Unit 77_Broken Read online

  “There’s big money in cyborgs—especially in the private sector,” Pike had told him. “We can get five million for every unit we deliver. And the Space Corps doesn’t need to know about it either. It’s all strictly under the table. Your cut is half. Think, Captain—even one would set you up for life. And if you deliver your whole company—”

  That had been enough for 77—for Drew. His men were like brothers to him. He would never betray them—never sell them out for that scumbag, Pike! He’d tried to report the slimy bastard—only to step on a landmine that never should have been there before he could file the report.

  And now he wants to kill Claudia—kill her because she knows too much—kill her just like he killed you! whispered the little voice in his head. Don’t let him!

  Once more Drew felt the rage building within him. Pike, that murdering bastard, was holding the woman he loved at gunpoint. He was about to end her, as he had ended so many other good men—and all for profit.

  She’s mine, he thought again, just as he had when the hopper had attacked her. MINE!

  At that point, the memories that had frozen him receded and his paralysis broke. With a roar, he charged out from behind the door, knocking the gun from Pike’s hand and getting one thick arm wrapped around the other man’s throat.

  “What…who…?” Pike wheezed as Drew dragged him backward, away from Claudia, whose eyes were wide and uncertain.

  “I came back, Pike,” Drew snarled in his ear. “Isn’t that what you wanted? You wanted the rogues back in the fold? Well here we are. Aren’t you happy to see me?”

  “Stand down, soldier!” Pike gasped, his pudgy fingers prying uselessly at Drew’s metal arm. “That is a direct, vocal order. Stand down right now.”

  “I don’t think so.” Drew laughed humorlessly. “Doc Chambers taught us how to disable some of the more inconvenient circuits in those damn CyBRG devices you made her implant in us, Colonel. The pain sensors that let you send those fucking agony waves was one of them. And apparently the need to obey your vocal orders was another. Their nano-threads must have been entwined. Bad luck for you.”

  He squeezed harder, letting his metal arm do its work on the CO’s soft throat. Yet something held him back from using all his strength and ending the bastard right then and there. What?

  Pike seemed to understand something was stopping him too.

  “You can’t…can’t kill me,” he husked, forcing the words out of his constricted throat. “That’s hard-wired into your main neural circuit. I made…made sure of that. No matter how you…you try, you can’t end me.”

  Unfortunately, he seemed to be right. Drew tried again but his arm wouldn’t tighten any further—try as he might, he couldn’t pop Pike’s head off his neck like a lollipop off its stick, the way the bastard deserved.

  How fucking inconvenient.

  “Captain?” 80’s voice crackled in his ear. “How you doing in there? We have trouble on the perimeter. Seems like Big Mama isn’t too happy we blew her nest to Kingdom Come. Should we shoot?”

  “Negative.” Drew was having an idea—a hell of a good one, under the circumstances. And the first idea he’d had as himself—as Drew—for a long time. “Just hold her off,” he told 80. “I’m coming out.”

  “What…what are you going to do to him?” Claudia’s voice shook as she nodded at Pike.

  “He nearly killed you. What do you think I’m going to do with him?” Drew gave her a harsh grin.

  “But…he said you can’t kill him!”

  “He can’t. He can’t!” Pike wheezed, still plucking ineffectually at Drew’s metal arm wrapped around his neck.

  “Unfortunately, he’s right about that.” Drew shrugged apologetically. “But a good soldier always has a Plan B.” Turning, he dragged Pike out of the med shack, where he’d first found the bastard threatening Claudia, and into the light.

  His band of rogues had done a good job of taking over the base, Drew saw with satisfaction. The other cyber soldiers, who had been coded for complete obedience to Pike, were now deactivated—courtesy of a little override device built by Unit 89—No,Paul, his name is Paul—who was a fucking nano-tech genius.

  The mindless soldiers stood there, vacant and glassy-eyed, not twitching so much as a finger even when Pike called out to them in his strangled voice.

  “Help! Help me, damn you—that’s a direct order!”

