Resurrection Heart: Robotics Faction - Cyborg Mercenaries

by Clark, Wendy Lynn

  His voice sharpened.

  “I’ve killed you so many times. The crazy builds, a bubbling, gurgling, uncontrollable need to kill you, and it only abates when I kill you, and you won’t die. You won’t die! Just die, Talia.”

  His voice reached the door. He eased in, the rifle pointed, slow and careful as an expert Gun. “Come out and die so I can save my little brother. And this time, stay dead.”

  She held her breath.

  He looked down at the cut badge comm. Understanding crossed his features.

  She leapt out.

  He swung his rifle. It knocked her back. He brought up the barrel.

  She fought him, her smaller mass on his, her greater will to survive against his crazy-fueled deadness. He stumbled. She stabbed him in the neck.

  He shoved her back, hard, slamming her into the wall.

  The penknife stuck from his neck. It did not kill him.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  He leveled the barrel on her. “Stay dead.”

  Fuck.

  She refused. “Don’t be such a weak-willed bastard.”

  His finger hesitated on the trigger. Fighting his inhuman masters. Fighting...

  “You’re better than this, Daz. You’re made of sterner stuff.”

  ...and losing. His expression turned blank as the deadness returned. He lost. The robot masters won.

  “Daz was a lazy bastard,” he said, robotic. “It’s not only his will that’s weak.”

  His fingers started to squeeze the trigger.

  She shoved him back, in front of the window.

  He pushed her to the floor and lowered the rifle to fire.

  Blood erupted from his chest.

  One, two, three. Shots sprayed in pulses.

  Shock transfixed Daz’s face, and then the rifle dropped from nerveless fingers, and electricity paralyzed him as he went down.

  She grabbed the rifle away from him.

  Outside the window, across the grass, Logen gripped his own rifle. He saw her alive, silhouetted in the window, like a signal.

  And then he slumped.

  The sound of an incoming shuttle broke through her shock.

  One threat neutralized and another appeared?

  She carried the rifle from Daz’s barely breathing body out to Logen, along with a med unit. He looked at her weakly, barely able to see. “You survived.”

  “Hold on,” she begged, reapplying pressure tape to stop the new bleeding.

  “I’m... always ruining... his life...”

  “He’d thank you this time. You stopped his controllers from making him do something he’d never want. That wasn’t your brother.”

  “I... killed him...”

  “You saved me.” She struggled to lift him. “We’ve got incoming.”

  “Friendly?”

  “We can’t be sure.”

  His bloodless face turned grim. With an inhuman feat of strength, he rose and stumbled blindly with her help into the tractor. She sealed up the tractor and roared the engine.

  He slumped against the seat as she drove them, bumping and bucking, into the jungle. “Daz... still in there...”

  “There’s no time to get him.” She drove them under cover.

  The shuttle’s shadow appeared over the base.

  She killed the engine. The shuttle was just visible on her external cameras. But under the dense foliage, they shouldn’t be visible to the shuttle. She zoomed in as far as the magnification would go.

  A door opened and made a ramp to rest on the ground.

  Vi, Iren, and Navina strode out.

  Logen made a noise.

  “Maybe they got free,” she whispered.

  Logen gripped her hand.

  “I’m not going to go check,” she assured him, squeezing back.

  And it was a good thing she didn’t.

  In the shifting light, bruises from the forcefully implanted robotic stents still marred their sickly white, expressionless faces. They moved stiffly, unnaturally, without any hint of camaraderie. Behind them, science androids stomped out of the shuttle, wielding guns. With Iren, they swarmed the base. A group returned carrying Daz’s body.

  He pushed at one of them.

  “He’s still alive,” she said in a low voice.

  Logen’s breath caught.

  They loaded the prone Daz into the shuttle while Vi and Navina set up a missile launcher. After everything was cleared out, the booms of cliff-breakers flattened and then cratered the rest of Base One, utterly destroying it and wiping away all the evidence.

