Iron stopped walking and stared down at her. “Are you well?”
“I’m fine.”
“You looked frightened. I won’t allow anyone to harm you, Dawn. Do you doubt my ability to protect you?”
“You said something about the life pod and I was thinking how stupid it would be to take one, if you want the truth. I’m guessing we’re pretty far off the beaten paths of travel routes so there have to be a lot of pirates out this way.”
“Yes. There are. They like to stay far from the travel routes because they know the standard is to shoot at them upon sensor detection. You need not worry about the Star being attacked. The Rally and the Star are a team, both ship and shuttle travel together. It dissuades even the more aggressive pirates from attacking.”
She nodded. “You’re smart. Unfortunately those crazy bastards rarely do the sane thing. They’ve attacked the Vonder a few times over the past year.”
A frown marred Iron’s lips as he hit the button to call for the lift. “The Vonder is a large station. It would be suicide for them to attack it. We wouldn’t even do that.”
“Yeah, well, nobody said pirates were bright. We have a kick-ass defense system but its slow getting parts out to us from Earth sometimes. We had four of our lasers go down after we took some fragment hits from a passing comet so we had a blind side that one of their ships slid through before we could turn the station. We were in spin mode, enabling us to continuously fire at them.”
Iron watched her with that same frown on his face as the lift doors opened and he led her inside. “Did they breach the Vonder?”
“Uh, no, not in the way you’d think.” Dawn sighed. “I was outside in a space suit repairing hull dents we’d sustained from those same fragment hits we took when they attacked. I barely made it into the docking doors before they were hooking up and blowing out the hatch I’d just come through, to gain entry. You know what I did to the Rally’s docking room? Think bigger. I blew out a section of hull after they boarded that area of the station to keep them from reaching the living areas with my crew.”
Iron looked stunned as he stared mutely at her.
“I watched them die, heard them screaming until the air was gone. It was hell. I had to vent their remains before I started to patch the hole so I could seal it up and reestablish oxygen. I had less than twenty minutes of air in my tanks by the time I was done. If the patch hadn’t held I would have suffocated too. I couldn’t walk outside to the docking port on the other side of the station since we were spinning to keep those bastards off us. My tether wouldn’t have been strong enough. My ass would have been tossed out into space.”
Full lips pressed tightly together. “Your job was very dangerous, Dawn. I am glad you will never do it again.”
She wasn’t about to tell him that once she escaped from him that going back to the Vonder was exactly what she’d do. It was her home now and they needed her. Other mechanics had come and gone in the past eight years to assist her but they never stayed. It was a lonely, shitty job with too many hours and too many repairs to keep up with but the pay was too damn good to walk away from.
The lift doors slid open when it stopped. Dawn peered out into the large cargo area and to her stunned disbelief saw over a dozen cyborg males in skimpy, thin outfits tossing each other around on thick mats on the floor. Iron gripped her arm again to tug her out of the lift.
“We exercise here to keep physically maintained. Do not be alarmed. The fighting is not genuine.”
The men stopped what they were doing as Dawn was pulled into the room. All attention focused on her and she glanced at each male, seeing their open interest instantly. Iron muttered something so softly she missed his words.
“What?”
“I was hoping that none of them would be working out at this hour.”
“You’re going to give me a tattoo in here? Seriously?”
Iron jerked his head. “Look.”
She followed his gaze and saw that in the far corner a Med area had been set up. She was shocked when a human older man walked into the room. His white hair put him at over fifty in age—a thin-framed man in good physical shape from the firmness of his muscular arms. A scar was evident, which had her guessing someone had sliced open his face with a thick blade once. The guy openly stared at Dawn for a few seconds before he shot a dirty look at Iron.
“Another one? Seriously? I’m going to run out of magnetic ink, damn it. I told Flint I’m low on it after I branded the last woman brought to me.”
“Is there enough?” Iron tensed. “It’s important to me.”
The doctor hesitated. “Yeah.” The man turned his attention on Dawn, studying her.
She stared back at him. “You are owned by them too?”
The man shook his head before he turned away, going to a cupboard along the wall. “No. I was rescued and freed by them. I was assigned to the Star when she left Earth’s orbit after she was cleared for flight. I was one of three medical staff members assigned to her.” He rummaged and pulled out a few things. “The Star was taken by pirates and they killed most of the crew, ransomed some of the lucky ones back to Earth, or sold them to some of the outer posts as sex workers.” He set four cases on one of the only two med beds. “I’m the only one they kept aboard since I’m a medic. They kept me pretty damn busy, considering how messed up they are physically.”
Surprise tore through Dawn. “Pirates were able to take this thing? How the hell did they do that?” Dawn frowned at Iron. “You said this was a Class-A ship. That means it’s fully armored, has state-of-the-art defensive weapons and it’s not that old. As far as ships go it’s a damn baby so it’s got to be pretty impressive technology. How were pirates able to get control of it?”
