The Cyborg Next Door

by Bianca D’Arc

  Roxy reached up and kissed him quick, right there in the view of her trainees. She didn’t want to hide their relationship, anymore. Not when he was willing to stand by her side like this. She wouldn’t disrespect his commitment by not giving him one in return.

  “You’re a good man, Chiron,” she told him, moving back and giving him a smile as she headed for the suit lockers. He followed right behind.

  He helped her find a suit in her size, and even helped her put it on and test all the seals. He had his own armor of course, which was fitted to him and space worthy, so they stopped by their shared quarters to get him into his own suit. When the station had been evacuated, all the cyborgs had been wearing their armor, so at least the men on this ship had good equipment. Getting the women kitted out was going to be Roxy’s next project, she decided. Just as soon as they had enough water.

  They were down at the cargo bay doors within minutes. Roxy had used the travel time to get more familiar with her suit’s controls. She’d tested the helmet in engineering but wasn’t wearing it for the travel down to the cargo bay. She and Chiron would seal each other’s helmets and check telemetry before they entered the personnel lock that would cycle them into the bay that currently had no atmosphere and was open to space.

  She’d brought a tool chest with her. It was equipped with hover capabilities, but Chiron was just carrying it, proving once again how incredibly strong he was with those cyber enhancements. Artificial gravity was still operational inside the cargo bay, but the closer they got to the open bay doors, the more iffy the gravitational field.

  “Don’t forget to activate your magnetic cleats, Rox,” Chiron reminded her, taking her helmet from her hands and giving her a last, lingering kiss before helping her put on the final bit of her suit and locking it in place. Air began to flow, and telemetry of the suit popped up on her heads-up display as soon as the locks on her shoulders engaged.

  “Bend down a bit,” she told him, doing the same for him. Chiron probably didn’t need her help getting into his armor, but he was humoring her impulse to care for him the way he’d cared for her. She looked into his eyes and smiled, the faceplates of both their suits separating them. “Thanks for coming with me.”

  “No problem,” he told her gently. “Just stay close, and if you need something done, I’m here to help, okay?”

  She nodded, though it was hard to make the motion in the suit. “Let’s do this.”

  Chiron wasn’t happy cycling them through the personnel lock into the open cargo bay, but he knew there was little choice. Roxy had the expertise needed to fix the grapple and get the ice on board. Without taking on more water, they would all have a very short trip, so getting it aboard was a necessity. Even if they failed to bring the ice aboard, they still had to fix the grapple in order to retract it and close the bay doors.

  Right now, they were sitting ducks if the chunky tail of the comet decided to do something erratic. They were holding a tiger by the tail, and the tiger might just turn around and bite them.

  When the atmosphere in the lock dissipated, the door to the open bay was opened. There was no sound, other than their own breathing within each suit, but the view that met them was…amazing.

  The bright tail of the comet shone out the large bay doors, bigger than the doors, bigger then the ship itself. The comet tail was a massive, roiling collection of rocks and ice chunks, reflecting the light of the binary stars at the center of this system. They were closer than any sane ship handler would stay to the tail of a comet, but they had no choice. The grapples were deployed and locked onto a chunk of ice that was nearly as big as the cargo bay itself.

  The bridge crew had chosen well. The ice chunk would fit nicely into the bay and was at the very edge of the comet’s debris-strewn trail. Easy to grab, and it should have been easy to reel in, but for the malfunctioning mechanism.

  “Now, that’s something you don’t see every day.” Roxy’s voice came to him through his helmet speakers.

  She, like him, had stopped short, watching the incredible view, but they couldn’t dally. They had work to do. She seemed to realize it too, because she started shuffling forward on her magnetized cleats, even though the gravity this close to the hatch was still active and strong.

  With magnets on your boots, you had to keep one foot in contact with the hull, at all times, for them to be effective, so a sort of shuffling gait worked best. Chiron was glad to see Roxy moving with confidence. She’d done this before. She wasn’t a novice at zero g maneuvers. If something were to happen to the gravity closer to the edge of the bay—as they’d been warned—she would be able to handle it.

