Unchained_ A science fiction romance adventure Read online

  “Amazing you need those baggy pants then.” Cortez thumped him on the shoulder, figuring Jerick would be more comfortable with humor, with making light.

  And he snorted. “Yeah, it is.”

  Cortez’s wristcomp dinged. “It’s Tek Tek, sir. We’ve got a response.”

  “Understood.” Cortez nodded toward the lift and headed that way.

  Jerick followed him, but he also took a long look back at the view screen, at Skylar's face, and Cortez suspected he was thinking some less than practical thoughts about her too.

  7

  Jerick yawned as he and Cortez waited in C&C. Hours earlier, they had gotten a response via the communications buoy anchored outside the wormhole. But all it had said was, “Message received. Stand by.”

  It was well into the station’s night cycle now, and Jerick kept waiting for Cortez to suggest naps for non-essential personnel. The staff had all been rounded up and locked into a room on this level with one of his men guarding the door from inside. The prison had been quiet for the last few hours, though one of Cortez’s men from the shuttle wandered in on occasion to report on some mission or another. Tek Tek had just strode in, his belt heavy with tools, and went straight to one of the computer stations.

  “Ah, there we are,” Cortez murmured, not sounding tired. Maybe he’d napped on the shuttle over, expecting not to sleep for a couple of days once his mission started.

  He pointed at the sensor display, and Jerick came to stand next to him. A warship had come out of the wormhole.

  At first, Jerick gaped, thinking the government had decided to give in to Cortez’s demands. Then he noticed squadrons of darters accompanying it and that its shields were raised. The fleet hadn’t come to hand over a ship. It had come to fight. As Cortez had predicted.

  “That convoy’s going to move a lot faster than the shuttle we came in,” Tek Tek observed. “Won’t take them three days to get here. Not even close.”

  Tek Tek didn’t have any wires sticking out of his head yet, but he pulled out a few tools as he watched the sensor display. What other alterations had he been making to the facility?

  Jerick wouldn’t be surprised if Cortez had him creating a variety of high-tech caltrops in case his team had to fight off a boarding party.

  “Hours instead of days,” Cortez agreed.

  “Does the asteroid have shields of any kind?” Jerick asked.

  “No,” Tek Tek said. “Guess they never worried about fighting off invaders way out here. A bit surprising, isn’t it? You’d think there would have been more jail breaks over the years.”

  “Antioch is designed to keep people in, not out,” Cortez said. “And in the event of an uprising or jail break, as you said, the government wants exactly this.” He tilted his chin toward the warship on the display. “To be able to send Fleet in to deal with it without worrying about hostile enemies raising defenses from within the asteroid. But we’ve added a few snares designed to slow them down, haven’t we?” He nodded to Tek Tek.

  “Oh yes, sir. Got Bragg and Pip helping with a few more down in the shuttle bay. I’m fixing up some traps at the airlocks, but I reckon they’ll come in through the bay. Or they’ll try. I think I’ve overridden all the codes, so the fleet commander won’t simply be able to press a button and fly their darters in here.”

  “Excellent work, Tek Tek,” Cortez said.

  Jerick felt a twinge of something. Not jealously, exactly, but he wished he’d been assigned a crucial task, something that could help the effort. Right now, he was trailing Cortez around and twiddling his thumbs. Oh, he didn’t have the technical expertise that Tek Tek had, so he didn’t know what task he would have been given, but he felt superfluous. He had no troops to command in battle, and Cortez didn’t need a bodyguard, not yet.

  The comm beeped, and Cortez took a deep breath when the source of the message came up. Not the warship, but the wormhole. This was something being piped through, likely from Colonial Headquarters on Earth. Maybe the president himself was responding.

  Cortez lifted a hand, and Jerick thought he would wave for him to move off to the side, so he wouldn’t be in the display when Cortez recorded a response, but instead he waved Jerick over, orange pants and all.

  Cortez tapped the button, and Fleet Admiral Nagoski’s creased face came up on the screen.

