Mach One Read online

  Table of Contents

  Mach One

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Romancing the Alien

  Thank You!

  MACH ONE

  CYBORG COWBOYS OF CARBON COUNTY

  INTERGALACTIC DATING AGENCY

  Elsa Jade

  WEBSITE | NEW RELEASE ALERT | FACEBOOK

  It’s autumn in Big Sky Country, and crash-landed aliens are falling in love!

  Oversized Montana rancher Mach Halley’s very big Stetson and giant belt buckle are hiding a secret of cosmic proportions: He’s a survivor of a transgalactically prohibited private army of cyborg alien warriors built to kill. But with a long-dormant member of his unit about to be born, he needs a healer—even if it’s a pretty little lady doc who must forget everything she sees.

  Making a name for herself in rural, large animal veterinary medicine has been tough for Doctor Chien Lun-mei, so she takes a strange midnight call to prove herself—only to discover a secret wilder than any bucking bronc. If she rants about UFOs and ETs, she’ll be laughed out of the county, but this strong, silent cowboy who feels even more out of place than she does touches her in more ways than one.

  Together they’ll fight to save an alien life, but for Mach to escape a war he never wanted, he’ll have to risk an alien love.

  On the outskirts of the Big Sky Intergalactic Dating Agency, the Cyborg Cowboys of Carbon County are rounding up earthly pleasures for their forever mates.

  Read all the Cyborng Cowboys of Carbon County

  MACH ONE

  DELTA V

  BIG BANG

  New to the Big Sky Alien Mail Order Brides? Read ALPHA STAR for free!

  And find all the Intergalactic Dating Agency books at RomancingTheAlien.com

  Copyright © 2018 by Elsa Jade

  Cover design by Croco Designs

  ISBN 978-1-941547-28-1

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as factual. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be scanned, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Prologue

  The scream of the falling ship was like a dying thing.

  He knew, because he’d killed things—many things.

  But he couldn’t help the ship, couldn’t help his matrix-brothers, couldn’t help himself. Seemed only fair, in a way, like payback.

  And still he raged against the dying when he and his brothers had never really lived.

  With his muscles and implants locked into stasis mode, he couldn’t help or rage or do much of anything, not even curse the pitiless encoding that had brought him this far and no farther. The flat spin triggered by the crippled stabilizers was ripping off chunks of the ship that burst instantly into flames projected in high definition on the viewport across from his hangar. The tortured shriek of plasteel mimicked the sound in his head, so maybe the ship was cursing for him.

  Didn’t seem as satisfying, somehow.

  Life support had failed. Though he’d inhaled deep before the last of the breathable air vented into the void, he sensed the rapidly escalating dismay of his organic bits. His inorganic nanites would do their best to compensate for the diminishing capacity and repair any damage, but they could only do so much.

  Since it seemed he was about to burst into flame himself in the very near future, probably it didn’t matter anyway.

  He couldn’t even roll his eyes to check on his matrix-brothers. Had they grabbed a breath while they had the chance? Or had they deliberately breathed out?

  Alarms warned that catastrophic depressurization was imminent. He didn’t think the pilots were alive to heed the warning. At least their demise would excuse their atrocious piloting skills.

  The flat spin turned to an out-of-control tumble, one that made even his nanites queasy. Every few rotations, he caught a glimpse through the viewport of the gravity well sucking down the ship.

  It was a planet. Not a big one, well outside the traveled space lanes. Looked primitive, with no sign of other ships or structures built up into the exosphere.

  No one to save them.

  To his shock, an incoming message scrolled across the bottom of the viewport, almost out of range of his frozen stare.

  “Welcome to Earth, lonely being of the universe. We are so pleased you have chosen the Intergalactic Dating Agency for your sojourn into matters of the heart or whichever of your soft, fleshy bits are biologically and culturally associated with passion and lo—”

  The message broke apart. Not that it was making any sense; he hadn’t chosen any of this.

  It was a pretty planet though. Bright blue with free-flowing water and streaked with puffs of pure white clouds.

  Too nice a grave for a gang of nameless, genetically and cybernetically enhanced, outlawed killers who’d never even made it to their first war. He hoped any remains of his soft, fleshy bits, plasteel implants, and marauding nanites didn’t hurt the pretty little planet.

  Burn hotter, he swore at the thickening atmosphere as they plunged down. Burn it all.

  When the ship hit the stratosphere, he thought he caught a tang of salt on his lips. A cloud birthed from the ocean, perhaps, although he knew they were still too high. A tiny wisp of condensation acting like a wall of destruction but tasting like the tears that had plagued him before his system programming had disconnected the useless impulse.

  Just as well his matrix was dead. Now at least they were free.

  Chapter 1

  This is your final offer!

  Mach had been through a lot of final offers in his day. He dealt with this one as he had with all the others.

  He crushed the notarized letter in his fist, taking some minor satisfaction from the resistance of the high-quality linen paper and the foil-embossed letterhead.