  “Could you help me with this cover?” Roxy asked. She’d made it to the base of the mechanism and was trying to pry off the lid that sealed the unit. Chiron went over to her and lifted the cover away with one hand. She smiled up at him. “Show off.”

  He chuckled. He couldn’t help it. Roxy just made him feel happy, no matter what the circumstances, it seemed.

  He watched as she began going over the mechanism, removing a few things and following the wiring with one finger while she muttered to herself. All too soon, she was shaking her head and standing up.

  “The problem isn’t here. We’ll have to go down the length of the grapple line. It’s likely hung up closer to the bay doors.”

  Chiron didn’t like the sound of that. From Roxy’s tone, she didn’t like it either. The grapple line was taut, but there was still some play in it—enough to make Chiron a bit more than nervous about Roxy having to go anywhere near it.

  “I’ll go first,” he told her, resigned to their fate. Somebody needed to fix this thing or the ship wasn’t going anywhere.

  Chiron tried his best to shield Roxy from the worst of the grapple’s motion. The grapple itself was a man-sized collection of cables and metal parts that, this far inside the ship, was linked together to form one bundle of components. Up near the connection to hoisting mechanism, the grouping of cables, wires and power conduits was relatively stable, but as they moved along the length of the bundle, there was more motion. More play in the components, more sway in the giant mass, and more danger of being knocked over or crushed by a sudden movement.

  Roxy was going over the bundle in meticulous detail. A failure anywhere along the line could be causing the entire problem. Chiron advanced, getting closer to the open bay doors, trying to keep himself between Roxy and the ongoing light show just outside the hatch.

  As he’d feared, the gravity was getting iffy, the closer they got to the open doors. That wasn’t the way things normally happened. It was a product of the age of the ship they were in. The Toby had probably been top of the line when it was built so many years ago, but hard use and time had led to a deterioration in almost all of its systems. It was still sturdy enough for casual use, but the aged ship was being put through all its paces in this endeavor.

  Ice mining was usually only done by deep space explorer ships, not in-system cargo haulers. Water and other supplies were more commonly loaded on at very comfortable space stations or orbiting dockyards under much more civilized circumstances. While all of the larger ships had the capacity to scavenge the galaxy for needed materials, such things came under the heading of emergency procedures, more often than not.

  “I think I found something,” Roxy said over the speakers in his suit helmet. Thank goodness.

  She paused at a joint in the bundle where it looked like several power cables had run afoul of a mechanical retraction joint. If the joint wasn’t cleared, the bundle couldn’t move any farther back into the ship.

  “Do you need help?” he asked, formulating plans in his mind.

  “No. I got this. Thanks,” she told him, already sitting to work.

  They were about two-thirds of the way down the bundle toward the open door. Chiron planted his feet, his back facing Roxy so he could keep an eye on the motion of the ice chunk just beyond the hull.

  So far, the bundle had only moved a few feet either way,
in a slow twisting motion for which they were able to compensate. The ice chunk was still moving out there. The grapples had pulled it only slightly away from the rest of the debris field that formed the comet’s tail.

  Chiron knew the ship could try to pull away from the comet even farther, but the uncertain movements of the large ice ball made any maneuvering away from the parallel course difficult to calculate. Tethered as they were to the irregularly shaped mass, the wrong move could prove fatal, drawing them into the comet’s tail to be hammered by the rest of the debris, or flung into the main body of the comet itself. Neither were good scenarios. The safest course of action was the one they were pursuing. If Roxy could find the fault and fix it, they could finish pulling the ice into the ship, close the bay doors, and get the hell away from the irregular motion of the comet’s tail.

