“Are you all right?” Skylar asked Keiko, again feeling a surge of guilt for being free while her cohort was tied up. But she thought Cortez had Keiko pegged exactly right, that she could and would turn from ally to enemy if she found out Skylar was working with the cyborgs.
“I’ve got a splitting headache, and this spacesuit is riding up into—” Keiko glanced at Jerick and scowled, “—dark places.”
“That’s Cortez for you,” Jerick drawled. His strong silent act hadn’t lasted long. “Tossing women onto beds without concern for the state of their panties.”
“You’re the one who shot me.” Keiko glared at him.
“I do apologize for that, but we needed the services of your doctor.”
Keiko threw Skylar an aggrieved look. “Sorry, Doc. I’m pissed at myself that I wasn’t faster with my stunner. I should have shot them first.”
Skylar, horrified that Keiko was apologizing and seemed to feel guilty over her failure, shook her head. “It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. And if I’d been just a couple of minutes faster getting back with the suits, you could have gassed them, and then they’d be locked up by now, sucking on their own drool.” Keiko glared at Jerick again.
“Is that the fantasy you had while sleeping?” Jerick asked. “It doesn’t sound appealing. Was I at least naked while you were dreaming of me?”
Skylar bent her face toward the desk, focusing on her ingredients… and on not smiling. She could see where Jerick would push people the wrong way and suspected Cortez snapped at him frequently, but she was also pleased to see that his tendency seemed toward humor rather than anything darker.
“Why’d we get stuck with the one with orange pants, Doc?” Keiko asked.
“I could take them off if you want,” Jerick offered.
“Hell, no. Nobody wants to see your shriveled inmate meat.”
“Not nobody, I assure you.”
Fortunately, he didn’t look suggestively at Skylar. Unfortunately, she blushed anyway. She continued to keep her face toward the desk and hoped Keiko couldn’t see her well from the middle bed.
“The other one is busy taking over the prison,” Skylar said, aware of Keiko looking in her direction.
“I thought he already had the prison.”
“The fleet keeps trying to get it back.”
“And what are you doing?”
“The same thing I was doing before you got stunned.”
“You’re making more of it?” Keiko asked. “Why?”
Skylar gave Jerick what she hoped passed as a dark look. “It’s been requested.”
“Requested or demanded?”
When Skylar didn’t answer, Keiko squirmed into an upright position, looking like she intended to figure out a way to walk—or hop—to the office area. She scrutinized Skylar.
“Are you all right? You look… rumpled.” Keiko sent a much more believable dark look toward Jerick. “You assholes didn’t do anything to her, did you? Another groping search?”
“I’m fine,” Skylar rushed to say, mortified that her willing kisses could be interpreted as force on the men’s parts. It was bad enough she was going through with this charade of helping while pretending not to help. She didn’t want Keiko to have more ammunition to fire at the cyborgs if she ended up testifying in court somewhere someday. “They stunned me, too,” she said, hoping that would explain her mussed up hair and rumpled shirt—whatever Keiko was cueing in on. “Right after you. But that’s it. When I woke up, they informed me I’m working on creating more of the knockout gas for them.”
Unfortunately, Keiko kept squinting suspiciously at Jerick. Damn, Skylar didn’t have bite marks or hickies on her throat or something, did she? She didn’t think Jerick had been that rough. If he had been, she had been too busy enjoying it to notice.
“They informed you?” Keiko said. “Nice.”
“You ready to insert those vials into weapons, yet?” Jerick asked, making his voice convincingly harsh. Maybe it didn’t take much acting. He probably didn’t appreciate Keiko’s insinuations.
Skylar turned toward him, her hands on the desk behind her, figuring she shouldn’t look too willing. “You said you wanted to be able to disseminate the gas through their ventilation system. You didn’t say anything about weapons.”
“Contingencies. Grab those and whatever tools you’ll need. We’re going to visit the armory, find something suitable you can modify.”
“I’m not making you weapons.”
