Cyborg Celebration (Interstellar Brides: The Colony #11)

Chapter 16

16

V ance

The chaos of the storm cloaked the Hive, made their movements erratic, their forms difficult to target. None of the ion rifles were hitting their targets.

“Ambush!” I ran toward Rowan as Marz charged forward, his rifle blazing with streaks of light. The ground heaved, tossed the drill into the air. It crashed down with a loud boom and settled back into place, automatically adjusting to resume digging.

The Hive’s attack was relentless, their forms twisting and shifting in the rain as they closed in all around us.

Panic twisted in my chest as I saw Marz standing rigid on a rise along our safety perimeter. Even wounded, he refused to fall back. The image seared into my memory, nearly identical to countless battles on dozens of worlds where Marz’s will alone had won battles, kept us alive. He surged forward as one of the Hive Soldiers came within striking distance. He swung the blade he kept at his side like it was an extension of his own body, driving the Hive Soldiers back in a desperate fury. I could hear Marz shouting orders, his voice hoarse with strain as his teams engaged the enemy, but I didn’t have time to listen. I had one goal. One fucking job. Keep Rowan alive.

“Vance!” Rowan’s cry cut through everything like a blade through paper. “We’re in.”

I was at her side in seconds. The drilling console beeped, indicating that we’d reached the machine’s core. She stopped the drill and activated the stabilization protocols, locking the drill in place. Small pockets of fighting surrounded us on every side, but so far, our security teams had managed to keep the fighting away from Rowan. Away from our equipment.

Marz was still fighting, his movements growing slower as blood poured from his side. I saw him glance toward Rowan, the same terror in his eyes that I’d felt in my own heart moments ago. We would not stop, would never stop, fighting for her.

Rowan examined her datapad, her hands shaking as she keyed in the commands that would trade the drill’s head for a weapon we’d perfected in our war with an enemy that was more machine than man. The electromagnetic pulse we were about to unleash would be directed. Localized. It should deactivate the Hive machine we’d uncovered.

I wanted to scream at Rowan to hurry. We were running out of time.

The Hive were closing in, their attention focused on our position, on the ancient machine under our feet. It was conscious, part of their collective, and it was screaming for help.

I felt them all, the pressure building inside my skull, a slow tightening that spread from the implants embedded in my brain to every nerve in my body. My skin prickled as the energy field in the atmosphere gathered strength, as the storm grew.

I staggered back as a wave of static crashed over me, my vision blurring into a haze of gray shadows and jagged white lines. Every implant in my body buzzed with a life of its own, a rhythmic hum that vibrated through my bones. The cold, probing touch of the Hive’s network clawed at the edges of my mind like icy fingers digging into flesh.

I bit down, hard, tasting blood as I fought back, pushed against the invasive pull with every fiber of my being. Fighting them felt like pushing against a current in a storm-swollen river, and with every second, the Hive’s grip tightened. Their whispers filled my head, a cacophony of voices overlapping and writhing, speaking in a language I didn’t know but somehow understood, a language that seeped into my consciousness like poison, thick and suffocating. A snake coiled around my brain, squeezing until my skull throbbed with pressure. My grip on reality slipped, my thoughts tugged apart thread by thread. Terror crawled up my spine.

What if I couldn’t stop them? What if I lost myself? They would use me against Marz, against Rowan. An even darker thought crept in—what if I had no choice? What if I had already drifted too far?

“Vance.”

Rowan … Her voice flashed through my mind, a burst of color in the gray fog, and I clung to it desperately, like a drowning man clinging to a lifeline. She anchored me, the one clear thought in the chaos threatening to consume me. I pictured her face—the warmth in her eyes, the stubborn set of her jaw when she’d marched onto that shuttle next to the governor, when she’d refused to stay out of this fight. The way her hot pussy wrapped around my cock. The way her soft cries of pleasure made me feel whole. Alive.

The way she loved me. Accepted me.

Wanted me.

If I failed her, the next time she looked into my eyes, the Hive would stare back.

No.

I wrapped her love around me like a shield, drove back the Hive’s influence, held onto who I was—what I fought for. Yet even as I did, a voice whispered in the back of my mind. Taunted me. The ancient one beneath my feet was older than the rest, eons older. Angry at being left behind. Forgotten. Forsaken.

As its rage intensified, so did the storm, and the fury in my mind. Each gust of wind tore at armor. The toxic rain soaked the ground until the mud sucked at our boots with every step.

My vision returned as if I’d flipped a switch. I staggered in a circle, looking for enemies, the ground slick beneath my boots. I watched Marz cut through the Hive Soldiers with the ferocity of a mate possessed. His fists flew in brutal arcs, the dull crunch of bone on metal echoing in the distance.

He froze, his gaze snapping to me. Terror flickered in his eyes—a terror that twisted like a knife in my chest.

He knew. Did he hear them? Could he sense my struggle not to become like Perro, my implants twisting me into a puppet of the enemy? Marz’s voice always hardened when he spoke of that betrayal. Now that we shared a mate, I’d felt his bitterness through the mating collars, the loss lingering in his mind like the aftertaste of smoke and ash.

I knew he feared he would lose me the same way.

“Vance!” Rowan’s voice cut through my chaotic thoughts, her tone desperate, tinged with a tremor I’d never heard before. She ran toward me, her face pale inside her helmet. Her breath came out in ragged puffs of mist. “You have to fight them! Don’t you dare leave me!”

The Hive’s whispers grew louder, swelling into a roar that drowned out even the wind. My consciousness slipped, the cold edges of the Hive network’s control wrapped around my mind like chains, each link tightening with every breath I took. Fear squeezed my heart until my chest ached.

