by Naomi Lucas
“The comm has a weak connection, it’s linked to a nearby ship that I’m guessing is controlling the servers here. New channels are opening up like a web.” They stepped over a solitary corpse. “We’ll have a better chance at survival if we meet them in the air. If they catch us in the hold, we’ll never make it out alive. I don’t know what the alien meant. Sometimes you end up in the middle of a war that’s not your own.”
He was chiding her.
Atlas stopped at a closed door where several of her robots were standing guard. She watched in awe as he ran his hand along the door, seemingly finding a weak point and punching through the metal frame. “Yesne, shut the hell up, we’re the ones outside your door,” he grated to whatever earpiece he still had in.
The mechanism broke and the door slid open. Yesne appeared, unharmed, with his bag in his hand. “It’s about time you guys showed up. I thought we built Cyborgs better than this,” he teased, entering the corridor.
Reina approached him. “I’m glad you’re okay. Did they hurt you?”
Yesne stopped, looking at her up and down, his face scrunched in horror. “Captain, what did they do to you?” He dropped his bag and reached for her hand. “You’re covered in blood, please tell me it’s not yours...that you at least hurt the ones that tried to damage such a perfect creature.”
She smiled. “They got what they deserved.”
Atlas stepped between them and forcibly took her hands out of the doctor’s. “You can examine her later. We need to move.” He pulled the earpiece out. “Your vitals appear fine, besides the elevated heart rate and some nutrient deficiencies. Can you run?”
“They did nothing but torture me with boredom.”
“Horrible.” Atlas smirked. “Let’s go.”
The three of them made their way to the surface, following behind Atlas, armored by metal. Reina’s mind stayed on the Cyborg in front of her. Even the dank passageways couldn’t pull her mind away from him. Atlas is alive. Alive. Alive. She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around it. His body, very much alive, rippled with muscle. Tense and fluid with perfect, alert, mechanical, calculated motion. And yet so very human.
His eyes flashed toward her every other second. She couldn’t help but do the same.
He’s really here.
And then it dawned on her. Yesne hadn’t seemed surprised at all by his magical appearance.
ATLAS GUIDED THEM ALONG the quickest route to the exit even though it was, perhaps, the most dangerous. The blueprints were displayed behind his eyes and in his mind. More men were coming, but what irked him the most was the unfortunate way he had appeared before Reina.
He glanced at her. I would have preferred to surprise her during an intimate moment. Prepared, wanting, and wet by my words.
Not after she was hurt, her body in the midst of repairing itself, and her mind possibly traumatized. Again.
Atlas watched her like a hawk, waiting for a reaction that, so far, hadn’t come.
Yesne’s heavy breaths kept pulling him out of his musings, along with the electric waves continuously increasing overhead. Part of their mission was to set up stronger relays on Antix. That sure as hell wasn’t going to happen now. Unfortunately, it wasn’t his choice. All he cared about was getting Reina back to the ship safely.
Atlas halted at an intersection, his back pressed against the wall, as he peered slowly around the corner. One of the drones flew past him.
“What’s wrong?” Reina came up next to him.
“We’re one level below the surface. The stairway is on the other end of this chamber.” He turned toward her. “But we have a problem.” Many, actually. But only one at a time.
“What now?”
I want to kiss you so fucking hard right now. Atlas kept that to himself, content enough just to be able to smell her. “The servers. The relay technology is still on the ship. We can either locate the source and fix it, re-establish communication with the Council, or–”
“–or we can leave it,” she sighed. “What are the odds of our success?”
“One hundred percent. The way behind us is clear.”
“Survival rate?”
“Hard to say, unidentified splinter ships are in orbit and more are approaching. There are still men aboard the current ship, possibly waiting for us to emerge. Our chance of survival fluctuates by the second. It’s getting lower,” Atlas answered.
“They won’t kill us, at least they’ll try not to. Not until they get what they want from us.”
