Cyberella: Preyfinders Universe (26 page)

A hovercab took her to the spaceport and she walked in, following a map guide sent to her when she arrived at the port.

She might have communicated the location of the ship, if not for two men who fell in beside her.

“Plito. Your comm,” was all one of them said. Then he held out his hand.

After a glance, she handed it over. There was no point in resisting.

A small, slickly orange spaceship with a plump set of rear engines turned out to be her destination. White symbols were etched on the hull. A man in black pants and shirt emerged and stood in the airlock at the top of a set of perfectly shiny metal steps. Her stomach crawled sickeningly.

Her left side escort took her elbow and her heart thumped erratically.

If she’d made a mistake, it was too late.

She hitched the strap of the carriers for the legs into a better place on her shoulders and climbed the steps. Each rung rang with expectant doom. Wherever this ship took her, she didn’t expect to come out intact, maybe not even alive. If she got Plito out, that was enough for her.

Even with the note, Torgeir was never going to forgive her or understand. That made her saddest of all. Her death or disappearance would leave him grieving but he would recover, he’d find another to love. An ugly gift, but it was the only thing worth giving – her absence.

At the top, she paused, stricken by how much this was going to cost her...everything that counted for anything in her life.

She sniffed and wiped her eyes, then hitched at the backpack again. What did it matter? She’d lost him anyway. Least she could do something right for once. Abandoning Plito? Not ever going to happen.

Her escort tugged at her arm.

Do this. There’s no one else who can help him. It has to be me.

The outer airlock door slid open. Retreat was impossible.

She heard the airlock’s second door hiss shut behind her and the three men led her down a short passageway to a room – white walls, some table-high equipment and storage cabinets. The ship wasn’t much bigger than a small house. There couldn’t be much more than a control room and engines.

“Put those down.” After she slid the straps off her shoulders and lowered the legs to the floor, he switched his gaze to her pair of guards. “Scan them for anything amiss. Then we do her.”

There’d always been the chance they’d simply throw the legs away and not let them aboard.

“Don’t lose those. Your master will want to see them.”

His expression barely changed. “Perhaps.”

The legs were carried to a portable scanning table similar to those the boys used to check parts for design and flaws. The machine moaned into high gear in a second. A holoscreen showed the leg’s designs, in a thigh to toes direction, in a slowly advancing cross-section.

She guessed they were looking for weaponry.

“Strip.” That word from him had her throat squeezing in. There was something about being unclothed before strange men that generated instant panic. “Everything off. How are the legs? He threw the words in an aside to the man working the scanner.

“Normal. Nothing dangerous.”

“Good. Now you. Don’t make us wait or we’ll strip you ourselves.”

The ship hadn’t left port but even if she could disable these three, she wouldn’t know how to find Plito. He wouldn’t be on this little ship. A curious creak and small thump somewhere else on the ship had her wondering at the cause. Were there others?

“Where are we going?”

He smiled. “Up. Your clothes have to come off. I’m not to damage you but I can be rough. Choose. You strip, or we do it.”

His face suddenly clicked. This was the fruit man, minus some changes.

Her face must have given her away.

“Remember me?”

She refused to talk. Enemies all around her, just this one seemed more personal. Letting him handle her was repugnant. She undressed, refusing to look at them or acknowledge their presence. When she pulled off her panties, the last piece to go, she stood there with every item in her hand, and waited, pretending this was normal, and hating them all.

“Thank you,” the fruit man added. “Now lie on the table. And give me those.”

Nonchalantly, she handed her clothes to him and climbed up to lie flat on her back on the table. The machine began to scan her. When she looked down her body, seeing herself naked, her breasts, her helplessness made panic churn through her. Her plan, she should go over it. But there was so much that might happen. Everything that was coming next would be an unknown except her and Plito.

If they found anything with the scan, she had other things they wouldn’t find. She was certain, almost. Someone hissed and she flinched. They’d found the obvious.

As she turned her head, the man in black stepped up and touched her neck with metal.

A liquid, brain-slamming, gut-twisting shock rippled to her bones and her head swam somewhere far away.