  “Captain Cortez,” the man said, and there wasn’t the distaste or mockery in the honorific that Jerick would have expected, “don’t do this. Surrender now, and if you haven’t harmed the staff or the civilian women, your punishment will be lenient. If our people are forced to physically remove you from the station, I cannot promise the same. As you can no doubt see, one of our best ships is on the way. A ship you know well.”

  Jerick stirred, leaning forward to take a closer look at the sensor display. His gut lurched. The Black Star. The fleet had sent Cortez’s old ship to deal with this? Had the admiral believed he would be less likely to fire on it or fight its crew? Jerick doubted that would stop Cortez. Besides, after three years, most of the crew would be different. Jerick wondered who the new captain was.

  “If you do not surrender,” Nagoski went on, “the Black Star has orders to force its way into the prison and capture or kill you. Captain Falconer is in charge. I believe you know how he feels about cyborgs.”

  Cortez snorted. “Yet he has some among his crew. Or he did the last time I ran into him.” The words weren’t for the admiral since the transmission was delayed by being relayed through wormholes and sent across multiple systems. Admiral Nagoski must have recorded this hours ago. Cortez hadn’t yet started recording a response.

  “Again,” Nagoski said, “I urge you to surrender. Don’t do this, Cortez. You are—you were a great hero. A role model to other cyborgs. To everyone. I understand you’ve been frustrated these past years, but this isn’t the answer. Crime and exile? You will never be satisfied with such a future, with being remembered in such a way. It’s not too late. As I said, if you surrender immediately, I’ll do my best to ensure your punishment is minimal and that your record isn’t too tarnished. Think on it, but think quickly. As you can likely see by now, you haven’t much time before Falconer arrives.”

  The transmission ended, the admiral’s face disappearing.

  Jerick looked at Cortez. Was he tempted by the offer? By the suggestion that it wasn’t too late for him to put a halt to this? Not too late for him to walk away, his reputation intact?

  And for Jerick to be returned to his cell. No, to be returned to that metal table down there, shackles on his ankles and wrists and a needle approaching, a needle that would end his life.

  Cortez looked back at him, lifted an arm, and drew Jerick close, gripping the back of his neck with strong fingers. Warmed by the gesture, Jerick lowered his head, almost resting it on Cortez’s shoulder. He’d always been the fierce one, the hardened combat sergeant, but not today. Facing ignoble death had a way of taking away one’s power to battle the world. As did accepting that one wasn’t the hero one had always longed to be, that one had fallen far, far from grace.

  “We’re not surrendering,” Cortez said softly and rubbed the back of Jerick’s neck.

  A thrill that had as much to do with the physical as the emotional coursed through Jerick. “We’re going off to find a new future. Together.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cortez lowered his hand, and Jerick experienced a surge of disappointment. He wasn’t sure where he’d wanted that to lead, but he’d been willing to follow. He supposed he always had been, but there had never seemed to be a route for either to lead the other down.

  Cortez faced the comm panel and tapped a couple of buttons. Rather than recording a message for the fleet admiral, he contacted the Black Star.

  Captain Falconer’s face soon popped up. He sat in the command chair, his fingers steepled, his dark eyes intent. He’d probably been sitting there, waiting for contact.

  “Huh,” Falconer said, only glancing at Jerick before focusing
on Cortez. “It is you. I never would have thought the model cyborg would go rogue. Did you okay it with your poetry students before haring off out here like a drug-addled idiot?”

  “I can see from your effusive warmth that you’ve missed my presence at command meetings,” Cortez said.

  “Surrender the asteroid, Cortez.”

  Jerick noticed a familiar figure standing in the background behind the captain. Lieutenant Baxtor, one of the cyborgs who had once served under Cortez. He had a cartography and mathematics background that made him a valuable asset, so the fleet had been eager to keep him. Jerick wondered if the engineer, Lieutenant Varma, still served aboard the ship. One of only a handful of female cyborgs, she would be useful if Cortez could win her over somehow.

  But no, that was unlikely. Those two had stayed in the fleet and had careers; they had sworn oaths. They had to stay loyal to their captain, and that meant battling Cortez. And battling Jerick.

