Indulgence (91 page)

“Be careful, sir,” she whispered, placing her palms on his
chest.

Be careful, sir.
Cyborgs mocked him.

Don’t damage that ugly C model mug of yours.

Keep your cock in one piece.

Irritated by their comments, Rage turned on his booted
heels, knocking his female away from him as he moved. She gasped yet didn’t
protest his brutish treatment.

This, for some reason, increased his anger.

And the taunting.

Be rough with me, sir.

You know I like it like that.

You’re such an animal.

Frag off.
He’d never hear the end of this. Rage
grunted and stomped up the ramp. He should have killed his little engineer as
the humans expected.

*****

Midway into the deployment, Rage was in a better mood.
Fighting always calmed him. He rolled on the ash-covered ground, shooting Mantidae
left and right, his muscles aching, his arms humming with the recoil of his
guns.

The insects were massive, requiring multiple shots to down
them, and fast, requiring all of his cyborg speed. But they weren’t overly
intelligent, their brains muddled by the need to reach their breeding planets
and reproduce.

Rage, for the first time in his lifespan, knew how they
felt, his cock aching for a certain engineer’s warm, wet pussy. He doubted
she’d ever had a C model cyborg. There were few of his kind left. She’d fit
tightly around him.

A projectile skimmed his arm, slicing through his armor.
Fraggin’ hole. He blasted the Mantidae in the eyeball, exploding its skull. He
had to keep his head in the game.

He cleared the last intruder from his portion of planet and
then helped Gap, the youngest, protect his territory. The kid grumbled about
doing it himself. Rage ignored him, not commenting when the cyborg mimicked his
attacks.

He had been a young cyborg once, learning from the A and B
models. That was something the humans didn’t understand. They tended to group
the young cyborgs with their own models, not allowing the transfer of
knowledge.

The last Mantidae fell and they strode back to their camp.
Crash waited there. They’d cleared his territory first, allowing him more time
to work on the human’s systems.

“You’re mellow today, Rage.” He grinned. “I wonder why.”

“Frag off.” Truthfully, he
did
feel more relaxed,
almost happy. He rolled his shoulders, joints cracking.

“Sounds like you need another round of breeding.” The E
model cyborg waved a handheld over their napes, pausing the recording
mechanism. “Providing your handler’s still alive when we return.”

“I don’t care.” Rage hid his concerns under nonchalance. He
didn’t like the thought of another being touching his female. “If they kill
her, it will save me the trouble. They all have to die.” He lowered his ass to
a rock.

“Yes, they do.” Gap gingerly claimed a makeshift seat beside
him. He’d been favoring his backside all day.

Rage knew what that meant and it angered him. He could take
the human’s torture but Gap was a young cyborg. He hadn’t yet built up the
emotional defenses. “We’ll kill them quickly. Show them mercy they didn’t show
us.” That would also speed their escape.

“Your female doesn’t act like the others.” Gap sorted
through the supplies and weapons they’d retrieved from the dead Mantidae.

“She’s
exactly
like the others.” Rage had to stop
that thinking immediately. “Human females are more cunning and deceitful than
males.” He removed his armor. “They’re also crueler.”

“What’s her plan?” Crash sliced open Rage’s wrists.

Pain shot up his arms. “Don’t know.” He gritted his teeth as
his friend poked into his mechanics. “Whatever it is, she won’t be successful.”

“The other handlers hate her.” Crash extracted a tracking
device with his grippers. “I’ve never witnessed anything like that. Dislike,
yes, but the males wish to kill her.”

“Many wish to breed with her first,” Gap added.

“Or after.” Crash located the tracking device in Rage’s
other wrist. “Whether she agrees to the breeding or not. They are sick beings,
the humans.” He examined the tiny pieces of engineering, his forehead furrowing
in thought. “This is complicated. I could take it apart, risk activating it.”’

“Sending the humans after us,” Rage rumbled.

“Or we could simply remove them before escaping.”

“And risk detection.” Neither alternative was good. “We
could tape the sensors to our skin and kill the handlers before they remove our
armor.”

“That could work.” Crash nodded. “I’ll tell the others.”

