Big Bang: Cyborg Cowboys of Carbon County #2: Intergalactic Dating Agency

by Elsa Jade

  Wasn’t better either, despite her sanctimonious speech to Cosmo yesterday. And she couldn’t even blame her selfish demands on sugar and caffeine and lack of sleep.

  Although those were a reasonable excuse now when she gazed mournfully at the older woman. “Why couldn’t the consortium make unsexy shrouds?” she whined.

  Laughing, Lindy sauntered into the room. “You can’t be talking about Cosmo.”

  Vic frowned at her. “Yeah, he’s too big and bulky and brooding…”

  Lindy waited patiently and, when Vic didn’t go on, finally arched one brow. “But…?”

  “But he’s too big and bulky and beautiful.” She tossed the untoothmarked half of the donut on a napkin—or maybe notes from last night?—and sighed.

  “I don’t know about beautiful,” Lindy drawled. “The best look I got of him was when he was blackmailing me with a baby.”

  Vic winced. “He’s, uh, picked up some nuance since then.”

  “Maybe.” Lindy shrugged. “Guess I’m surprised you are talking about the Omega. You are too smart and sexy to fall for a vagabond robot.”

  Unaccountably, Vic bristled on his behalf. “He was never a vagabond. He’s never gone far from his brothers.”

  “Just squatting in my badlands, sure. Is that the kind of nuance you meant?”

  The righteousness drained out of her. “I think he needed to be close to them in case anything happened. But he wanted to be far enough that he wouldn’t hurt them if…he happened.”

  Lindy shrugged. “Yeah, he could’ve been more of an asshole, like the Theta, making them believe he was dead and they were alone.”

  Rubbing the tension in the back of her neck—where Cosmo had gripped her—Vic looked at the other woman. “It’s hard to make a place for yourself.”

  Lindy’s derisive snort was big enough to extinguish a burning yule log or two. “Just have your great-grandmother carve a few acres away from men who’d stolen it from the earlier inhabitants. Then hold onto it until you can give it back to the daughter of your long-gone love.” She huffed out another laugh. “Maybe it’d make more sense if I drew a map.”

  “I’ve tried that,” Vic muttered. She swiped one hand peevishly across her keyboard, conjuring a querying beep for her next command-line entry. “I think I need to zero it out and start over.”

  The rancher shook her head. “You can’t. Not in real life. Everything comes with history and everyone comes with something they want. Even shrouds.”

  “Not Omegas.” Vic swiveled her chair restlessly. “Aren’t you worried if I find the unlocking mechanism for the imprinting code that Delta will want…” She waved her hand in a vague circle.

  Lindy tilted her head. “What?”

  “Something else. Besides you and Stella.”

  “Could happen.” Leaning against the door jamb, she smiled a little smugly. “Probably not though. But even if he decided to move to Vegas to become a lounge singer, would I hold him back? No. Much as I’d want to. Not just because I love him but because everyone deserves the chance to become what they’re supposed to be.” She paused, looking toward the window where the sky was paling. “Become what they already are.” She glanced back at Vic. “That’s the worst thing about the shroud consortium. Not that they created fighters or even killers, but that they thought CWBOIs weren’t anything else. Delta is a cyborg, my fiancé, a father, and a not very good singer. Although maybe he’ll get better.” Her smile softened. “I already know what he is and why I love him. I want you to set him free so he knows it too.”

  A faint cry echoed down the hallway and Lindy straightened abruptly. “Uh, but maybe don’t set him free until after we’re done with midnight feedings, yeah?”

  Vic tsked. “There’s one chocolate donut left in the kitchen. Take him that and he’ll never leave you.”

  “True. And what would keep you around?”

  The question seemed to bring a screeching halt to the quarter-spins of her chair. “Me?”

  “The universe is tempting, I know, but this place needs smart, sexy Earther girls too.” Without explaining whether this place meant the ranch or Diamond Valley or Earth itself, Lindy vanished.

  Leaving Vic to stare in consternation at the empty doorway.

  What did she want? She wanted to break this code.

  But after that?

  Maybe she should wait to see if there was an after.

