Delta V Page 2

  “I’ll never love anyone else.” The break in her voice felt as if it went all the way down through her throat to her heart, never to be made whole.

  “Someone. Someday.”

  “Never,” Lindy vowed. “There’ll never be anyone like you.” She cupped her hand behind Amber’s smooth skull, peering deep into her dark eyes, left foggy from her latest treatments. Treatments, Lindy thought savagely. More like barbaric poisonings of the body and soul she loved beyond all reason.

  “You can’t know that until you meet everyone in the world.” Amber matched her hold on Lindy’s sympathy-shorn scalp, where blond fuzz was already sprouting back, a whispered reminder that life went on, even if she wasn’t interested in hearing about it.

  “I could know them all and none would be you.”

  “Maybe not me,” Amber agreed. “But someone. Sometime. Love finds a way. Didn’t I promise you that?”

  Maybe. But five years wasn’t enough to get over her loss, and even a hot, young, experimental military stud wouldn’t fill the void.

  Hating the memories that were fogging her own eyes, she scowled at Delta. “I assume you have some protocol for being accidentally spotted,” she snapped. “Deny. Obfuscate. Bury. Let’s just assume I’m on board with all of that and part ways, shall we? I’m cold, and obviously you have better places to be.” She gestured vaguely toward the moon.

  He followed the wave of her hand. “Not quite that far,” he murmured. His gaze dropped back to her, as if the skies weren’t more interesting. “We do have a protocol, but it involves wiping your memory and it never works as well as you think.” When she drew a breath to protest anyone wiping anything of hers, he continued, “Besides, as you say, there have been plenty of unidentified flying objects across Big Sky Country and still no one believes. And it’s not as if you have photographic evidence.”

  Which was all true, but still he didn’t walk away. Or fly away, she supposed. And she wasn’t entirely comfortable turning her back on a chicken-voiced, peacock-tailed, hay-eating dragon.

  “How about you climb back on your yurk and get back to your roost?” She gave the muzzle of the rifle a little twitch. “We can pretend this was just a bad dream.”

  He tucked his chin. “I don’t dream.”

  The wistfulness in his voice stopped her for a heartbeat. “Well,” she said finally, “I don’t either anymore. But we can pretend to dream too, I suppose.”

  After a moment, he nodded. “That I can do.” He turned to the giant creature, and though he gave no signal she could discern, the yurk rose to its full height, spreading its wings wide in a flurry of once-fallen snowflakes. Halley grabbed the side strap of a thin harness—not much more than a lariat—she hadn’t noticed before and hauled himself upward, like he was climbing on top of a bush plane. The yurk snorted and took a sidling hop.

  Despite herself, Lindy couldn’t help but feel a little tug of longing. Not for the striking man but for the chance to fly away.

  He stared down at her. “Goodnight, Missus Minervudottir. You might want to take a step back.”

  “Lindy,” she corrected as she followed his suggestion. “Since we’re dreaming.”

  He gave her the frugal little forefinger wave common to all ranch folk, and then the yurk leaped into the air. Lindy gasped at the violent gust of wind that brought the snowstorm back to life. The pair must be pulling as many G’s as a fighter pilot at launch.

  By the time her eyes cleared, they were high above her. They circled once—did the yurk dip its wings in farewell?—and then they were invisible against the black night sky.

  A few snowflakes still swirled in the aftermath, catching the moonlight like tiny silver stars falling back to Earth.

  Later that night, for what felt like the first time in five years, Lindy got into bed—nudging aside three of the older ex-barn cats—and fell asleep without crying.

  Chapter 2

  The morning after their forbidden flight, Delta fed and inspected the yurk. She ate more than usual, but she was still growing and her nanites hadn’t reached full capacity so she wasn’t running at a hundred percent efficiency yet.

  And after last night, Delta figured he was somewhere in the thirties.

  He couldn’t believe they’d been spotted. Who fed their cows at midnight? Their neighbor at the Strix Springs Ranch, apparently. A good thing to know, he supposed, for next time they flew. Just as well they’d never recovered any of the tech from their crash that would’ve allowed the yurk to have limited verbal interactions.

