“Vos, what the f**k do you think you’re playing at? You’re in the wrong freaking system!”
Vos. Hearing that name, the name of one of the hijackers, over the comm froze Milly in place. She turned wide eyes onto Johnny, seeing the same realization written over his features she knew had spread over hers. The hijackers had been meeting up with another ship, a fleet ship.
Not just any fleet ship, but a destroyer. A ship with enough weaponry to blow a planet out of space, never mind a civilian transporter. If cargo space equaled speed, then they were the fastest thing out on the space lanes, but it didn’t. The Starflame was a big-bellied behemoth designed for lugging cargo at a set pace.
“That is so not good. I’m jamming the signal. Can you plot us a jump vector?” Johnny was already moving, using a few commands she’d never seen before to split the helm console in two. She gawked as the half he was working on dropped the user interface, leaving her looking at what she assumed was raw code. Whatever it was, he seemed to understand it.
“Vos? What the hell is going on over there? We can’t raise Darrick or Hiram either.”
Who the hell were Darrick and Hiram? She’d only seen two, and those weren’t what they’d called each other.
“Crap, they’re powering weapons. Out of the chair, now.”
“What?” she squeaked a reply but she was already moving, aided by his large hands as he bundled her from the chair and crammed his large frame into it. “What the hell…it takes years to learn to pilot one of these things!”
Yanking the console, he locked it into place over his lap. His teeth flashed white as he shot her a quick grin. “Maybe for you—”
“Let me guess…experimental pilot chip?” she asked as she raced across the bridge. Her butt hit the first officer’s chair even as she reached for the straps to clip herself in. If that thing got a weapons lock on them, then this was going to be a hot jump and the last thing she needed was to be unsecured during a hottie. There were more than enough horror stories of unsecured crew ending up an inch thin red smear over the nearest bulkhead. Not a good way to go.
He grunted in answer behind her as she flicked the FO’s console on and watched in amazement as he took the autopilot offline and dumped the ship into manual mode. The deck lurched under their feet, but he had it, catching the ship and stabilizing it before it could be dragged into the gravitational pull of the nearby planet. The roar of the engines powering up mingled with the metallic squeal of the ship’s space frame as he pushed it beyond its theoretical limits.
“Hell, your creator really did a great job on you. I’m just surprised she put so much…stuff into a sexbot.”
And she was. He handled the ship like a pro. No bot she’d ever seen could handle a ship like that or had half the abilities and sheer normalness he displayed. The amount of money it had taken to develop him must have been immense, and it couldn’t have been just for the sex trade. Fucking didn’t need a bot that could drop an attacker like a trained killer or the ability to pilot megaton transports. She froze, fingers extended over her own keyboard.
“Shit! Will your creator have listed you as stolen? Is that why we were hijacked?”
“Not likely.”
His short laugh echoed around the bridge as the engines wound up to full power. Even at top speed, they seemed to be moving at a snail’s pace and threats poured in over the comms unit. Reaching over, she cut it off, silencing the filth in mid-sentence. It was safe to assume they’d realized the hijacking team weren’t in charge.
“And since you’re only half loaded, they’re either inept or they have another agenda. Hold tight, we’re jumping.”
“Ugggghhh,” was all she managed as Johnny initiated the jump and everything lurched.
She curled her hands like claws around the console in front of her and tried to keep the contents of her stomach where they belonged. She hated hot jumps. Hell, she hated normal jumps, but hotties were the worst. Without the normal build up it was like every cell in her body had been wrenched sideways a few inches, then jiggled up and down. Violently.
“Hold on, sweet stuff.” His deep voice sounded behind her, his tones reassuring as she resisted the urge to lay her head down on the cool surface of the console. The entire bridge rattled around and the navigator’s console exploded in a spray of sparks. The acrid smell of melting plasti-flex and fried conduits filled the room, burning her lungs.
“Nearly…there. Hold on, dropping to normal space.”
The ship lurched again, and Milly’s cells snapped back to their normal position. Dragging a deep breath into her lungs, she waited for the queasiness to pass. After a few seconds, she turned, meeting Johnny’s gaze and nodding that she was okay.
They sat in silence, the ship settling around them with metallic groans. Gazes riveted to the sensor feeds on the main console, they waited for something, anything, to indicate that the destroyer had managed to follow them. She didn’t think they would have. They’d jumped blind, so they could be anywhere within the jump radius of the Starflame’s engines. It would take an AI assisted oct-core ship computer to even try to predict a blind jump and then jump to land in the right area.
“I think…” Johnny started. “Aww fuck.”
