Theta: Intergalactic Dating Agency (Cyborg Cowboys of Carbon County Book 4) Read online

  Troy gazed down at her. His own reflection—tanned, bearded, weather-beaten hat still on—stared back at him from the silvery mist of his nanites suspended in the clear parts of her eyes. “I scanned everywhere, but I can’t find it. He’s too greedy and suspicious not to have a safe somewhere on the premises. Tell me where it is, and I’ll leave the rest of the whiskey with you.”

  Her lips pursed, and he wondered if she could hear him through the opium daze any better than she could see him. Then she tightened her grip over his, pressing his fingers into her soft flesh. “Give me the diamonds too,” she whispered. “Along with the bottle.”

  He grunted, not quite a laugh. The synthetic aphrodisiac that his nanites manufactured as part of the seduction protocol should have left her desirous of nothing more than to meet his every need, not negotiating for mineral rights. But he’d given her only a small dose of the nanites, and maybe they were concentrated more on treating her infection than manipulating her libido.

  “Half the diamonds,” he hedged. “Since I can’t be sure that whatever is in the safe is worth more than the gems.”

  “Jed’ll have more,” she promised. “He just took the papers for a ranch and mining claim in Carbon County off some fool speculator from back East who didn’t know what he was holding.” Her grin was more a baring of teeth. “Jed won’t be able to contest your possession when he shouldn’t have it himself.”

  Troy considered. He wasn’t interested in land, but he could make sure the claim found its way into the hands of his matrix-kin. They didn’t need to know where it came from, but if they had land, they’d have a refuge in this rough frontier world.

  Rolling away from her, he grabbed his satchel and dug out three of the diamonds. Turning back to her, he slapped them on the bedside table next to the bottle. “The safe. Where is it?”

  She swept the diamonds and bottle toward her. The gems disappeared somewhere about her person, and she cradled the bottle in the crook of her arm. “There’s one safe in his office, in the room behind the bar. But he keeps the real valuables hidden in a trunk in the attic. The only access is through the main hall, and there’s always someone at the bar.” She frowned. “Unless you go in from the outside. You look strong and spry enough.”

  He smiled at her slyly. “And you haven’t even seen all of me.”

  She shook her head. “Most of you cowboys do it without even shucking your pants. But if you got a need for naked…”

  He frowned. He intended to keep his pants on when he broke into the attic— Oh, she was referring to their burgeoning sexual encounter. “You’ll have to be satisfied with the diamonds and the laudanum.”

  She stiffened when he mentioned the drug. Then she let out the tension with a derisive snort. “I knew Jed’d get caught someday. I’m glad someone will finally make him pay.”

  He studied her. “You could’ve done it, seems like.”

  She took another swig from the bottle with a grimace even more bitter than the bite of the whiskey could justify. “No, I couldn’t, but it’s sweet of you to think so.” She laid back, angling her face toward the darkened window, though he doubted she could see anything out of her cloudy eyes or the primitive quality of the wavy, bubbled glass pane. “Now, you want the rest of what you paid for or not?”

  The lines of her body were indolent, softened by the worn fabric of her dress, the effects of the laudanum, and what he guessed was a well-practiced professional pose. But the muscle in what he could see of her scarred cheek was clenched hard. He hadn’t even needed his seduction protocol, just a few diamonds and the promise of revenge against her captor.

  He shifted uncertainly. “If you wouldn’t mind keeping the door shut until I climb out your window and up to the attic, I’d sure appreciate it.”

  She hefted the bottle, waggling the heavy bottom. The jug was weighty enough to be a weapon if she chose to use it that way. “I got things to keep me busy,” she drawled. When she flicked a glance at him, despite the sideways tilt of her head, he thought she was seeing him direct. “I’ll take a last boon from you.”

  He arched one brow. “And what might that be?”

  “One more kiss,” she whispered. “Another one that makes me breathless like I haven’t felt since…” She shook her head hard enough that he thought the wayward pile of stained maroon locks on top would come tumbling down. But whatever technology she was using held fast against the rough treatment and the relentless pull of gravity. “One more kiss, star man,” she repeated.

