Resurrection Heart: Robotics Faction - Cyborg Mercenaries

by Clark, Wendy Lynn

  “Oh yeah,” she breathed, starting toward it with open arms. “We could transmit to the solar station with this—”

  Logen’s hand planted on her chest and dragged her back, out of sight.

  “I know, I know,” she said, crouching behind him. Exhaustion was addling her brain.

  They approached the tractor slowly and cautiously, searching for anything amiss.

  Nothing out of—

  No, wait.

  Around the other side of the tractor, they found half a dead body stretched across the freshly unearthed dirt in the middle of the crater. The head turned away from them, torso bloodied and scratched with dinozoid claws, and marks that said it had been chewed in half.

  “Who the fuck is that?” he asked in a low tone.

  She shook her head, on guard again. Not a biologist, not a team member.

  “Maybe the murderer?” he said.

  “It’s a recent arrival.” Because it was lying on top of the crater. And also, she had played the badge recording, and knew that even if this creature had killed her, it wasn’t the most dangerous to her. She knew not to trust an outsider.

  “Maybe dropped from the chase ship.”

  “That’s my guess too.” She looked around for the lower half of the body.

  Logen cautiously approached.

  She stopped him with a hand on the shoulder. “It’s a robot.”

  He froze.

  Nothing moved. Nothing at all. Just the distant screech of jungle denizens and last of the storm loosening its grip on the land.

  “How do you figure?” he asked at last.

  “No blood.”

  It was too clean. The dirt, still damp from its upheaval, had already started to dry, and it was dry under the loosened bowels of the torso.

  “Looks human,” he said doubtfully. “I’ve never seen one so realistic.”

  She hadn’t either, but she knew they existed. “Let’s suit up.”

  He walked close. “It’s dead.”

  “How can you tell?”

  He stood over it, way way way too close, and then leaned even closer. “It’s not breathing.”

  “So?” She hissed to stop him from reaching out to check for a heartbeat. Who knew if it even had a heart? “Suit up before you get too close.”

  He acquiesced, returning to the tractor and finding the nearest set of controls. “Ready?”

  “Do it,” she urged.

  Logen activated the righting mechanism.

  Pistons pushed out, and the hydraulics hissed. The whole fortress, which had landed on a corner and buried, groaned to its proper orientation. Logen stood next to Talia. She kept one eye on the unmoving robot torso and the other on anything unusual on or around the tractor.

  A large snakezoid slid off the slowly righting vehicle. It dropped a half-chewed robot foot and landed on top of her.

  Logen yelled, “Talia!”

  She stumbled back. Its dagger teeth snapped at her jaw and its poison-tipped claws raked her battered suit. She struggled under its slippery weight.

  It smashed her into the ground, thrashing and shrieking.

  Overhead, Logen yanked it off her and threw it. The snakezoid flew into the air, landed on distant vegetation, and undulated away.

  She sat on the ground, heart thumping, a moment away from the adrenaline shakes.

  Logen stood over her, his head turned to watch the snakezoid, his broad back silhouetted against the cool, white sky.

  He looked like her long-ago dream.

  A rescuer.

  His back rippled with muscles, and she knew exactly what they felt like clenched with his orgasm.

  And she had rejected him.

  It made so much sense. Damn her earlier self. Of course she had rejected him then. Logic dictated she do it again for the same reasons, even though her heart demanded she grab onto her beautiful Gun and never let him go.

  There was no point in falling for a man about to pay out. Or who wouldn’t share himself with her. Or who cloaked the important things in lies.

  But now she knew him so much better. She needed him like sunshine. The waterfall wasn’t enough. She wanted all of him, right now, and for all time.

  Talia pushed her musings aside and forced herself to pay attention to their surroundings.

  The future only mattered if they made it out of this jungle alive.

  She focused.

  She put her palms on the ground and shoved herself to her feet. The shakes started, like they always did. In a battle, she took stimulants to get tight focus with diamond precision. In real life, she got the hard chaos of adrenaline.

  He enfolded her into his arms.

  “I’m fine,” she protested.

  He squeezed her so hard, stroked her cheek, tucked her head under his chin, and rocked her. “Don’t go away from me. Don’t go away from me. Don’t go away from me.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said softly.

  His wide hand spanned her back. He nuzzled her gently for a kiss, as though confirming her life with his lips. The kindness, the gentleness of his intense passion touched her heart like a glowing shard of fallen starlight.

  She looped her arms around his tapered, muscular waist. Skinnier after all these days without enough food, but always and indelibly her Logen.

  Beyond their embrace, the fortress finished righting itself with a pleased groan and another satisfied hiss.

  When it had rolled off the line, the tractor had been the top of its class for mobile expedition forces, and had probably gone straight to the top Hazard Five team.

  They parted reluctantly to face the next challenge.

  Logen gripped the door handle, pulled it out, and turned it.

  Nothing happened.

  Because this was Hazard Zero. It was a long time since this baby had been the top of the line.

  He turned the handle several more times. Sweat glistened on his brow. He started to mutter.

