“I can’t believe you’re still in here! The stench! Get cleaned up and get up to the bridge, Jared! You, too, Kane! The bastards are coming back! Somebody’s going to have to clean up this mess and it sure as hell isn’t going to be me!”
Rubbing his throat, Damon got to his feet hurriedly as Chloe turned and stalked out, bracing himself for a resumption of the fight. Jared merely glared at him, however. “You heard the captain! Swab the room! And get cleaned up!”
“Fucking assholes!” one the cyborgs muttered when Jared and Kane had left. “I do not believe the gods damned port authority was here as long as they left us in that gods damned sewer!”
Damon studied the man speculatively for a moment, but he didn’t see any advantage to himself in voicing his opinion that it was entirely because Jared saw him as a threat. He shrugged. “The sooner we clean up, the sooner we can bathe.”
“And we are liable to have to go right back if the authorities catch up to us again!” one of the others growled.
“I do not think so,” Damon responded. “If they are coming back, then they are no longer in any doubt that we are on this ship.”
* * * *
Chloe was pacing the bridge nervously when Jared and Kane finally arrived. She glanced at them, did a double-take and stared at them open-mouthed. “Oh my god! Did … did that happen at the ranger’s station?”
Jared and Kane shifted uncomfortably, glanced at one another in a search for an answer, and looked at Chloe again.
Jared flushed slightly. “What?”
Chloe frowned, started to inform him that he was beat and banged to hell and gone, and then decided against it. She found it hard to believe he couldn’tfeelthe damage. It occurred to her, though, that she had no idea whether they had sensors to detect biological damage or not or if, in fact, they had any way of knowing when they were damaged. It certainly seemed like they would, especially being soldiers, but maybe the company thought it would be better if theydidn’treact to harm inflicted upon them? They certainly couldn’t react if they didn’t know about it.
It occurred to her almost immediately that that didn’t make any sense. They were damned expensive pieces of equipment. Whether they’d been designed to fight and die or not a certain degree of self-preservation would’ve been installed to protect the investment as much as possible.
They’d beenfightingwith the other cyborgs, she realized abruptly! She’d been too focused on the imminent danger of another encounter with authorities of the Osirus star system to really register it beyond noticing that they seemed to be wrestling one another. Considering the condition of the deck, though, she’d thought it was some sort of accident caused by trying to offer resuscitation to the poor cyborgs who’d been confined in the ship’s sewage holding tank for hours.
Jared hadliedto her! He hadn’t been trying to resuscitate Damon! He’d been trying to choke the life out of him!
Uneasiness flickered through her, but far more confusion than anything else and she abruptly dismissed both when she remembered why she’d summoned them. “I think we’re being chased, but I don’t know what to think of it.”
Jared and Kane both frowned curiously, glanced at one another, and surged toward her.
“Why do you not know what to think of it?” Kane demanded.
“They haven’t hailed us. I’m actually not really used to breaking the law, but don’t you think they should’ve hailed us and ordered us to stop if it was the authorities?”
Jared and Kane moved close enough to study the blip on the screen with frowning intensity, as if they could discern what it was just by the flashing cursor. “There is no interference that might have prevented them from hailing the ship?” Jared asked.
“Not that I could tell. Of course, it didn’t occur to me at first that there was anything strange about it. I only checked after it did, and then I went down to find the two of you …. There weren’t any messages when I got back to the bridge, though.”
“You are certain they are chasing us and not merely also leaving the system?” Kane asked.
Chloe chewed her lip. “I don’t know. I thought they were. Now I’m wondering if I’m just being paranoid.”
They both focused on her for a long moment and she was beginning to think that was exactly what they thought when Jared shattered that illusion. “It is too coincidental, I think, that they left directly behind us to dismiss the possibility.”
“Who would be chasing us, though, if it wasn’t the authorities?”
“Company reps who had come to collect the cyborgs we now have?”
Chloe gaped at him. “That just doesn’t make sense! I mean, I see where it’s possible that they might’ve been informed the rangers had them, and that they might have been heading there to pick them up, but the authorities cleared us.”
“Mayhap they were not as convinced as the port authority?” Jared said thoughtfully.
“Yes, but they don’t have any authority at all! They couldn’t make us hand them over even if we stopped and we don’t have to stop for them. We wouldn’t have to allow them on board and I certainly wouldn’t be obligated to turn over the cyborgs just because they demanded it. Maybe it’s the rangers? They know we’ve got them and not only did one of the locals tell me they were a bunch of thugs using their badges to their advantage, but you saw how they were yourself!”
“It is not the rangers,” Kane said flatly.
Chloe glanced at him quickly, but she decided not to ask him why he was so certain it wasn’t the rangers. “Maybe other rangers, then. There were four in the station, but that doesn’t mean that’s all there was of the gang—uh—all of them.”
