Hurting Danya was the worst pain he could have inflicted on Vyken. It hurt him more than the bullets he took. It was the closest to tears he had been in all his eighty years. He life wouldn’t mean much if she died. But he couldn’t rest for a moment until she finally opened her eyes and whispered his name.
“Oh, Baby. You scared the hell out of me!” he murmured huskily and kissed the back of her hand.
“What happened?” she asked
“That motherfucker Jacob Black shot you right in front of me. Then he shot me, but that didn’t stop me from killing him,” Vyken growled.
“Are you, all right?” She frowned in concern, her eyes flicking over him, searching for signs of injury.
“I’m fine,” he assured her. “My nanites fixed the damage. You didn’t have enough of mine yet, so we gave you some more and some of my blood. You’re going to be fine in a couple days.”
Danya’s father came to the other side of the treatment lounger and stroked her forehead. “That vicious bastard deserved everything he got. He blamed me for revealing his sick master plan.”
“His only problem with her is that she became my mate,” Vyken said.
“He didn’t know about Maree or her might have gone after her as well,” James said.
“How are things going with her?” Danya asked. “I really like her, but she doesn’t say anything about you.”
“We’re taking it slow,” her father said.
Momentarily, Kydel came in to recheck Danya’s vitals. She was still weak from her ordeal, but the Medic pronounced her well enough to go back to hers and Vyken’s quarters, providing she stayed in bed for at least twenty-four hours---no hanky-panky.
Vyken wasn’t exactly up for it himself after giving a third of his blood to Danya. He had been hurt even worse than Danya during the war and lost close to half his blood and recovered. Now, he just felt tired for the first time in a long time. That didn’t stop him from carrying her in his arms back to their quarters wrapped in a sheet from sickbay. He didn’t want to bother helping her on with clothes just to take them off again when he put her on their bed. For once he didn’t even feel like breeding; he just wanted to feel the warmth of her skin against him.
Once he had her in their bed snuggled against him spoon fashion in his arms, she felt quickly asleep. Vyken couldn’t make himself fall asleep. As close as she had come to death that day he realized that every breath she took was precious. For at least that night, he didn’t want to want to miss a single one.
This was love. Vyken was thankful he had told her he loved before she was hurt before he was terrified that he was going to lose her forever. That one small word seemed so inadequate to describe the petrifying magnitude of his feelings for her. It was like nothing he had ever felt. He had loved and lost far too many brothers and sisters in arms over the years and his good friend Admiral Gregor. But that emotion paled compared to his love for Danya.
He couldn’t even speculate on a future without her. Vyken could only hope that the mass infusion of nanites that saved her life, would also extend her life for many years to come. Theoretically, it should, and he would give her more every time they mated or kissed.
Less than six months into what he expected to be a two-year mission, Vyken wished he could take Danya away from the chaos and violence on Earth. He knew he wouldn’t abandon his mission, and he knew Danya wouldn’t want that. It would never be any different if he didn’t help change it.
He certainly didn’t regret taking this mission, because it brought him to her. Vyken knew now, she was his soulmate, and he was hers. One day they would have the life together he’d hoped for in his wildest dreams.
Vyken Dark had been genetically engineered and born to kill enemies of the Federation. He had killed many, and he would kill more if necessary, but he now knew there was more to life than killing.
There was love, and her name was Danya. It might have been minutes or hours. Vyken pressed his lips to her hair, then closed his eyes and finally slept.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Danya was fully recovered by the next day with two barely visible marks on her skin where the bullet entered and exited. Vyken had several similar marks on his skin that would all fade in time, but he still felt the trauma of seeing Danya shot down in front of him. That would take a lot longer to fade, meanwhile he hardly left her side the next few days.
Unfortunately, three people had witnessed Jacob Black’s grizzly death at Vyken’s hands and were traumatized by it. The Enclave Council, while they agreed he it was justifiable, requested that Vyken not show himself in the residential areas of the Enclave for the time being. He had no regrets. It was just one more killing in a long line of kills throughout his career as a warrior. He would kill anyone who tried to hurt his female and not think twice about it.
“You really don’t remember?” Vyken asked Danya while they ate their morning meal.
“I remember Jacob calling my name. I turned around, then lights out. Then I woke up in sickbay, and you were holding my hand,” she said with a shrug.
“It’s just as well,” Vyken told her, taking a sip of his water. “We should have put Black in the brig on the ship. He couldn’t get out of there.”
“You killed him, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Vyken told her. “He thought his little projectile gun could stop me.”
“Are you in trouble for that?” she wondered.
