by Aurelia Skye
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Amourisa Press and Kit Tunstall, writing as Aurelia Skye, reserve all rights to MEANT FOR THE CYBORG CAPTAIN. This work may not be shared or reproduced in any fashion without permission of the publisher and/or author. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
© Kit Tunstall, 2017
Edited by N.G. and CM Editing Services
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Meant For The Cyborg Captain (Celestial Mates and Cybernetic Hearts #4)
Aurelia Skye
Blurb
Celestial Mates—Romancing the Galaxy…
Human Heather Sanchez and the cyborg captain, MX409, have been working together for weeks—and he’s driving her crazy. She doesn’t have time to absorb the sudden epiphany that her annoyance springs from an attraction to the stubborn cyborg—an attraction that’s clearly mutual—before they discover a secret synth base that could be the key to defeating their enemy forever. They have to act quickly to avoid the amassing synthetic army, and if they aren’t successful, it means doom for humans and cyborgs. Her thoughts should be solely on survival, not on anticipating claiming MX as her mate.
Can a human woman find true love with a cyborg captain while fighting a massive army of synthetics? Find out in this latest installment in the Celestial Mates (and Cybernetic Hearts) series, brought to you by USA Today bestselling author Kit Tunstall, writing as Aurelia Skye.
Chapter One
Heather Sanchez jammed her hat more firmly on her hair in hopes it would provide some protection from the wind blowing tiny particles of dust that managed to get everywhere, but especially in her eyes. It was the third time she’d adjusted her hat since they had started the morning search, and it was starting to irritate her.
Honestly, the biggest source of irritation was her search partner, rather than her white hat. Not that she could call it white anymore, and she wasn’t certain she could call MX409 a partner by any means. They had been working together for the last three weeks, but they were no closer to finding either a new source for terbium, or a location to where they could relocate the human enclave. It was frustrating, and she had just about reached her limit of endurance.
He came to stand beside her, his hand brushing against her shoulder as though she needed to be alerted he was there. Of course he was there. He was always there, except when she escaped to her quarters at night, and even then, he seemed to plague her dreams and her waking thoughts.
Who could blame her for not wanting to work in close quarters with him after he’d killed her great-grandmother? He’d apologized for that and seemed sincere in his claim that it was an accident, but Elena was still dead. She had to breathe deeply not to shrug off his light touch, which naturally fell off her shoulder a moment later. She looked at him, cocking an eyebrow since it was difficult to hear anything or anyone over the wind whipping around them.
“We should probably check the stabilizer system,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “What’s the point? It’s just going to tell us what we already know—the stabilizers are slowly failing, and it won’t be long until the entire enclave collapses under the weight of the rock above it.”
He frowned. “We should still check to see how much of a difference it’s recording today versus yesterday. Right now, it seems gradual, but it could—”
“Suddenly and abruptly change.” She bit out the words tersely. “I’m familiar with your reasons. I’m just sick of it. I’m sick of all of this.”
He was frowning now and clearly confused. Perhaps he had a right to be, since she had been completely polite with him until this point. In fact, she had been practically icy in her engagement with him, doing her best to hide anything she was feeling beyond professional interest. She couldn’t explain why it was all coming to a head today, but she was sick of it and could no longer keep it in.
“I understand your frustration, and I share it, but we must continue to search for an alternative.”
She shrugged and threw up her hands. “Fine, then let’s hit another sector we haven’t checked yet. Anything to speed this up.” She jerked past him, her elbow accidentally colliding with his stomach as she did so.
A moment later, he caught up with her, his hand tight on her upper arm, but not so firm as to hurt. She tried to resist when he attempted to turn her to face him, but her average frame and average height did nothing to give her leverage when she was resisting the strength of a cyborg. She was certain he was holding back too. Finally, with a grunt, she yielded and looked at him. “What?”
“I do understand your frustration, but I’m not certain why you’re venting it on me. We’re in this together.”
She snorted. “No, we aren’t. You have a safe base where you can go, but my people have nothing. We’ve lost Abuelita, my grandfather turned out to be a traitor, and now our very home is crumbling around us. How can you possibly understand any of that?”
His lips tightened. “I might not understand, but I can empathize. We have challenges as well, including the fact that harvesting our main energy source is risking your enclave. We haven’t found another source of terbium, and if we don’t, and this is the last vein, my people face extinction as well. Probably not for ten or twenty years if we continue to mine as deeply as we can, but it’s a concern for us too.”
“In ten or twenty years,” she said mockingly. “You’d understand the urgency the humans feel at this very moment.”
He sighed and seemed to be trying to take a step back to bring calm back to the situation. For some reason, that only exacerbated her ill temper.