The medic cleared his throat. “Our captain was straight out of the academy. His father was some big shot who got his precious boy assigned.” He glanced at Dawn. “Call me Doc. You both need to remove your shirts.” He opened another case. “As I was saying, the captain was green and an idiot. We ran into a group of pirates with four ships docked together in a cluster who instantly surrendered as we approached them claiming they were dead in space with mechanical failures. Captain Tillis wouldn’t listen when the crew tried to tell him to just kill them. Instead he docked the Star directly to them, thinking he was saving lives, and of course they attacked the second they were aboard. They’d had more of their ships hiding behind a moon, had filled those four linked ships over capacity from all the men from the hidden ships so at least fifty of those bastards were able to walk right onto the Star.”
“Shit.” Dawn shook her head. “Didn’t your captain scan for life signs first or have security teams ready to open fire on them if it was a trick?”
“Obviously not. I said you both need to remove your shirts.”
Dawn turned her head to look at Iron, seeing that he’d removed his shirt. He frowned at her, waiting for her to comply but instead Dawn turned to glance at the other cyborgs across the large room, silently staring directly at her. She swallowed.
“Um, isn’t there somewhere private we can do this?” She looked back at Iron, her voice lowering. “They are watching me.”
“It’s a public area.” Iron shrugged his broad shoulders. “I can’t make them leave and this is where Med is set up. The original Med was destroyed in the battle that took place when the Star was taken over by pirates. We offered to restore it but Doc says he likes working here better because he always has company with the men using this area for training.”
“And I’m right on hand if they get a little rough with each other.” Doc chuckled. “No way in hell do I want to be stuck spending my days staring at nothing but walls.”
Dread filled Dawn as she carefully removed her shirt while she made sure that her breasts remained covered. If she was on the Vonder she would have shucked all her clothes in a heartbeat but those weren’t other women staring at her. She glanced back at Iron to see that he was silently watching her.
“You
’ve got my back, right? You said all your men are single. Me stripping isn’t going to cause any shit? None of them are going to want to move closer to try to touch me, are they?”
“I made it clear that you are mine. You aren’t for sale or for lease.” Iron’s voice went deeper. “Do you think I can’t defend you if there is a problem?”
She sized up his large body. “Nope. You look pretty able to kick some ass.” She clutched the material against her breasts and faced the doctor. “What now, Doc?”
“Have a seat. I am going to use an imager to scan and copy Iron’s markings and then I’m going to hook it to this neat device that will form to the area we want tattooed. It will hook into the imager, inject tiny needles into your skin and remove tiny bits of fat tissue to replace it with magnetic ink.” He paused. “The wrap can manipulate the ink under your skin once it’s injected and force it to move where it’s needed to copy the image it wants imprinted. You’ll smell a little burning flesh scent but that will be the tiny bit of fat tissue it removes being disposed of.” He paused again. “Am I clear? You have to hold damn still. If you have a problem with doing that, say so now and I’ll give you something to help.”
Dawn stared at the doctor. “I’ve heard of magnetic ink tats. I get the concept. I just wasn’t sure how it was done. Is it going to be painful? That’s all I care to know.”
“You’ll feel the needles and I’ve been told you can feel some weird sensations while the ink is being pulled to the right skin locations but nobody has ever complained about real pain.”
She climbed up on the med bed and kept the shirt clutched to her breasts to keep them covered. She looked at Iron. “Don’t forget to tell him to put my name on your body. That was the damn deal.”
“Her name?” Doc gasped, his head turning back and forth, staring at each of them.
Iron sighed loudly, an annoyed expression on his features. “I made an agreement with Dawn. If she would agree to my brand on her body without a fight, I agreed to have her brand put on my body. She deemed that fair and I saw the logic in her demand.”
Doc’s eyebrows arched. “Wow. Okay.” He turned his shocked expression to Dawn. “What do you want on him and where?”
Looking at Iron’s naked chest and arms, she tried to think of where she wanted her name. Her gaze went lower and then lifted to his face. Iron stared silently at her. She glanced into his gorgeous blue eyes and knew in that second where she wanted her name on his body. As tempting as it was to ask the medic to put it on Iron’s beefy ass just for the teasing ability to tell him she owned his ass too, she instead chose another location.
“I’d like Dawn put in small letters on his lower stomach right next to his hipbone. That way it’s hidden unless he’s naked.” She touched the area on her lower stomach, indicating where she wanted Iron marked. “Right there.”
Doc looked stunned, his eyes were wide open and his mouth hanging open a bit. He jerked his gaze from Dawn to stare openly in disbelief at Iron.
Dawn watched Iron closely, wondering if he’d protest her wanting the tattoo there. He met her gaze but then looked at Doc and nodded as he agreed to allow her name to go on his body where she wanted it. She hated to admit it but Dawn was a little touched that he didn’t argue the point. When she left him and he moved on to another slave, that woman would have to look at her name on his body every time he stripped naked. She’d always be a reminder to him that he’d once made love to her. It was fitting since she’d never be able to take off her shirt without being reminded that she’d once been owned by Iron Cyborg.
The medic nodded. “Okay. Let’s get this show on the road, folks.”