  Navina and Vi both looked in the direction of the tractor, as though following the tracks to the camera. Talia tensed. Then, they turned and entered the shuttle after Daz. The shuttle closed up and lifted off.

  Leaving behind Iren and a fire team of robots.

  He shouldered a missile launcher and started down the tractor tracks. Coming for her!

  She started the tractor in a hurry.

  He quickened to jogging.

  She muscled onto their preexisting track and sped up, leaving him behind. If she could keep ahead of him, then they wouldn’t have to engage in a firefight, and she could still reach the outcropping and shoot off the warning.

  But when she got to the outcropping and started sending the signal, Logen suddenly slid out of his seat. Blood, hidden by his seat, poured down.

  Her hope fell from the sky.

  She gasped, shut off the tractor, and cradled him in the cramped cab. He was such a big man. “Why didn’t you tell me you were bleeding to death?”

  He licked his lips. “Did we get away?”

  Five taps sounded against the outside window. Fuck.

  “Almost.”

  She hit the locking button, but the red light indicated it was out of service. Fucking shitty Hazard Zero equipment. She scooted up and slammed the inner segments, putting fifteen extra doors between the cab and a relentless, enraged robot-controlled Iren.

  Logen’s blood pooled around her. “Sorry I didn’t get to see Sirus.”

  The fifteenth door opened.

  “You will. He’s going to be here any moment. He promised.” She ripped open the med kit. No more pressure tape. “You can’t die. Don’t die.”

  The fourteenth door opened.

  And the thirteenth.

  He struggled to breathe. His chest rose and fell, paused, rose and fell. “S’okay.”

  “It’s not okay.” She hugged him. “I want to bunk with you. You have to pay out. Okay? Don’t die and forget all about it.”

  Overhead, the sound of another shuttle roared across the sky like thunder. Gigantic ship-side auto-turret cannons ripped up the dirt outside.

  The twelfth door opened.

  Eleventh.

  Tenth.

  “...remind me.” His smile changed to a chest-sucking cough and he lost the battle.

  She hugged his unconscious body while the world ended around them.

  No!

  She had no gun, the last of her strength was leaving her, and her vision was fading to black. Still, she positioned herself beside Logen’s unconscious body. She would not give in. She would fight to the bitter, bitter end. She was a mercenary.

  The hail chimed.

  Were the robots calling to gloat? Talia smacked the button. “What the fuck do you want?”

  “Well, nice to hear from you too.” Her old commander, Sirus, grinned from the comm screen.

  “Commander!”

  “I’ve mowed down Iren’s backup, but I can’t get to him inside the tractor. He’s very focused on killing you. What do you two have in terms of defending yourself?”

  Shit. “Just my brains, sir.”

  “Good start. And Logen?”

  “He’s out.”

  “Okay, well, then. Can you get Iren outside?”

  The cab was completely sealed. “I don’t see how.”

  “And you have no weapon?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, you have a choice. Iren’s carryi
ng a force baton. If you get it away from him, you can crush his head in. Or, you can throw him outside the tractor with it and I will take care of him with the auto-turrets.”

  So, killing him.

  She gripped the console. “What’s plan B?”

  “I can try to broadcast a sound to ‘drown out’ the robots controlling his stents. The only problem is that we’ve never tried it over a loudspeaker.”

  Iren stood outside the final door.

  She braced herself. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Wait until he comes in, then turn the volume up to max and hope for the best.”

  The cab door opened.

  Iren stood blankly on the other side. He had even less ability to communicate than Daz. He stared at her without seeing her. His hands went for her neck.

  She cranked the volume. “Now!”

  The comm made a popping noise and then went silent.

  Iren turned away from her to the dash.

  “Sirus!” She jumped to guard the controls.

  “Shit,” Sirus muttered, back to normal volume. “Let me check something. Also, run.”

  Iren shut off the comm and threw her down.

