“Even when she saw who shot her?” Cortez flicked his fingers at Jerick as he moved to lift Keiko off the deck and lay her on a bed.
“Maybe she’ll have amnesia and you could say one of the fleet soldiers did it.”
“You wouldn’t tell her the truth?” Cortez looked disheveled with his hair sticking out in all directions, soot smearing one cheek, and char marks all over his suit, but he smiled at her.
“I haven’t decided yet.” Skylar slipped a painkiller into the jet injector, noting how Cortez watched her like a panther as she pressed it to Jerick’s bare shoulder. “Do you want a sedative too?” she asked him.
“Absolutely not,” Cortez said.
“Professors aren’t allowed to do drugs,” Jerick informed her. “Can’t be a bad influence on the students, you know.”
Skylar ran the scanner over his mottled skin. “You have several broken ribs, a punctured lung, and there are blunt injuries to your spleen. I can’t believe you’re talking.”
“Are spleens important for that?” He smirked. It was clearly a pained smirk, but a smirk, nonetheless.
“Lungs are.” She was tempted to smack him, but her memories of appropriate bedside manner weren’t that rusty. “You use air to speak.”
“Huh.”
Shaking her head, Skylar then tapped instructions into the knit-beam and rested it against his ribs. “I haven’t seen any nanobots in here yet, but this will be able to heal your broken ribs and damaged organs. The bruises will linger but shouldn’t deter you too much. Once there isn’t a shard of rib sticking into your lung, you’ll feel much better.”
“And I’ll be able to go back into battle,” Jerick said, throwing Cortez a worried glance, as if he feared his commander would lock him in sickbay and not let him fling himself in front of another robot.
“Absolutely,” Skylar said. “There’s no way you’re getting out of defending the prison.”
After making sure Keiko was in a comfortable position on the bed, Cortez turned toward Jerick, standing on the other side of his bed.
“Good.” Jerick allowed his head to slump back onto the pillow. “I didn’t keep myself in top physical form during my years here for nothing.” He rested a hand on one of his admittedly admirable pectoral muscles. “It’s not easy to keep this kind of mass when you’re locked in a box.” He wriggled his eyebrows at Skylar as he spoke. “Even for a cyborg.”
“Your mass—uh, both of your masses are impressive—” Skylar waved to include Cortez, “—assuming you’re no longer on the growth hormone cocktails the military gave you and you simply have implants.”
“No cocktails. They don’t let you drink in prison.” Jerick smiled lazily up at Cortez. “She likes my mass.”
“Clearly a woman of impeccable taste.”
“Definitely. You should recite her some poetry.”
“About your mass?”
“Do you have some?” Jerick looked oddly hopeful. Maybe the painkiller had kicked in and was making him loopy.
“I might be able to come up with a limerick on the fly,” Cortez said.
“The men always said you had super powers.”
Cortez grunted.
Jerick closed his eyes, nodding his head slightly to “Someone Moved the Stars of Home.” Someone had loaded the whole album on the computer, and it had come back around to that song. Skylar couldn’t guess who would have done it. From what little she knew of Dr. Branigan, it was hard to imagine him as a fan. Even though the Unknown Soldier’s songs weren’t about cyborgs specifically, they had a lot to say about veterans, how hard the war had been, and how the war being over was even harder.
Cortez peeled off the rest of his spacesuit.
Skylar watched the display on the knit-beam and moved it farther along Jerick’s ribs. She was relieved he didn’t truly need a surgeon’s skills, as she hadn’t operated on anything below the skull in years. She didn’t even know brains as intimately as she once did, now that she dedicated her time to research. Was operating like riding a bike? She wasn’t sure.
She looked at Cortez, wondering if any more wounded cyborgs were on their way, and caught him watching her. She looked back down, feeling self-conscious. She glanced up again to see if he was still watching. He was. He looked contemplative. Then he blinked, and she realized he might have simply been looking in her direction while thinking of other things.
“Sorry,” he said, “you weren’t waiting for it, were you?”
“What?”
“A mass limerick.”