  But no one paid any attention to the CO’s shouts and curses. Most of the cyborgs in Drew’s company were standing at the east perimeter gate of the base, watching something moving in the jungle outside.

  Something huge.

  “What’s going on?” Drew asked 80—Jake—as he came up to the other cyborg, still dragging Pike along with him.

  “It’s like I told you—Big Mama’s not happy. Can’t believe she tailed us all the way from the main nest.” Jake gestured with one metal arm at the vast shadow rustling through the tall blue trees. Suddenly it emerged from the jungle and for the first time, its true form was revealed.

  Pike, who was watching, sucked in a tight breath.

  “Mother of God…huge!” he gasped.

  “Yeah, she’s a big girl all right.” Drew watched as the massive female hopper lumbered toward them. Up until their attack on the nest, the Clydesdale-sized hopper that had attacked Claudia was the biggest he had ever seen. This one dwarfed it. She was at least as big as an African elephant from Old Earth, if not bigger.

  The harsh Hastian sunlight glittered mercilessly on her shiny, electric-blue carapace and her sharp, curving teeth were easily as long as Drew’s arm. Her head moved ponderously, swaying from side to side as her hubcap-sized compound eyes searched for the ones who had ruined her home and violated her nest.

  Drew was glad, at least, that they didn’t have to fear a flying attack. There was no way Big Mama—as Jake had dubbed her—was getting off the ground with her bulk. But then, she wasn’t made for flying. She was an egg-laying machine. Even now he could see a shiny white oblong as big as a body-bag protruding obscenely from her thorax. She had torn herself free from the pulsing egg depository apparatus when they’d bombed her nest and had apparently been following them ever since.

  “Look at that,” Jake muttered. “I’d say we better take her down soon, Captain—before she gets frisky.”

  “I agree.” Drew grinned humorlessly. “But first I think we have somebody she’d like to meet.”

  Jake dragged his gaze from the massive hopper and his eyes widened as he seemed to register Pike’s presence for the first time.

  “Holy shit, Captain! You’re going to kill the CO?”

  “He killed us,” Drew told him, shaking Pike fiercely until he gasped and choked. “He planted the mine that blew us all up and then made Doc Chambers implant the fucking CyBRG devices in us to bring us back as soulless, mechanical slaves.”

  He watched as Pike’s eyes widened.

  “You can’t…you don’t…”

  “You think I don’t remember what you did?” Drew demanded, shaking him again. “Unfortunately for your sorry ass, I do, Pike. I remember everything now—how you offered to split the profits with me if I’d sell out my company…and now I know how you planted the mine after I tried to report you. Everything.” He looked at Jake. “Did you know we’re worth five million credits apiece on the black market?”

  “Fucking…what?” For a moment Jake seemed like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “The CO sold us out?”

  “He tried to,” Drew said grimly. “Now do you see why I think it’s a good idea for him to make the acquaintance of Big Mama before we blow her the fuck up?”

  Jake’s normally humor-filled eyes had hardened.

  “Well, you know how it is. You can’t send a condemned man to the firing squad without offering him a last meal. Or in this case, a condemned hopper. Go on, Captain…” He nodded at Pike. “Put him outside the perimeter and let’s see how she likes him.”

  “What?” Pike, who had nearly gone
limp in Drew’s grip, began to thrash in earnest. “No—you can’t—you can’t.”

  “A life for a life,” Drew growled. “You took my life and the lives of my company. You made us all fucking monsters. Now it’s payback time, Pike.”

  The CO had lost all dignity by this point. He struggled and howled and elbowed Drew in the side—only succeeding in breaking his arm on Drew’s body armor with a muffled snap. He tried to grab for his wounded arm with his remaining good one, but since Drew still had him by the neck, that was difficult.

  But a broken arm was the least of his worries. He had ruined Drew’s life and made the woman he loved turn him into something that couldn’t—or shouldn’t—be allowed to love her. Back when he’d been a man—a real man—Drew could have hoped to have Claudia Chambers as his own. Now he was nothing but a metal monster and he wanted the one responsible to pay—and pay big.

  “Fuck!” Pike gasped as Drew squeezed his throat as hard as his metal arm would allow. “Fuck!”

