Page 3 of Her Cyborg Commander (The Drift: Haven Colony #9)

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Why did leadership come with so many fraxxing meetings? Edge asked himself that question often, but so far he hadn’t come up with a satisfactory answer. His cynical side insisted it was so the bigwigs could hear themselves talk, but in his rare moments of generosity, he admitted that none of the colony’s leaders were much for grandstanding. There was so much work to do, and all of it required a nauseating amount of communication.

He sat in his usual place with his back to the wall furthest from the door. The table was round to allow everyone an equal position as well as a decent view of each other and anything displayed on the holo-projector that took up the center of the space.

The other members of the council arrived one or two at a time, claiming their seats without more than a few words of greeting. Exactly thirty seconds before the meeting was scheduled to start, River arrived. It was unusual for her to cut it so close. Normally, she was one of the first ones here, greeting the others with a smile and a bit of light banter before they got down to work. She never did that with him, though. Her smiles were reserved for other beings. The ones she wasn’t afraid of.

The thought stung, but it was an old, familiar pain, easily ignored. At least, that’s what he told himself. So what if she thought he was dangerous? She wasn’t wrong about that. Though he resented her for telling the humans not to wake him and the other male cyborgs until after they’d arrived at the colony. She’d made them out to be monsters, too violent and unstable to be allowed any say in their future. By the time he and the others woke from cryo, it was too late to do anything but go along with the deal she’d made with the Vardarians.

Edge’s gaze drifted to where Prince Tyran sat in quiet contemplation. In the beginning, he’d thought of the prince as the warden of the cyborgs’ new prison. Now, he knew differently. The cyborgs were as much a part of the colony as any other citizen. It still rankled him that River had taken the choice away from him and the others… even if she had found them a safe place to call home.

River took the last remaining chair, which put her directly across the table from him.

Her short, dark hair was pushed back from her face, and the shadows beneath her eyes and lines at the corners of her mouth told him she was pushing herself too hard. Even cyborgs needed downtime, but River never took time for herself. She was always too busy taking care of everyone else.

The first time he’d seen her was as he and several other cyborgs were dumped into the general population area of Reamus Research Station. They’d all been “re-acquired” by their former masters despite the promises to free every cyborg in existence. Angry, injured, and weakened by their minimal diet, it was all he and the others could manage to stay on their feet. River had been the first to approach. When she’d smiled at him, her brown eyes full of kindness and her voice as gentle as a whisper, he’d felt something so unexpected he’d almost laughed aloud—peace. For one brief, shining moment, she made him feel at peace.

He’d known then that she was the best of them, and he’d continued in that belief until he’d woken up on Haven and learned what she had done while he’d been asleep. After all the nights he’d guarded her, after all the beatings he’d endured to protect her and the other females from the predations of the guards… she’d sold them into a new kind of slavery.

At least, that’s what he’d thought back then, and his anger had made him say things he regretted. Not that he’d admit that to anyone. Especially not to her.

It was easier to leave things as they were.

It might sting that she was afraid of him… but that’s only because she didn’t know the truth. His soul was so much darker than she knew. If she had any inkling of the things he dreamed of doing to her? Stars above and below, she’d have fled the planet rather than risk staying anywhere near him.

His moment of reverie ended as Tyran rapped his knuckles three times on the table to call the meeting to order.

“We’ve got a lot to talk about today, and I know we’ve all got things we need to be doing to finish securing the colony,” the prince said. “We’ll go around the table. Everyone give a brief summary of what you’re doing and what you’ve learned. I’ll start.”

The Vardarian prince provided a concise report of what his spymaster had learned since their last meeting. It wasn’t much, but it did confirm the identity of the two Vardarians who had been murdered and replaced with what he thought of as infiltration units. Some of the others called them doppelgangers, but most referred to them as ghosts. He didn’t like either name. They added a sense of the supernatural to the situation, stoking everyone’s fears. A frightened population was prone to making bad decisions. If that happened? Everything could go to hell in a rocket-powered handcart.

Around the table they went, each summarizing what they were working on and what they knew. Most of it he was already aware of, but he filed away every detail for later review, anyway. When Zanyr spoke, Edge gave the Vardarian his full attention. The male had been in the middle of the situation from the beginning. If anyone had anything new to add, it would be him.