Skylar snorted. “Not at all.”
“I’m disappointed to hear that, Doc,” Jerick said, his eyes still closed. “Some things deserve to be immortalized with words.”
“Maybe you can paint some graffiti on the lavatory walls later,” Cortez said, moving to the end of the bed. He lifted his wristcomp to his mouth and murmured a request for an update to one of his men.
“The lavatory walls here are already filled from what I’ve seen.” Jerick opened his eyes halfway, and he gazed at Skylar while she moved the knit-beam around, getting updates from the device.
“The one in sickbay is clean,” she offered, though she doubted that was why he was gazing at her. She wasn’t sure why he was gazing at her. A question of trust? He didn’t seem suspicious or antagonistic. If anything, he was affable, the drug taking away his usual edge. “You can leave your mark there.”
“Perhaps I will. You have pretty hair, Doc. It looks… soft.” He lifted a hand and touched one of the dark locks that had fallen free from her ponytail.
A part of her thought she should push his hand away, that she should keep a professional distance. A part of her didn’t mind that he had nice things to say about her hair. Even though she’d always preferred it when men noticed her interests and complimented her skills and dedication to her work rather than her body, it had been a long time since she had experienced either. Cortez would be the kind of man to notice a person’s passions and comment on—or compliment—them accordingly. Jerick seemed a simpler fellow.
“Thanks,” she said, though her tendency was to shrug away such observations. One ought to be polite to wounded men, right? She smiled and met his eyes, intending it only to be for a moment, but their blueness struck her anew, how bright they seemed in contrast with his black hair. “How did you…” She paused, not sure if she wanted the story of how he’d ended up here. Cortez had mentioned murdered men. “What made you decide to join the fleet and become a cyborg?”
“I wanted to be a hero,” Jerick said promptly, lowering his hand. “First, I wanted to be a famous singer and get rich and get the hell out of my horrible neighborhood, but I didn’t have the voice for it, and it’s tough getting out of League 17, even if you are super talented. So, I decided I’d sign up for the fleet, battle the vile Hrorak, and learn some skills while I did it. Maybe get a good job afterward and be able to live somewhere better. Only I was mostly just good at the combat stuff, and that’s where they kept me. When the opportunity to join the cyborg program came along, I jumped at the chance. There’d been all these punks that picked on me as a kid—it was a tough neighborhood to grow up in if you didn’t have someone to protect you—and I figured that as a cyborg, I’d never get picked on again. Not by aliens and not by anyone else. And maybe I’d be able to be the protector for others that I’d never had.”
Skylar found herself blinking away tears as he spoke. She wasn’t surprised that he had a sad story—likely, every inmate here did—but it affected her more than she would have expected. She’d been thinking of him as something of an ass, if an affable one, so it was strange thinking of him as… something else.
“How did you end up here?” she asked, too curious now not to ask.
He smiled sadly toward the ceiling. “Forgot my strength. I was trying to defend some people, but I got mad, ended up killing their attackers. They were asses but civilian asses. Not aliens. Not enemies to the colonies. Just asses. Not supposed to kill them. I’m like tha
t guy in that book they make you read in school. Though at least he got shot in the back of the head by a friend and not dragged off to prison.”
Skylar arched her eyebrows. “I had to read a lot of books in school,” she offered, feeling bad that she didn’t know exactly what he was talking about.
“You’re not Lennie, Jerick,” Cortez said, his voice not coming from where Skylar expected.
She turned to find him staring at the holo projector, and her heart hiccupped. When she’d seen Jerick wounded, she had forgotten about the map of the ventilation system, the desk full of vials, and the fact that she and Keiko were the men’s escaped prisoners. Escaped prisoners who had been plotting to knock them unconscious.
She swallowed, realizing Cortez would see everything, but that he wouldn’t realize she’d chosen not to do it. Why hadn’t she tossed the spacesuit onto the desk, onto the vials? Without that damning evidence visible, he might have thought they’d simply meant to escape into the ventilation ducts.
