Star Navigator

by Naomi Lucas

What a way to be welcomed back to the living. Atlas slid across the smooth stone, pinpointing the last of the men while switching to scope-lock. They were dead a moment later. He ran past the other bullet-ridden bodies as he approached the re-sealed door. Their ship was a click away.

  He traced his fingers across the cold surface, trying to locate an electrical current. Antix is on but it won't be soon. He couldn’t hack without being on-site with the servers. A digital hostile take-over. One strong concrete and metal door, nearly a foot and a half wide lay between him and Reina.

  Atlas found a current and tapped it, locating his girl. His mind willingly left his body, unprotected, as he traced her weak connection to the ship, knowing she had one. He channeled within it, letting his presence be known, bolstering its strength, her strength, before he pulled back into his shell.

  His arm waved behind, sending the drones that desperately wanted to get into the building to protect their queen back out into the slate fields. He understood their need far too well.

  His need was greater, raging, to get to her. The cybercells in his wiring were wild with frenetic energy.

  Atlas unclipped the explosive grenade from his hip and gave the volatile weapon a kiss for good luck. Joining his brothers back out in the fields, he released the grenade into the opening. The acid followed soon after.

  Click. Tick. Tick.

  The explosion ignited with the gasses in the air, and a gaping, fiery hole appeared. Green flames licked the now unsealed quarantine chamber.

  The drones went mad behind him, fueled by Reina’s fear.

  Atlas grinned as he approached and gripped a sparking console. His body surged with power just as he shattered the facility with dangerously strong magnetic fields.

  I’m coming for you, Reina. The bots appeared at his back soon after, as eager as him to commit murder.

  THE GROUND SHOOK. HER body was plastered to the floor, face down, her arm pressed into the concrete as if it was trying to get away. What sounded like an explosion vibrated through the steel hallways, followed by intermittent crashes of machinery throughout.

  Reina grimaced as the room went dark, only to be disturbed by Black and the alien’s disbelief. The room washed into a grey tone as backup light globes flickered on.

  “What the fuck was that!?” The knife slipped out of Black’s hand to land next to her head. Reina tested her arm, finding that she could move and that her corded shackles had broken.

  “Gunfire.” The alien answered, “There’s no way the Earthian Fleet could have responded so fast.”

  She bit her tongue, thinking she might have fired on Antix with her ship. Maybe Atlas had. She had felt his presence right before the explosion.

  Reina, with a speed she didn’t know she possessed, seized the knife, flipped to her side, and jammed it into Black’s foot. His howl vibrated off the walls as she took advantage of his confusion and tackled him to the ground, taking the dagger with her and thrusting it into his gut.

  “My ship is coming to kill you, you piece of trash,” she hissed through her teeth. Shots hit the wall next to her head and the burn of bullets seared her cheeks.

  “Don’t move,” the alien spoke from directly behind her. Yells could be heard down the hallway, and outside the room she could feel the zip of her drones move closer to her location. She held onto the knife, the handle sweaty in her palm. She couldn’t bear to look at her now-visible robotic fingers; their inhuman nature was deeply unsettling.

  Black sagged and sputtered under her as his life gushed out of him and onto the floor, soaking her legs. Her toes slipped across the wet grime.

  “I don’t want to kill you,” she whispered to the alien. Black heaved his last gasp. The sounds he made could have been mistaken for sounds of pleasure.

  “I don’t want to kill you either.” Black died, ignored. “I’ll let you walk out of this room and see the end of this.” Reina felt the safety snap on the gun pressed into her skull. “If you answer me honestly.”

  The screech of metallic grind was right outside the door.

  “I’m the one who holds all the power. Why should I make a deal with you?”

  “Because this firearm is neither laser nor projectile. It’s a plasma cannon and not even a Cyborg can’t withstand their metal skull melting into their brains.” The Trentian sounded like he spoke from experience. Any gun would have worked on her head. She tried to act brave. “Do you know where Larik is?” he finished.

