Cyborg Nation by Kaitlyn O'Connor (english readers TXT) 📗

Gabriel could carry her a while, which she couldn’t help but think was significant. They’d been walking the rim of the cliffs for nearly an hour when they heard the sound Bronte thought was going to figure in her nightmares for the rest of her life.

The screams of challenge were blood curdling.

Jerico promptly set her on her feet and the three men formed a semi-circle around her as they had before, swords drawn as they waited for the horde that had burst from the edges of the forest with the first cry. Bronte divided her attention between the trogs and the drop at their backs. There was no fortunate circumstance of discovering a nice wide path down. The cliffs were nearly sheer at this point not even offering much in the way of hand or footholds if they had to retreat. The only option they had would be to leap from the top and hope they landed in water deep enough to keep them from dying, and even that was doubtful. She was certain they must be forty or fifty feet from the water’s surface. If she survived such a fall, her healing leg wouldn’t be able to withstand the impact.

There was no retreat that she could see along the cliffs either. The rocky ledge still stretched out in both directions as far as she could see.

Coldness gripped her as she realized they were in a fight or die situation. The trogs seemed to have no interest in taking captives and they couldn’t flee even if they wanted to.

As before, Gideon drew the laser pistol and used it to take out as many as he could. Unlike the first time, however, the pistol ceased to fire before he’d killed more than a half dozen. Tossing the now useless weapon aside, Gideon’s face was grim as he settled into a fighter’s stance and waited for the first to reach them.

Bronte glanced down the cliff again as cyborg blades of steel rang against the blades of the trogs. She was pretty convinced that she couldn’t have climbed down if her leg hadn’t still been in a splint. With it, she had no chance at all. Jump, she wondered as the battle began to slowly inch toward her?

She couldn’t bring herself to do it and turned to watch in horror as Gideon, Gabriel, and Jerico swung their blades with fatal, seemingly tireless precision, facing first one opponent and then another, shifting each time one of the trogs tried to dart past them to get to her. Blood flew in every direction, spouting like fountains from the trogs as the cyborgs hacked them to pieces, flying off the blades of their weapons as the swung them over and over until bodies and body parts formed gruesome piles all around them and the trogs were falling over their dead to reach the cyborgs.

Bronte surveyed the drop again as the circle closed more tightly around her, knowing the moment of choice was nearly upon them.

“Do not even think about it!” Gideon growled.

Bronte jerked all over, more unnerved that he’d spared the time to glance at her than she was that he’d correctly interpreted her indecision.

“Close ranks!” he bellowed directly behind that order.

Instantly, Jerico and Gabriel stepped closer and Gideon stepped back. “Put your arms around my neck as you did before!” Gideon snapped as he bent down for her to reach around his shoulders. “And hold tightly.”

She didn’t even think to argue with him although she would almost have preferred to jump without him.

Actually, not. She didn’t think she could make herself jump. At least if Gideon jumped with her she wouldn’t have to make the choice. Throwing her arms around his neck, she locked them as tightly as she could and prayed she could hold her grip when they impacted with the water.

To her surprise, he crouched even lower. She bent with him, holding tighter.

She almost lost her grip when Gideon, instead of whirling and leaping from the cliff, sprang almost straight up. “Behind them!” he bellowed as he launched himself skyward at breath taking speed.

Bronte’s stomach didn’t just go weightless. It couldn’t decide which way to pitch. They soared over the stunned, gaping trogs as if Gideon had suddenly sprouted wings. Almost as if time had slowed, she turned her head to rest her cheek against Gideon’s shoulders and saw Gabriel soaring beside them, higher, almost spinning as he slashed at the men now below him as he passed over their heads. Sheer awe flooded her at the sight … and then they landed. Gideon absorbed much of the impact with his legs, allowing them to bend, and the abrupt stop still jarred Bronte loose. She sprawled on the ground at Gideon’s feet.

Jerico and Gabriel, unencumbered as Gideon had been, landed several yards further away, but they whipped around almost before they had touched down and raced forward as Gideon bounded over her, landing behind her. Bellowing their own war cries, they charged the trogs, who’d just discovered they were now trapped at the edge of the cliff.

She thought the trogs would have fought even more ferociously if they’d had the time to overcome their shocked surprise. They didn’t. The cyborgs had executed the maneuver so swiftly and charged that the primitives barely had time to turn to meet them, and no time at all to realize how closely they were to the cliff’s edge. Three went over immediately, shoved off by those trying to break their forward race and turn. Another five fell over as the ‘rear guard’ suddenly discovered they were in the forefront of the battle and tried to avoid being impaled on the cyborg swords.

Within a matter of minutes, Gideon and Gabriel and Jerico had dispatched the rest, some with their swords and others by seizing them and pitching them from the cliff.

Bronte lay where she’d fallen, watching them with a mixture awe, relief … and pride. As wonderful as she’d thought they were before, watching the absolute beauty of