  He froze. “Star man?”

  “Your eyes. They glitter like stars. Too far away, I know. But I wish…”

  “Wish what?”

  She scowled at him. “Wish on stars. Nobody can take those away.”

  He didn’t have the nanites to spare, and since they were coded to his unique physiology they wouldn’t last long in her without him. But an ache in his reticular activating system made him realize how alike they were.

  If he’d been Earther born, perhaps he’d be this too: thief, addict, whore. Perhaps she’d even killed, given her complicity in James’s predations. Not so different than a shroud, although he’d been deliberately created to be a murderer, thief, and whore as necessary, while Nell was more organically wicked.

  So he kissed her again, infusing her with another breath of nanites he could ill afford. Maybe he should take her as part of his robbery.

  No, he was not like his matrix-brothers, who were struggling to make a place for themselves in this world where they’d been marooned. If he could steal this land Nell had mentioned, that would give them a fighting chance, but he wasn’t like them. Thetas were meant to be outliers.

  When he lifted his head, Nell had gone slack in his arms. He laid her down, tugging the flayed edges of her bodice to shield her breasts and tucking her skirts around her legs to cover her against the touch of the night’s chill. If James came looking for her, she’d be asleep.

  As he rose from the bed, though, he gazed down at her with a narrowed gaze. By his programming, he knew how to take what his keyholder wanted. In the aftermath of the crash, with no keyholder in sight, his scant time on this world had taught him to take what he wanted. And so far, he had.

  This was the second time he was leaving something behind.

  He didn’t like the feeling. There would be no third time.

  Pivoting away from her, he let himself out the window into the darkness, climbing toward the attic. The stars burning in the blackness above were like billions of eyes watching him. None of them could touch him anymore that he could reach them.

  Thetas had never been coded to hold onto anything. And one broken dove was no exception.

  Chapter 2

  Present day

  Troy Lehigh had nothing left, not even his nanites.

  Watching the thin trickle of gray sludge oozing from the back of his hand, he tried to dredge up some feeling about it. Fury, perhaps? At least embarrassment at how far he’d fallen. The best he could do was a distant sort of amusement.

  It wasn’t how far he’d fallen that was the problem, really; it was the sudden stop and fiery explosion at the end.

  “There,” said Victoria Ray, sitting back in her swivel chair. “All your damaged systems are repaired and updated, so I’ve put a resources hold on your nanite production. Don’t fuck around and you’ll be fine.” She glowered at him. “Try to betray us again and your own bugs will eat you alive.”

  He gave her a tight smile. “Your coding skills have improved.”

  “I’ve learned a lot fixing you.”

  After she’d helped the matrix Omega blow his stolen hovercraft out of the sky. That failure still burned.

  Literally. Whenever he closed his eyes in system restore mode, the flames of the recent crash seemed to lick up around him, scorching off his skin down to his implants, the stink of burned hair stinging in his sinuses…

  He squelched the memories as ruthlessly as the Earther hacker across from him had controlled his shroud powe
rs. “Am I free to go now?”

  She studied him. “Your Alpha wanted to put you in stasis, you know.”

  He couldn’t hold back a snort. “Is that a euphemism for killing me?”

  “No. We’ve mostly repaired the yurk’s chamber. Mach wanted to keep you bound, asleep, and safe. But Cosmo said that was worse than death.”

  “Your Omega shot me down in flames,” Troy said wryly. “Excuse me if him claiming any concern for my fate strikes me as too little, too late.”

  “Of course he cares about you, as he cares about the whole matrix,” she scolded. “But you did try to enslave his will and force him to travel across galaxies to fight the consortium.”

  Crossing his arms over his chest and tucking his poked hand under his armpit, Troy looked past her. “Ruthlessly destroying the consortium that made us into one of the most hated and feared—not to mention outlawed—fighting forces in the universe would’ve been the perfect end to our existence.”

  “But Cosmo chose not to end,” she said, as if she were being reasonable. “And he had the right to choose his own fate, not you.”