  “I’d say that about covers it,” Drew said agreeably. Gripping the CO by the scruff of his neck, he marched him to the perimeter and shoved him through the one-way energy field that guarded the gate—directly into the path of the Queen hopper.

  Pike screamed hoarsely and tried to run, one arm dangling limply by his side. But his movements only seemed to attract Big Mama’s attention. Moving more quickly than any creature that massed more than a bull elephant should have been able to, she snapped her head to one side and opened wide.

  The top half of the CO disappeared, still screaming, between her massive jaws. A second bite took care of his legs. They were still running when she snapped them up.

  Suddenly Drew felt ill. He was back to his normal self—back to being Drew instead of 77, which made it worse. Somehow he found it a lot harder to divorce himself from his emotions now that he remembered himself and his past. What he had been and what he was now. The control the CyBRG device had exerted over his emotions was completely broken now.

  Don’t you mean you’re completely broken? whispered the little voice in his head. Drew tried to ignore it.

  “Enough,” he said to Jake. “Finish her off. And burn the carcass—I don’t want anything left of either one of them.”

  “You got it, boss.” Jake saluted and turned to the other cyborgs. “All right. Big Mama’s had her last meal. Now it’s time for her to go.”

  Drew turned his back as the sound of pulse rifles and hand-blasters echoed through the compound. He didn’t want to watch—didn’t want to see as the remains of the man who had stolen his life from him went up in ash and smoke.

  And what he really didn’t want to see was that look in Doc Chambers’—in Claudia’s—eyes when she looked at him as she was now as she came to join him.

  “Drew?” she asked softly, putting a hand on his arm. “Or…is it Unit 77?”

  For a moment he was tempted to lie—tempted to fall back on his cyborg half and pretend to be the same emotionless machine that had captured her in the first place. But one look in her big gray eyes and he knew he couldn’t do it.

  “It’s Drew now,” he said heavily. “Just Drew. What’s left of him, anyway.”

  “What do you mean by that?” She fell in step beside him, which couldn’t have been easy for her. She had to take two steps to every one of his and he was walking fast, wanting to get away from the east perimeter where the action was happening.

  “You know what I mean.” Drew kept his eyes to the front, heading for his old barracks. He had a bunk to himself due to his rank of captain and right now he could really use some alone time. But Claudia refused to let him be.

  “No, I don’t know what you mean,” she insisted. “Talk to me, Drew. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “You don’t want to know,” Drew growled, looking down at her. He had reached the door of his bunk. It wasn’t much, just a one-room prefab shack with a single bed and a small shower unit attached at the back, but it was his own space and right now he wanted to go into it. Wanted to hide inside it like a hurt beast would crawl into its cave to lick its wounds.

  It was a good analogy. I’m a monster, he reminded himself. Just a monster and she deserves better.

  “Yes, I do want to know. Drew, talk to me.” She got in front of him, facing him down fearlessly though he severely outmassed her and had at least a foot and a half of height on her. “You seem…different now,” she added. “Since the last time I saw you.”

  “I am different.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Hearing Pike admit what he’d done did something to me—brought back the past—brought the real me back, I guess.”

  “But that’s wonderful!” Claudia exclaimed, her eyes shining. “It’s like your mind is healing itself!”

  “Too bad my body can’t do the same,” Drew muttered. “Look, Doc—I’m really tired. I want to go in my bunk and shower and get my head together. Do you mind?”

  She lifted her chin. “Yes, I do mind. I mind like hell that you’re trying to shut me out. You don’t still think I’m a traitor, do you?”

  “No.” Drew sucked in a deep breath and wished he hadn’t. The scent of her hair and skin—the scent of Claudia—came to him loud and clear through his enhanced senses. A sudden wave of longing crashed over him—a desire to have her that was every bit as painful as the agony pulses that bastard Pike had sent through him before he’d had 85 disable the pain sensors in the CyBRG device at the back of his neck.

  Can’t have her though—not anymore. Not like this, he told himself. He had to put her off—tell her to go so he could get his head together.

