“Acceptable. Confirm course change and drop us.”
“Confirmed. Dropping to normal space in one minute, twenty seconds.”
There were many stories about the ruthlessness of cyborgs when they went into combat. Merciless killers, they’d been bred in a lab, matured in tanks and gone under the surgeon’s knife before they’d achieved consciousness for the first time.
Most of that was true, Johnny acknowledged as he strapped weaponry around his body from the small weapons cache kept on the bridge. He checked the power pack on the pulse assault carbine in his hands and shoved it home before activating the weapon with practiced movements. Another carbine was slung crosswise over his back, he had pistols on both h*ps and a small shotgun in a spine sheath. A trench knife played peekaboo from the top of his boot as he strode across the bridge to the lift.
No, far from the hardened psychopaths they were labeled, all cyborgs were “born” from the tanks a blank slate. Like a terran pitbull forced to fight in the ring, it took intervention and cruelty to create a monster. He flicked the safety off the carbine as the lift doors slid shut in front of him, rage surging through every cell in his body.
He’d spent years serving the fleet and he’d never once stepped over the line from thinking, feeling soldier who just happened to be cybernetic to cold, heartless cyborg killer. Attacking Milly was one step too far, as the two life signs he’d picked up in the shuttle were about to find out.
It took him less than ten minutes to traverse the length and depth of the ship, his boots pounding the metal deck plates at a dead run that would have taxed his system had he been merely human. But he wasn’t, he was a cyborg and unlike his organic systems, the tri-sappherium crystals that powered his combat chassis never tired.
He swung into the corridor they’d breached and plastered himself to the wall behind a support strut. The corridor was dark. It had taken some arguments with the Starflame’s old and crabby computer core and lowering his body temperature by a few degrees, but the computer was now set not to recognize him as a life form. He shook his head, he really had to get Cyn on the ship to deal with the thing. A couple of upgrades and one of the new AI cores and Milly wouldn’t know the place.
He leaned out and peered down the corridor. Like all the lower decks, this one didn’t have the luxury of the extruded fabric walls and neat checker plate flooring that marked the bridge and upper levels. Instead the walls were bare bulkheads marked at intervals by internal support struts and the floor was little more than a mesh walkway over the conduits and piping running beneath.
But he wasn’t interested in the interior decoration. Instead, his attention was fixed on the boarding hatch ten feet down, on the opposite wall. Standard issue, it featured interlocking rings to clamp onto the hull of another ship, and an arc cutter to slice pressurized plating. A one-stop operation that both created a big enough hole to board through and equalized the pressure on both sides at the same time. It was a sweet bit of equipment he’d heard about but never used.
The sound of the hatch sliding open echoed through the corridor. Johnny tightened his hold on the pistol grip of his rifle and waited. Sure enough, a leg extended through the opening.
“Told you we’d dropped out of jump space. I didn’t think this crate could move so fast…it’s bigger than your butt. And we all know how fas—”
Johnny squeezed the trigger. He’d never purposely shot to wound before, but he did now, peppering the leg and torso which emerged from the hatch. The energy bolts sizzled as they streaked through the air, burning through clothing and skin alike to slam into the tender flesh beneath. The hijacker’s body danced like a marionette with a maniac on the strings as screams filled the corridor. Fuck, his shoot to wound skills needed some updating.
Six hits. Vital organ damage, femoral artery damage, circulatory system fatally compromised. Death imminent.
His onboard kept up a stream of information as he moved from cover, stalking toward the board hatch and the dying man squirming there as the damaged artery in his thigh continued the paint the inside of the opening scarlet.
“What the fuck?! Darrick…fuckfuckfuck!”
Johnny ignored the swearing from inside the shuttle in favor of wrapping a hard hand around the newly named Darrick’s ankle and yanking. The still twitching man slithered from the hatch into a boneless heap in front of it. Johnny didn’t flinch as blood splattered in a warm spray over the side of his rib cage and down over his leg. The pulses were getting weaker now and the light in Darrick’s eyes fading as his heart struggled to find blood to pump. He was f**ked, properly f**ked, and try as he might, Johnny couldn’t find any sympathy in his heart.
“Screw you, a**hole!” The hijacker still inside the shuttle screamed and slammed the internal door across. Johnny shook his head. As if a thin sheet of metal was going to stop him. The carbine clattered as he dropped it on the metal floor next to the dead man.
Winding his shoulder back, Johnny let fly with his fist. Punching like the machine he was, he hammered at the metal in front of him, venting all his rage and fury on the barrier. Thuds rang out like old-fashioned gunshots as he punched deep holes in the metal. It screamed and squealed, twisting like a living thing under his blows before one heavy punch spilt it like the skin of an overripe orange. His lips quirked, a line from an old holo-vid he’d seen a week ago springing to mind.
“Heeeeere’s Johnny.”