  His stomach turned at the thought of fighting his old comrades. And nothing in Baxtor’s cold face suggested he felt warmth at seeing Cortez or Jerick. Indeed, he caught Jerick looking at him, glanced down at his orange trousers, and sneered.

  “Surrender?” Cortez responded. “What suggested I would do that? I thought you were returning that ship to me.”

  Falconer smiled. “Oh, I’m bringing it to you. And now that I’ve passed along Nagoski’s order, and you’ve decided to refuse it, I shall enjoy bringing your cocky ass to your knees. I hope for the opportunity to shoot you myself.”

  The screen went dark.

  “I see he still doesn’t like you,” Jerick said, though he’d never been certain why the other captain felt such animosity. Because Cortez had been the hero of the war, and he hadn’t been?

  “He’s always mistrusted the idea of some men being made stronger than other men. He lobbied against cyborgs being created, and then, when the aliens showed up and it happened swiftly, he argued that we shouldn’t be given our own units or our own ships. We had to be watched by normal men to make sure we didn’t start fancying ourselves the overlords of humanity. He was always positive that a few smart cyborgs could have gotten together and enslaved Earth and the colonies.”

  “To what end? I’m sure there’s a ton of paperwork involved in being an overlord.”

  “No doubt. But he was right in that some of the people drawn to volunteer for the program were the types that would abuse the power. We dealt with some of that on our own ship.”

  “True, but more men just wanted to help the war effort. Or they were tired of being nobody and hoped for a chance to be somebody.” Jerick knew all about that.

  “Yes,” Cortez said softly, though Jerick knew that wasn’t the reason he’d signed on.

  According to the story he’d once shared, several of his students had been drafted and killed in the first year of fighting, and that was what had prompted Cortez to join. He’d been determined to go out there and do some good, to try to prevent the deaths of so many young men. He had been chosen for the cyborg upgrades, rather than volunteering, perhaps because others felt the same mistrust Falconer did. Maybe the fleet higher-ups had assumed that a literature professor was unlikely to turn into a power-hungry megalomaniac. Perhaps they should have foreseen that he would always be someone who wanted to battle injustice and save lives.

  Cortez stepped back from the console. “Let’s round up the men. We have an asteroid to defend and a ship to capture.”

  Jerick arched his eyebrows. “Did you suspect all along that the fleet wouldn’t deal? That you’d have to use force to capture the ship?”

  “It is fleet policy not to deal with blackmailers. We’ll see how they feel after we repel their strike teams.” Cortez headed for the door.

  “Did you know they would send the Black Star?” Jerick trailed after him.

  “I did my best to arrange it, actually.”

  Jerick stumbled. “You want to have to fight former colleagues?”

  “It was never going to be an easy battle. We’re intimately familiar with the layout of the Star. This could be to our advantage.”

  Jerick thought of the sneer Lieutenant Baxtor had given him and doubted it.

  “You know we’re going to have to do more than stun them to defeat them, right?” He eyed Cortez as they entered the lift, certain his old commander didn’t want bloodshed. He’d been careful thus far to avoid it.

  “We’ll see.”

  After they left their cell, Skylar let Keiko lead the way, since she’d been to the asteroid prison before and seemed to know her way around. Keiko almost bounced as she jogged down the corridor and into the lift. She hadn’t been happy with Skylar’s plan to take a nap and wait until the night cycle before lowering the forcefield and slipping out.

  When the doors opened four levels down, Keiko peered out long enough to check for enemies but soon ran into the corridor as if it were a race. Skylar didn’t know if it was or not. She did not know how long it would take the government and military to mount a response.

  Surprisingly, there weren’t any cyborgs wandering the corridors. At least not on this level. Skylar wondered how many men Cortez had let out of prison and added to his team.

  A distant boom sounded, as if someone had fired a cannon on the other side of the asteroid.

  Keiko paused, resting her hand on the riveted gray wall. “I think the fleet may have arrived.”