Proximity alerts drowned out all other noises on the bridge as the destroyer emerged right in front of them, filling the screen at the front of the bridge. This close in all she could see was the armored forward hull, and as the other vessel shifted position, the row of battery cannons lined up on the bridge.
Her breath caught in her throat. At this range, there was no way they’d survive if the destroyer opened fire. The Starflame was a civilian vessel, the shields weren’t rated for combat. The most they’d ever had to deal with was random strikes from space debris as the transport chugged along the space lanes.
“Starflame,” the voice said over the comm again. “This is the Warspear, power down and prepare to be boarded. Resist and we open fire on your bridge.”
Anger flared through Milly’s system. Clenching her teeth so hard she thought they’d crack under the pressure, she stabbed at the reply button. These bastards had hijacked her ship, chased them across jump space and now wanted to make threats.
“I’ve got my finger on a dead man’s trigger,” she lied smoothly, amazed at how calm and collected she sounded. “Fire on the bridge and the cargo you’re after gets jettisoned to cold, hard space. And none of its vacuum protected…so good luck with that. No pay off for you, sunshine.”
They were dead. She knew that. There was no way the Warspear would let them go, not when she and Johnny could identify them as being part of a hijacking plot. Bile rose in her throat at the thought of members of the fleet being involved in shit like this. Oh, thanks to her ex she knew that there were rotten apples in the bunch, but this was something else. It was one thing to look the other way, quite another to use a fleet destroyer to steal ships and cargo.
“Hull breaches on levels three and five.” Johnny’s voice was as calm as hers was as he levered himself out of the main chair. His face was impassive, but the look in his eyes nearly tore her apart. “Sweetheart, they’re coming for us. There’s no way we can fight off a destroyer. What do you want to do? We can use the escape pod—”
She shook her head, cutting him off. “We can’t. The pod was due to be serviced while we were in dock. It’s nonoperational, doesn’t hold atmosphere.” She paused, and eyed him speculatively. “Which makes no difference to you.”
Surging to her feet, she started to herd him toward the access hatch by the viewer. She was dead, she knew that, but at the least she could save him. His memory chips were admissible as evidence in court. He’d suffer the same fate as she would, albeit in a slightly different way, his android body smashed and broken beyond repair and his systems fried so nothing could be pulled from his memory.
If anything, they’d have to do a more thorough job on him than on her. At least once a human brain died, there was no way to access the memories it had contained. It was just a lump of soon to be rotting gray matter.
Her heart ached at the thought of him destroyed, even though his creator could probably make another version. He was her bot. They’d shared experiences and passion that had to have seared into his neural net and shaped his personality. Surely?
“They don’t know about you. We put you in the pod, you hide out and jettison when they take the flame near a station. Get to the authorities and tell them…what?” she asked as he shook his head, a sad little smile on his lips.
“I can’t do that, little human.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” She threw her hands up in despair, turning away from him to run one through her hair. It shook. So the stress of being boarded by fleet troopers was getting to her…he could sue her ass for it later. “Look, I release you from the primary directives. In fact, new primary directive. Survive.”
“Marry me.”
Of all the things he could have said, those two words were the last two Milly had expected to hear. He moved, bracketing her in against the back of the helm chair, so close she could feel the heat of his hard body against hers. The scent rising off his skin, shower gel and warm skin, overrode the aroma of burnt conduit and plastic. Tears welled, tightened her throat as she wrapped her hands around his thick upper arms. All she wanted to do was bury herself in the safety of his arms, close her eyes and stay there forever.
“Okay, now I know you have chips for brains. You really have bought into your cover story haven’t you?” She managed a small smile, inordinately pleased that her voice didn’t crack and betray the fear she was hiding inside as she considered his words. It wasn’t so weird, was it? Not when there were stories on the news streams about people who married their shuttles or ground flyers…at least he was humanoid and could walk and talk.
“You got a deal, if we get out of this and you can…we’ll get married.”
Triumph flared in his eyes for a second and then his lips were on hers. The kiss was as swift as it was possessive, need and promise wrapped up in one brief exchanged that stole her heart and sealed her fate. She was an idiot, falling in love with a bot.
“Follow my lead,” he broke away to whisper, his hand cupping the nape of her neck for a second to make her look up at him. His green-gold eyes were serious, filled with grim determination. “We will get through this. I promise.”
He stepped back and his whole demeanor changed. The fluid movements disappeared as though they’d never been, replaced by the slightly too stiff movements she was used to seeing on a bot, and his expression reverted to the rigidly polite half smile all the makers seemed to prefer on their creations. It made her shiver to see him change so abruptly.
“Johnny?” Hating the needy catch in her voice, she stepped forward and touched his arm. He turned his head, the movement so mechanical she could almost hear the servers in his neck working.