Page 19 of Swept By The Alien Pirate Prince

“What do you need from me?” I clasped my hand over his knee and squeezed it.

“I need you to round up my crew,” Cyburn said, looking at me just long enough to lock eyes. When I saw the darkness inside them, it made me shudder. His emotions were webbing him in this sticky funk that he couldn’t escape.

“I can do that.” I swallowed hard.

“We’re barely going to have enough power and fuel to limp to the nearest allied world,” Cyburn explained, his features twisted with despair.

“Okay.” I nodded, trying to manage my emotions on a passive level, all while trying to keep my lover calm.

“Go find as many of my crew members as you can and bring them back to the bridge,” Cyburn requested. “Once you do that…” he trailed off and glanced at an unmoving Silver. “How is it coming on getting the A.I. back up and running?”

“It’s going to take some reprograming,” I admitted, “but I can reboot the software and make some changes to it. I’m going to have to fiddle with the wiring some more too.”

Cyburn squeezed my hand and gave me a sentimental smile. “I have faith that you can successfully get her up and running the way she's supposed to be.”

My heart fluttered as we locked eyes.

“Thank you.” My voice was barely a whisper above the hum of the ship’s engines being cranked and moaning to life — trudging along with whatever endurance they had left to give us and keep us from floating out to the oblivion of nothingness.

I jogged down the corridors, my boots echoing through the walls as they pounded against the metal grated floors.

My breath felt stifled in my lungs. My legs were heavy as I tried to race as fast as I could to find everybody.

Cyburn needed every soldier, every guard — everyone possible to back him up and help us limp to a safer, more secure location in the asteroid belt.

I was having an out of body experience. How did I evengetto this place? If I ever went back to Earth, I’d have some stories to tell.

Not that anyone would probably believe me. Sometimes when I laid awake at night, I wondered if all this was just a dream, or like being caught in the Matrix or something. What if life on Earth was just the computerized simulation andthiswas real life?

I knew it wasn’t really possible. Cyburn would have said so. It was just things I thought about, and scenarios that my brain played with to help me make more sense of everything going on.

The only problem with that was, I still couldn’t understand everything that was going on, or whyIhad been chosen by fate to meet and help Cyburn, to fall in love with him and to view him — an alien of all species — as a partner.

I never even glanced in men’s directions when I was back on Earth. I didn’t have time to care about relationships or the drama that came along with them. I was perfectly fine to just stay in my lane and bury my head in my work. Cyburn was different. It wasn’t just about the intimacy. The chemistry between us was intoxicating.

Ithadto be fate. I already worked with robots for a living. What else could it be? I reminded myself that working in the lab on the robots were primitive in comparison to the one’s I’d seen in operation both on this ship and on the Belic harvester ship.

I’d never programed or built an A.I. nearly as alive and aware as Silver. Now I was going to have to put her back together. It seemed like an impossible challenge, especially without the proper tools or knowing exactly what was wrong with her. I knew Amada had screwed her up pretty badly, but I was going to give it my best shot to bring the real Silver back to us.

It was a task that brought me massive amounts of anxiety, but I’d promised Cyburn. He was counting on me. I had to at least try.

Anger steered me ahead. It was fuel in my veins. I wanted my revenge against Amada too, but we had to be careful and do it the right way.

“Have you found any of the others yet?” Cyburn asked through my headpiece.

“I—”

I barreled into the side of Nix’s rock hard shoulder as soon as I began to answer.

I stumbled backward just as Nix was reaching out to keep me from falling backward.

“Nix,” I said.

“What?” Cyburn asked.

“I just ran into Nix,” I explained. “Literally.”

“Good, tell him to fetch the others. Please come back to the bridge. Silver is starting to twitch.”

---