As they headed for the final approach to the wormhole, the message chimed into the comm window on his control-room holoscreen.

Ella, slave to Torgeir Rakkel, registered departing Riptide via Pelagia spaceport.

He stared, barely able to comprehend. His slave code had triggered an alert? The only explanation – someone had her.

“Terminate approach,” he snapped. “We’re turning back.”

A quick analysis of departures had her ship as one of two possibilities. The government ship was very unlikely. The other one...

He sat back. That explained a lot. The attempted abductions, the sophisticated poisoning. Ella was an Earth girl. It fitted the rumors about the man. How brazen.

No matter how rich and powerful he was, the man had picked the wrong adversary.

He would get her back even he had to wrestle a Bak-lal factory queen.

“Prepare for battle. We’re going to be armoring up when we get where we’re going.”

Dresdek hadn’t questioned his decision at all, but now he asked, “Where is that, sir?”

“You want an address? The Verok megastructure, center of the Meek Crusade. The castle is our target.”

He was losing a lot of money doing this but money was worthless if he didn’t have Ella.

*****

Reboot.

Time ticked by. Slowly.

Someone laughed.

She opened her eyes to the sight of a ceiling with chandeliers then frowned for ages while attempting to sort out where that had come from.

The pumpkin orange ship? Clearly she wasn’t on it anymore. She lay on soft padding and above her was a curved, transparent lid. A coffin? At least it was mostly open. She tried to sit up and discovered the restraining straps fastened across her body, then turned her head and saw him: a white-haired man, with perfectly close-cropped hair, a square jaw, and a white-and-gold suit that looked appropriate for a ballroom. He sat on a golden throne. His cologne hit her like an axe, from five yards distance, and his face seemed familiar.

She checked her other side. The rest of this space...enormous. The chandeliered ceiling was two stories high. The throne sat at the end of a long, stone-floored vista. And there were guards, posted along the sides, at even spacing, like dominoes or chess pieces. Far more than she’d imagined having to deal with. Never mind.

Well, okay. Crap. She had no idea what to do. The man had ten men in here. At least that many.

“Hello.” He hopped off the throne and strolled to her, his boots clicking on the hard floor. “Welcome to my castle. I am Verok, Miss Ella.”

This was Verok? The gazillionaire zealot up in space with the crusade? She gulped. This was who wanted her? She rolled up her eyes and did a fast check on her systems, searching for all the new engineering, the little weapons. They were gone, neutralized.

His scanners were good.

“Where is Plito?”

“You’ll see him after your surgery.”

“My what?” The word surgery raised her hackles at the same time as she tasted the metallic
acidity of bile
. How sick was this alien megalomaniac?

“I hope you don’t mind that we removed all the dangerous perks you added to your cybernetics. Ingenious some of it.”

She enunciated the next words well. “You. Are a bastard.”

“Shhh.” He arrived at her raised coffin bed. “Soon we’ll have you as our princess.”

Verok reached in, his hand moving slowly, as if afraid she’d be frightened. He had no clue as to what she was about to do. Plan B. She sent her nanogeers scurrying, unblocking, shifting paths. Time, she only needed time. Sweat trickled down her brow.

He stroked her forehead and she let him, despite wanting to spit. Whatever they’d given her before was making her feel tired.

His princess? How dare he.

“We know all about your foot and we are going to do a little surgery. Soon you will be perfect, ready to be bondmated to us.

Us? We? Of course. He was using the royal we. The man was scary, crazy bonkers. Cutting off her foot if done by a surgeon was bad enough. She couldn’t look away.

Growling would’ve been a great reply but, fumbling, she found speech. “You cannot. I am bondmated already.”

“Not quite. I have a chemical to reverse that. We’ll give you a few days, keep you well-controlled until then. After that...” He smiled that sickly smile, his perfect, white teeth gleaming as brightly as his gold brocade collar. “You’ll find you do not wish to disobey me.”

“I will
never
be your princess. Just saying that makes me feel ill.”

He took one step back. “Go to sleep. We’re removing that diseased foot.”

