Liberation's Desire Read online

  And she wanted a hell of a lot more than a kiss.

  “Didn’t you want me to do something?” she asked.

  “Dig up the wedge and break us out of here before we die of asphyxiation or heat exhaustion.”

  So maybe the sweat breaking out on his forehead wasn’t solely from the temperature of their kiss.

  She quested her hands blindly into the junk.

  “To the left,” he said. “Under the seat handle you’re holding.”

  “You can see?”

  His lenses glinted. “Infrared.”

  “No fair.” She scooped a hole. “You can see me, but I can’t see you.”

  “We’ll have our next kiss under the visible spectrum then.”

  Next kiss. They would have a next kiss. She ached with the tempting fantasy.

  Digging out the cascading junk eventually uncovered a triangular shard. Supposedly a wedge? She tried to hand it to Yves. He did not take it.

  “Now fix it between the wall and the lid.”

  She felt along the crate’s rim for a seam. The wedge fell as soon as she let go.

  “Use more force,” Yves instructed. “Push from your shoulders.”

  “It’s not as easy as it looks.” She massaged her bruised palms. “You try.”

  He dropped silent for a long minute.

  “Yves?”

  “My hands are not responsive.” His voice lowered with regret. “I am afraid I don’t have the fine motor control I used to.”

  Oh, no. “I’m so sorry—”

  “That’s not what’s important now.” Gentle encouragement infused his words. “Pick up the wedge.”

  She swallowed. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “I will talk you through it.”

  “No, I mean…” She swallowed again. All the people she had let down. Cressida and Aris, and their parents. Ruining her uncle’s military career by forcing him to drop out and take care of her. All of the people. “I really can’t.”

  “There’s no one else.”

  “Yves…”

  “If you can’t trust yourself”—he sucked in a deep breath—“then trust me. I know you can. My conclusions are never wrong.”

  She patted the top of the junk until she found the wedge and tried to follow his directions, grunting with effort. The wedge fell with a clatter.

  “Again,” he said softly.

  She gripped the wedge. The lip narrowed to a fraction of the width of the wedge. Of course. She put one corner into the lip and then forced the rest of it into place. The wedge stuck.

  She collapsed on the junk with a relieved gasp. “It’s in.”

  “Now use the heavy, flat-sided lamp base under your left ankle as your hammer.”

  Every strike jarred her bruised hands or knocked out the wedge—or both. But with Yves’ insistence, she broke the seal.

  Air whooshed in.

  She cheered raggedly. He had been right. She had done it. “Oxygen!”

  “Good.” Yves’ glasses glinted, opaque. “A hard vacuum would have changed the nature of our problems considerably.”

  Her cheering arms dropped to her thighs with an audible smack. “Do you mean to tell me all the air could have sucked out just now?”

  “The odds were in our favor.”

  “Are you crazy? We could have died!”

  “Channel your exuberance into the hammer. We need more than a crack to get out.”

  After more swearing, she lifted the lid enough to squeeze through. No ladder stretched down the side of the crate to the ground.

  “You’ll have to drop.” Yves rose and waded through the junk. His hands bumped her, useless below the elbow.

  “How can I help you?”

  “Follow me.”

  He disappeared headfirst out the gap. A second later, his body thudded to the ground with a ringing sound.

  From off to the side, he called wearily, “Your turn.”

  She scooted out, first one leg and then, awkwardly, the other. The crate bit into her midsection. She wiggled her hips over the ledge. It caught painfully on her boobs. Her feet dangled.

  Oh, no.

  Her stomach fluttered. The ground yawned far below, too far. Her heart hammered. She couldn’t pull herself back up.

  “Now ease yourself out,” Yves said below.

  “I can’t,” she groaned.

  “You don’t have a choice. It will take a much lower gravity to get you back in from that angle.”

  She flopped her boobs over the lip and fell like a lead weight. The lip ripped out from under her numb hands. She crashed into Yves. His injuries! She twisted out of his arms and landed on the ground, hitting her already bruised butt and elbows, and cracking her head yet again. Her funny bones tingled with pain.