  “Try pulling it all the way in the other direction, then try to open it, then all the way back, then try to open it again,” she suggested, scratching her neck. “I’ve also seen Iren tap five times on the pilot’s window before trying it. He says you’ve got to get the attention of the ghost pilots of the past.”

  He looked at her, his irritated grimace asking the question.

  “Who knows?” she said. “I’m just telling what I saw.”

  He wiped his brow, then reached up and tapped the window over his head, looking at her.

  “Try it,” she said.

  He twisted the handle. With a smooth hiss giving absolutely no indication of the trouble it had caused them, the door swung outward.

  They walked up the ramp into the tractor.

  First, they cycled pressure in the vestibule, even though there wasn’t much of a pressure difference and the atmosphere was breathable.

  The hangar still held all the shit they’d piled into it from their last missions. Since Hazard Zero skipped from job to job without returning to a solar station for refitting, this was the usual state of operations.

  Today, the chaos filled her with teary-eyed joy.

  She touched familiar go packs and emergency stocks. Everything a person needed to survive.

  Well, maybe not everything. Two bites into a meal bar washed down with their delicious stored water, she realized what the distracting almost-itch was. Snakezoid poison leeched into her skin and festered, hot and red beneath her fingers.

  Perfect marks punctured her skin and didn’t hurt at all.

  Meaning the poison had already killed her nerve endings.

  Shit.

  She finished her bar, opened another one, and scratched the numb slashes. “What meds do we have on board?”

  Logen glanced back, ducking his head automatically beneath the lower beams of the segments, his own mouth full of the first of several days’ worth of missed meals. “Huh?”

  She showed him the punctures.

  He swallowed and stared for a long, hard
moment.

  Then, his brows drew together. Terrible flashes of failure and pain crossed his normally calm face. Redness rimmed his dry eyes. He put a hand to his brow like a sudden headache.

  She stepped forward, reached up, and cupped his cheeks, caressing the stubble with her thumbs. “Hey. Hey, hey.”

  He took a slow, deep breath. It held just the edge of pain. He took a second one, clean, and opened his eyes to meet hers.

  Her heart swelled. “You’re fine. Right? I’m fine. We’re both—”

  A flinch wrinkled his brow and he had to close his eyes again, trying to look away.

  She drew him back. “No, we’re both fine. This one’s treatable. We’ve got a hundred samples of snakezoid venom and all sorts of metabolized cures. This close to Base, it’s definitely one we tagged. Remember when Iren came back with fourteen baby snakezoids still hanging off his forearm? Or the Bad Company guy who didn’t tell anybody about his bite for three days, and he swelled up like a balloon? We still fixed him.”

  He snorted at the memories, then winced.

  She stroked the face of the beautiful, kind, incredible man that she loved. “What is it?”

  “I swore…” He fixed her with his hottest, darkest gaze and she felt a stirring in her belly. “I swore I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

  “You haven’t,” she promised.

  “I swore.”

  “We won’t tell Daz.” She pressed soothing strokes against his hard masculine frame. “He hates it when I show up in Medical.”

  Logen snorted again, then sucked in a breath and turned to the tractor.

  They only found the basic medical kit. Unsurprising, because they hadn’t needed the tractor down here.

  “There’s probably some antivenins in the base,” she said.

  He looked out at the dense jungle.

  She knew what he was thinking.

  His brother and unknown others could still be pinned at Base One. The sooner they drove back, the sooner they could assist in retaking the base. And although they had originally planned to wire up the Base Two comm tower and call home, now that they had the tractor, they could just throw up the receiver and call when they passed through a clearing.

  But now they had to go in.

  The buried Base Two outbuildings sat so quiet and innocent.

  Just like the Supply Depot.

  They suited him up as if he were headed into combat. For all they knew, he was. Heavy shock absorbing, fireproof, heat-resistant, and electric-neutralizing shielded plates encased every vulnerable part of his body, and a helmet sealed in his air supply. He slung his multi-range rifle over his shoulder.

  He looked like a warrior.

  She got into her gear too. It was so heavy that she also put on strength-assists, a military-grade exoskeleton that would let her leap onto the top of the base building with the lightest hop.

  Her helmet’s seal didn’t quite fit around her growing hair. Logen’s didn’t fully seal around his stubble.

  “Don’t crack your faceplate,” she warned, following him to the airlock. “I’ll cover you.”

  “You stay in the cab.”

  Her chest squeezed. “We’ve stayed together this long. You don’t know what’s out there.”

  “That’s why only one of us should go.”

  “The tractor’s still booting up. I won’t be able to see what’s going on or communicate with you inside the buildings.”

  “You have no restore point.”

  Dammit.

  “What the hell am I going to do if something happens to you?” she demanded.

  “It won’t.”

  Double dammit.

  “Be careful,” she told him, through the impenetrable helmet glass. “Be smart. Don’t crack your suit.”

  He patted her on the head, exited the tractor, and waded out into the warzone.

  Watching him walk in alone was agonizing.

  She worked furiously to get up some surveillance and angled the solar panels to collect meager sun from the distant, closed canopy.

  At least his suit kept him safe from biological threats. A dinozoid would have trouble chewing him now; his suit could withstand incredible crushing damage and, in the worst case, he could blast free from its stomach.