  Reina willed her battle drones to move faster. “Why does he matter so much?” Her head pushed forward as the alien pressed the barrel painfully hard into her.

  “He stole something from me. Something worth more than your life.”

  She wagered her life to buy another second. Another explosion erupted somewhere close by.

  “Do you know what that is?” she asked, hoping her evasion would work. “That’s me. I’m not some lone, unprotected female you can torture,” her voice rose. “I don’t need anyone. I don’t need anything to destroy this facility. All I need,” Reina said. “Is this.”

  The ground began to tremble and the roar of bullets ricocheting overwhelmed her ears. Reina ducked to the side as she seized the opportunity from her captor, her eyes locked with his for the first time as the door began to fissure like lightning. Her skin heated and numbed as shockwaves of electricity coursed through her circuitry.

  The drones were breaking down the barrier that separated them.

  “Please don’t do this,” the alien man spoke softly. Reina was mesmerized by fear as his pale eyes milked her of her fortitude. The Trentian stepped forward and laid down his gun. He cupped her face and bore down on her willpower. “A lone star-jewel with the perfect combination of Earthian genes doesn’t even know when a man owns the universe,” he whispered, nuzzling her ear. She grew weak and pliant from his touch. “You’re a good person, Captain Reina, it’s in your eyes. But you’re an idiot who is fighting a battle that is not your own.”

  A familiar voice rose over the chaos, breaking her away from the Trentian.

  “Reina! Stand away from the door!” Atlas? She turned toward the sound. Something like a magnetic force, beyond anything she had felt before in her life, shot out like a wave from the door and brought her to her knees and dragged her forward. The gun flew out of the Trentian’s hand and cracked the wall with the force of its impact.

  She barely had time to react, to take a breath, when the door caved inward–sucked out of the wall and shot through to the other side of the room, crushing the lone table and chair in its wake. Now only a hole remained in its place.

  The magnetic currents released just as the room filled with her drones. Reina shot forward and grabbed the dagger, which had speared through Black’s ribs, pulled by the magnets, and threw it at the alien.

  He caught it in the chest in an anticlimactic death. His eyes sparkled with mischief as he slumped into a shadowy ball, pale purple haze exuding from his frame.

  Reina lost sight of him as her robots surrounded her like a shield. My robots and I against the world. They moved out of her way in deference as she walked to the dead Trentian. She reached her hand out to move aside his jacket, already knowing his body wasn’t there.

  It’s not possible. He’s gone. The figure of a man caught the periphery of her eye.

  Every gun she controlled swiveled and pointed at the dusty figure blocking her exit. The fingers of her flayed hand clenched her jacket with anger. Reina was high on electrical power, and the chip in her head flared as nanocells poured out, lighting up behind her eyes.

  “Reina, it’s me.” The figure spoke. She gave the order to her drone soldiers to kill anything that tried to stop her from getting to her ship.

  He spun out of the doorway just as her drones targeted him for death.

  “Fucking hell, Reina, it’s Atlas. Atlas!” He screamed over the gunfire. “Call off the robots, please?”

  She pushed forward to kill the liar, only to stop when the first several drones crashe
d to the ground and erupted the moment they entered the passageway. Reina felt the familiar current and magnetized connection coming from the being.

  Not. Possible. She glanced back to where the alien corpse should have been. “Atlas?” her voice hitched in disbelief. “Prove it.”

  “Seriously?” he groaned.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m your Automated Transport and Logistical Aid System. I would prefer to prove it with a kiss.”

  Reina shook her head and stepped out of the room, almost afraid to find who was behind the wall, but more afraid that it was all a trick and Atlas wasn’t actually there.

  She came face-to-face with an impossibly tall, impossible, improbable man, whom she vaguely recognized. Atlas met her perusal with a devilish smirk, and her breath hitched as his strong arms snaked around her just as a magnetic pulse blasted out from outside their embrace. Her drones pushed away from them.

  “I don’t like the idea of being shot at.”