Zanyr began by announcing that his mate Jenna had fully recovered from the attack that had nearly killed her. Everyone brightened at that, with smiles and words of encouragement easing the tension. The moment didn’t last, though, as Zanyr briefed everyone on the details leading up to the discovery that they had been infiltrated.

Once Zanyr finished, Raze was the next to speak. “Your mahaya was a spy for our side? Why weren’t we told about this? I thought this council was supposed to be kept apprised of everything important.” The big cyborg managed to keep his voice calm, but there was no missing the anger behind his words.

“I had the same reaction,” Zanyr replied. “But think about it for a minute. The more beings who knew, the more likely it was that someone would make a mistake. The fact none of us treated her any differently is why she was able to keep up the facade as long as she did. I don’t like it any more than you do, but it makes sense.” His voice dropped to a growl. “And if she ever does anything like that again, Torren and I will tie her to the damned bed and never let her leave the house without us.”

That statement triggered an outburst of laughter and hearty agreement from every male present.

“I still don’t like it,” Raze grumbled when the laughter faded. “Once we start keeping secrets, where does it end?”

“We have to trust each other,” River stated softly. “As much as we can, anyway. We’re all here because we want Haven to thrive. Sometimes, that might mean we have to keep secrets.”

“And who decides what to reveal and what to keep hidden?” Edge asked. “Vardarians? The humans? Who?”

River’s deep brown eyes fixed on him. “We do. That’s what this council is for. To make sure our decisions reflect the needs of the entire colony.”

She was right, but it still rankled him for some reason. Probably because he had trust issues the size of a small planet and wasn’t good at sharing responsibility. At least, that’s what River had told him once, long before they were free.

Zanyr waited for a heartbeat before continuing. “So, in summary, we know the Shadows are behind this infiltration. The good news is that if they are still trying to introduce spies, they’re not getting the information they want any other way. Whatever they’re after, they haven’t gotten it.”

“Yet,” Denz added. “They haven’t gotten it yet. But they will keep trying. Obviously, they view the Vardarians as a threat to their control over this part of the galaxy. They don’t want the races here forming alliances with anyone who might disrupt the status quo.”

“You mean anyone who might cut into their profit margins,” the Vardarian prince said, his tone drier than moon dust.

Denz nodded. “And that. But it’s about more than money. We don’t know who the new players inside the Shadow organization are, but the Gray Men were all corporate owners or high-level executives trying to gain the upper hand. Control means everything to those kinds of beings—not only the flow of wealth but resources and manpower. Haven represents something vastly different, and I don’t think they want anyone else to try and replicate what we’re building here. They need us to fail, and they’ll do everything in their power to make that happen.”

Edge hadn’t intended to speak, but he couldn’t stop the words from coming. “So, what you’re saying is the corporations are coming after us. Again. And we’re playing defense. Again. When is it our turn?” he demanded, scanning the faces around the table. “Or should I say, when is it your turn? Because none of the cyborgs are allowed to leave the planet. Not even to defend our fraxxing home.”

To his surprise, no one tried to interrupt, so he kept talking. “We need to do something more than sit here and wait for them to come after us again. They’re applying pressure to all our weak spots, waiting for something to break. Eventually, it will, and then what? We react to yet another emergency. I’m tired of reacting . First it was the raids to steal tantalum from this planet before we could mine it ourselves.

“Once we activated the security net around the planet, they tried messing with us in other ways: with spies from Earth, with nanotech designed to weaken the Vardarians. Then it was the Vardarian Liq’za and their intolerance for anything other than total racial purity. Now we’ve got operators wandering around in cloned bodies. What’s next?”

Zanyr cleared his throat but didn’t speak until Edge nodded his way and asked, “What else do you know?”

“I don’t know anything, but I think someone has been messing with the machinery at my farm. The coordinates I programmed for one field shifted slightly, so some of the seed ended up in the ground too rocky for it to grow decently. Water is going to the wrong field, flooding out some areas and making others too dry. Bugs happen, but this season it feels like they’re happening too often. I didn’t put the pieces together until the last few days.”