“Do we have to wait for repositioning?” Gap wiggled.

Rage understood his impatience. He wished he could kill the
young cyborg’s handler now also. “We need a reason to load the Mantidae weapons
and our other supplies on our ships. The lazy humans will assume the extra
items are the remnants of our camps.”

“Repositioning is also chaotic.” Crash reinserted the
tracking devices into Rage’s wrists. “They’ll be focused on external, not
internal threats.”

Every cyborg would be on board the station, giving them the
strength of numbers, and their handlers would be distracted. Not having an
immediate deployment to prepare for, they would use that excuse to relax, drink
too much, carouse.

Would his female allow herself to be touched, fondled?

Rage would kill her before that happened.

The wounds over his wrists healed, leaving strips of paler
skin. His clever female would notice that, as she’d noticed the wounds on his
groin. He’d ask Crash to cut his wrists every deployment so she didn’t suspect
their intentions.

It would be painful, but that was life—pain and betrayal.

Soon, it would be freedom.

“Green wants to know if he can take Windy with us.” Crash
cleaned his grippers. “I told him his plant would take up space and require
resources. He said he’d rather stay on the battle station than leave her
behind.”

“It’s his ship. He can do what he likes.” Rage didn’t care.

“I’ll relay that.” Crash handled the communications with the
other cyborgs.

“Do you think they’ll have females like yours in the
Homeland?” Gap tossed a severed Mantidae claw over his shoulder.

Reaching the cyborg Homeland, a planet seized by their
brethren, was their goal. There would be no more pain, no more orders to obey,
no more humans to torture them. They would have total control.

“There are no humans in the Homeland.” And Rage had met no
other female like his.

“Oh.” Gap’s shoulders slumped.

“There are cyborg females.” Crash turned his attention
toward their ship, rerouting the critical systems so they didn’t flow through
the tracking beacons. “But I hear not all of them are accommodating.”

“Very few of them are accommodating,” Rage grumbled. Their
nanocybotics were hostile to those of any intruder, especially a dominant
male’s.

“Maybe they’ll be accommodating to me.” Hope lit Gap’s
unmarked face. “I don’t scare others as you do, Rage.”

He didn’t scare his little human. Rage took apart damaged
weapons and pieced them back together, creating functional units.

They worked, Crash and Gap chattering as much as his female,
talking about their plans for the future. Rage listened, commented only when
needed.

The Mantidae slowly approached until they couldn’t be
ignored any longer. “We’ll perform one last sweep of our territory.” He stood,
heaving his biggest gun over his right shoulder. “This will be one of our
bloodier deployments.”

Crash set his tools aside, his reluctance obvious. The
cyborg didn’t enjoy fighting as Rage did. “Your human told you to be careful.”

“When she sees me, we’ll know if her concern is genuine.”
Rage doubted that it was. He stalked toward the enemy, determined to vent some
of his frustration on their green skulls.

Joan wasn’t dumb. She knew the other engineers wanted her
dead. She heard the whispered rumblings of their discontent, their crude
comments and dire predictions.

Attacking Boyd didn’t help her situation but he had left her
with no choice. The guard had disrespected her cyborg, threatened to harm him.
She had to take action, had to show all of them that she’d protect C899321.

Knowing she’d be targeted, Joan took precautions. She left
the docking bay in the company of others, gambling that they wouldn’t want an
audience to witness their assaults. When she stocked the chamber with supplies
and extra flight suits—red to reflect her new position, she asked an extremely
enthusiastic medic cadet to help her carry and arrange the items. Now, she
waited at the intersection between the busy main hallway and the less-traveled
route to the cyborg’s chambers.

A group of cybernetic engineers turned down the cyborg
hallway. One of those engineers was her friend, Denny.

She joined them, falling in step beside him. “Thank you for
trying to warn me,” she murmured.

Although he didn’t say anything, staring straight ahead, he
heard her, his body stiffening. Joan matched him stride for stride, feeling a
little less alone, almost part of their group.

“I heard that cyborg fucked that fat ass of yours, Tits.”
Plank, the meanest cadet in their graduating class, called from behind her.
“Did you moo like one of those bovines you love?”