  Though the hole in his fist was negligible, it ached when Troy made a fist. “An Omega’s only purpose is to be the end. Just as shrouds are meant to fight and kill and die, not fall in love with primitive Earthers.”

  “Well, luckily my Omega has more nuance than that. All the shrouds are now more than they were intended to be.” She flashed him an evil grin. “Except you. You’re less, since I’ve drained your life force like a computerized vampire.” She swept her gear into a satchel embroidered with the Intergalactic Dating Agency logo, which seemed inappropriate considering Earth was a closed planet and its sentient inhabitants weren’t supposed to know about the IDA. “Mach will give me permission to remove the limiters when you can convince him you are not a danger to the matrix anymore.”

  Hissing out a breath through his teeth, Troy reminded her, “I’m not the danger. The consortium is. None of my brothers will ever truly be liberated until our master maker is ended. You of all people should know our code is vulnerable.”

  Vic brushed her fingertips over the IDA logo which showed a galaxy of stars in the stylized shape of a heart. Which was utter nonsense because the two symmetrical curves coming to a point at the bottom wasn’t even the shape of any internal organ in any organic physiology. “We’ve fought off other threats before, including interstellar scavengers.” She glared at him. “And you.”

  “The consortium is exponentially more powerful than me.” Couldn’t she understand that if he was saying that, she should be frantic with fear? “When I activated after our transport crashed, I thought at first, as the rest of you do, that we’d be fine, marooned on this nowhere world.” He ignored her huff of protest at the insult to her planet. “But in our century and a half here, I’ve found the universe is smaller than it seems, and we’re too exposed. Anyone could hijack our programming.” He gave her a pointed look.

  At least she had the grace to blush. “That’s why I coded the love cipher: so every shroud can choose who—or if—they give access to their imprinting subroutine.”

  He leaned forward abruptly, making her flinch. “Then set me free to serve that delicate poison to the consortium mainframe.”

  She clutched the IDA satchel to her chest, wielding it like a shield between them. As if that would stop him. Except—he restrained a sulky pout—technically, it and she had stopped him. “You’re a Theta. Encoded for tricks and cheats to aid your matrix, but only from a distance, a failsafe blocked off from the key command structure. Why are you acting all Alpha and Omega?”

  The doubt and dismissal in her tone stung more than the hole in his hand. “I thought you believed shrouds could change.”

  “Well, I guess we’re waiting for you to prove it. Until then, you’re stuck here as little more than an Earther.”

  “And you’ve made that choice for me when you say I may make no choices for the matrix.” He shoved himself back on his seat in disgust. “The Earther capacity for hypocrisy shouldn’t surprise me anymore.”

  She wrinkled her nose, making the freckles across her cheeks dance. “We’re trying to make you a better person, your original coding aside.”

  “I’m not a person. And being better was the Omega’s wish, not mine. All I want is to end the consortium.”

  She let out a gusting breath. “Not using my Omega or any of the others, you’re not. And not by putting my planet at risk.”

  As if this backward, nowhere planet of Dirt mattered more than the eradication of the consortium. Hypocritical and selfish. He sent a questing ping into his vastly reduced nanite load and bit back one of the many curses he’d learned in his century and a half. The limiter she’d placed in his programming was as elegant as a cow-sized wad of Earther chewing gum shoved into a hovercraft’s engines. And equally effective. In the time he’d spend unraveling one strand of the entangling code, the self-replicating directives would wrap themselves around his back end. He was well and truly stuck.

  At least until he could get far enough away from his noble jailers to take most of his systems off-line while he scraped them completely clean.

  “You know, it’s not too late to make something of yourself,” Vic said. “Something else, I mean. You’re half cybernetic, so you can literally make yourself anyone you want to be.”

  He wrinkled one corner of his mouth in a snarl. At least she was making him feel something again: fury. “I don’t want to be something else,” he snapped. “That was your wish. And I definitely do not want these inspirational quotes. I find them more draining than your digital bloodletting and leeches.”