  Skylar's stomach did a nervous flip—she’d never been in battle, nor had she dreamed of being in it. She could easily imagine dying for some stupid reason, like the structural integrity of the asteroid being compromised. Keiko already seemed to believe her weak and crazy for sympathizing with the cyborgs, so Skylar vowed to put up a strong front.

  “That’s good,” she said. “We were smart to wait until night. The cyborgs will be distracted dealing with this. Maybe that’s why we haven’t run into any yet.”

  Keiko frowned back at her. “We don’t want warships hurling explosives at the asteroid while we’re inside it.” Keiko waved and returned to her fast trot down the corridor. “Come on. Let’s get your plan enacted. Maybe it’s not too late to knock everybody out and stop the attack.”

  Keiko paused at an intersection and started to peer around a corner, but she jerked her head back and held a finger to her lips.

  The thumps of boots on the deck reached Skylar's ears. It sounded like a squad of men running. Toward them?

  She glanced about, but there was no place to hide unless they ran back to the lift.

  But the thuds of boots didn’t grow louder. Instead, they grew softer, as if the men had turned down another corridor.

  “Off to defend the shuttle bay, I’ll wager,” Keiko whispered once the noise had faded. “I bet the fleet will send some darters in with strike teams to try to take down the leaders—your Cortez—by force instead of blowing up the whole asteroid and sacrificing the innocent people inside.” She thumped her chest. “That’s what I’m hoping is their plan.”

  Another boom sounded. This time, the deck shivered under their feet.

  Keiko’s face grew grim. Was it possible fleet didn’t know about the hostages? Or wasn’t that worried about them? What if they considered the cyborgs such a threat that they were willing to make sacrifices in order to stop them? Civilian sacrifices.

  “Those better be warning shots,” Keiko grumbled.

  Skylar nodded and waved for her to continue, assuming the way ahead was safe. Whether they were warning shots or real threats, Skylar realized they might not have much time alone in sickbay. If a battle was coming, there would be injuries, and the cyborgs might take some of their people there. Now she questioned her decision to wait until night. Maybe they should have left their cell sooner.

  Keiko led her through another intersection and to wide double doors with a hover stretcher in the corridor outside. The doors slid open for them, and the lights came on.

  For now, sickbay was empty.

  Skylar strode past a couple of workst
ations and beds to supply cabinets and refrigerators. The computers and equipment lining the walls didn’t impress her—nothing looked state-of-the-art. Or even state-of-the-twenty-years-ago-art. There certainly wasn’t anything she would deem a lab. Could these people even analyze blood samples? What if some odd virus was brought into the asteroid?

  She opened the refrigerator doors, hoping they were reasonably well stocked with medicines.

  “Hah,” Keiko said from a corner desk, probably what passed as the resident doctor’s office. She pulled a stunner out of a drawer. “It looks like the last doctor—” she glanced at a holo-plaque on the wall, “—Doctor Branigan—didn’t feel that safe here.”

  “That’s the doctor I’m supposedly replacing. Nobody seemed that concerned that I’m no longer licensed to perform surgeries or give medical care.”

  “Wonder where he went.” Keiko scraped at a dark stain on the desk. “Damn, I think that’s blood.”

  “Nobody ever told me what happened to him.” Not seeing any bottles of inhalational anesthetics already prepared, Skylar plucked chemicals and compounds off the shelves so she could create something.

  “Probably because the savages here killed him. You need any help?”

  “No. Just watch the door, please.”

  Skylar, carting armloads of vials, packets, and bottles to the little office area, switched positions with Keiko. As she stacked everything on the desk, she must have brushed through a motion sensor because a holo projection activated. A three-dimensional image of a brain popped up, along with scribbled notes about performing exploratory surgeries and making adjustments to the prisoners’ prefrontal cortexes and amgydalas to potentially make them more docile. A video of a brain operation in process started playing.

  Skylar hunted around for whatever sensor she’d triggered so she could turn it off, but she didn’t see it. She doubted these surgeries had been sanctioned, and she didn’t want to hear the details of what Dr. Branigan had been doing, not now. But she didn’t have time to play with his computer, either. It looked like an operating system even older than the sickbay equipment. She managed to pause the program. Good enough.