LyonsPrice Read online

  It’s just shock. She’ll be fine.

  Pushing the sheet out of the way, he focused on her thigh where the implant was embedded. How had he missed it? He knew every inch of her body, had been over it with hands and lips, but he hadn’t spotted this. Contra-implants should be sub-dermal, just under the upper layers of the skin, not this deep. For it to be this deep meant that someone didn’t want it found.

  Cael, what’s the medical procedure for contraceptive implants?

  Her reply was a stream of information on how to insert and remove implants. He looked at Samara’s thigh again, but didn’t see the satin skin nor the enticing curve as it flowed into her hip. Instead he used his onboard comp to display an anatomical diagram over the limb. He needed to cut into her flesh to remove the thing. The longer it remained active, the longer they were all in danger.

  He moved to rest the tip of his knife against her skin. The soft whimper from her lips twisted his heartstrings. What if she didn’t know? Her leg would have been numbed when they replaced her implant. She may not have noticed the difference between the placement of the old and the new. He hadn’t noticed and there was no way his exploration of her body had been casual.

  He started to press down, but stopped. His hand was shaking. A frown creased his brow as he stared at it. A quick check of his subroutines and hardware confirmed the limb was within operational standards. He pressed down again. The blade parted the skin and a bead of blood rolled down her skin.

  His hand still shook.

  Boss, let me. Go take a breather, okay?

  Cael was at his elbow, holding her hand out for the blade. A sigh rumbled through his chest and escaped over his lips. He couldn’t do it. For the first time in his life, he couldn’t achieve the mission objective. He looked at Samara spread out over the bed. As furious as he was with her, he still couldn’t hurt her. She was the enemy and all he wanted to do was pull her close and protect her. How pathetic was that?

  He handed the blade over and stood to let Cael take his place. Grabbing a med-kit from the wall, she knelt by the bed and rifled through it. Withdrawing an anesthetic, she administered it with quick, efficient movements and picked the knife up again. Lyon hovered, his hands clenched into fists at his side. He couldn’t watch, but he couldn’t walk away either.

  In the end, Cael made the decision for him. She looked over her shoulder and fixed him with a cool, gray stare.

  “Boss, breathing down my neck isn’t going to help. You wouldn’t want me to slip with this—” She wagged the knife, which suddenly resembled a butcher’s meat cleaver, at him. “Now would you? If you want to be helpful, go and get Eoin for me. And make sure Archon isn’t doing something stupid. Like rerouting us to the Kilian pleasure resorts or something.”

  An unwilling smile tried to crawl across Lyon’s lips. “Yeah, I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  He headed for the door, but paused as he reached it and looked over his shoulder. His gaze settled on the sheet-wrapped form on the bed. She was facing the other way, so he couldn’t see her face, but she hadn’t moved, her arm still outstretched where he’d left it.

  She’d betrayed them. Betrayed him. A fresh wave of…something…gripped his chest. He turned, leaving the cabin before he could weaken any further over a damn human.

  Chapter Seven

  Lyon and his anger leaving the room lifted the crushing pressure weighing down on Samara and allowed her to breathe again. The gray on the edges of her vision receded and the world came back into focus. Blinking, she felt her heart rate drop down a notch. Apprehension still swirled through her veins as Cael dropped the used anesthetic shot into a biohazard bag, but didn’t seal it.

  Wetting her lips, Samara plucked up the courage to speak. “What are you going to do?”

  Far from the smiling, joking woman of earlier, Cael’s expression was blank and shuttered. As forbidding as the grim reaper himself. She shivered as the woman picked up Lyon’s discarded blade and fixed her with a steely look.

  “I’m going to assume you’re intelligent enough to realize that this implant isn’t the contraceptive one you claim it is,” she said as she settled the tip of the blade against Samara’s thigh, as calm as though carving up someone’s leg was an everyday occurrence. Maybe it was, those horror stories about cyborgs had to have come from somewhere.