  ***

  She was facedown on her keyboard—the command-line prompt beeping pitifully—when a hand on her shoulder brought her lurching upright. “Control alt delete!”

  Delta squinted at her. “Reformat the hard drive?”

  “That seems a little extreme.” She scrubbed her hands over her cheeks, feeling the imprint of the keys on one side.

  “I’m getting a do-over and so is Lindy. We kinda like it.”

  She sighed. “As much as chocolate donuts?”

  The shroud—he would still be that, even if her hack was successful—gave her a beatific smile. “Better than.”

  “Sorry I fell asleep. I know I’m supposed to be saving you.”

  “Control S.” He winked. “Shrouds don’t sleep much, but watching over Lindy and Stella at night makes me peaceful. You Earther females are soft and delicate and sweet when you sleep. Very much like donuts.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Is that how you wooed Miz Lindy? Comparing her to a pastry?”

  He laughed. “Not likely. But delicate is why Cosmo is afraid of you.”

  An Omega? Afraid? She wanted to laugh too. Or cry. “So…I should be tough like, what? Boot leather?”

  He tilted his head. “Maybe save that for the Theta. According to the tracker, Tanner Cross’s belt buckle left town about ten minutes ago, heading this way.”

  There wasn’t anything else out this way that he could be heading toward. “You think Troy is with him?”

  Delta shrugged. “He said he’d come this evening to help you with your sexbot scans. But he must know that’s not the real reason.”

  “It kind of is.” She waved at the data gel, which she’d explained to the best of her ability when Cosmo had brought her back to the ranch. “All the best lies are semi true.”

  “What’s your reason for running away from my matrix-brother?” Delta gazed at her expectantly.

  She opened her mouth then shut it again. “Nice try.”

  “Break out your sexbot in a can there to distract the Theta when he comes. Mach and I will make sure he doesn’t leave us again.”

  Unlike Cosmo.

  He’d brought her back on a hovercraft confiscated from the scavengers who had tracked them down a couple months ago. But then he’d disappeared.

  So she’d ridden a yurk, a hovercraft, and a shroud. She was really zinging through her transgalactic citizen bingo card. What would she win in the end?

  A big Omega or a big zero?

  When Delta left, she reset her system for a new scan. Though she doubted Troy would sit quietly as Cosmo had, she’d be ready to capture whatever data she could.

  But she wasn’t sure about capturing the Theta. She’d been brought here to find a way to free the CWBOIs from their imposed programming—not to imprison another shroud. Although she knew Lehigh was being disingenuous too, in agreeing to come here after he’d sneakily tried to buy the ranches out from under his matrix-brothers.

  Whatever else happened, though, at least she had the nanite imprint pathway sketched out in the gel. From there, it was only a matter of time and banging her head on the keyboard—hopefully without falling asleep—to break the code.

  And then she’d finally be able to point to her purpose and say she’d made the universe a better place, for real. Unlike the promising scams of certain charlatans she might mention.

  She was getting antsy by the time the winter sun had set somewhere behind the clouds, leaving only the tall yard light and a few strings of Christmas lights left by Lindy’s ranch hands to illuminate the night.

  At the crunch of
tires over gravel and snow, she slid her chair to the window, peering out. The bright xenon headlights almost blinded her. Yeah, definitely Cross’s truck.

  But getting out of the driver’s side—she squinted to see past the glare—was Lehigh.

  Tanner Cross was a few seconds behind, sliding out from the passenger seat. Hard to believe he’d voluntarily given up control of his truck.

  Thinking of the dataport marking at his temple, Vic wondered what else he’d given up, voluntarily or not.

  How much did Cross know? When he’d confronted Mach at the Fallen A, they’d wiped his memory of encountering aliens. Maybe he’d already been working with Lehigh, but maybe not. This was too many variables to create a useful Boolean script. She scowled. The Theta was really complicating everything by bringing an Earther along.

  Probably that was his intent, since he was a Theta.

  Oh man, she’d been hanging out with shrouds too long, all of them, from Alpha to…to the end.