“What were the spacesuits for?” Cortez glanced at the one Skylar had dropped. He couldn’t have missed that Keiko had been wearing one when he’d carried her to a bed.
Skylar groped for a lie, or would it be better to tell the truth? Would he believe either?
He picked up one of the vials. “Poison?”
Skylar winced. “No, I wouldn’t hurt anyone. It’s just an oneiro—a knockout gas.”
“For us?” Cortez looked back at her for the first time, his face impossible to read, but he had to be thinking that the fleet would have overrun the station if she had managed to knock them out.
“Yes,” Skylar said, his gaze compelling her to tell the truth. She tried to rouse some indignation, the will to remind him that he’d taken her prisoner and it was natural for her to try to escape. “I told Keiko we needed gas masks to keep it from working on us. She thought of spacesuits and went to find some.”
She could feel Jerick looking at the back of her head and couldn’t bring herself to turn around, to meet his eyes. Why did what she and Keiko had been planning feel so wrong? Like a betrayal?
“That’s interesting, considering the ventilation map you have suggests it would have been fairly easy to distribute the gas to pinpoint locations, such as the corridor outside the shuttle bay where we were.” Cortez set the vial back down and walked toward her.
There were no attacks going on now, and the asteroid seemed deathly quiet. Skylar could feel the fast thudding of her heart in her ears.
She backed up but couldn’t go far. Her butt hit Jerick’s bed. She still couldn’t read Cortez’s face, didn’t know if he was angry with her or if he understood. Before, he’d seemed to get it, seemed to agree that prisoners had a duty to escape if they could. That he couldn’t expect them not to try.
He stopped only a foot away and gazed down at her. For the first time, a trickle of fear flowed into her as her spinning mind contemplated some of the scenarios Keiko had voiced earlier. She was alone with Cortez and Jerick. Big hulking men, both, and far stronger than any mortal human being. Lennie, indeed. She grasped the reference now, and while a part of her might pity Jerick for believing he was like that, she also found herself remembering that Lennie had killed a woman in that book.
“You didn’t need the spacesuits,” Cortez said, like he was trying to figure out a puzzle that didn’t quite make sense. Or maybe he’d already figured it out. He didn’t appear puzzled.
“No,” she whispered. “I just told her… I didn’t actually think she’d find any.”
“Is anyone else confused?” Jerick said from behind her. The knit-beam beeped, indicating it had finished.
“Our doctor could have gassed us, but didn’t,” Cortez said.
Our doctor? Was it good, bad, or downright alarming that he—they were claiming her?
“Which is good because that would have been inconvenient, if not deadly. The fleet strike team wouldn’t have been affected in their armor. And without us there shooting at them, Tek Tek’s traps wouldn’t have been much of an impediment. You knew that, I assume.” Cortez had been explaining things to Jerick, but at this last sentence, he raised his eyebrows at her.
“The plan was to knock you out so they could regain control of the prison, yes,” Skylar admitted, looking at his chest instead of into his eyes. It was closer to eye level, anyway. She hadn’t realized how tall he was.
“But you decided not to do it,” he murmured.
She shrugged, as if it hadn’t been a big deal, but she was relieved he seemed to understand, that he wasn’t angry. “It would have been a shame to miss being offered limericks about mass.”
She expected him to laugh, but his face was grave—or maybe intent. He lifted a hand, his knuckles brushing the side of her face. A little shiver went through her, and she grew still.
He touched her lips with his thumb, his fingers coming to rest under her chin. He tilted her face up, and their eyes locked. Her lips parted with the realization that he was going to kiss her.
Here? Right in front of Jerick?
If her heart had been beating quickly before, it tried to hammer its way out of her chest now. She knew she should protest, or move away, or suggest a private spot, but she didn’t.
His lips captured hers, warm, inviting, and… thankful. Was that it? She sensed something more than simple desire in his touch. As if he knew what she’d meant to do but hadn’t and appreciated it. Appreciated her.
She shivered again, her body coming alive to his touch. It had been a long time since anyone had appreciated her, and she’d never been so close to someone like this, someone who smelled of masculinity and the battlefield, but who gazed into her eyes and read the loneliness there, read it and understood it.
