Abiogenesis (3 page)

Satisfied that they hadn’t discovered her and surrounded the building while she rested, she found a corner to relieve herself and then returned to her corner and sat down to figure out what options she might have.

There weren’t a lot. She didn’t know why they wanted her dead, but they seemed pretty damned set on seeing it done.

The tech had seemed to indicate that it was because she was gestating, but that was nearly as inconceivable as the fact that she was gestating at all. No one bore young anymore. It was too unpredictable and too inconvenient. If they happened to want one, they bought a permit and ordered one from the med lab. They hadn’t practiced the ‘natural’ way of doing it in nearly a century. As far as she knew, though, there was no law against it, certainly not a death sentence, anyway.

She wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d arrested her for breeding without a permit. She would’ve expected something like that, if she’d been engaging in sexual activity and stupid enough to do it without protection. But that would’ve been followed by a brief trial, maybe, and then release as soon as she coughed up the fine and bought a permit.

Maybe it was a law that was still on the books, but hadn’t been used in so long that nobody, except the lawmakers and the law enforcers, even knew it was there anymore?

It seemed possible. The morons never got rid of laws. They just made more when the need arose. There were laws still on the books, she knew, from centuries before, laws that people didn’t even understand anymore because nothing they pertained to even existed now.

Briefly, she wondered if there was any way to remove the parasite, but it occurred to her fairly quickly that that wasn’t going to help. If there’d been a way, or if that would’ve made a difference, they would have done that instead of deciding to kill her. She hadn’t come cheap. The company had spent a lot of money training her to be a rogue hunter, and even more bioengineering her for strength, stamina, high pain tolerance, computer assisted mental capabilities, and a broader hearing and sight range.

Anyway, she felt strangely possessive about it. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t really want to examine it at the moment. But she did know she didn’t want to make any kind of decision about, possibly, removing it until she’d had time to think it through and consider every possibility.

Besides, the tech had been dying. How much faith could she place in anything he’d told her? The company’s reasons for trying to terminate her could be something else entirely.

Unfortunately, no amount of carefully reconstructing her actions over the past month, or the month before that, produced any possibilities. She hadn’t failed her last mission and, even if she had, punishment for failure was only a death sentence if the rogue dealt it out. The company was content to fine her all her pay and half her previous paycheck.

Shaking her head, Dalia finally decided she couldn’t waste time trying to figure it out. It was enough to know she was dead if ... when they caught her. The only chance that she could see of turning the ‘when’ to ‘if’ was if she managed to get off world. Sooner or later, if she stayed, they were going to catch her, with or without the locator.

She could die a slow death here without food or water, or risk getting caught going for supplies. One retina scan and she was done for. Besides, she wouldn’t be able to buy anything without having her barcode scanned, even in the black market, and once they had that, they’d have a bead on her location.

They would be expecting her to try to get off planet, though.

Her only chance, as far as she could see, was to locate a smuggler and either take the ship, or bargain a ride, and that meant she was going to have to figure out a way out of the dome.

Chapter Three

It took her almost a week to locate a man who claimed he not only knew a way out of the dome undetected, but also knew where the smugglers usually landed. It stood to reason that he would since there wouldn’t be any other reason for leaving the protection of the dome.

The problem was, Dalia had nothing to bargain with. She finally convinced him to take her, however, by telling him if he did she wouldn’t blow his head off. He wasn’t terribly thrilled with the bargain, but he led her through the tunnels that eventually carried them beyond the city without detection.

By that time she had no problem blending with the natives. She’d had very little to eat, very little sleep, no access to bathing facilities and, since the clothes she was standing in were all she had, she looked as ragged and unkempt as everyone else. She didn’t like it, but she was inclined to see it as an advantage.

The quality of the air inside the dome wasn’t that great in the lower regions, but the air beyond the dome was the next thing to unbreathable. She still had her weapons, but the lack of a mask put her at a distinct disadvantage when the smugglers had more manpower and firepower at their disposal than she did.