  “No,” he said again, as gently as he could. “And I’m sorry I thought it in the first place. I should have known you’d never betray us. You’ve always had the best interests of my company in mind, right from the start.”

  “Not just your company, Drew—you,” she emphasized softly. “I’ve always had your best interests in mind. In fact…” She took a deep breath and seemed to be nerving herself up. “In fact, I’ve always had you in mind period. Ever since…ever since that first time you saved me from a hopper. Even before Pike forced me to implant the CyBRG device in you.”

  “I had you in mind too—a fucking lot,” Drew heard himself admitting. “But like you said—that was before the CyBRG device.”

  Her face fell. “Is it…is it because you still blame me? For what I did? Should I have told Pike to go fuck himself and left you dead on my OR table? You don’t know what it did to me, Drew…” Her eyes filled with tears. “Seeing you broken and bloody—and thinking I was turning you into a machine that would never come back. But now you are back and you’re still pushing me away.”

  “Pushing you away for your own good,” Drew growled. Goddess, she was killing him here! She was so close…her scent so warm and enticing, her curves so lush. His hands itched to caress her body and his mouth watered to taste her again. The memory of pressing between her thighs to lap her sweet pussy was uppermost in his mind. It made him feel like he was going to go crazy if she didn’t leave him alone!

  But that appeared to be the last thing Claudia was willing to do.

  “Why?” she demanded. “How is it for my own good?” She stood on her tiptoes and caught his face in her hands, staring into his eyes. “I want you, Drew! And I thought…” Her voice faded a bit. “Just for a little while there, I thought you wanted me too. Have you changed your mind now that your memory has returned? Am I not your type? Too old for you?”

  Drew couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Of course you’re my fucking type!” he exploded. Grabbing her hands in both of his, he pulled her closer. “You’ve been everything I ever wanted in a woman from the first minute I saw you. And back when I was a man, I would have done anything to have you.”

  “You’re still a man!” Claudia insisted. Rather than pulling away from his punishing grip, she pushed even closer. “What I’m asking is if you want to be my man?”

  “Of course I
do but I’m made of metal. Look at me!” Drew growled. He held out his left arm. “I’ve hurt you several times with this because I couldn’t control it—because I’m not fully human anymore. You deserve to be with a whole man, Claudia, not a fucking half-robot bastard like me.”

  “I’m not scared of you.” Her eyes blazed as she looked up at him. “Not afraid of your cybernetics. I installed them, remember? I know what you’re capable of, Drew, and right now it’s not my body I’m afraid you’ll break.” Her voice sank to a pleading whisper. “It’s my heart. Please…won’t you give us a chance?”

  Drew clenched his jaw. If only she knew what she was doing to him! How she was pushing him closer and closer to the edge of the cliff—to the point of no return! If he took her now he’d never be able to let her go. Never be able to let her leave him and find the kind of man she truly deserved—a man who was whole and sound in body and mind, not broken and pieced back together like a jigsaw puzzle made of metal and flesh.

  Then again, maybe she did know because she clearly wasn’t backing down.

  “Listen to me,” he growled, taking her by the shoulders. “I’m going into my bunk now. If you follow me in, I’m having you, sweetheart. And by having I mean fucking. And if I fuck you, I’m never letting go. So this is your last chance—get away from me now or I won’t be responsible for the consequences.”

  He released her and opened the door to his bunk, revealing the cool, quiet space inside.

  “Last chance,” he told her. “Leave now while you can, Claudia.”

  Her face went a bit pale but she lifted her chin and looked him straight in the eyes. Then, not saying a word, she stepped over the threshold and entered his bunk.

  “Well?” her voice drifted out, soft but defiant. “I’m waiting, Drew. Come and take me.”

  Claudia stood in the middle of Drew’s small room and waited. Her heart pounding in her chest, her breathing shortened as she watched him through the open doorway.

  He’d challenged her. Said he would have her, fuck her… She wasn’t an idiot, she knew his harsh, crude words were intended to make her run for the hills, but she was done running. Done hiding from what she wanted. Done hiding her feelings… for him.