  She rocked in the blackness. “Ow.”

  “Next time, I will force you to accept my assistance.” Yves voice stood over her, looking down. “You can’t hurt me.”

  She rolled upright with a groan, rubbing the injuries. “That’s what you think.”

  “And as I told you, where logic is concerned, I am never wrong. At least accept my help to stand.”

  She grasped his forearm. He remained steadfast as iron as she pulled herself upright.

  “Where are we going?”

  Her question echoed, like a cavern full of tunnels.

  “To find you the essentials. A reprocessor, a life pod, and an atmosphere pump.”

  Her eyes felt hot and scratchy from her cry, and her throat burned hot too. Dripping cool water evoked welcome fantasies of a sweet dip in a pool and then a nice, fluffy rest on her own bunk, back on Mares Mercury. If not her own bunk, then her uncle’s harder plank above her, or even the four chairs in the Luck Station departures lounge.

  “And you need a medkit,” she said.

  “Yes, I will attempt to locate fabrication machinery to repair my injury.”

  She walked forward. Something hard jabbed her shin. She stumbled back with a cry.

  His voice approached her. “And a source of visible light.”

  She rubbed her newest bruise. “So I can stop stumbling around.”

  “And for more kissing.”

  His joke helped. She smiled.

  “I’m not joking,” he said, reminding her that he could see. Something cool brushed her forearm. His palm, maybe. “Take my hand.”

  She sniffed. “I can’t see it.”

  His voice held a tired smile. “I would take yours, but unfortunately, that is impossible. We must both rely on you.”

  Oh, of course. Was she a child? He couldn’t even make a fist, and yet, he gripped on to an iron control. She suffered a few minor bruises and melted into what her uncle would call a wimpy, whiny puddle.

  “I’ll never be a commando,” she said, mostly to herself.

  “Most commandos haven’t successfully survived two direct assaults by the Faction.”

  Her hand bumped his shoulder. She traced down the hard muscle to his warm, masculine hand, curled her fingers between his, and clasped on with all her might.

  “I still have feeling.”

  “Oh, sorry.” She loosened her grip. “I just— It’s so dark and I— I’m sorry.”

  He hesitated, and then stepped closer to her.

  “We are safe. No one knows we’re here.”

  His now familiar scent reminded her of warm nights and rough chins and safety. “I know.”

  “Although I can’t squeeze your hand for comfort, I promise you, I will keep you close. Believe me?”

  She did.

  “Then let’s go.” And he led her deeper into the blackness.

  ~*~*~*~

  Elite zero class android Zenya Sen read her new assignment silently, in her head, just as her torturers embedded a searing poker one inch into the bone of her forearm.

  She obediently screamed.

  The Undovan rebel removed the poker, clicked a retractable pen, and marked a tick on his clipboard under the column for “Verbal emission
s—loud.” It joined a line of similar marks. He retracted his pen, set his clipboard aside, and rested his poker on the furnace.

  A second rebel picked up a glowing fork.

  She wet her lips and prepared for the next torture.

  Undova was one of those awkward colonial worlds that had money but no chance for growth. So, the governments fought amongst themselves.

  Colors and names changed, but on Undova, bureaucracy was universal.

  The rebels dug their crude metal implements into her cauterized flesh while her robotic brain reviewed the new assignment with cold impartiality. She was to leave Undova immediately.

  What?

  Leaving Undova now rendered the months she’d spent infiltrating the rebel base, allowing herself to be “discovered” as a spy, and her current throat-shredding performance, moot. Sure, she had a few tertiary assignments like rescuing other hostages and killing everyone on the rebels’ secret base. But, her assassination target, General Ard, arrived with his warships this evening, not immediately.

  Honestly, she had to try hard not to sigh.

