Not that she could honestly say she knew him all that well. He wasn’t exactly the open, friendly, or chatty type and aside from their current mission, she’d only been partnered with him on two others. Prior to that, her missions had all been solo, but she’d fucked up royally on her last solo mission--almost gotten herself killed--and Robotics, Inc. had decided to pair her with a partner when she had finally recovered enough to take on another assignment.
She resented it. To err was human. It was only to be expected that, occasionally, somebody would fuck up. That didn’t mean she needed a baby sitter and she knew damn well that was what Reese was--guard dog--because he’d made certain she saw next to no action since he’d been with her.
She figured they’d saddled him with her because of the credits it had cost the company to rebuild her--not that they were actually footing the bill. The credits were coming out of her salary, but she supposed they meant to see to it that she lived long enough to repay her debt and having a topnotch soldier like Reese to watch her was the best way of getting their use out of her and at the same time making sure she was around long enough.
Regardless, it was still a source of embarrassment and irritation. Probably a quarter of the females in the unit were paired with a male partner, so her situation was by no means unique. It was the fact that she had been deemed competent to work alone before and no longer was that irked her.
It also bothered/embarrassed her that Reese had only to glance in her direction to make her feel uncomfortable in a way she didn’t particularly welcome.
She’d been too confused and angry at first to consider the reason for it. Later, she’d put it down to everything except what it really was.
She’d finally been forced to admit, to herself at least, that the fact was that he was a dangerous distraction. She had heart palpitations whenever he looked directly at her--which, for good or bad, was rare--which put her in far more danger, to her way of thinking, than if she hadn’t had a partner at all.
It wasn’t the sort of thing she could complain to the company about, of course. She could well imagine their reaction. ‘Yes, I know he’s a great soldier, a perfect killing machine and a brilliant strategist, but he’s also grade A prime beef and I can’t look at him without my brain going to mush and you don’t even want to know what it does to me when he touches me, however casually. Do you think you could pair me with somebody that doesn’t make me cream in my pants every time I look at him?’
The idea of the expressions such a confession would elicit was almost amusing. Unfortunately, the situation made her feel like a silly schoolgirl in the grips of her first crush, and that didn’t amuse her at all.
Shifting uncomfortably, she glanced down at the hand that rested on his thigh only inches from her own. He had big hands, strong, faintly calloused but perfectly groomed, and long fingers that put all sorts of forbidden thoughts into her head. She couldn’t look at them without feeling her belly clench and having images flood her mind of those hands skating over her body in a slow caress.
Not that she would allow such a thing even if he’d shown any interest and it hadn’t been a court martial offense. To look at her, she didn’t think anyone could tell the years she’d spent in reconstructive surgery. The doctors had assured her no one could feel the difference either, but, deep down, she was afraid they could, that if she allowed anyone intimate access to her body they’d ‘feel’ that she was more mechanical marvel than human. That was one of the reasons she’d never done more than a little experimentation with her sexuality, the other being that she hadn’t run into anyone that could banish the image she still carried around of herself from her birth defects. The few times she’d tried to take a lover, she’d been so self-conscious she couldn’t even enjoy herself, so what was the point?
The soldier sitting across from her, Johnson, who’d been fidgeting nervously since his initial outburst, broke into her thoughts at that moment.
“I really hate this shit! This iswrong,” he muttered irritably.
“As bad as I hate to agree with Johnson--this feels more than a little off to me, too,” she said under her breath.
Reese slid an assessing glance in her direction and her pulse jumped as his cool blue eyes skated over her.
“Pre-battle nerves,” he said succinctly.
Amaryllis glared at him, but it was a wasted effort. He’d gone back to ignoring her.
“It isn’t pre-battle jitters,” she muttered through gritted teeth. “This feels like a tra….”
An explosion, too close for comfort, cut her off. The craft screamed and bucked as if it had hit a wall, shuddering so hard it felt as if it would disintegrate. Amaryllis’ heart slammed into her ribs painfully.
“What the fuck?” Johnson yelped.
“Oh shit!” someone exclaimed.
“Nukes? Are they out of their fucking mind?” Amaryllis exclaimed breathlessly, frantically checking her safety harness.
No one answered, naturally enough, since the question was purely rhetorical. She couldn’t see a damn thing and no one had a clue of whether one of their sister ships had launched the nuke or if the Cyborgs were lobbing nukes at them.
“They’ve thrown up a force field,” the captain announced abruptly, his voice gravelly from the wild jouncing of the ship.
Amaryllis exchanged a look with several of her fellow soldiers. A force field? The long range robo-probes had indicated a crude settlement only—flimsy huts built from vegetation, timber palisade walls. Where the hell had the force field come from?
When they’d set out, she’d thought four squads of hunters would be overkill, but there seemed little doubt now that they’d flown right into a trap—as she’d feared they would. She just hoped she was going to live long enough to say ‘I told you so’.
“What the hell …?” the navigator exclaimed suddenly.
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when a strange blue light filled the ship. Something crept along her skin like the touch of an invisible being, lifting the fine hairs on her body. Abruptly, the craft dropped like a stone, leaving her stomach miles behind and then slammed into something so hard it jarred every bone and tissue in her body, detonating an explosion of pain. Time seemed almost to stop, as if holding its breath. The deafening noise of shouts, crumpling metal, wind and explosions vanished.
Curiously the pain dissipated almost as instantaneously as it had erupted and a strange sense of detachment enveloped her. Amaryllis watched as the ship began to disintegrate around them, pieces breaking off and becoming deadly shrapnel that peppered everyone in the compartment. Three shards sliced across her legs, arm and belly in quick succession. Across from her, Johnson let out a yelp that ended in a gurgle as the munitions locker careened into him and then collapsed on top of him, crushing him into a twitching mass of blood and meat. The man next to him disappeared out of a hole that appeared in one side of the craft that hardly seemed large enough to swallow him. Beyond, Amaryllis saw nothing but sky. She stared at it uncomprehendingly, trying to figure out what wasn’t ‘right’ about what her eyes perceived. Why would she see only sky when they’d crashed?
Almost on top of the thought, her stomach clenched, went weightless in freefall.
