Abiogenesis (15 page)

There was also the insurmountable fact that, on varying levels, she wasn’t particularly popular, even among the hunters. Some of the resentment predated her involvement in the affairs of the cyborgs, to her hunting days, and was directly proportional to her success as a hunter--professional jealousy. Zenia wasn’t by any means the only one who’d viewed her helping the cyborgs as treachery, either, and then there were those who resented her merely for being the bearer of bad tidings.

All in all, it was only the fact that they were constantly watched, and knew it, that had kept any number of them from working out their fears and frustrations on her.

Pierce was the exception. They’d been in the hold almost three weeks before she even realized that he was among those captured. He hadn’t approached her, but when she’d finally emerged from her abstraction enough to notice, she realized that he had been watching her for some time.

They’d come as close to being friends in their early days of training as anyone ever did, and even for a while after they’d emerged from training and begun assignments. The company didn’t encourage friendships. And their training and the demands of the job made it nearly impossible anyway. She’d scarcely seen him in the past two years and usually only then in passing.

She knew, however, that Pierce felt more than friendship toward her. If anyone would be willing to help her, he would.

The thoughts had barely formed in her mind before doubts crept in. She might never have considered him in a sexual light, but she liked Pierce, very much, and it wasn’t right to use him, even knowing it might be a matter of survival. There was also the little matter of Reuel. It seemed unlikely he would care. It seemed unlikely, now, that anything would come of what had happened between them before, but she still felt bound to him, felt like it would be betraying him to even consider becoming friendly with another man.

She wrestled with it for almost two weeks, but in the end she knew she had no choice. The trip seemed interminable. The ship had been designed for long hauls of huge cargoes, not speed, and there was no telling how long they would be imprisoned together in the hold.

Finally, nerving herself, she approached Pierce in the rec room. Almost from the moment she started in his direction, his gaze fell to her bulging abdomen and remained fixed there until she felt so awkward and hideous it took all she could do to refrain from whirling and bolting in the other direction. "Hi," she said, smiling with an effort.

Pierce turned red and stumbled from his seat, knocking his chair over in the process. "Dalia! It is you," he said, and then turned even redder. "What I meant was, I hardly recogniz.... No. What I meant was ... shit!"

Agonizingly aware that a half a dozen people were watching them, Dalia smiled with an effort. "I hope that means you’re glad to see me."

He laughed, dragged a hand through his shaggy blond hair and finally swarmed toward her and grabbed her in an awkward embrace, rocking her slightly. "I am glad to see you, Dally. God I’ve missed you!"

"Step away from the female!"

Pierce released her as if he’d just discovered he was holding a hot piece of metal and jumped back. He glared up at the observation window.

Dalia placed a hand on his arm warningly. "Never mind."

He looked at her, still frowning, but finally a grin dawned. He was taller than she remembered, blonder. She realized she’d forgotten how handsome he was, or, more accurately, she supposed she’d never really noticed. She had noticed that one out of every two females that glanced his way did a double take, or simply stopped dead in her tracks and gaped at him as he walked by, but he’d never had that effect on her, never made her heart flutter with excitement. It was unfortunate, because he was as kind as he was handsome and he always made her laugh.

He’d always reminded her of a frisky puppy--a very large frisky puppy--always anxious to please, delighted with the smallest scrap of attention.

She immediately felt ten times worse than she had when she’d considered renewing their friendship merely for safety’s sake. As he grabbed her arm and led her to an empty couch, however, she realized that it wasn’t only for that reason. Until Reuel, she’d never been close to any other person, but, in the time they’d spent together, she’d grown accustomed to having someone to talk to, to touch and she desperately missed contact with another breathing being.

Pierce, she noticed, was beaming at her, watching her expectantly. His gaze kept flicking toward her belly, however. "So--it’s true what they said about you then? Man! I can’t believe my little Dally’s going to be a mom!"

Dalia blushed uncomfortably. "I suppose by ‘they’ you mean the company?"

He shrugged. "Bunch of assholes. I won’t miss it. I can tell you that. I never did have the stomach for ... well, hell, I never was any good at it anyway."

