Kameron shrugged. “If she does, it is certain to make a good impression upon her that she did not succeed in terminating me. There are not many who have faced her in battle and walked away from it.”
Damien considered that and finally nodded again. “A female would not respect a male she could best in a fight. It says that in the mating manual. ‘Females will only agree to breed with strong males’.”
A look of uneasiness flickered across Kameron’s features. “There must be more to it than that.”
Damien shrugged. “It also says that you must be ‘attractive’ to the female and find ‘favor’.”
Kameron pursed his lips. “What do you suppose they meant by that?”
“That is the ‘courtship’ part,” Damien responded, nodding decisively.
Kameron glared at him. “I have accessed the manual, as well,” he retorted testily. “It seemed to me that the female must find the male attractive, first, before she will even allow courtship. How is one to determine that?”
Damien stared at him blankly for several moments, considering it, and then shrugged. “I am not certain.” He reviewed the file for anything that might explain it. “I must suppose that a male can only determinethatif the female allows him to court her.”
Kameron shoved to his feet and began to prowl the bridge restlessly. “It also says that a female will study the male with interest if she finds him attractive,” he growled. “I have not noted that any of the females study the cyborgs with interest, have you? They are far too busy studying the hunters. How did the others get a female? That is what I would like to know!”
“Gideon CS46721 and his men, Jerico CS98300, and Gabriel CS61167 have contracted with a human female.”
Kameron jolted to a halt and swiveled around to stare at Damien, his jaw sliding to half mast. “Ahumanfemale?” he echoed after a prolonged moment of disbelieving silence.
“It is in the news dispatches,” Damien said.
Kameron surged to the console and shoved Damien out of the way. “Where?” he demanded.
Damien glared at him when he’d gotten to his feet again, but finally shrugged. “They were in route to our world. It was the group that was sent on the mission to extract a doctor.”
Kameron flicked a distracted glare at him. “Cyborgs,” he muttered. “Why would a human female accept Cyborgs when even the Cyborg females favor the hunters?”
Damien shrugged, although Kameron wasn’t looking at him. “Mayhap they forced her to sign the contracts?” he guessed.
Kameron turned to glare at him. “It says right here that she accepted them!” he said, stabbing a finger at the vid screen. “She was assured that she would be protected if they had used coercion to get her to agree, and she accepted them. She even claimed affection for them!”
Shoving to his feet, Kameron began to pace again. “They are not more handsome than I,” he muttered under his breath. “I am a series 45. I cannot believe that they would have evolved faster than I, so it cannot be that they have a better understanding of the courtship process.”
“Gideon CS46721 has yellow hair,” Damien pointed out. “Mayhap the female found that appealing?”
Kameron halted, staring at Damien for several moments while he accessed his memory banks. Finally, he shook his head. “Jerico CS98300 and Gabriel CS61167 are dark haired as we are. It cannot be that. There are as many of dark hair who have a female as there are who are fair.”
Damien frowned, reluctant to give up his theory, particularly when it soothed his own smarting ego to consider that the fact that he hadn’t managed to catch the interest of a female might have to do with coloring. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more certain he was that it must be something like that. Physically, aside from coloring—and of course a variation in facial features depending upon their genetic donors—there wasn’t a great deal of difference in any of the cyborgs. They had been designed to be physically appealing since the company had wanted to insure versatility in their end use, but it was considered most likely that they would be sold to the government to be used for soldiers—which, in point of fact, they had been. That being the case, they had been designed to be physically intimidating, ranging in height from six foot two to six foot five inches and heavily muscled.
They were all prime physical specimens. All documentation pointed to that conclusion, so there should not be any reason why one cyborg would be more appealing than another to the female—unlessit had to do with the coloring.
“I am certain it must have been the yellow hair,” he informed Kameron. “They work as a team. Gideon took point—secured the female—and then she accepted them all because they were a squad and she saw the logic of contracting with the squad since she would have been required to accept at least two.”
“It wasnotthe yellow hair!” Kameron growled. “And human females have no logic, so she would not merely have accepted because it was the logical thing to do!”
Damien planted his fists on his hips in a belligerent stance. “What is your theory then?” he demanded.
Kameron eyed the antagonistic stance Damien had taken. “I do not have a theory … yet. I am still collating the data,” he snarled.
“If you do not have a theory of your own,” Damien said in a low, menacing voice, “then why have you dismissed mine?”
“Because it is not logical!”
“Emotions are not logical!” Damien shot back at him.
“Attraction is not an emotion! It is a physical and chemical reaction between a male and female that denotes compatibility in breeding on an unconscious level! In other words, instinct—because the human is an animal and animals are instinctually drawn to certain attributes that they subconsciously wish to pass to their off-spring! It states that clearly in the manual!”