Yesne breathed, joining them. “What do they want?”
“They want info on Larik. They believe we can give them a lead.”
Atlas sighed, annoyed. “They don’t know for certain.”
“No. They don’t. But we do.”
“Sometimes I hate that a part of me is human.” Atlas kept tabs on time, feeling it tick, needing to move, wanting to kill. “What do you recommend we do, Reina?”
She turned away from him and looked back down the hall, at the bodies on the floor, and the sizzling mech on the ground, then turning back to look at him, and past him toward the exit. She weighed the odds in her own head. Atlas knew when Reina came to a decision: her swollen face hard, her eyes determined.
Good choice. Atlas really didn’t want to throw her over his shoulder and force her like a caveman.
“We head for the ship. The Council will investigate this. My priority is to make sure you guys survive. Whatever happened here, whatever we were dragged into, is second. We have a mission to complete.”
Atlas leveled his gun and rounded the corner. They made a mad dash toward the decontamination chamber just as he began to feel the boosters fade from his system, the painkillers weakening, and it made him feel that much more impatient to get back to the lab.
The smell of smoke and burnt chemicals clouded the air, the chamber destroyed by the blast and now flooded with planetary gasses.
Light rays pierced out toward them as sand crept into the concrete interior, penetrating Port Antix with poison. Beyond was a screen of swimming dust, too dull to even catch the light from the nearest sun. Atlas turned toward his charges.
He caught Reina’s eyes, her skin flushed and beautiful with natural light, where it was washed out before in monotone, emaciated greys. Atlas briefly forgot how to speak.
“Reina, link to the ship, warm up the thrusters, and initiate the cannons.” He swallowed tasteless saliva. “We’ll need them.”
“On it.” Her eyes unfocused. He felt her surf the digital waves.
She was born to be a Cyborg. She was born to be mine. I was created to be hers. The thought gave him all the strength he needed to become the metalloid-man he used to be. He was consumed with getting them to safety.
As she stood out-of-body and barely cognizant, he couldn’t help but steal a taste of her. His nose found her frenetic pulse until it led him down to the crook of her neck. Atlas placed a desperate kiss, replacing the dry taste of his mouth with her sweat.
Reina jerked, startled, coming back into herself and he pulled away.
“Atlas, for Earth’s sake, we’re in danger. I need to concentrate.” She stepped away from him. “You now have dirt smeared on your lips.”
He smirked as she rechanneled, fueled by her emotions, soon followed by the sound of their ship’s drives powering on in the distance. His eyes took in the area.
“There are six ships in orbit, two are descending as we speak. There is still only the ship from before grounded nearby. I feel nor sense nothing between us and our destination.”
“Doesn’t mean there isn’t a trap,” Yesne mumbled.
Atlas turned to the doctor. “You’re going to lose the bag, you’ll both have to run as fast as you can.” The doctor gripped it tighter in defiance.
“Reina, keep the bots around us, cover our skin. Let’s go!”
He took off.
“We don’t have exosuits,” Yesne yelled before running after him. Atlas hit the open air. The sparkle of the ship was a beautiful beacon.
“Run fast and hold your breath!” Atlas yelled back, shooting down an enemy sky-mech.
Chapter Eighteen:
Every step she ran pulled her to the ship like a taut elastic band, only growing looser as she got closer to home. She felt a transcendent invigoration that was only lessened by an insatiable need to feel her feet planted on the metal floor of the bridge.
They had barely covered fifty feet of open ground before Atlas shot off his gun, scoping out the airborne enemies even before her drones could. Pings erupted around them as bullets sailed through the air and embedded themselves in the swarming bots that began to follow and surround them.
Her personal army, spinning their turrets in beautifully synchronized motion, blasting the enemy tech out of the skies. She cheered them on; they moved faster.
Two shots. Two down.
She hadn’t spent eleven and a half years in the Space Fleet without learning how to protect herself.
