Taken by the Cyborg (Galactic Pirate Brides Book 4) by Tamsin Ley (classic books for 10 year olds TXT) 📗

Helpless, Attie screamed. These men—these cyborgs were about to gang rape her.

And there was no way she could stop it.

Chapter 3

Doug sat on the steel exam table with a hardline attached to his cranial port. Syndicorp had assigned a mission, and as usual, the doctor chose Doug for the job. Usually, he didn’t mind, but today Attie would be in the Consort chamber, and his fellow cyborgs had already departed for rec time. His imagination kept thinking of Attie stripped naked and pinned to the floor by the other cyborgs.

He quickly shielded that thought. The dampening fields were down, but the hardline let the doctor see everything Doug was doing; a skilled tech could even extract threads of Doug’s thoughts if he wasn’t careful.

Bypassing a firewall, he tunneled into a posungi Matriarch’s personal feed. Syndicorp wanted to guide the government’s response to an emerging coup on the posungi home planet.

The tech sitting at the monitor next to him raised pale eyebrows. “You’re remarkably fast today.”

Doug continued working without responding, wanting to complete the job so he could leave. Before the hardline had been attached, he’d managed to send a transmission to Benjy, one of the other human test subjects. Protect her. Benjy wasn’t exactly a friend—Doug didn’t have friends—and not knowing if the other cyborg would heed his request was killing him.

Dollard leaned over the tech’s shoulder, black hair gleaming in the lab’s harsh light, and examined the monitor. “What’s that?”

Fuck. The doctor was getting suspicious. He once more shunted thoughts about Attie aside and focused.

“You want me to back it up?” the tech asked.

“No. It looks like he’s into the core processor already.”

Doug had never let on just how lightning quick he could be, keeping the doctor unaware of his true cyber-sensitive potential. Even the other cyborgs had no idea. Too many times he’d made the mistake of trusting someone only to be betrayed.

“Target located,” Doug said aloud. He planted a code in the Matriarch’s polycom that would lead her to blame a particular faction Syndicorp wanted eradicated. This job was more political than usual, but right now Doug honestly didn’t care whether he was sabotaging a start-up competitor or performing cyber-espionage for a backwater colony. He just needed to be released from the hardline, and soon.

“Record time,” the tech said with an appreciative chuckle.

Dollard pointed at one line on the screen. “Back that up.”

Doug’s heartbeat kicked into overdrive, and he resisted the urge to take a peek at what had caught the doctor’s attention. This was a normal job, he told himself, hoping the thought came through to the monitor.

Straightening, the doctor turned to the biometric scanner tracking Doug’s vitals. “Your respiration is stressed. When was your last medical assessment?”

Thinking quickly, he replied, “The anomaly is due to a new algorithm I employed to improve my access speed.” At least he had an excuse for why he’d been able to complete the task in record time. “I’ll work on improvements.”

“Why didn’t you mention that when we started?” The doctor let out a breath, pursing his pale lips. He scowled toward the technician. “Get the details. I have to check in at the cloning lab.”

With that, Dollard pivoted and marched past the armed guards through the exit, white tails of his lab coat fluttering. The moment the door swished closed, Doug detached the hardline from his head.

“Hold on,” the tech complained, lurching out of his chair.

Doug stood, towering over the smaller man. “I sent the algorithm to your computer. I’m eager to join the others. If you would please, open the door.”

The tech scuttled along behind him as Doug strode past a bank of cryopods toward the Consort Chamber.

“What’s gotten into you?” The tech waved a hand over the door’s security scanner and the door whirred open, revealing a short corridor with a single door at the other end. “You’re not usually one for companionship.”

“The task has tired me,” Doug lied. “I need relaxation.” With that, he strode down the short hallway to the other door, which opened automatically. What he saw on the other side made his blood turn to fire.

A scream tore from Attie’s throat as she clawed at the hand knotted in her hair. Her scalp burned as the cyborg jostled her, his other hand freeing the knot holding his pants up. She struggled to remember her combat training—her sister would’ve handed this guy his ass by now. But Attie had never excelled at the physical aspects of her training. She’d gone into admin for a reason. Go for the balls, Marlis’s voice whispered in her head.

Clenching her hands into fists in front of her, Attie lunged forward, driving her knuckles upward into his crotch.

He grunted and let go of her hair.

She tumbled forward, catching herself on one elbow. Pain lanced up her arm to her shoulder.

“Fucking bitch!”

“Cut it out, Rust!” someone shouted.

She clambered upright to see the dark-haired cyborg deflecting a blow Rust aimed at his face, while the saluqan grappled with Rust’s other arm. The redhead shrugged off the saluqan and pummeled the dark-haired cyborg backward. From the other side of the room, a big blond man clomped over to enter the fray, while Claudia gaped at the commotion from the alcove across from her.

Attie pushed to her feet, heart nearly stopping as Rust turned his attention to her once more. She swore steam poured out of his ears as he took a menacing step toward her.

Then a man she hadn’t noticed before stepped in and clamped a metallic hand around Rust’s throat.

As if a curtain had dropped, the fight stopped cold.

The blonde guy muttered, “What’s he doing here?”

The saluqan’s veins pulsed iridescently beneath his dark purple skin.

“Take it easy, now,” said the older man who’d offered to go first.

The new cyborg wasn’t the tallest of them, but somehow he was the most imposing. One side of his face was a dull gray metal, complete with a glowing green