“Just for distributing the gas. We’ve already got weapons for killing people.” He glowered and slapped the rifle strapped to his bare back.
Skylar lowered her head in acquiescence, hoping she’d been convincing enough. She didn’t want Jerick to come across as a jerk to Keiko. More of a jerk.
While she found a bag and carefully slipped the capsules into it, grabbing some hand towels for padding, Jerick strode toward Keiko.
“What are you doing?” Keiko lurched off the bed, trying to stand to face him, but with her wrists and ankles tied, she pitched sideways.
Jerick rushed forward and caught her before she fell to the ground. “Just tying you a little more so you can’t hobble out of sickbay and worm-crawl yourself into someplace dangerous.”
“I bet you like tying women.” Keiko curled a lip, looking like she would spit in his face. She was close enough to do it. “Hurting them.”
“I’m ready to go,” Skylar blurted, not able to read the stony mask that came over Jerick’s face. She worried Keiko had pushed him too far, that he would lose his temper, and she would witness his temper, his fearsome cyborg power. His words where he’d compared himself to Lennie from Of Mice and Men stampeded into her thoughts.
“I do not,” Jerick said, holding Keiko’s gaze. “I only ever took satisfaction in hurting the Hrorak, and only because they killed us, they hunted us, and they wanted to claim all of Earth’s colonies for themselves. And when they captured us and locked us in the prisoner of war cells, they tortured us until we cried for our mothers and spat out every piece of intelligence that we knew. I get no satisfaction in hurting anyone of a lesser evil.”
Keiko frowned but didn’t seem to know what to say. Skylar wanted to hug Jerick, but she merely waited by the door with her bag while he used some tubing to tie Keiko’s wrists behind her back and then bind her to a grip bar in the bulkhead.
“I’ll untie you when we return,” Jerick told her and strode for the door, his face still a stony mask.
Even though she had to hurry to keep up with him in the corridor outside, Skylar let out a relieved sigh as soon as they were out of Keiko’s sight. She hadn’t enjoyed that acting. Even though it might save her career one day, if not her life, she hated lying, hated letting the cyborgs be seen as worse than they were.
Was she foolish to hope that Cortez and Jerick and the others succeeded? That they claimed a ship and flew off into Hostile Space where nobody would bother to go after them? And was she even more foolish for fantasizing about going with them? To a place where she wouldn’t have to deal with work politics and she could choose to study whatever she wanted to study. Maybe she would even get a chance to study some of the alien races out there and learn more about how their brains worked. How similar and different they were to the animals that had evolved on Earth.
“I’m definitely foolish,” she muttered.
Jerick glanced back, and she remembered that cyborgs’ senses were enhanced as well as their muscles.
“Just telling myself I’d be a fool if I went off to Hostile Space with you guys,” she said, opting for honesty.
They reached the lift, the double doors swooshing open, and a faint smile returned to his face.
“It would likely be bad for your career,” Jerick said as they stepped in, “but think about how much fun you would have exploring my mass.”
She snorted. “I don’t usually base my life decisions on the potential for fun.”
“You don’t? It’s possible
you’re not doing something right, then.”
“I suppose.”
“My mass is fun. You’d know if Cortez had shared the poem.”
“It was to be a limerick, wasn’t it?”
“I’m not above starring in a limerick. Neither is my mass.” He patted her on the shoulder as the doors closed and the lift headed up. And he smiled.
She was glad to see the gesture return. “There’s not really a poem, is there?”
“Not that I know of, but he could make one up quickly. He’s good, and even though he thinks rhymes are beneath real poets, I’d take him into a word battle in a rap club any time.”
“Were you two… back when you served together, did you two have a relationship?” Maybe she shouldn’t pry, but she couldn’t help being curious. They both seemed interested in her—their eager kisses and touches had certainly suggested that—but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be bisexual or have experimented in other directions.
“You’re wondering if after missions the captain and I ever threw each other up against the bulkheads and banged all night?”