  If she ratted him out to their matrix Alpha, he’d spend the rest of his more or less immortal days at zero efficiency once Mach was done with him.

  And rightly so. He knew they must never be identified as CWBOIS—Custom War Bionic/Organic Impersons. This planet didn’t have genetically and cybernetically enhanced killers (not that they hadn’t caused plenty of impressive mayhem on their own) and didn’t acknowledge the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, so the only way to hide here was for the surviving martrix-kin to keep their heads down.

  Which by any stretch of the definition did not include flying.

  But the yurk had wings that needed to be used, and Delta…had needs of his own.

  Watching his Alpha imprint on the pretty little Diamond Valley veterinarian had triggered some unpleasant subroutine in his latent programming: jealousy. That they’d gone off to Bozeman for the weekend, researching a coding specialist for some reason they hadn’t seen fit to explain to him, only made the seething in his gut worse.

  He was just a Delta V, the most expendable Delta of the matrix, so he’d learned not to expect consideration of any sort. Unless being considered cannon fodder counted as consideration.

  The jealousy was making him unreasonable, of course. All shrouds like him and the rest of the matrix were expendable—expensive, but ultimately doomed. They were sent on their missions, where they wrapped their targets in destruction, but they too were ultimately discarded.

  Maybe someday he’d recover enough emotional depth—feelings having been rejected as mostly superfluous in a shroud—to be angry.

  And maybe… That someday could be now.

  Imprinted on Lun-mei, Mach was more than just Machine One in an anonymous matrix. He became himself when he was with her. And with his systems aligned solely to her, he was protected from their keyholder if that unknown being ever came to reclaim them.

  Delta wanted that for himself. There was only one pretty little female vet named Lun-mei in Carbon County, so he couldn’t have exactly that for himself—also, Mach would deactivate him if he tried to hack her affections.

  But he’d figured out that he didn’t need exactly her, just something like her. So he made a list of all the most important characteristics that would be necessary for imprinting.

  Small probably. Lun-mei was very short and slight. A portion of his programming was geared for the protection of his keyholder, and vulnerability would help trigger that subsystem.

  A liking for donuts was important. So he noted “must be sweet.”

  Single, small, and sweet. That seemed doable, even in Diamond Valley.

  But last night, he’d seen Lindy Minervudottir.

  Oh, he’d seen her before. The Minervudottir females had been around almost as long as he and his matrix-brothers. Earthers assumed Mach and he were the sons or grandsons of the original rancher. With their nanites, they were able to adjust a few minor aspects of their appearance, enough to pass unremarked through the century as long as they didn’t call attention to themselves. Last night, he’d caught her attention and he’d seen her.

  She was not small. She was not sweet. And he wasn’t entirely certain she was single. Missus usually indicated a connection to another, and she’d been with a female starting about a decade ago, although that connection was severed when the female died. Perhaps her imprinting capabilities were permanently damaged by that loss. When keyholders died, any shrouds imprinted to their command were deactivated,
but Lindy was very much alive. The snap of her voice and glitter in her eyes had pinged off his awareness even with all the night sky between them.

  Did that mean she’d been the keyholder? If so, she was strong. Lun-mei was also strong, although he’d forgotten to note that because she was also small and sweet.

  This list was getting complicated, and Lindy met only one of the criteria for sure.

  But she had two incontrovertible pluses: She was close and she’d seen him flying on the yurk.

  So after his chores were completed, he carefully packed up the last donut (chocolate, with sprinkles) into a container on the farm truck and headed down the road for the Strix Springs Ranch.

  It was already midday and he happened to know she’d gotten a very early start on her chores, so he took a chance that she’d be somewhere near the house and followed the split rail fence up the driveway. Although the Strix Springs house wasn’t as large or ornate as the main building at the Fallen A (Delta had heard Lun-mei describe it as a Russian Orthodox bordello, much to Mach’s chagrin) Lindy’s home had all the symmetrical elegance of a classic farmhouse. Dark gray roof and white shingles shining in the crisp October sun, the two upper dormer windows watched him approach like a pair of disapproving eyes under arched eyebrow eaves.