I could almost see Rowan’s face twisted in despair, Marz’s eyes filling with bitter resignation as he held a blaster to my head…

“Vance, come back to me. I need you.” Rowan commanded, her voice grounding me, pulling me back. She stood as a constant—a light in the darkness that threatened to swallow me whole. I needed to fight for her. I needed to hold on.

I focused on her, on the way her hand felt when she’d touched me earlier, on the memory of her fingers brushing mine, the softness of her skin, the way her body felt wrapped around mine. The way the smell of her skin lingered when she leaned close. I replayed our first kiss, a moment I’d held onto, replayed in my mind a thousand times.

She was more than my anchor; she served as a lifeline, tethering me to reality. I drew strength from our connection, her emotions, the way her warmth invaded every dark place in my soul. I pushed back against the Hive’s control. My muscles tensed as I reached out with my thoughts, struggled to disconnect from the machine buried beneath us. Its dark, living presence pulsed in the ground like a heartbeat, a deep, resonant thrum vibrating through my bones.

The Hive’s presence surged, crashing against me, trying to overwhelm me, to bend my thoughts to their will. The Hive’s integrations sparked with pain, a white-hot lance that shot through my skull and sent stars bursting across my vision. I gasped, each inhale burning, their grip weakening as I fought back. Gained ground. Forced them from my mind.

The moment my mind made contact with the ancient machine’s thoughts, its consciousness surged through me, a flood of alien thoughts and commands that burned like ice. I watched them pass by like stars in the night sky, refused to let them consume me. I latched onto the machine’s control protocols, twisted the connection, forced those commands to bend to my will.

My fingers tingled as if they were on fire, and a chill ran down my spine as the implants crackled with static, but I refused to let go. I couldn’t let go. If I did, the machine would unleash its full power, blast everyone and everything within miles into space dust.

“Kill it Rowan. Kill it now. I can’t hold it for long.” My command rumbled around inside my own skull like stones thrown inside a pot. If she didn’t hurry, I would be lost. And so would they.

“I tried. We already fired the EMP! It didn’t work!” Rowan shouted over the comm. Her voice rang raw with fear. I heard the strain as she struggled to keep the drill stabilized, the grinding of metal echoing through the storm. “We’re lining up for another shot, but I think we just pissed it off.”

Fuck. They’d fired the weapon while I’d been buried alive inside my own mind.

And it failed?

What kind of machine were we dealing with?

The remaining Hive Soldiers’ influence clawed at me, tore at my grip on reality. But their numbers were down. Marz and his warriors had terminated most of them. Thank the gods. If I only had to deal with the machine below the surface, I might have a chance.

I forced the ancient machine’s mind to disconnect from the Hive Soldier’s network, severed the psychic threads that linked the ancient machine to the chaos in the sky.

With a final burst of effort, I overrode the machine’s commands and initiated the shutdown sequence. The electromagnetic pulses subsided, the power feeding the storm dwindling to a faint hum. The lightning strikes grew less frequent. The winds weakened to a mere whisper of their former strength.

I collapsed to my knees, my breath coming in ragged gasps as the last of the Hive’s influence receded, their hold on me slipping away like a retreating tide as our warriors eliminated the last Soldier and the machine powered down.

A small body slammed into me and I wrapped my arms around my mate.

She clung to me, her body trembling. “That sucked. I don’t ever want to do that again.”

“Nor do I.”

Holding her in my arms, I struggled to my feet as Marz stumbled, his strength finally giving out. “Rowan?”

She felt his urgency, his need to know she was safe. “I’m here. I’m not hurt.”

“Thank the gods.”

I knew what he needed. I covered the distance between us and wedged my shoulder under his arm, held him upright as he reached for our mate. With the immediate threat gone, his injuries caught up with him like a delayed blow. He was going to collapse. “You need a ReGen pod.”

He shook his head and held Rowan tight. “I have everything I need right here.”

I snapped to attention when the governor’s voice suddenly blasted through our comms. Guess communications were back up now that the storm was clearing. “Status, Captain?”

Marz’s smile was half relief, half physical pain. “We won.”

“Did you find anything?”

I glanced over my shoulder at the drill. “Yes. It’s old Hive tech. Eons old.”

“What woke it up?”

I shook my head even though I knew he couldn’t see me. “I don’t know.” Somehow, I had communicated directly with the ancient entity. Mind to mind. If I didn’t know the answer, no one did.

The governor’s sigh fit my mood perfectly. “Dig it up and bring it back. I want that thing off planet as quickly as possible. The I.C. can deal with it.”

“Yes, sir.” The Coalition Fleet’s Intelligence Core would probably be thrilled to get their hands on it. The governor signed off and the security team checked the Hive Soldiers as the drill team got back to work. It would take them hours, if not days, to extract the ancient machine. I wasn’t sure we had a ship large enough to carry it. They’d probably want me to fly the fucking thing all the way to?—

“Vance.” Rowan’s whisper commanded my attention faster and more completely than any order issued on any battlefield.

“Yes, mate?”

“I love you. Don’t you ever scare me like that again.” Our mate was adorable when she was trying to scold me. Made me want to kiss her. Feast on her wet pussy until her sass turned to moans of pleasure.

To my surprise, Marz answered. “He won’t.” His golden gaze found mind and I knew he spoke the truth. My mind was my own. I would hear them, when they were near, but the Hive’s whispers no longer tempted me, would never control me. I wasn’t alone. Would never be alone again.

“They can’t touch me, mate. Not while I have you.”

I thought she was finished, but she glared at Marz next. “And you. You’re bleeding everywhere. That is totally unacceptable. No bleeding.”

Marz laughed. I joined him, the relief and joy bubbling through our mating collars more potent than any drug.