“Yes, Captain.” The warmth was gone out of his voice, a warmth she hadn’t realized was there until it was absent. Then, almost too quick for her to register, he winked, amusement in his eyes before he spoke again. “Aries 7000 operational and awaiting orders.”
Sneaky bastard. If she hadn’t seen the wink, or known what he’d been like before, she’d have believed the ruse.
“Okay, Chip. Some bad people are going to come through that door soon. Whatever happens, you will do as they say—”
“Excellent advice, dear.” A new voice sounded from the direction of the lift. A familiar voice, and one she’d hoped never to hear again. Slowly she turned, her movements stiff as she faced her ex-husband.
“Hello, Jason.”
Jason Templeton.
Johnny froze and all the pieces fell into place with a resounding clang as he recognized the tall man in the lift door.
The clean-cut poster boy for the fleet, Templeton was all blond good looks and straight white teeth Johnny itched to smash down his throat. His daddy was a war hero, his uncle a political whirlwind and his aunt some kind of celebrity cosmetic surgeon, so to say Jason had been born into a charmed existence was an understatement. Pity he was a lying, cheating scumbag who’d step on anyone to further his own aims.
“No…Templeton, no. We’re on the same side, man… Fuck, this is Harris. Templeton’s go— Arrrrgggh!”
The screams of his dying comrades echoed in Johnny’s ears from across the years, each gunshot etched deep into his memory and soul. As soon as he’d met Templeton, an observer assigned to measure the cyborg unit’s performance, he’d warned his section leader the human would get them killed. And he had, Harris and the other members of their section dying in agony as Templeton executed the kill order handed down on all cyborgs that fateful day.
The bastard hadn’t even waited for them to finish the operation. An innocent little girl had died as the Cyborgs had tried to protect her with nothing more than their own bodies, their only witness the two members of their team medivaced out with the girl’s father.
Collateral damage, Templeton had called her, and he’d signed his own death warrant with those two little words.
He was older, his sandy hair streaked with gray that caught the overhead lights as he sauntered across the bridge with all the swagger and arrogance Johnny remembered. He schooled himself to indifference, forcing his body to remain still when all he wanted to do was leap across the space between them and snap the human’s neck. No chance of that. The instant he tried it, the heavily armed commandos pouring onto the bridge from the lift would put enough energy bolts through him to power a ship. Moreover, the possibility Milly would get caught in the crossfire was too high. No, he’d watch and wait.
The uniform was different, the dual bars of a lieutenant replaced by those of a fleet captain on Templeton’s collar as he stopped in front of Milly.
“Hello, darling, miss me?”
Jason? Darling? Just what was he missing here? Johnny’s eyes narrowed a fraction before he stopped himself and looked blankly ahead. Behind the blank mask, his mind churned. How did Milly know Templeton? Her name was Locke…
“I should’ve known you were behind this.” She looked him up and down, her expression clearly stating that she was unimpressed by what she saw. “The judge told you that you had no claim on the ship, but you just couldn’t handle that, could you Jason? You found another way to get what you wanted.”
He smiled, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes. They were cold and flat. A predator’s eyes if ever Johnny had seen them. And he had, every morning when he looked in the mirror.
“Darling, Judge Reynolds was a little…shall we say ‘off’ in some of his recent decisions. Particularly in the divorce courts.”
Divorce. The ex. Realization hit Johnny hard and fast. Milly had been married to Jason Templeton. The ex was the a**hole human he’d been tracking for years. Bitter amusement rolled through Johnny as he added another black mark to Templeton’s list. The bastard was going to suffer for everything he’d done. And soon. Somehow.
“The error of his ways has been pointed out to him and he regrets his mistakes.” He shrugged and studied his fingernails nonchalantly. Johnny gritted his teeth harder. Fucking poser.
“Well, he did. For all of five minutes. After that he was too busy screaming and begging me to kill him. It was annoying, all that bloody noise. I can’t stand a whiner.” He looked up and speared Milly with a speculative gaze. “I do hope you’re not a whiner.”
“Fuck you, Jason.” Milly snarled and spit in his face. Johnny bit back his grin as she clocked him right under the eye. Using his implants, he locked down his expression to ensure no emotion showed on his face. Grinning like a damn fool at the spittle as it slid down Templeton’s face was a sure fire way of proving he wasn’t a bot.
“You’ll pay for that, bitch.”
Jason wiped his face and looked at her coldly. Then, just as coldly, he backhanded her across the face. The force of the blow knocked her aside and to her knees. Looking for some purchase to keep her balance, her hands landed on Johnny’s thighs. Forcing himself to keep staring straight ahead and not help her was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
He felt the weight of Jason’s gaze on him and met it, automatically shifting his position to face the fleet officer, just as a bot would do when encountering a human.
Recognize me, a little voice in the back of his head whispered. A voice made up of many voices. Five to be exact. Five voices for the five dead members of his unit. Five cyborgs Templeton had executed along with one little girl.
