Page 31

CORINNE

“There it is.” Corinne couldn’t keep the relief out of her voice.

She’d been worried that the hopper might have been stolen or broken into, despite the locking mechanism.

But the squat, silver vehicle was still where they had landed it—in a clear space which might have been a park before all the buildings had been destroyed.

“Let’s go— I’ll pilot,” K -lx offered.

“Sure—you’re definitely better at it than I am.” Corinne smiled at him. “ As long as you don’t?—”

But the words died in her throat as someone stepped out from behind the hopper. Several someones, in fact, she saw. It was Silas and he had a whole security force with him from the station.

“I thought I might find you here, Virelle ,” he sneered at her.

K-lx stepped forward, a growl rising in his throat but she put a hand on his arm and shook her head.

“No, stand down, K -lx,” she ordered. “ Let me deal with this.”

Since it was a direct order, the big Cyborg did as he was told, but he didn’t look happy about it.

Corinne took a step forward, eyeing Silas warily. He was armed and so were the rest of the guards he’d brought with him.

“Look, I can explain,” she said, raising her hands.

“Explain what?” Silas sneered. “ Explain how you decided to steal a hopper and then make off with millions of credits worth of Company property?” He nodded at K -lx and Corinne understood, with a sinking heart, that he was going to try and frame her for theft.

“I didn’t steal K -lx— I just brought him with me for security,” she explained evenly.

“ I wanted to get more insight into his specs—-which I did. I also learned some valuable information the Company is going to love. I doubt they’ll care that I had to take a hopper to get it once they find out what it is. It’s all right here.”

She reached into her pocket and held up the drive as proof.

Silas’s eyes widened…then narrowed greedily.

“Very good, Virelle . That’s an excellent find—probably worthy of a bounty fee,” he remarked. He stepped forward, holding out his free hand—the one not gripping a blaster. “ Hand it over now so I can collect it.”

“What? I don’t think so!” Corinne put the drive back in her pocket as K -lx, who had been standing silently and watching the confrontation, stepped up.

“Just let us go back to the station in the hopper,” he growled. “ And don’t threaten my Mistress with any of your bullshit or you’re going to be fucking sorry—all of you.”

“Well, that sounds like a threat to me,” Silas remarked, raising his blaster. Only it wasn’t a regular blaster, Corinne saw with horror. It was an EMP hand-cannon!

“K-lx no—stand back—get away!” she cried.

But it was too late. Silas squeezed the trigger and a silent but deadly pulse of electromagnetic energy surged from the muzzle of the hand cannon and hit the big Cyborg right in the solar plexus.

It didn’t damage his body—it didn’t have to.

It wiped his programming and cut his power in a single instant.

“No!” Corinne gasped as the big K - Unit crumpled to the ground. She rushed to him but K -lx was out. Gathering his head into her lap she glared angrily at Silas . “ Do you know what you’ve done? You might have just fried all his circuits beyond repair! You probably wiped his memories too!”

She couldn’t believe this—using an EMP weapon on a Cybernetic Unit was strictly against Company policy. The likelihood of permanent damage to expensive equipment was much too high to risk it.

But Silas only sneered at her.

“It’s a good thing if I wiped his memories—he was getting entirely too attached to you. You know, what a Cyborg of this size and strength needs is a Handler who understands him. One who can control him completely and competently.”

Corinne stared at him in surprise.

“You think you can be his new Handler if you can get rid of his memories of me? Forget it, Silas —a K - Unit can’t function without a female Handler .”

“We’ll just see about that.” And reaching down, he grabbed the Linking Star from her temple and ripped it off.

Corinne gasped and put a hand to the side of her head. It felt like someone had just cut off one of her limbs. The shock of severing the Link was so painful she couldn’t think. She could only feel the loss of where the big Cyborg had been in her mind for so long.

As she was still reeling, trying to deal with the mental shock of the abrupt severing, Silas ripped off K -lx’s Linking Star as well and then the guards—with the help of an anti-gravity hammock—hauled the big Cyborg away.

Corinne tried to protest, but she was still in shock. De - Linking was supposed to be a gradual process which took place over several days under controlled settings—if it took place at all. The feeling of overwhelming loss she was experiencing made her feel like K -lx had died.

And maybe he did, she thought bleakly. If the electromagnetic pulse had wiped her completely out of his memory, it would be the same as a kind of death because he wouldn’t know her anymore.

While she was still trying to process the cruelty of the abrupt loss, Silas hauled her to her feet and shoved a blaster—a regular one this time—into her ribs.

“Come on, Virelle —we’re going back to the station,” he snarled. “ And then I’ll decide what to do with you.”