Page 45 of Her Cyborg Warriors

I kicked. Thrashed. I threw my head back and crashed my skull against Giram’s helmet. Hot, wet blood trickled down the back of my skull. I struck again. I had to get to Mikki.

“Surnen! Calm the fuck down.” Trax grabbed my face by the chin and squeezed, hard, forcing me to look at him. “Don’t make me shoot your ass.”

“Let me go.”

“No. You are losing your fucking mind. Giram is going to carry you back to shore, and you are going to fucking stay there while I go get our mate.” Trax slammed my helmet back on my head, initiated a pathogen scan and nodded at Giram. “Thanks. Take him back.”

Giram turned and I saw the other guards with Rachel and Maxim, the female gaping at me like I’d lost my damn mind. I had lost more than that. I had nothing without Mikki.

“Surnen? I’m fine. Okay? I’m not going anywhere. We have time to figure this out.” Mikki’s voice was pure sweetness and light, and I broke, slumping in Giram’s hold moments before he dumped me on the sand like a bag of rocks.

I deserved worse.

Trax bent down, taking a knee to look me in the eyes. “Now, tell me what the hell that was about.”

“My mother.”

“You’ve never talked about her or your fathers. Not once in all the years I’ve known you.”

“The past should stay in the past.”

“Perhaps, but not today.”

“I’m so sorry. What happened to your mother?” Mikki said, her voice coming through loud and clear over all our comms.

“My mother was rebellious,” I clarified. “Free-spirited. They were all sickened by a deadly disease they never should have been exposed to—all because my mother had wanted to take home a harmless-looking flower from a newly discovered world. My fathers allowed her to break the rules and hide the plant in her gear. She smuggled it back to our home on Prillon Prime. Turns out, it harbored a deadly virus carried by alien insects hidden in the stems. She was dead within a week. My fathers followed her two days later.”

I heard her gasp.

“All because they broke the rules.”

“And so you decided never to break them,” Trax sighed. “Well, that explains a lot.”

“Protocol saves lives. Rules are rules for a reason.”

“I’m not down here because your dads didn’t follow the rules, Surnen,” Mikki said, her voice calm. “Things happen. Sometimes things completely out of our control. Uh-oh.”

All around me, chimes erupted from every scanner and handheld device.

“Sensors picking up additional energy coming from the machines,” one of the warriors called. His gaze was on the scanner in his hand.

Rachel waved a scanner at her mate. “The machines are what’s bringing this about. It’s not a climate issue. The planet will be bled dry of all water in months at this rate. Maxim, we have to do something.”

Trax looked to me, his rust-colored gaze narrowed. “They’re sucking the life from this planet.”

“Mikki, do you see? You shouldn’t have gone down there,” I snapped. “There’s no protocol for going under the fucking water!”

“I.C. Core Command, this is Governor Maxim of The Colony. Get me Helion. Now!” he snapped.

“Request denied. Location could not be verified. You are not on The Colony,” a benign voice replied.

“I am on Valuri,” Maxim said, going over to Rachel and standing directly beside her, close enough that they touched from shoulder to thigh. I doubted he would leave her side before we were off this planet. “Your data will confirm that. It will also confirm a Hive presence that had been undetected by your commander. Get me Helion now or I will have you working as a prison guard orbiting Everis before the sun sets.”

“Um, guys…” Mikki said. “The suction is picking up. It’s like it switched into high gear.”

Her voice was muffled by the swirl of water, the loud vibration of a machine we hadn’t even known existed until minutes ago.

“We need to get her out of there,” Trax said. “Now!”

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