The straps were breakable. Though her eyelids were lowering, she let panic seep in. But not enough. Not enough panic
at all
.

The bed on which she lay seemed to close in on her; the lid above quaked as if about to shut. She struggled weakly, tugging at the straps on her chest and arms, her waist and legs. Nothing gave.

“The autodoc I have is quite wonderful. You won’t feel anything, at all, Ella. Shhh. Sleep.”

The lid was lowering. She watched it swing down, unable to do more than swallow. Her skin prickled with dull fear. The lid sealed to the base with a
clunk
.

All by herself, inside this thing... She should be screaming.

His muffled words came to her: “Goodnight, my sweet princess.”

Should be screaming...

The princess tag was getting old.

Scream...

She wrenched her eyes open only to have them flutter down again.

Would it be gas? That taser thing aga –

Blackness.

*****

When she awoke her anger fired up instantly, like she’d kept it burning while asleep. Her eyes were shut but her leg, her foot, she could feel the difference. She was cyber down there now, from just above the ankle and downward. He’d cut off her fucking foot.

The loss was appalling, sending cracks of panic through her heart that actually hurt. Tears leaked from under her lids, spilling down the sides of her face and trickling to her hairline.

The panic spread silently, screwing into her mind, closing her throat, spiraling her pulse beat upward into the stratosphere. She let it come. There were men out there watching her. Verok too. They had guns. No way out. Enemies. Outnumbered. Plito needed her.

Body surveillance kicked in. Her nanogeers were ready.

She was a hairsbreadth from dissolving into a chaotic mess.

She forced open her eyes. No lid anymore. Thank god.

Verok stood a foot, at most, from the coffin-like bed and she was still naked. Kneeling beyond, on the floor, was Plito, his hands cuffed at his front. He had legs. Legs! They’d attached the legs. God. She blinked. The bravery shining in his eyes, and his vulnerable youth, escalated her panic to the last possible level before...

Meltdown.

Deadness and darkness overcame her.

Deadtime.

“You see. We’ve fixed your friend. If you behave, he can keep them. You look well,” said Verok, leaning in as if for a kiss. “Such a pretty –”

A
throm
sound like something big travelling overhead, made him look up. It dwindled as if passing the building

She took the opportunity to survey the room. Same chandelier. Same room. Same straps holding her down.

The uniformed men along the periphery also looked upward. A distant overhead crash kept them craning their heads back. Perfect.

No one in here was as cyber as her. If they had been she could’ve controlled them. That she could have done that seemed as obvious and natural as blinking. It simply
was
. Except for Plito. They’d forgotten him, thinking he was just a boy. Logic said they’d never let him leave here, not after he’d seen Verok.

She erupted upward, tearing through the arm straps. Her left arm wasn’t as reinforced by metal and it snapped below the shoulder. She ignored the pain. Her right arm ripped loose the strap at the base, somewhere below, and only her artificial skin suffered. She lunged for Verok, her fingers in a cone shape, and crushed most of the ribs on his left chest. Her metal fingers penetrated all the way to his heart, where she blithely ripped loose an artery or two.

Her hand emerged bloodied. Verok crumpled soundlessly, his face taut with shock. Dead in seconds, gushing blood by the bucketload, she calculated, unless someone stuck him in the autodoc she currently occupied.

Ten men. She began at the right with Plito’s guard and shot them one by one, center of the forehead. Her arm held eighteen rounds of her improvised cry-steel flechettes. Working within her cybernetics, her nanogeers had closed the final pathway to create the weapon as she’d slept.

Good little nanogeers.

The last four men scattered and she only got one of them.

Deadtime petered out.

The pain from her left arm roared in. The guards were screaming and drawing weapons. Weeping now, partly in shock, she plucked at the other straps with her intact right hand. Got one undone. She needed a gun. Though cuffed, Plito ducked and grabbed a pistol from his dead guard.
Too late. Too late.

Verok sucked in a last gurgled breath and fell silent. The guards, thinking her the worst threat, trained their guns on her. One round blasted into her soon-to-be coffin, rocking it.