“Move faster!” Atlas roared at them, far ahead and crouched, adding his own covering fire. He shot with such precision that it looked like a dance. The crunch of several sky-bots, including several of her own, sounded just beside them.
They ran past Atlas, still leveling the playing field. The planetside wind storm was at their back and pushing them forward.
“I can barely breathe,” Yesne wheezed. Reina slowed down enough to grip his forearm.
“Me neither,” she gasped back. “But we don’t have any other option.” They ran together and spurred each other on as their goal grew further away with each step.
More of her drones erupted and dropped, creating large gaps in their makeshift shield.
They were barely jogging now and each inch they moved forward felt like slogging through sludge. Reina reached for the doctor’s arm only to find at some point she had let go. She jerked around frantically, confused as to how she had lost him.
A gust of wind hit her straight on filling her mouth and nose with toxic gas and each subsequent gasp afterward burned her throat, flooding into her lungs, frying her throat.
She swayed stupidly as all her pain came back: the slices on her bare feet, filled with dirt, the swollen pain of her face. Reina looked down at her hand, and it didn’t hurt. It didn’t feel like anything at all.
Yesne’s body lay unmoving several yards away. Her feet brought her to him only to collapse to her knees. Atlas appeared next to her.
“We’re losing him.”
He ignored her, blasting something somewhere beyond, and picked the doctor up, throwing him over his shoulder. Reina grabbed Atlas’s suit and hefted herself back to her feet.
She nodded at Atlas and he took the lead, her flayed fingers holding onto him as they slowly jogged onward. Every cybercell in her system was in overdrive trying to keep her conscious and alive.
The ominous shadows of incoming spaceships grew overhead.
We’re not going to make it.
Reina lost conscious just as her feet were lifted off of the ground.
SEVERAL HOVERBIKES dropped from the sky overhead. He ran faster, faster than he had ever run in his life, running away from the men aiming stunners at him. Atlas hated it but he couldn’t do anything but run now, carrying two limp bodies over his shoulders.
The bikes were gaining on him just as the hatch slid open. He dodged and dashed around the electric shots, forcing him to weave his way to the entrance. His body flew through as the biker closed on him, he hit the console to close the hull, managing to get it shut just a second before impact.
The idiot chasing him crashed into the heavy metal door. Reina groaned, half underneath him. He scanned her vitals with a sigh of relief: she was coming to.
He hauled her up against the wall. “Don’t fucking move.”
Her eyelids twitched. Speckles of grey sand clung to them like jewels.
Atlas turned to the dying doctor and ran him to medbay. He couldn’t let him die, not when Yesne had risked his career and possible imprisonment for him. He needed to pay the man back for his life. Reina wouldn’t forgive him if he let the doctor die.
We’re even now. He powered up the glass pod, a full-service medical machine that would stabilize the man.
Atlas hated a lot of people; he distrusted even more. But for some reason, this person, this doctor, he was attached to. Atlas would even call him a friend. He quickly stripped Yesne of his clothes and placed him into the machine. The only movements his body made were short, painful gasps, and the jerks caused by bombs hitting the ship.
The wait was agonizing while he monitored the doctor’s vitals. He plugged into the machine and forced more power through it, hoping it would go faster.
Power raged through him suddenly, his feet spread out to keep his balance, as the telltale signs of takeoff caused the internal atmosphere around him to fluctuate.
Reina.
Cannons sounded.
Atlas eyed the pod, still running reports. Grippers shot out as IVs sank into Yesne’s arms. The machine was frantically trying to save the poisoned man’s life.
His fist met the bulkhead, punching a hole through its frame.
REINA COULD FEEL THE wild rush of kisses taste and pucker over every inch of her skin. Wet, rough licks from a tongue that was altogether too hot slid across her body. Moans escaped her as it moved all over her at once, bathed in a sexual haze.
Her body arched against something hard, as every inch of her was being ravished and suckled. She fell into a blissful euphoria, knowing Atlas was taking advantage of her.