  Her naked skin puckered with old and new scars, her fingers and toes bent in all the wrong directions, and such things had happened to her as would make a combat med-tech puke. And now she wasn’t going to execute her primary target? She had never failed an assignment, and she wasn’t about to start now.

  But that was her human persona complaining.

  Her robot calculated the most efficient way off the isolated Undovan base. A commuter shuttle was due in an hour.

  Time to go , her robot instructed. Rescue a hostage and kill everyone else.

  Just a few more minutes, her human begged. The commander might arrive early.

  The second torturer—actually, she believed the Undovan income tax form identified them as Information Extraction Specialists—removed the fork from her forearm and returned it to a portable nuclear furnace.

  The first extraction specialist adjusted his thick rubber gloves and picked up the shears she had been dreading for weeks. He rested the thick blade against her misshapen right thumb.

  “No!” she cried. “No! Nooooo!”

  He squeezed them together in a brisk clip. Her thumb mushed to a thin line of flesh. But it did not actually break.

  A perk of the zero class skin type. So human-like, so smooth and inviting to stroke. Completely indestructible.

  But obviously her torturer didn’t know that. He frowned and examined the shears. Any human’s thumb would have popped right off. Surprised but undeterred, he picked up a serrated saw.

  She jerked against the heavy iron restraints, releasing her last dribbles of saved urine on the bare stink-mossed floor.

  He sawed and sawed on her thumb skin, also to no avail. She went through the motions of freaking out. How long would it take him to figure out what was wrong? She was built from the same material that made star cruisers, and no piddling butter knife was going to scratch the gloss.

  The torturer finally lifted the saw and examined the strangely bent blades. He frowned at her suspiciously.

  Look, her robot said, our cover is blown. Let’s go.

  We could fake it , her human persona argued. Just a couple more hours.

  The torturer picked up the shears again with new determination.

  See ? Her human persona crowed. A few more hours and we win.

  But the new assignment demanded priority.

  Her robot took over.

  The human persona receded into the mists of consciousness, and the z-class android Zenya|Sen moved forward.

  Her cry stopped mid-scream.

  The specialist squeezing on her thumb looked up in surprise. The other turned from the portable nuclear furnace.

  “It’s been quite a long time since you asked a question,” her human persona said to their stunned faces, “but I’m about to give you quite a lot of information. Listen up.”

  In the curved glass of their welder-style helmets, her deadened face reflected. She activated her aerogel-nanotube muscles and pulled the reinforced iron plugs from the walls.

  The torturers stepped back, arms up.

  Those same muscles forced her “broken” osmium-alloy bones back into perfectly fused digits and joints. She grasped the three-inch-thick collar at her throat and pulled the iron apart like taffy. Her skin, meanwhile, transformed the blackened “char” back to her normal ashen color and texture. Even her hair changed texture, crackling electrically to form superhydrophobic bonds.

  She ripped the shears into two blades and strode forward. The specialists’ hygienic bio-barriers became less hygienic and barrier-like.

  Thanks to her superhydrophobic hair, their blood sprays carried dirt and debris off her naked body, down the drain. Now she was beautiful, clean, and alone in the torture room.

  She stepped over their slumped, eviscerated bodies and padded up the stairs.

  Android Zenya|Sen moved through the administrative building like a noxious gas.

  Taking out the administrators’ families, including innocent spouses and tiny infants, saddened her. But her assignment’s tertiary goal, Death to all those sons of bitches, spelled out her actions explicitly.

  Hers was not to judge the why. Only ensure all others died.

  Poetic , her human thought. I should write sonnets.

  Focus on the assignment , her robot replied.

  Her path took her through the building head’s private chambers. An emaciated woman in her fourth decade—real age—lay chained to a bed with bonds of tensile duct-silk. She turned sunken black eyes on the doorway.

  Zenya|Sen stood naked in the reflections of the garish gold-rimmed mirrors. Dulled shear halves dripped from her loose fingers.

  The woman laboriously cleared her throat. “Are you here to save me or kill me?”