  But it was no defense from the kind of assault they had faced in the Supply Depot. Or Base One. Even the tractor would struggle to withstand a cliff-breaker.

  No.

  He wouldn’t go down. She would back him up. Both barrels, full tractor.

  He disappeared inside the main building.

  She stared at it, heart pounding and vision blearing. Listening and watching for any danger.

  A few minutes later, he exited via a window, clambered over the thigh-thick vines growing out the main mess windows, and disappeared inside.

  Her heart thumped and then she resumed her held-breath agony.

  Apparently he was doing a full tour, because a few minutes after that, she saw him at the other end of the mess, disappearing into storage. Had he reached medical? The way through the halls must be blocked.

  The tractor controls beeped. Comms charged, and she was already receiving a signal.

  Fantastic.

  She hit the controls, expecting to see his suit pop up on the main screen. “Logen?”

  The signal crackled and solidified.

  Instead of Logen, she saw two of her old team members, Navina and Vi.

  * * *

  Minutes earlier...

  The day seemed oddly calm and ordinary as Logen stepped out of the tractor. The inner vestibule sealed behind him, keeping Talia safe. He strode down the ramp and his boots mushed into slippery vines and soft earth.

  A grackle of some animal challenged him over his shoulder. The shadow of a deadly bird-lizard flew overhead.

  His skin prickled all over with the sensation of a glowing target painted on his chest. And back. And head.

  Logen shouldered his multi-range rifle and clambered into the concrete entrance. Slow, careful, cautious. He passed the stacks of boxes he expected, groaning under palm frond seedlings and standing impervious to boring insects that chipped away. Everything should have gotten loaded onto the final clean-up shuttles. The robot attack had interrupted that plan.

  Was it only a few days since the attack? It felt like they’d been lost in this jungle forever.

  Until now, Talia remained healthy and alive.

  He fucked it up. In the last hour. She had been within arms’ reach! He was a fucking fuck up and he always would be.

  He passed gaping windows low and fast, ducking to stay below the horizon of storage boxes. Inside one was probably a machine that could synthesize a new antivenin from her blood sample. Too bad it would take a week to go through all of the boxes to find it.

  A millipede the size of a man’s skull screamed on top of a box then dropped down and scurried away.

  He wanted to be done with wildlife assignments for a while.

  With the shields down this long, he hoped the cleanup team wore heavy duty exposure suits.

  Medical was blocked off.

  He tried a couple different ways to hit it, exiting the compound and reentering at different locations, but boxes and plants cut him off.

  This was taking too fucking long.

  Somehow, being back at the base where he had failed her made him so nervous that he was incapable of doing his basic job.

  He checked on the tractor. Sitting there like a fortress. The sight of it and knowing Talia was safe inside put him back on task.

  Logen gave up on reaching Medical and started searching for boxes marked as medical supplies. They were scattered throughout the base. If he peeled one open with his laser rifle, he was likely to slice the antivenins in half, and the only thing worse than fucking up protecting Talia would be fucking up curing her.

  He would never leave her vulnerable. Especially since now, no restore point would save her life.

  A clever murderer would sabotage
the restoration machinery so when they tried to make another backup, they killed her instead.

  His dark thoughts clenched his gut.

  Focus. One thing at a time. Look for Talia’s medicine. Worry about the rest of it afterward.

  In the back of the mess hall, close to the windows for the back side of the base, he pored through already opened boxes of wildlife sample equipment and netting, tranquilizers and guns. Useful if he wanted to arm himself. Not useful for opening a damned crate.

  He turned and something caught his eye out the back window.

  Through the canopy was the comm tower.

  It was lit.

  What the fuck?

  He waded to the wall where once had been a commark. They had packed it up on their last trip. The one where everything went to shit.

  It was unpacked now.

  Shivers ran up the back of his neck. All the hairs rose to a point.

  A signal was running through the commark. As he reached for it to get more information, the signal winked out.

  Someone was collaborating with the robots. Not him, but someone on their team.

  He dropped down to see the wiring. His team did a distinctive job. Iren stripped the shit out of wires while Daz was precise as a surgeon. Navina tied her extra cords in perfect knots, and Vi left tangled cables.

  As he knelt and opened the wiring access panel, his atmosphere indicator blinked a warning.

  He rested on his heels. The whole base was open. How could his external oxygen supply be low? Made no sense. He tapped the gauge. It beeped and then returned to a cheerful green.

  Fucking Hazard Zero equipment.

  He set aside the wiring access panel. The part he wanted was, of course, all the way in the back. He got down on the floor, helmet to dusty concrete. His hand outstretched and grasped the secondary access panel’s plug.

  The plug handle came off in his hand.

  He pulled it out. It was a local comm silencer, like the kind they used for privacy and studded around the officers’ meeting rooms.

  He smashed it.

  His suit comm hissed and Talia’s face appeared in the upper right quadrant of his helmet. “Hello, beautiful.”

  She gasped and leaned forward. “Logen?”

  “Here I am.” He reached into the wiring access panel again. “You’ll never guess what I found.”