Grabbing the edges of the split metal, he tore it like paper, throwing huge chunks behind him before shouldering his way through the gap. He dropped onto the floor of the shuttle, trench knife in hand, and looked around for the occupant.
“Fuck you, you stay away from me, bastard!”
Johnny caught movement out of the corner of his eye and twisted automatically, his arm lifting into a block just in the nick of time. A second later and the fire extinguisher the hijacker was using as a club would have caught him on the side of the face.
“Oooooh, rocking it in the improvisation stakes,” the cyborg taunted and dropped to the floor. Weight on his hands, he sliced his legs around, the scissor action taking the hijacker’s right out from under him. In a second, Johnny was all over him like a bad rash.
“Hold f**king still,” he snarled but the guy fought back like a bucking Bacaral, twisting as Johnny tried to slam a fist in his face. His knuckles left an imprint in the metal right where the hijacker’s face had been not a moment before. He turned wide eyes up to Johnny.
“What are you?”
“I’m your worst f**king nightmare.”
Johnny grinned and let his serial code show through on his cheek. The hijacker paled, right as Johnny’s fist hammered into his temple and dropped him into unconsciousness.
The sound of running water brought Milly out of sleep slowly, fighting every step of the way. She was warm and cozy where she was, but the warning buzz at the back of her mind said she’d forgotten something. Something important.
As she opened her eyes, it hit her. The memories poured back, slamming into and rolling over her. Her breath caught in her throat as she recalled the hijack, being dragged onto the bridge and what had happened after. Fear held her rigid as image after brutal image flashed through her mind, all backed up in graphic detail as she remembered the pain of her face hitting the table, the smell of blood and other nastier things as she’d stabbed the guy trying to rape her…
Then there had been Johnny. Her Aries had come to rescue her, killing two humans in the process. Something no bot should be able to do, but he wasn’t just any bot, was he? He was some kind of uber-bot, able to think…and feel?
She sat up in bed, gaze going instinctively to the glass door of the shower alcove and the shadowy male figure behind it. There was no mistaking Johnny’s tall, broad-shouldered form and relief hit her at jump speed. He was here, he would protect her.
When did she start thinking of him as Johnny, rather than the bot or the Aries? When he’d taken her with such power and desperation in the shower…or when he’d arrived on the bridge like an avenging angel? No, it was neither. She knew the exact point when her perception of him had changed. It had been when he’d carried her, battered and bruised, from the bridge to her office and set about cleaning the battered mess of her face with such tenderness.
Sliding from the bed, she ran a distracted hand through her hair. Her nose wrinkled as she got a look at her clothing, the sweat pants and clingy t-shirt ripped and splattered with dark spots she was trying hard not to think about as blood. She must look like a total freaking mess.
The door slid open to reveal Johnny on the other side. Naked and fully aroused, his c*ck jutted proudly from his body in a rampant declaration of masculinity. Water beaded across his skin, highlighting his washboard abs and the hard musculature of his chest and shoulders. Heat slammed through her, settling in her stomach as a heavy weight and extending tendrils of desire and awareness through her body. Her p**sy ached, desperate to feel the thick slide of his c*ck as he claimed her again. God help her, he was gorgeous. She wanted him in the worst possible way. Over her, under her, behind her…any way she could get him and in every hole he’d fit.
Her breath hitched, stalled in her throat at the expression on his face. Tight and feral, his hooded gaze swept over her with possession and desire, the need to f**k her etched deeply into his handsome features. It was the look she’d always wanted to see on a man’s face, but never expected to see on a bot’s.
What made a man, though? Kindness? Tenderness to those weaker than himself? Decency to those around him? Courage under fire? Johnny had those all in spades…which by her reckoning made him far more of a man than her waste of space of an ex-husband. Bot…man…who cared when he looked at her like that, crooking a finger to beckon her closer.
She sauntered toward him, all mental debates over his status as a person disappearing under the surge of desire running rampant through her body. Right now, she didn’t care what he was. She could deal with all that later.
“Shower,” he ordered, looming over her in a way that made her feel small and feminine but not threatened. Never threatened. Heat gushed at the rough tone of his voice, soaking the thin panties she wore. “Leave the door open, I want to watch you.”
Unable to do more than nod, she watched as he walked across to the bed. The view was just as good from the back as the front. He had an ass that could crack nuts, firm globes that just begged for her to dig her fingers into. Preferably when he was balls-deep inside her, riding her to a mind-shattering orgasm. Her gaze fell on the vanity case by the side of the bed. He’d fetched her toy case. She’d missed it when she woke.
Heat flared in her cheeks as she started to strip, trying not to watch Johnny as he lounged over her bed, still butt nak*d and totally unashamed. Watching her, he reached down and wrapped a big fist around his cock. She stopped, panties around her thighs as he started to stroke. Root to tip, the thick length of his rigid c*ck played peekaboo either side of his fist as he pumped. All the time his eyes were on her, even when a bead of moisture welled on the tip. She moaned, desperate to lick it off.