  “Do you have a preference?” Zenya|Sen asked.

  She stared at the ceiling. Empty psych-needlers on the bedside tray meant she had survived as much torture as Zenya, although only in her head. Not a scratch of proof existed on her body.

  She held out her bonds. “Get me out of here.”

  “As you wish.” Zenya|Sen walked across the room and sliced the woman’s head off.

  Then, because consciousness lingered for minutes after a beheading, she sliced the skull through the vertical axis. The two lobes fell neatly apart. She was stuffing them in a convenient garment bag when the headless body fell back on the bed.

  Probably not what the kidnapped daughter of a prominent politician had meant, but it would get her out of here, and a head traveled more expediently than lugging around a drug-addled prisoner.

  The commuter shuttle landed as usual. Zenya carried the dripping-wet bag out to the mass scale. Sand gritted against her naked skin and adhered to the bag, adding fractional weight. She left her shears behind, embedded in the chest of the shocked pilot, so that lightened her up again.

  When she got back to civilization, she would commandeer a fast ship with a hot mineral bath. Something to boil off the grime and gore of the last few months. And she’d find a reprocessor coded for luxury. Rose chocolate biscuits, gold-dusted coffee, and honeyed lemon ice cream.

  Too bad the warships had never shown up. They would have all those luxuries and more. The officers had to live in style.

  She took a command chair on the grim shuttle and set the dripping bag on the bloodstained co-pilot seat.

  Then she reviewed the new assignment.

  Yves|Santiago was a y-class. Disconnected from the Faction, he had somehow remained functional. So, he was smart. Maybe a little too smart.

  Such an easy weakness to exploit.

  She skimmed his target’s profile while the shuttle idled on the desolate tarmac. Nothing special struck her about Mercury Sarit Antiata. Fat, ordinary, stupid. Executing her was the dull tertiary goal.

  Disassembling Yves|Santiago was her potentially more interesting secondary goal.

  And destroying the rogue agent responsible for his corrupti
on and Mercury’s position on the Kill List was her mysterious primary goal.

  Blowing up the garbage frigate they had escaped from Luck Station in would be the easy solution, but the Faction still hoped they would go to or lure out the rogue. Yves had a special connection to the rogue now. A connection Zenya could string into a web to ensnare her prey.

  After six hundred years, there was nothing she hadn’t really seen. Torture, death, sadness. Destruction of species. The end of ways of life.

  She had caused them without using a fraction of her capabilities.

  On the horizon, the familiar shadow of a juggernaut blocked out the sun. The commuter ship’s com shivered. “TM-Righteous Future hailing unmarked commuter vessel. Is anyone below? I repeat, from the bridge of the TM-Righteous Future of true president General Ard of Undova, what’s going on down there?”

  Fortune smiled upon the deadly.

  Zenya showed no expression as she answered the hail. “This is the commuter vessel. There appears to have been a gas leak and everyone inside is dead.”

  Swearing followed. “Acknowledged, commuter shuttle. Are you okay?”

  “Our own ship was damaged and we request assistance.”

  “Acknowledged again. We are sending someone down to assist you.”

  She closed the communication and hunted for her scissors.

  We are wasting time , her robot said.

  Cheer up. Nothing is faster than a Treatymaker-class warship .

  They watched the tiny shuttle drop through the atmosphere. Once she killed its pilot and overtook his vessel, using it to slip aboard the warship would be too easy. Delivering the warships to the ruling government was the ultimate goal, but no one would argue if she borrowed one for a few days. Especially if no one was alive to tell anyone what had happened.

  She flexed her fingers around the scissors.

  Hopefully the new assignment would present her with a more interesting challenge.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Yves led an obviously exhausted Mercury through the freighter, taking note of the organization. He expected to need it.

  He had partially lied when he said no one knew where they were. No one could know they were on this garbage frigate right now, because he was disconnected from the Faction, so their tracers no longer worked. But they would review security footage and figure it out eventually.