“Then let’s see what we can find together, but please don’t take your frustrations out on me.”
She glared at him, taking a step forward before she could call back the urge. Her face was near his, and she was certain his skin should have been burning from the fire in her eyes by that point. “You’re a continuing source of frustration. You, yourself.”
He drew in a ragged breath, and he seemed to be steeling himself. “I understand that as well. I know I shot your great-grandmother, and there are only so many times I can apologize. It was an accident—”
“I know that.” She cut him off before he could continue. “It still doesn’t make it any easier to work with you when your presence, your very proximity, just rubs me the wrong way.”
As she said the words, an epiphany practically smacked her in the face. She took a step back automatically and drew in a harsh breath. “You’re right. This isn’t productive, and we should just continue. I apologize.” She was trying to go for stiff and aloof again, suddenly needing it more than anything. When he didn’t argue, she turned around and started walking again, very conscious of him just a step behind her and slightly off to her right.
How could she have missed it for so long? For three weeks, she’d felt this
building inside and had attributed it all to her anger and frustration with the situation. It hadn’t occurred to her until that very moment that it was a different kind of frustration entirely that was prompting her response.
How the hell could she be so attracted to a cyborg, and not just any cyborg, but the one who had shot her great-grandmother? It made no sense, and even after working with him for three weeks, he was still a stranger in many ways. They didn’t talk or share confidences, so it had to be all purely physical.
That didn’t make it much easier to accept though, but at least she could comfort herself with the knowledge that perhaps it was simply a biological function and nothing more. It wasn’t as though there were many men in the enclave who were in her age group, and despite his light blue skin with its luminescent veins, which was completely foreign compared to the men of the enclave, he was still quite attractive.
His body was all hard muscle and lean planes, with a handsome face and a thick head of dark hair. She didn’t know if the process of becoming a cyborg somehow perfected each one’s form, or if they had just been uncommonly attractive before their conversions, but she had yet to see one who wasn’t physically appealing. They were all attractive, so that had to be all this was—a simple physical reaction based on pheromones and chemicals inside her brain and body. There was nothing more to it than that.
She was engrossed in her thoughts, and it took her a moment to realize that when he put his hand on her shoulder, it wasn’t just to get her attention to talk more. Instead, he pressed his finger to his lips and nodded down at the sensor he carried. It was a modified version of the one Leith had retrieved from her grandfather’s room, and it showed they were about to approach four synthetics.
She nodded her head in acknowledgment and pulled out her pulser, grasping it in her left hand before taking her sidearm with her right. Her nerves shuddered, but it was starting to become commonplace to deal with these things. That happened when you were out exploring the surface of the planet every day for three weeks. She wasn’t afraid, but was wary as they approached.
Chapter Two
Dispatching them was a seamless process, and she and MX had gotten quite good at the routine. They alternated pulsing and shooting, until all four synthetics had been dispatched. At that point, they dragged them somewhere out of the cleared area through which they had been walking, hiding the bodies behind boulders. Other synthetics would soon discover them, but they hoped to be out of the area before that happened.
As she was standing up from having crouched to cover one of the bodies as best she could with some rocks, she realized they had displaced another set of stones, revealing the opening to a cave. There was too much interference from the surface to allow her to get a good reading of what was inside, but she could see enough from looking in to know that they would have room to stand up once they passed the first couple of feet of the entrance. “We should check this out.”
He didn’t argue, and she wasn’t certain whether to be relieved or disappointed. His lack of argument meant they could get exploring that much quicker, but also left her with unshed frustration. Remembering her epiphany, she decided perhaps that was for the best. Letting her outrage flow might unintentionally reveal something she didn’t want him to know.
She slithered in first before he could object or try to block the path. More than once, they had argued over who would go first, and he was still no more likely to yield to her than he had been in the beginning. She was simply trying to do her part as well, and not hide behind the cyborg for protection.
She didn’t miss his little huff of irritation as she passed by him, realizing just how close they were as she wiggled into the cave entrance. He was right behind her, and she could sense his presence even before she felt his hand rest lightly on her hip for a moment as he righted his position. She tried not to let it bother her and continued forward, crouched over until she could finally stand up a couple of feet later.
He stood up directly behind her, and for a long moment, her back pressed against his front. She took a quick step forward before she could analyze whether or not he had any sort of reaction to her proximity. Through the lens of her new perspective, and accepting her attraction to him, she could freely admit to herself she certainly had a reaction to being that close to him. Her heart was racing, and her palms suddenly felt damp. She tried to wipe them discreetly on the side of her pants, though it was difficult with both of her weapons, which she had extracted before entering the cave.