The doors opened on their new level as he finished that question, and a burly cyborg in black stood there, waiting for the lift. She recognized him as one of Cortez’s original men from the shuttle, his dark skin and the port in one temple making him memorable. Judging by the way his eyebrows flew up, he’d heard most of that question.
Skylar felt mortified.
Jerick smirked and said, “Hello, Tek Tek.”
“Er, hello…” Tek Tek looked down at Jerick’s pants, maybe wondering whether a name or rank or prison number was most appropriate. “Sergeant,” he decided on.
“Just informing our new doctor as to the captain’s sexual preferences,” Jerick said. “In case it’s ever pertinent.”
“Our new doctor?” The man shifted a heavy toolbox so he could step past them and into the lift.
“Yup, Cortez and I are schmoozing her so she’ll come along on our quest and examine our brains whenever it’s necessary.”
“Oh?” Tek Tek touched his temple and looked at her.
Skylar thought he might ask a question related to whatever neural rewiring had been done to help him interface with computers quickly. She actually knew a lot more about that kind of biotech than she did about cyborg musculoskeletal implants. She smiled invitingly.
Tek Tek looked her up and down. “She’s pretty.”
So much for brain-related biotech questions.
“Thanks, Tek Tek,” Jerick said, guiding Skylar out of the lift by her elbow. “But she wasn’t wondering about your sexual preferences.”
“Not at all?”
“Sorry, no.”
Jerick released her elbow and waved toward one of three corridor options. “The armory is that way.”
Skylar nodded and walked at his side. She thought he might not answer her original question and decided that was fine. Maybe she shouldn’t have pried.
Jerick looked back after a while—making sure the lift doors had closed and nobody was listening?—then spoke again. “Nah, Cortez and I never jumped into each other’s bunks. It wasn’t that uncommon on the ship, and nobody really cared or judged you over it. We had an all-male crew until the last couple of years of the war when we turned the tides on the Hrorak and weren’t being captured so often—we got some female officers onboard then—and even burly cyborgs with lots of mass get lonely.” He grinned lopsidedly at her as they turned at an intersection. “But me and Cortez? Nah. Not me and anybody. Not him and anybody, either, as far as I know. He was my commander, and I was his combat sergeant. Even if nothing else had been in the way, our ranks would have made it awkward. Like, would I have to yell out ‘yes, sir’ when we were in bed? I don’t know, but nothing ever happened. I did always feel…” Jerick looked down the corridors again, making sure they were empty, and lowered his voice. “We’ve been through a lot. I was one of the original men with him on the Black Star when he was only the weapons lieutenant and hadn’t worked—survived—his way up the chain of command to being captain. We were close. And it means a lot that he came out here for me. For the others, too, I know, but he must have seen I was going to be killed.”
“It’s good that you two have each other,” Skylar said.
“Yeah. I think when we got out, I didn’t realize how much I would miss him. All of my friends on the ship really. I was just as alone back home in my city as I later was here in this prison. I guess it takes being alone—in solitary confinement even—to realize how much old friends mean to you.”
She patted his arm, not knowing what else to say.
“It’s nice making new friends too.” He wriggled his eyebrows at her, his gaze dipping toward her chest briefly.
She almost laughed, amused that she had started to enjoy him looking.
But she wondered how she could truly fit in with him and Cortez. Would there be a very large bed with her in the middle between the two big men? It wasn’t like anything she’d ever fantasized about before, and yet it didn’t seem as odd as she would have expected. It wasn’t exactly like being invited to a party by the popular kids—cyborg felons struggling to find a way to belong in the galaxy didn’t quite count as popular—but it was being invited in out of the aloneness and into a safe place.
Jerick stopped in front of a door that looked secure enough to belong to a bank vault. Fortunately, it stood ajar, with some homemade override device sprouting wires like spider legs latched to the control panel beside it.
He frowned and held a finger to his lips.
A faint scraping sound drifted out from within the room.
“Stay back,” he whispered, pointing his rifle into the dark armory and easing the door farther open.