Fear hit Dawn as she watched Doc point a small camera at Iron who turned his body and bowed down a little so every angle of his tattoos were recorded. She wasn’t into pain and never had been. She was tempted to ask Doc to give her something for it in case it did hurt but then she looked at Iron’s shoulders. She bet he hadn’t asked for painkillers when he’d had those put there.
It was a matter of principle, she decided. She was tough, she could take it and she would. When Doc moved toward her to put the big, heavy wrap around her shoulders, she didn’t protest but she did tense. He was careful to cover her from neck to lower ribs before he asked for her shirt.
“Why?”
“You’re covered and it will scan your ribs to help map bone placement to exactly mark you the way Iron is.”
She eased the shirt from beneath the wrap and released it from the death grip she’d had on it. It reminded her of when she was a small child and had a favorite blanket she’d slept with. Wherever Dawn had gone, her blankie had been with her until she was about five years old. She turned her head and locked gazes with Iron. God, I hope this doesn’t hurt, she silently prayed, not looking away from Iron’s watchful gaze.
The wrap tightened even more, hugging her in a stronger embrace. She kept her breathing to a minimum, only taking shallow breaths.
“Hold still,” Doc warned. “You don’t want to mess this up.”
“I won’t move,” she promised softly.
Doc hooked the camera into a port on the wrap with a small cord. He hit a button, his gaze lifting. “Here we go. Just hold real steady.”
The needles went into her skin. Small pricks of pain but it was tolerable. The wrap vibrated slightly and something cold injected into her and she realized it had to be the magnetic ink. So far, so good, she thought. In seconds an uncomfortable sensation tingled as if something wiggled in her skin. It didn’t hurt or tickle but it was noticeable. The wrap vibrated more, the smell of something burning filled the air but she didn’t panic, expecting it since Doc had told her that it wasn’t her skin frying.
In minutes it was over. The wrap had to be gently pried from her skin. Iron moved forward instantly to pick up her shirt. He held it up to hide her breasts as she was freed from the device. She looked down, staring at identical tattoos to Iron’s in black ink over the curve of her shoulders. The skin was slightly red.
Doc sighed. “Now it’s your turn, Iron. Lower your pants.”
Chapter Seven
Dawn ate her food, watching Iron closely. He had come into the room in a foul mood. She swallowed her bite of steak and sipped her juice. “What is going on? Rough day at work?”
Iron hesitated before he answered. “It is this latest mission that we are on. There is so much to do and it’s proven more difficult than I first estimated.”
He never talked about work. She had tried to pull details from him but he always brushed off her questions. She sighed and decided to try again. She’d discuss paint colors with the guy if he’d just talk to her. Usually he’d bring her food, they’d spend a few hours getting close and personal, something she looked forward to, and the second she nodded off to sleep afterward he’d leave the room to return to his quarters down the hall. She knew that because she had faked sleep once—that had taken practice since he could read her so well—just to see how long he’d stay. He’d left immediately.
“What is the mission?”
To her shock, he answered her. “We are rescuing cyborgs off a planet surface. Their ship was thought lost to us when we originally fled Earth. We had to separate and they never arrived to rejoin us.”
“I’m not real familiar with all that happened. I dropped out of school and history wasn’t my thing. I know that you were created for some deep space missions nobody else wanted to take.” She pushed the tray aside, done with her meal. “They wanted pilots to go out looking for new planets farther than we had previously explored.”
Iron sat on the bed a few feet from her. “When they created us they thought we would be living robots with blank minds. They determined we wouldn’t have souls but they were wrong. We have emotions and think for ourselves.” He paused. “They implanted chips in our heads, trying to stop those functions but we were able to work around them to reestablish the parts of our brains they tried to block us from. We just hid it better. Once we realized th
ey were sending us on death missions, to spend our lives aboard shuttles designed to never return to Earth but instead to send data back to them, we rebelled by demanding human status. We wanted rights that other humans had. We tried to do it by following their laws. We found council that spoke on our behalf but we were deemed property, not fit to have rights or the ability to say no to their orders.”
Sympathy welled inside Dawn as she reached out to touch him. “They were wrong to do that. You’re living beings and hell, other than the color of your skin, you are human.”
The tense expression on his features softened. He moved his hand, placing it over hers to curl around it. “We are in agreement there. We might have genetic enhancements and have technology added to our bodies but we are human on every basic level.”
“So Earth Government turned down your requests because you were free labor they didn’t want to give up.”
A firm nod of his head indicated he agreed with Dawn’s blunt statement. “They mandated we follow orders or we would be terminated. We went on strike, refusing to take our shifts or attend our classes. They arrested us and took us to detention centers. What they didn’t factor in was that they’d given some of us the ability to send and receive data. Though we were confined to holding cells in small numbers, they took us to the same holding facility.”
“You could silently communicate with each other.”
“Yes.” He paused. “They deemed their cyborg project a huge failure and realized we posed a threat since we were not only great pilots but they’d made our bodies much stronger and durable for long-term space travel, making us physically superior if we chose to declare war on them. From what some of us overheard from guards and the data streams we were able to pick up, we were able to figure out that they were going to mass execute all cyborgs within weeks.”