  Her heart skittered at the thud of boot heels down the hall. Lindy had taken Stella to stay with Lun-mei in town—all of them were unwilling to risk exposing the child to the inquisitive Theta. And suddenly Vic wished she was with them, away from this.

  Who would’ve guessed that taking a behind-the-scenes tech support job at a dating agency would lead to such danger?

  With a calming breath, she faced the doorway as Delta appeared again, this time with Lehigh close behind.

  The Theta glanced inquisitively around the cluttered room before turning back to the other shroud. “I still can’t believe it,” he said, in obvious continuation of an ongoing line of not believing. “CWBOIs as a template for sexbots.”

  “Cowboys are sexy.” Vic gave his decidedly non-cowboy attire and hirsute hipster styling a pointed look before sliding her glance to Cross lingering in the hall. “It’s the pointy shoes and big hats.”

  “Not to mention the belt buckles.” Troy rolled his cat-green eyes toward Delta. “What? You thought I wouldn’t find it?”

  Delta shrugged. “We can’t believe we found you.”

  “Cosmo found me,” Troy corrected. “And that one.” He jerked his thumb toward her, the crystal in his ring flashing. “Speaking of… Where is our last brother?”

  “Ranch chores are never-ending,” Delta said, with a hint of aggravation in his voice. “And not rewarding enough. Why do you think we’re licensing the love cipher to the dating agency?”

  What a convincing medley of truth and lie. Vic would’ve applauded. And as suddenly as she’d wished she was back in town, she was even more quickly thankful she was here. Better her than Cosmo. She’d con the slick Theta and let her Omega stay as blunt and innocent as a tree stump.

  Her Omega?

  She didn’t have time to journal this revelation that sounded like one of the saccharine “after” testimonials for the Intergalactic Dating Agency.

  I knew the first time I saw him that he would be my last alien date. As if love was ever that easy.

  “Love cipher,” Lehigh mused. “That does sound better than slavery.”

  Vic tapped the cable against her palm. “We ready to do this?” Since she couldn’t ask the Theta point blank if he was actually going to let them bring him back into the matrix…

  He grabbed the chair across from her and spun it toward him. Hitching up one leg of his snugly tailored trousers, he straddled the chair backward. “I should probably let you know, I brought Cross along as my bodyguard.”

  She glanced past him at the lurking Earther and lowered her voice. “Does he know?”

  “Not much,” the Theta said, giving his sleek beard a thoughtful tug. “I’ve found Earthers to be, on the whole, a determinedly stupid species.” A wide, sincere smile flashed through the precisely oiled strands. “Present company excluded, I’m sure.”

  Her parents would’ve loved him. She smiled back. “Well, I am looking for a way off-planet, so that probably says something about my judgment if not my IQ.”

  Troy laughed and dangled his hand over the back of the chair toward her. The thumb ring’s big, opaque crystal seemed to swallow the light in the room and give nothing back. “Is that the uplink to your scan? Primitive, but functional. Hook me up.” When she tilted her head toward Cross, the Theta waved negligently. “Don’t mind him. He certainly doesn’t. My nanites will keep him in line.”

  That seemed to confirm the dataport at Cross’s temple. She squelched a nervous shiver. It was one thing to play with the microscopic technology as she and Cosmo had done, but to have it deployed with purpose against a fellow Earther—even a jerk like Tanner Cross—terrified her. Planetary security for a small, unimportant planet like Earth was haphazard at best—which was one of the reasons the Intergalactic Dating Agency was able to operate with benign impunity, but also why there’d been little assistance when the IDA had “misplaced” some of its Earther brides.

  Who would save Tanner Cross?

  Dammit, this was why it was easier to be a grifter who cared for nothing outside the con. She fiddled at her keyboard a moment then turned back to Lehigh, reaching for his hand. “I’m glad your bodyguard is under control, since this might hurt a little.”

  “Is that what the other shrouds told you?” He shook his head. Released from the man bun he’d worn before, the thick waves of his light brown hair skimmed over his broad shoulders. “It doesn’t really hurt. It’s more the shock of a killer robot realizing that someone can drain the ‘life’”—he made quotation marks with his fingers, avoiding contact with her—“from him with a tiny needle and few clever lines of code.” He peered at her. “You’re not going to do that, are you?”