  Then he tossed it in the recycle bin.

  Which was a slightly ominous sentiment, now that he thought about it. Last chances shouldn’t be reusable. He should probably move that to the burn pile.

  Pushing back from his desk and the small stack of mostly junk mail he’d retrieved from the post office earlier in the week, he slapped his dark brown Stetson on his head and sauntered out the door to the rambling front porch of the old ranch house. The mightiest powers of the universe could offer him anything—everything—but this was all he wanted.

  To his admittedly biased eyes, the rich bottomland glistened like a jewel. The bright golden fields bisected by the gleaming blue creek were a brilliant backdrop to the glossy black cattle and the white-capped hills beyond. When he’d come to Carbon County, Montana, he’d been vague on the concept of heaven—though it sounded nice—so when they told him this was heaven and it was for sale, he’d bought his chunk. Now that he knew what heaven was, he agreed with them, and they’d have to pry it from his dead hands before he’d give it up.

  He had very strong hands.

  When he stepped onto the porch, Chip and Pickle raised their heads to watch him from the rays of slanting sunlight where they’d lounged.
They loved the warmth of their bright yellow star, especially in these chill autumn days, but if he was going anywhere, they wanted in, didn’t matter much to them where or why. Such allegiance—not to him exactly, but to the work—had bothered him at first and he’d tried to refuse all dogs on the ranch.

  Cats, fine. They killed indiscriminately and pissed on the boots he left at the back door. He could appreciate that.

  But dogs… Dogs had expectations. Dogs wanted to work together. Dogs put their fluffy butts under his hand when he wasn’t being careful and then he ended up skritching them. Dogs needed a leader.

  He didn’t want to be that, not to anyone, not anymore. But cattle needed dogs, and he needed cattle, so he needed dogs.

  The cats thought he was an idiot.

  With a sigh, he gestured to them, and in a blur of black and white fur they flanked him. The October night came early in Carbon County, so he got on with his chores. Destroying that annoying letter had been the easiest thing on his list.

  By the time the last light was fading, he had cleaned, chopped, stocked, checked, rechecked, and triple checked as needed. All was right in his small chunk of heaven.

  He had just fed the dogs—and was petting them; how did they always get him to do that?—when a heavy clunk on the porch warned him to get himself together.

  So Delta found him leaning at the kitchen counter, pouring a second cup of coffee, not petting dogs.

  That didn’t stop Delta from petting them. “Guess what I have,” he crooned.

  “Donuts,” Mach said flatly. “Even I can smell them.”

  “Donuts!” With a theatrical flourish that he certainly hadn’t learned anywhere in Carbon County, Delta produced a bag from behind his back. “Who wants donuts?”

  Chip and Pickles both did, apparently, and Delta handed one to each of them.

  Mach frowned. “I don’t think that’s—”

  Delta stuck a jelly one in Mach’s open mouth as he sauntered past. “You were saying?”

  Years and lack of stimulus had dulled Mach’s reflexes, but not so much that he couldn’t have blocked an incoming circle of fried dough if he’d half tried. Apparently he wanted one too.

  Still, he felt compelled to reprimand. “Not a great idea to go into town.” It was one thing to swing through the small population center of Diamond Valley Depot when necessary—for supplies, mail, a few very minimal Earther interactions—but donuts weren’t necessities. He closed his eyes as he chewed the completely unnecessary treat. “Who was there?”

  “Just the girl at the counter, one of the Madison offspring. She never looked up from complaining at her phone while I was there.”

  The distractions of modern life had proved useful in keeping a low profile, especially in this part of the county where lack of development and a quirk of the local geography meant the distraction of modern life were particularly distracting. The electronic signals that everyone so desperately craved were only fleetingly reliable and even then only within the town of Diamond Valley itself. He could’ve rustled entire herds while his fellow ranchers were adjusting their antennae in the hopes of catching the latest live-streamed sport.

  Not that he rustled anymore.

  When the sugary dough melted, he had to ask. “Did you need something in town? I was just there last week.”

  Delta’s jaw jutted out. “We needed donuts,” he said in a very deliberate tone. “They don’t last all week.”

  “Not if you give them to the dogs,” Mach pointed out.

  Delta sucked in a harsh breath, clearly annoyed on the dogs’ behalf. Then he let the air whistle out of him, his complaints unspoken. He put the bag on the counter, trading it for the second cup of coffee. He took a gulp. “Donuts go really well with coffee,” he muttered.

  Since Mach couldn’t argue that point, he said nothing. After a moment, he reached for the bag and divvied up the remaining donuts among the four of them.

  If there was one thing he learned in the last hundred and fifty years or so since they’d crash-landed on this planet, it was that donuts didn’t last.

  While they finished, he updated Delta on the status of the ranch and then retreated to the back room designated a “bedroom” to initiate the rest sequence that would allow his nanites to efficiently convert the donuts and coffee to the energy that had kept him alive all this time. It wouldn’t take them long; coffee and donuts, he’d discovered, were some of the most efficient energy sources in the known universe. Then he’d spend the rest of the long night staring into the darkness, waiting for morning chores.