  “I’m also going to give you the benefit of the doubt and believe you’re telling the truth when you say that’s what you thought it was.” Cael’s voice was hard. As though she really didn’t want to give Samara even that much. “It’s not. It’s a sub-dermal tracking device. I would guess your ship has been trailing us since we took you aboard.”

  Samara closed her eyes, her head dropping back against the bedclothes.

  “They called all the nurses in. Said the brand of implant we all had was under recall. I thought it was odd at the time…I mean, what are the chances we all had the same brand of implant? No medication suits everyone like that…”

  She pressed her lips in to a thin line as she made the connections. She’d been played like a freaking concert violin. What an idiot! They’d called them all in and fitted the entire nursing staff with tracking devices.

  “But why?”

  She turned a questioning look on Cael, as though the other woman had all the answers. She certainly knew more about what was going on than Samara did. Why would her own people put a tracker in her? Unless…she paled, feeling sick.

  “They wanted one of us to…” She couldn’t say it. Couldn’t admit she’d fallen for the trap, hook, line and sinker. Couldn’t admit that she’d allowed herself to become the trap for Lyon and his people.

  “Cut it out. Now. In fact, give me that knife. I’ll do it,” she ordered, struggling to sit up. Her leg felt weird, the muscles at the front of her thigh refusing to cooperate.

  Cael shook her head, holding the blade out of reach.

  “Not a chance, sweetheart. You’d be cutting the wrong way to reach it, and if I let you bleed out, Lyon will have my head on a platter. Now lie down and don’t move. I’d like to do this quickly. I hate cleaning up blood.”

  Samara held her breath as Cael put the wicked-looking blade against the pale skin of her thigh again and pressed. The skin parted, a bead of blood welling up into a bright red ball. Christmas decorations, she thought absently. It looked like a Christmas bauble or a holly berry. All red, shiny perfection.

  It grew too large and rolled down the side of her thigh. Cael paused and looked at her. If Samara had thought the female cyborg looked scary before, then the look in her eyes right then was downright terrifying.

  “Lyon isn’t just my boss, he’s family. My father, my brother…call him what you want. He was there when they pulled me out my tank and he’s been there ever since.” Her voice was like ice, the words a chill warning in the small room. “You hurt him and I’ll not only make you wish to God you’d never been born, you’ll wish your parents had never even met. Do I make myself clear?”

  Samara swallowed, and then winced at the loudness of the sound in the silent room.

  “I don’t mean to…I don’t want to hurt him. Or any of you. I-I can’t believe they did this. I’d like to throttle the captain. I thought he was an okay guy, but this? Uh-uh.”

  She shook her head, deliberately not looking as Cael pressed the knife into her leg and trying not to think about what would happen if she pushed too much. She was a cyborg, right? Had all those computers and whatnot in her brain. So she’d know just how deep to go, wouldn’t she?

  “Let’s just say he’s off my Christmas card list. And he can forget being invited to my birthday party.”

  “The worst you can do is striking someone off your card list?” Cael’s lips quirked as she worked. Just a little, but Samara caught it.

  “Well, no, but drugging your CO insensible and duct-taping him naked to the helm tends to be frowned upon in the Fleet.”

  Cael snorted in laughter, her lips curving as she ferreted under the skin of
Samara’s leg for the tracker. She was glad she couldn’t feel it at the moment, but she was sure as soon as that shot wore off, it was going to hurt like a bitch.

  “Yeah. I’m sure it is.” She looked up, mischief in her eyes. “But it’s an idea for certain smart-mouthed men around here. Ah, here we are. Meet our little friend, the standard Combined Fleet personnel tracking implant.”

  She held up a small, plastic cylinder similar in size and shape to the contraceptive devices Samara was used to dealing with. The only difference was a small indentation at one end, where a tiny green light flashed intermittently. Cael crushed that end in her strong fingers and let it drop to the bedclothes, leaving a bloody smear.

  “Transmission interrupted, that’ll bring them running. Let’s get you patched up before the shit hits the fan.”