  She made a scoffing noise as she snagged his hand, careful to avoid the ring. “It’s actually a pretty big needle. Sometimes it helps if you don’t watch.” Giving the back of his knuckles a brisk tap opened the port in his vein and she slid the jack in smoothly. “Anyway, I know your nanites can blow back through the link and destroy my computers. You’re not going to do that, are you?”

  His scoffing noise was pitched exactly the same as hers. “It’s actually not destruction so much as infiltration. And yeah, sometimes it helps if you don’t watch.”

  She wished Wog was here for this game of cat-and-cat. Her human claws weren’t sharp enough to keep up with a Theta, built and programmed for intrigue.

  And she didn’t doubt for a second he could be almost as destructive as Cosmo but she probably wouldn’t even notice until she was already under the control of his nanites.

  She just hoped the new safeguards she’d installed on her system would confound his invasion long enough.

  He looked down at her hand cupped around his. “You’re probably wondering why I came tonight.”

  Oooooor maybe he’d just give up his secrets on his own? Nah, that didn’t seem likely. “I thought you were ready to rejoin your matrix. And take your cut of the licensing fee for the love cipher, of course.”

  “We’re wondering where you’ve been,” Delta interrupted. “We missed you.”

  “Not much, I think,” Troy murmured. “The entrepreneurial potential of bovines notwithstanding, this CWBOI matrix seems to have done fine without me.”

  Watching the scan results spool out on the tablet in her lap—out of the Theta’s line of sight—Vic noted a spike. Was he trying to backwash his nanites into her system? Or was he…hurt that he’d been forgotten?

  “About the cipher,” she said idly as her fingers tapped out a new command, “funnily enough, we made a little simulacrum to show to savvy investors such as yourself.” She pushed aside a napkin with its half-eaten donut to unveil the gel cylinder.

  The compiling code had gotten more complex since they’d downloaded it into the gel, and the shimmering threads inscribed an interconnected web of data points and arcing trajectories between them—like the routes of space-faring ships through a miniature universe.

  Lehigh leaned forward, eyes wide, and the glimmer added more colors to his devious green iri
ses. Silver sparks flared in his gaze—and she knew he and his nanites were focused on the cipher.

  She executed the new subroutine she’d been sketching out on her tablet.

  It wasn’t elegant, might not even work, but if she was right, she’d have a temporary backdoor into the Theta, the same way he was puppeting Cross. At least until he found it and executed her.

  Lehigh tsked, and the chiding sound was like a rattlesnake’s warning that froze her blood. “You’re missing some nuance here,” he said, reaching out his jacked hand to indicate a dark area of the gel. “And here.”

  “It’s just an imitation,” she reminded him. “Not the real thing.”

  “Close enough.” His fingers curled inward, leaving the cloudy crystal in the thumb ring to stare at her like a blind eye. “The Intergalactic Dating Agency could rival the shroud consortium with such ethnically questionable programming.”

  “Except one is for love and one is for death,” she pointed out.

  He studied the coded gel for another moment before slicing his sharp green gaze at her. “I’m impressed. You did this yourself? From your scans of the Omega?”

  She bit at the inside of her lip, not sure how far she could string him along. “Mostly.”

  “Ah. That explains the missing nuance.”

  Okay, she couldn’t help it. She bristled. “Cosmo was a big help.”

  “Cosmo is big,” Troy agreed. “But since an Omega is the only shroud that doesn’t imprint—doesn’t have to, considering their role in the matrix—you’re missing that function except where the baseline encoding common to all shrouds leaves essentially a variable hole where the callback unit would’ve gone.” The Theta glanced up at her through his lashes, his green eyes sly. “An Omega has no heart.”

  She wanted to argue with him. How could she have found the connections she had under the influence of Cosmo’s nanites if he didn’t sense the same links on some level? He might not be as well integrated as Troy Lehigh, but Cosmo had feelings. He had fears; he didn’t want to explode, and end his existence—not to mention everyone else’s. And he had desires too. She’d felt that, felt the rush in him that had ended in an orgasm, not in mayhem and destruction.