Several councilors spoke at once, but Tyran’s voice carried over the others. “You’ve got enough to do already. Can you hand the investigation off to someone else? Someone you trust to find the answers without triggering more rumors?”

“Already done,” Zanyr replied.

Edge growled in frustration. “This is what I’m talking about. We’re running around, putting out fires instead of making a move of our own.”

“We’re all in this together,” Phaedra spoke for the first time. The prince’s human consort wasn’t officially part of the council, but she attended most meetings and spoke up for the human contingent until the first elections were conducted.

He turned to look her way and did his best to stay outwardly calm. The last thing he wanted to do was to set off Tyran’s protective instincts. Not to mention the fact the little fuchsia-haired human female was slightly terrifying in her own right. “I know that. But if this goes sideways, you can find another world to call home. The cyborgs can’t go anywhere. If we lose this place, we lose everything .”

Raze slapped the table with an open hand. “ Fraxx that. We’re not losing to those void-sucking bastards. This has been my home far longer than any of you, and I’m not leaving. So long as I draw breath, the cyborgs have a home—one we’ll defend together.”

Edge was caught between gratitude for his brethren’s words and surprise Raze had said so much in one go. The male could go for an entire meeting without uttering more than an occasional grunt.

“None of us are leaving,” Tyran said. “Edge, I heard what you said. It is time we did things differently.” The prince looked around the table, his expression serious. “We need to open the armories and arm Haven’s citizens. I know most of us are already armed in some fashion, but that won’t be enough if there’s a real attack.”

Edge sat back in his chair and tried to process what he’d heard. The armories contained body armor, combat gear, and tactical weapons. Enough to ensure every adult on the planet was outfitted for battle. One of the first decisions they’d made as a council was to keep the armories locked until there was an undeniable threat.

Holy fraxx , Tyran had heard him. More than that, he agreed. If the others felt the same way…

River shook her head, shooting down Edge’s hopes before they even got off the ground. “Not until we’re finished scanning everyone. The last thing we need is to arm our enemies before we know who they are.”

Frustrated, he snapped at her. “You mean the scans you’ve spent the last few days performing on the cyborgs? The ones that don’t mean a fraxxing thing because we already know none of us have been compromised? It’s impossible because while a cyborg clone might look the same, they wouldn’t have the same implants or internal comm-channels. We’d know if one of ours was replaced with an infiltration unit.”

River’s eyes narrowed, and he saw the flash of pain as his words landed like physical blows. “You’d think so, but we’ve already established that some of us were compromised. I—we can’t be sure.” She tapped her temple with a trembling finger. “We can’t take our security for granted, because some of us have already had it taken away.”

Angry at himself for starting them down this path but too stubborn to back away from a fight, Edge folded his arms and glared at her. “I’d know.”

“You didn’t. None of us did,” she fired back. “You are our leader, Edge, but that doesn’t make you infallible. I know you want to protect all of us, but you can’t .”

Their gazes locked. “I protected you. Didn’t I? Every way I could. No matter what the cost. And I’d do the same for everyone else in Haven. Cyborg or not.”

That should have ended it. He’d taken beatings to keep her safe. He’d killed for her, and he’d do it again.

Her words were little more than a whisper, but he heard them clearly along with the pain threaded beneath them. “I never asked you to do that. The people you hurt…the ones you killed. You shouldn’t have done that for me.”

“After what they did to you, you couldn’t protect yourself. If I hadn’t done it, who would have?” he asked, but his anger was gone. No matter what she thought of him, he never wanted to be the reason she was in pain.

She raised her chin and gave him a look of pure defiance that made his cock twitch with desire. He hadn’t seen this side of her until recently, and he liked it, even if he refused to acknowledge his interest in her.

“We’re not on Reamus anymore,” she said. “I can take care of myself, Edge. You worry about everyone else.”

The room was so quiet he could hear his own heartbeat. Everyone was watching this exchange like it was some kind of spectator sport. Fraxxing wonderful. Now he was distracting the others from what was important. It was time to end this conversation and get back to what mattered—preparing for the fight coming their way.

“Thanks for clarifying. I’ll do that.” With that said, he pushed back from the table and reluctantly dragged his focus from River to Tyran. “Now, about opening up the armories. What say we put it to a vote?”