  Clutching the donut box in front of him like a blaster shield, he angled warily toward the front porch. Wrought in iron, a larger version of the ranch brand—two circles with central points, touching at one point along their circumference—decorated the lintel, and they too looked like judgmental eyes. In his hundred and fifty years on this planet, walking up to doors unannounced had gotten him shot at, chased by dogs, yelled at, and sometimes just ignored. And they didn’t even know he was an alien shroud. Maybe there was a reason none of the transgalactic community visited Earth.

  But here, only a couple of cats sprawled in the sunlight slanting across the porch. One was brown and black and the other was gray and white, both with the lean build of born predators. They watched him through slitted eyes even more condemning than the house and the brand combined, because as predators, they recognized one of their own.

  Delta kept track of them from the periphery of his wide-angle vision because he’d been attacked by cats before too. Now that he thought about it, the one element in all of his unwelcome encounters…was him.

  He hugged the donut to his chest. Might be that this was a terrible idea.

  Before he could retreat—shrouds never ran away, but strategic withdrawal was always a reasonable option—the front door opened and Lindy stepped out, holding a cup of coffee.

  They stared at each other for a long moment, the only movement the soft coil of steam unspooling from her overfilled mug. The rich scent of the coffee filtered down the front steps and curled around him like an invisible lasso. He was tall enough that the three porch steps put him at eye level with her coffee mug, and he caught a glimmer in the coffee as a concealed tremor in her hand sent the ripple through the dark liquid.

  The cats broke the impasse, rising simultaneously to their feet and slinking off the side of the porch. Delta wasn’t sure if they’d been guarding the house, waiting for her, or if she’d caught them slacking off their mouser duties. He watched them go—didn’t want to be outflanked by vicious killers—before sliding his gaze back to her.

  She huffed out a breath that ripped apart the coffee steam. “I guess I’m still dreaming.”

  He didn’t move. Was she saying she’d dreamed of him last night? As he’d told her, he didn’t dream, ever. But he didn’t sleep either. He’d laid in his bed in a neutral mode, staring up at the ceiling and thinking of her. Which was the closest a CWBOI could get to dreaming.

  His gaze dropped to the mug in her hand. “How did you know I was coming?”

  “Didn’t. Coffee’s not for you.” She took a deliberate sip from the mug, watching him over the rim.

  He imagined her lips on the ripple of her initial surprise, not that her Earther senses could detect the infinitesimal waves of energy that had disturbed the surface tension. His own specs weren’t really up to that task either; he was no Beta, Gamma, or Theta to need that sort of sensitivity. And yet somehow he seemed to feel the ripples, wince at the heat she hadn’t waited to dissipate.

  Struck wordless by this strange cascade of unlikely input, he just waited for her to finish her sip.

  Finally she lowered the mug, her gaze too dropping to the box in his hand. “You didn’t come here with some mind wiping thing, did you?” She lifted one eyebrow. “I’m a taxpaying citizen of the United States of America, and my own army ought not to be erasing people’s memories. Also, my rifle’s just inside the front door, and I’m pretty sure I can get to it before you can get to me.”

  He was pretty sure she couldn’t, but he hadn’t come here to show off his inhuman abilities. At least not quite yet.

  He held out the box. “I brought you a donut,” he announced. “It’s day-old, but it’s chocolate.” Mach and Lun-mei had brought him a box of a dozen from Diamond Valley Depot before they left for Bozeman. They told him under no circumstances should he be wandering into town while they were gone. Wandering to the neighbor ranch, they hadn’t mentioned.

  Lindy stared at the box only slightly less suspiciously than she’d stared at him. “I’m not really into sweets.”

  He recoiled, clutching the box tighter. “What?”

  Another snort from her. “Not every woman loves chocolate.”