  * * * * *

  Cael slipped back into the main cabin with a near silent tread. Didn’t help when they could all register her heartbeat, but Lyon knew she wasn’t trying to be stealthy. She had a natural grace that was unusual in a Cancer class and one their group often took for granted.

  “All done?”

  His query was short and brusque, as normal. Only the lying little witch in his bed seemed to be able to bring out the conversationalist in him.

  “Yeah, it was a new one. Not seen it before. They’re getting clever.” She slid into the empty copilot’s seat and buckled herself into the harness.

  Lyon’s eyebrow winged up. “Since when were you bothered about flight safety?”

  She rolled him a look as she brought the ship’s sensor controls online. Since she could direct link with the shuttle any time she chose, the fact that she wanted eyes on as well was telling.

  The shit was about to hit the fan.

  Archon. Eoin. Get your asses in here now! he bellowed as he vacated the pilot’s seat. Archon was the better pilot. With him and Cael on the flight team, there wasn’t much they couldn’t outrun, outmaneuver or full-on outfly.

  “What we looking at?”

  Cael’s lips compressed into a tight line for a second as she studied the display in front of her. “We got company out here. That tracker was short range.”

  He started to buckle himself into the second row just as the two Geminis barreled through the door, alerted by his shout. Although they could use mental communication, all of them could block themselves off if needed. They often did, otherwise the voices in their head could drive them mad. Hearing, though, couldn’t be blocked, so when Lyon shouted, they came running.

  “Archon, helm. Eoin, guns. NOW!”

  The twins split without a word. Eoin dived back through the door, heading up to the gun turret, as Archon headed for the front of the cabin.

  He didn’t make it.

  Something hit the side of the shuttle hard. Like the Gods had had taken a large hammer and decided to beat the hell out of it. The metal of the sub-frame screamed in protest as the shuttle skittered sideways and started to spin. Archon stumbled, grabbing at the back of Lyon’s chair as he fought against the violent movement to reach the pilot’s chair.

  “Fuck it,” Cael swore. “Eoin, we got multiple targets—what the fuck is that?”

  Lyon didn’t need to be looking at the sensor readouts to know something was seriously wrong. A fight with Fleet forces was nothing new, even if they were massively outgunned, but the sound reverberating through the cabin made them all pause.

  It built within nanoseconds to overtake the screaming of metal. A distinctive whine designed to send a chill down the spine of any cyborg.

  Electromagnetic pulse.

  The only thing that could take down a cyborg at long-range was an EMP and the Fleet knew it. Which meant every one of his kind was shielded. It was a hack job, though, as they tried to stay ahead of Fleet technology. The bastards had money and resources to throw at the problem, whereas Lyon and his people had to rely on field data.

  Field data that was hard to come by. Any cyborg unlucky enough to get caught in an EMP was either dead, their cybernetic systems stifling their bio-organic ones, or en route to a Fleet medical facility for a slice and dice as the scientists tried to figure out what modifications had been made to their systems.

  Archon hauled himself upright, got a hand on the pilot’s chair, but he was too late. The whine became a scream. Lyon closed his eyes. This was it.

  Whhhhummmp.

  The pulse hit, racing through the small vessel like a tidal wave. Lyon cursed as his cybernetic systems froze, locking him into the cage of his own body. At his side, Archon suffered the same fate and hit the deck in an untidy sprawl of limbs, the pilot’s chair empty and mocking. It wouldn’t have mattered if the Gemini had reached it. As soon as the pulse hit they were done for.

  Silence fell over the small cabin, the sound of his own breathing loud in Lyon’s ears. His eyes closed and unable to speak or contact his team through other means, he was reduced to listening to make sure the other two were okay. Filtering out the sound of his own breathing, he concentrated.

  There…and there. He could hear both Cael’s and Archon’s steady breathing. Good. Although he knew better, he always worried that if something froze their cybernetic halves, it would kill all biological function as well, like it had with the early prototypes. They’d all heard the horror stories, traded in the darkness of the barracks when their human masters thought they were asleep.