She started to lean toward him, but an arm slipped around her waist from behind. She froze. Jerick.
She hadn’t forgotten he was there exactly—though she should have been mortified at making out with Cortez right in front of him—but she hadn’t expected him to reach out and touch her. More than touch her. He shifted to a sitting position, and she felt his chest lean against her back. She should have been alarmed, even scared, but a strange little thrill went through her at the idea of them both wanting her.
Was she understanding them correctly? Was that what they wanted?
Cortez kept kissing her, his tongue stroking hers and promising enticing things to come. Then he paused, his mouth leaving hers, his gaze shifting over her shoulder. His eyes meeting Jerick’s?
She expected him to growl, to tell his comrade to back off, but he reached out, gripping the back of Jerick’s head briefly before bringing his hands back to her. He rested them on her hips, rubbing her through her shirt as his lips returned to hers.
The logical part of her mind didn’t know what to make of this, but it didn’t seem to be in charge. Her mouth moved against his, returning the kiss. Enjoying the hell out of it.
Another set of lips touched her throat, warm and tender but with a hint of lust and need. They nipped—Jerick nipped—at her skin, and a zing of pleasure shot through her, straight to her core.
Thus far, she had been standing like a stunned doll, but she reached out to Cortez, resting a hand on his chest, squeezing his muscles through his shirt. She dropped her other hand to the arm around her waist, Jerick’s arm, letting him know… she didn’t know what. That this was all right? Was it? She wasn’t sure it should be, but Cortez’s kisses were sending warm spirals of heat through her, even as he rubbed her with his hands, fingers slipping under her shirt and kneading her back. Jerick found the most sensitive spots on her throat, and then his arm shifted, fingers finding the buttons of her shirt. A draft teased her bare skin, but soon warm hands slid up her flesh, cupping her breasts.
She pushed into them, surprised by the gentleness of the touch, and surprised how right it felt to have hands—and lips—all over her. She was trapped between two hard male bodies, but she couldn’t imagine anywhere else she would rather be. All conscious thou
ght dropped out of her brain, as she reveled in touching and in being touched, their hands almost reverent, as if she were something truly special.
Cortez pulled his mouth from hers, and she mumbled an incoherent protest, but he was merely pausing to gaze down at her breasts. Jerick shifted his hand away, so Cortez could cup her and stroke her. When had her bra come free? She didn’t remember, but she arched her back, delighting in the calloused fingers circling her breasts but wanting more. Cortez obliged, slipping his mouth around one of her nipples, and she gasped, her head falling back as rockets of delight launched inside of her body.
Strong fingers rubbed her scalp and gently turned her head to the side. She found herself meeting Jerick’s blue eyes as he leaned over her shoulder. Those eyes were intense and full of desire, and he brought his mouth to hers, transferring those feelings into her through his lips, his tongue.
She welcomed the kiss even as she curled her fingers into Cortez’s short hair, nails scraping his scalp. He groaned and shifted to her other nipple, teasing with his tongue, sucking her as Jerick’s tongue plundered her mouth.
He was hungrier than Cortez had been, a little rough, a little more demanding, and she imagined how long he’d been alone with nobody to touch, nobody to care about—nobody to care about him.
His passion drew out more of hers, and she found her own kisses growing demanding, her roving hands unable to get enough of them, the core of her body heating like a furnace. She squirmed against the big men, needing more.
Fingers slipped under her waistband, unfastening the snap, and a surge of excitement ran through her at where this was going.
But then a soft beep came from Cortez’s wristcomp.
He flinched, as if he’d been caught doing something naughty. Something inappropriate. And maybe it was, but Skylar didn’t care. This felt too amazing, and she gripped his shoulder when he pulled back, not wanting him to go anywhere. Jerick kept kissing her, his hand coming up to cup the breast that Cortez’s mouth had left. He either hadn’t heard the beep or he didn’t care about it.
Unchained_ A science fiction romance adventure Page 12