"That’s not true! If you hadn’t been, you would’ve been cut from the program."

Again, he shrugged dismissively. "Oh, I never had any problem learning the skills. I can’t say I even mind a rousing good fight from time to time, but I puked my guts out every time I had to kill."

Dalia looked at him in surprise. "You too?"

He laughed, but the sound had no humor in it. "I kept trying to convince myself they were just machines and it wasn’t any different from busting up a ... freezing unit or something like that, but it was ... the blood, the look in their eyes.

Throwing a glance in the direction of the viewing windows again, he leaned toward her. "Can I feel it?"

Dalia looked at him blankly. "Feel what?"

"The little tyke."

"The what?"

He gave her an exasperated look. "The baby, Dally."

Dalia studied at him self-consciously, but finally nodded. Pierce placed his hand on her rounded stomach and frowned in concentration. After a moment, he grinned. "It’s an active little thing. My mom told me.... Uh." He broke off, looking at her uncomfortably. "Forgot."

Dalia hated seeing the glow of happiness in his eyes dim. "Never mind, Pierce. What did she tell you?"

He looked at her a little hopefully. "Boys are more active. She was ... she was really old fashioned. She had all of us herself. She said it wasn’t natural to breed babies in tanks, like they were goldfish or something."

He looked so unhappy; she cast around in her mind for something to distract him. Unfortunately, nothing came to mind. "You like babies?"

He smiled. "Sure. They’re cute as hell. I had...." He broke off again and leaned back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling. "This really confuses the hell out of me, Dally. I don’t know now what happened and what didn’t. I was beginning to think that me and you being friends was only more of the memory implant. You didn’t seem to recognize me. I can’t tell you what pure hell it was to think I’d lost ...my best little buddy."

Guilt swamped her. He didn’t have to tell her what he was thinking and feeling. His face was as open and honest as Reuel’s was dark and mysterious. "I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to ignore you, it’s just ... I’ve been so unhappy since we were put in here that I was too self-absorbed even to realize you were here."

He rolled his head along the back of the couch and studied her for several moments. Finally, he sat forward, grasping her hand. "Hey! You shouldn’t be unhappy. You’re going to be a mom!"

As much as she appreciated his efforts to cheer her, pointing out the one thing that was making her most unhappy didn’t help. Regardless, it was sweet of him and, impulsively, Dalia leaned toward him and kissed him on the cheek.

"Release the female!"

Dalia whirled at the voice that barked at them over the speakers, looking up toward the viewing window. Reuel was standing at the window, looking directly at her, his expression almost a mirror of the last she’d seen--one of pure fury.

Chapter Fifteen

Fear and guilt hit Dalia a good five seconds before outrage. She jerked away from Pierce before the thoughts even connected in her mind. Pierce reacted almost identically, which only added to Dalia’s irritation when indignation finally hit her. Dalia jumped to her feet and turned to glare up at Reuel, her hands on her hips. "What? Is fucking not allowed among the prisoners?"

Dalia knew the moment the words were out of her mouth that she’d been spoiling for a fight and hoping to provoke one. She also knew, just from the look on Reuel’s face, that it would’ve been wiser to chose another point of contention.

Most of the hunters in the room merely gaped at her, but several of them snickered.

Reuel looked like he might explode.

Pierce, she saw when she glanced at him, was staring at her with his mouth at half cock. "Majia’s balls, Dalia! You want to get us thrown into solitary confinement or something?"

"Wait a minute," the hunter, Kennedy, said, getting to his feet. "She’s got a point. If we’re not company men anymore, if we’re free men, then we ought to be able to socialize with our fellow hunters if we want to, any way we want to."

"We haven’t been told anything," Rose put in, standing up and addressing the cyborgs in the viewing room above them, as well. "Dalia said we were to be part of the cyborg community. Why are we still being held prisoner if that’s the case?"

Dalia glanced at Rose and then around at the others in the room uneasily. She hadn’t intended to start a riot, but it looked as if one was brewing. "Because we’ve given them no reason to believe they can trust us, and every reason to believe we still see them as our enemies."