He wanted Templeton to recognize him, but it wasn’t going to happen. Thanks to Cyn, Johnny’s face was different now and there was nothing else for Templeton to connect the bot stood in front of him with a cyborg who, as far as he knew, had been decommissioned years ago.
Templeton raked him with a look, seeing the set pose, the marks of the rings through Johnny’s n**ples and dismissing him in the same instant.
“Lock them both in the secondary hold,” he ordered in a bored tone as he turned and headed for the Captain’s office. “Leave two here and head on back to the ship. I’ll take care of this and we’ll meet at the rendezvous point. Oh…”
He paused and looked over his shoulder, his eyes glinting with malevolence.
“If the bot gives you trouble, kill her.”
Chapter Eleven
“Keep it moving along,” the trooper behind him snarled and slammed the butt of his rile into the small of Johnny’s back. Pain flared, but he ignored it, reducing it to little more than another electrical impulse for his onboard to register and manage. “Boss has a tight schedule to keep.”
Not for the first time on the walk down to the holding bays, Johnny wondered just how much the grim-faced men surrounding him benefited from that schedule. Dressed in fleet standard black “bad-ass” uniforms, they wore matching “Don’t f**k with me” expressions. He suspected that if he broke them in half, they’d have “Templeton’s bitch” running through them like the lettering through cheap stick candy from a resort colony.
He stumbled forward as the trooper shoved again, boots clumping against the plating under his feet. Adrenaline filled his muscles, making him twitchy. The urge to turn around and snap the guy’s neck like a dry twig was almost overwhelming. The only thing that stopped him was the no-nonsense way one of them was holding a combat knife to Milly’s throat.
Something, perhaps the tight set of his shoulders as he caught his balance on the walkway balustrade, must have leaked through. The corporal at the back of the section barked, “Less f**king about with the bot. And keep that knife up in case it has a voice activated bodyguard system. Last thing I want to explain is why we got done over by an android.”
“Heh.”
The man in front of Johnny stopped, his back to the corner as the walkway changed direction. Temptation reared its head. It would be so easy to fake a stumble, slam his shoulder into the guy’s gut and send him tumbling over the barrier and into the cavernous drop below. Perhaps desperation would force an evolutionary leap and a fleet trooper would learn to fly.
The trooper’s gaze wandered over Johnny’s tall frame with way too much interest, lingering on his broad chest for a second before moving down to his crotch. Lust flared in his eyes.
“Nah, this one’s a sexbot through and through. I doubt it’s designed to do anything other than look pretty and fuck. Ain’t that right, sweetcheeks?”
He pinched Johnny’s ass as he passed. Johnny ground his teeth, having to use all the control functions of his implants to avoid reacting. Since that reaction was going to be bloody and brutal, he needed to ensure he unleashed it at the right moment. Such as when there wasn’t a blade at the throat of the woman who he loved.
Loved? When had that happened? In the seconds between the pinch and the trooper speaking again, Johnny pondered his emotions. His implants didn’t recognize them but his biological half—the part with instincts and emotions—did. The warmth in his chest as he looked at her or thought about her…the need to do something silly just to see her smile…the heat that surged through his loins when she looked at him just that way…the rage that filled his veins at the sight of another man’s hands on her or holding a blade to her skin, he knew instinctively what they were. What he was feeling.
“Oh, firm. Perhaps I should take it for a test drive later.” He fell into step behind Johnny, his steps ringing out on the metal walkway. “Boss did say we’d get some downtime, yeah?”
The corporal barked out a laugh.
“Only you, Hudson, you bi little f**ker. We got a real woman and you want to stick your c*ck up a bot’s ass.”
The team of men around them burst into laughter and several ribald comments followed, all at his and Milly’s expense. It was the sort of camaraderie and banter between soldiers that Johnny was used to, but the fact that they were talking about rape so casually made him sick to his stomach. Not because of Hudson’s interest in him—he’d snap bits off the little a**hole before Hudson got his c*ck anywhere near Johnny—but because of the way they were talking about Milly as though she were a piece of meat.
Despite her violent reaction yesterday, she wouldn’t be able to fend of a group of determined attackers, pen or no pen. The thought of what would happen to her almost paralyzed him before rage, white hot and electrifying, rolled through him. Not happening. Not on his watch.
“Yeah, well.” Hudson responded, his voice jarring cheerful. “Ain’t nothing wrong with a bit of ass-f**king. Face it, you lot’ll be drawing straws to see who gets her ass first, won’tcha?”
There was a general murmuring of assent as the group trudged along the walkway. Milly whimpered in fear, stumbling a little ahead of them and hauled upright by her captor. All the while, Johnny ran different scenarios through his onboard, trying to find a way to reach Milly before the trooper holding her could slice her throat. Frustration gnawed at his gut as they approached the end of the walkway. So far, he was coming up blank.