Sensors detected more when they were inside the cave, but still had only limited range of information. It had been like that with every network of caves they had explored thus far, and she was kind of getting used to going in blind, though she certainly didn’t enjoy the prospect. At least MX provided illumination in the form of a headlamp, and it provided enough bluish light to illuminate the path before them without spreading so far that it would give any synthetics in the area warning of their approach. She hoped.
She turned her head to glance at MX so he could hear her whisper as well. “Is your sensor detecting any synthetics?”
“Not so far. I only see the blue dot for myself.”
She wanted to be reassured by that, but knew she couldn’t take it completely at face value. The sensors didn’t work well with the thick walls of the cave, or at least they hadn’t in other instances. More than once, they had rounded a corner and been confronted with a couple of synthetics, though she hadn’t been able to figure out why they were using the tunnels underground when synthetics were practically impervious to all of the conditions that might manifest themselves aboveground. The blowing wind and occasional dust storms didn’t seem to faze synthetics at all.
They moved deeper into the interior, and she was painfully conscious of every time her body collided with his. When he rubbed against her for the fourth or fifth time, she stopped walking and spun to face him. “Can you please keep some distance between us?”
His scowl was visible from the light on his head, and it was bright enough to irritate her eyes, but not so bright as to keep her from seeing him roll his eyes.
“How should I do that? I’m trying to stay close enough that you can benefit from my light, since you’re too stubborn to wear one of your own.”
She bared her teeth at him. “I’m not being stubborn. If I don’t wear the hat, the dust gets in my eyes.”
He smirked down at her. “I think it has more to do with protecting your hair. Humans are silly about their vanities.”
“I hate this. I just want it all to be over.” If Leith hadn’t placed her in charge of finding a new home for the enclave, or finding a solution with the cyborgs, she would’ve struck out on her own. Unfortunately, Leith had agreed to work with the cyborgs, which meant she had agreed when she had accepted the assignment.
He frowned. “What’s with your bad mood today? Normally, you’re easy to get along with.”
She gritted her teeth and spoke through them. “I usually manage to suppress my irritation with you. I’m just not as successful today.”
He shook his head. “What have I done to frustrate you?”
She snorted. “You’ve been yourself. That’s all you have to do. It’s clear you think you’re superior to humans, and this whole assignment is beneath you.”
His eyes narrowed, and she cursed herself for noticing how thick his dark eyelashes were as they framed his cool blue eyes.
“It’s true that cyborgs are superior to humans in many ways, but that doesn’t mean this assignment is beneath me.”
She shook her head. “And that right there is exactly why you’re annoying to work with. You don’t even try to hide your disdain.”
He scowled. “I’m not disdainful. I’m simply agreeing with you that cyborgs are physically and emotionally superior to humans.”
Heather let out a harsh laugh that had little amusement. “How are you emotionally superior? It’s my understanding you are the same as you were in that regard before your conv
ersion. The process might make you physically perfect, but your perfect body can’t offset your acerbic personality.”
“Cyborgs still feel emotions, but with our past mostly erased during the conversion from human to cyborg, we aren’t as burdened by memories as humans. We’re better able to control ourselves.”
“Or maybe you were just a cold fish before, and you’re still a cold fish.” She waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter. This entire conversation is just stupid. We need to get on with this.” Without waiting for a reply from him, she spun on her toes and continued walking forward.
Her pace was faster than it had been, and perhaps less cautious than she should be. That was probably why it took her a moment to realize the ground was shifting underneath her. She let out a small cry of alarm and reached out for anything to hold onto, but found only smooth walls from the cave. She slid down slowly at first, until the rock under her feet completely gave way, and she found herself falling at a much faster pace.
The fall abruptly ended with a crash against the ground, and she cried out as pain radiated outward from her hip, where she had landed, and throughout her body to exacerbate the already painful jar of landing so hard.
Chapter Three
MX didn’t hesitate to jump after her, which was not the wisest course. He should have been more cautious in his approach, determining the extent of the damage to the floor of the cave and ensuring he wasn’t about to make the problem worse instead of just blindly plunging after her. He couldn’t explain the lapse in protocol, but he could justify it by his instinctive concern for the human.
Fortunately, he landed lightly on his feet, though there was certainly a jarring thud on the ground beneath him as it vibrated under the strength of his landing. She had fallen a few feet away, and he moved to her quickly. It felt like time had slowed, and his heart was no longer beating as he crossed the last few steps between him and Heather. When he reached her and realized she was still conscious and breathing, he could suddenly breathe again too. His heart resumed beating, though he suspected it had never stopped. He simply hadn’t noticed it in his panic.