“No, he tried to kill you and then me, but I don’t kill so easily. There were witnesses, and I’m sorry they had to see that.” He paused meeting her solemn gaze. “I’m glad you didn’t see me do that. I am a killer. We were all bred to be killers. I didn’t have to kill him. I wanted to. When I saw what he did to you, I went berserk.”
“There have been people I’ve wanted to kill,” Danya admitted. “But I’m wasn’t strong enough or skilled enough to do it, and the only weapons we had were knives.”
“Well, I will teach you, and you have your sidearm,” he said. He took the last bite of his protein bar and finished his water. “Are you finished?”
She nodded.
“Good, I want to show you something,” he said. “We can take one of the little hover trams. It’s not that far, and it’s a clear day.”
The hover tram was an open utility vehicle with a seat for two people that hovered a couple feet off the ground. Behind the seat was a small box for hauling tools and supplies around a large property. Vyken helped her into it even though she really didn’t need help and climbed in beside her. He had set the coordinates when he called it. They rode it across the open countryside for about fifteen minutes to a small hill overgrown with grass and weeds with a big bushy maple tree off to the side.
“What do you think of this place for a home?” Vyken asked when they came to a stop.
“I thought you wanted to go to Phantom,” Danya said a little surprised.
“A lot of it has to do with you, I think. Since I have been back here, I’ve started to think of this place as home. This is where I was spawned, right in the Enclave facility. I did some research, and most of the land out here has been abandoned. So, we can just build a house and live here if we want to. We’re outside the boundaries of the Enclave.”
“Sure, if that’s what you want. I’ve never been in space, but I have no great desire to go off-world. But, I would have if you wanted to go there,” Danya said with an affectionate smile.
“I didn’t want to take the assignment when Admiral Gregor asked me. Eighty years of war is enough to wear even a cyborg down. Now that I’ve been here and started the work, I feel like I am needed here. I can do more than just kill beings I’m told to kill. I can build a place where we can make offspring and I can help you raise them.”
“And they would have the chance to know their grandfather,” she said. “I know Dad is not going anywhere.”
“Phantom is a pristine world, and the cyborg colony is only about fifty years old. Our life there would hardly be that different from here.
My brothers want to stay, too now that they’ve seen the plans for the community.”
Danya put her arms around Vyken’s waist and looked up at him, blue eyes sparkling happily. “I would go anywhere with you, Vyken Dark, here is as good a place as any.”
“I love you,” he said softly and lowered his mouth to hers to seal their future with a kiss.
EPILOGUE
Five Years Later
Vyken gently pushed his three-year-old son in the rope swing hanging from the big maple tree in the front yard of their home. Danya walked toward them with the lumbering gait of a heavily pregnant woman.
“Hold on tight Gregor,” she said, smiling at two of the three most important males in her life. Her father was the other.
Danya complained that she felt fat and unattractive, but Vyken didn’t see her that way. How could he not find her beautiful with her baby-laden belly full of the daughter they had made together in the passion of their coupling?
Staying on Earth had been the right decision. It would be years before old Chicago was the booming city it once was but most of the ruins were gone from the heart of it, and new buildings started. There were still pockets in the ruins where overlords ruled violent gangs, but the cyborgs were rooting them out.
Vyken had picked his successor at the end of his two years. It was Agare Jax, and his brothers had all chosen their successors, but they hadn’t decided whether they were going to stay on Earth or head to Phantom.
It seemed pretty clear that even their long lifetimes might not be enough to restore order to Earth and rebuild its civilization. Old Chicago was just one city. There were hundreds of major cities in the world that lay in ruin, existing in a state of anarchy. The whole process could take hundreds of years. Many of the old cities would never be rebuilt.
Vyken wasn’t concerned with them. There were still eight thousand cyborgs in stasis in Peru who could continue what he started. Soon it would be time to make the trip back to Peru to awaken more his cyborg brethren.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christine Myers has been a science fiction fan since seeing the original “Day the Earth Stood Still” at age eight. Her favorite subgenre is space opera romance. Among the most influential in her work are the Lazarus Long novels by Robert Heinlein including “Time Enough for Love”, Marta Randall’s “Journey” and of course “Star Wars”, everything “Star Trek” and “Firefly”.
A lifelong resident of Silver Lake, NY she wrote her first novella at age fifteen. She has a BA in Cultural Studies from Empire State College majoring in creative writing.
OTHER BOOKS BY CHRISTINE MYERS:
THE ALEDAN PSION
OLTARIN
SURVIVING ZEVUS MAR
PSION FACTOR
PSION’S CHILDREN
Vyken Dark: Cyborg Awakenings Book One Page 11