  For an instant, a shadow of hurt flashed through her dark eyes. Then she shook her head with a chuckle. “I’d be more offended that you can’t see we’re trying to help, but I guess this is a call to up my coding game again. Maybe in our next session I’ll write you a sweeter attitudinal adjustment.”

  His aggravation drained away like his nanites. “So, now you’re into torture.”

  “Poor Theta,” she murmured. “I hope someday you’ll be able to appreciate how your matrix was given a second chance when you crash landed on Earth. Don’t waste it living in the past.” She rose and looked down at him. He couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to be annoyed at her dominant stance. “See you next week.”

  This was worse than stasis. An endless purgatory of his moral superiors gently preventing him from seeking some righteous vengeance. His brothers were victims too; how could they forgive and forget and find inspiration? None of those responses were written into their procedures, and if that was the upgrade that the love cipher gained them, he wanted no part of it.

  Not that anyone had offered.

  When Vic left, Troy remained on the chair in the parlor where she had set up her miniature software studio while she’d helped him repair. The large, boring house he’d claimed as his stronghold in this pathetic little town was silent.

  He didn’t know what had happened to the Earther male whose house it had been before Troy hijacked his brain with a temporary influx of nanites. Vic had told him that they were rehabilitating the confused Earther. Troy glowered to himself. Manipulating Tanner Cross had cost him more of his resources than he realized, and it had been his downfall when he’d challenged his brothers directly. He should’ve dumped the useless Earther male much earlier.

  That his matrix-brothers hadn’t ended him was just more proof of how they had been weakened by their association with the soft-hearted Earther females.

  Soft-hearted, but the code of the love cipher that bound them together was strong.

  With a grunt, he levered himself to his feet, swaying on wobbly knees. His cybernetic implants consumed most of the limited nanite power that Vic had allowed him, which meant his organic components were left to their own devices. He even got hungry now.

  Grumbling to himself, he slouched to the kitchen.

  Of the three Earther females holding the keys to his brothers,
Lindy Minervudottir had been voted Most Likely to Watch Traitors Burn Alive. And yet yesterday she had stopped by the quiet house to drop off a fresh loaf of homemade bread.

  “I know shrouds can survive on pure carbon, but toast doesn’t always have to be burnt to a cinder,” she’d told him. “Here, you can try it with pickled herring.”

  He stared at the jar in her hand. “Why are you being nice to me when I stole your Delta and your offspring and tried to reinitiate their weapons status?”

  Her eyes narrowed, suggesting that he probably should’ve just said thank you since the lady rancher tended to go about armed to the teeth. Obviously his vaunted Theta cleverness had drained away with the nanites.

  But instead of shooting him as he deserved, she let out a slow hiss of breath. “Vic tells me your programming pushed you away from the matrix and made you…like this. Like a feral dog, Lun-mei says. Personally, I’d put down a rabid cur like you. But Delta still calls you brother, so…” She shrugged.

  When he’d eaten the herring that evening, he thought maybe she had poisoned him after all. Earthers ate the strangest things. But he’d survived, even without his nanites available to cure him. And it was all he had in the house.

  Though his hand still ached from Vic’s hacking, he got as far as toasting the bread—gently, until the outer crumb had a similar golden hue to the sun at the center of this solar system—when a subtle change in the air pressure of the house caught his attention. His nanites should’ve warned him of an intruder. He grimaced as he strode out of the kitchen with the butter knife in his hand.

  No one knew he was here in this isolated house except his matrix-kin and their keyholders. They’d left him helpless without enough nanites or any weapon except this dull sliver of stainless steel, not even plasteel.

  It would serve them right if he was murdered by the returning Tanner Cross or some random Earther burglar and left a big, bloody gray mess for them to clean up.

  But as he rounded the doorway to stare down the hallway, he saw only a slender Earther female framed in the open front entrance. Against the black rectangle of night behind her, her pale silhouette was like one of the delicate pieces of glassware in the wine cabinet of this house. From the high neck of her gown to the wafting hem of the split skirt, the curves of her reminded him of…something…