She bit her lip, wondering how to phrase it.
“It’s stupid. But the way you said that.” She shrugged. “It was like you considered Miisan a real woman, not just an AI.”
“Of course she is.” His expression was calm and level. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Her eyes prickled with heat and a tear slid down the side of her face. “You think I’m real then?”
It sounded so pathetic that she winced, expecting him to laugh at her. But he didn’t. Instead his brow furrowed and he moved, bracing himself over her.
“Hey, hey,” he murmured, leaning down to kiss her tears away. “Of course I think you’re real. Very real. Perfectly real.” Another kiss punctuated each word as he worked his way down to her lips. “You are utterly real to me, whatever your origins. You always have been.”
Her gasp was a soft sob against his lips as she wound her arms around his neck to kiss him back. He accepted her, really and truly accepted her.
Their lips caught, clinging together as they shared a breath. When he claimed her lips, she opened up for him. Her heart raced as she drove her hand into his hair, holding him to her. She could spend eternity kissing him, but within moments other needs made themselves known.
With a small whimper in the back of her throat, she pulled at his shirt. He growled in approval as she drove her free hand beneath it, then sighed as she found hot skin.
Before his lips could claim hers again, the world exploded. She screamed as the ceiling came down around them, instincts taking over as she tried to shove Jay under her to protect him, only to realize he was doing the same. They rolled off the bed, Jay pulling it over them as a shield as something ripped the door away.
A B’Kaar stood framed in the devastation, lights from his kasivar stabbing through the sudden darkness to pinpoint them. Tiny circles of lavender light from the cyberwarriors’ scopes danced over the center of their chests. Ice rolled through Keris’s veins as she raised her hands.
They were caught. There was no way out.
The warrior in the doorway stepped aside for Risyn. The B’Kaar leader’s expression was hard as it swept over them and she trembled. There was no mercy in his pale gaze.
“Take the AI,” he ordered, motioning to two warriors behind him. “Kill the human. We don’t need him.”
“Wait! No!” she gasped, trying to get between the suited warriors and Jay. It was no good, though. Their strength easily outmatched hers. Jay swore and tried to fight, shoving her behind him again, but one of the B’Kaar backhanded him across the face. The force of the blow, enhanced by the exosuit, knocked him across the room to crumple against the wall.
“No! Jay!” she screamed, reaching for him, but the other warrior, Berr, had her around the waist. “You can’t do this. Humans are protected by the emperor!”
“Actually,” Risyn said coldly. “Human females are protected by that ridiculous mandate. There is no such protection on human males.”
She whimpered as the warrior standing over Jay leveled both canon arrays. Jay looked up, his expression unreadable. The B’Kaar’s exosuit had cut his cheek almost to the bone, but he didn’t seem to notice the pain. He watched his enemy with a steely-eyed gaze.
“Do it,” he growled. “Kill me. Because if you don’t, I’ll never stop coming for you. You’ll always be looking over your shoulder, and one day I’ll be there to send you to hell.”
Risyn laughed. “Of course you will.”
The B’Kaar looked over his shoulder at Risyn. “If I fire in here, I’ll bring down the whole place.”
Risyn shrugged as Keris was carried past him, kicking and screaming. “Wait until we’re clear and then finish it. Rejoin us later.”
“No, no, no, please,” she begged, trying to catch at Risyn’s arm. “Please. I’m the one you want. Let him live, please. I’m begging you. I’ll do anything you want.”
As one the B’Kaar turned, the heavy metallic clomps of their suits the only sound other than her screams as they carried her out of the outpost ruins.
“You’ll do anything I want anyway, AI,” Risyn managed to pack loathing and disgust into the word. “You’re just an errant piece of code in that body. And I will have all your secrets. Willing or not.”
18
Jay didn’t take his eyes off the alien warrior standing over him. The B’Kaar was a hulking brute of a thing in his armor, heavily armed with all those guns aimed right at him. By rights he should have been terrified, praying as he prepared to meet his maker.
He wasn’t.
Instead, he watched the alien in front of him with a steely gaze as the others left. He didn’t know this one by name, but he’d seen the guy around, lurking and watching the women with the group. His black-eyed gaze had even given Jay, used to the blackest that humanity was capable of, the creeps.
“How could something as pathetic as you hope to beat one of us?” the B’Kaar snarled, looking him up and down. “You are no match for us physically. Mentally you are deficient. You are thoroughly inferior. I fail to see how any of us became… you.”
Jay let his body remain lax and pliant where he’d fallen after being thrown across the room. His face hurt like a bitch and he was sure he had at least one broken rib. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was he’d landed with one arm twisted behind him.
“Yeah… maybe we lost some advantages when we evolved,” he admitted readily. “Far as I can tell, you lot designed that expedition for some specific circumstances. Given the genetic type was smaller and less capable than the rest of you, you gotta wonder what your scientists were on. It’s almost like they intended for it to fail.”
That had been bugging Jay since he’d gotten a look at the data for the Jevenar mission. The Lathar knew what they were doing with genetic adaptation, so why didn’t they equip the expedition with plenty of redundancies rather than just assume they’d reach paradise and settle in without any issues or setbacks. It was like they hadn’t even heard of Murphy’s law.
“It did fail,” the B’Kaar bit out. Cold sweat trickled down Jay’s spine as he tried to ignore the multiple muzzles aimed at his face and chest. Just one thought and he’d be swiss cheese. Then who would rescue Keris? He put her from his mind instantly. In a situation like this, he couldn’t afford to be distracted.
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t say failed as much as they adjusted the parameters for success.”
The alien bit out a laugh. “Success? In no way could humanity be considered a success.”
“Sure we can,” Jay argued. “We survived on a planet where pretty much everything wanted to kill us. Wanna know how?”
“How?”
Jay grinned. “By being the nastiest fuckers out there.”
Before the B’Kaar could get over his confusion, Jay whipped out the blaster he’d been hiding behind his back and shot out the control units on the suit’s shoulders. They exploded in multi-colored sparks, plunging the underground room into darkness. The B’Kaar swung for him but Jay was already on the move. He was out through the door and into the blackness before the alien could catch him. He counted his blessings he’d reconned the area earlier.