  Okay, sometimes even lethal killer robots needed to run away.

  Swiveling on his boot heel, Delta headed back for his truck.

  “Hey! Where are you going?”

  He glanced back over his shoulder. “I can’t be with a female who doesn’t love chocolate.”

  She sputtered. “Can’t be… What the hell, Halley?”

  He pivoted back to face her over the distance of a few strides. She was leaning against the porch rail, her lips and brow twisted with confusion. A lifetime’s worth of summer sun and winter wind—and dynamic expressions like this one—had left lines on her face that would never go away. If he could map them all, maybe he could know her well enough to anticipate how to make her smile, how to get her to look at him the way Lun-mei looked at Mach. That must be the key to imprinting.

  He realized he’d been silent too long when she set her mug on the porch rail and straightened. He was just far enough away from her now that she might get to her rifle before he got to her…

  “Fine,” she growled. “Do you want a cup?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly.

  “Only you can’t ma’am me. I’m not that old and I’m not your commanding officer.” She turned away and went inside, letting the screen door slam behind her.

  Cautiously, he approached the steps again, watching for cats and rifle muzzles. But there was only her mug on the rail, waiting for her return. So he waited too. Waited to see if he might make her his commander, his master, his keyholder.

  Every module of every subsystem in him seemed to hang in waiting mode.

  She was back in just a minute with a second mug. No rifle. “It’s rewarmed from this morning’s pot,” she said. “Tastes a little burnt. Should go perfect with your day-old donut.”

  His nanites didn’t care what carbon-based material he gave them to convert to energy. She held out the mug, and though this felt a bit like a trap, he walked up the three steps to accept it.

  The thick ceramic was cool in his hand, but inside he felt the warmth slowly permeating. Maybe Lindy Minervudottir was the same.

  But nowhere in his programming did he have the skills to bring out such feelings in her. CWBOIs didn’t normally need to force imprinting; it happened automatically when their keyholder activated them. After crash-landing before their activation, his matrix had gone a hundred and fifty years in unclaimed mode, never realizing they could imprint without an identified keyholder.

  Still, Mach had done it with Lun-mei, and his Alpha was terrible with Earther i
nteractions. Delta was the one who’d discovered donuts. And beer. While Mach had rustled their first cattle—back in the early days when that had seemed like a good idea—Delta had been the one to make sure their claim to the land of the Fallen A met Earther legal standards. And he wasn’t even a Theta who had the clever spy/assassin subroutines to master bank and county registrar paperwork.

  Surely he could decode this one Earther female. Even if she didn’t like chocolate.

  He peered sidelong at her. “If you don’t want the donut…”

  Canting her hip against the rail, she waved one hand at him. “Eat it.”

  Over the rim of her mug, she watched him as he reverently lifted the ring of fried dough from the box. It wasn’t until he took that first bite that a subtle tension in her spine eased, and he realized she’d thought his gift to her was drugged. As if he’d ruin a donut.

  “I just wanted to apologize again for startling you last night.” He looked down at the half a donut that remained after his first bite. “But this was my way of saying sorry.”

  Her lips quirked to one side. “I thought we agreed to say that was just a dream.”

  “Well, I’m sorry for trespassing in your dreams.”

  After a moment, she nodded. “Forget about it. It was a weird night.”

  He nodded. “Imagine how the cows felt when they woke and the sweet hay was already there, smelling like spring.”

  She gazed at him. “Odd way of thinking.”

  He hesitated. “The cows? Or me?”

  With a slight shake of her head, she seemed to dismiss the question. “The hay smells like that because of some herbal concoction one of my interns invented. Supposed to improve resilience.” She shrugged.

  He perked up at the story. “It’s good to be open to new ideas.” New ideas like, say, extraterrestrial invaders who just wanted to stay on Earth and be ignored.

  “They get room and board and I get ranch hands and cow potpourri. Seems like a fair trade.”

  With him, she’d get an essentially immortal being enslaved to her will. That was almost as good as potpourri, right? And he could keep all the donuts. This seemed ideal.