The moment they reached the landing area, she saw immediately that simply blending wasn’t going to be enough. There was no way she was going to get close enough to either overpower the smugglers and steal a ship, or slip on board. Releasing her ‘guide’, she watched until she was certain he was headed back the way they’d come and wouldn’t alert the smugglers, and then settled down to study them and watch for an opportunity.

She’d been fully aware that smuggling was rife, but she hadn’t realized that trafficking in stolen and/or illegal merchandise was done on quite as grand a scale as this. When she arrived, a large ship was already at the rendezvous point. More than a dozen smugglers had piled off of it. A third were busy unloading, a third loading new merchandise and the rest pacing restlessly about the activities with some fairly intimidating firepower.

Before they had even completed their business, a second craft nearly as large set down at a little distance and proceeded pretty much as the first had, off loading on one side and on loading on the other.

With decent air, or a mask, she might have been able to take four or five men. She wasn’t stupid enough, or desperate enough to consider taking on crews as large as this, particularly when she was fairly certain that it would take no more than a hint of threat for them to combine forces.

She had very little food, however, and not a great deal of time. After a little while, she decided to change positions and see if another position would provide her with a better opportunity.

To her surprise, it did, but it had nothing to do with either of the two large ships she’d been watching. As she made her way around the perimeter, a relatively small, very sleek, racer settled into the rubble-strewn field at a little distance from the other two ships.

This might be doable.

The craft was designed for short, very fast hops, from planet to planet--and required no more than a pilot as crew or perhaps a pilot and copilot. There was no way it was being employed to haul cargo. It was too small to carry much and too short-range to go far--unless the pilot was insane enough to use the wormholes--which, upon reflection, she supposed he must.

If the pilot was smuggling anything, it was human cargo--escaped slaves or criminals fleeing justice--or possibly rogue cyborgs. He would want privacy to load his cargo. The fact that he’d landed so far from the other two ships seemed to bear up her theory.

She settled down to wait. It wasn’t until the first of the two larger ships had lifted off that the gangplank was finally let down. Minutes passed. Finally, a man appeared at the top of the gangplank, stood looking out for several moments, and finally sauntered almost casually down the gangplank and stepped off of it.

The only weapons he had on him were strapped to his waist, a pistol holstered on one side and a three-foot blade on the other.

She stared at the blade. It indicated a strong familiarity with some primitive culture somewhere in the universe, but she couldn’t see it well enough from this distance to place it. Not that it mattered. In the first place, she didn’t particularly care where she went so long as she could elude the company for long enough to figure out what was going on and how it had come about that she’d suddenly become high on their list of public enemies. In the second, it supported the theory of rogues.

In general, cyborgs were at least half human, or half biological materials anyway, and all of that on the exterior, but anyone familiar with cyborgs could spot them within minutes. The were just ... not quite human, regardless of their appearance. It was often hard to put your finger on just what it was, but there was always something that gave them away, even to people not particularly looking or not particularly interested. The only way they could truly disappear was to find a culture too primitive to know what a cyborg was.

The question was, was he doing it for the money? For the adventure? Or because he was one of those fanatical assholes always trying to change the universe?

The latter made her want to puke. She despised fanatics, whatever their particular brand of insanity was, because they were not only incredibly boring and annoying, but they were also dangerous. They, almost inevitably, managed to convince huge numbers of ‘followers’ to believe them and usually managed to get them killed.

At this particular moment, however, it could prove useful.

Money was a problem. She had plenty of credits saved up, but she wasn’t certain it was enough to tempt a smuggler of this caliber. If it wasn’t, and he scanned her barcode for the money, she would be located in short order.

Finally, she decided to move a little closer and get a better look at him.