  She hit the deck and rolled. He turned to face her. She staggered to her feet.

  He crossed the distance in half a stride.

  “Iren, fight—”

  His hands wrapped around her throat and squeezed. She choked and clawed at his hands, struggling to fight him off. He was winning.

  Her hands closed around something at his waist.

  The force baton.

  Behind him, the tractor hall gaped. She could crush him. She could run for freedom.

  But he was her team.

  And she was a fucking mercenary.

  She yanked the baton free and smacked him with the blunt, non-functional end.

  He grunted and staggered back, loosening his grip on her.

  She yanked free, kicked him in the gut so he staggered half out of the cab and put distance between them, flipped the baton around, and activated it. It hummed with warning.

  He shook his head and blinked at her. His blank eyes focused. He came toward her again.

  She kept the baton between them, and, with her other hand, hit the comm.

  A tinny hiss emerged.

  “Turn it up!” Sirus cried.

  Iren accelerated to attack.

  She slammed the volume up full. This hiss escalated to white thunder. Iren was about to slam into her. She crouched to brace for his attack.

  His eyes blinked back to normal and he saw her for one panicked, confused moment. “Talia?”

  But his momentum carried him into the baton.

  The instant his chest touched it, his body lifted into the air. He flew away from her, somersaulted backward, and landed way down the tractor hall. He lay still.

  The comm popped again and went silent.

  “Dammit.” Sirus sounded normal again. “What’s happening down there? Who’s still alive?”

  She swallowed. It still felt like hands constricted her throat. “Sir.”

  Her commander grinned in relief. “How you doing?”

  Everything hurt. “Fine.”

  “I never doubted you’re a survivor. I’ll see you in a few.”

  Talia clenched the force baton. Logen lay at her feet, still breathing. Iren, slumped down the hall, harder to see, but she hadn’t crushed his head and he might have only a few broken bones and a concussion.

  Her vision flirted with black oblivion as the poison pumped harder through her veins. But she was fine.

  She had her team. And she was a survivor.

  * * *

  Logen awoke on a nice bed, in a real bunker, engulfed in the calming scent of well-oiled life support systems. Above his head, five gigantic hunting knives studded a wood bedstead and formed the rack for a collection of guns. Long and short range, full and semi-auto.

  Everything was just fine.

  Talia slept beside him in a barely-there nightgown thing.

  Okay, it was more than fine.

  He stretched.

  She awoke. “Hey.”

  “Where are we?”

  Concern faded her smile. “Do you remember anything?”

  If it had to do with how they ended up in bed together and whether he had made the most of it, then no. “Depends.”

  “We’re on Sirus’s ship. He destroyed the androids and fixed up Iren.”

  That, he did not remember. “Daz?”

  “Sirus intercepted their ship before he reached us, but he was only able to free Navina. Daz is being taken to prison.”

  “Why?”

  “The Faction concocted some story. They still control the communications.”

  If he hadn’t shot Daz—but he had barely been able to see. Only the silhouette in the window, without his Spot, and hoping to hell he wasn’t too late.

  “We have to get the word out.”

  “Vi, Navina, and Iren singlehandedly took over the solar station.”

  Taking over a thousand-plus station full of the mercenary corps’ finest with only three people and Hazard Zero equipment? “If we’re going to turn evil, we’re going to do evil right.”

  Her smile shared his sadness. “The survivors were rescued by Bad Company and supported by Sirus, but the station itself is a loss.”

  “Hell of a time to come back from a vacation.”

  “His niece was targeted by the Robotics Faction. He’s been fighting them secretly for all these years.”

  “Makes my head hurt.”

  “Hey, you’ve been unconscious for over a week.” Her concern deepened. “I love you. Do you remember that much?”

  Her declaration hit him like a shock. A welcome shock, with tingles. Yeah, that was good.

  She’d ignored his confessions before, leaving him uncertain of what to think. This time, there was no doubt.

