Page 1 of Kiss of Steel

Chapter One

Somewhere in outer space

Steel awakened to darkness. One by one, senses booted up. Auditory receptors noted a faint hum, and olfaction detected burning metal, the peculiar odor of outer space, while his tactile sensors recorded a vibration against his spine. Information synchronized.I’m on a spaceship.

No visuals yet. Flinging out his arms, he hit solid metal above him, to the sides, and below.Containment pod.I’m in a containment pod.Hazy memories replayed how he’d been forced into the capsule as his systems had powered down.

His hand flew to the immobilizer around his neck. The electronic device had enabled his captors to control him. He dug his fingers under the tight band and yanked hard, breaking it loose.

Free,he thought with vicious satisfaction.

But the hot metal smell concerned him. He sniffed, speculating as to the possible cause. An engine core malfunction? Lingering remnants of bay doors having been opened? Or a hull breach? If he broke free of the capsule, and there was a gaping hole in the craft, he’d get sucked out of the ship. Even a cyborg couldn’t withstand the extremes of outer space.

He palmed the metal walls of the pod. Cool, but not frozen. So, no hull breach.

He attuned his hearing and listened for voices but heard only the ship’s faint rumble.

Balling his hand into a fist, he rammed the top of the pod. Pain splintered through his knuckles and fingers and radiated up his forearm, but his processor shifted the uncomfortable sensation into the background, and he punched again. The metal dented. Another strike caved it farther. Wetness trickled down his hand. He was bleeding. Bones might have been fractured. With the next punch, he broke all the way through, slicing his skin on the sharp metal. Faint red light filtered in. Grasping the edges of the hole with both hands, he ripped open the top of the pod and squeezed out of the pod.

Red auxiliary lighting revealed a cargo hold filled with crates, some metal, some wood. He held up his throbbing, bleeding hand and watched the hemorrhage peter out, and the mostly organic skin heal itself. He wiped the blood on his naked thigh. He’d been stripped of his clothing before he’d been placed in the pod.

Silently, he padded around the bay searching for something to use as a weapon. He could kill with his bare hands, but he wasn’t invincible, as the capture, deactivation, and containment had proven.

He tore open several crates, finding only detritus—miscellaneous parts for obsolete robos, hovercraft, computers, and other junk. Nothing of practical value—except for the information. All the crates were stamped DESTINATION: HELL’S GATE. Nobody with half a brain would pay the freight to dispose of this worthless crap by shipping it to Hell’s Gate.

Out of environmental concerns, incinerators, including crematoriums, had been banned on Earth. Bodies and anything else anybody wished to dispose of without a trace got shipped to Hell’s Gate, a planet of molten rock. But items had to be recorded on a flight manifest. Hence, the crates of junk camouflaged the only cargo worth sending to Hell’s Gate. Him. Solutions, Inc. intended him to disappear without a trace.

They’ll never take me alive. Not again.

After the Chicago incident and resulting trial, all cyborgs had been tricked into reporting for deactivation. Earth authorities had been promised the man-machines would be destroyed. The cyborgs had been told they were reporting for another assignment. Solutions had fed both sides a line of crap.

Except, he’d already gone AWOL. Balking at an assignment, he’d ripped out his tracking chip and bolted. Unfortunately, the precaution hadn’t been enough to save him. Solutions excelled in finding people who didn’t want to be found. He had been zapped with a pulsator, collared, shoved into the pod, and deactivated. They hadn’t deactivated him until after placing him in the capsule because they intended for him to know his fate.

You belong to us. We created you. We’ll take you out.

Had he turned himself in, he probably would have been deactivated but then redeployed at a later date after public outrage subsided and memories faded. But he was fed up with the bullshit of beingowned. The government classified cyborgs in the same category as robots. That they were mostly human organic material didn’t matter. Solutions legally owned him.

He’d been created in the robotics lab, beginning as a fertilized human embryo then genetically and cybernetically modified. “Born” from a gestation tank, he’d emerged as a perfect mature adult killing machine.

He didn’t remember when dissatisfaction with his lot in life had begun; perhaps it had started when he began to suspect maybe not all targets deserved to die. Most marks were predators who posed a grave danger to their fellow humans. Executing them amounted to a public service. But could that be true of all of them? The dossiers were sometimes sketchy on the details.

Out of doubt, a longing for personal license had kindled.

His first act of self-determination had been to walk away from his mark in the park. Then the shit hit the fan over the Chicago incident. In his second act of personal autonomy, he’d opted not to report as ordered but to remain gone for good.

Freedom had been short. But now it appeared he’d been given a second chance.

What had reactivated him anyway?

How long had he been in the pod? How close was he to Hell’s Gate? Would anyone come to check on the cargo? To check on him? He was the only cargo that mattered.

Cocking his head, he listened. The engine noise should have been deafening. Located right over the hyperdrive, the cargo bay provided a sound buffer, putting space between the engines and the rest of the ship. The hold was eerily quiet, except for a hum that sounded more like an auxiliary system than the main hyperdrive core. The lack of overt engine noise coupled with the low-level scarlet lighting suggested power failure.

Were repairs in the works? He didn’t hear mechanics working, but if the problem was electronic, and not mechanical, the AI would fix it, and there would be nothing to hear. But once it got fixed, somebody—human or android—would conduct a sweep of the ship. He needed to be ready. He resumed his search for a weapon.

Having found nothing of any use, ten minutes later he was about to call it quits when he discovered another containment pod, flipped on its side, open and empty.

Somebody else is here.

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