  “This isn’t possible.” His fingers weaved through her soaked hair, holding her close to his hard, heated chest. A chest that isn't supposed to exist. She breathed in his stale sweaty scent, awed that he even had one. Reina pulled away to look at his eyes, already knowing the answer to her question. “Who are you?”

  His eyes flashed down at her. “You know who I am, sweetheart.”

  Reina stepped away, feeling uncertain, unsure of their contact. Metal–cybernetic metal–older and well used, unlike her own.

  Processing...

  She was scanning him. Cyborg model number fifty-two, second edition. Cyber Sergeant Kyle Atlas-Fifty-Two, in the Earthian Space Fleet–navigator and consultant.

  Processing...

  The information seeded from him and uploaded into her head. His hand caught her, pressing her back into him when she was hit with vertigo that was worse than gravity loss.

  Cyber Sergeant Kyle Atlas-Fifty-Two, served in the Shield and Disrupter Division: Magnetic manipulation. Shot down in the battle of Cosmic Storm. Sustained life-threatening injuries and the loss of his heart. Intelligence transcended into the network while the body remained in cryo life-support. Nanocells frozen but intact.

  First sentient biological-vat-born Cyborg to fully integrate into the system... scanning vitals...

  “Reina, you can read my stats later.” Atlas threw her out of his logs. Her eyes refocused on him. “We need to retrieve the doctor, he won't stop talking.” Faded shots, somewhere in the distance overlaid his voice. “We’re not out of this yet.”

  With an impulse she couldn’t understand, Reina threw herself into his arms. Atlas caught her in a painfully tight embrace. Every hard edge of him pressed into her flesh, his fingers, her hard edges, the weapons strapped to his arms and legs, dug into her and she gave herself over to it.

  Her back hit a wall as they warred with the chaos inside themselves. The smell of burnt metal and copper blood filled her nostrils. She felt alive.

  She gripped him tighter. “It’s really you.”

  “It is.” He groaned, pressing her into the cold, concrete barrier.

  “I almost had my drones kill you.” Reina shivered, holding onto him tighter. She leaned up, uncaringly desperate and found his mouth. His hands cupped her ass and slid her up the wall to meet him equally. Their kiss was a frenzied battle. Atlas sucked her tongue into his mouth and drank her down, assaulting her. For a Cyborg who had never been with a woman, he knew how to kiss, licking her teeth, biting down on her lip, bruising her in a way she needed amongst the death surrounding them.

  “It would take a lot more than that to kill me.”

  His nails tore into her as he ground her into his cock. Reina shrieked and gasped as he rubbed himself between her spread legs, up to her stomach, before gliding back down.

  Everything was surreal, even the distant blasts of gunshots, and her robot army that surrounded them from every side. He was here. Lust, unlike anything she had experienced before, consumed them.

  “Atlas,” she screamed over his wet tongue, plunging in and out of her mouth. “Take me.”

  The back of her head hit the wall as he allowed her to breathe, licking his way along her jaw, over her cheek, only to end up at her ear. “No.”

  Reina thrashed, the power and the burning want inside her screamed inside her head for release. “Please! Take me or kill me.”

  “No, Captain.” He taunted her, his wispy breath slithered into her ear, making her twitch and convulse. The pressure of his erection just a rip away.

  “I command you, Cyborg.” She clasped onto him and writhed. I need to feel anything, everything, anything. She wanted to lose herself, and to hold onto the careless feeling that electrified her.

  The command didn’t have the effect that she wanted. Atlas lifted away from her, still gripping her, but there was a sliver of space between them now and she almost hated him for forcing her back into the now.

  “I’m not going to fuck you or kill you, Reina. If anything, you and I are logical, rational, intelligent, emotional, and yet slightly sociopathic killing machines. You brought me back to life. You gave me the courage to take a chance. Life or death, that’s what we have, what we’ll always share, and why we belong together.” He bit her earlobe, making her shiver. “And as much as I would love to fuck you in this hellhole of broken metal and revenge, we’re not safe here, and Yesne will not stop talking in my ear. Hearing that man talk is kind of a turn-off.”