  Rage and frustration surged through him as he threw everything he had at his “bonds”. Lyon was a mark-three Leo class. Running through his body like a spider’s webs, his cybernetics were the most advanced out there. Every system was controlled, enhanced or monitored by the central implant in his brain. The only problem was, it had shut down at the first wave of the EMP.

  A defense mechanism, it prevented his onboard computer from being wiped clean, an event that would render him a useless hunk of metal with a heart, lungs and other organs piggybacked onto it. Hell, without his machine half, he wasn’t even a full human. The defense was almost as bad as the result and left him vulnerable, wide open to attack.

  The irony hit him. He’d pitied Samara earlier for her limited natural design and her reliance on the bio-organic systems she’d been born with. Yet now he was a prisoner of his own advanced design. Locked into place until the human forces boarded the shuttle much like his team had boarded the Valkyrie.

  Damn it, why hadn’t he realized the escape was all too easy… That they were being set up? Twenty minutes. That’s how long it took for even the quickest of them to do a full shutdown and reboot. Some auxiliary systems like comms came online faster, but full operational status took twenty minutes from shutdown. They didn’t have twenty minutes. He would guess they had ten, tops, before the cavalry came storming through a laser-cut hole in the hull.

  “Hello?”

  Everything was too quiet. Slipping from the bed, Samara kept an ear out for movement from the main area of the shuttle as she pulled her clothes on. She winced as she pulled the leg of the coverall over her bandaged thigh. Cael had done a good job, clean and concise. The numbness was wearing off though, leaving her sore.

  Shoving her feet into her shoes, she padded across the room. She paused at the door, her hand on the cool metal of the frame and listened. Silence met her ears and a sense of foreboding filled her. Unless they were having a slumber party and it was the quietest slumber party she’d ever heard, then something was wrong. Very wrong.

  Trying to be quiet, she walked down the short corridor that connected the back room to the main cabin. Heart hammering in her chest, she pushed the door open and peeked around the edge, expecting Lyon to see her at any moment and growl.

  Worry and apprehension filled her. He thought she’d betrayed him and, in a way, she had. Not willingly, she would never do that. Even though he was a cyborg and half the people she knew would condone it—hell, most of them would even congratulate her for trapping a whole cyborg squad—she just wasn’t built that way.

  She judged people on her own impress
ions, not on what the Fleet or other people told her. She just needed to get him to believe that now. At least she had Cael on her side, kind of, the other woman appearing to think she was more of a threat to Lyon’s heart than anything else.

  A thrill ran through her. Was she a threat? Could Lyon feel the same way about her that she did about him? Did he feel that weird sense of rightness and excitement when he looked at her? Or the inferno that spread through her veins as soon as he touched her.

  The main cabin was silent, not even the soft banter she’d heard between Cael and Archon filling the air. Perhaps they were communicating through other means? She knew they could talk to each other without speaking. She wasn’t stupid, she’d caught the looks between them and the way Lyon’s expression focused inward, as though he was concentrating on something she couldn’t see or hear.

  “Hello?”

  She pushed the door open farther and stepped through it. Her gaze swept the cabin. It was empty… She paused, catching sight of a pair of legs sprawled between the two rows of seats at the front of the cockpit. Male, no leg brace and not as big as Lyon.

  “Archon?”

  She took a couple of steps forward. What was he doing lying on the floor? There were at least two other cabins at the back if he needed to take a nap, or the bench seats lining the rear section of the cabin. He didn’t need to lie in the way. He couldn’t be comfortable like that.

  She padded forward until she could see down between the seats, the sense that something was wrong increasing. A feeling confirmed when she saw Lyon’s arm motionless on the arm of the chair, and beyond him, Cael sitting in the copilot’s seat, also as still as a statue.

  “What the hell?”

  She darted forward and dropped to her knees next to the fallen man. Her medical training rushed to the fore. Looking for signs of breathing, she pressed two fingers into his throat to locate a pulse. Relief flooded her at the strong beat under her fingers. Not thready or weak, just normal.