glared as Pip left, and something in his eyes made Skylar think he might go behind Cortez’s back to free even those who weren’t on the list. That alarmed her, but she was glad the cyborgs were having this conversation and that the topic of searching appeared to have been forgotten.
Unchained_ A science fiction romance adventure Page 4