  “Brace!” Chiron was shouting his warning even before his mind fully recognized the threat. He put one arm around Roxy and tried to move her, but she was held fast by her magnetized boots.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Roxy had started to move away from the bundle, but it wasn’t enough as the ice at the end of the grapple was hit by another chunk of debris and knocked sideways, causing it to spin and the bundle of cables inside the ship to undulate like a bucking bronco. It hit Chiron in the side, knocking him flat, but Roxy took a greater hit that was forceful enough to detach her cleats from the hull. She went flying across the hold, hitting the wall only inches from the open bay doors.

  “Shit!” Chiron was up and moving at once.

  He jumped clear over the bucking cable, using the weaker gravitational field near the edge of the ship to help him swim toward his goal. He had to get to Roxy!

  Her feet were drifting upward, the magnets on her boots not in contact with any of the metallic parts of the ship. As her feet drifted toward the open door, he cursed the fact that they hadn’t had the proper safety equipment to do a job like this. Where was the long tether she should have been wearing? Where were the bots that should have been sent inside first, allowing the engineer to diagnose the problem from afar?

  He cursed the old ship and the previous crew that had allowed so much to deteriorate or just disappear from storage. And he cursed himself for letting her go into such a dangerous situation, and for not being in the right place to prevent her from being tossed around like a rag doll.

  “Roxy! Can you hear me?” he practically shouted at her over their suit comms as he made her way toward her.

  “I’m okay,” she said in a gasping breath that didn’t go a long way toward convincing him she was speaking the truth.

  “Rox, your feet. Can you plant them on the wall or something?” He saw her trying to pump her legs like she was riding a bicycle or something, but it was no good.

  “Can’t,” she said shortly, giving up the awkward motion. “But I’ve got a good handhold,” she insisted. “Bad gravity here,” she added, as if he hadn’t already realized.

  “Just hang on. I’ll be there in a moment.”

  Chiron calculated how far the fumes left in his armor’s maneuvering jets might take him. He could probably get to her quicker, but after that he’d be under his own power all the way back. He needed to have her in his arms, but he also had to be practical. The wiser course of action was to do what he was already doing. Coast over to her under his own power, then use whatever microns of fuel remained to get them to a safer location.

  All the while, the bundle of components bucked and waved, banging against the bay doors. If they closed properly again after all this abuse, Chiron would be amazed. He kept one eye on the grapple line and the rest of his focus on Roxy. She was holding on for now, and he was almost…almost there.

  Then, there was no more distance between them, and he took her in one arm, using the other to hold onto the hull of the ship. He didn’t bother magnetizing his boots, again. He’d move faster in the low g with his suit thrusters.

  “How are you doing?” he asked her, lowering his head so he could meet her gaze through their faceplates.

  He had one arm clamped around her suit, and she returned the favor. They each had one hand wrapped around a convenient metal pipe that ran perpendicular to the floor of the cargo bay. What it contained, he had no idea, but it seemed sturdy enough, and he was glad for its presence.

  “I’m okay,” she repeated. “What about you? That thing knocked you flat. I saw it.”

  “My armor protected me,” he replied. He wouldn’t complain about the aches and pains he knew would show up later. For now, he was fine. “You ready to get a little farther away from the door?”

  She nodded. “More than ready. What’s your plan?”

  He loved her confidence in him. If he could’ve kissed her right then, he would have. Long and deep and hard. Just like he would make love to his Roxy after this was all over.

  “My armor’s maneuvering jets have just a little juice left. I think it’ll be enough to get us back to where you were working. At the very least, they’ll take us far enough for the gravity to pick up again, then we can walk the rest of the way on our cleats.” He wouldn’t recommend running. Not with the uncertain gravity. Having at least one foot in contact with the deck at all times was the safest way to go, even with the writing grapple only a few feet away.

  “Why wasn’t your armor fully loaded?” Roxy’s question wasn’t the one he’d been expecting.

  He almost laughed at the indignant tone of her voice. She was mad that he hadn’t been provisioned fully. Well, not madder than he’d been when he realized the military wasn’t going to give the cyborg troops their full ration of weapons or fuel on Eagle Nest Station.