  He took a deep breath. Stretching out his lungs, which were sore, but in the good way of healing and not the bad way of damage.

  His silence seemed to make her even more nervous. She twined her fingers in his hair, stroking his cheek, touching him exactly the way he always wanted. “Don’t you remember? You were actually dead for forty-four minutes before Sirus had you hooked up and restarted your heart. Amnesia is possible, but you have to remember. You have to.”

  Her here like this felt too amazing. “Not sure.”

  Talia’s inner strength returned. Firm. She rolled onto his hard body and straddled his thighs. “I’ll remind you.”

  Yeah.

  He shifted, making room for the serious hard-on tightening his cock, pulsing with heat and urgency.

  Her bare thighs squeezed his, silken and amazing, and her sheer nightdress floated like a cloud across his hard torso. She smelled clean and sexy and feminine, fiery and smooth as a sip of vanilla vodka. Even though she was as hard a soldier as he was, and a much better person, she was also all woman.

  “Especially seeing as Sirus knows the truth and you can pay out any time,” she settled herself, delicious and gorgeous, “I better enjoy this while I can.”

  He grabbed her hands. “I’m not paying out.”

  “Don’t sign your life away.”

  “There’s too much for me in the corp,” he said. “I’m probably a lifer.”

  She laughed, her fears turning into genuine amusement. “That’s quite the prison sentence.”

  He shifted, trapped by her silky thighs. “Lock me up and toss the key.”

  “Well,” she leaned closer, “I guess there are things to save up for.”

  “Like health and homes and nice things.”

  “And our kids.”

  “Yeah.” It felt right, saying that. His kids, her kids. “Our kids.”

  He would love them and keep them safe and always be there for them. Present, a hundred percent, from their wake up cry to their last kiss goodnight. And Talia would be right beside him, fiercely protective and sweetly loving. They would both be kind parents
who were also incredibly badass.

  Talia breathed out, long and slow. Living in the seriousness of his words. Serious because they were true, and he would keep them.

  “Well, at your current rate, it’ll only take a couple more centuries to save up for kids.” Then, she turned naughty. “You want to practice?”

  Fucking hell. “Absolutely.”

  “Then, there’s something you should know.”

  She leaned over him. Her breath teased his rough cheek; her soft mons pressed against his waist. Her breasts dangled, close enough to palm and caress, tantalizing above his chest.

  “I’ve never been with anyone in this body.” Her full lips teased his trembling earlobe. Heat shot directly to his cock, pulsing hard. “Will you be my first?”

  He loved her more than anything, and would pleasure her however he could, however she wanted, as much as he could, forever. She was his gorgeous, strong, determined Talia. Way better than him, and yet still willing to give a battered, bedraggled, unworthy soldier a go.

  Well, he was working his way up to worthy now. She wouldn’t regret her choice. He swore to take care of her for the rest of his life, no matter what.

  He gripped her waist, savoring the softness. “Fuck yes.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Fuck yes,” the man she loved told her, his urgent desire a sharp catch in his rough voice.

  That was exactly how she felt about her life and their future together.

  Fuck yes.

  She cupped Logen’s rough jaw and kissed him full on the mouth. He tasted like long lost wishes and newly rediscovered possibilities, like the future and the past, like her impossible crush and love returned. He moaned and sucked her in deeper.

  Her desire ignited. She braced her hands on his wide, muscular shoulders.

  He slid hungry hands up her side to cup her breasts, palming the swelling globes, pearling her nipples between his fingers. Ecstasy shot straight to her sweet, hot, molten core. He seemed to know her desires before she could tell him, tracing the gasps to their source, and lifted his head to taste her sensitive buds through her sheer slip. The hot desire twisted into a wonderful, aching, tight knot. She awoke with throbbing need for the erection pressing against her derriere.

  She slid off her sleeping gown and shivered down his well-muscled thighs, delighting in the view of him. He was so wonderfully male, regarding her with a passion-soaked gaze that radiated love.