His two henchmen, cadets she nicknamed Dumb and Dumber,
sniggered.

Joan ignored him. He’d been spreading rumors about her for
solar cycles, had been responsible for her unfortunate nickname.

“The cyborg had to take you from behind.” Plank closed the
gap between them. “Not even a machine could maintain a hard-on while looking at
your face.” He shoved her against the wall, knocking the air out of her lungs.

She staggered backward, hurt but not worried. There were
bystanders, witnesses. One of them included her friend. They’d stop Plank and
his buddies.

“Don’t move, cyborg slut.” Dumb and Dumber pinned her
shoulders, grinding her into the panel. “We don’t want to see your face
either.”

No one stepped forward. No one said anything.

There were three of them. Only one of her.

“Denny,” she called for her friend. He’d help her.

“You know Tits, Olsen?” Plank asked.

“No.” He continued walking, not looking back.

She stared at him, some of the fight oozing out of her. Her
friend had deserted her.

“We’d kill you.” Plank pushed her face against a seam in the
panels. “But the machine will do that job for us.” Metal scraped against her
cheek, leaving a trail of pain. “Last shift, it had already vented its rage on
your predecessor. This planet rotation, it will turn on you. You’ll die slowly,
painfully, Tits.”

Rage was the right word for Plank to associate with her
cyborg. Joan had watched the footage. Most of it. A malfunction had erased
several particles of time. The other males called him Rage.

“I’d rather him kill me than you,” she muttered against the
wall. The cyborg killed quickly. Plank would torture her for an entire shift
before completing the deed.

“You’ll get that wish.” The engineer knocked her head
against the panel. Explosions of pain and brightness exploded in her brain.

“On your own time, cadets,” a stern voice cut through the
buzzing in her ears. “Your deployments are returning.”

The three engineers released her. “Yes, sir.” They snapped
into a salute and walked away, leaving her slumped against the wall.

“Thank you, sir.” Joan turned, managed a sloppy salute.

“I stopped it because no one interferes with the ship’s
timetable, Cadet.” There was no kindness on Commander Lewis’ face. “Not because
I care about your welfare.”

“I understand, sir.” She understood she was on her own. She
also understood that no one would attack her close to deployment start or
completion time.

The Commander nodded and strode off, a smirk on his face.

No one expected her to survive the pairing with her cyborg,
with Rage. They thought he was a killing machine.

And in the footage, while he was in battle, he had been,
slaughtering the Mantidae swiftly, efficiently, his biceps bulging, his huge
body almost graceful.

But when he spoke with the other cyborgs, Crash and Gap,
he’d shown his human side. He’d been surly, yes, and often impatient, but he’d
also been tolerant, allowing the others to tease and taunt him.

She hurried toward his chambers, wishing to be there when he
entered them. If she earned his respect, as the cyborgs had, he might also
become as tolerant of her, allowing her to serve him. Then all she had to do
was avoid everyone else on the station and she’d live.

She accessed the chambers and waited between the two sets of
doors for her cyborg to return.

*****

Rage walked through the door, covered in dried blood, a
piece of metal lodged underneath his right eye, his armor battered and torn,
and Joan felt faint, the floor unsteady under her feet.

“I told you to be careful.” Her voice rose to a screech.
According to the footage, he’d returned to the battle station clean after the
previous deployments. What had happened during this planet rotation?

Her cyborg gazed at her, his eyes blazing with fury. His
fingers folded into massive fists.

Was he preparing to use them on her?

She gulped air. “Sir.”

Boyd, that rectal wipe, sniggered, his nose bruised and
swollen. “Your rough day is about to get rougher, Cadet Tits.” The door closed
in front of him.

“Did he do this?” Rage touched the scratch on her cheek and
she winced. “No one harms what is mine.”

Although she knew it was the primitive C Model in him
speaking, his possessive tone still curled her toes. “It wasn’t Boyd, sir, and
I’m more concerned about you.” She led him through the inner door, toward her
hoard of medic supplies. “I’ll spray your wounds first, then I’ll remove the
shrapnel so they can heal.”