If it had been anyone but Bronte, she would’ve accepted that it was a closed case, impossible to bring to a satisfactory conclusion. Officially, she’d done just that, closed it on orders from her superiors. On a personal level, it sure as hell hadn’t been a closed matter, however, and when she’d found out about the reward the company was offering for information leading to the stronghold of the rogue cyborgs, she’d taken leave from the force, sold everything she had to come up with the money she needed to pursue the case ….
And here she was in the middle of no fucking where, running out of patience because she could see she wasn’t going to crack this case and find her sister.
In a matter of a few weeks, the company she’d leased the Evening Star from was going to report it stolen, and that was the least of her worries. She’d taken two month’s leave, and she’d been gone for three already—no job. She’d sold everything she owned to finance her jaunt—which meant she was flat broke because failure also meant she wasn’t going to get a dime of the reward money she thought she’d get to put her life back together.
“Shit!” she growled, surging out of her seat and prowling the small cockpit area of the Evening Star. “They’ve got to be out here somewhere! They need basically the same things we do, damn it to hell! It isn’t like they could just live on a rock!”
Ok, so technically, they weren’t ‘alive’ to begin with, but they’d been designed and manufactured by humans and she knew from studying the information on the ‘borgs that they had been constructed from almost as much biological material as inorganic and that meant, as far as she could see, that they needed a lot of the same things to sustain them. She’d seen the vids of the abduction. There was no deterioration of the skin or flesh that sheathed their titanium chassis. She might not be a scientist, but it didn’t take that to figure out that the organic materials would’ve been damaged if they’d been living under conditions detrimental to humans.
That comforted her because she knew it meant Bronte had a better chance of staying alive until she could rescue her. It also limited the options insofar as where the rogues were holed up.
She still didn’t quite get that.
She wasn’t buying the story the company had spun on it.
She’d watched the security vids and she damned sure didn’t see anything, beyond the kidnapping itself, that pointed to ‘crazed’. They’d planned and executed a virtually flawless abduction.
She wasn’t buying the ‘wrong place, wrong time’ scenario. Bronte had been clueless. They could’ve gotten in and out and she would never have tumbled to what they were doing.
It didn’t escape her that they took Bronteafterthe alarm had been tripped and the private security force had arrived on the scene.Maybethey’d taken her as a hostage, thinking that would stop them from trying to shoot them down, but not only did something like that require logical thinking, but theyalsohadn’t made any attempt to utilize her as a hostage, hadn’t tried to contact the ships firing on them at all.
They hadn’t used her as a shield when they were fleeing across the roof either. They’d been protecting her from fire.
She stopped pacing when she reached a view port, staring out into the vast ocean of space. She didn’t believe it was wishful thinking to interpret the abduction as she had, although she was aware that she wasn’t as completely subjective as she needed to be. There were just too many things that pointed to a predetermined abduction to dismiss it.
The cyborgs had hit the med center with the intention of taking ‘a’ doctor, if not Bronte in particular. They’d gone straight to her offices, emptied it, and taken her, as well. They hadn’t even attempted to access any of the other offices. There was nothing even remotely random about it, regardless of what those assholes at the company said to the contrary.
The question was, why? Why Bronte? Why a doctor at all when they were nothing but machines? Why hadn’t they hit the company and made off with records regardingtheirconstruction? Why not carry off a tech from the company if they thought they needed something?
“I have determined that there is a sixty percent probability that there is a habitable star system just beyond range of my sensors,” the computer announced abruptly, breaking into Zoe’s thoughts.
* * * *
“I have been thinking,” Kameron announced abruptly.
Damien, who had been perusing the communications from their home world, lifted his head and turned to stare at Kameron blankly, his dark brows drawn together in a frown of puzzlement as he scanned his memory for any indication that Kameron had been speaking to him before, any clue of what Kameron might have been thinking about.
He drew a blank. He could not recall that Kameron had said anything at all to him for several day cycles and the last communication had been regarding the length of time they had until they were relieved of sentry duty and would be allowed to return home. He was fairly certain that they had finished that conversation.
“I have been reviewing the available females,” Kameron continued before Damien could respond, “and I have decided that I will court Dalia. She has only two males in her household.”
“Reuel’s woman?” Damien responded doubtfully.
Kameron glared at him. “The law says she can take four. Reuel cannot object.”
“He will remove your head from your shoulders,” Damien disputed. “Why else do you think Dalia has only two partners? She is beautiful, and a hunter besides being a proven breeder.”
“By law, he cannot object,” Kameron retorted, his face taking on a belligerent expression.
Damien stared at Kameron while he considered the situation. After a few moments, a memory surfaced. It flickered at the edges of his consciousness for a few moments more before it emerged completely. “Is she not the hunter who nearly killed you when we were on Rialto?”
Kameron’s swarthy complexion took on a reddish hue. His frown deepened. “She did not even come close to terminating me,” he said stiffly.
“You came away from that battle with two holes in you and a broken arm,” Damien reminded him.
“Exactly!” Kameron agreed. “Nothing life threatening. She terminated the two who were with me. I escaped while she was occupied with them.”
Damien nodded, then frowned again. “Do you think she will recall that she battled you in the past?”