  They painstakingly disengaged from each other and although she did hate him now, the chaos lifted.

  His eyes shifted to her flayed hand, his smile dropped and his eyes went hard. “What the fuck did they do to you?”

  He cupped her cheeks, his thumb brushing softly across her bruised face. Reina barely knew why she felt safe in his arms, why she looked at him for comfort.

  “They tried to extract information out of me.”

  “Did you kill them?”

  Reina nodded.

  “Are you going to be okay to make it back to the ship?” he continued to question.

  “Yes, I think so. My body is on fire but numb at the same time.” She held onto his arm, not wanting to let him go, afraid that this was all another nightmare and he would be gone when she woke up. But the gunfire was getting closer and even if this was a nightmare, Reina knew if she died in it, it was no dream. “Atlas,” she breathed, feeling very alone. “Please don’t leave me.”

  The door leading to their exit slipped open, cutting him off from responding, and several men came through with guns. Their moment was gone as her drones flew forward and committed pirate genocide.

  Atlas handed her a pistol and they made a run for it.

  Chapter Seventeen:

  “More are coming!”

  Atlas motioned to her to follow, her hovering drones providing them cover. The carnage was breathtaking. Blood painted the walls as they made their way through heaps of corpses and fried mechs.

  “How many?” Her bare feet made squishing sounds as they ran, her soles cut to shreds.

  Can’t feel anything. Fight and flight dominated her brain, as well as the hungry looks that Atlas cast her way. The kind of looks that hinted at his desire to throw her up back up against the wall and take her in the midst of battle.

  He crowded her. “I can’t get a clear signal, my radar tech is out of date and I’m being blocked by their firewalls. I do know that there is a group of ships entering Antix’s atmosphere. It’s hard to miss that much power.”

  Reina spun around as a garbled noise broke behind her. A lone man with a broken leg and a bullet wound to his shoulder whined in conscious pain.

  Atlas shot forward before her drones flooded him with more bullets. He grabbed the man by the neck and shielded him until they backed off. Reina approached warily.

  The man sputtered and choked.

  “Atlas, let up! You’re going to break his neck.” She watched as his grip tightened before he let go.

  “Where are the men who were stationed
here?” Atlas took a blade out and took the man’s hand. He’s going to cut him like they cut me. Reina was all of a sudden horrified and pleased.

  The dying man coughed, unaware, “Dead.”

  Atlas shifted. “Why? What makes you think an act of war would accomplish anything?”

  “We don’t want to hurt you,” Reina reassured, playing nice, catching the man’s eye.

  “Like I believe that crap, you’re the ones slaughtering everyone here. We just wanted to talk.”

  “You have a funny way of showing it!” She hissed, flashing her skeletal metal hand in front of his face. “This doesn’t look like ‘just talking’ to me.”

  “Like you’re any better.” The man shrieked as Atlas sliced the skin of his thumb off. “You won’t make it off the planet alive.”

  Reina reached down and relieved the man of his personal telecomm unit.

  “Why is Larik so important to your group?” Atlas shot her an annoyed look. “Why do you need him?” She asked again when he didn’t answer. “Atlas, stop hurting him!”

  His eyes bore into her as he sat back on his haunches, wiping his bloody blade off on his thigh. He took the comm unit from her. Atlas’s eyes flashed bright blue as he temporarily connected with it.

  “Pissed off the Trentians,” he groaned. “They won’t...stop.”

  “They won’t stop what?”

  The man heaved.

  “They won’t stop what?” Reina urged, but he was already dead.

  Atlas grabbed her arm and lifted her to her feet. “We need to get to the ship and fast. More ships are entering orbit.”

  Reina shot the man in the head for good measure before they moved away. Her curiosity grew every slippery step she took. Atlas and she moved forward with reckless speed, knowing each second was precious. She kept point from behind.

  “Any update? Do you know what he meant about the aliens?” Her drones swarmed before them, rooting out any hiders and wasting them before they arrived.

  The entered a relatively clear, gore-free hallway, gloomy with flickering grey light globes.