Page 28 of A Cyborg for the Alien Mercenary

“What do you make of all this?” he asked the other mercenary, his voice low and gravelly.

Zero’s sigh was audible over the comm. “I don’t know, man. It’s like… it’s like looking at a photo album where half thepictures are missing. I know something’s there, but I can’t quite grasp it.”

Covak nodded. “Do you think she’s dangerous?”

“Aren’t we all?” Zero replied, his lips quirking up at the corners in amusement. “But yeah, I’d say so. Whatever she is, whoever she was… she’s not just some damsel in distress you rescued.”

“No,” he agreed, his eyes tracing the line of Jesh’s jaw. “She’s definitely not that.”

He didn’t wantto leave her.

Covak stood in the doorway of the medbay, looking at the little female sleeping peacefully in the bed. What if she woke up while he was gone, alone and panicked?

But duty called. Ryke had called for a debrief, and if he didn’t show, the leader would track him down and have his guts for garters. Covak had no idea what garters were. It was one of Davis’s sayings that he attributed to his grandmother. But having his guts used for them sounded painful and somewhat messy.

With a sigh, he turned away, the door sliding shut behind him with a soft hiss, and headed up to the briefing room.

The rest of the crew were already there, gathered around the central holo-table. Ryke looked up as he walked in, a question in his eyes. Covak nodded. Their patient was stable. For all that Ryke had a “frexx you, devil may care” attitude. He was actually as soft askriiznaalon the inside.

“Now that we’re all here,” their leader began, his voice cutting through the soft chatter, “let’s go through what happened planetside.”

The holo-table flickered to life, projecting a three-dimensional map of the compound they’d infiltrated.

Ryke’s fingers danced over the controls, highlighting key areas. “We were outgunned from the start,” he said, his tone clipped. One thing he took very seriously was the team’s combat abilities. He never let them sit on their laurels. They trained, incessantly, to the point that some days their muscles were screaming in agony. But it paid dividends when they went into action and ensured that the Reapers were up there in the big leagues with the likes of the Warborne. “Their security systems were more advanced than our intel suggested.”

Rann leaned forward, his large form casting a shadow over the hologram. “We underestimated their response time,” he added, pointing to a section of the map. “They had reinforcements on us before we could secure the primary target.”

”But,” Covak added, “they missed me heading for the house where they were holding Jesh.”

Rann shrugged. “Missed, or weren’t bothered? Jane… wait,” he blinked, looking directly at Covak. The blue of the holo-field made his eyes, a mixture of blues and greens, pale and piercing. “Who is Jesh? Our guest?”

“Got it in one, boss. Her name is Jesh,” he said, his deep voice rumbling through the room. “I’ve managed to counteract the drugs they used on her. She’s sleeping it off now.”

Ryke’s eyebrow arched. “What were the drugs?”

Covak’s jaw clenched as anger surged inside him. He’d had more chance to analyze the compound they’d shot her up with while she was sleeping, and the more he knew, the angrier he’d gotten.

“It was brutal,” he said, leaning forward on the holo-table with one hand as he accessed medbay records with the other.“Basically a chemical lobotomy. They were trying to liquefy her brain.”

Gasps echoed through the bridge. Rann’s face contorted in disgust. “Why would they do that? It would have rendered her useless if they’d recaptured her.”

Covak shook his head, his hair dancing over his shoulders. “I don’t think they care one way or the other. The drugs were all human and would have a devastating effect on her brain… personally I think that was it. They don’t need the biological components anymore.”

He leaned forward, his gaze sweeping around the team. “She’s a cyborg, as we suspected. I’ve reviewed the files the Warborne’s scientists sent over. It seems that this project’s people have been stripping her cybernetic systems, and the only reason I can think of is to reverse-engineer the technology.”

Ryke snorted, a sound somewhere between amusement and frustration. “And why can’t you use that ridiculously expensive auto-diagnostic bed you insisted I buy to confirm this?”

Covak’s lips quirked. “Because she has some kind of power core that would likely blow us all to stardust if I tried. The Warborne’s medic attempted something similar with Zero. Nearly took out their entire ship.”

“Draanth,” Ryke muttered. “Yeah, I’d rather you didn’t do that.”

“What about a human-level scanner?” Davis asked. “It’s passive tech, not active. Shouldn’t trigger her power core.”

Ryke chuckled. “And where the hell are we supposed to get a human medical scanner? We can’t exactly waltz into a human hospital.”

“Well, we could…” Rann folded his arms over his chest and grinned. “But Covak would cause quite a stir.”

Covak snorted, his gaze sweeping the bridge. “Me? Have you seen yourselves?”

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