People have good reason to fear cyborgs like this. They were originally made as soldiers in the Nickel Wars about two hundred years ago. Whole armies of them were produced, so say the history books. Most were blown up in battle fighting for the rights to a faraway asteroid belt, but about a thousand or so lived through the wars and eventually formed a rebellion and then some spread out as mercenaries for hire, while others settled into humanoid societies.
Obviously these guys are the former variety.
One slings his rifle over his shoulder as he steps forward to mess with the magnetic binding on my ankles, while another one shoves the barrel of his rifle against my head.
The anklets release and the first one pulls me to my feet and shoves me against the wall as he grabs his rifle and resumes pointing it at me.
“Let’s go,” the third one in back says. He has no weapon so he must have rank over the other two.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
He tilts his head at me like he’s not used to being questioned. “You have three seconds to comply, then we stun you.” His one racing red eye light scans me then stops dead center of his faceplate and blinks once. That’s military cyborg speak for, Don’t fuck with me.
I raise both my bound hands, palms out, and say, “Relax. I’m coming.”
I end up in a shower, of all places. Pretty sweet one, too. Not a prison shower, that’s for sure. And the clothes waiting for me when I’m done aren’t prison garb.
“What’s is this?” I ask the cyborgs. They don’t even acknowledge me with an answer. The leader just glares at me with that red light of his and points to the rack holding black trousers and a black, double-breasted jacket with ruby-red military buttons. There’s ceremonial ornaments too. Small, ruby triangular medals attached to the cuff of the coat with an eagle heat-pressed into the gems and gray epaulettes on the shoulders.
“What the fuck?” I mutter. Because even though being kidnapped by a ship and ending up on some lair run by a psycho-woman called the Loathsome One is pretty out there as far as odd days go, the fact that she’s cleaning me up and dressing me in a weirdly familiar ceremonial suit is just… well, as I said. It’s all very, What the fuck?
But, not seeing any other choice, I put it on, then drape a creepy red sash with dark gray fringe across my chest and pull on the highly-polished, black, knee-high boots.
There’s a mirror on the far side of the room and I catch a glimpse of myself and suddenly remember where I’ve seen this uniform before.
Crux. More than twenty years ago. That night we made our escape from Wayward Station he came to me in the middle of the night and said we were leaving. He was wearing this exact suit.
At first I thought he was out of his mind drunk or something. But he was talking fast and searching my room for weapons. And what he told me was enough to make me get up, get dressed, and then steal into Serpint’s father’s quarters and grab that little brat right out of his bed, still sleeping.
We went and got Draden, Luck, and Valor after that, while Crux got Tray, and less than an hour later we were shooting Princess Corla though the nearby spin node, had stolen a ship, and were on the run from the entire Akeelian Navy as we made our way towards ALCOR’s station gates.
Yeah, I have a pretty solid idea of what’s happening here.
“Let’s go,” the cyborg leader says. His two thugs jab me with their rifle barrels until I start moving and then we’re walking through the station.
We pass dozens of other cyborgs, but no other flesh-and-blood humans. Whoever this Loathsome One is, her army is all made up of mercenary borgs.
That gives me a little hope because turning cyborgs and bots into dedicated Harem Station loyalists is what I do, right?
But it’s not a lot of hope. Because this situation is nothing like the typical ones I navigate my way through when I’m on the job. The bots and borgs I usually approach have all been conscripted against their will. I find them in ones and twos, mostly. Sometimes as many as half a dozen. But not an entire fucking army.
But then again… sometimes all it takes is one or two. Xyla comes to mind. Her story started out something like this but it ended with the deaths of millions of people on ALCOR Station and she pledged allegiance to the AI who killed them.
So… just keep cool, Jimmy. You got this. And hell, there’s always the off chance that dragonbee bot will come up with a plan, right? And Queenie. She made me an offer. One that’s looking a lot more attractive in this moment than it did when she proposed it.