  “That was a decision by the station commander. Above my pay grade,” he said, shaking his head slightly.

  “They didn’t want you at full power,” she concluded correctly. “They were afraid of you.”

  Chiron shrugged. “Possibly. Or maybe they were just cheap.”

  Roxy chuckled, and it was music to his ears. His cyborg brothers were privy to their communications, because Chiron had kept the channel open to them. He knew some of them were also amused by Roxy’s attitude. Some were touched. And some still couldn’t really comprehend how an unmodified human woman could have so much compassion and understanding for a cyborg.

  “Are you ready?” he asked, already running calculations in his processor as to duration of burn, distance and probable gravitational resumption.

  In answer, she removed her hand from the pipe and placed it around him. Essentially, she was demonstrating without words how much she trusted him. With her life. Chiron felt humbled by the gesture as she smiled up at him.

  “Ready when you are,” she told him brightly. “Just don’t drop me.”

  “As if,” he scoffed a moment before he sent them into a near-weightless tumble back toward the interior of the ship and the malfunctioning grapple assembly.

  About halfway there, gravity started to kick in again, and they began drifting toward the floor. Chiron righted them and allowed their feet to touch down first.

  “Magnetic cleats on,” Roxy reported, adhering her booted feet to the deck. “Damn. That makes me almost want to hurl.”

  “Not in the suit, Rox,” Chiron warned her with a chuckle. “They’re a bitch to clean.”

  He knew what she meant, though. The sudden resumption of gravity after their spinning tumble through near-weightlessness would be enough to make most unmodified humans want to vomit. The cyborgs didn’t have the same impulses anymore, but Chiron remembered the feeling from his early EVA training, when he’d still been one hundred percent human.

  She laughed weakly and began shuffling back toward the point in the bundle where she’d been working. The tools had scattered, the box ricocheting off the walls, leaving new dents, but mercifully, it hadn’t flown out the bay doors. No, it was lodged between two pallets on the far side of the hold. Good enough. They’d leave it there for now, unless Roxy needed something from it.

  The bundle had
settled down again, but Chiron watched it warily as Roxy put the finishing touches on her repair. She asked him to pull on one of the cables in the bundle at one point, and he observed as she carefully untangled a mess within the heart of the bundle. It was interesting work, but he was more worried about the grapple bucking again, so he was thankful when she gave him the signal to let go and began shuffling back toward the personnel hatch.

  “If that was the only malfunction, we should be able to get the grapple moving again,” she told him on their way back. “I’ll trigger it once we’re clear, but let’s not leave the hold just yet, in case there’s another issue.”

  He agreed with her thinking, but he didn’t like her being in the hold any longer than absolutely necessary. He ushered her toward the personnel lock, and they stood inside, together, as Roxy issued commands via the control panel near the door. Slowly, the grapple began to retract, the joint she’d worked on folding in on itself the way it was supposed to. The motion was smooth, and Roxy kept it steady as the ice chunk was pulled farther away from the roiling tail of the comet and closer to the hull.

  “Keep your fingers crossed,” Roxy murmured as they watched the ice chunk draw nearer. “Almost…there…”

  When the ice cleared the bay doors, Chiron almost breathed a sigh of relief. They weren’t completely out of the woods yet, but things were definitely looking up.

  “The ice has arrived,” Roxy announced, switching from suit comms to a line that would connect her with the bridge. “The grapple appears to be working, but I’ll check it thoroughly before we deploy it, again.” That last was a command from the chief engineer. The message was clear. Nobody was going to deploy that grapple again without her say so.

  “Understood,” Medeus replied in what Chiron considered all reasonable tone. “Good work, Chief.”

  Roxy started a bit at the title, and Chiron knew she understood that Medeus had just accepted her as part of his crew. That was a big step for a man—a former fleet commander—who had very high expectations of the people who worked with him. Every one of the cyborgs understood what was expected of them, and performed to the best of their abilities. The civilians on board the Toby weren’t the same.