Something's not right. He doesn’t have a hundred tongues.
She flailed, fear and confusion quickly replacing her pleasure. “Atlas?” Reina moaned, trying to ground herself. The chilly room around her rocked, knocking her off balance.
We’re being fired on! Her body went up in electrical flames. She needed to move, needed to get to the bridge, to connect her arm with the captain’s seat.
Her eyelids peeled back painfully, stinging from sand and possibly chemical burns. Her hands found the wall and she dragged herself up; shallow, burning breaths, and the taste of something bitter coated her mouth.
Where did Atlas go?
My Altogether Tough, now-Living, Android Savior. She giggled to herself, coming out as a hiccup. A blast hit directly outside the exit, knocking her back into her head.
She half crawled, half staggered into her ship, heading through a haze of anxious confusion to the bridge. Her body hit the wall as her ship took another hit. Every hit was another shock to her system.
Her body was damaged in such a way that she should have succumbed to death by now; the only thing fighting for her life were the rapidly regenerating cybercells flowing through her form–and her willpower.
Reina located an emergency unit and pulled out a detoxifier, swallowing the plastic tube and biting down on the outer ring.
Stumbling into the bridge, she found her seat. She initiated takeoff, targeting her guns at every moving thing within range, rage burning through her. She felt a horrible sense of glee with each explosion.
Thrusters went into overdrive, the propellers stressed her engines, and each charge snaked through the cybernetic ship and straight into her head. Electricity flooded the fuel pipes. The ship lifted off the ground in a swirl of gusting grey dust.
Atlas appeared next to her as they shot into the sky; he reached across her chest and buckled her in.
“Man the guns,” she ordered, pulling out the breather, and watching the planetary rock burn with overloaded electrical fire. Soon they were too high up to see anything. “They’re trying to surround us.” Sirens blared to life as they took a damaging hit to their landing struts.
“Guess we won’t be landing again anytime soon.”
Reina adjusted her route and aimed directly into the center cluster of ships.
“Think we can warp in the thermosphere? How good are you?”
“Not that good, and not unless you want to punch a hole in the ozone layer and blo
w up the ship.” He chided, “Love the way you think Captain.”
She smiled, the high from the planetary atmosphere making her lightheaded, alert, and giddy.
I can’t believe we might make it. I can’t believe he’s alive.
They shot through the murky clouds and flew perfectly through the enemy fleet. Their shields slid across another flyer, damaging the outer structure. More sirens screamed at them for the exterior damage. Several ships locked onto them and fell into pursuit.
Atlas wasn’t just shooting at the enemy vessels, he was shooting at their cannons, blasting them in mid-space before they could ever land a hit. Still, some hits came through, and she felt every one of them like a bee-sting.
“Do we have a course charted?” Her eyes were on the sky.
Warnings kept flaring on her screen. She risked a glance at her co-captain. He was a man with a one-track mind, and that mind was on their escape.
“Keep pushing, head for the abyss, we can try and lose them in there–they won’t follow us long in the dark.”
Reina put everything into the hyperdrive, desperately trying to gain a good enough lead, zig-zagging and avoiding any approaching blasts. They gained some speed but not enough to lose the worst of them.
“We’ve lost some of them.”
“We may still lose ourselves, we need to go faster!” he yelled.
“I can’t!”
“Take over the guns. I’m going under, don’t get us killed.”
She shot him another glance as his body went stiff. Locked down and powered up. His hands hovered over his console as sparks of electricity shot from his palms to the screen. The ship thrust forward and she could feel her systems’ distress. Reina couldn’t see it, but she hoped they left a trail of plasma lightning in their wake.
A hail flagged her screen from a nearby ship. She ignored it and flew further into the scary dark.
Please don’t follow us. Please don’t follow us. Please don’t want what we have badly enough to chase us down. Why do I keep being in the wrong place at the wrong time?