She managed to get several yards closer before she ran out of cover. She discovered it didn’t particularly help her, however. Naturally enough, it was dark. Smugglers didn’t land in the daylight, and it was smoggy as bedamned, as well. The poor visibility wasn’t as much a problem, however, as the fact that her feminine side took that inopportune moment to kick in and completely distracted her.

He was, quite possibly, the finest specimen of a male she’d ever set eyes on. Even her male counterparts weren’t generally so beautifully enhanced. Her first good look at him impacted on her as physically as if she’d been hit by a grenade concussion. She felt as if she’d been body slammed, too stunned to think for several moments. Finally, her training kicked in and she settled behind the pile of rubble and frowned, wondering what had just happened.

Not only was she certain she’d never had a reaction like that to a male before, she couldn’t even remember experiencing anything even close. Her training had been thorough and nothing had been left to chance, certainly not something as predictable and inevitable as sexual attraction. Very little ever managed to break through her conditioning as a soldier and throw her off kilter. Some sort of chemical imbalance related to the gestation, she wondered?

The sounds of the second craft lifting off jogged her from her abstraction and into action.

She peered at the pilot, saw that he’d been distracted, as well, and began to move quickly around the ship while he stood watching the ship’s ascent. Coming upon him from behind, she placed the barrel of her weapon against the center of his back, directly over his heart. "I need passage off of this rock, and I don’t particularly care who I have to kill to get it. Take me, and I’ll pay you for your trouble and you can get on with your life. Give me any trouble and I’ll kill you."

The moment the barrel of her weapon dug into his back, he went perfectly still. As she finished her little speech, however, he moved, so fast her jaw didn’t have time to drop in surprise, snatching her weapon from her hands so hard and fast she was surprised he didn’t take her fingers with it.

"I only take rogues," he said coolly, taking the weapon in both hands and bending it into a bow, as if it had been made of putty instead of titanium alloy.

Dalia glanced from the bent weapon into the face that had launched a million flyers. It was Reuel CO469, the first of his kind, the first cyborg rogue, the leader of all who’d come after him, and the only rogue nobody had even come close to catching in all the time she’d worked for the company.

"Oh fuck!"

A smile curled that devastating mouth. Stepping toward her, he grasped her arms, thrusting them behind her back and bringing her up hard against his massive chest. "We could. On the other hand I’m waiting for someone and I really don’t like being interrupted when I’m pleasuring a beautiful woman."

"That wasn’t an invitation," Dalia snapped.

His dark brows rose. "No?" He shook his head and finally shrugged. "Machines! They can never quite grasp the subtleties of human interaction, can they? That’s what always gives us away."

She didn’t believe for one moment that he’d interpreted her comment literally. He was, she realized with a touch of stunned amazement, amusing himself. "Let go of me," she said through gritted teeth.

His smile vanished. "I’m not even slightly tempted ... rogue hunter."

For the first time in her memory, Dalia felt real, unmitigated fear. "I wouldn’t be fleeing the city if I were."

"The question is, are you fleeing the city? Or was this merely a clever ruse?"

She gave him a look. "I had my weapon on your back. I could’ve killed you then and there would’ve been no point in subterfuge."

"Except that that wouldn’t have gotten you into the rebel camp, would it, Dalia?"

Dalia stared at him in dismay. She licked suddenly dry lips. "My name’s Kaya."

"Your name is Dalia VH570 ... and you are a rogue hunter ... gone rogue."

Of all the things he might have said, nothing could have stunned her more, or more surely inspired her to throw caution to the wind. "I’m no rogue," she spat in disgust before she thought better of it. "I’m human."

His mouth tightened until his lips were no more than a thin line. His nostrils flared as he dragged in a deep breath to calm his temper. "You have enough contempt to be a rogue hunter, whatever you want to call yourself."

Dalia twisted, testing his hold of her, but she was not the least surprised when he held her without any sign of difficulty. She supposed she should have simply accepted the fact that she was dead except for the dying part. He knew she was a rogue hunter. He wasn’t going to simply let her go, and he wasn’t going to take her with him.