  But barely an hour into his mental review and analysis of ranch operations, a hard rap at his door brought him to high alert. Without waiting for his hail, Delta entered, the frown between his brows erasing any lingering satisfaction from the donuts.

  Mach rose to his feet at once. “Report.”

  “Security breach of the outer shed,” Delta said curtly.

  Not bothering to ask for more intel—if Delta had it, he would’ve given it—Mach headed out. Delta trailed after him until he grabbed the rifle that was always near the front door.

  Delta grabbed his elbow. “Wait.”

  Mach shook him off. “After we check the breach.” But when Delta opened the door, Mach added gruffly, “Don’t let the dogs out.”

  Running parallel but staggered—no position of cover would grant an easy shot at both of them—they hurried across the closest paddock toward the fence line and followed the barbed wire through the dark over the crest of a small hill into the lodgepole pines. They’d decided to site the big maintenance shed close enough to keep an eye on it but far enough that no unwelcome eyes would readily mark it. So the thin line of light glowing around the edges of the sliding bay doors didn’t bode well.

  Mach gripped the rifle harder. He hadn’t shot to kill since—

  Not that it mattered. He’d shoot when he had to. That had always been the case.

  Wordlessly, he gestured for Delta to swing behind the shed, but he didn’t wait for confirmation before he ran through the front door. It was still locked, so it resisted his entry a millisecond longer than would otherwise be the case. But the bolt couldn’t hold against a direct blow from his boot. He tracked the rifle across the whole room in one sweep until Delta crashed through the back door with the same lack of subtlety. They faced each other across the empty space.

  Not entirely empty, of course, but nothing unexpected. The familiar heavy crates—some wooden antiques, some aluminum and steel—were stacked and sealed as always. The only change was a row of red lights blinking from underneath a small pyramid of moldering canvas like demonic eyes.

  Mach hadn’t known what heaven was when he came to this place, but he’d always known about demons.

  As he prowled to one side of the stack, Delta stepped up and yanked the old canvas off the pile. The fabric came apart in his hands, revealing the slanting sides of the metal container underneath. Mach grimaced. Plasteel wasn’t so different from the alloys available on this planet, but still, the pyramid managed to look…

  Alien.

  “Something’s wrong,” Delta murmured.

  Weird blinking lights in an abandoned structure on an old ranch in the middle of nowhere? Yeah.

  “The stasis field is breaking down.” Delta’s hands flew over the lights, but the blinking continued, like a countdown. “I don’t think I can stabilize it. If our Theta was here—”

  “He’s not.” He was gone. Like all the rest of their matrix. “You have to stop it, or slow it, something.”

  Delta slanted a glance at him. “Something? I can release the stasis.”

  “No.” They’d done everything they could for so long to hide what they were. Now a malfunctioning lightbulb was going to betray them? “Kill it.”

  Delta straightened at the control panel, pivoting slowly. “Kill…”

  “It can’t hatch.” Mach kept his voice steady. “Not on this world.”

  “We shouldn’t be on this world,” De
lta spat.

  “But we are. And if we want to stay alive here—”

  “By destroying what’s left of our matrix?” Delta stared at Mach hard. “Is that what happened to our Beta and Theta, our other Deltas? You said you broke stasis first after the crash and everyone else was incinerated or missing, but maybe it was just easier to stay alive on your own.”

  Mach jolted toward him, leveling the rifle with a snarl. “Then why’d I keep you?”

  They stared at each other for a long moment before Delta dipped his head. “Good point.”

  That grudging acknowledgment almost made Mach want to shoot him more. “We escaped our encoding once,” he reminded Delta, “and how many more times since? But only because we’ve kept our heads down. That”—he pointed the rifle toward the pyramid—“won’t keep its head down.”

  Delta grimaced. “Give me a chance. I’m no Theta but maybe I can make something work.”

  Mach eyed the panel. “Stasis failure in less than two local days. If you can’t reinitiate the field, we’ll have to destroy it.”

  Delta had already turned back to the pyramid. “There must be some reason for the fluctuation…” But he was talking to himself.

  Prowling through the rest of the shed, Mach checked the other two pyramids that had survived the crash—that they’d found. When they’d first dug out of the pit where their semi-intact compartment of the ship had buried itself, they’d discovered a very backward planet, one without the capability of tracking their arrival—or reporting them. Somehow, on route to the keyholder who would’ve taken possession of them, their ship had gone off course and been all but obliterated.

  They were free.

  Over the decades, they’d gathered the recoverable wreckage, to hide the evidence of their presence. And that had been enough.

  Until now.

  Under more layers of stinking canvas, the remaining two stasis chambers glowed the cool blue of undisturbed slumber, the same as they’d looked since before the crash. Knowing that one was coming awake was a menace to the small measure of peace he’d made on this nowhere planet.