Since Skylar didn’t have any weapons, unless she pulled out her vials and threw one to the floor, she was glad to stay out of the way. She pressed her shoulder blades against the opposite wall. Noticing the stunner on Jerick’s hip, she almost asked for it, but he disappeared into the armory.
And fired immediately. She jumped.
“Careful,” she blurted, imagining plas-bolts ricocheting about in a small enclosed room.
He fired again. Something hit the wall and bounced around. Bolts? Bullets? She couldn’t tell. A burst of pings came from the room.
Something tiny shot out, lodging in the wall—the metal wall—only a few feet from her head. Gaping, she skittered farther away from the door. It looked like a miniature throwing star.
“Sleeping gas won’t do anything against that,” she whispered.
Her hand strayed to her bag, but all she had brought were the vials, a few tools, and a couple of empty bags so they could carry back whatever they made. She delved in and pulled out a laser scalpel as more shots came from inside the armory.
Jerick yelled. She couldn’t tell if it was in pain or if that had been a battle cry.
Something zipped out of the armory, a hovering drone with a prickly exterior that reminded her of the pili-covered surface of a bacteria cell.
Jerick leaped out after it, but with a soft puff, the drone shot at him from ten feet down the hall. As fast as Jerick was—he almost caught it—it was faster. It fired three times in rapid succession, and metal stars streaked down the corridor.
Skylar flattened her back to the wall again as Jerick also fired three times. His plas-bolts struck the stars in midair, knocking them aside and half-melting them.
She gawked. She wouldn’t have believed that possible if she hadn’t seen it.
Jerick charged down the corridor, firing and leaping after the drone. It zipped up to the ceiling and flew past him. He twisted and sprang into the air. Once again, he came within an inch of grabbing it. Maybe it was better that he missed. The thing had more points than a porcupine.
This time, as it flew away from him, its route took it toward Skylar. Would it fire at her? She sure as hell couldn’t shoot throwing stars out of the air. She didn’t have a gun, regardless.
She
looked at her puny laser scalpel and almost laughed.
The drone stopped a few feet away, right in front of the armory door. It hovered there, whirring and puffing and rotating to face Jerick again. Light glinted as it moved, a reflection. Off what? A lens? Was that drone a flying video recorder?
Jerick fired again. His plas-bolt bounced off the drone’s surface and ricocheted back down the corridor. His metal enemy didn’t even bother moving.
Skylar stuffed her scalpel into her pocket and pulled out one of the empty bags. She assumed the drone had sensors and knew she was behind it—maybe it had dismissed her as a non-threat—but it wasn’t paying attention to her, not with Jerick stalking forward.
It darted toward him, as if it meant to go over his head again. This time, he kept his rifle instead of trying to grab the drone with his hands. He swung, the barrel a gray blur it moved so quickly. He connected with the drone, a glancing blow. It was enough to throw off its flight. The drone clanged against the wall, its points leaving gouges in the metal, and hit the floor.
It puffed air and started to rise, but Skylar sprang forward. She opened the bag and spread it as the drone shot upward. It rose with enough power to tear the bag out of her hands, but she must have discombobulated it because it hit the ceiling.
Jerick reached her, jumping to snatch the ends of the bag. He swung it as if it were a vampire cat he had by the tail and slammed it into the wall. The thunderous crunch made Skylar jerk her hands up to cover her ears.
Jerick swung the bag again and again, utterly crushing the drone with his powerful muscles. He finally seemed to believe the thing destroyed for he stopped, holding the bag out and eyeing it.
Dozens of the spines or quills or whatever they were stuck through the material, bent and broken. The inert lump inside appeared to be less than half the size that it had been before.
“Excellent work, Skylar.” Jerick grinned and patted her on the shoulder.
She snorted. As if she’d done anything. “Yes, whatever would you have done if I hadn’t been here to throw a bag over your nemesis?”
“I would have failed and probably died. Look, I was gravely wounded.” He touched his shoulder where a slender line of blood drew the eye to a minor cut. One of the throwing stars must have grazed him.
Unchained_ A science fiction romance adventure Page 14