The comment drew the attention of everyone near enough to hear. Rose looked at her curiously and finally spoke again. "Why are you here? With us, I mean? The company said you’d gone rogue. You fought with them, against us. It seems to me that that means they’ll never trust us, or accept us. And, if that’s the case, why take us at all?"

Dalia shook her head and lowered her voice. "It wasn’t like you thought it was."

Rose glanced up at the viewing room and moved closer. "Then what was it? Why did you try to kill Jackson?"

"I wasn’t fighting for them, or against you. I was trying to help someone I cared for. It was against orders and they’ve no tolerance for mistakes, and no forgiveness."

Rose glanced toward the guards again uneasily. "If that’s true, they’re no better than the company."

Dalia shrugged. "And no worse."

"She means, they won’t accept us, no matter what," Kennedy said.

Dalia glanced around at the others a little helplessly. "Trust takes time. They’re willing to try or they would’ve simply killed you all and been done with it. They could’ve done it, easily. You saw the weapon they’ve developed. All they would’ve had to do was drain the ships of power and let them hit the cliffs. If you’re willing to try, then eventually, you’ll find a place for yourself."

"What if we’re not willing? What if we don’t want to build a cyborg nation? Is this ‘freeing’ us going to still be an option? Or are we only ‘free’ men as long as we believe what they believe?"

Dalia glanced toward the man who’d spoken. "I don’t honestly know. They never said, but I got the impression that they meant to release anyone who didn’t fit in to go their own way."

"As far as the company is concerned, we’re rogues now, not hunters. It looks to me like we can stay with the rogues or be hunted. That doesn’t give us much freedom of choice."

Dalia drew in an annoyed breath. "That’s the only freedom of choice anybody’s ever had," she snapped. "And it’s more that you had. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I was inducted. I didn’t decide to be a hunter. I made the best of it because I didn’t particularly care for the consequences of failure, but it was never my choice!"

Feeling a hand along her waist, Dalia glanced back sharply, and saw with relief that Pierce had come to stand protectively behind her. "Give her a break! She doesn’t know any more than we do."

She was relieved when the others drifted off, returning to their own interests. She didn’t glance up at the booth again, but Pierce’s hand on her waist began to feel like a firebrand. After a moment, she moved away from him. Taking a seat on the couch once more, she turned, putting her back against the arm at one end and placing her knee on the seat between them. Pierce glanced at her, shrugged, and moved to the opposite end.

She couldn’t help but grin at him. He grinned back. "Somebody up there’s feeling damned possessive, Dally," he murmured almost lazily, though something flickered in the depths of his deep blue eyes that told her he didn’t feel nearly as unperturbed by it as he was determined to pretend.

She frowned, but instead of addressing the comment, said, "I never told you, I know, but I never particularly cared for being called Dally."

He grinned mischievously at her and chuckled. "I know."

She stared at him in surprise, then started laughing. "I’d forgotten you were such a tease."

His brows rose, something a bit warmer than friendship gleaming in them. "Now I’m hurt. When I think of all the hours I wasted thinking up things to do to aggravate the hell out of you!"

"Pierce!" she clamped a hand over her mouth, realizing she’d practically shrieked his name. "That was you that put peroxide in my toothpaste! You ass! I thought I’d been poisoned when I started foaming at the mouth."

He gave her a sheepish grin. "OK, so I fucked up. I put too much in it. That’s why I never told you it was me."

She glared at him several moments and then snickered. "I knew it was you. That’s why I put alum in yours."

He burst out laughing. "I hope you know I beat the pure hell out of poor Grant for that."

Dalia grimaced. "I know. That’s why I never told you it was me."

He shrugged, his eyes still gleaming with amusement. "He deserved it anyway, the asshole. I never did like that son-of-a-bitch."

She cast her mind back to their days together in training, the incident under discussion in particular, and chuckled and the memory. "You looked so cute with your mouth all puckered up from the alum."

"Right! That’s why I got slapped by three different females before I could get out of the shower room. They thought I was making lewd faces at them."